February 3, 2019
I hope I haunt you.
Ása can feel the beat of the music pulsing in her skeleton, but she can’t hear it. She can feel Lilja’s hot breath on the back of her neck, undoubtedly complaining about something, anything to get Ása’s attention back on her, but she can’t decipher it. The vodka burns a messy path down her throat and she doesn’t know how many she’s had, but she can’t bring herself to care. There is no party. There is only the high-pitched internal scream that whistles in her ears every time she thinks about him and the words on the screen in her hand. Her fingers hurt from clutching the phone for so long.
I hope I haunt you.
All it takes is a tap, and she’ll have sent it. She’ll never have to see him again.
She can’t do it.
“What’s wrong?” Lilja, shouting in her ear.
Ása clicks the button to kill her screen. Lilja will look. She’ll search for a gap in Ása’s concentration. She can’t let things rest. Sometimes Ása thinks Lilja can smell the secrets on her.
Normally, Ása can swallow her irritation. But there’s no more room in her stomach. No more patience. The sounds of the party come back in a flood, the music, the laughter, the press of bodies dancing. At her feet, there’s a half-empty beer can spinning on its side, vomiting its contents all over the floor. Ása toes it away from her, but it rolls haltingly back to her. She kicks it.
The can lands with a satisfying smack on a girl’s leg, exploding the last of its contents. “Hey!” she yells, twisting in place to figure out what’s happened.
“Aim higher next time,” Lilja says, hoping for a laugh.
Desperate for some air, Ása pushes through the crowd in the living room, into the decrepit kitchen. Lilja follows, as Ása knew she would. They find a corner by the back door, the only open space in the abandoned house. It’s never been this full. Even in the dead of winter, the room is hot with the combined breath and body heat of its inhabitants. The smell of sweat and grease and cigarette smoke overwhelms Ása, threatening to choke her. Or maybe it’s just Lilja’s arm, snaking around her neck. Strands of her hair plaster onto Ása’s skin, dragging and sucking like tentacles.
“Is it Óskar?” Lilja asks. “Or is it—”
“Leave it,” Ása warns her. She slicks her friend’s hair away from her face.
Lilja’s eyes are red and unfocused. She asks, “Is it me?” like she’s terrified to hear the truth that it is, but she can’t help herself from asking, just as she can’t help herself from snooping.
Ása knows she is equally unsteady, has had even more to drink than Lilja, but the anger roiling inside her props her up. The rage and the desire to run—to him, from him, she doesn’t know anymore.
“Does it ever bother you,” Ása says, shouting over the music, “how everyone wants everything from you, all the time? No one is happy. We are all hungry mouths. Opening and closing, opening and closing.” She demonstrates with her hand, blinking as her own fingers blur in front of her.
“What?” Lilja aims her ear at Ása’s face.
“Nothing,” Ása says.
It’s true.
It’s nothing.
There’s another mouth coming toward her. Óskar, cutting through the crowd, shoving at people’s shoulders, laughing when he spills someone’s drink. He wants Ása to dance.
He wants so much from her.
Ása downs the last remnants of her drink and lets the cup fall to the floor. She’s leaving.
“Where are you going?” Lilja asks her, wounded. Hungry.
“I have to piss,” Ása lies. She tells Lilja she’ll go outside. There’s nowhere to go in here, not unless she wants an audience. Lilja starts to follow, but Ása presses a hand against her chest. “I can do it myself. Give me a moment.”
She moves before Lilja can voice her hurt, before Óskar can reach her. They came in through the front door, but that’s too far away, the crowd too full for her to try. Even if she weren’t feeling like this, like her whole world were coming apart and she was the one yanking at each thread, she wouldn’t want to be here. It’s the big night, the last celebration before they lose access to the house. Everyone’s treating it like a great tragedy. But this is just an excuse to drink too much, to dance in the darkness together, screaming into the void.
She nudges the plywood aside from the back door, prepares to throw her body into it to get it free, but the door swings smoothly on its hinges. She slips outside, pulling the door shut behind her. She takes a sharp breath, hoping the frigid air will sober her up. Usually it helps, but tonight, there’s no feeling, as though she’s walked into a vacuum. There’s no light, either. The scant illumination from the lanterns and flashlights inside is nothing against the plywood tacked to the windows. All that’s left is a thin line of white leaking through the cracks. The rush of the river, so close, sucks the remaining air from Ása’s lungs.
With trembling fingers, she slips her phone from her jacket pocket. There’s the message, still waiting to be sent. She’s already said so much, but she wants these to be the last words. She wants him to understand. She wants to hurt him, the way he’s hurt her.
I hope I haunt you.
She’s sick of thinking about it. And staring down at the bright screen is making her feel actually sick.
She presses send.
The relief doesn’t come. Ása shoves the phone back into her pocket and steps forward, into the night. She’ll go home and sleep this off. It will be better in the morning, when she wakes up new and free and probably so hungover she’ll want to die, but at least she’ll be alone.
She aims for the trees, for Óskar’s car somewhere beyond, but her legs won’t cooperate.
She can’t find her balance. Her feet sink strangely into the fresh snow, sliding sideways or backward, so that she can’t trust each footstep. That last drink—those last drinks—had been a mistake. She can see it now. Inside, with all the chaos, the unsteadiness had felt normal. Expected.
Everything she has done recently has been a mistake.
Her fingers touch the cold snow and there’s pressure in the back of her eyes. When did she fall over? Acid fills her throat, but she swallows it down. If she starts vomiting now, she won’t stop.
The world rights itself in slow, blurry stages. She has to get to the car. Óskar left the keys in the cupholder. She’ll sit in there, take a minute. Warm up with the heater. She can wait for him or Lilja to follow her out. Either one of them can drive her back.
She’s in the trees, making her way by feel more than sight, the noise of the party a distant murmur behind her. Here, the quiet throbs against her ears, the snow muffling even the harsh quality of her breathing.
Which is why she doesn’t hear it at first.
A voice.
Soft.
She thinks it’s her own voice at first, she’s whimpering under her breath. But the sound comes again, and it’s not her, not her own blurry whisper telling her to move.
It’s a man’s voice.
Calling her name.
She walks faster, brushing her hands against the rough bark of the tree trunks as she goes. The voice presses closer. Louder.
“What are you doing? Ása?”
There’s a catch in her body, hurtling her forward. She’s aware of sitting, of both hands freezing in the snow. She doesn’t know how long she’s been like this. She drank too much tonight. This isn’t what she’s used to. This is something beyond her body. She’s hovering outside of herself, but there’s no thought in the outside. Only the trees spinning around her and the vague sense of anger, but even that is draining away.
She looks up into a beam of light.
There are hands in her armpits. Hoisting her back up to standing. She feels safe, because someone who cares about her is here to help her, but there’s the whistling again. High-pitched and shrill, a teakettle screaming on the stove. She wonders if he can hear it, too.