Elena Vanishing (14 page)

“Elena? Elena!”

I sit up and blink. My neck is stiff. The light has changed. It's getting dark outside.

I stumble out of my room, and Sandra is waiting for me in the little kitchen. Compact and muscular like a cheerleader, with a pretty, heart-shaped face, Sandra has just come from the gym and looks like an ad for Nike.

Loser! You didn't work out today
, says the voice in my head.

“I've got your hot dog right here,” Sandra says, rustling around in a white paper bag.

A hot dog!
says the voice in my head.
That's fifteen grams of fat. Fifteen grams at least!

“Oh, no, I don't want it right now,” I say. “I just woke up. I'll eat it later.”

Sandra gives me a look.

“Elena, you know what tonight is. It's a party night. Party means protein before you go out. You know you shouldn't drink alcohol on an empty stomach.”

She takes the steaming dog out of its foil wrapper, squeezes a packet of relish on it, and hands it to me. “You'd better eat it,” she says with a pout and a determined gleam in her eye. “I already spent student credit on this. If I have to eat one, you have to eat one. You know the party rules.”

Oh, well, this isn't so bad
, I think. I haven't had anything today since my green tea and granola bar at eight in the morning. I bite into its greasy goodness. Sandra and I eat together, standing at the kitchen counter.

Think of the fat!
shrieks the voice in my head.
Think of the chemicals! Remember
The Jungle
!

But I wolf down the hot dog so quickly, I'm ashamed of myself.

“Costume time. I claim shower,” Sandra sings out, and before I can stop her, she's barreled into the bathroom and locked the door. I'm left to rub my uncomfortable stomach and slouch off to my bedroom. That's what comes of having an athlete for a roommate.

Sandra's got a scholarship function tonight. She invited me to come along, but my friend Meghan and I are hitting the Halloween parties instead with a couple of friends of hers. Meghan's roommate, Regina, is the mopey kind; she's gone again for the weekend back to her parents' house in Uvalde, so I can have Regina's room for the night. Or at least, I can have Regina's room for as much of the night as I'll be sleeping. Some of Meghan's and my party nights have lasted until the next day.

I change into my costume. I'm wearing a cheap German Oktoberfest outfit: white puff-sleeve blouse, black lace-up vest, and blue miniskirt. It doesn't look much like a real dirndl, but it reminds me of home.

You shouldn't be wearing a skirt like that
, says the voice in my head.
Everybody will look at your flabby thighs.

I distract myself with memories of dirndls. In Germany, dirndls can be as important and expensive as evening gowns. Some of my boarding-school friends had to wear them on holidays—dirndls for the girls and lederhosen for the boys. As I lace the vest, I think about Frau Tannenbaum and the green dirndl she wore to church every Sunday.

Then I pull on a pair of black fishnet stockings and step into five-inch heels.

It's a good thing Frau Tannenbaum can't see me now.

A text comes in on my phone:
im here!
I shout good-bye to Sandra through the bathroom door and remind her that I won't be back tonight. Then I grab my keys, slam the front door, and go down the concrete stairs outside as fast as my heels will let me.

A warm breeze ruffles the short skirt, and I reach back to try to hold it down. After wearing jeans all day, it feels strange to be so well ventilated.

Meghan waves from the parking lot. She's wearing a pirate costume, more or less . . . mostly less. She's got the pirate hat on, and a curved plastic sword at her side, but her shirt is unbuttoned down the front, showing a black bra underneath. Her skirt is even tinier than mine.

“God, Elena, hurry up!” she yells. By the way she's holding on to the car door and leaning, I can tell she's already had a couple of drinks. I jump into the backseat, and she slides in after me.

The guy driving the car is Kirk, a friend of hers. The guy sitting up front is Wayne, a friend of his. Kirk pulls away from the curb with a squeal of his tires, and I think:
Has he been drinking, too?

Serves you right if you all die
, says the voice in my head.

Kirk drives to where the guy in his algebra class said the party was going to be. It's obviously where the party is. Bumper-to-bumper parked cars line both sides of the street, and music blares out of an open doorway.

