Last Train to Babylon

Author:Charlee Fam
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2014-09-08T16:00:00+00:00

177

Chapter 17

Tuesday, October 7, 2014.

COME WITH ME, come with me, he says.

I wobble on the balls of my feet, twisting my car keys in the door. It doesn’t open. Smoke streams off the end of my lit cigarette. It’s clenched between my teeth.

It won’t open, I say, my voice muffled. I collapse into a hysterical fit of giggles. I’m on the ground, my sweater lifts up and the asphalt scratches my bare back.

Come with me, Aubrey, the voice says. Let me take you home.

There’s pressure under my arms—hands, I think, lifting me back on my feet.

178

The streetlights buzz, the keys rattle and fall to the street. His hand comes down and swoops them up. I can’t stand, I feel my weight start to shift, and Ally’s house stands like a giant pink elephant on the cul-de-sac.

The streetlights spin, I let my face fall into his chest. I breathe in coffee and cinnamon.

Let me take you home.

My car, I say. I think I say it. My car. But my insides spin and the streets swirl around me and I feel my center of gravity churning up from my guts, up through my chest and lodging in my throat. I fall to my knees, and retch: Karen’s roast chicken, Jack, and half a bottle of Pinot splatters onto the street.

The hand rubs my back. The keys rattle in his pocket. He’s lifting me to my feet.

THE SUN SHRIEKS through a crack in the curtains. My insides feel hollow and dried out. I open my mouth, and the air hits my tongue. It feels like I’ve been chewing on sand, puke-flavored sand. A thick, groggy fog envelops me, and for a moment I don’t remember where I am, or why I feel like shit, and then it hits me like a bag of bricks, and panic sweeps over me.

I’m in my own bed.

179

I can barely read the digital clock on my nightstand, but if I squint, I make out a blurry outline: 7:51. I’m almost sure it’s 7:51. And the light streams in through the window; it’s the bright, unnatural morning light, the kind that comes all at once. I groan and roll on my side. I’m simultaneously hot and cold, drenched in a dizzy sweat. I kick the covers off, but feel exposed in a Brown T-shirt and shorts; I don’t remember putting on either. So I pull the blanket back up over my head, will myself to just vanish into the sheets, and retrace my steps from last night. I can’t see the clock, so my contacts are out. That much I know. At least I’d been somewhat responsible. But other than that, there’s nothing—just a black hole of nothing and this throbbing pain in my temple.

And then it starts to come back to me. Piece by piece. There was dinner.

There was Ally’s.

I remember falling, vomiting, and that smell. Coffee and cinnamon. There’s only one person I know who smells like that. So that part must have been a dream. I’m sure of it.

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