Lottie pretended to read the message on the iPhone that Summer was shoving in her pale face. Summer was whining about the same guy for the tenth time that night. Lottie wanted so badly to rip the Band-Aid of comfort off and shove the thick pill of heartbreak down her best friend’s throat, but she couldn’t. There wasn’t enough vodka left in Summer’s plastic cup and Lottie lost her wallet earlier in the night.

“C’mon Summer, we’re out tonight,” Lottie huffed as she pushed her blonde bangs behind her ear. “Let’s just have fun and forget about him.”

The suggestion felt rehearsed.

Instead, Lottie turned her attention to Esme who was pulling a tiny baggie from her bra. She was taller, especially in her heels, which made her dress appear even shorter. Lottie was pushed against the wall in the club’s tiny bathroom stall. The three of them shoved into it, as they usually did when they went in on an eight-ball before going out. As Esme used her fake ID to cut the coke on the sanitary disposal, girls continued to holler at them to hurry up. Esme, who now sat on the toilet for more room, looked up with a brief giggle.

“What does this even mean?” Summer wiggled her phone back in Lottie’s face, demanding her attention. She kept whipping her curly brown hair behind her back in fits of frustration.

“I can barely hear you in here,” Lottie lied. “The music is so loud.”

An EDM song blasted from the DJ outside of the bathroom, causing vibrations underneath their feet. Lottie wanted to take her phone out too, perhaps send a risky text, but she knew not to give him that type of attention this early in the night. Lottie tuned the noise out and grabbed Esme’s wallet from her purse. She took out a twenty-dollar bill and tightly rolled it to save time.

Esme glanced up, “Okay girl, it’s all you.”

Lottie leaned down, plugged one nostril, and snorted her line through the bill as quickly as she could. The girls outside the stall knew exactly what they were doing, howling again to get out. Lottie straightened up, held her nostril, and sniffled again as she shook her head. The drip left a bitter taste in her throat, but she continued to gum the remains of her line to numb her mouth.

“Summer,” Lottie turned around, grabbing one of her shoulders. “Do this line, let’s dance, and just forget about it. At least for the night. This is the best distraction.”

Summer shoved her phone in her purse and swatted Lottie’s hand off her shoulder, “I’ll pass.”

“Girl, don’t get upset,” Esme said, exchanging quick glances between the girls.

“Whatever, just hurry up,” Summer said.

After Esme and Lottie finished their lines, they headed out of the stall. Girls rolled their eyes at them, but the three just smiled back. It wasn’t an every weekend routine, but close enough that they had the ritual down. Depending on the situation, Esme typically exited first and gave a royal wave as an ode to sarcasm. Lottie would strut behind, complimenting the nearest girl’s outfit. Summer would go last and wear the brightest smile, but she didn’t tonight. She also sometimes apologized to the other girls for the holdup, but she stayed quiet this time. The three would always stop in the mirror, fluff their hair, reapply lip gloss, and adjust their tops.

The club was jam-packed with other college students. They wedged through the crowd as flashing lights on the rainbow spectrum pirouetted across their faces. They passed through security to an area with a reserved VIP table for one of their friend’s birthdays. Lottie took off her leather jacket and threw it on the back of a chair. The girls greeted their other friends and were offered drinks through the bottle service, despite not pitching in money to help pay for it. The area was already filled with friends and friends of friends, dancing on tabletops and shouting lyrics to an R&B throwback.

“Hunny,” a familiar voice said in Lottie’s ear.

Two hands wrapped around her waist as a broad body pulled her close from behind. Lottie grabbed the hands and spun around quickly. She jumped in her heels at the sight of Peter’s face. She took his smooth, slightly chubby cheeks in her palms and kissed his nose. Talking obnoxiously fast, she swayed back and forth and sporadically hopped.

“Listen,” he said with a laugh. He pulled at Lottie’s hands to weigh her down, “I brought a guy with me tonight.”

“Awe a little date?” Lottie arched an eyebrow.

“No, he’s straight. You’ve met him before,” Peter said.

Esme ran up behind Peter, kissing his cheek. “Baby!” she cried out. She hugged his hips, resting her buzzed head on his arm.

“He’s really into you Lottie,” Peter continued. “He’s over there, he’s…”

“Oh babe,” Esme stood up straight and rolled her eyes. “Lottie’s still with this so-called mystery man.”

Lottie was known for her mysterious impulses. She enjoyed keeping little secrets about herself, leaving others to wonder. No one knew she smoked Parliaments, which she had since the age of thirteen. Her dad burned the family business to the ground for the insurance money and her family leaves a Christmas tree lit up year-round in the living room.

