cliché musings

“What are you drinking?”

Danielle draws her eyes away from her Twitter feed, locking the phone in her hand. Rosie’s standing in front of her, part of the line of already-wasted freshmen and girls in tight skirts and heels, waiting on the designated mixer for the party. The line for the beer keg is shorter, and comprised of only white boys in polo shirts.

“I don’t know,” Danielle tells her. She has to shout to hear her own voice, drowned out by booming bass and drums through speakers and party-goers reciting rap lyrics at the top of their lungs. “What do they have?”

“It’s usually, like, vodka or rum.”

“I’ll just get whatever you get.” Danielle watches as the next girl is handed a red cup full of, apparently, vodka or rum, and whatever soda they’ve decided on today. The frat guy mixing drinks is wearing a headband with pink, springy hearts attached and glasses with heart-shaped lenses, dancing around as he fills up cups from the coolers.

“Oh, let’s take pictures,” Rosie suggests, while they’re waiting in line. “Can we use your phone? You’ve got the 10.”

Danielle hands her iPhone X–a result of working as much as she could at the Target in their hometown over the summer–over to Rosie. She’s better at taking selfies for them, an art Danielle can never figure out. Lighting and angles are important, so she’s told, but it seems like the front camera had a personal vendetta against Danielle’s features. 

Rosie holds the phone out in front of them, lifting it for a higher view. The screen shows two girls: Rosie, with her dirty blonde hair curled, wide brown eyes and eyelashes coated in mascara, her contoured and highlighted cheeks and jaw, and Danielle, with straight black hair and attempted eyeliner that looks like an uneven block. She grins for the pictures Rosie takes, and doesn’t ask to have them retaken, even though her smile looks wonky and her chin is pointed too high.

When Rosie’s at the front of the line, she asks for two of the vodka drinks and passes one to Danielle. They move to get out of line and stand near the wall, sipping on their drinks.

“So Greg has this friend…” Rosie starts, turning to face Danielle.

Danielle’s fingers clench around her cup, the cheap plastic crinkling. She stays quiet, and Rosie looks away when she doesn’t say anything, taking another sip of her drink.

“He wants you guys to meet. He thinks you might get along.”

“Does he?” Danielle says. “I don’t know anything about him.”

“His name’s Bradley. He’s in the frat with Greg and he–”

“That’s not going to make me know him, Rosie.”

There’s a change in Rosie’s expression, a switch in her eyes, like she’s surprised Danielle isn’t on board with being set up. Of course, Danielle thinks.

“I know,” Rosie says, almost like a sigh. “Just trust me, okay? Give him a chance.”

Danielle takes another sip, trying her best not to down half the cup. “Where is Greg, anyway?”

“He’s coming later, and then he’ll introduce you guys.”

Danielle looks over at the dance floor, a conglomeration of sweaty bodies packed too tightly together, elbows jabbing arms and sticky drinks sloshing to the ground.

“I mean,” Rosie starts, “only if you want to.”

“I wish you would have told me about this before.”

“We weren’t sure if you would come.”

Danielle’s eyes lower to the floor. Her stomach feels cold, like a chill has passed over her body, and she pulls down her cropped shirt with her free hand, getting the fabric to rest just above her belly button. 

“Can we just dance?” she asks, and finishes the rest of her drink. “I want to experience a real frat party.”

Rosie grins, her lipstick-covered mouth widening. “Of course!”

It’s in the middle of a song Danielle doesn’t know–but sounds almost exactly like the last one that just played–and on their second refill of drinks when Greg arrives. Danielle is dizzy and everyone is only blurry shapes, but she sees him come up behind Rosie, holding a bouquet of flowers that she hasn’t noticed yet. Danielle watches him wrap an arm around her waist and lean down beside her ear.

Rosie spins around in his arms. “You’re here!” she exclaims. “Oh my god, are those roses?”

He holds the bouquet out for her and smiles. “Roses for Rosie! Sorry, that’s, like, horrible, but I couldn’t resist–”

“I love them!” She grabs the flowers out of his hand, almost tripping over her heels in the process. She’s drunk too, Danielle knows, otherwise she might not be as excited for the third time someone’s made that Valentine’s Day joke. 

“Shit, but where should I put them?”

“I’ll just put them in my room later.”

“Ohh,” Rosie says, smiling. “Right.”

Danielle looks away, too grossed out to watch whatever weird foreplay is happening. Rosie already told her she probably wasn’t coming back to the room tonight. Danielle remembers the bit of relief that raced through her chest when she heard, then remembers the guilt that quickly replaced that, and has to finish the rest of her drink.

“So, where’s the guy I’m meeting?” she interrupts. “Brad, or whatever.”

Rosie’s eyes light up, and Greg says, “Yeah, Bradley. I’ll go get him.”

Greg kisses Rosie on the top of the head before heading off further into the party. They’re a cute couple, Danielle supposes. She just wishes it didn’t feel like walking onto an alien planet and suffocating without a spacesuit when she was around him. Or any of Rosie’s other friends.

She wishes she wasn’t starting to feel that way about Rosie.

