Page 28 of You Are Not Me

No, nothing was funny at all anymore.

Chapter Four

‡

Daniel and Barrycleaned up my vomit while Renée clucked over me and wiped my face with a wet washcloth from her makeup vanity.

Struggling to keep from throwing up again, I dimly heard their discussion about what to do with me now. Renée still had a short encore performance, and Barry had to finish up behind the bar. Daniel offered to take me home, but everyone agreed I should sober up a little first so I could deal with my folks.

Now that I’d vomited, I didn’t seem in any danger of dying from whatever drug I’d consumed, but I couldn’t just be left alone either. I wondered where Jeremy was and why they weren’t concerned about him too, but that thought washed away like so many others.

Finally, Renée tucked me under some blankets on the floor of her dressing room. She placed the bucket and a bottle of water beside me.

Daniel sat in Renée’s fancy makeup chair and cracked open a dusty book he’d found on top of a cardboard box. From where I lay on the ground, the title was obscured, but I thought it wasCry to Heavenby Anne Rice.

Alone with Daniel in the dressing room, I was too sick and confused to be excited by his presence. The music from the club pounded against my skin and in my head. It was no longer beautiful. It was monstrous, a throbbing complication to my nausea.

I trailed my gaze over man-sized dresses, makeup, powder, and strange contraptions that Robert used to push everything up and in. I’d never been in Renée’s dressing room. I remembered suddenly that Adam had been in here without me before he got spanked.

Adam, fuck. He was going to be so pissed off with me for tonight.

“Itdidn’tmake it taste better,” I said, finally.

Daniel looked up from the book. “What didn’t?”

“What Jeremy put in my drink. Didn’t make it taste better. At all.”

Daniel frowned, his kind eyes narrowing. “You didn’t know it was GHB?”

I felt like I’d heard that acronym before, but I wasn’t sure when or what it meant. Daniel had said it earlier, but it rang a bell from well before that. Maybe newscasts my parents watched? Some kind of new drug?

“Peter, did you agree to let him put GHB in your drink?”

Yes, I had, but in another way, no. “I don’t know.”

Daniel slapped the book shut, slipping down to the floor beside me. “He coerced you?”

“No!”

He studied me. “But you didn’t agree to it?”

“I did,” I said, my tongue feeling clumsy. “I said yes.”

He touched my cheek, his fingers soft and gentle as he stroked down to my jaw. His eyes studied mine.

“It tasted salty,” I said.

“You’re lucky it didn’t kill you.”

“What?”

“Alcohol mixed with GHB is a dangerous combination. A very bad idea. Jeremy should’ve known that.”

“Oh.”

“But Jeremy is the kind to learn the hard way.”

Daniel rubbed his thumb across my cheek. I realized there was something wet there. Was it vomit? I really hoped it wasn’t vomit.

---