Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/6786673.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      F/M, Multi
  Fandom:
      Homestuck
  Relationship:
      The_Psiioniic_&_Redglare, The_Psiioniic/Redglare, The_Condesce/The
      Psiioniic, The_Disciple/The_Psiioniic/The_Signless, The_Disciple_&_The
      Psiioniic, The_Disciple/The_Psiioniic
  Character:
      The_Psiioniic_|_The_Helmsman, The_Condesce, The_Disciple_(Homestuck), The
      Signless_|_The_Sufferer, Redglare
  Additional Tags:
      Past_Rape/Non-con, Dead_Dove:_Do_Not_Eat, Collegestuck, Humanstuck,
      Alternate_Universe_-_College/University, Post-Traumatic_Stress_Disorder_-
      PTSD, Recreational_Drug_Use, Alcohol_Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced
      Self-Harm
  Series:
      Part 10 of The_Collegestuck_'Verse
  Stats:
      Published: 2016-05-08 Chapters: 4/4 Words: 11918
****** open my heart and let it bleed onto yours ******
by thermodynamicActivity_(chlorinetrifluoride)
Summary
     Your name is Simon, and you don’t like telling people about what
     happened, because either they feel sorry for you, they try to
     interfere, or both. Your choice was just that. A choice. Freely made.
     Fuck anyone who tries to suggest otherwise. Your name is Simon, and
     once upon a time, when you were sixteen, you were involved with a
     woman named Carolyn.
     Your name is Yekaterina, and you would very much prefer it if your
     best friend from high school didn't drink himself to death behind
     that which he cannot change.
     Your name is Krishna, and you don't know how to reach your roommate.
     What words will reach him over the twenty-foot wall he's erected
     around himself.
     Your name is Marisol, and you never quite seem to say exactly what
     you need to tell Simon. You try anyway.
     Her name is Carolyn, and even if they've been broken up for years,
     she still looms - larger than life - in his dreams, in his
     nightmares, in the back of his mind. For good reason.
Notes
     Yet another casualty from my "go through the collegestuck tumblr and
     post stories I think are decent".
     Simon was not always a cynical, drunken, self-destructive person.
     This is what happened.
     Technically runs concurrently to every collegestuck story that spans
     the period between 1993 and 2000.
     Sort of a sequel/prequel to "Notes From Undergrad".
***** got a curse i cannot lift *****
Chapter Notes
     Most of the usual readers (who will probably be the only ones reading
     this) are familiar with the human names I've given the ancestors.
     Just in case they're not...
     Simon Cao = The Psiioniic
     Carolyn Clark = The Condesce (sort of, I have two characters who are
     roughly analogous to the Condesce, and this is the more evil one by
     far)
     Yekaterina "Cat" Levin = The Disciple
     Krishna Vandayar = The Signless
     Marisol Perez = Neophyte Redglare
     Mind the warnings on this story, seriously. It's not pretty.
October 1993 - Simon Cao
The first time you meet her is your second time at the Electric Warehouse. The
guy at the door barely glances at your ID, the one you’d taken pains to
procure, which states your date of birth as 2/2/1975. You melt into the crowd
of light and sound, driving backbeat of the music jackhammering against the
inside of your skull.
She’s standing at the bar, long legs, bronze skin, dark, curly hair, and a
skin-tight purple dress. All you can do is blink at her as she grins, grins so
wide that it makes you feel weightless.
“Isn’t it a little past your bedtime, guppy?” she asks you, stirring her drink
with a toothpick. You shake your head, like a dog with water in its ears.
“Um.” You blink. She cackles, your face reddens, and she assures you that she
isn’t laughing at you. She gestures to the empty seat next to her, and you take
it, mouth still open wide in shock. 
She draws close so you can hear her, pressing her leg up against yours. She
introduces herself as Carolyn Clark, and thankfully doesn’t ask you for your
name immediately, because you’ve rather forgotten it. When you give it, she
repeats it and draws out the syllables in a way that leaves you weak-kneed. 
“You’re kinda cute, you know that?” she asks, breath warm against your ear.
Okay, she definitely has to be bullshitting you now. 
“I am?”
“Oh yes,” she says, running one of her manicured fingers across your
jawline. “Very cute.”
With that sparkle in her eye, you can almost believe it. She rises, and judging
from the look on her face, expects you to do the same.
“Would you like to dance?”
“I can’t,” you confess.
You must have given the wrong answer, since her expression hardens. Or maybe
it’s a trick of the light, because a second later, you’re certain you’ve
imagined it. You laugh nervously, and she pulls you toward her.
“You’ll learn, Si. Or is it Simon?”
You shrug. “Whatever you want.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, then.”
She hands you a drink and it makes your head spin in the most delightful way.
She’s in graduate school, she tells you, and she loves these raves, because
whiling away time attending endless lectures is dreadfully dull. She turns to
you again.
“So what school do you go to, Simon?”
“Uh…” You moisten your lips with your tongue and give the first one that comes
to mind. “City College?”
“Really, now? I did undergrad there. Annoying commute to the lower east side,
isn’t it?”
You nod, relieved that she bought it. “Yeah, it’s so tedious, you don’t even
know.”
“Particularly tedious since CCNY is actually far uptown,guppy. West 137th
Street.”
Oh god, she’s played you. She’s played you and she must know you’re underage,
and there’s a leaden weight in your gut. But she doesn’t leave. She merely
smirks.
“It’s okay, though.” She winds a hand into your hair and tugs gently, bumping
noses with you. “I’ll forgive a little white lie. I won’t tell if you don’t.”
You should have known then that she would draw you down, down, into her depths,
into her wishes, into her whims, trying to mold you into the person she desired
to you be, whenever she desired. You should have known that you would nearly
drown in the attempt, that you would lose giant parts of yourself in a storm,
and never quite find them again.
But you do not. She treats you as an equal (at least for a while), so unlike
your parents, so unlike your teachers, and you cannot turn away from her
unconditional positive regard.
She takes you back to her place, or, rather, her chauffeur does, since you two
are too fucking blitzed to get back there alone.
“He’s with me,” Carolyn insists to the giant man in the doorway, who eyes you
skeptically but ultimately steps aside to allow both of you entry. You still
can’t believe she lives in a building in Gramercy of all places. She has to be
loaded to the power of five.
Maybe you’re all strung out and mellow from the substances coursing through
your veins but Carolyn’s vehemence makes you feel warm. Warm and wanted, which
is a brand new sensation for you.
You want to just curl up and stop time here at this moment.
“Say hello to my new buoyfrond!” she continues with a giggle, and points to a
little padded chair near a glass table. “Simon, you sit right there, okay?”
You can barely stand, but Giant Hulking Bastard guides you to your designated
seat. 
He doesn’t seem to like you all that much. You can just tell. It’s all good,
though, since Carolyn appears to be pissed at him about something. Her voice
floats up like you’ve stuck your head underwater, and she’s still on the
surface.
“Where’s my 8 ball?” she demands of the man with the dreadlocks. His frown
deepens. She punches him in the arm, and repeats, “My 8 ball?”
You want to know why she needs to consult a magic 8 ball (signs point to
wasted) until the guy takes a little baggie out of his pocket and holds it up
for Carolyn.
Oh, yeah. That. That's a thing.
She grins, and snatches it from him. She switches the lights on, and holy shit,
then you can see the entire apartment in all its glory.
This is the sort of place you don’t want to breathe in too hard, lest you
disrupt something. Not like you can breathe all that hard. The chair upon which
you have planted your skinny ass may or may not be worth more than your
parents’ house. Carolyn sits down next to the glass table, practically on your
lap, and surveys the contents of the bag.
“This seems reely light. Did you even weigh this shit before you bought it?”
Giant dude shrugs.