But her father never hit her, nobody was a drunk, and an uncle never touched her when she was a child. It was never any of that, it wasn’t a predestined trailer park path. She just always had a taste for older men and perpetually lacked a moral compass. She found life more thrilling when playing it like a game. So, when he asked her what her favorite subject to study was, it felt premeditated. She cocked her head, did the typical lip bite, and replied smoothly with Biology right before going down on him. It’s been an affair since.

As Esme and Peter tried to coax the mystery man’s name out of her, Lottie felt her phone buzzing in her clutch.

“Speak of the devil and he shall appear on caller ID,” Lottie said holding out her phone.

“She goes to the club, he invites her over at wee hours. It’s the circle of life,” Esme said.

Lottie pranced out of the VIP area and back into the crowd. She wiggled her 5’1 frame through sweaty millennial bodies, dodging ass grabs from uncanny guys and accidental hair pulls from intense drunk dancers. She made her way to the back door for the closest place with the slightest chance of privacy. She nodded to the security guard and peeked her head out the door into the ally. She saw a few people behind a dumpster smoking a joint, but far enough away for her to return to the now missed call. As she unlocked her phone, Lottie overheard Summer laughing from behind the dumpster. Ignoring the missed call, Lottie began walking over.

You know, she’s probably a coke addict. That’s how she stays so skinny, Summer’s voice echoed.

Lottie paused mid-step, waiting to see who she was talking about.

And what is with this mysterious girl act she’s always doing? What is she, a psychopath? Leave it to Lottie to be snorting coke in the bathroom all night and fucking her law professor. She’s a walking, breathing cliché.

Lottie didn’t know the other faces that were behind the dumpster, but she heard enough. Her chest felt heavy as she decided if she should confront Summer with confidence or foster the knowledge for a later game.

Her phone began to buzz again. It was him. He’s earlier than usual, Lottie thought. His deprivations always followed a few Scotch and sodas. Lottie walked into the darker part of the alley to answer his call. As she balanced her phone between her ear and shoulder, she unscrewed the top of her heart locket hanging around her neck. Once detached, the top acted as a tiny gold spoon.

“Yes?” she picked up.

She used the spoon to scoop coke stashed in the heart locket. She held it to her nose for a quick bump and then screwed the necklace back together.

“Yes,” she politely answered him. “I’ll see you soon.”

After ordering an Uber downtown, Lottie punched in the four-digit code to his brick apartment building. It rested on a busy street where the upper class lived in Babochka. Cherry blossom trees nestled by pine trees circled the block and dangling lights were strung from building to building. Lottie took in the scenery each visit, wondering what it looked like during the day.

She took the elevator to the twelfth floor and sashayed to his apartment door. Before knocking, he was already standing there with the door halfway open. His thick coffee hair was pushed to the side and he had his readers on. He rolled his blue oxford shirt carelessly to the elbows as he gave her a crooked grin.

“Sorry to bother you so late,” Lottie rested her head against the doorway. “I was having trouble studying Title IX. Do you think you can help me with my notes, Professor Collins?”

“We’re going to hell,” he said, kicking the door fully open.

As Lottie’s heels clicked against his mahogany wood floors, Collins looked both ways down the hallway before closing the door. He turned around to find Lottie at the island pouring herself a glass of Scotch.

“Do you mind?” she asked.

“Not at all,” he coolly answered. He examined her torn knee-high socks and mini skirt. Her leather jacket looked a size too big, but the tight sheer shirt underneath revealed her black bra. He approached her from behind, grabbing at her bony hips.

“Collins, before anything, I have to tell you something,” Lottie bowed her head and set the liquor bottle back on the granite countertop.

He curiously began tugging at her skirt, causing Lottie to swiftly jerk around. Closer to his face, nearly touching noses, Lottie studied the wrinkles around his eyes and on his forehead. Through his pale green eyes, she sometimes forgot their twenty-year age difference. It could easily be done sitting far away in class, or through a text, on the phone, or when he would grab her from behind. He didn’t look as old as he was. Everyone in the major knows him as that one hot professor, Lottie would remind herself. He isn’t too old. But, standing a few feet away from his bedroom in his elaborate apartment, she was reminded he was old enough to be her father. Even so, the fact never bothered her, it just amplified her desire and fed the rush.

She grabbed the hem of his shirt, “Summer knows.”

