Page 49 of The Business Trip

But she lunged toward me and growled like a dog.

“You are so fucked up, Jasmine. Your cat outfit is a piece of shit, just like you.”

And the next thing I knew, that long, thick tail on her outfit was being wrapped around her neck. I intended just to scare her, to make her lose her breath for a minute. I wanted to see her begging me, her eyes terrified, her hands on the tail as it roped around her neck, clawing at it. Me in the position of power for a change. It was like a grade school game where you make someone pass out. That was my intention. I didn’t think about what would happen after she woke up. How much trouble I’d be in. It just felt good to watch her writhe in agony for a moment.

The tail kept getting tighter and tighter and she was gagging.

By now, the party had moved entirely inside, and someone changed the soundtrack to thumping rap music. No one could see us; no one could hear us.

My arms felt like they didn’t belong to me. I was superhuman and powerful, out of control of my own limbs.

I noticed her face turning slightly bluish and her eyes bugging out, but it still didn’t register how close she was to dying. We had just learned about asphyxiation in health class, but none of the lessons came back to me in the moment. She was desperately clawing at the tail and trying to kick me. I pulled it even tighter.

And then, suddenly, before I anticipated it, she stopped gagging and went limp, her eyes wide and vacant, only two whiskers still stuck on her left cheek, the headband on the ground. She slumped over, her face falling into the dirt and leaves with a hard thump.

I stood, horrified, the tail and the suit still in my hand, her lifeless body in front of me. An incredible mixture of emotions passed through my body in that moment, a mix I had never felt all at one time, before or after: power, fear, horror, and, I had to admit, a tiny flash of joy.

Instinct took over, and I threw the rhinestone catsuit as far as I could toward the woods and ran to the other side of the backyard, where I had to stop to puke by a log, the thought of her face-first on the forest floor, her limbs splayed at weird angles, seared into my brain. I kept heaving until I had nothing left, wiping spittle from the corners of my mouth and trying to swallow away the horrible mix of Kool-Aid, alcohol, and stomach acid that was still on my tongue.

But as I sat down on the log panting, I realized exactly what I had to do.

I needed to pull myself together, go back into the party, act natural, and blend in. And I knew with complete clarity all of a sudden that Drake would take the fall for this. His sperm inside her. A clear rape and assault. It was him or me, and it wasn’t going to be me. I didn’t owe him anything. He had never been kind to me either.

Walking quickly back to the deck and slipping through the glass doors, rap music pulsating in my ears, I beelined for the snack table, downed a full glass of Kool-Aid, and gobbled cookies with frosted ghost faces until my mouth finally tasted better. Another glass of Kool-Aid and my senses started to dull. Soon I was on the dance floor, moving with more fervor than I ever had, waving my arms around wildly.

People began to ask where Allison was, but someone said they thought she had a curfew and was picked up by her mom and no one panicked. I stumbled back to the bus stop, throwingGrandma’s gloves away in the garbage can by the bus shelter. I got home after midnight and puked one more time before bed.

Allison’s body was found in the late morning, and Drake did take the fall, his future ruined. Her friends mourned like I had never seen. Over a thousand people came to her funeral in a megachurch that had to provide overflow rooms. I faked grief while I watched the real tears from my classmates flow and flow and never stop. Jealousy overtook me again. If I had died, I would have been lucky if ten people from high school had come.

I was never the same, of course. Nightmares, headaches, my grades dropped even further than they had been. I fell into a deep funk. I abandoned any idea of being near the Fun Bunch. I couldn’t even look at them anymore.

Raven and I never talked about our fight that Friday night, but we did move on, becoming friends again, cautiously at first and then more firmly as time passed. Raven, Anna, and I continued running around with the hardened crowd and got in trouble for shoplifting, underage drinking, and driving without a license.

For more than a year, I never told anyone what happened.

One spring afternoon our senior year, Raven and I were out back smoking cigarettes after school by the baseball field.

“I never thought I’d pass frickin’ chem,” Raven said, handing me the cigarette. “Asshole gave me a D-minus, but it’s enough. What a messed-up high school this is. So much shit has happened. I still can’t believe that bitch Allison was killed by her boyfriend. Stuck-up little snot walked around with her nose in the air like her shit didn’t stink, though. She deserved it.”

I looked at the concrete and said nothing, taking a small drag.

“You were there that night. You didn’t see anything?” Raven asked. We were just two months from graduation. I wanted togo to cosmetology school and move somewhere far from Madison, to start a new life away from these memories.

I said nothing, jiggling my foot nervously. Raven stopped smoking and cocked her head, looking at me quizzically.

“Jazzy?”

The boys’ baseball team was practicing in the distance, the sound of a bat hitting a ball and a coach yelling. I still said nothing.

“Jazz?” She looked worried.

Suddenly, I felt like telling someone, an explosion of a year and a half of secrets bursting from behind my ribs and making their way to my mouth.

It came out in a rush as Raven stood slack-jawed, staring at me. To be honest, I don’t know if she fully believed me. Maybe she thought it was a tale I was telling just to sound important. After all, there was no evidence for anything other than the fact that several eyewitnesses had seen Drake run off with Allison to the trees and not return for twenty-five minutes. DNA convicted him.

“You can’t tellanyone, not one soul,” I begged, suddenly not sure if I would regret divulging this.

“I won’t, I promise,” Raven said and continued to stare at me, eyes wide. “Holy shit, Jasmine. You’re my hero!”

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