“Looked like motherfuckin’ three-five to me, but I defer to your judgment.”
“Of course you do. That’s why I pay you,” she replies, with a smile that shows
off all of her perfectly white teeth.
“Your fucking parents pay me, sister.”
“That’s why I pay you more.”
You let your eyes slide shut, and when you open them again, they’re arguing
about something else.
“That nodding motherfucker over there, how old is he?” Giant Hulking Bastard
wants to know.
“Nineteen, Irfan.”
“Caro, you know I know better than that. Don’t lie to me.”
“Nineteen. Going on twenty.” She shoves him roughly, losing her balance, and
falling down upon the slate gray carpeting in the process. “Got it?”
It takes you a moment to realize that she’s talking about you. But you’re not
nineteen, at least you don’t think you are. You blink. You’re not sure. Still,
she looks so distressed, with her hair in disarray and her chin quivering. 
You’ll be nineteen for her, if that’s that’s what she wants. 
“Whatever you say,” he replies, stone-faced, and he might as well be taking the
words out of your mouth.
November 1996 - Yekaterina Levin
AC: >:33 I think it would be purrudent if mew reconsidered your relationship
with Caro, to be honest.
AC: >:33 I know you lived with her fur some time when you were pissed at your
family, but that’s been over for a while.
AC: >:33 This isn’t high school anymore.
AC: >:33 It might be time to move on.
TA: II can’t.
AC: >:33 Why not?
TA: It’s complicated.
AC: >:33 Maybe if mew explain it, it’ll be less complicated.
TA: II can’t, it’s just two fucking difficult two convey.
AC: >:33 Simon, I am your friend.
AC: >:33 And as your friend, I am concerned.
TA: Stop trying two interfere, you’ll just make it worse between us.
AC: >:33 Between you and her, or between you and me?
TA: Both.
TA: And don’t fucking guilt me, please.
TA: II am begging you.
AC: >:33 When mew broke up, you stopped going to all your classes and ended up
on academic probation.
AC: >:33 Then mew ended up hospitalized.
TA: Yes, II remember.
TA: She visited me all the time.
TA: And changed her mind about our relationship.
TA: She forgave me.
AC: >:33 Only for you guys to crash and burn again.
AC: >:33 I don’t purretend to be a relationship expert but she seems to be
pretty fucking awful to and for you.
TA: Okay, II partially agree with you, but...
AC: >:33 But.
TA: II need her.
TA: She needs me.
TA: II can’t explain, just take my word for it.
AC: >:33 You’re determined to keep me wandering around in circles.
TA: II’m sorry.
AC: >:33 Fine, don’t listen to me.
AC: >:33 I will be there to pick you up when you fall again, but I WILL ALSO
say I told you so ad infintum.
TA: II would be shocked if you didn’t.
February 2000 - Marisol Perez
“So when did you actually lose your V-card?” Simon asks you.
A few years ago, you would have blushed the color of your glasses at such a
personal question, but now? What’s the point?
“Whenever we started having sex, figured you might know.”
He actually chokes on his drink, and you mentally award yourself a point.
Marisol: 1. Simon: 0. Still, he recovers quickly enough.
“Right, I forgot. You subscribe to that Catholic bullshit.”
You’ve a half mind to call him an irreverent bastard, but he’s probably heard
that one from you before. Probably heard that one this week, come to think of
it. It’s one of the nicknames in your repertoire, the others being such titles
as “drunken fuck”, “massive dick”, and “that cynical douche”.
“Indeed, I do,” you reply. “What about you? When did you lose it? Who’d you
lose it to?”
You don’t even know why you’re asking. You expect a tale full of swaggering
bravado, as befitting his general attitude toward sex, but instead of some of
epic saga of how he did the deed with five girls at once, shortly before
exiting his dorm room to a standing ovation, he looks away from you and fiddles
with his empty empty glass.
“Her name was Carolyn.”
"Only one woman?”
“That’s right.”
He goes on without waiting for a further response.
“I met her in a club, y’know, one of those places way downtown,” he says in
almost complete monotone. He glances up at you. “Hey, Mari, d’you have a
cigarette?”
There’s a faraway look in his eyes that unsettles you. You give him your
penultimate smoke, and watch as his fingers shake on the inhale. His glasses
have gone lopsided, but he doesn’t pay it any attention.
“But that was years and years ago,” he goes on, shrugging.
You quirk a curious eyebrow. “Years, and years ago?”
Another inhale, less shaky.
“Yeah, like, ‘93, ‘94ish, some shit like that. Think she was an NYU grad
student.” He cards a hand through his jet black hair. “We dated for a while,
and it and it was kind of nice. Scratch that, it was really nice.”
A prickling sensation needles up and down your spine, a little warning your
body always gives you when shit’s about to head south. Math has never been your
strong suit, but it doesn’t take a genius to subtract 1977 from 1993 and come
to the right answer. He was seeing a graduate student. 
Maybe you should pour yourself a glass of wine as well, but you’re afraid it’ll
make you throw up.
“She taught me a lot of things. Shit, she actually took me seriously as a
person,” he says. “I was this lispy kid with a fake ID, she was a fucking
knockout, and she didn’t even care. Yeah, we had problems, but what
relationship doesn’t?”
“Problems,” you echo.
“Like maybe I was apprehensive about something she wanted to do, but she always
set me straight. Pointed out that she’d never do anything to hurt me, not
unless I wanted her to. And believe me, I did.”
You bite down on your tongue, hard. You taste blood.
“I see.”
There were times, he informs you, when she went a little too far. “But that was
on me. I wasn’t clear enough, like, how was she supposed to know I wasn’t into
it?”
Your mouth tastes like cigarettes and bile and copper-iron, and there’s Simon,
sitting there with his usual air of nonchalance, but this time, the affectation
is window-glass transparent. Swaggering Simon, drinking his wine. You reach out
toward him, but your hand falters.
What can be said in response to something like that?
Simon scowls, and looks sullenly away.
“I shouldn’t have told you all that,” he finally says.
You swallow, trying to get the taste out of your mouth. You tap your fingers
against the table. You glance toward him, then avert your gaze.
Little Marisol, always with her head in her books, always somehow managing to
get in over her head.
You pour yourself a glass of wine. Simon gives you this tight smile, more
grimace than anything else. You have no idea what to say, so you fall back on
logic and rationality, law and order.
“You know, Simon, the statute of limitations f–”
“I don’t give a flying fuck about the statute of limitations,” he says, his
face suddenly twisted in a rictus of fury. 
He stubs out his cigarette with particular vehemence. “Just do me a favor, and
forget what I told you. Go back to being a bitch to me. I like it better that
way.”
You shake your head gently. “It wasn’t your fault.”
He pounds his hand on the table, causing you to jump.
“What did I just tellyou?”
“God-fucking-damn,” you mutter. Then, you collect yourself. “Okay, I’m
forgetting everything. Removing all data related to this conversation, deletion
currently in progress.”
You need more wine for this.
***** dream me, oh dreamer *****
Revision, 1996 - Simon Cao
You lie to yourself sometimes. You recall the past in a way where its jagged
edges won’t cut you as you stumble toward the future.
You didn’t lose your virginity to a graduate student when you were sixteen, no.
That never happened, you tell yourself.
That is not how it happened.
It was an evening during your first year of college, with a pair of chatoyant
green eyes sparkling in the half-light of your dorm room, taking you in,
betraying amusement.
“I have no idea what I’m doing,” she confesses, her hand creeping tentatively
into your briefs. A bolt of arousal, entwined with guilt, shoots through you.
You pull her close, brush her red hair out of the way, and smile against her
neck.
“When’th that ever thtopped you?” you joke, with an eyebrow wiggle. “It’th not
going to jump up and bite you.”
