Four students dressed in uniforms sat in a circle around four pills. One student per pill. These ‘muscle relaxers’ as the senior boy explained to Mey, came in the same diluted blue shade, etched with various faces that looked to be drawn on with sharpie. The pill assigned to Mey came with deeper cobalt stars for eyes and an inlaid whitish curve for the mouth.
“I’ve eaten Percocet before,” Mey said to her new group of friends.
“I’ve never eaten Percocet before,” one of the footballers said.
Mey couldn’t remember his name. But she’d seen him plenty throughout the years. It was only after the other senior boy, Freddy, had befriended her that she started to notice this other fella. His muscles were big and deeply rutted, and she was certain he was dating the other girl sitting in that damp bathroom that day. Ellie the cheerleader, and her perfect cascade of blonde curls, resonating even under the gloomy light of the boys’ bathroom. To Mey, perfection. Everything she coveted for herself.
“Percocet is a muscle relaxer,” Mey explained. “You feel really good. Like the world is completely perfect.” Mey held up an Okay sign with two fingers from her right hand.
“Arnold always made a scene during B-period,” Ellie took Mey’s pill and held it close to her face. She made a face at the perpetual smile.
According to Freddy, “These are just like Percocet.”
“All I want is to hit escape velocity,” the footballer shot his hand out at the ceiling.
“Do you know how long until first bell?” Freddy asked.
Ellie had her phone in her lap. “We have a few minutes. Are you sure the door is locked?”
“Of course it is. It’s the only reason we’re here.”
“We could have done it in one of our cars.”
“There are cameras in the parking lot.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Such and such were caught having sex.”
“…”
While they argued, Mey leaned back on her arms to stare at the surrounding grim walls of the bathroom. This subdued, white-washed rectangle on the fourth floor was one of the few on campus that locked. None of the other bathrooms had working locks. You could spin the knobs, but the doors still opened. This bathroom was the only one—surrounded by classrooms no one used (which remained locked) and empty, enclosed hallways to insulate against the cold. The fourth floor was a strange place still unused for a budding school like Bellgrave Preparatory.
A bell tower outside of this building rang loud enough for all those from everywhere else to hear. Barely a dim alarm clock from a phone. But they would hear it ring through the door.
Freddy explained to Mey he chose this bathroom because of the Dean. A greyhound in his own right. Most school shenanigans were on his radar, even before they happened. If he somehow caught their scent, he would first have to open the door. Upon noticing it being locked, he’d have to reach for the key. If the key wasn’t in his pocket, he’d have to walk back to his office and retrieve it from the many keys that were festooned on a key rack. Then he’d have to walk back.
Although there was a scenario with a walkie-talkie they’d considered. Whenever Mey saw the Dean, he had his walkie-talkie strapped to his hip the same way a cop carried a gun. And some students acted as his eyes and ears on campus. He had an emergency number which could be reached anonymously via text message. If the Dean had any inclination as to what was transpiring in that bathroom, and if he were to have tried that door with no key in his pocket, one of the many school snitches could retrieve it while he stood guard.
But for that day, unbeknownst to Mey, he was preoccupied with a group of knuckleheads burning joints on the side of the gymnasium, the south side of campus.
There were no joints in the boys’ bathroom. Only the pills on Freddy’s butternut blanket. Therefore, not much risk. That’s how it was rationalized.
“There’s only one thing we have to do before we feast,” Freddy declared after the argument had reached some conclusion.
“What’s that?” Mey asked.
“We pray.” Freddy held out both hands. All four of them locked hands in the circle. Freddy cleared his throat, swallowed the phlegm that gurgled somewhere in the back, and said, “Dear Lord, thank you so much for these drugs. Thank you so much for letting us all have lots of sex—”
Frozen. Mey’s body flush with gooseflesh. Her personality, thankfully, in this setting, was normal to be silent and shut off, paralyzed, yet Ellie’s hand clenched twice upon that word: sex.
