Free The Law of Loving Others by Kate Axelrod Page A

become. We talked of our families, how we were both pretty homesick, how much we missed our friends and the simplest luxuries of home: having a refrigerator always stocked with food, not having to share a bathroom with twenty people when we were feeling sick. It was the only time we ever really had a substantive conversation. A couple of weeks later she started dating this senior who wore tweed blazers and boat shoes and did tons of acid. He was always scaling the walls of our dorm and trying to break into the room through our window to surprise her or wake her up, and by the middle of November they were both gone.
    The second time I’d seen coke was in a bathroom at some crowded off-campus party with Daniel and three of his friends. One of the day students had thrown it while his parents were away in Nantucket for the weekend. There were four of us packed inside—Daniel was leaned against the sink, and I sat on top of the closed toilet seat. Two guys were in the tiny turquoise bathtub, with their legs hanging out over the side, inhaling lines off the porcelain edge. One of them called the guy hosting the party a fag, and I looked at Daniel expectantly, like,
Come on
, but he didn’t say anything, just sort of glanced at me sheepishly and shrugged his shoulders.
    â€œReally?” I’d asked. “Did you really just use that word?” There was silence and then I wondered if I’d said it out loud, or maybe I hadn’t. And I just kept hearing the word reverberate inside that cramped little room,
really, really, really
. Daniel opened up the medicine cabinet, which was mostly empty: Ibuprofen, some disposable razors, a travel-size deodorant, and an amber bottle of prescription something or other.
    â€œValium, anyone?” he’d asked. I felt my cheeks heating up, and my heart began to beat in this irregular, frantic sort of way. I spent the rest of the night lying in the backyard with my hand flat against my chest, listening to Annie calm me down from three hundred miles away.

    THAT night, Christmas Eve, I was so eager for a distraction from my own thoughts that when Kyle offered me the line, I took it. I felt the powder go straight to my head, this little tingle in my brain, and suddenly I was so alert, ready to go, eager to talk to everyone. I walked into the living room. I saw Jane, Daniel’s mother, and gave her a quick hug.
    â€œSweetheart,” she said. “Can we talk later?”
    I glided through the party like the best version of myself, poised and confident, interested and friendly. I took Daniel’s hand and wanted to be introduced to everyone—his grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins from Argentina, a few of his friends from the city whom I still hadn’t met.
    I poured myself a glass of white wine and introduced myself to the caterers, who were dressed in black-and-white outfits with perfectly pressed crimson bowties. I had a sudden urge to tell them that I wasn’t like all the other guests there, in pearls and dresses from Bergdorf, and that Daniel would never understand me, that he would never get what it felt like right then, to have my mother sequestered in a cold, sterile hospital, with tiled walls that smelled just like my elementary school cafeteria, where she couldn’t even have a fucking plastic bag because they were afraid she’d use it to suffocate herself. And abruptly I saw all the flaws that were beginning to emerge in my relationship with Daniel. I knew suddenly that they were there, that it was bound to fail, that I’d go back to school and be so lonely. But somehow it was all floating past, and it was okay, as if my problems were hovering in a little bubble nearby, not touching me quite yet. For now I was happy. I took Daniel into the bathroom, the one in the hall, and pushed him down onto the toilet seat, with my legs around him.
    â€œWhoa, whoa, whoa,” he said. “What’s up, baby? You pretty drunk