She laughs and socks you with a pillow.
You can’t finish what you start, though. Your hands feel tainted, because you
are tainted. You don’t want to spread whatever affliction lurks under your skin
to someone like her.
Yekaterina, who went to high school with you, who spent time she could have
been studying for the SAT worrying about your state of mind. You were kind of
an idiot, then. You’re kind of an idiot now, if the rum bottle you’ve stashed
in your bookcase is any indication.
So you turn away and curl up, retreat to a twilight state of unreality,
repeating nonsense phrases that seem soothing to your mind.  Clang
associations, your psychiatrist called them. You rhyme until the thoughts
recede to a dull ache.
Cat lets her hand hover over your shoulder, but doesn’t touch you. She gives
you an old towel to mop up your face with, and watches you until you relax.
So that wasn’t the evening you lost your virginity.
Maybe it was two weeks later, the day she came over wearing nothing but a see-
through nightie under a trench coat. You’re pretty sure it was that day. It
should have been that day.
Maybe it was two years before, when —
No, because if it were two years before, then —
(Violet dress, stiletto heels, leather cuffs, downtempo, zinfandel)
You wish your memory were as tenuous as your sanity.
Autonomy - 1994
“You really are lucky to have a gillfrond like me, you know,” Carolyn says,
tugging your jeans down to your ankles. “Someone to keep your in check. Someone
to make sure you stay on your best behavior.”
She shoots a derisive glance at your old scars. That’s part of the arrangement,
that you stop taking out your frustrations on your forearms. It works,
surprisingly enough. You would never want Carolyn to think less of you.
When she blindfolds you and refuses to turn off the light, that’s when you
panic. You can’t stand the brightness. You can’t stand the leaden weight in
your stomach.
“Caro, pleathe.”
“Please, what?”
You point a shaking finger to the lamp. “You know I don’t like that. Yellow.”
She removes the blindfold and nods, then reminds you of the necessity of
testing your limits. That’s all she wants to do: help you become a better, less
fearful version of yourself.
“Don’t be afraid, Simon,” she says gently. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
She must be right.
She knows more about this than you do.
At night, you sleep next to her, and it’s dark, and warm, and nice. There are
certain things people say when they’re on the verge of slumber, deep secrets
that would shrivel in the day, and Carolyn lets one slip.
“You’re the only person who’s ever understood me,” she tells you. You turn
over, smile at the sight of her sleep-tangled hair, and kiss her forehead.
“Same here.”
You’ve always wondered if she was a little crazy, but figured that it was just
as well. You are also deranged.
At least she cares. You will be whoever she wants you to be. You want to be
whoever she wants you to be.
At long last, it’s a sense of direction.
Imbalance - 1995
Sometimes she touches you and nothing feels right. Her nails scrape down your
back, and her tone feels so contemptuous (genuinely contemptuous, like she
hates you), and all you want to do is retch. But her grin at the end, all
blissed out and free, makes it worth it. You think it’s worth it. Cat asks you
how it’s going with you two, and you give her all the truth and none of the
honesty.
You wonder what it might be like to kiss her.
You wonder what it might be like to use a brillo pad to scour yourself clean in
the shower.
You wonder, you wonder a lot of things.
Carolyn makes you breakfast, and you can tell that they’re pancakes, that
they’re just as good as they were the last time she made them, but they go down
like glue. You barely chew before you swallow. Caro winks at you, pressing her
leg against your thigh, and murmuring something about having better uses for
your mouth.
You snort, ask her if that’s an order, and everything is okay for a while.
Everything’s okay until it isn’t.
Platitudes - 2000
Dr. Aronson reminds you that you’re safe.
But as long as you possess the gift/curse of cognition, you will never be safe.
Safer, perhaps. But safe? Safety is a delusion, the span of time between two
triggers. 
You tell Krishna this, he shakes his head, and asks you how he can help.
You don’t know.
You never do.
***** transfer my tragedy *****
March 2000 - Simon Cao
You and Marisol sit on one of the benches in Riverside Park, watching the last
vestiges of the dying sunlight. She has her skateboard tucked under her arm.
You have a cigarette in one hand, and a 40 oz bottle of Olde English 800 in the
other. In other words, a normal Tuesday,
“I wish they’d just get married already and leave me the hell alone,” you
mutter, taking a long swig. Marisol gives you a sidelong glance through her red
shades.
“No, you don’t.”
You tell her how presumptuous it is for her to assume that she knows what
you’re thinking, as if she can see into your mind or some bullshit like that.
She counters with the fact that you’re about as predictable as the weather,
though occasionally more volatile. Occasionally.
“You push people away so they won’t have the chance to leave you,” she sighs.
“And then, on the off chance that they do leave, you get all bent out of
shape.”
You snort, take another drink. “Ever consider pursuing a career in clinical
psych?”
“I’d have to listen to other people’s problems.”
“Like you wouldn’t do that as a lawyer.”
“I’d get paid considerably more to listen to other people’s problems my way,”
she deadpans.
Of course, she’s right on all counts. You won’t tell her so, because she can be
downright insufferable given sufficient provocation. However, there’s something
she hasn’t considered, something which has been eating away at you ever since
you entered into that relationship… triad… thing, with Krishna and Cat.
You stare at your hands in the encroaching darkness, and know that they have
been tainted. Just like the rest of you. You’re not trying to be melodramatic;
this is a basic fact of your existence.
Your continued existence.
The existence where you wake up screaming some nights because you can feel
Carolyn’s fingers gripping your hips, dancing across the waistband of your
pants, teasing you, but not pleasantly. More like an animal playing with its
prey before it swallows it whole.
You are not like the others. You are not like the others. You will never be
like the others because you have been molded into something else entirely, by
whatever the fuck it is you went through from 1993 to 1995.
(Dialectics, Simon. Rational mind, emotional mind, wise mind, like that manual
you got from the therapist Dolores recommended.
Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
Thesis: The world is a fundamentally safe place where terror does not lurk
around every corner.
Antithesis: The world is a dangerous place, full of awful people, and the
exceptions to the rule are merely that: exceptions.
Synthesis: Pure, absolute, crippling, dissociative confusion.
That’s you. Synthesis.)  
Maybe Krishna, with his nightmares that begin with men in navy blue and end
with a nightstick blow to the skull, has a faint idea. But he’d never trusted
the cops, never pretended they were anything but a state-sanctioned gang tasked
with protecting the white and affluent
You and Carolyn, though?
You and Miss Clark, the beautiful woman who lived in an apartment with a
spectacular view of Gramercy Park?
She took you seriously as a human being. She treated you not like some gangly
teenager, but as a person worthy of love, worthy of her affection. You
consequently thought the sun rose and set on her. You surrendered to her your
soul, your dreams, your sense of self, your ability to…
(say consent and that arrangement becomes a word you dare not contemplate, even
silently.)
You figured out what she was, though. You realized her capabilities, her
potential for infinite tenderness, along with its equal and opposite: her
potential for relentless cruelty. And yet, you stayed. You even moved in with
her at the start of 1994, sixteen years old, with all your worldly belongings
in a suitcase.
Maybe the doctors are right, maybe there was a power imbalance between you and
her, the graduate student halfway through her twenties. How correct could they
be, though? They weren’t there. They didn’t see it.
Ultimately, you chose to yield. You offered her your autonomy, receiving a
collar and (un)conditional positive regard in return. That has to count for
something, that youmadethe conscious decision. That, and the fact that she
needed you as much as you needed her. It was a precarious equilibrium.
A snippet from a David Bowie song occurs to you: you are not a victim, you just
scream with boredom.
You aren’t. You aren’t. You would never call yourself such a thing.
Carolyn was the better part of a foot shorter than you, and barely a hundred
and ten pounds. You could have fought her off, had it come down to that. But it
never did, because you never refused her, because you wanted it, you wanted
everything, you did.
