by Alison Grey
Wendi stepped past Amanda and three other girls followed her, barely even greeting Amanda, which annoyed the piss out of me.
“No,” Sheridan replied. “She didn’t tell us anyone else was coming.”
Wendi ignored her and looked at me.
“Hollis said I could come if I made jello shots,” she explained. “So here I am. Where’s the kitchen?”
I sighed and looked over at Amanda who just shrugged in defeat. What could we really do? Kick them out?
All these years later and there isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t wish that we’d done just that.
Forty-One
AMANDA
By the time Hollis and Olivia showed up at the cabin, it was almost ten o’clock.
I’d sobered up by then. As soon as Wendi and her crew had shown up, I hadn’t felt like drinking anymore. If I’d been able to drive, I would have just gone back to Staunton.
But I was stuck.
That’s why I’d been such a keen observer that night, a night that would come back to haunt all of us later.
At that moment, I was just observing the other girls around me who were getting increasingly drunk with each passing minute.
Wendi was gossiping and animatedly talking to Sheridan, who was beckoning me to come over and join the conversation.
I did so, begrudgingly.
“Hey, Amanda!” Wendi slurred, giving me a playful smack on the arm. “I was just telling Sheridan all about your friend and how truly shitty she is.”
“Who?” I asked, looking at Sheridan, but she was long gone, and barely coherent.
“Olivia Barron,” Wendi said. “I ran into someone who knows her, and boy did they tell me a thing or two.”
Ordinarily I hated to listen to Wendi shit talk, especially like now when it was to capture everyone’s attention.
But I was also listening. Eagerly.
Wendi had learned a lot indeed.
Olivia had never attended UVA. Not for a semester, not for a day.
She began her college career at Radford.
Apparently, Olivia left Radford first semester because she’d been having an affair with a married professor. When his wife found out, there had been a ton of drama, and the wife confronted Olivia and her husband during a class, an epic event that resulted in campus security being called to drag the professor’s wife out of the building, but not before she had both hands around Olivia’s throat. Even tenure couldn’t save the professor, who lost his position and was supposedly now teaching at a community college in New Jersey. While Olivia wasn’t explicitly told she had to leave, there was a lot of encouragement for her to do so. The bullying had been relentless and by Thanksgiving of that year she’d started the paperwork to transfer to Martha Jefferson.
“She’s also not from Richmond,” Wendi said. “Total fabrication. She’s trailer trash from fucking Waynesboro! No offense, Amanda, from what I hear you grew up in a trailer. Sorry. So, Olivia is basically a townie.”
Her half-assed apology and my desire to knock her teeth down her throat notwithstanding, what she had to say was shocking. Olivia’s story had always been her family was old money from Richmond. Why had she lied about it?
“She doesn’t have any siblings either, much less one that works on Friends,” Wendi laughed. “So pathetic. Though you guys didn’t know either and you live with her. What a phony ass.”
I stood there, shocked.
I’d been sharing my entire life for the past two years with someone who, it turns out, I barely knew.
“You’re sure about this?” I asked. “All of it?”
“Yep,” Wendi said, taking a swig of her drink. “Confirmed it with the Dean’s office too, had a freshman who does work study in admissions look up her file. It’s like she came to Martha Jefferson and just decided to make up an entire life.”
Wendi changed the subject then since she preferred topics about herself over anything else.
I backed away slowly, thoughts racing through my mind.
None of it made sense.
Who was Olivia Barron?
Forty-Two
SHERIDAN
A lot of that night in the cabin is a foggy recollection in the back of my mind where I recall bits and pieces, but nothing that would make me a credible witness if I’d been on trial.
I’d drank too much, I admit. I was trying to fill my broken heart with booze, and it was only illuminating my sadness and anger at being betrayed by my friend.
Wendi’s gossip made me sad more than anything else.
That’s always been my problem, I guess. Instead of believing people when they show me who they are, I analyze how they got there. I was someone who believed you weren’t born flawed. The world made you that way, and therefore I considered everyone redeemable.
So even as upset as I was with Olivia, I also worried about her, because only someone with a lot of pain would do the things she was doing. And why had she waited so long to reveal it to us? And why had she felt the need to completely lie about her life?
I’d always wondered why we barely heard from her in the summer time between our years at Martha Jefferson. She’d disappear for 3 months and come back to Staunton with all kinds of amazing stories of adventures in LA and New York City. Even Europe.
I just didn’t understand her reasoning, and I really wanted to. I’d lived with this girl for years, I cared about her.
A while after Wendi and her friends showed up, just long enough for Wendi to turn our worlds upside down, Hollis and Olivia arrived. They’d brought Winston and Heath of course. And six other SMI guys.
Suddenly the cabin was very crowded. It gave me anxiety having so many people stuffed into a relatively small space, especially as out of control as we were all getting. Not a single person appeared to be even close to sober.
Maybe that’s how we were able to forgive ourselves later.