His hands stayed tight around her body, but a shift in his face made Lottie’s nervous system swing into hyper-alert. He tilted his head gently to the side, “Did you tell her?”

“Do I tell anyone anything?”

“How would she find this out if you didn’t tell anyone?”

Lottie squeezed out of his pull and walked around the island into the living room. She eyed the pictures he had hung, always pleased there wasn’t one with a wife or child. She stopped at the oil canvas of Henri Matisse’s La Danse. She ran her fingers across the painting, adoring the strong warm colors against the cool background. She sighed and threw her clutch on the black leather couch beneath the painting. She made her way in front of his wall of windows that overlooked Babochka’s skyline.

“I don’t know,” she put her hand on her forehead and equably began pacing. “I don’t know. I overheard her talking shit to some people outside. She called me a coke addict and said I’m fucking my law professor.”

Collins slowly followed her into the living room, “Who did she say that to?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t look.”

“God damnit, Lottie,” Collins said. His tone was imperturbable, but the lines on his forehead hinted at his worry. “Why wouldn’t you look to see who all heard? How could she have found this out? Does she see your phone? Does she go on your computer?”

“Look, it’ll be okay. She was mad at me for whatever reason tonight, she was probably blowing off steam,” Lottie said optimistically. She turned to Collins, who was in the middle of the living room. He was standing on a hazy orange, red, and yellow Vonda rug. Lottie, ignoring the mess they were now in, looked at Collins with the same admiration she had for his extravagant interior design. Once she grabbed for his arm, he backed away. Lottie immediately regretted telling him, wishing she would’ve waited for the morning.

“I could lose my job, Lottie.”

“I know. You like to remind me.”

“No, now word got out and we don’t know how she knows. She had to of went through your messages. I told you to delete them and to change my contact name, I told you…”

“God, I hate her!” Lottie ran her hands through her hair, allowing the feeling of betrayal to rush through her. “I want to kill her. I wish I could just fucking kill her.”

Collins briefly eased, allowing a moment of silence between the two. He leisurely stepped up to Lottie and curved his eyebrow, “I think you should do it.”

She looked up at him. He towered a full foot over her, even with her heels on. “Do what?”

“Kill her.”

“Sure Professor,” she rolled her eyes. “I’ll have it done by Monday.”

“Hypothetically,” he yanked at her jacket with enough force that she stumbled into him. He jerked her onto the couch with him. “How would you do it?”

Lottie kept her face unreadable while she wondered what Collins wanted from her. However, his rosy face didn’t budge. She gripped his coarse hands and then wormed herself on his lap. As sex lingered on the tip of her conscious, she figured this was an attorney’s idea of kinky role-playing.

“I’d poison her,” Lottie said.

He put his arms around her, pulling her closer. “How?”

Lottie’s fingertips danced on his five o’clock shadow as she grinned, “Do all criminal defense attorneys discuss murder so slickly?”

Collins kissed her neck, “How would you poison her?”

Lottie threw her head back. The conversation was boring her. It was definitely sick, but he seemed excited. Though everything Collins did was with a cool demeanor, she could tell he was eager to listen.

“Okay,” she said, meandering her body to straddle him. She gave him a sadistic smile while she lowered her hips into his lap. “I’d put on some fun disguise, break into her apartment at night, scare her a bit, and put cyanide in her drink. Force her to drink it. Fast and easy. Make it look like a suicide.”

“How are you going to get her to drink cyanide after scaring her?” he asked while running his hands across her lower back. “You’d have to make her trust you.”

“She already does.”

“It wouldn’t work.”

“Okay,” Lottie said. “I would go to her place before she goes to bed. I’d say some bullshit like I have to apologize for earlier tonight. She’ll be all drunk, on whatever drugs. I’ll tell her she should take Tylenol before bed to ease the hangover.”

“A Tylenol overdose is risky,” Collins interrupted.

Lottie put her finger over his lips, “I’m not finished. I would put the cyanide in Tylenol gel capsules. Dead by the morning.”

“Ah, the medical mystery of ’82,” Collins grinned. “And Lo, how do you plan to lace the capsule with a lethal dose of cyanide? Would anti-freeze not be easier?”

“How? That’s simple. Getting cyanide is the struggle. Plus, we’re only speaking hypothetically here.”

“Sure,” Collins said. “Hypothetically.”

“Besides,” Lottie ran her hands through Collins thick hair, laughing. “What I really want to do is sell her yayo cut with laxatives.”

“That won’t shut her up though.”

