I took yesterday’s inventory, dredging images from the swamp: Dominic’s condemning glare, a drink, patio guy, gravel piercing my knees, I’d been bad, his turned-away face, his disgust, I saw you, another drink, Celeste’s party, dragging Jojo into the corner, my nails digging into her arm, I’d been bad, drinks and more drinks, Sam upstairs, harder, his hands in my hair, I’d been bad, You don’t give a shit what I want, I would need to atone, my parents’ apartment, That’s very short, I was disgusting, Langham, his stony look of no, Jojo, right before bed, glaring at me from the staircase, I had treated Sam like shit, Sam, whom she loved, whom she cared about more than anyone, more than me—but before that, the bar, Freud. Aren’t you curious? he had said, and I know who I am, or was that my dream?

I tried to reconstruct our conversation, but my mind had sucked much of it back up like quicksand. I remembered him smoking outside the bar, spotlit by the streetlight, the haze of smoke giving the image the sheen of a movie still. I remembered the scent of burning leaves hanging sharp in the air. I remembered him looking at me, You came back, that little smile. But then he had given me the minutest of headshakes. He had rejected me. The knowledge of this was acute and raw once more. He was better than me. But Why do you need me to betray you? he had asked, and Come back, he had said, and Aren’t you curious?

I rose from bed slowly, trying not to jostle my brain inside my skull, and tested how I felt. My head was pounding, but my stomach felt solid, at least for now. In the mirror on top of my dresser, my lips were bright pink, my cheeks flushed, as they often were after I’d been drinking. I looked pretty.

I snuck to the bathroom and back, determined not to wake Jojo, and, safely returned to my room, beheld my shirt drawer. I had too many shirts, collected them like skins of a different self. There was the black mesh shirt, under which I’d wear my black bra, or even the bright red one, when I wanted to be noticed. There was the T-shirt I’d gotten at a thrift store, printed with an image of a candy bar from my childhood, which I wore out in Brooklyn. There was the avocado-colored shirt my father had given me long ago, a memento from a conference in California. I remembered him giving it to me, on the breast pocket a small patch with the name and logo of the store. The shirt was too small now, but I couldn’t bear to give it away, though I never took it out of the drawer unless I got hammered and got the idea to try it on—or, on one mortifying occasion, to sleep with it tucked into the crook of my arm. I had no closet, only the hand-me-down dresser. My good shirts, all three, were hung in Jojo’s closet; she had the bigger room. I would, I realized, need to get one before school on Monday—tomorrow. I could sneak back in tonight; maybe by then she’d have a chance to cool down—but Why do you need me to betray you? Was Jojo really enraged? I tried to recall what she’d said, her tone, and realized I could not. All I knew was the sour feeling deep in my stomach: fear, maybe, or mortification. Maybe by evening she’d have left for her boyfriend’s, as she often did on Sunday nights.