We knew not what we were doing.
Forty-Three
HOLLIS
I’d forgotten about inviting Wendi. I’d done it so we’d have more alcohol, which I explained to her was the price of admission to our cabin. She had agreed to bring some. Otherwise, she was useless.
By the time we left the dance Olivia was already getting sick. We’d had to pull the car over four times so she could throw up on the side of the winding mountain road that lead to the cabin.
I almost felt sorry for her.
Heath looked perturbed. He didn’t offer to help Olivia in any way and was sitting as far away from her in the back of the car as he could. We’d hired a driver to take us from the school to the cabin since none of us were capable. I sat up front and poor Winston had stuffed himself in the backseat between Olivia and Heath.
We were all miserable. Including our driver. He looked so grateful to get us out of the car once we arrived.
By then, Olivia claimed she felt much better.
“I just need some water,” she said. Her makeup had been rubbed off her face. “I need a touch-up too, I think.”
“You need more than that,” I mumbled, low enough so she didn’t hear.
* * *
The music from inside the cabin echoed out beyond it and into the surrounding acres of woods around us.
“Good thing we don’t have any neighbors,” I said as we walked up the steps to the front door. “I really need to tell Sheridan to cool it with the Sisqo song.”
“I like it,” Winston said, winking at me. “Especially when girls dance all dirty to it. Amanda came up, right? Maybe the two of you…”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not drunk enough for you right now, Winston. Sweet Jesus.”
This is what I liked about Winston. Our relationship was casual and just fun. He was easy and we knew the deal— no expectations, no rules. No labels.
But he was also hot, probably one of the hottest guys I’d ever been with. So, it was a nice arrangement. I wished more of my friends could somehow figure out how to avoid the heavy feelings and just stick to t
he sex. It was much less complicated that way.
When we entered the cabin the music and the humidity of so many bodies smacked us in the face. I could see Sheridan on top of the coffee table shaking her ass completely off the beat, her arms above her head.
Someone had brought pot, which was fine. I didn’t love the skunky smell of it, but I knew I’d adjust and be grateful for it later when I needed something to help me come down from the night’s debauchery.
Wendi whooped when she saw us walk in and ran over to hug me. I hate those fake girl hugs, the ones you give and receive with people you don’t really like that much. They’re the weak kind, usually just from the side. That’s the kind of embrace Wendi gave me.
I could tell she was super messed up right away.
“I need to change,” I shouted to Winston over the music.
He nodded. He was already unbuttoning his uniform jacket. He winked at me and I smiled.
This was going to be a good night. Olivia be damned.
* * *
Olivia and I changed in one of the bedrooms where everyone had piled their coats and purses. The girls brought our overnight bags with them so we’d have fresh outfits. As I buttoned up my jeans, Olivia pulled something out of her duffel bag.
“I brought my camera!” she squeaked. “Capture some Kodak moments!”
I raised an eyebrow. “Not sure how flattering any photos of tonight will be. Or how much we want them documented.”
Olivia waved my words away. “I’m not going to take many, just a couple for my scrapbook.”
Olivia had recently gotten very into scrapbooking and collages. The wall next to her bed in our door was covered in photos she’d taken of all of us over the years. I’d always loved looking at it.
Back in those days, photos weren’t a part of everyday life. Pictures had a real value to them then. And I’d always been grateful for Olivia’s love for capturing memories on film.
I felt uneasy though, for some reason. I wished she hadn’t brought the camera.
Amanda came into the room just then. She was sober and she looked a little concerned.
“Hey,” she said, glancing over at Olivia. “Did you guys have fun?”
“Yes!” Olivia shrieked. She was so shrill that night. “It was great! I wish we’d all been there.”
Amanda smiled thinly and didn’t say anything.
“I’m going to start drinking,” Olivia proclaimed, as she put her camera strap over her head and around her neck so that the camera hung right on her chest. “I feel a lot better!”
“Cool, be out there in a bit,” I said as Olivia skipped out of the room. Amanda walked over to the door and closed it behind her.
“So, Wendi dropped some information about Olivia on us while you were gone,” she said.
She briefly rehashed the conversation from earlier.
Jesus.
It was crazy to know we’d been living with someone who could lie so easily and for so long. It wasn’t necessarily like any of the lies were scandalous, other than the stuff with the professor. That was what was so curious about it all, they’d been so pointless. I mean I guess I understood claiming to have gone to UVA, there was a certain prestige in that, and I could understand wanting to hide the stuff about the affair, but the rest of it?
But why lie about the family? Where she lived?
Had she planned on lying to us forever?
It was so bizarre.
“I don’t even know what to say,” I said when Amanda was done. “I mean. What do we do? Should we talk to her about it?”
Amanda shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe just keep it to ourselves for now. Wait for the right time to bring it up, obviously not tonight.”
“For sure.” I stretched my arms above my head. “Let’s just focus on one thing.”
“What’s that?” Amanda asked.
