Here is another chapter. Thank you for any reviews.


Spencer turned the last page at about seven in the morning

Spencer turned the last page at about seven in the morning. On that last page, neatly taped, there was the messy sketch of the Great Dane standing beside the mailbox.

"Why Toronto?" she asked.

Toronto was written along the bottom. It was underlined very severely, twice.

"I don't know. Maybe fucking Kenya, then."

"You want to buy a house in Toronto or Kenya?"

"No, I want to put my dog in Toronto or Kenya."

There were other drawings too. Some of them were good, dictated with a steady hand and with vivid strokes. Other pages had writing, a few had music. Ashley had taped postcards and scenic photos of various locations into the empty spaces. There was a portion of it dedicated to an itinerary of sorts. It was very full. Throughout the length of the book, there was absolutely no Los Angeles.

The two girls were bent crooked over the worn paper. Spencer closed the notebook, set it down on the bedside table. She rubbed her eyes and her expression was one of fatigue, her slump lethargic. They'd been up all night.

"Do you want me to keep this?" Spencer asked, although she wasn't sure exactly what to do with it.

Ashley grabbed it and sat back against a pillow, clutching the journal against her chest.

"No," she said, then frowned at Spencer suspiciously. "Are you trying to go to sleep, or something?"

"That would be nice."

"No, no, none of that. You're not allowed to sleep. I'm not tired yet."

"Oh?"

"No. You can't sleep until I am ready to let you sleep, and until then you're just going to have to do whatever I say. Come on, open your eyes."

Spencer was laying down and then she was being straddled. She opened her eyes and they were kissing, Ashley's hands were sliding beneath the fabric of her shirt, tracing the wire of her bra.

They moved and the book on the edge of the bed landed on the carpet with a thump.

"Spencer! We're going to Church today! Your father's going, and you're going, and Clay's going, and Glen's not going but he said he went yesterday so it's okay," said Paula, knocking excitedly on the door. Her footsteps followed, echoing down the hallway. It was a calamity of noise.

Ashley was halfway out the window, stumbling awkwardly on the siding for footing. She kissed Spencer goodbye here.

"Get me the Trip Book."

Spencer acquiesced.

"I'm not finished here, so don't go to bed yet," Ashley said. Then she fell. She rolled through the grass and darted back to her car. As she pulled out, she hit their mailbox.

Spencer went to Church with her parents that day and was careful to observe many aspects of the experience, because it had been a long time since she had attended and she wanted to remember what it was like before she had known about the city and city things.

The pews were full and the choir was loud and enthusiastic. High above in the rafters light filtered through the stained glass onto certain ornate crevices. Everything was decorated and the statues were quiet and solemn when the people left. The priest spoke with conviction and described sin as if it were a terrible beast.

She thought about the beastly side of humanity, and she contemplated confession. She decided she would wait, because she was tired and her lips were still numb and partial to her most recent escapade with mortality.

Paula loved taking the family to Church and when Spencer watched the people she also loved going to Church. This time she saw them all as beasts like her, thought that although they grinned under the gaze of God they probably went home and helped Los Angeles corrupt itself just as she did.

Spencer continued thinking about sins and the nature of evil throughout the week. She kept her phone off. At school, she slipped through the halls stealthily and avoided her companions. She talked to Kyla a few times in class, and saw Sean once when he was with Clay and Glen. She didn't even look Aiden in the eye until Friday morning, and that was because he had her pinned against the brick exterior of King High.

"Where have you been?" he asked. His face was next to hers, his breath was on her cheek. "I've missed you."

She tilted her head and let her lips brush against his and thought for a moment that it wasn't so bad.

"I've missed you, too. I've just been swamped with school work. My grades were dropping for a second, so I've been picking up some extra credit, and I was thinking I'd join Model UN so I have a club this year…"

Aiden looked incredulous at first, then deeply confused. He couldn't quite recognize what she was talking about.

"School?" he tried. He stepped back a bit and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Don't worry about it. You're a senior."

"I haven't even applied to any schools yet. Have you?"

"Pff, yeah. You know, UC…something, perhaps. Okay, come on, let's go out tonight."

Spencer looked down, acknowledging the end of her temporary isolation, then smiled up at him and made a point to look curious and excited.

"What are we doing?"

"There's a triple-kegger in the Valley that Sean was talking about, so I was thinking we'd go there."

They arrived around seven. They were in a Victorian mansion. It was smaller than Ashley's mansion, but Spencer figured that it was prettier, and cleaner, and fuller—there was real furniture that was appropriate and lived on. Raife Davies had organized his house like a child, overwhelming the space with large toys.

Spencer still hadn't seen Ashley, so a few hours later she found herself calling her from a gazebo in the back yard.

"Hello?"

She sounded hungover, and asleep.

"Ashley?"

"You have a cell phone, now? Who gave you a cell phone?"

"Why aren't you coming to the kegger?"

"Okay, I have been partying all week, and you haven't been partying all. I don't have to go to the kegger if I don't feel well. So I'm not going to go to some dumb kegger."

"You love keggers, Ashley, and I want to hang out. When can you hang out with me?"

Ashley hesitated. On the other line, she was eyeing her nails compulsively.

"It's not my fault you haven't seen me. I came to school Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. You just weren't around."

"You told me you were coming back, and that I shouldn't go to bed yet. What if I actually hadn't slept? I would have gone insane. It's a good thing I don't normally listen to you."

"I don't even remember that. I'm not going to some dumb kegger. I'll look at you the next time Aiden makes me look at you."

Ashley hung up.

Spencer wandered back into the house, up onto the back porch and through the masses of people. She did a keg stand, and played Beer Pong. She took shots with a shady young adult, then she found Kyla and they giggled and danced and did good party things together. It was all horribly easy for Spencer in that environment and at some point she was horribly drunk and was puking in the cute but trashed second story bathroom and she didn't know where anyone was.