“—Like that one time I made sweet love in the girls’ locker room. Or that other time I forgot to wear a condom, and that overwhelming sense of doom struck so profoundly. Oh god, what did I just do, I thought. But you were there with an answer. Thanks for not letting Tristy get pregnant. I know Annie got pregnant. But I also know Annie got an abortion. That wasn’t my fault—”
Before Annie was expelled, the students fashioned a makeshift cross on the grass near the tennis courts, in homage to her aborted babies. Mey saw it upon walking onto campus before Freddy asked her if she wanted to try this muscle relaxer with a smiley face on it.
“I also want to let you know that even though you kind of fucked me on the test last week, I can forgive you.”
Ellie reminded him, “We’re running out of time.”
“Amen.”
They each took their assigned pill.
*
The buzz hit almost immediately, and it wasn’t from the drug. It was Ellie and her walking down the third-floor hallway, en route toward their A-period English class. Mey would have preferred they walk the entire campus, so that everyone could witness the girl who now considered Mey worthy of her time, but half the campus was almost as good. She didn’t really know any of the underclassmen, anyway. And the initial view of her classmates stretching forth amplified the vulnerability with the sudden frantic palpitations bursting beneath her ribs.
Yet none of them stared. None that Mey could see. But that didn’t matter.
There was something tranquil about the world when you were beautiful. Mey wouldn’t say she was beautiful, even with the transformation her body had undergone this past year, but Stacy was, and had been since their freshman year. And even though most of the eyes from their classmates were for Ellie, Mey felt part of it. Overwhelmed by it. The boys that coveted her but never said a thing. The popular boys that were out of her league. The strange looking chaps near the lockers that were like her, standing with the same propensities as the popular boys. They never spoke with Mey. Barely ancillary considerations in the damp cold that encapsulated these enclosed walls.
There at the end was an English class, on the second floor of the only four-story building on campus. The only building made of brick. For the mornings, the bottom floor was overrun by seniors wearing black t-shirts (only seniors could wear black) tucked into their shorts or skirts, usually congregating around a small amphitheater built into the ground. Not big at all, it could seat maybe ten students. Mey had to take a deep breath simply thinking about this, interacting with those popular kids now that Ellie was with her.
Remember how you looked when you recorded yourself. No matter how you feel, your face hides everything.
The palpitations placed a garland of anxiety on her head. Mey wished for stilts.
They were the first to enter English AB.
“Jesus fucking Christ.” Mey almost fell into the wall. Her left hand grabbed her heart and wedged between her boobs the same way her seat belt did during the drive to school.
“What’s wrong?” Ellie asked.
“You deal with that every day?”
“What?”
Mey didn’t want to explain it, this inexperience of hers. She couldn’t let Ellie see the vulnerability. Not right then. I am not weak.
“Look,” Ellie placed a hand on her shoulder. “Take a deep breath and sit down.” She escorted Mey to her assigned seat.
Mey sat in the back. Literally the back row. Ellie was off to her left, in the front row but halfway to the front of the classroom. Before the bell rang and their classmates walked in, Ellie sat at the desk directly in front of Mey. “Is it because of the, you know?”
“No, I just felt popular.”
“What’s popularity feel like?”
“Like a drug. But it hits a lot harder than Percocet.”
“Don’t say that when Mrs. Romschnard gets here.”
The bell rang and students filed in.
Ellie told her to, “Just wait.”
If there was one thing Mey had come to understand about her personality, it was the extremes. No matter how good something felt, there was a drop. Like a pendulum. The depression hit in waves. The waves themselves were buoyant and shrouded the world in a beautiful veneer. But they always spiraled a drain. Usually, it was someone else who pulled the handle for the toilet to flush.
This time the sea never stopped lolling against the coast. The back and forth brushed slow at first. Same students sitting in front of her. The English teacher Mrs. Romschnard sat at her desk. When she locked eyes with Mey, she smiled, and Mey smiled back.
The second bell rang (smooth as glass), and class began.