You did.
(Your name is Simon Cao, you are seventeen, and you are flying on so many
substances that you cannot count them all, even if you could count. You lie in
her bed, your bed, surrounded by tyrian purple hangings, nodding off every now
and then.
Carolyn straddles you, wearing not a stitch of clothing.
“And we are going to have so much fun this evening,” she says, all starry-eyed
from coke. She notices how hard it is for you to keep your eyes open and swats
the inside of your thigh. “You payin’ attention, guppy?”
“Yes,” you reply. You shake your head to clear your mind of the windblown haze.
“You know it.”
She balls up the leash tighter, yanks you up toward her, the collar straining
against the back of your neck. You inhale sharply, something in your stomach
flip-flopping. You remember the dying fish at the market in Chinatown, mouths
opening and closing, eyes glassy, and struggle to think of something else.
“Yes, what?” she asks, eyes flashing.
“Yes, mistress. I’m sorry.”
She loosens her grip, smiles, and plants a kiss on your forehead.
“That’s betta.”
She pulls you into an asphyxiating kiss, laughs into your mouth when your hands
roam, but something is off. You’ve done this so many times, had this done so
many times. But right now? You don’t know what’s wrong, but you don’t want to
keep going.
Besides, you have a test tomorrow. You should be studying.
Why did you get so blitzed? How did you get so blitzed? What are you even
doing? Drugged out fear suffuses through you, and you turn your head away from
her.
“No,” you think weakly.
She tries to palm you through your pants.
“Red,” you manage, breath hitching in your chest. “Mistress, red. I can’t. Not
tonight.”
She takes the leash in one hand again.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I’ll make you feel so good. You want to feel good,
right? You want to do good, right?”
She’s testing your limits, and you want to pass the test. Of course you want to
do good. You have only ever wanted to do good.
But the room is rocking back and forth, and… what are you doing, exactly? Why
isn’t she stopping? She yanks your jeans down to your ankles, then crawls back
up to you, pressing her body against yours all the while. You cup her cheek,
staring her straight in the eye, those blown wide pupils.
“Carolyn,” you beg. “Caro, please.”
“How could I say no?” she smirks.
For one fleeting instant, you’re sure she’ll unhook the leash, and you’re so
thankful that she understands, so grateful to have someone like her, but she
touches you.
She keeps touching you, and more besides, shoving you down against the
mattress, hair hanging around your face like a curtain. She goes further,
faster, anywhere and everywhere, her annoyance at your hesitation long gone. As
long as you don’t give it too much thought, it feels wonderful, just as
wonderful as she is.
She always takes such special care of you.
Her bodyguard slash babysitter slash giant Turkish dude her parents pay to
watch her pulls her off you at some point.
Giant Hulking Bastard picks her up, as she kicks and screams, pounding her
fists against his chest, and carries her off to another room. Locks her in it,
by the sound of it. You hear her breaking things, screeching furiously, and
flinch. Curl up and try to make yourself small. You’d run but you don’t even
think you can stagger at the moment.
“You alright, motherfucker?” Giant Hulking Bastard asks you, once he returns.
You did good. Carolyn said so. Said you were the most wonderful boyfriend ever,
that she loved you above all else. You’re fine. You should be fine.  You sit up
and open your mouth, but nothing comes out. You blink at this man, and he hands
you a glass of water that you immediately let fall to the floor. You try to
apologize, but you’ve forgotten how to formulate words.
Carolyn called you perfect, so why do you feel sick?)
The truth is that you must have wanted everything, otherwise you would have
done something. And you wouldn’t have tried to kill yourself after Carolyn
broke up with you. You would have celebrated instead.
You aren’t like those women who convene on campus every year with their candles
and their signs and their chants of “yes means yes, and no means no!” The ones
who are determined to take back the night.
You have no specific night to take back anyway. Take back the year, more like.
Two years, actually. And don’t take them back. Erase them entirely, like the
blackboard in the lab class you teach. Obliterate them. Rewind to your
sophomore year of high school, when it was just you and Cat strolling around
Washington Square Park.
You are something else. You are not a victim of rape. You swear it.
Still, Carolyn has gouged holes in your vocabulary with her brand of love, and
twisted entire areas of Manhattan into minefields of memory you dare not
venture. And if you wanted it all, then why do you dream the way you do?
Why do you feel damaged? Something here is logically inconsistent.
You put a cigarette in your mouth and make to light it until you realize you
have the wrong end in your mouth. You rectify the situation, fingertips shaking
on the filter.
Marisol gazes at you, concerned, the glare of the sodium lamp glinting off her
glasses. She’s such a tiny young woman, practically drowning in the sweatshirt
she’s borrowed from Cat. You feel what you can only describe as the emotional
equivalent to a dissonant chord.
(No. Stop. Red. Please. Cease. I can’t. I’m sorry. Please don’t. No more. No
more.)
She reaches out and puts a tentative hand on your shoulder.
(I said no. I said no. I said no.)
You tense up, lines between past and present blurring like candlewax to a
steady flame. You shove Marisol from you so roughly that she tumbles off the
bench and onto the ground. Her glasses go flying.
“Don’t fucking touchme!” you shout, jumping to your feet.
She slides back several inches, her hands raised defensively, her eyes trained
on you.
“Simon…?” Marisol asks.
Marisol Perez, sophomore Marisol, who buys you hot cheese popcorn, argues
revolutionary ideology with Krishna, wants desperately to make out with Cat,
and sings along to 3LW songs in her underwear, using a hairbrush as a makeshift
microphone, when she thinks nobody’s awake enough to witness.
Oh no.
You cover your mouth with both hands.
You pick up her glasses and hand them back to her. You offer her help getting
up, which she refuses. She rises, brushes herself off, stretches, and continues
to stare at you. Not quite concern anymore, no, now there’s some fear mixed in.
You didn’t think it was possible to feel worse than you did before. You were
wrong.
“Are you alright, Mari? Holy shit, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to… I would
never, I just… I was thinking and…”
You trail off helplessly.
She shakes her head at you. You wait for her to turn on her heel and walk away,
cursing you out in Spanish all the while, but she just stands there, looking
mildly irritated about the whole thing.
“Man, I knew you were out of it,” she says. She slings her bag back over her
shoulder. “Shoulda asked before touching you, my bad.”
It’s official. You’ve fallen into the twilight zone. You knocked Mari over,
could have actually injured her, and instead of yelling at you - which you
would very well deserve - she says “my bad”.
“I’m sorry,” you repeat. “I am so sorry, you don’t even…”
She rolls her eyes.
“We’re good. You had one of your freaky vision things, bugged out like usual,
but no harm done. I promise,” she continues. “Areyouokay, though?”
She makes it sound so simple, manages to sand your state of mind down into
something almost non-threatening. You don’t know why, but it’s reassuring.
That, and she’s still here. That’s also reassuring.
You pick up your 40 and your cigarettes. “I’ll be fine.”
“No, you won’t,” she says with a sigh. “I mean, you probably will be, but not
right now.”
She asks you your name, the date, the year, where you are, and who she is. Once
you’ve answered these questions to her satisfaction, she walks back to the
bench, opens your bag, digs out a pill bottle, and passes it to you.
“Are these the ones for anxiety?” she asks. “You may be surprised to know I
can’t read this shit.”
She laughs at her little joke, and in spite of yourself you snort as well,
feeling lighter. You squint in the faint light and read the label - Lorazepam,
1 mg.
“Yep. You got ‘em.”
She pumps a victorious fist into the air.
You uncap the bottle and dry-swallow two of the pills. You’re about to sit back
down on the bench, when you notice her walking toward the park exit. Perhaps
you were remiss in thinking she would not leave you right here.