Danielle feels a hand fall on her shoulder. “I’m glad you came tonight!” Rosie says, leaning in to yell in her ear. “You’ll like Bradley, I promise!”

Danielle shrugs. “Sure, Rosie!” she shouts back. 

* * *

Danielle stumbles into her dorm room, her keys jangling as she pulls them out of the lock. The bright, overhead lights are on and there are still clothes all over the floor and her and Rosie’s desk chairs, pairs of rejected outfits for the night, while Rosie’s makeup bag is spilled over her desk. Danielle trips over a sandal on the way to her bed, and laughs aloud to herself when she almost falls.

She collapses over her mattress, her eyes pressed into the peach-colored comforter. She reaches her hand back and pulls her phone out of her back pocket. 

danYELL: fukc rosse

danYELL: rooosi

danYELL: rosiie

kim possible: oh girl what did she do??

danYELL: im alobe

danYELL: and durnk

danYELL: i hste herrrrr

Emery’s icon and three dots appear at the bottom of the chat, but Danielle ignores it and opens up her Notes app. It’s the last thing she types before she falls asleep, crumpled over her bed with smeared eyeliner and one wedged heel still on her foot.

FUKCKK FAKE FREINDDSSS!!! rsoie doesnt ebven know me anymoreeer

Danielle doesn’t want to think about what it means that she finally agreed to go with Rosie to one of Greg’s frat parties. Instead, she wakes up, gets blinded by the lights she forgot to turn off last night, lays in bed until she doesn’t feel like she’ll vomit the moment she tries to stand, and types another paragraph below the note she left the night before. She takes a screenshot and opens up her Twitter DMs, which is full of unread messages from the other girls. She smiles as she reads their messages, asking if she was alright and what was going on, and also pls drink lots of water!!

danYELL: rosie tried to set me up last night

Insert eye-rolling emoji.

sabrina the slutty witch: oh no

sabrina the slutty witch: what happened

danYELL: her bf had this dumb valentines day party and apparently they thought it was a good idea to set me up with one of his friends

danYELL: like. frats are literally the worst what makes you think im gonna wanna date a frat guy???

danYELL: and then she has the audacity to literally leave me alone for the rest of the night so her and greg can fuck or whatever and like?? im drunk and alone what are you doing

kim possible: wtf is wrong with her

kim possible: does she just forget ur a person

remembery emery: YOOOO DROP HER

remembery emery: can i just block her for you

sabrina the slutty witch: retweet

Danielle doesn’t have much memory of Bradley. His face is foggy, but Danielle’s sure she could replace any fraternity guy with him and get someone sort of similar. She remembers getting introduced and then Rosie and Greg leaving, Bradley’s awful definition of small talk (“What’s your major?” “Business.” “Oh, cool, cool.” “Yeah.”) and then his subtle proposal to go somewhere private. Danielle left to get a fourth drink, the mistake, and spent the rest of the night trying to avoid him, but isn’t really sure how successful she was. Someone must have felt bad and given her a ride back to her dorm–she definitely remembers laying her head on a window and trying desperately not to cry–but she isn’t sure who that was either.

sabrina the slutty witch: do you have more notes about it

remembery emery: oh right

remembery emery: i love those

Danielle smiles to herself and sends the screenshot she took earlier. She’s been in a group chat with these girls for over a year, the four of them eventually interacting over funny tweets and deciding they needed to get to know each other better. It’s not on the Twitter account Danielle says she has, but a second one she made to complain about the certain people in her life. Rosie doesn’t know about it, and none of the girls know Rosie, so it makes them the perfect, and only, people she can talk about what’s been haunting her mind for months.

kim possible: why are these so good

kim possible: its like so sad but thats what makes u want to keep reading them

remembery emery: sis where’s the publishing deal

remembery emery: i needed a book of all your notes like yesterday

sabrina the slutty witch: RETWEET

sabrina the slutty witch: girl we need it

Danielle doesn’t completely understand the notes herself. It started at the beginning of the school year, when there had been a few times of Rosie making plans with Danielle and then cancelling because other things–study groups, parties, hanging out with Greg–had come up. Danielle put down all her thoughts in her Notes app, her best way to organize the raging storm and chaos of her emotions at the time. And when she needed to rant to the Twitter chat about her supposed best friend, her notes served as the reflection of her rollercoaster train of thought.

She never saw herself as poetic–she’s majoring in engineering, and there is no world where those two things could mix–but it seems like the second her thumbs hit the keyboard, or maybe as her anger controls all the veins in her body, another part of her brain opens up, a land full of the right word choices and emphasis and a secret skill to pull at heartstrings.

Maybe it’s for the best that Rosie finds out.

Rosie comes back to the room sometime in the afternoon, blabbering on about Greg while Danielle only half listens. Rosie spends five minutes trying to explain how the capitalistic atrocities of Valentine’s Day can go hand-in-hand with the idea to spread love, and Danielle has to excuse herself to go to the bathroom.

She steps through the connected bathroom to their dorm room, and Rosie calls out to her through the door.

“Hey, Danielle! Can I look at the photos we took last night?”