Bellgrave Preparatory did not use chalkboards. Almost none of the classrooms even used whiteboards anymore. This classroom did have two leftovers from last year. But between them, a large, digitized screen that connected to the internet and functioned like a whiteboard, most of the time. Plastic markers were displayed on holders beneath, and could be used to write on the digital screen, usually custom-made with a tiny delay between what your hand wrote and what appeared on-screen. Sometimes whole chunks disappeared, forcing you to start over with one of the gray plastic circles that served as an eraser.
Smartboards made presentations easy. USB ports along the side let students plug in their junk drives. Projectors still hung from the ceiling, though they were archaic now, relics from before the smartboards—Mey’s freshman-junior year.
Today, staring at an internet webpage pulled up on-screen, the palpitations in her chest did not break her ribs. They beat a strange warmth into her fingers and toes, the same way Ellie did when they walked to class. Vague recollections in Mey’s head of past wrongs came with a gentle, soothing intuition, and a burning sensation on her skin that matched Bengay on sore muscles. The world was comforting for once. And the letters Mrs. Romschnard wrote up front danced on-screen.
Sudden considerations effectuated for those on either side of herself; no one seemed to notice. Although no one paid attention. Laptops were allowed in class. For most of the year, Mrs. Romschnard said no. Since they had a week of school left before winter break, why not?
Why won’t the letters stop moving?
Mey squinted, but it did not steady the words. Her contacts must not have been working. From her backpack, she tried her glasses. It was like trying to read through clear, rippling water. The letters were visible, bright as day, but the movement made them impossible to read.
The rest of everything else felt great. The euphoria cooed between her ears. Everything is going to be alright.
“This is the greatest day of my life,” Mey whispered aloud, to no one who cared.
There was a boy who sat next to her. All year, he said nothing to her. He was talking with someone who sat on the other side of him. He didn’t notice the letters bouncing up front.
Since Mey was the first desk in the last row of the middle cluster of desks, there was an aisle that separated her from the cluster on the left. The girls that sat there didn’t want anything to do with her.
They didn’t notice the letters on the smartboard.
Ellie smiled at her. Mey sent her a text message. What’s the deal with the letters on the smartboard?
Maybe you should ask the teacher?
And so Mey raised her hand in the middle of class and asked Mrs. Romschnard why the letters on the smartboard were bouncing up and down. “Is there something wrong with the internet?”
“Oh my god Mey, what are you on?” Ellie giggled.
“Nothing!” She snapped. Quick. So sudden.
The girls to the left of her laughed. “Has someone been snorting OxyContin during science?”
“No, I don’t!” Mey felt her face burn with an exclamation mark.
“She totally does,” Ellie verified.
Mrs. Romschnard looked at the smartboard, then back at Mey, and she asked, “Why don’t you look at the letters on your paper?” Mey did realize she had paper in front of her, or that she had scribbled notes onto it. The teacher asked, “Are those letters bouncing up and down?”
The letters weren’t so fast. Trampolined, but readable. “No.”
The boy that never said a word to her started clapping. A few of his friends joined in. The rest of the class stared. Mrs. Romschnard walked up and looked her in the eyes. A grim look of doom settled over her shoulders, as if her hands were tied simply because of how the rest of everyone else behaved, and Mey was sent to the Dean.
*
Mey walked, and she wanted to cry. You stupid fucking bitch! Why did you ask? No one had to know. This could have been the best day of your life.
The only thing that made her trip, other than the curb at the bottom of the stairs where the sidewalk turned to grass, was the text message from Ellie: Why did you ask the teacher about the letters bouncing up and down?
Why would Ellie tell her to ask about it? Why would she tell those girls that she snorted OxyContin, loud enough for Mrs. Romschnard to hear?
These questions followed her down the hallways, decorated somehow with bizarrely pleasant and interesting details. Mey wanted to cry, but the emotion felt like such a distant emotion.
Despite the euphoria and her lack of tears, Mey couldn’t bring herself to tell Dean Williams what had happened. He read the note, called Mrs. Kimberly to verify it, and phoned the police.