The neighborhood is full of student rentals with carports, ripped screens, and dead lawns. Ryan's house looks like a cheaper version of my parents' 1970s ranch house—if my parents' house held almost no furniture, forty or fifty ghouls and mummies, and several kegs of beer in the kitchen.

The host is standing just inside the door in a bright red devil costume.

“Trick or treat!” he yells over the pounding dubstep, and he holds out a plastic pumpkin candy dish.

I look inside and see little tablets in muted shades of pink, blue, and yellow with quirky symbols stamped into them.

“Fantastic!” says Kirk. He grabs a pink peace sign and pops it into his mouth. Wayne reaches into the candy dish next. Meghan
puts a blue smiley-face into her mouth, then grabs my arm and heads toward the kitchen.

“I hate the taste,” she says. “I need a beer.”

We push our way through the crowd of capes, masks, and bright-colored underwear. The crowd is so dense, I can barely maneuver. I think about my short skirt and put up with the unpleasant feeling of bumping against people I don't know.

Perverts!
warns the voice in my head.
Fat, sweaty perverts.

But at least in this crush, no one can see my flabby thighs.

Jell-O shots in Dixie cups line the kitchen counter. Two reasonably sober girls with bunny ears are guarding the good stuff in the fridge. A guy who decided that plaid boxers are a Halloween costume is mixing a Jack and Coke. Somebody hands Meghan a plastic cup full of beer, and she chugs it down.

“Yuck!” she says. “Here, you want to wash the taste out?”

“No, I'm good,” I say. I don't like pills, even if I don't have to swallow them.

Meghan's face lights up with the beatific look of a preacher talking about salvation.

“Oh, Elena, you've
got
to try Ecstasy,” she says. “You've
got
to try it. It makes you so happy, and all calm, and things feel so good. It's just . . . you've
got
to try it.”

She hands her plastic cup back for a refill.

“Maybe next time,” I say. “I've got what I need right here.” I pick up a red Jell-O shot and a green one and slurp them down, then crumple the Dixie cups and toss them past a goggle-eyed Where's Waldo into the big gray trash can by the kegs. “Vodka and Jell-O,” I say. “What's not to love?”

I pick up two more on my way out.

We go into the living room, shoo a Smurf in short-shorts out of the way, and plop down on the couch. I'm next to Wayne. He's
holding a Corona with lime and is deep in discussion with the guy next to him about one of the Halo levels. His entire costume, I realize, consists of a rubber knife through the head.

I don't know very many people here. In front of me, an angel is dancing with the devil host. If angels really look like that, they should wear bras and maybe check their white stockings for holes before they leave home.

“I'm out of beer,” says Meghan.

“I'm out of Jell-O shots,” I say. “Let's go.”

Time passes, with more trips from the couch to the kitchen. They begin to seem like massive and difficult journeys. Meghan and I have long, complex discussions about them first, as if we are planning a hiking trip through the Himalayas.

I feel a hand stroking my hair and turn to see why.

“So soft . . . ,” murmurs Wayne. “So soft.”

Then he kisses me—a long, deep kiss. I pull away, but secretly, I'm flattered.

“Jesus, Elena, what are you doing?” says Meghan. She starts to laugh. “Oh, my
God
!”

I find myself laughing, too.

Several more trips to the Himalayas. The loud music and bright colors of costumes have merged into a fantasy landscape that swirls around me in slow motion. But through the haze, a growing awareness dawns on me.

“I need to pee,” I tell Meghan.

She doesn't hear me. She's talking to someone else. Nevertheless, I feel good for having told her. It's the sacred duty of friend to friend.

I wend my way to the front hallway, where the bathroom is. That's also where the largest crush of people is. I stand in line for ten minutes, or maybe one minute, or maybe half an hour—it's hard to
tell. Then I push through to the front of the line and smack my hand against the door.

“I need to
pee
!” I yell.

From inside the little bathroom come girlish giggles and snatches of conversation. “We're taking
pictures
!” someone yells back.

