Page 145 of Good Girls Lie
The nurses loved me. No one doubted my sincerity. No one thought twice about my devotion to my friend. Lucky for me, I suppose.
No, I never gobbled down her pills, as much as I wanted to, as much as I knew they’d make my pain go away. I’ve been saving them for the proper time. For a while, I thought I might take them all at once, standing on a stone bridge, watching the snow kiss the Seine. Perhaps I would change my mind at the last minute and throw them into the gray water. Perhaps I would keep them taped to the back of the bathroom mirror in the flat I would rent, let the delicious temptation of them sing to me day after day.
And then I saw her, quite by chance the first time—the first time—in the street, those red-soled heels clicking as she navigated desiccated dog shit on the grate in front of her Upper East Side brownstone, and I knew exactly what to do with the pills.
Takeoff is smooth. Dinner is served. The meal is tasteless, cardboard; drenching it in salt doesn’t help a bit. I sip the wine, a meager cabernet—really, I expected better, almost a shame to even call it so—drink a cup of the freshly overbrewed tea, then wait for the bathroom lines to clear before taking my bag and stepping into the tiny space.
Eight pills? Nine? How many will it take to kill a woman of her size? I have forty. Forty pilfered OxyContin. One for you, sweet sister, one for me. I was afraid the security agent was going to ask to see the prescription bottle, so I used one of my old antibiotic bottles, excavated from the shoebox under my sink, the label so faded the date and name are indiscernible.
I twist open the top and shake one into my hand. Large, cylindrical, chalk white. Lick the edge, savoring the divinity in the acrid taste on my tongue.
Mmm. Death tastes so good.
It takes me a full five minutes to grind them into a fine powder with the heel of my shoe—not red-soled, I’ll have you know—and return to my seat.
She sees me then, though she still has no idea who I am. I am gracious, as expected.
“Good flight?”
“Is that a question?”
Rude.
I want to launch into the speech I’ve rehearsed, the conversation to make it seem like I’ve only just recognized her, a hand on her arm, lightly, gently, my mouth in a tiny O of recognition.
Wait, aren’t you the woman who went to the private school that burned down? I know I saw you in the papers recently, with the former dean, what’s her name?
Westhaven.
That’s right. She’s a big-name author now. Wrote a novel about the school. Married to some young buck she was seeing, oh, wasn’t that the scandal?
True love.
And wasn’t there some incident with an impostor, sisters? All those girls, dead. What a shame. Amazing that they rebuilt. Of course, coed, but it’s such a good school. Such a good reputation.
But she’s already turned away, wedged in her earbuds, pulled up a movie. A delightful rom-com, a woman who needs a wedding date, by the looks of it.
Maybe we’ll talk later.
Said the spider to the fly.
I wait.
I wait.
Finally, finally, the flight attendants do their dessert pass, and she takes a refill. Such a creature of habit, our little wine connoisseur.
Excellent. It’s easier to obscure this powder in wine than water.
And here’s the second moment I’ve been waiting for.
She unfolds from the seat—I always forget how tall she is—and heads to the loo.
I dump the powder in my wine and stir it with my finger.
And then I lean over, my hand snaking out of my pod into hers, and with a quick glance to make sure no one is watching—these seats afford so much privacy—I switch the glasses.
Easy.