*
At Bellgrave Preparatory, drug tests were a bi-weekly occurrence. Students were notified and pulled at random, usually during the middle of class. Boys were placed in the boys’ locker room, girls in the girls’ locker room. A licensed urine inspector handed out bottles for them to pee in and recorded the temperature to make sure no one used fake pee. If you couldn’t pee, they’d take your hair; if you shaved your head, they’d take your blood.
Normally done at random, when drugs were found on campus, drug tests were issued, cops were called, and they brought dogs. Sometimes, the dogs were there without probable cause. Occasionally, Mey would walk past police and their hounds.
Out of Mey’s four years at this school, she had only been tested twice, both her sophomore year.
“Do you know why we’re here?”
Mey nodded her head. She wiped fake tears off her face. Abnormal devastation. The detective told her she had taken a very potent form of MDMA. The euphoria was still there, but Mey was able to understand the severity of the situation, now faced with the possibility of jail. “I thought they were Percocet. That’s what they told me.”
Dean Williams returned from a phone call. “Your parents are on their way. They were surprised when I told them. I don’t think they believed me. I still don’t think they do.”
Neither of Mey’s parents knew about her drug habit, or that it had flourished this past year. It was a great way to cope. An even better remedy for a non-existent personality.
The detective said, “Mey Sahin.”
“My last name is pronounced Saheen.”
“From what your Dean has told me, you’re an outstanding student. Mostly straight A’s. You volunteer for the community even after your service requirements have been met. I don’t know why you would throw away your opportunities for something like this.”
The only reason Mey volunteered was that she didn’t have anything better to do with her time. Mey didn’t have friends until this year. Not good friends, anyway.
“This is a scary situation for a girl your age. Bellgrave Preparatory has a zero-drug tolerance. Do you understand the severity of what this means?”
Mey was able to manage the smallest nod. Her shoulders were slouched, and she knew she looked pathetic.
“You said Freddy ____, Ellie ____, and Cameron _____ were there with you?”
Mey didn’t want to say anything. All three denied it and said to drug test them, then they yelled at her through the walls. Mey could still hear them, a distorted chorus vibrating through her bones.
“I’m here because I’d like to know a little bit more about you, Mey. I don’t think a girl like you needs to resort to drugs like these. Not with your academics. I believe you are smarter than that. Smart enough to keep yourself away from these situations. And yet, here we are.”
Would Mey have been smart enough to fix her personality? Without drugs, no.
“If you were caught with marijuana, I wouldn’t care as much. It’s an illegal substance. This school doesn’t believe in leniency. I’m not condoning it. But I can understand it. What I don’t understand is why you decided to take it one step further and try something worse.”
“Have you smoked marijuana on campus?” Dean Williams asked, arms crossed, leaning against the wall.
Mey was able to shake her head no.
“Where do you think Freddy got ecstasy, Mey?” The investigator’s cologne almost coaxed it out of her.
It’s not that Mey was against answering his question. She didn’t really have the stomach to voice it.
And the investigator seemed to know it. “The pills were taken in the fourth-floor bathroom?”
Mey nodded.
“And all four took a pill of some sort?”
Again, Mey nodded. “They had faces on them.”
Dean Williams said, “I had one of my students sift through the footage. All four were leaving at the time Mey said they did.”
“There are drugs on campus, and if you took them with other people, then it’s in your best interest to cooperate with us. If there is anything in your locker, we will find it.”
“We searched her locker,” the Dean replied.
The detective turned his head from Mey. The Dean and he shared a few words, muted by a groggy intuition that blurred through a murky pool. It sounded important. The detective and Dean Williams made sure there wasn’t anything in her backpack. They tried a few more times to cajole more information about other students circulating drugs.
Mey thought about her scholarship. What would they find from her hair sample? What if they searched her car?
The intensity of the pill coated the world in a warm and sensuous aura. The lights tinkled. And the two men caused her to shake.
Mey Sahin was expelled from Bellgrave Preparatory on December 13, 2012.