“Uh, Mari…” you begin nervously. “Where’re you going?”
“Weare going to get pizza, becauseIhaven’t eaten in twelve hours,” she says,
and you’re not about to argue with any of that. You haven’t eaten either.
“Then, we’re coming back here so I can perfect my radical stunts while you
drink your forty and try not to think too hard. Whatever you feel like doing,
really.”
You take a drag off your cigarette and consider her offer. She doesn’t try to
rush you in the least, content to stand around and roll up the sleeves on Cat’s
sweater again so it’ll fit her.
“Sounds good to me,” you finally respond. “Although…”
“Although?”
“When we come back here,” you gesture to the park, the benches, the halfpipe.
You swallow. “When we come back here, do you think we could just talk for a
while?”
She turns to face you, something fleetingly gentle in her expression, so gentle
that it throws you off balance. She nearly reaches out for you, but rethinks
the action. Instead, she chews on her lip, and nods.
“Yeah, sure, we can talk. We can always talk, you know that.”
It occurs to you that out of everyone in your quartet of friends, Marisol knows
the least about certain events. You’ve talked to her about it exactly once, and
gave her only the broad strokes.
Unlike Cat, she didn’t attend high school with you for three years and witness
the myriad ways in which you changed from your sophomore year to your senior
year. Unlike Krishna, she never shared a dorm room with you, meaning that
telling her certain facts about yourself so someone could drag your ass back to
reality at four in the morning never became a necessity.
Still, you think she should know. Not just because you could have seriously
injured her earlier, but because you genuinely want to explain. She’s a good
friend of yours now, and she’s told you about many of her own insecurities and
issues. You feel like you can trust her.
You want to tell someone who’s not going to write it down on a clipboard and
put it in some file. You have nothing against your therapists, but you’re still
a little leery of revealing all your innermost secrets to someone who can have
you hospitalized with the flick of a pen.
Most of all, you want to get the story straight, the whole thing in its
entirety, at last.
Might as well be to an aspiring attorney, you figure, as you pay for your food
and hers.
The pizza at Tallini’s is legendarily greasy and reheated unevenly every now
and then, but it’s 75 cents a slice and neither of you is in a position to be
choosy. You make another stop at 7-11 to grab another 40. The faintest
disapproval passes across Mari’s features as you hand the clerk your driver’s
license and make the transaction, but she says nothing.
You walk back to Riverside Park, side by side, in relative silence.
With you two seated on the ground instead of the benches, you put your hand on
her skateboard, swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth. She rolls her eyes, laughs, and calls you a dumbass.
“I….”  The park begins to spin.  “Back in junior year….”
Marisol gives you that same gentle stare, and insists that you don’t have to go
any further than you wish, but you really do. You need to do this.
So you start with the club downtown in 1993, your fake ID, and the
sophisticated woman in the violet dress.
***** mirror my malady *****
March 2000 - Simon Cao
It’s half past hangover in the morning, halfway through your first Bloody Mary,
and halfway through one of Krishna’s rambling lectures. Unfortunately, a few of
his words stick in your mind like stubborn flakes of dandruff. God, you hate it
when he gets going this early. It means he’s not planning to shut the fuck up
anytime soon.
He stirs an excess of creamer into his coffee, and sits down on the edge of
your bed.
“…as you know, tonight will be the Take Back the Night demonstration, an event
I once more encourage you to consider attending.”
He must anticipate the effect these words would have on you, since he manages
to duck before you can even think of hurling one of your old calculus textbooks
at his face. Exasperated, he shakes his head, and resumes lecturing.
“You can’t keep this sort of thing bottled up. You shouldn’t have to keep this
sort of thing bottled up.”
You flip him off with one hand and consume your drink with the other, telling
him that talking about your feelings is what weekly therapy is for. Another
heavy sigh from his approximate direction. 
Annoyed, you realize then that you’re out of tomato juice, and you’re way too
lazy to walk five blocks to get more. You settle for scowling at your roommate.
“Has it ever occurred to you that I don’t want to go to this stupid thing?” you
ask him. “You think I want to hear about a whole bunch of chicks complaining
about guys I’ve never met doing terrible things to them? You think I want to
remember any of the old shit?”
He says nothing, at first.
“Perhaps witnessing other accounts of such heinous betrayal will help you to
realize that you are not alone, that you in fact, never hav–”
You interrupt him mid-lecture by loudly dropping the Stoli bottle on your desk.
Once he’s quiet, you uncap it and pour yourself half a glass.
As the old refrain goes, you, Simon, are an unmitigated disaster. At least
you’ve cut your fondness for swilling hard liquor like it’s going out of style
down to once a month or so. Small victories.
You drink the contents straight without grimacing, you have practice after all,
much to Krishna’s consternation.
“This is the sound of me wanting me to hear about half of Barnard’s issues,”
you tell him, after you’re finished. “Anyway, if you think it’s so helpful, why
aren’t you going?”
He gives you some bullshit about it not being his event to attend.
Yeah, okay. Undoubtedly, he must be afraid of the throngs of marching candle-
waving women in the same way you are. 
Though you aren’t exactly afraid of them, more like annoyed by them. You have
to put on your headphones and turn them straight up from “deafening”to “cochlea
liquefying” in order to drown out the chants of “Yes means yes!”and “No means
no!”
“One of the attendees from last year’s demonstration might drop by to speak
with you in the evening,” he goes on. “But don’t worry, it’s someone you know.”
You rack your brains for anyone who might fit such a bill, come up with Cat,
but decide that if she’d ever been sexually assaulted, the entrails of her
assailant would have ended up spread out down Eastern Parkway as a warning to
anyone else.
She would have mounted their head on a pike and marched with that, at the front
of crowd. Would have certainly made the whole thing a lot more entertaining.
That leaves one of your one-night stands, and you don’t even have to tell
Krishna how eager you are for one of them to show up at your door at 8 PM to
tell you about sexual violence and implore you to come with them into the land
of depressive recollection.
You’d sooner jump off the Triboro bridge. 
That’s probably why Krishna bundles up his books and gets ready to leave before
you can retort.
“Thanks for telling one of your social justice dipshits intimate details about
my life,” you call, as he walks out. “Can’t tell you how much I appreciate it!”
He’s already gone, so your words echo to no one. You mix yourself yet another
drink - well, not mix, more like pour - and ask yourself if you’re still sober
enough to teach your 11 AM class.
Since you’re not slurring, and able to walk in a straight line, you settle for
showering and dousing yourself in aftershave, then walking to East Campus to
teach a bunch of wide-eyed freshmen about line integrals.
As you scrawl equations across the blackboard, it occurs to you that a few of
them might show up tonight, that you might see them there, assuming you go. You
gaze at your students with their mostly babyish faces and the very thought of
that makes you want to throw up.
If any of them have questions, you might vomit instead of explaining the
concepts.
Thankfully this is your only class to teach for the day. 
You’re a senior, so you’ve earned the right to skip the rest, go back to your
room, lie face down on your filthy sheets, blast Public Enemy, and pretend
nobody else on earth exists.
You’ll never get over the fact that Take Back the Night is held in mid-March,
right around Carolyn’s birthday. It’s as if the entire universe revels at the
chance to spit in your face whenever possible.
Barely thinking, you pour yourself a full glass of vodka - great, now the
bottle’s finished - and sip from it quietly.
You sign onto AOL and ask another one of your fellow Physics majors for the
homework, telling them that you’re dreadfully ill with Spanish Flu to the power
of Ebola. You don’t have to exactly pretend with them; your ability to show up
for class shitfaced and still make straight A’s is something of a legend in the
department. Nevertheless, you do.
When your glass is empty, you start on the brandy, nevermind that it makes you
think of one person and one person only. It’s not like you have to bullshit
yourself, you’ve evolved past that defense mechanism, somehow.