“Go ahead!” Danielle shouts back. For Instagram, she suspects. The usual.

She’s washing her hands when she hears Rosie’s voice again.

“Danielle, what the hell is this?”

“What’s what?” Danielle calls, stepping in from the bathroom. Rosie is sitting on the bed, Danielle’s phone in her hands.

“You tell me,” she says. “I sit alone and think how I’m a passing thought to even my best friend. I don’t know what happened with us, or when she became such a bitch.”

Danielle can feel her stomach sink to the ground and her vision start to go blurry. There’s a ringing in her ears, thousands of sirens and alarms going off all at once and jostling the cells in her brain to pay attention. Fuck. Her camera roll. Her screenshots of her notes she sent the Twitter group chat; they would have came up first. 

Rosie keeps going, Danielle unable to say a word.

“I get abandoned at a party where I know no one and she knows everyone. She thinks a man is going to solve my problems, because she also thinks I have all the problems and she has none.”

There’s a hitch in Rosie’s breath and she stops reading the note. There’s more to that one, of course Danielle knows that, about her never working a day in her life and not caring about anything but the party life, but Rosie doesn’t keep going, just stares up from the phone screen to look Danielle right in the eyes.

“Rosie, I…” Danielle swallows and steps further into the room. She pretends not to notice Rosie taking a step back. “I didn’t know how to tell you–”

“Oh, tell me that she doesn’t know anything about me, I can’t even be around her–”

“I’m sorry!” Danielle cries. “But it’s true, okay?! I can’t!”

Rosie stands up, throwing Danielle’s phone back at her. It fumbles in Danielle’s hands and ends up crashing to the floor.

“Why couldn’t you talk to me about it? You’re ranting in your fucking notes and talking shit about me behind my back. What have I done to you, Danielle? Tell me, because I don’t fucking understand!”

Danielle takes a breath. She has to look away, can’t bare to face Rosie like this, with flushed cheeks and red eyes on the borderline of tears, like Danielle isn’t experienced with the exact way Rosie looks right before she starts to sob.

“You just–you just do whatever you want to do, alright? Ever since we came here! You take me out to these things with all your new friends and boyfriend and pretend I don’t exist anymore. You took me to a frat party even though you know I hate them! You tried to set me up with Bradley last night like I would actually be interested in a frat guy, and then left me all alone while I was fucking wasted!”

“What are you–I thought you and Bradley hit it off! Didn’t you leave together?”

“Of course not!” Danielle has to keep herself from grabbing her own hair and yanking it out. She can’t believe Rosie’s getting mad at her for this, completely unaware of how she’s treated her for months. Why would she ever hit it off with Bradley? “He was boring, Rosie! You don’t even know the kind of guys I like anymore.”

Rosie seems to pause in her fury, sitting back down on her bed.

“I’m sorry, I–Greg said Bradley gave you a ride back. I thought you were fine!”

“Wait,” Danielle says, rubbing her hands down her face. “Bradley drove me back?”

“Well, that’s what Greg said! I didn’t know he was lying, Danielle, I swear–”

“No, I–” Danielle gets a flash of a memory, hands guiding her to a Camry parked outside the frat house. A voice saying she’ll be home soon. A smile and friendly eyes. “Shit, I think he did.”

“What, Danielle, I–how gone were you? You’re gonna yell at me for abandoning you when you were perfectly okay?!”

“That’s not the point,” Danielle says, this time in a near whisper. “That’s not the point. You were gonna leave no matter what. You do this all the time.”

“No, that is the point, Danielle!” Rosie argues, jumping to her feet and snatching her own phone off the bed. “You judge everyone for every little thing, even Bradley who just wanted to get to know you and was nice enough to give you a ride home, like are you fucking kidding me? And everything I do, I try to include you. You’re my first concern, because you’re my best fucking friend. You can complain about going to frat parties but I know you want to go to them, that’s why I invited you! It makes you feel like you fit in for once in your life, Danielle, and don’t even try to lie to me about that.”

A black stain runs down Rosie’s cheek, and then another, dripping pathetically down her foundation and concealer. And suddenly, the water builds up in Danielle’s own eyes, spilling over while she rubs them away. Her breath has been taken and her words are choked, even though thousands of words come to mind that she’d want to spit in Rosie’s face right about now.

“I’m leaving,” Rosie says, grabbing her keys off her desk. “Talk to me when you actually want to be mature about whatever this bullshit problem is.”

Rosie’s feet stomp across the wooden floors as she heads to the door, yanking it open and slamming it shut. The vibrations resonate across the walls, echoing through Danielle’s ears and down to the spaces between her bones. She stares at the door for a moment, or maybe two or three, and then bends down to pick her phone off the ground.

The screen protector is cracked, shattered in a diagonal line down her phone. Danielle runs her finger across it and doesn’t flinch when the glass pricks her skin.

Her shaky hands unlock the phone, while she slowly sinks down onto her mattress. Her thumbs, in an instinctive process, find the Twitter app and open her DMs, typing across the keyboard.

danYELL: lmao im so fucking done. guess what this bitch just did