Work Text:
When Dess brought pills along, you always knew it from the plastic rattling in her pocket. I think everybody noticed it–Kris, Noelle. Maybe her parents too. It was just another problem she had. She collected problems, maybe. Or problems clung to her.
One night in early summer, Dess brought pills with her to the lake. I got a joint off Pizzapants–we were already planning on getting a little high, so she wanted to go a little farther. That's what I told myself. It wasn't a big deal. But the moment we hit the lakeside, she was throwing down her jacket and popping out a couple benzos. She flashed her buck teeth at me in a grin and tucked them under her tongue.
For a while, things were fine. We lay side by side on the shore, smoked a bit, complained about siblings, talked about the new Blood Crushers. Normal shit. But then she started getting this look in her eye. She started just laughing, in the middle of nowhere. Laughing at nothing that I could see, nothing that I could hear.
Dess turned to face me, folded one leg over the other, smiled without teeth. “Azzy,” she said. “Do you want to know a secret?”
“Uh, yeah. Who doesn't? Everybody loves secrets.”
“Okay! Then here it is: there's nothing here. Did you know that?” She tilted her head. “There's nothing here in this town. Did you know that one too?”
“Um.”
“What if you had to die here?” Dess wondered. She put her finger to her lips theatrically. “Wouldn't that just be ghoulish?”
“Then get out of town. You can do it. If you upped your grades.”
She laughed again. I think it was at me this time. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm smart. I know a lot of shit. I could get out, maybe. If it was with you, maybe. But then again, I wouldn't be afraid of dying if it was you either.”
Again, the close-lipped smile. The head tilt. “That means, um! That means a lot! Or what I mean is,”
Dess stood, swaying slightly. The waxing moon hung behind her antlers like a halo. Her eyes glittered. She put her hand out. Looked me in the eye. “Let's drown ourselves in the lake together. We'll haunt this place, forever and ever. Lure people out to the depths. Sirens. Don't you want to?” She tilted her head again. That closed-mouth smile.
“Seriously, Dess, you're freaking me out.”
“I beat up Kris last week,” she said. “But you knew that. Didn't you.”
I didn't say anything.
“Kris probably didn't tell, but I knew you knew it was me. Of course it was me. Of course it was. Do you want to know why I did it?”
“You're saying crazy stuff–”
“I did it because nothing feels real anymore,” she said. “And you can feel it too.”
We didn't talk much for a while. Eventually, we went home. It wasn't long before she was gone.
There isn't much more to say about this, I think. Please leave now.