Eli sat on the windowsill while her friends convened in the living room, one knee pulled to her chin and the other swinging idly as the lit end of her cigarette burned closer to her fingertips. The crooked lamp in the corner cast shadows she couldn’t quite make out into recognizable shapes. She didn’t mind–they were just long enough for her to lean over and cozy into while she pondered her next move. 

It had been a long night, one that had turned into another day and now it was night again. That seemed to be the way things were going lately. She couldn’t decide if she was on the brink of an epiphany or facing a challenge. Maybe both. Might as well move to the other side of the room to figure it out, she thought. It was the night before she had an interview for one of the largest companies in the city, something she’d been working towards for almost two years now. 

“Guys, if we split the cost of the cab it’s not that much.”

“No seriously, we need everyone ready to go by midnight or it’s not happening.” 

“There isn’t enough room.”

“Yeah it’s not my favorite club, but I don’t wanna go home.” 

The conversations around her muddled into each other, and the corners of her vision wavered in small black blurs. It was like there was a faint electrical current that wafted through the room with a beeline straight to her heart (or was it her mind? The origin of emotion was hard to trace these days), each sense tingling with unease. So goes the girl feeling everything intensely. Like a slow motion scene in a movie where only one character moves in real time, Eli sat in the corner alone; close enough to the chaotic ambience, feeling out of place, yet tethered to it all the same. 

She didn’t want to hear their voices anymore, yet she didn’t want to be alone. She didn’t want to watch the lamp flicker, but she didn’t want it to be turned off. She had an early morning tomorrow, but she had had a long night. She wanted to feel different when the sun came up this time.

Eli took the last drag of her Marlboro gold (no, not blue American Spirits anymore, she was growing up) and pulled her free leg onto the windowsill so that she could balance herself enough to pull the glass down. Snapping herself out of the dissociation she was descending into was her inevitable responsibility; they had been partying for over 24 hours for a reason, though no one wants to ever accept that the reason might be anything other than to just have fun. So–like she had every weekend for the summer so far–she kept telling herself that if she could just stretch the moment a little bit longer, it would be worth the time spent. The consequences would arrive on their own time. She would deal with them later. 

Before she had the chance to rejoin the mission to make haste out of the house, she looked up to see Grayson had joined her. Grayson was a little bit older than Eli, though still close enough to her age to feel like a friend, often balancing somewhere between brother and mentor in a way she’d come to grow fond of. They’d spent the day before in his living room, so he’d seen her in the throes of her typical mental gymnastics: committed to staying awake, but burdened by its emotional consequences. Eli immediately felt a sense of calm as soon as he walked over, and she knew that she could trust him to guide her through this. 

“What are you going to do, Eli?” he asked directly. She knew he was looking for one answer.

“I know… Tomorrow feels bigger than ever before,” she replied. In her tone, nearly defeated, there was a twinge of hope. 

Grayson put his phone down and looked at her with laser focus that she had to muster back out of respect. “Eli,” he began. “If you want things to change, you have to operate in a way that you might not have before.” His words were simple, cutting through the noise in her head and, thankfully, the noise in the living room as well. 

As the crowd of close friends continued to get ready to leave, their voices became a cyclone she was finally jumping out of. She landed on her own two feet by the front door and slowly slipped out to walk home. The drugs began to wear off. The wind was picking up swiftly. The flickering lamp was replaced with buzzing streetlights, dim in their shadowcasting. The leaves whisked around her, the breeze not yet cool no longer imbued with the summer heat. The earth was sending Eli on her way, or perhaps it was Someone Else. Her hips led her forward. The hairs on the back of her neck rose in unison, and she blinked for an eerily long second. When she opened her eyes, the sun was coming through her bedroom window. 

Her interview was in an hour. Who led Eli home?