Tomorrow, Facebook will display fifty-three new and almost identical pictures of a Teletubby, a cowgirl, and the Progressive Insurance lady holding up their phones and shooting photos in a bathroom mirror. But right now, I still need to pee.

Then I realize:
There's another bathroom upstairs!

For a second, I am stunned by the force of my own brilliance. Then, congratulating myself on my superior, laserlike mind, I abandon the huddled masses waiting for the photo session to break up. I climb the stairs. The carpet grabs at my high heels and threatens me with a fall at every step.

The landing is lit only by the lights from downstairs. I wander into the hall, trying doors. The first door is a darkened bedroom. Wayne is in there, playing some kind of computer game. Past his silhouette, on the screen, men in flak suits shout to one another.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, getting up.

I feel like I've been caught doing something wrong. It's bad manners to snoop in the bedrooms at a party. Wayne's up here because he's friends with one of the guys who lives here. He probably thinks I'm on a treasure hunt, looking for things to steal.

“Finding the bathroom,” I say.

“Next door.”

I turn to go, and he follows me out. What a jerk! He's actually going to watch me to make sure I'm not taking stuff.

But he isn't. He grabs me around the waist in the hallway and tries to kiss me again.

I push him away and turn toward the bathroom.

“I need to pee,” I say firmly.

He grabs me again—roughly this time. “Come on,” he says. “I know you want it.”

“Let
go
, Wayne!” I say.

Wayne doesn't let go. He gets a grip on my arm and starts to pull me into the bathroom.

“I know the kind of girl you are,” he says. “I know what you want—hey, stop fighting, bitch!”

NO! NO! NO!

Not another bathroom! Not another yelling voice!

I wrap my arm around the doorjamb and hang on tight. A burr of metal on the hinge peels its way down the flesh of my forearm, but I barely feel it. This time, it's not going to go like that. It is NOT going to go like that!

I strike out at Wayne with my free hand and scratch him so badly that I feel bunched-up skin under my fingernails. “You
bitch
!” he howls, and he smacks me across the face.

I see red. I literally see red. I can't even see Wayne's face anymore. I am a kicking, slashing, howling she-devil. I am screaming with rage.

“Forget it, bitch,” Wayne says, letting go. He pushes past me into the hall. “You're not worth my time.”

He's getting away. He is NOT going to get away!

I'm right behind him. I punch and slash and shriek. We're on the stairway now, and Wayne's at a disadvantage because he can't fend me off and handle the steps at the same time. My high heels are catching in the sculpted carpet. If my punches didn't keep landing and bouncing me back upright, I'd fall down the stairs.

We burst into the living room, and all the Ecstasied-out partiers on the couch and chairs and floor look up at us like flower children in the Summer of Love.

“Dude,” says the devil host sleepily. “What happened?”

“Get this bitch away from me!” yells Wayne.

“You
dick
!” I shout. “You asshole piece of
trash
!”

Meghan is next to us now.

“Elena, you messed up my high,” she says. “Stop hitting Wayne. He's my friend.”

“Goddamn bitch! Look what you did!” Wayne shouts, clutching scratches on his arm and chest. He ducks a punch, and then he hits me hard across the mouth.

“Wayne,
Jesus
!” screams Meghan. “Oh my God, Wayne, you
asshole
!”

But I don't feel it. I am swinging again.

Kirk is beside me, too. He says, “Come on, Elena, we're leaving.”

Now we're outside the house, but I'm still swinging. Wayne is farther away, and I see guys around him holding his arms, but I keep closing the distance to connect. Somebody I don't know puts his hands around my waist to pick me up off the ground.

“He's not worth it,” he tells me. “He's not worth it.”

I use this opportunity to kick Wayne as hard as I can in the crotch.

The guy can't hold me and keep his balance, and I end up on the ground. But Wayne's there, too, writhing and groaning. And I'm the one who gets up first.

Then I'm in the car, in the backseat with Meghan again. I've lost one of my shoes. Meghan and I are arguing, explaining, backtracking, and clarifying in grand, sweeping statements.

“What
happened
,” I say, “is that guys are assholes. That's it. That's all. That's it.”

Meghan nods like a bobblehead.