There was a small area to the side where people were standing by a fence listening to the group performing at the closest stage. Anna became transfixed by the dancing crowd, watching the trails of colors waving off everyone’s clothes. Then she saw him. Alexia was dancing, surrounded by three girls, each in a bright pink wig. The girls were laughing and holding hands, a ring-around-the-rosie with Vronsky as their maypole.

He’s already forgotten about me. He’s moved on and replaced me with three Asian girls with cotton candy for hair. Anna hated the girls and their stupid pink party wigs. She hated their faces and their long tan legs. She hated the cropped pink denim jacket and the short turquoise-and-red cowboy boots that the prettiest of the three was wearing. She wanted to beat up the blond dancing boy. She wanted to rip every curl from his stupid head, but she couldn’t move. She felt like she was part of the couch, like she was sitting on a melted clock from a Dali painting. Time is melting. I’m melting Anna, tick turning into tock, and soon I’ll be gone. She held up her hand, and her fingers looked longer than they should have been. Alexia is the pied piper playing his flute and luring all the pretty dancing girls back to his bed, where he will fill them up and film them up, fill and film, just like he did to me.…

Anna looked over again and saw the three pink-haired girls had morphed into one, and she was no longer positive the blond boy was Vronsky after all. Wanting a closer look, Anna got up but immediately lost her balance and fell to the ground. She bit her lip, and when she touched her face, there was blood all over her fingers. My life is spilling out of me. Terrified, Anna scrambled up and looked for the exit. A security guard saw her bleeding and came over to ask her if she was okay. “No, I’m not,” she cried.

Anna spent the rest of the day in one of the medical tents, where she confessed to the nurse she had taken LSD. They gave her water, an ice pack, and a cot. She spent the next five hours curled in a little ball, squeezing her eyes shut, seeing swirls of colors that moved too fast and were too bright, but when she opened her eyes she saw a Japanese girl next to her throwing up into a plastic bedpan.

“What’s your name?” Anna asked the girl after she stopped hurling. “I’m Anna.”