Before I Die Read Free

flicker from the video screens on the walls. The joint goes round again.
    I don’t know how much time goes by. Hours maybe. Minutes. I know I mustn’t stop and that’s all I know. If I keep dancing, the dark corners of the room won’t creep any nearer, and the silence between tracks won’t get any louder. If I keep dancing, I’ll see ships on the sea again, taste cockles and whelks and hear the creak snow makes when you’re the first one to stand on it.
    At some point Zoey passes over a fresh joint. ‘Glad you came?’ she mouths.
    I pause to inhale, stupidly stand still a second too long, forgetting to move. And now the spell is broken. I try to claw back some enthusiasm, but I feel as if a vulture is perched on my chest. Zoey, Stoner and all the other dancers are far away and unreal, like a TV programme. I don’t expect to be included any more.
    ‘Back in a minute,’ I tell Zoey.
    In the quiet of the toilet, I sit on the bowl and contemplate my knees. If I gather up this little red dress just a bit further, I can see my stomach. I still have red patches on my stomach. And on my thighs. My skin is as dry as a lizard’s, however much cream I smooth in. On the inside of my arms are the ghosts of needle marks.
    I finish peeing, wipe myself and pull the dress back down. When I leave the cubicle, Zoey’s waiting by the hand dryer. I didn’t hear her come in. Her eyes are darker than before. I wash my hands very slowly. I know she’s watching me.
    ‘He’s got a friend,’ she says. ‘His friend’s cuter, but you can have him, since it’s your special night. They’re called Scott and Jake and we’re going back to their place.’
    I hold onto the edge of the sink and look at my face in the mirror. My eyes seem unfamiliar.
    ‘One of the Tweenies is called Jake,’ I say.
    ‘Look,’ Zoey says, pissed off now, ‘do you want to have sex or not?’
    A girl at the sink next to mine shoots me a glance. I want to tell her that I’m not what she thinks. I’m very nice really, she’d probably like me. But there’s not time.
    Zoey drags me out of the toilet and back towards the bar. ‘There they are. That one’s yours.’
    The boy she points to has his hands flat against his groin, his thumbs looped through his belt. He looks like a cowboy with faraway eyes. He doesn’t see us coming, so I dig my heels in.
    ‘I can’t do it!’
    ‘You can! Live fast, die young, have a good-looking corpse!’
    ‘No, Zoey!’
    My face feels hot. I wonder if there’s a way of getting air in here. Where’s the door we came in from?
    She scowls at me. ‘You asked me to make you do this! What am I supposed to do now?’
    ‘Nothing. You don’t have to do anything.’
    ‘You’re pathetic!’ She shakes her head at me, stalks off across the dance floor and out to the foyer. I scurry after her and watch her hand in the ticket for my coat.
    ‘What are you doing?’
    ‘Getting your coat. I’ll find you a cab, so you can piss off home.’
    ‘You can’t go back to their house on your own, Zoey!’
    ‘Watch me.’
    She pushes open the door and surveys the street. It’s quiet out here now the queue has gone, and there aren’t any cabs. Along the pavement some pigeons peck at a takeaway chicken box.
    ‘Please, Zoey, I’m tired. Can’t you drive me home?’
    She shrugs. ‘You’re always tired.’
    ‘Stop being so horrible!’
    ‘Stop being so boring!’
    ‘I don’t want to go back to some strange boys’ house. Anything could happen.’
    ‘Good. I hope it does, because precisely zero is going to happen otherwise.’
    I stand awkwardly, suddenly afraid. ‘I want it to be perfect, Zoey. If I have sex with a boy I don’t even know, what does that make me? A slag?’
    She turns on me, her eyes glittering. ‘No, it makes you alive. If you get in a cab and go home to Daddy, what does that make you?’
    I imagine climbing into bed, breathing the dead air of my room all night, waking up to the morning and nothing being any