Ch. 7: Sambuca

Lying awake in her bed on a Friday evening, Harvey felt unusually isolated. Not that she wasn’t often alone, but just that it was particularly palpable that night. Daxx was out getting fucked up with the rest of the football team and, obviously, didn’t invite Harvey.

After a bland meal at Casolaro Commons, Harvey strolled about the obscure campus, smelling the damp fall air and maybe hoping to run into someone she knew. The shadowy paths winding through the grounds were quiet, while occasional dorm congregations echoed hollowly above them.

Lacking a phone, Harvey felt almost free in a sense. Lonely, but free. She didn’t have to try to read about James Leonard Twill or Donovan Lanning or the CMT or anything.

Lost in thought, Harvey discovered herself at the top of a hill overlooking an eerie Andover. She saw, plunged in a dense fog, stately homes lighting up streets of wet concrete and interspersed with dark patches of green stretching toward dusk. A mild breeze carried the scent of crisp pines that pricked the nerve endings lining her nostrils and all the way up to her olfactory cortex, likely leading to the long-term storage of this event as a memory. It felt almost spiritual.

Back at the dorm, she watched an Ingmar Bergman movie with the goal of stirring up some sense of longing but got bored halfway through and was now just lying there. So, she pulled out The Catcher in the Rye, but found herself re-reading the same paragraph over and over again.

Investigating the murder of one of Moorehaven’s most prominent students, a tale already awash in conspiracy theories, Harvey was starting to feel like not only was it pointless, but it might actually be detracting from living a normal teen life.

With the names of rich white boys filling her brain, how was she supposed to do things like figure out who the cool bands were or what the latest style of clothing was or what reality TV show everyone was watching?

Who the fuck was she kidding? Harvey didn’t care about any of that stuff, beyond what she needed to know to keep from looking like a complete hermit to her peers. Each day she just threw on whatever clothes were clean and walked to class, listening to the sounds around her and thinking about, well, the meaning of life, her place in the universe, our ongoing ecological collapse and these days, for some reason, James Leonard Twill.

Harvey’s eyes became heavy as hypnagogic visions started to swirl in the blackness of her mind. Donovan Lanning was screaming, mouth agape and saliva forming wet stalactites and stalagmites across the opening. Behind him, an ominous orange glow grew brighter and brighter with a myriad of geometric motifs emerging and disappearing with each of her breaths. She couldn’t quite make out Lanning’s words as she drifted off to—

Her phone had been vibrating for probably 30 seconds before she realized it, slowly pulling her back into the world of reason and rationality. It was Kinzly.

“Didn’t you get my texts?”

“Huh? Sorry, my screen is smashed. I can’t read texts or anything.”

“Are you asleep? You’re not sleeping on a Friday night, are you?” Kinzly asked.

“I dunno.”

“Well wake up and come over to my room! We’re getting fucked up!”

***

There were eight people crammed into 130 square feet of institutional concrete and drywall. You could tell who was invited by Kinzly and who were friends with their roommate, Claire, just by how they dressed. Claire was a Midwesterner whose idea of style was farmgirl chic, light blue jeans and a modest red sweater. Her friends were equally inoffensive, the two boys wearing plain t-shirts and loose-fitting blue jeans and the girl wearing jean shorts and a white t-shirt.

In contrast, Panda wore a velvet blazer with a pocket square, a Memphis-style dress shirt with a range of pastel, rounded polygons strewn about. Their friend Mo wore all black: long-sleeve black shirt, black skirt, black tights, black faux leather boots, black gauges in her ears. The only thing that wasn’t black was the streak of bleach blonde in her otherwise raven-colored hair.

The other way you could tell was that they sat on opposite sides of the room, like genders separated at a middle school dance. The only time the disparate groups commingled was when it was time to drink.

“You guys want a shot?” Dreck, the tall, white boy asked, at which point everyone convened in the center of the dorm and held out their motley crew of glasses to receive a round of licorice-flavored sambuca.

“This is the most disgusting booze I’ve ever had,” Panda said.

“The flavor makes it go down easier,” Dreck justified.

“It does taste like shit,” Claire said, to which her female friend, Wendy, nodded in agreement. “Do you have a chaser?”