Hours go by, with you operating in this fashion.
If Krishna returns in the interim, you don’t notice, and he’s gone just as
quickly. Probably the best for the both of you, lest either of you get put on
disciplinary probation for another fist-fight.
At a quarter to eight, you hear a knock at the door.
You groan, press the pillow against your face, and consider smothering
yourself. If the visitor didn’t have to sign in at the front desk, and security
didn’t have to call up to your room, that means it’s a fellow Columbia student.
But the fact that they didn’t just turn the key in the door and come inside
means it’s neither Cat nor Krishna.
Must be his social justice activist friend dipshit alleged one night stand of
yours. You need more fortification. You dig through your sock drawer until your
find your Ativan, and pop three.
You rehearse the speech you’d tenuously prepared for this, one that amounts to
an order to “go the fuck away”, given slightly more politely than that. It’s
not until you’ve already unlatched the door and gone halfway to letting it
swing open that it occurs to you that you’re only wearing your boxers and a
wifebeater.
(Didn’t Krishna give you a lecture on why that name was problematic?)
The person in your doorway is decidedly not a social justice dipshit or a one
night stand of yours. Well, not entirely.
“What a pleasant surprise, Simon,” she says, tone cool as always.
She peers at you through her red glasses, and you turn to let her in. Sometimes
providence doesn’t wholly suck.
You dig a bottle of Coke, one you use solely as a mixer, out of your mini-
fridge and hand it to her. You’d get a glass for her, but you’re too lazy. You
point in the vague direction of Krishna’s desk, to his neatly washed mugs, so
she gets the idea.
“Might wanna get a move on, Mari,” you tell her. “Some social justice dipshit’s
coming to drag me to Take Back the Night.”
She plops down onto your bed. “Really, now?”
You don’t have time for her passive-aggressive sarcastic nonsense. Not tonight,
when the name of the game is to drink yourself insensate before the godawful
chanting starts. You pluck your eyeglasses off the nightstand and cram them
onto your face without breaking them.
“Yeah, and unless you wanna be part of the fallout, you should probably go back
the way you came.”
That’s when you notice there’s half a sheet of oaktag, curled up and held
closed by a single rubber band, sitting at her feet. While you might be the
better part of two thirds of the way to shitfaced, you’re no idiot.
“Don’t tell me he’s roped you into this bullshit, too,” you mutter.
Marisol gives you a wan smile and shakes her head.
“Hard to rope me into something I suggested,” she replies. “He merely presented
me with an opportunity.”
So this is the recompense you receive for baring your soul to another human
being, to giving her the whole account the way you never have: having her take
your anguish and attempt to twist it to serve her activism. She wants to put
you on display like some sort of caged animal.
This is why you never trust people - friends, families, therapists, doctors -
it always amounts to the same level of horseshit in the end.
While you ruminate and grow progressively angrier at her, Marisol snaps the
rubber band and lets the sheet unfold upon your floor, in a motion so abrupt
that it interrupts your thoughts.
“This is what I was wearing in 1996. Did I deserve it?”the poster reads, in
meticulously painted cursive, covering the entire space.
Your mouth drops open, and you look up.
She’s got on her high school sweatshirt, some nondescript jeans, and a baby-
blue pair of Nike high-tops. Oh, and her hair’s pulled back, and she’s got on
hoop earrings. Not as if you really pay much attention either way, but you
can’t recall having ever seen her wear anything like that before.
So the same vertiginous nausea that overtook you while you were teaching
earlier resurges, except this time you’re certain you’ll throw up if you
respond. You stare at her, slackjawed and rendered silent.
“I was thinking you might want to come with me,” she says, wiping her mouth on
the back of her sleeve, her gaze as unyielding as ever. Perhaps you’ve imagined
it, but there’s the hint of a quaver in her voice.
You subtract 1981 from 1996.
14 or 15, depending on the month.
Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no, no.
You recall last month’s tryst, the one that ended with a sunflower left at her
door.
(You needed to make sure you weren’t exploring uncharted territory, because you
were decidedly not the person who should have been tasked with showing anyone
their first sexual experience.
“Have you ever done it with a guy before?”
“Probably.”
“Have you ever done it before?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“…yes.”
You didn’t really believe her, but you didn’t feel like arguing.)
You grab your brandy bottle and take a healthy gulp, verging on a chug,
searching for the words, for any words, for anything. Even an apology for
thoughts you never voiced. She doesn’t break eye contact with you. You need
something to puke in, fast. If need be, you’ll stick your head out the window.
You stare at her again.
“You…”
She quirks a curious eyebrow. “I.”
Your hands shake on the bottle, which she confiscates from you. All you can do
is look at her helplessly.
“You never told me.” 
It shouldn’t sound accusatory - she’s not under any obligation to divulge such
a thing to anyone - but it does.
“I never saw reason to,” she says. “I did not want anyone’s pity, well-
intentioned or otherwise.”
If that doesn’t sound like the first thing you said to her after you partially
opened your Pandora’s Box of a high school career for her - “Just do me a
favor, and forget what I told you. Go back to being a bitch to me. I liked it
better that way.” - you don’t know what does.
You nod, swallowing back vomit and tears. You don’t have any right, not in
front of her.
“I get it,” you reply. “But why now, then?”
She removes her glasses and fixes you in her teal, slightly filmy gaze. Beneath
her shades, it had been unwavering, but here, like this, you can see the faint
weariness. She exhales once.
“Because I thought you would understand. I’m sorry if I’ve overstepped my
bounds.”
“No,” and you pound your hand against the adjacent wall for emphasis. “No, you
didn’t overstep anything, don’t worry about shit like that, Mari, fuck.”
“Okay. That’s good, then.”
You have so many questions flying through your head, and none of them are
polite (or even appropriate).
What happened? Were you sober? (Tell me you weren’t sober.) Who did this? How
old were they? Did you know them? Did you love them? Who did you tell first?
Did you tell anyone else? (Well, obviously you said something to Krishna, if
you’re here.) Did you report it? Did you want to report it? Do you want to
report it?
Were you angry about it? Are you still angry about it? 
Do you ever study your ass off just to stay up? Just so you can stave off the
inevitable moment when you drop into slumber, and subsequently awaken screaming
yourself hoarse from the flood of memories?
Do you have problems with reality testing? Does your mind ever fuzz into white
noise when you think too hard about certain things?
Do you have any triggers? Have I ever crossed them?
Who did this? Who let this happen?
Are you okay? Are you okay?
I’m sorry if I apologize, I know it’s useless, but that’s all I have right now.
You open your mouth to give voice to any number of these statements.
However, something closes in your throat.
You refrain from puking on her sweatshirt, but you do burst into tears, gasping
for air, the room flickering before you. You rock back and forth, utterly
undone, and holy shit, you must look even crazier than usual. She doesn’t need
that from you.
So with much effort, you marshal your histrionic crap into a facsimile of
composure.
Meanwhile, her face could be carved of marble for all the emotion it betrays.
She leans in, and both of her hands close over yours. It’s hard to let go of
some of yourself and give into her comfort, but perhaps her need to give is
greater than or equal to your need to take.
(Fucking pathetic, Simon.)
“I’m so sorry,” you choke out.
She shakes her head and holds on tighter. “I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have
said anything. This has to be way harder on you.”
You want to refute that statement, blow it to bits with the undeniable logic of
fact, but your ability to verbalize remains spotty. You’re holding on like
that, hands linked beside your nightstand, when you smell the slightly sour
aroma of wine on her breath.
You let one of her cool hands drop onto the bed.
Not like you have the right to judge, but… fuck that, you totally have a right
to judge, because you know exactly where that path leads.
“You’ve been drinking.”
