I am floating. 

The light on the surface of the pool casts shadows onto the tiles below, giving the illusion of stained glass. 

I wonder if this is what it feels like to be born. Or, more accurately, what it felt like when I was born. Released into a big, warm, tub. It’s warm because someone - probably Olivia - is so messed up on drugs right now that her body is failing. I doubt that was happening when I was born.

I surface and wipe stray hairs from my mouth, gagging. I lean over to the ledge of the pool and vomit up a night’s worth of sausage rolls and party pies. My fingernails are red from using them to throw up like this. Bile and all the gross human stuff we use to digest has given them the appearance of unskinned carrots.

Someone wades through the water. She’s naked and covered in body glitter that hasn’t fully washed off.

“Are you okay?” she asks, resting her elbows on the ledge of the pool.

“I think so,” I say. I feel around my throat as if looking for outward signs of injury. 

“Where’d you learn how to do that?” the girl asks. 

I look at her eyes. Her pupils are blown, one of the first things you notice about people on molly. An 18 year old bulimic rookie, skinny from drug use, wanting to know trade secrets? Yuck.

“Sod off,” I mutter, lifting myself onto the ledge of the pool. 

Everyone at this party has been utterly braindead. It’s sad, really, how teenage life is full of bad choices and drinking. I pick up the discarded clothes of someone with poor taste - a Harvard sweater, really? - and sit on the grass.

Chris really lives in a gorgeous house. It’s something out of a travel magazine, like a housewife splurged on all the modern trends without a second thought on the budget. It’s charming in the way reality TV is. Something charming but not desirable. 

There’s someone else standing on the grass. Younger than me, still in Catholic uniform, with a military cut. He’s someone’s younger brother.
“Stare much?" I call.

The boy looks at me. He kicks at the grass idly. “The cops’ll be here in 15 minutes or so.”

“How do you know?” I ask.

“Because I called them,” he replies, “and someone died in that pool.” 

⸺

I am floating. 

This is the fourth time I’ve ever shot anything up, and it’s terrifying every time in the best way possible. I don’t even throw up or nothing, ‘cause it isn’t that kind of intense. I just sweat it out, or something, then wait a month until the next party.

I am floating so high. And I’m going to be a pianist. I want them to watch my gentle playing and tell me I killed it out there.
I swim a lap in the pool, barging past all kinds of people. Under the water, I witness guys groping girls, people struggling to stay afloat, all the normal stuff with nothing but the water between us. Just humans. Our base forms.

I glide along the bottom of the pool, sucking my stomach in, letting out air to keep the downwards motion. I weave past legs. I touch the edge of the pool and turn around and glide back the other way. It feels like one big fish tank.

Some girl throws up. I don’t care much ‘cause everyone throws up. It’s a natural response to having a body flushed with toxins. We’re all just doing our own thing, really. Taking pictures with friends, smoking weed, asking if anyone in Biology has finished the assignment due on Monday.

More people jump into the pool, discarding their clothes on the tiles. Some guys are too insecure to give them up, shirts puffing up under the water jets. 

I’ve seen this behaviour before. When someone kicks up an ant nest, they all scurry around. They look for someone to blame. But humans are bigger. They leave you alone. Here, we’re all ants. Scurrying around. Partying in our own little bubbles. 

Swimming becomes harder. The very act of putting one arm after the other, even with the divots in the tiles to claw at, exhausts me. There are feet, legs, and arms, and warm bodies everywhere. I resurface briefly but there’s no air. I crawl along the bottom and reach the other side despite it all.

I try to resurface again. There is still no air. I thrash my body the way I’ve seen fish do when they’re caught on a fishing line. I wriggle around. The last of my air bubbles fizzle to the surface, drifting up in a slow line.

Someone tries to shuffle out of the way as if the act of taking up space is punishable. 

I must look like a creep to them. Swimming under all the warm bodies, thrashing like a madman. 

Am I drowning? 

⸺

I wonder, looking at my older brother, if this will be me in two years. Free from the shackles of the Catholic school system, compensating for time lost. Finally permitted to make impromptu mistakes and connections beyond a community of baptised criminals and their sheltered kids. No consent forms needed to think. Drunk with power, with an overwhelming urge to blow up any semblance of good faith through the gentle art of partying, a “roster”, and digital footprints.

One time Dad told Chris that “men used to go to war,” of course, with a beer in hand. 

He says that, and I tune it out. I take one thing in stride: to be raised by a militant. Even if he is a traditionalist.

Chris has grown resentful, though, because he’s fighting his own war. With porn, with drinking, with inviting girls over to skinnydip. I guess in his eyes the only thing our father did right was invest in a big house. Parents away, everyone here. People we don’t even know. 

We have such a nice pool. Our grandfather tiled it. Someone in that pool who really could have been anyone tonight drowned, and nobody has noticed yet. His body is face down in the water like he’s at the beach getting a tan. Chris is too busy to notice. Everyone is too drunk, or too high, or just too self-absorbed to care.

I didn't want to tell anyone, but I called the police. I feel bad ruining the fun. I feel worse that I didn’t notice a kid drowning. I’m scared of being implicated for not doing anything sooner.

Men used to go to war, but now they just fight silently. Or, I guess, until someone drowns in their pool. Or they drown in a pool.

One of the girls is sitting on the grass stealing clothes. She’s put on Chris’s Harvard sweater. 

“Stare much?” she calls.