THE PRINCETON TRIP. I knew it was going to come up. So here’s how it went down.
We took Tabby’s mom’s car. We left on Friday afternoon, right from school. Tabby had told her mom she was sleeping over at my place that weekend, and I pulled the same lie with my parents. Mom told me to have fun, but I could tell she was disappointed we were going to Tabby’s house instead of staying at ours. She loves having both me and Tabby under our roof, bringing us snacks and asking Tabby about her homework and her boyfriends and her life. Tabby indulges her in a way I never do. The way Mom interacts with her—Tabby is the daughter she really wanted, the beautiful and charismatic one. In Mom’s eyes, Tabby can do no wrong.
Tabby told me Mark invited her. That he knew we were coming. “I can’t believe we haven’t done this already,” she said. She was driving too fast, and it was cold out, but her window was open, the air coming in and slashing our skin.
It was absolutely insane, driving halfway across the country—it would take us an entire day just to get there. I struggled to stay awake when it was my turn to drive, chugging coffee that settled in my stomach like acid. I didn’t want to go to a party. But Tabby and I stopped at a shitty rest stop and did our makeup in the bathroom. I watched her apply her signature black eyeliner, even though she was already wearing a ton of it. I let her put bronzer on my cheeks after she said I looked pale.
“Where exactly is the party?” I asked when we were finally off the highway, ensconced in city traffic.
“Some guy’s apartment,” Tabby said. We were at an intersection and she pulled out her phone, where Mark’s Instagram was already up on the screen. That was when I first doubted that we had been invited anywhere. “It should be right around here.”
To this day, I have no idea how she found out where “some guy’s apartment” actually was. Later, I searched Mark’s Instagram for the same clues she had to work with. There was a picture of him and some other guys who must have been his college friends, plus one girl with dark hair. The photo was posted the day before we arrived. Someone had commented on the photo: Can’t wait to see you assholes tomorrow!
Someone else had posted Igor’s parties are the best parties.
That was all she had to go on. The name Igor. If you pull up his Instagram, you’ll see a picture from September of an apartment building, and a guy standing in front of it who must be Igor. First grownup digs, it was captioned, with the hashtag #adulting.
I didn’t know this at the time, when we pulled up in front of the building. You needed a buzzer to get in. Tabby searched the directory, probably for Igor’s name, but it was the kind of directory without names. She looked at me, shrugged.
“Why don’t you call Mark?” I said.
“I want to surprise him.” She touched her lips.
“So he doesn’t know we’re coming.”
She broke into a big smile, as if I’d be happy about being lied to. “Well, not exactly. I knew you’d think it was crazy. But I need to do something to get his attention.”
His attention. I hated that attention was all we ever wanted, and it was the hardest thing to get. If people just gave it to us from the start, maybe we wouldn’t do such wild things to get noticed.
I bit the inside of my cheeks. I was nauseous—the inside of the building smelled sour, like body odor and stale perfume.
“What’s your plan, exactly?” I asked, just as her plan strolled through the lobby. A guy, probably midtwenties, who was leaving and held the door open for us. Tabby flashed him a smile.
“We just follow the noise,” she said.
Except there wasn’t any noise. This wasn’t a high school party, one that ricocheted through the neighborhood, the kind I had somehow become synonymous with because Mom wanted to be cool and let me get away with it. The only reason we found Igor’s apartment at all, after taking the elevator from floor to floor, was because a girl got in the elevator with us and Tabby asked her.
“Do you mind letting me know Igor’s apartment number? I’m such a space cadet.”
The girl laughed. “Yeah, no worries. It’s four-eleven.” She went down, and we went up.
What happened next was embarrassing. We opened the door to Igor’s apartment and let ourselves in, me following behind Tabby like a shadow. People were standing in clumps, talking, some of them dancing, and they stopped to stare at us. Mostly everyone was in jeans and sweaters. Tabby and I stood out, in our short skirts and ripped tights, cleavage everywhere. I wished I had never come.
“Can I help you?” a guy in a thick wool turtleneck asked. Later, I would recognize him on Instagram as Igor.
“We’re looking for Mark Forrester,” Tabby said. “Is he here?”
Something like confusion passed over Igor’s face, then he rebounded with a nod. “Yeah. He’s here. Not sure where, though. Who are you guys?”
“I’m Elle,” I started to say, but Tabby cut me off. “I’m his girlfriend.”
It was obvious from Igor’s face that Mark had never mentioned a girlfriend. In that moment I hurt for Tabby. She must have been mortified.
Igor started to say something else, but Tabby pushed past him, into the apartment. She didn’t bother taking her boots off, even though everyone else was in socks, shoes piled by the door. I took mine off. I just wanted to sit down, or lie down and go to sleep.
“Elle,” someone said, and it was Keegan, a beer in his hand. “What are you guys doing here?”
“I don’t know,” I said, because I couldn’t think of something better to say. “Tabby’s looking for Mark.”
Tabby stomped back a few minutes later, brushing tears from her cheek. “Let’s go,” she said.
“Go where?” I said. When she looked at me, I noticed how red her eyes were. Then she saw Keegan sitting behind me.
“What are you doing here?” she spat.
“I was invited,” he said. “I’ve been here since Thursday. I have the weekend off.”
Mark showed up maybe a minute later, followed by a girl. The dark-haired girl in his Instagram photo. He tried to put his hand on Tabby’s shoulder, but she shook it off and sat down, practically on Keegan’s lap. She took his beer out of his hand and held it to her lips.
We didn’t go. Tabby got increasingly drunk, flirted with Keegan to piss Mark off, to make him pay for whatever he was doing with that girl when she arrived. I let somebody hand me a cup of something, but I didn’t drink it. I watched it all unspool, whatever was happening between Tabby and Mark, the flickering of eyes, Tabby’s narrowed and Mark’s pleading. By the end of the night, they disappeared together, and the dark-haired girl was nowhere to be seen.
Keegan seemed as annoyed as I was. “She shouldn’t have showed up. Things were fine without her.”
“Who was the girl?” I asked.
Keegan shrugged, but he liked the question. I could tell. Maybe it felt good for him to see that Mark wasn’t perfect. “I don’t know that one’s name.”
I ended up crashing on a couch in Igor’s apartment, the one adjacent to Keegan. When I woke up the next morning, it was still dark out, and I had no idea where I was. I stumbled to the bathroom, where I hovered by the toilet, thinking I needed to throw up, even though nothing came out.
Tabby and Mark must have been in the hall outside, because their voices came into focus. Mark saying We were just talking. She’s having a hard time with her boyfriend right now.
Tabby. I don’t care. You’re my boyfriend. Don’t forget it.
On the drive home, I told her what Keegan told me. I don’t know that one’s name. Tabby needed to know what that meant. That there were others.
“We talked about it,” Tabby said. “We’re good now. I believe him that nothing happened.”
Except she didn’t, and I didn’t believe it either.