“Let’s just get super fucked up and worry about the bullshit tomorrow,” I declared. “Let’s test the limits of the security deposit I had to pay on this place.”
And with that, we joined the rest of the party, Olivia and her issues on the backburner for now.
Forty-Four
BROOKE
Here’s the thing I have never been able to say out loud.
I know I’m the weak link among my circle of friends.
I’m not exceptionally beautiful like Hollis and Amanda. I’m not whimsical and charming like Sheridan. I lack the confidence and charisma that they all seem to have.
I always wondered if they’d even be my friends if it hadn’t been for the forced proximity freshman year. I knew they loved me, but I never felt like I was quite as important in the grand scheme. I just felt lucky to be along for the ride. I’d never been part of a clique. So even if my position in the group was merely due to lucky circumstance and not my own alpha woman merit, that was okay with me. Most of the time.
But it was when we weren’t alone where that insecurity started to eat at me. Like that night at the cabin.
For once, there were almost as many guys as there were girls, a rare feat. There were eight guys and nine girls.
Usually this meant I would be the odd one out, the one who would sit back and watch her friends do the hooking up, the drinking, the flirting with boys, with the risk of sex and sometimes drugs.
That’s who I’d been for almost 3 years now— Brooke the wallflower. The one who watched.
That night, I didn’t want to be her anymore. We barely had any time left in college. I didn’t want to leave Martha Jefferson having never taken any risks at all. Didn’t I want to look back and be able to say I did something crazy? Just once? Something secret. Sexy. The kind of thing that would remind me that my history among our friends wasn’t just a linear and boring timeline of pedestrian observance and inaction.
Hollis was on the couch with Winston, rolling what looked like joints as the music thumped around us through Sheridan’s very silly speakers.
“Hey,” I said flopping down next to them. “Can I have one too?”
Hollis looked at me, surprised.
“Of course!” she grinned, handing me what she’d been working on. “We have a bong too. You might like that even more.”
I nodded.
“I want to do it all,” I affirmed, and I suddenly felt euphoric. Willfully shedding my inhibitions gave me a rush like nothing I’d ever done. I was going to experience something for once.
I wanted to wake up tomorrow and have my own story to tell.
Forty-Five
AMANDA
Later I would live in LA, though I didn’t know that at the time. I would experience plenty of insane parties where things happened under the cloak of night and secrecy, where sex, drugs, and depravity ruled. By the time I reached my 30’s I would no longer be shocked at anything.
Yet even after that life, I’d still think of the night in the cabin as one of the most wantonly debauched of maybe my entire life.
Perhaps that’s because it was the first time I witnessed people really letting themselves go and embracing the hedonism.
It was all consensual, mind you. As far as it could be, since almost everyone was heavily under the influence of multiple types of substances. But no one was in a place of power to really take advantage of anyone, is what I’m saying. We might regret much about that night, but it wasn’t because of anything close to that.
Sometimes the mob mentality can really push everyone to go past their normal boundaries and inhibitions.
I’d started drinking again by midnight. The booze was flowing, but all of Wendi’s jello shots were long gone. Hollis had procured various drugs and she was more than willing to share. I had no interest in them, but almost everyone else did something that night other than drink.
Olivia had abandoned her date for a different SMI guy, which seemed completely fine to everyone involved. Sheridan was in Heath’s lap on the recliner in the corner of the living room, next to the stone fire place. Their heads were close together and he had his a
rms wrapped around her.
I didn’t love seeing her so quick to jump back into his arms, but I also liked seeing her happy again. If Heath made her happy, so be it.
I could tell I would be the odd girl out as far as hooking up went. And that was fine. It really was. As pathetic as it sounds now, I was still hung up on Alec. I thought about him all the time, despite having not spoken to him in months. And I wasn’t someone who could give my body to just anyone anymore. Not after that kind of hurt.
With nothing better to do, I just… kept drinking.
Wendi was the first to suggest going to the bedroom. She had slipped out of her sweater and jeans and was standing in just her underwear on top of the coffee table Sheridan had been dancing on earlier.
“Hollis Cobb,” she slurred, pointing to Hollis who was on the couch with Winston. “Get your ass in the bedroom with me.”
We all laughed, assuming Wendi was kidding around, despite her bisexual past. I mean we were just all out of our minds and everything seemed either funny or thrilling.
“Only if Winston comes,” Hollis replied. She stood up and slipped the straps of her tank top down and suddenly her boobs were out for the entire room to see, making some of the guys cheer.
Wendi reached out and grabbed them and I wasn’t sure what Hollis’s reaction would be to that, but she just laughed and pulled Wendi down from the table and on top of her.
And then they started kissing.
Which suddenly really changed the vibe of the night.
“I am not drunk enough for this,” I said to myself, but no one was paying attention to me.
Something told me I should stop this somehow. Not out of some righteous moral judgement— even then I supported women making sexual choices out of their own desires, which were completely normal.