Leda

Friday night, hot and loud. My hair is sticking against the back of my neck, and someone elbows my spine hard enough to pitch me forward and send electric blue liquid sloshing over the rim of my cup. The boy standing across from me has to yell to be heard over the music—he’s asking me what sorority did I say I’m in, again? I lift my hand up to my mouth to suck liquid off the side of my fingers (bubblegum, astringent) and watch his eyes slip sluggishly across my chest. Finance major, for sure. Poolside at the country club in the summers, Aspen over winter break. I tell him I’m not in a sorority, I just came here with my roommate, and then realize I’m tired of being here.

You can’t stay in again, she’d said to me earlier while standing in my bedroom doorway. Her tits were magnificent in an orange bra and one eye had been meticulously lined in gold glitter. Come on, it’s been almost a month. If you’re going to get drunk tonight, at least do it around other people.

Other people—sweaty, lurching, desperate to lose themselves in a labyrinth of alcohol and bass and someone else’s body. I push through a sea of bar chests and bedsheet togas, strappy sandals and smudged eyeliner. A tiny girl in a Cleopatra headdress and the most brilliant eyeshadow the color of lapis lazuli is nuzzled up against a dime store Marc Antony in boat shoes, both of them tucked away in an alcove by the stairs.

I’m standing in the kitchen fiddling with the tap when someone I can’t see asks if I was too cool to dress up. I turn around and all I can see is pink strobe lights glinting against white teeth, the rest of their face covered by a masquerade mask made to look like a swan. The mask comes up to reveal bright blue eyes, a crooked nose—a good face, nondescript. This man-boy is all tousled hair and smooth cheeks, although I see a spot where his razor kissed his jawline. I realize I want to do the same. So when he reaches out his hand I take it, let him tug me up the stairs and down the hallway. It’s quieter up here, the music and voices downstairs now underwater. He starts kissing me and I think I’d like it a bit softer but I don’t complain, hum when he takes my bottom lip between his teeth and nips, gentle. I’m laid down on a worn green comforter and close my eyes, feel the world turn on its axis a bit, when I feel eager hands start to pluck at the buttons on my shirt.

Downstairs, upstairs; kitchen, bedroom. Suddenly I’m disoriented and I try to sit up, pushing at the hands currently tugging down my bra. Wait, I think I say, slow down, but maybe I don’t because he doesn’t hear and I don’t think he hears because he doesn’t stop. My shirt is splayed open and my breasts are hunched over the cups. Man-boy is working at my jeans, and he’s feverish now, a bit frantic, not meeting my gaze, and jesus god I’m about to be one of those girls that that something happens to. He’s working at his own jeans, telling me I’ll like it, I want this, to just relax.

Stop. It’s my voice, but high, like a maiden in a tower’s—he’s startled enough to look up and I kick my legs, ensnared in my jeans, at his groin. He squawks and I’m already hurling myself off the bed (pull my jeans on, just take them off?) when he covers me from behind and we crash to the floor, two oak trees going down, timber. I’m an animal, all bucking and snarling and biting, one word on a loop in my squirrel-rabbit-mouse brain: survive. I sink my teeth into his fleshy wiry arm and grin, feral, when he cries out—I scrabble onto hands and knees—when he comes at me from behind again I’m ready—I throw my head back like an angry bull and hear our two skulls colliding before I feel the reverberations. A thump on hardwood floor, then silence, then the faint music coming from the party downstairs.

I clutch the edge of the nightstand to pull myself off the ground and my rodent fingers catch at something before it falls to the floor. A notebook, small and black—I open it to a page and see, in swimming blunt second-grade print, August 17 - toga party - Scott - blonde Kappa - gave decent head

August 25 - beer bash - David - brunette Pi Phi - passed out after keg stand

August 28 - hawks game date night - Jesse - some GDI chick - had to hold her down but he showed her what was what!!

I empty my stomach into the space between nightstand and bed (electric blue, potato chips) before I stand up, shaky, my rodent hands now talon-like around whatever this is. Man-boy is right where I left him; no candy apple or lipstick-crimson wound to remember me by. I’ve never been colder in my life so I grab a jacket (blazer, expensive, way too big) from a pile of laundry on the floor and slip outside, only now noticing now the door had been locked.

I’m stumbling down the stairs, my animal-girl brain still pulsating. Cleopatra and Marc Antony are still in the alcove, but now his body is covering hers and I can’t see her face but I see her arm, tiny like a baby bird’s, flexed against his torso. It’s not an embrace, it’s a push, it’s get away, and my voice is no longer high but low and guttural when I say hey. Marc Antony and his fucking boat shoes turn around and the expression on his face tells me everything. He hastily pulls his hand out from beneath Cleopatra’s top and tries to say something tough but she’s already slipping past him and we’re making a break for it, two deer slipping into the deep, dark, wet forest.

I’m shivering as soon as we step outside and I realize I’m drenched in sweat; the wind caresses my face and I feel how hard my rabbit-heart is beating against my chest. Cleopatra’s pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offers me one, and I don’t smoke but accept it, let her light it for me, her hand cupped tenderly around the flame. We walk down the street away from the bass and the booze and the bodies to find a curb to sit on.

For a while it’s just inhale-exhale, smoke thick and hazy and gorgeous in the September heat, then Cleopatra speaks. She thanks me for “that” “back there,” and that Kevin can just be a real fucking asshole sometimes, you know?

Do I.

Do I?

I stick my hands into my suit jacket pockets and realize they’re not empty; my fingers wrap around something smooth and brick-shaped. I pull it out and notice, in order, that my hands are shaking and the brick is made of one hundred-dollar bills.

Holy shit, Cleopatra laughs, stamping out her cigarette. Guess you had a better night than I did.

I turn it over in my hands, use the edge of my thumb to flip through the bills. Man-boy, smooth cheeks, sharp teeth, pink wicked grin. A suit jacket full of cash and a notebook filled with conquests—what must it be like to live in a world that had only ever been for the taking?

I place the money back in my pocket. When Cleopatra offers me another cigarette, I take it. Place it between my lips.