Sid took me to an outdoor party that had an intricate flowering labyrinth all too easy for me to solve, since I mapped its turns and blind ends in my mind and never made the same mistake twice. When I claimed the prize at the center—a simple gold bangle on a pedestal—a trapdoor opened beneath me, dumping me into a vat of pleasure dust. I sputtered, trying to get the dust out of my mouth, but the voluptuous, wild taste clung to my tongue. The dust glittered on my skin even after Sid helped me out of the trap. Partygoers laughed, and laughed harder as she brushed me off and dust got on her skin. Then her black eyes widened and got very glossy, and I knew dust had gotten in her mouth, too.

That night was hard, with me feeling enchantingly free, enamored with everything, each slight touch an intense caress, laughter liquid in my throat even as Sid dragged us both into a fountain that washed us clean but couldn’t rinse the bright taste from my mouth.

“You’re beautiful,” I told her. The fountains’ jets bubbled around us.

“You’re foxed,” she said.

“You stare at me sometimes, too. I see you sneaking glances.” Later, when I was sober, the memory of this made me cringe.

“I don’t.”

“You are lying. You’re a liar. You told me that you were one. But!” A new thought occurred to me. “If a liar says she is a liar and she is really and truly a liar then she has just told the truth. Which makes her not a liar. Or not always a liar.”

“Please,” said Sid, “keep drinking the water. It will clear your head.”

She sounded so distraught that I did what she said until my whole body felt like lead and I wanted to crawl home.

“I’m so sorry,” I said later, when I was cold and the world had stopped gleaming.

“Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault. You weren’t yourself.”

“You swallowed some.”

“Yes.” She sighed.

“You were normal.”

“I didn’t feel normal.”

“You were able to act like you were.”

“Maybe I’m getting better,” she said, “at controlling myself.”

I shuddered all the way home. I began to despise the parties, how they lured me with their beauty and then left me feeling sick with it, as though I had gorged myself. I was ready, with or without Sid’s help, to find a councilmember’s passport to forge access to the Keepers Hall, when finally one party was different from the rest, because I saw someone I recognized, someone who had taken something from me and owed me an explanation.

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