The corners of her mouth twitch. She retorts with something like, “Excellent
deduction, Watson.”
“Why?”
She puts her glasses back on, her first line of defense, and sighs.
“I’ve learned from last year that perhaps total sobriety is overrated on
certain occasions,” she says airily. “At any rate, don’t worry about me. That
st
As you sit on your bed, in your cozy warm dorm room, guilt bowls you over with
the force of a typhoon.
uff, the shit that happened–” (oh, look, she’s taken to using your
euphemisms)“–all of that barely affects me now.”
You scoff and roll your eyes.
“Which is why you’ve been drinking.”
She kicks idly at the sheet of oaktag, and while she’ll still look you in the
eye, you can sense the tension in her frame. Being close to her is like sitting
beside a wire with a strong electrical current running through it.
“I stated that my circumstances no longer affect me the way they once did, but
said nothing about everyone else’s. Believe me. Out there, a lot of them will
want to tell their stories.” She eyes your brandy bottle almost experimentally,
and then seems to decide better of it. “Besides, you drink to numb your affect
all the time, and barely seem worse for the wear. The fact that your mood
stabilizers hardly work, aside. I am not on medication, so...”
If the rationalizations you’ve offered others for your behavior were small-time
bullshit, she’s just served you an entire bullshit pie. But moreover, and more
damningly, it sounds like she got the idea to hit the bottle straight from you.
Never once during your trek down self-destruction lane did you really consider
the influence you might have on another. Maybe that you’d have an effect on
them, you’re not that dense, but not that someone would follow in your
footsteps.
“Just because I do something doesn’t mean that you should do it. You’re way too
good for that,” you tell her, needing her to get it. “There’s a reason that
Krishna calls my shitty coping mechanisms shitty.”
“Is that so?” she asks, calm. Her demeanor rankles you.
“That’s so,” you grit out.
“Therefore, if I’m to follow this, your methods are horrible enough for you,
but too horrible for me,” she replies.
“That’s not what I said.”
“That’s exactly what you said. Furthermore, I am eighteen, an adult according
to the law, and I’d appreciate it if you stop blaming yourself for decisions
I’ve consciously made.”
You didn’t realize you were nervously pulling at your hair until you throw your
hands up in the air and feel the sensation dissipate.
“You said you got the idea from me.” You stare at the floor, at the sign.
She rolls her eyes. “You hardly have a monopoly on the concept of drinking away
your sorrows. This is college.”
Yeah, no shit. But, like…
You mean to tell her something else, but she’s already shrugging back into her
jacket, slinging her bag over one shoulder, and tucking her skateboard under
her arm.
“Guilt without action is meaningless,” she says, opening your door and stepping
outside. “And while I am here if you need me, and apologize if this comes off
as tactless, I do not wish to play party to your cycles of self-flagellation,
particularly where they are unwarranted. I have a prior engagement to attend
to.”
You down another shot of brandy, musing all the while that only Marisol could
get more articulate while hammered.
“I see.”
“Alright, then.”
She’s out the door and halfway to the elevator before you call out to her.
“Wait up for a fucking minute. I gotta get dressed, okay?”
She glances back into your room, as you struggle to put on clothes and lace
your boots, with something like surprise dawning on her face for the first time
in months. You throw a scarf around your neck, and start walking before you
have time to regret the action.
The elevator descends. Sweat beads on the back of your neck. Marisol stares
straight ahead. You mentally thank her for it. She interlaces her arm with
yours once you reach ground level, and you thank her harder.
Like this, you could be her boyfriend, just there to offer support. You don’t
have to be part of the march to be part of it, you think dizzily. You focus on
putting one foot in front of the other, and Marisol leads you forward, toward
the gathering crowd with their posters and flickering candles.
She lets go of you momentarily to accept a candle from an upperclassman.
You pull your lighter out of your pocket and light the wick. She unrolls her
sign. You will yourself to relax. Your gaze darts from the crowd, to the trees,
to the streetlights, to the library far off in the distance.
Once you can deflect no longer, you chance a look at the people around you.
Nearly all women, all solemn-faced, all speaking to each other in hushed tones.
Occasionally, they glance at you, and their whispering intensifies, at least in
your estimation.
You focus on your feet again, but you can sense the hostility, the phantom
voices around you, gathering in intensity, marking you as an Other. AnIntruder.
A dull roar against you.
The worst thing is that you are one. You’re trespassing. You didn’t fight back.
You knew what you were getting into. You are not Like Them. You are, the way
you always have been, the way you always will be, something else entirely.
Still, you’ll play it cool for Marisol. You owe her that much.
She steps ahead of you and turns around, so you’re eye-to-eye once more.
Even in the semidarkness, you can tell that she’s assessing you. She blows out
her candle and offers you her arm.
“C’mon, Si,” she says, louder than necessary. “I changed my mind. It’s too cold
out for this shit.”
Funny how she’s the blind one, and you’re the one who lives in Hartley, but
invariably, she’s the one dragging you back to your building. You have the
presence of mind to flash your ID to the security guard, and nearly make it to
the elevator. 
Then, you slide down the wall to a sitting position, the voices continuing with
their vicious rhythm.
But the hallway is deserted, minus Marisol, who says nothing.
God fuck it all, it’s just one of your hallucinations. You must say that last
bit aloud, because she cocks her head to one side.
“Hallucinations?”
You rub at your temples absentmindedly.
“Yeah, I just…” You take a second to breathe. “I saw people looking at me, and
then I heard them whispering all kinds of shit, and I can still hear them, and
there’s nobody here, so…”
“People were looking at you,” Marisol says evenly. “Mostly since you looked
like you were going to pass out.”
You hadn’t entertained that idea.
“Oh.”
She kneels down on the floor next to you, trying for one of her devil-may-care
smiles, however strained it may seem.
“Wanna go back to your room?” she offers.
“I’m sorry for ruining your night.”
She puts a hand on your shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. I realized after last
year that I didn’t want to go alone, so I probably would have been even more
pissed if it was only me.”
“Or if you’d forced yourself to stay,” she adds. “I wasn’t trying to make you
uncomfortable.”
The wind has stirred her hair into a mild tangle, frizz hanging about the
straighter bits. She gazes down at her clothing, and her leg shakes a single
time. Then, she sets her attention straight ahead again. 
She has not bothered to chide you for drinking on your medications, or to point
out that part of the reason they’re not working fully is because you’ve been
doing just that.
You get up, and take her by the elbow, and she reacts as if you’ve interrupted
something. But not angrily. Not angrily at all.
“Let’s go upstairs,” you tell her. “We could talk. Or video games.”
Go Simon, paragon of coherent phrasing, soon to be Ivy League graduate.
Brilliant.
She doesn’t comment on it, just quietly lets herself be led up to 6B5, as if
you’re bringing her there for the first time. You lock the door behind her, and
Krishna is still MIA. Whatever. Probably having wall-shattering sex with Katya.
Katya. Not Cat. Katya. Like high school,like 1994, like…
Your mind whites out, full of static, running the usual flashback subroutines.
Any minute, you’ll hear the lilt of Carolyn’s laughter, the sound of her violet
heels on the tile floor.
You will yourself back into the present and put on a pot of tea. Tea sounds
good. 
Brandy sounds better, but knowing your shitty brain, it’ll only make everything
worse. Imagine if the voices get louder. Imagine if Carolyn really does make an
appearance, hallucinated or otherwise, it’s her birthday in a few days, after
all.
Marisol pulls a mostly-empty bottle of wine and a PS1 controller out of her
bag, plugging the latter into the console.
“Tekken 2?” you ask.
She nods.
Then, she strips down to her underwear, tossing her clothes and sign as far
away as possible, seeming far more comfortable in her sports bra and panties.
