The party was already at a dull roar, much looser and more untamed than the one she’d been to previously. The music was contemporary, the people young and supple. Odilie raised her hand to say hello to Caroline Perkins, the redhead from the beach party, but the woman looked right through her, going for the mounds of coke dumped on the mirrored table in the corner of what Odilie believed to be the living room. There were so many reflective surfaces she caught her new face in. Mirrored walls, mirrored tables, mirrored cabinets smoked and scratched to simulate age.

She joined the group, sitting on the edge of the sofa as they snorted up the white powder. There were two guys with gelled hair and shaved faces, leaning back on the sofa, hands clutching drinks, watching with amusement as Caroline motored up the drug. “Do I know you?” asked one of them, his forehead already shiny, eyes bulging.

Odilie shrugged. “Do you want to?” she challenged him, realizing that she didn’t have a drink, nothing to do with her hands.

“Yeah, yeah, I think I do.” He introduced himself as Jackson. “You’re Peri’s little sidekick, right? The one she brings around because none of the other chicks will give her the time of day.” He laughed at his own joke, swilled his beer.

“Easy. Be nice. Offer her some blow,” said his friend, his voice a low drawl, his face housing too-small eyes, a nose that didn’t quite fit. She recognized him from a few summers back. He’d concussed himself at the public pool. His father had tried to sue. He leaned over and cut Odilie a line. Caroline was gone, off making a beeline for a new adventure.

Odilie went on her knees, the table too low to properly sniff sitting down, the nasal drip hitting so soon that she almost gagged on it.

“Atta girl! Look at her go. So tell me how you got here, Peri’s Sidekick?” Jackson asked while the other guy went to get her a drink. And when he came back, she found herself telling them, these men, every little detail of what landed her here in this space at this time, her jaw clenching with the effort. She realized she couldn’t stop talking, that her entire history with Peri was just spilling out of her, like she was making up for the quiet at her apartment, and she was only taking breaks by sipping the drink that the other guy had brought her, something bitter and tangy and green that she was sure she’d never tried before.