The white grains stood out on the red plate, like a flag of some fucked-up country. He stroked my hair while I snorted the K. He touched the straps of my tank top, the hem of my skirt. There was a cavalier quality about it that thrilled me. His fingers moved from the fabric to my skin, and I felt such gratitude and warmth. I would do what he wanted, I didn’t care what.

“You’re beautiful,” he said.

Not like her, I thought. Nonetheless I liked his words and his hands on me. I made a decision then to let her in, to let her live inside me. I’d let in the dead, her and my mom; they could have me. I’d empty myself to make room. As soon as I had the thought it started happening. My self evaporated. In our kiss he bit me hard, and my body twitched, and they were right there, all the people I’d never see again. He tightened his grip on my thigh and leaned over me. My legs parted as he kissed my cheek, my neck, my lips. I smelled an odd, chemical odor about him. I held him to me. He sucked the air out of my lungs and I was glad; I didn’t need it anymore. I needed room.

“God, I miss her,” he mumbled.

He was doing it, too: channeling the dead. I understood and the understanding flew between us every place we touched.

Simultaneously I felt curious, analytical and without agency. I waited to see what would happen. Maybe it was the drugs, making me separate from my body, or the presence of Danielle inside me, in both of us, or maybe it was his cock, thick and hard and curved at the tip, the way he gained confidence, shed his grief as he entered me, turned me over and fucked me from behind, yanking my hair, holding me with his arm around my neck, pumping steadily, filling me and pulling out and filling me again. I came three times from fucking, and my body disappeared. I could see it on the end of his cock, a separate thing, pulsing like a severed lizard’s tail—disposable, controlled by a distant electricity. I think for a while I stopped breathing. Pieces of him ended up under my nails.

I can’t remember when it stopped or even if he came. At some point I was in the car, driving, having to learn again how to control my limbs to steer and brake and accelerate. I attached no emotion to any of these processes. Everything still seemed inconsequential and also fine.

CHAPTER TEN

The next day I put on a sundress and made coffee. I thought I’d be more affected by the K, but I felt normal, like it had happened to somebody else. I liked being with Danielle’s friends. I could relax around them, like they’d been preapproved. My computer lay open, sleeping, and when I moved the mouse the screen brightened, still showing the porn site. What the hell, I thought, and played the video I’d seen before, of Danielle and Audrey together.