She pours the remainder of her wine into your empty lowball glass.
“I’m gonna kick your ass,” she grins. You snort.
“Yeah, maybe if I let you win.”
You two lean against each other, plotting out moves and mashing buttons.
Every so often, Marisol pauses the game, and says something like, “…he was a
varsity senior, what could I do later? As he said, I owed him, he basically
rewrote my argument for the better.”
It’s not a straight narrative like the story you made yourself tell from start
to conclusion in Riverside Park. It’s more like a murder mystery, where you
have to unite the pieces in order to understand.
“..that’s the first time I ever left the state for a tournament. If Papi found
out, I woulda been out of debate so fast…”
Playing as Marshall Law, she deals a decisive kick to your Yoshimitsu, one that
causes you to wince as it depletes half your health.
“Anyway, he offered to help me construct an alternate interpretation. And mi
hermano, he always told me, never go alone with a boy… I didn’t listen. Look at
me, not listening right now. Estupida.”
You do pause the game.
“You’re not stupid. You were never stupid,” you reply.
She shoots you a glare that could melt ice. You recoil.
Round 6 out of 9.
“…like the drink would loosen me up, and it did, and he was all…”
You defeat her for that round. She curls up and turns away.
“…‘cause I didn’t fight hard enough.”
You feel a prickling sensation down your back. You realize that you’re watching
yourself through a magnifying glass. The same guilt. The same self-loathing,
but superimposed upon someone else.
And that someone doesn’t deserve any of it.
“We never fight hard enough.” You put down your controller loudly enough to
catch her attention. “It’s not on us to fight back, Mari. It’s on them. It’s
always on them not to do it.”
She rolls over again, her expression skeptical, one hand thrown over her eyes.
“You never thought it was on Carolyn.”
You shrug.
“Yeah, well, as you’ve said several times, I’m a fucking idiot. Bad example.”
She stares at nothing in particular, breathing softly, as if she wasn’t even
listening. Her breath hitches, something strangled working its way out of her
mouth.
For one scary moment, you’re terrified she’ll start crying. Not because you
won’t be able to handle it, but because Marisol crying, that is one of those
rare occurrences you never thought you’d live to see.
But she doesn’t, quite. She laughs, hard and bitter, and finishes her wine,
mopping up her mouth with the back of her arm.
When she removes her glasses to wipe her eyes, you pretend not to notice. Maybe
you unpause the game a little too soon, but she doesn’t protest. She merely
redoubles her effort on kicking your ass clear to Westchester.
For the last few hours, you’d been marveling on how much stronger she was than
you. There are no too-straight lines on her arms or legs. She does not have an
entire liquor cabinet under her bed - as it turns out, that was Katya’s bottle
of wine that she swiped.
However, something she points out near the end of her disjointed recollection
stays with you more than the rest. A mental post-it note for further
consideration.
“We compare ourselves to everyone, how much better we are. How much worse. And
that’s the most fucked up thing, ‘cause we’re trained into it, like. What’s
your GPA? What’s your SAT score? On a scale of dignified to trainwreck, how
well did you handle this? You can’t do that. You’d drive yourself insane. Or,
uh, more insane.” She hits the pause button on the console. “There’s no good or
bad here with us, there just is.”
That’s probably true. Your therapist has probably given you a variation (or
several) on the same theme. It means more coming from Marisol.
One of your usual sardonic bastard remarks occurs to you. Never get drunk with
an aspiring lawyer, you’ll get philosophized at until your brain leaks out of
your ears. You say this to her, and she smiles.
“Don’t drink with a Physics major, they’re all fucking neurotic.”
She hugs you, and you let yourself accept it at last. Warmth, safety, and
empathy.
Then, more gaming.
You unplug your PS1, plug in your ancient Sega Genesis and take turns playing
zones in Sonic 2. Every time you die in the Aquatic Ruin Zone (several, never
play this game under the influence), she calls you a moron.
She manages to lose 400 rings a single zone later, and not even in a boss
battle. She swears with such fluid fluency that you can’t even begin to
comprehend a word of it.
“Who’s the moron now?” you ask, from your lofty position on your bed, as she
sits on the floor. Mockingly, she picks up the wine bottle like she might throw
it at you. And dies again.
“You distracted me, you fuckass!”
“Yeah and you’re wasting continues!”
“We’re never gonna get to the Metropolis Zone at this rate.”
“You’re telling me.”
When Krishna finally ambles his way back to the right side of campus, he kindly
refrains from asking you how the march went. He can probably tell from the
miasma of ethanol that slapped him in the face when he walked in.
You notice that his sweatpants are on backwards.
And Marisol points this out with uncharacteristic amusement, given that she’s
about to drown in oil while fighting Dr. Robotnik.
“How’d you even figure that, when you’re not even looking at me?” he wants to
know.
She pauses the game and turns from the television. “Hijo de puta, they’re
actually on backwards? Tell Cat I send my regards.”
You cackle so hard that tears form in your eyes. Krishna sits down beside
Marisol in an offended huff. She hands him the controller, tells him to vent
his frustration, and watches him die approximately eight times in rapid
succession.
A regular evening in your room.
After Mari’s gone to sleep - if you give a sophomore half an Ativan, they’ll
pass out for a while instead of jittering anxiously - Krishna wants to know the
details.
“Not my story to tell, man. Not all of it.”
He nods respectfully. “I understand.”
You point to the pile of clothing lying in a heap on his side of the room, and
then to your garbage can.
“Take out the trash, wouldja?”
He gives the clothes a once-over, nods, crams them into your trashcan, before
taking everything out to the chute at the end of the hall, the one that leads
to the incinerator.
That’s probably the best you can do for those.
In the afternoon, squinting against her hangover, Mari bitches about how she
has to wear some of your clothes back to her dorm, and it’s going to look like
she’s walk-of-shaming her way across campus.
You point out that she’s stumbled over to your building in nothing but a
nightgown and Cat’s oversized boots, during a blizzard, because Krishna was at
Dolo’s, Cat was at her brother’s, and you were depressively hammered. Oh yeah,
and she’d been on her skateboard, carrying nothing but her ID, a PS1
controller, and a bag of hot cheese popcorn.
Besides, it’s usual-type bitching, not an actual conniption. 
And she lets slip a small smile of relief as she rolls up the cuffs on a pair
of your pants.
“Thanks, asshole,” she says, kissing you on the forehead. 
You flip her off.
“Yeah, yeah. Get the hell out of my room so I can have my bed back.”
Krishna stares between the pair of you in utter confusion.
===============================================================================
Years pass.
When you see Carolyn’s face in the eyes of certain students, you text Mari and
she drives you to City Island to get fried scallops and pina coladas after 9th
period lets out. Every 18th of March, when you insist performing on what she
calls your “inalienable right to get falling-down wasted”, there’s no real
vitriol in that proclamation. She, Cat, and Krish ensure that you get back to
your apartment with a minimum of hysterics at the bartender involved. And Mari
always stays until you fall asleep.
When Marisol refuses to sleep anytime the debate team is on an away tournament,
pacing the halls of their accommodations like a sentinel, doing random room
inspections to check for contraband liquor, Masae admonishes her upon her
return. Tells her that she’s going to drop dead of exhaustion like that. Who
gives a shit if the students are drinking? They’re always drinking.
“You remember what debate team was like in your day,” Ms. Sakamoto says, joking
in her ignorance. “Don’t spoil it for the next generation!”
Marisol’s lips tighten into a furious white line. You inject yourself into the
conversation, offer Mari first dibs on the coffee pot and ask her which
students won trophies.
Sometimes, passing value judgments on your strategies is perilous. 
Sometimes, there is neither good nor bad. There just is. 
To quote one of Cat’s favorite books: so it goes. 
Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed
their work!