Chapter 660: 65 ~ The Roxanne That I Knew-3

And now, as I slowly rose from where I had crouched in front of the toilet, pressing my warm palms against the cool and smooth surface of the white tiles underneath me, and stood up, ambled slowly toward the sink where I grasped onto a plastic cup I used for rising after I brushed my teeth, and I turned on the faucet, the running water filling the room as I remembered that night, the ringing of their laughter echoing in my ears, the gleaming traces of shed tears on her skin under the moonlit glow, and the quiet crunch of the gravel that sounded like small gun shots as we silently made our way toward her car, that night felt suddenly different, knowing that at some point, Debbie actually encouraged her to flirt with Evan Dillinger and that Orion was there when her naked body was exposed from the second story hallway, blue fabric barely concealing her, and every intention of winning her back withered in that moment. I wondered if she had seen him, standing among the swarm of drunken high school students and bored college students, perhaps wearing one of his white T-shirts or something with Batman on it, and if her eyes met his for that brief moment before the jeering of the crowd reached her ears again and brought her away from the hazel storm staring at her. I rinsed my mouth, swishing the water around my teeth and under my tongue, the cool temperature relaxing me for that small and still moment as I stood, alone, in the dark bathroom, swirling water in my mouth to dislodge the grainy bits of vomit that had huddled themselves into th crevices of my teeth, and I spit into the sink. When I looked up, saw the sunken in cheeks and hallow eyes staring back at me, a strand of hair having slipped out of my ponytail and hung over my clammy face, I suddenly felt cold, the kind of cold that multiple blankets and raised thermostats couldn’t warm. I exhaled, gripping the edge of the countertop, and breathed in again but it felt as I was gasping in weightless air that only rattled in my lungs as I thought of her, smiling at Roxanne and inspiring her to garner the courage to approach Evan Dillinger, and of him, standing in the crowd, his eyes searching for her until he found her, pressed against the banister, and of me, gulping beer until the laughter died down to a muffled drone in my ears. . . . I was sitting on the foot of Reese’s bed, feeling the thickness of the duvet underneath my crossed legs, and I held the dark blond strands of Veronica’s hair in my hands as I attempted to braid it, smoothing my fingers through the tresses that felt soft, almost like a feather of a bird, and through the porous speaker attached to Reese’s iPod, I could hear the muffled lyrics sung by Taylor Swift, her heartbroken crooning nearly washed away in the crunching of static in the background, almost as if the music was emitting from a record player instead of an iPod. Three neon hair elastics dug into the skin of my wrist as I overlapped her locks while she flipped through an old issue of M Magazine, to which Reese muttered that that was pretty middle-school of her, but Veronica argued meekly that it made her feel nostalgia for simpler years. As I intertwined her dark blond hair, I wondered if she was referring to the fact that maybe she didn’t heave after eating then or before she started to feel self-conscious how her clothing sizes, but I never asked her what about those simpler years she still yearned for. “You never hear about the Olsen twins anymore,” she mumbled into the glossy, but worn-out, pages of the magazine, where an article of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen had adorned the page, a photograph of them arm in arm together, grinning at the camera. They looked like the kind of sisters that your mother always wished you were with your own sister, the kind she smiled at wistfully before turning back to you with a slight scowl and a disappointed, “Now why can’t you two get along like that?” as if in those few moments, she had completely analyzed their relationship, determined that the faults didn’t exist and that the sweet smiles conveyed every emotion that filled their minds. It reminded me of Mikayla and how we never linked our arms together, or grinned at each other as if we had just let an inside joke slip past our lips, and I blinked away the image of the Olsen twins just as I heard Veronica grunted, tugging her head forward and reaching a free hand to touch her hairline. “Ow,” she complained.