“What’s a chaser?” Harvey meant to shout-whisper to Kinzly over the music, but it came during a break between songs and the whole room heard.

“You’ve never gotten drunk before?” the chubby Latino boy said.

Harvey looked down at her shoes in disgrace, noticing that the holes at the front of the cheap canvas were no longer looking punk and were starting to look tragic.

“Come on, bro, I’ll take care of you,” he said, throwing his arm around Harvey and pulling her in. “I got some Gatorade you’re gonna wanna drink after you take the shot.”

The crew stood around in a loosely formed circle, arms outstretched as Dreck filled each glass with two fingers worth of liquor. Harvey was handed a plastic bottle of purple sugar water with the flavor “Desert Storm” emblazoned on the plastic wrapper.

“What are we drinking to?” Wendy asked.

“Fuck,” Panda chimed in, “Not living at home!”

***

It was strange being with these people Harvey hardly knew or didn’t know at all, but Panda was right. It was better than being at home. She missed her parents, but she didn’t miss the guys from her town who would yell “faggot” at her when they rode past on their bikes. Here, at least she was nobody and not the effeminate kid. Also, getting drunk was fun.

“How does it feel?” the Latino boy asked. The group was now intermingling while Claire’s TV played an endless series of music videos bringing light into an otherwise darkened room.

“It feels fine,” Harvey said. “I mean I don’t know if I really feel anything. Just kind of dizzy and a little warm. What was your name again?”

“Roger,” he shouted over the music. “Let’s do another shot!”

Roger grabbed the bottle of liquor and took a swig, then handed it to Harvey. “Hasta la mierda!” Harvey shouted and swallowed a large sip.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Roger said.

“You don’t speak Spanish?”

“Why would I? I’m Filipino,” Roger replied. Before Harvey could apologize, Roger yelled a mangled “Hasta la mierda!” He laughed and pulled Harvey in, “Man, I love getting people drunk for the first time!”

Roger cheerfully ambled off to give hugs to the other people in the room as Kinzly sidled up to Harvey. “Dude, what’s up?” Kinzly asked. “You got a thing for Roger?”

“What? Ugh,” Harvey said with a shock. “No. And please keep your voice down.”

“What’s the problem? He’s cute enough.”

“Please shut up, Kinzly!” Harvey said, pushing her friend away.

“Listen, I’m just trying to get you to have a good time. Gettin’ you all drunk for the first time, you know. See if we can get you to make out for the first time, too.”

“First of all, you don’t know that I have never made out with someone.”

“But it’s safe to assume.”

“And, also, I am not making out with just any normie.”

“What about Claire?”

“Please.”

“Freckles?” Kinzly said, pointing to Wendy.

“Uh, no.”

“Dreck?”

“God no. The last person I’d kiss is some Donovan Lanning lookalike.”

“Lol. Who said anything about whoever the fuck you said?”

“It’s just that all of these boring cishet white guys are so gross. And they come from these families that are like the most awful thing on the planet. Like literally killing the planet,” Harvey was saying. And she was actually feeling pretty out of it now. “Did you know that Donovan Lanning might have had something to do with killing Josh Kilpatrick?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

At that point, it seemed as though Harvey’s mouth kept moving and words were coming out, but she wasn’t actually the one doing the talking. And before she could understand the words that were spraying forth from an unregulated spout, it all went black.

***

The next thing Harvey remembered was sitting with Kinzly in front of a computer in the lab on the basement level of the dorm. Both of them were cackling at the top of their lungs. On the screen was a grainy black and white video of someone at the Venezuelan embassy in New Orleans. It was a time lapse, showing a kid at the embassy several times across multiple timestamps, multiple days.

“Dude! That doesn’t even look like him!” Kinzly was screaming. “Look at how short he is, dude!”

They were right. It didn’t actually look like Twill. He wasn’t even 5’9. The New Orleans Twill had to be no taller than 5’3.

“That’s just a little, itty bitty baby JLT! Aw! He’s so tiny! Poor baby Jimmy!”

The two started chanting in unison: “Poor baby Jimmy! Poor baby Jimmy!”

Life faded to black again.

***

Next, Harvey was clinging to a toilet in the girl’s bathroom and throwing up purple. Kinzly was standing behind her and talking, occasionally punctuating the stream of consciousness with, “Here, drink some more water, dude.”

