Page 124 of The Unraveling

I breathe through it, eyes shut.

The elevator shudders to a halt and a wave of sick comes over me. The doors, blessedly, open at that moment, and I burst through them as soon as I can fit through. I then run straight to one of the bathrooms and puke.

I throw up for five straight minutes, my body undulating and aching already as I throw everything up.

I never get sick like this from drinking. Everyone’s made a mistake here and there, but this is not like me. Not like my body.

Is there a chance I was drugged?

No, there can’t be. I only had the champagne with Arabella in the car, then the drinks from the bartender. I watched her get them from him.

Unless…

Another wave of vomit.

I flush the toilet after that, and then fall to the freezing-cold tile, my hair swept over my face. I feel like I’m dying.

I become vaguely aware of a figure above me and blink a few times to see that it’s Arabella. She’s holding a phone above me. At first it doesn’t make sense, and then I try to ask, “Are you taking a picture of me?”

But it comes out as a terrible garble, one long syllable.

My eyes shut, and darkness falls over me again.

The next time I hear movement, I blink again to see another figure.

Then I feel myself being lifted up.

“Jocelyn. Jocelyn, can you hear me?”

I groan. I don’t know who it is. I can only tell that it’s a man.

“Jocelyn. Arabella, what the fuck did you do to her?”

Through the fog of my mind, I hear his question and register that he thinks she did this to me.

“No, no,” I start to say. But then I start to wonder if maybe…maybe she did.

My thoughts aren’t coming in clearly enough to firmly doubt or accuse. I feel my head flop backward again, and then I feel a hand on it, holding me like a baby.

“What the fuck did you give her?”

“I didn’t give her anything!” she says. “She just can’t take her liquor, that’s it!”

“Bullshit. She doesn’t drink like this.”

“What…what is this?”

A woman’s voice.

I blink slowly, over and over again, trying to get my eyes to roll back to where they’re supposed to be. I can’t see anything. I can only feel the solidity of the man who holds me and the icy, freezing floor beneath my bare skin. Am I naked?

Oh god. Please don’t let me be naked.

“Fuck,” says the man’s voice.

“What the hell is this place?” the woman asks.

My head lolls and I see sparkling high heels on the bathroom floor a few feet away, then the slender legs of the woman wearing them.

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