When she was finished and had washed up, she searched a few rooms and found Aiden staring dimly at the ceiling on one of the beds.

"Aiden, Aiden," Spencer said. She shook him and he was rousted. He sat up and looked at her, suddenly smiling.

"Spencer! Sit down, Spencer. I've got to talk to you. I love you."

"I love you, too, Aiden," she said, and she smiled as well. She was drunk enough at the time that she did love him that much, and enough to say it sweetly.

"But, uh, it's about five. We're going to have to leave eventually." He directed her pointedly to the time on his phone. It was 5:45.

"Oh, yes. Eventually."

"So, Kyla's going to need to drive."

"Kyla's drunk, I think."

"I think so, too."

They went downstairs and found Kyla. They determined that she was, in fact, drunk. Luckily, she was on the phone, inventing them a ride.

"Ashley's coming," she told them, and they sat down among several other people in the living room to roll a blunt.

After smoking and sobering up a bit they could walk comfortably under the glare of the sunrise, so Aiden took Spencer into the kitchen and pressed her against the counter. They made out to the static murmur in the next room, felt close and warm and content. Spencer was clumsy and tired but she had forgotten to feel guilty, so it was okay. They stayed in that position until Ashley got there. Spencer woke up in Kyla's bedroom fourteen hours later.

She got up and walked down the stairwell, listening for the familiar buzz of activity below. No sounds came and she didn't find another person until she checked Ashley's bedroom at the end of her investigation. She was lying on her floor, her eyes wide open and bloodshot and brown.

"You aren't welcome here," Ashley said. "Walk home."

"Where is everyone?"

"There's a party at Sean's. In fact, you can walk there, too, if you like. It's a little shady, but there are some shortcuts."

"Is that Jose Cuervo? Are you drunk?"

"Yes and never." Ashley grabbed the half-empty bottle and embraced it defensively. "You can't have any, by the way."

Spencer sighed and sat down beside her, ignoring the gesture and the drink.

"You're a horrible drinker and so am I. I don't want any right now."

Ashley became offended for a bit and pretended Spencer wasn't there. She poured herself a line of double shots and prepared them tediously. Then she gave them a very angry look, staring at them intensely.

"What are you on?"

"I am most certainly not drunk," Ashley responded, which was true but irrelevant. Realistically, she was coked up.

Spencer stood up and walked over to Ashley, grabbed her hand and pulled their forms onto the bed. Ashley was looking down at her, and they were in rapture across the mattress again after various readjustments.

Ashley trailed kisses down Spencer's collarbone, carefully removing her shirt as she sat up on top of her.

"You really are sexy," she said, eyeing Spencer's body with an unusually shameless degree of lust. She was blushing; she turned her head away under the gaze. "If only you didn't sound the way you did. It fucks everything up." Ashley's voice was strange and her speech was rapid.

"What are you doing? You're messed up," Spencer asserted, a little bit solemn. She felt nervous suddenly, sad, too, that this was the condition of the event. Her skirt had come off and Ashley was tugging at her underwear now, kissing along her hipbone.

"You'll fuck me anyways?"

"No," Spencer said after a pause. She pushed Ashley's hands away. "I won't fuck you."

Ashley returned her lips to Spencer's face, let them rest against her jaw line. She was indescribably happy and she was grinning about it, but she became very serious observing the profile of her companion's face.

"Would you like me to make love to you?"

Spencer watched her and felt better, took solace in an expression that lacked the typical emptiness: she was staring at her like they were in a romance novel. She sat up, realizing repeatedly that she was naked.

"I don't know if I believe that you can," she said. Ashley became theatrically passionate. She embraced her, pressed their lips together in a fit of dramatic energy. They became entangled on the bed; she shed her clothes and their bodies molded against each other. They were one shape, writing upon the sheets.

Ashley pulled herself down and moved her mouth up Spencer's thighs. It was a full moon, bright light bounced from the window and off their pale silhouettes. She began to suck on Spencer's breasts, slid her fingers down her stomach and between her legs. The sun was rising later and they were trapped like that, making love beneath various forms of illumination.

They were tired eventually, and Spencer was asleep, attached to Ashley's side. It was about four in the morning. Her breathing was even and calm and Ashley felt angry that she could not sleep herself. She got out of bed and dressed herself, locked the bedroom door and went upstairs. She smelled dust and stale smoke and snooted a few lines in the coke room. She was gazing into eternity here, that yellow-stained wall and that damn dirty carpet and that spot on the wall where a painting used to be…

She remembered the entire night and she hated herself and Spencer for it. Her mind began to wrap into itself again and she smoked a cigarette she had dipped in the bag so that her mouth would go numb and maybe if she smoked enough weed in the next hour she'd erase the entire night and all the things they did and said from her immediate memory. She feared that she was scarred, and she was grimacing at every hint of recollection. It didn't seem right at all.

Aiden and Kyla came home and it was time to function again. Ashley shoved her coke drawer shut and greeted them with half a handle of Jose. She sat with them and found that something had changed.

Spencer was still asleep and she told them, but she did not tell them where. They did not know yet that things were different, but Ashley began to boggle her mind about it.

She wanted to go to bed, and she wished that she could. She wished she could understand why the shiver in her bones wasn't enough anymore, why the buzz about her thoughts could no longer suffice to please her. She hated this stale, sleepy daylight, and she was more tired than she had ever been.

When her friends had fallen asleep Ashley found Spencer still upstairs, breathing the same idle breaths. She wrapped her arms around her and closed her eyes. Three hours later, she was dreaming about a place where birds sang and the trees danced.