And Harvey would reply with something like, “I’m gonna punch god in the face.”

At some point Panda, Mo and Roger came in. “Lol, holy shit,” Roger said. “Are you okay, Harvey?”

And then it went black again.

***

When she woke up again, it was around 7 am Saturday morning. She turned her head to find herself in the arms of Kinzly, who was in oversized pajamas. The thought that something might have happened between them made the blood rush from Harvey’s face like a sudden break in traffic. Then, she turned her head to the other side to see Mo, Panda and Roger all in bed, too, fully clothed and all passed out in Roger’s massive California king.

Around that time, Panda lifted his head up and stretched a fast grin, revealing teeth dyed red with wine, a cannibal satisfied by a feed. The image immediately sent Harvey climbing over Kinzly’s unconscious body and over to a red plastic bucket beside the bed, whose location had somehow embedded itself in Harvey’s muscle memory. She barfed her own putrid red bile into the bucket, then collapsed into another bout of sleep for a couple of hours.

***

This time Harvey awoke to find her friends recounting the events of the night before. Apparently, they’d left Kinzly’s dorm at some point and went to a party at Dreck’s dorm, where a barrage of white cishet boys were attempting to woo white cishet girls. When Kinzly’s crew began making fun of the white people attire, a fight began to bubble, which caused Roger to guide them through the foggy night back to his own room, which was not a dorm, but a private apartment his parents had rented for him in Andover. Before they wound up in his studio, the group went to a Bickford’s and ordered countless low-cost burgers, fries and shakes that would see Harvey take yet another trip to the vomitorium.

Then they did a version of karaoke at Roger’s that lacked the trappings of a formal karaoke lounge. Without microphones, the group would take turns picking lyric videos online and shouting the words as they projected onto a blank white wall on the north side of Roger’s apartment.

From the sound of it, Harvey must have had fun. The videos they’d shot on their phones lent further evidence to the story that they’d had a good time. One thing was still unclear though: what had Harvey said about the Josh Kilpatrick murder?

So, she asked Kinzly.

“Hey, Kinzly, can I ask you something for a quick second?” She pulled them in. “Did I tell you last night about the article I’m working on?”

“Huh?” they said.

“About,” she hesitated, “Josh Kilpatrick.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Wasn’t I telling you last night—“

Kinzly stared at their friend blankly, before turning to the rest of the group and shouting, “I’m hungry! Who’s gonna feed me?”

Before Harvey could register anything, the kids were hurtling down the apartment stairs and out into the street below, likely heading to George’s Diner for piles of pancakes. She shoved her feet into her shoes and chased after them, slamming the door behind her.

***

After breakfast, the kids all went their separate ways to nurse respective hangovers. As Harvey trekked into the red early morning vapor back to her dorm, she gripped the pain in her gut, mentally swearing off alcohol for the rest of her life. It wasn’t the puking or even the massive migraine, but the fact that she had lost her wits.

At some point, Harvey had given up total lucidity and let slip crucial information related to her investigation. No checking to make sure she wasn’t within earshot of Claire or one of her friends. No way to know if she’d blabbed about it at the white boy party. Who knows what she could have revealed? Harvey vowed never to drink or be that careless again.

Returning her concentration to the five stairs ahead, Harvey got a flash of something from the previous night: the video footage of local gang member Jimmy Diamond shooting Twill as he was coming out of the Boston Municipal Building.

There Twill was, three days after the assassination, coming out of the police side entrance to the building, confronted with a swarm of reporters, shoving microphones into his face, the flashes from their cameras going off. A reporter asks, “Why’d you do it, James?” to which Twill angrily replies, “I’m a patsy.” Then, Diamond appears from the crowd with a revolver, aims at Twill’s chest and fires. Not captured in the video was the fact that Twill died in the hospital later that day.

Remembering that Kinzly and she had watched the video several times, saw Twill clutch his torso with a panged look on his face over and over, Harvey leaned over the railing of the stairway and puked a portion of undigested breakfast burrito into the shrubbery that adorned the adjacent hill. As ugly as it was, it sort of resembled an impressionistic painting of a dewy English garden.

She subsequently wiped her lip and continued her way up to her dorm.

Next Chapter: Boston