Chapter 1

India Rubber

Samantha wakes up next to something strange.

She's slept with a few different girls since she got back for this semester, three to be exact, as part of trying out the whole carefree college girl lifestyle she'd supposedly been missing out on. Until now those were all normal, non-descript girls like herself.

But no one like this. No one with a bald head and tattoos and piercings and scars covering nearly every inch of her body.

Judging by the intensity of the light creeping in through the blinders, Samantha guesses it's somewhere between eight and ten in the morning. She wonders if she could crawl out from under the covers and sneak out of the room without waking up the girl beside her. Not that she has anywhere she needs to be, she'd just rather not be here.

She knew that this casual, one-night stand sort of thing wasn't for her, and she hates her friends for convincing her to try it. Now she's in bed with some – probably – drug-addled delinquent who looks like she just broke out of solitary confinement.

God, she was good in bed though.

Her brain seems to feel the need to retrace her steps from last night, as if to remind her of the… missteps that brought her here. And her head hurts so much from her hangover and her muscles so much from the things she and this girl did, that she just lies there and cringes at yesterday.

She was standing in someone's bathroom, staring in the mirror and feeling weirded out by how slutty her reflection looked, and someone was knocking on the door so hard that she couldn't bring herself to pee, so she just ended up sitting down on the toilet seat for a couple of minutes and taking off her pumps to let her feet breathe and not be squeezed to bits.

When she opened the door she was immediately knocked aside by some guy and girl who rushed past her into the bathroom and slammed the door shut and she winced as she was knocked into the wall. She wandered off to look for Kelly or Emma, but she knew her chances of finding them in this haze of alcohol and horny students were slim at best. Still, she kept mumbling excuses while she pushed through the bodies, much to the annoyance of their occupants who breathed their alcohol-tinted moans in her face.

As she kept fighting through the crowd, her goal gradually changed from finding Kelly and Emma to simply finding a way out, but even that seemed to be impossible. At some point, she remembers, she saw the girl now lying next to her, her tattooed neck, face and scalp in the crowd jumping out her, and she flinched, as if she'd seen a zombie. Then the girl was lost behind someone taller, though she'd remained for a few seconds in Samantha's brain as she pressed on.

She ended up hitting her knee against a make-shift bar before she found an exit. The guy behind the table asked her if she wanted a drink from the keg, and laughed and walked off when she asked for water. She let her stomach press against the table as she leaned over it and tried to breathe out and get her bearings. Bodies pressed up against her back and then ceased to do so, only to be replaced by more, and a song she liked was playing but the speakers were so blown out and the volume so overly loud that it made her head tremor.

It took a while before she realised that the guy standing next to her was talking to her, and even when she did she couldn't make out a word he was saying. Still, it was pretty clear that he was flirting with her. His expression and body language made it seem like he was trying to be suave and kind of romantic, and Samantha thought that this was an odd place to try that approach, and she just smiled and nodded and pretended that she could hear him while she waited for a gap to appear in the mob behind them.

Before she knew it the guy had bought her a drink. It was a beer too, and she hates beer, and she looked down into the red plastic cup that was placed in front of her and contemplated her situation and she just felt tired and depressed and wanted to be back in her bed, listening to Sarah snoring in the bunk below her, but even if she made it out of this place it would be another twenty minute walk across campus in the cold dead of night before she was there.

She heard someone near her shout over the noise of the room, but it didn't register. Something bumped into her right leg and when she looked down she saw her suitor doubled over on the floor next to her, clutching his stomach, and standing over him was the girl she'd seen in the crowd, her fists clenched and her knuckles white.

That was hardly necessary, Samantha thought.

The girl's top was little more than a few leather straps covering only the most vital parts, and as the guy stumbled off into the crowd zombie-girl slid up next to her and Samantha almost flinched away again, but the tattoos covering every inch of skin on this girl's body were so strange and imposing in the room's imperfect lighting, that she just stood and stared.

The zombie-girl rested her elbows on the table and leaned forward and smiled up at Samantha and motioned for her to get closer. Samantha did, all while staring at a bar-code on her head, and the girl arched her neck and screamed a name into her ear, but somehow Samantha still couldn't make it out over the music, so she nodded a little awkwardly, pretending like she'd heard, and shouted her own name back, though it probably wasn't loud enough either.

The girl smiled again and reached out so she could snatch Samantha's beer, and as she drank it she grabbed Samantha by the arm and pulled her along as she began elbowing through the crowd in what Samantha dearly hoped was the direction of an exit.

It was, and out in the cool night air, walking across the lamp-lit campus with this barely clothed girl, she suddenly felt a lot less tired, and a lot more buzzed.

The girl's eyes open suddenly and without warning and it catches Samantha off guard, making her almost fall out of the bed. The girl yawns and on her breath Samantha can feel the mix of the many alcoholic beverages she tasted every time they kissed last night.

"Good morning…" the girl mutters.

"…Hey." Samantha responds.

"Sleep well?" The girl says and cracks that same grin from yesterday, the one that just seems a little off.

"Yeah, uh… I've got to be somewhere!" Samantha blurts out and jumps out of bed. She looks around for her clothes and finds them scattered all over the room, which in itself is just a bloody mess.

