At Night’s End

Chapter 7

There was a point in my life where I learned we all grow backwards. From age eighteen, we stop flourishing. We go from being bright children to angsty teens into lost young adults. Any perspective you gain in your teenage years turns out to be egocentric moralistic reflection.

Which kills you.

So by the time you’re old enough to know you were in over your head the entire time, the reality check stuns you. You’re not smart. You’re nothing but a big, fat assuming snail in a situation where everyone else is a cheetah. Congratulations, loser.

It is now three months after senior year has let out. Sarah has been quiet amongst our circle, parting ways with her high school friends so soon. I understand why. We weren’t anything spectacular. Just bitchy girls.

Some things have changed. I’ve found a job as a waitress at a local strip club. Something about dressing the way I want and strangers not being obligated to touch me for it empowers my will to make money off their tips. I do wear low cut tops with high heels, flared out bottoms and my makeup on fleek. I’m a show pony without a pole. A slut without her clothes off.

Maive, my coworker continues to ask me to cover her shifts throughout the week. We’ve gone out drinking together. But if she knows anything about my breed of human, or who I am beneath my normalcy, she will avoid me. I still smoke crystal meth. I have been this past summer. To get over Sarah, I mean.

My problems disappear as soon as the stimulant hits me. I love how I perceive myself as most beautiful, know exactly what to say and manifest to myself in the mirror, as I isolate happily. My best friend is a drug many say to avoid. Many say to avoid an augment that fixes me.

I haven’t made a plan of contacting Sarah. As much as I have a longing to have her back in my life. She is worthy of better than a junkie. I’ve done a lot of reflecting. It’s not the right time.

Tomorrow, I will be scheduling a trip to Paris on my own. There are other things to look forward to than pushing yourself back into someone’s peripheral after rudely revealing you were a total lesbian and pined for them daily.

As I walk through the mall on my day off, I look for my drug dealer, Carl. He promised to meet me outside the movie theatre. I’m supposed to sleep with him in his car for seven grams, my unused skills of many years coming back out.

I throw my neck repeatedly. He takes a long time to finish, just to degrade me, just to make my jaw hurt. He knows I’m not interested in men. He knows how much I fiend for a drug to ignore my broken heart longer. Carl is a misogynist for what he does to me. Spitting on my face and slapping it, pulling my hair and calling me a filthy f*****g w***e, he plunges into the depth of my fervent self hatred. I lost Sarah Lovett.

—

Alice promised me a role that she couldn’t attain for me again. The longevity of an extra’s career is out of the question in that it does not last long. Like the short lived bouts of peace I have with Kyle, the fiancé. Nothing really goes perfectly right for anyone in life, but things I wish I could change seem unreachable.

I’m stressed at the point I’m supposed to be enjoying my life. And the only person who ever cared about my well being is gone. Courtney Miller was a good friend if not a total bombshell who knew how to look out for me. She has everything going for her and I know that to this day. Even when she told me she had a long standing problem with drugs since the age of thirteen, I still knew she had herself together.

No one was cooler than Courtney until that night we vowed to never speak to each other again. The pain I felt in my chest for the rest of the year made me wonder if opiates were worth the cost of everything around you.

I was offered multiple variations of drugs throughout my modelling career. But that is nothing to highlight as a big moment in my life gone well. I nearly died of anorexia at age sixteen, a week before my first supermodel shoot.

If I remained in my career, my mother would have spent every day crying over my bad health choices and malnourishment just to make clothes look nice in photographs. I couldn’t imagine putting her through that. I had to grow up at some point and recognize my loved ones and everything they do for me.

I suppose before all of these realizations, Courtney kept me sane. Her dangerous eyes were like a protective barrier around me. Like a drug one takes at a party. She felt warm to me, despite her icy demeanour. When I think of her, I only wish her the best things for she was miserable.