"Really? Where?"

Samantha finds her panties and puts her legs into them. "Class."

"Oh." Her tattooed bedmate props herself up with a pillow and watches as Samantha puts on her bra, which she finds thrown over a computer monitor. "What class?"

Shit.

"Uh… contemporary literature."

"Oh, nice."

Getting her stupid dress on seems to take forever, especially with this girl watching her. She can feel her skin burning under her gaze, and every time she tries to sneak a look back at her their eyes meet, and that just makes it worse.

Whatever, she just needs to get out of here. She sits down on the end of the bed, struggling with the zipper on her back.

"Want some help there?" The girl asks behind her.

"What?" Samantha shoots back a glare. "No! I'm fine."

The girl shrugs. "It just… seemed like you were in a hurry."

"I am."

Samantha stands up. The zipper is only halfway up her back, but it'll have to do. Her face will catch on fire if she stays here another second. She starts putting her shoes on, then remembers that they climbed a set of stairs together last night, and grabs them and heads straight for the door. If she tried to run downstairs in these things, she'd probably fall and break her neck.

"Hey, Samantha?"

She stops in the doorway. The girl throws the covers of her body and gets up and stands a little too close to Samantha.

"Just, uh… have fun in class." She smiles.

Samantha nods.

"Yeah. Thanks."

At 12:45, Samantha is in Lucy's having breakfast - or maybe this counts as brunch - with Sarah and Emma. It turned out her friend from last night lives pretty much as far from Samantha's dorm as is possible while still being on university grounds, and Samantha had to walk across the entire campus in her heels and minimalist blue dress in the middle of the day to get back to her room.

Once there she opened all the windows, brushed her teeth, showered and then wrapped herself in a towel and laid down on the couch and looked up at the ceiling. She considered going back to the economics essay she hasn't touched in weeks, but she could barely bring herself to move her arms. She stayed like that for 30 minutes or so, listening to the muffled voices and music coming through the walls, until Emma called and Samantha remembered she hadn't eaten since seven PM last night.

The shop is full of people standing in unorganized lines, orders being exchanged and the clattering of plates and cutlery. The three of them manage to snatch a table by one of the windows, giving them a wide view of the green grass and baby-blue sky and the white college buildings sandwiched in between.

"So where did you and Kelly disappear to yesterday?" Sarah asks as she sits down opposite Samantha.

"I thought she was with you guys." Samantha says, biting into her grilled cheese.

"She was, but she disappeared around the same time as you."

Samantha feels herself frowning. She was feeling a lot better when she walked here in the brisk midday, wearing shoes and clothes that she actually likes and find comfortable, but they've barely been here five minutes and Sarah is already questioning her. She should have known this would turn into an interrogation.

"I didn't disappear; I just went to the bathroom." She looks over at Emma who's sitting between her and the window. "I told you where I was going, right Emma?"

Emma only mumbles something back, poking at her salad.

"Well you didn't come back to our room all night, so you must have gone somewhere. Or were you in the bathroom all night, Sam?"

Samantha sighs. "No."

"So, where?" Sarah hasn't even looked at her food yet.

Some guy walking by them drops his drink and as the liquid spills out some of it splashes onto Samantha's trainers. The guy, who looks small and scared, a freshman, starts apologising profusely, but Samantha assures him it's alright and uses the chance to continue working on her sandwich. Sarah doesn't even glance at the boy though, and just continues staring her down.

"Well?"

"I went home with someone." Samantha concedes through a mouthful of toast. She knows if she doesn't admit it now, Sarah's going to be on her about it all day.

"I knew it!" Sarah's face lights up and she gleefully clasps her hands together. Emma doesn't even look up from her salad. "Who was it?"

"I don't know..."

"You don't know?"

"No, I mean, I know, it's just, it was nobod-"

Samantha trails off when she sees a familiar face among the people behind Sarah. People have been rushing in and out since they got here, but zombie girl stands out like sore thumb against the background of normals. She walks towards Samantha, who's quickly slipping into panic.

"Hey."

"Are you following me?" Samantha manages to blurt out before her friends even have time to notice the tattooed girl that has appeared beside them, and she immediately regrets it as she realises that the girl was about to pass with only a greeting.

Instead she stops, looking a little surprised.

"I came here to get something to eat." She says calmly, nodding to the paper-wrapped sandwich in her hand. "The grilled cheese here is insane."

Now Sarah's staring at both them, eyes darting between them at the speed of light.

"How was contemporary literature, by the way?"

"Uh," Samantha stutters, trying to will the girl away with her eyes. "I missed it, thanks to you."

"Oh, fuck, I'm sorry." For a moment it looks like she's going to leave, but then she places a hand on the table and leans into Samantha's face. "But you know they don't do classes on Saturdays here, right?"

With that, she spins around and walks to the door. Samantha watches her the whole way, and when she turns back around she sees Sarah looking her up and down suspiciously. She waits for the questions to hit her like a tidal wave, but Sarah just stares, then she suddenly looks away and finally takes a bite of her BLT.

Next to her, Emma hasn't even looked up from her plate.

I have no excuse for this.