Lottie’s smile quickly faded, “We don’t even know who she was talking to when I overheard her. Everyone she told would have to be killed off too. Hypothetically, of course.”

“Hypothetically,” Collins casually nodded.

Lottie unscrewed her locket and motioned the gold spoon in front of Collins. He lightly chuckled and shook his head before allowing Lottie to scoop up the powder and hold it to his nose for him. He took the bump then leaned back again.

Lottie took a bump and then screwed it back inside her locket. She felt a flash of a euphoric high and swung her arms around his neck. Collins noticed her entire body stimulate, like a child who had too much soda and candy. He moved Lottie off his lap and then walked into his bedroom.

Lottie stood up, questioning his quick exit. She leisurely clicked against the wood floors into his bedroom. His room was contemporary but masculine. The room, just like the living room, had a single wall of windows. The opposing walls were dark grey with hazy lighting. His bed was against a white headboard with a grey comforter. She stepped in, pulling back the blankets revealing her favorite silky emerald green sheets.

As she began to take her jacket off, Collins came out from the master bathroom, “Come here.”

Lottie did as she was told and followed him in. On the quartzite countertop was a round mirror tray with multiple lines of blow. Lottie’s face didn’t light up. Summer’s comments started echoing in her head as Collins snorted three lines. Lottie knew he occasionally did it since he was the first one she did it with. A mix of a man, she thought the first time. A coke-snorting lawyer. He didn’t offer her lines of coke very often or particularly like to do it with her, so his presentation of a large amount on a fancy glass tray made a part of Lottie perturbed. Why is he doing this now? Even so, she did the remaining lines.

As soon as Lottie placed the dollar bill on the counter, he began kissing her. He tore her jacket off, throwing it on the bathroom tile. Lottie unbuttoned his shirt and kicked her heels off. He smelt like expensive cologne, but cheap cigarettes. She was even smaller than him now, tasting the alcohol on his tongue. As he aggressively pushed her out of the bathroom and into the bedroom, he yanked off her sheer shirt. He threw her onto the emerald sheets, making her appear even paler. While he hovered over her, Lottie undid his pants.

“Wait,” he suddenly stopped. “I’m starting to get anxious.”

Lottie tossed her head back, “Ha! Humbert Humbert is having a moral crisis.”

“No,” Collins smirked. “We have to figure out what to do with Summer.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Lottie tugged at his pants. “I’ll just tell her I heard people gossiping about me and that it isn’t true.”

Collins stood up from the bed, yanking Lottie’s petite body onto her feet, “Let’s finish my blow, dress up, and go freak her out.”

Lottie laughed, “How about we finish what we have going on in here?”

“This won’t be going on much longer if this spreads.”

“Don’t you think it’ll be a little suspicious when me and the professor she thinks I’m hooking up with show up at her house terrorizing her for saying…”

“She won’t know it’s us. She’ll be so fixated on this dramatic break-in that happened to her that your shit won’t matter anymore. She won’t be thinking about us anymore.”

“For a lawyer, that’s some fucked up logic,” Lottie said. She didn’t know if it was the coke making him adventurous, confident, and irrational or if there was an ominous side to Collins she was about to meet. “I’m all about adventure, but I’m not going to murder my best friend.”

“Your best friend called you a coke addict and went digging into your personal life,” Collins argued.

“Maybe she’s just concerned about me.” Lottie knew right as she said it, it wasn’t true. The words felt toxic as they rolled off her tongue. “You sound crazy. You’re talking about murder.”

“We won’t kill her,” Collins grabbed Lottie’s hands. “We won’t kill her. We’re just going to distract her.”

Collins drew Lottie closer, his hand playing with her messy hair. Lottie continued to shake her head no. Yet, the idea lingered, feeding from her lust for Collins. She couldn’t stop clenching her jaw, and she wasn’t sure if it was from the blow or from trying to resist everything Collins was telling her to do.

“C’mon,” he said. “It’s a game.”

Lottie puffed, unable to disregard the insane high she was on. Trying to hijack her rational mind, her moral compass was again lost. She felt impelled, ready to do something. Since sex was no longer an option for Collins at this point, she was eager for something just as exhilarating.

She looked into his dilated pupils and sniffled her runny nose, “Okay, but we’re setting rules, Collins. This isn’t getting out of hand and we can’t get caught. I want it to be innocent.” But Lottie knew nothing about this entire night had been pure.

The two moved to the kitchen’s island. Collins, now more talkative and amped, began mapping out on a loose-leaf paper how the plan would unfold. Lottie moved across the kitchen back and forth, before sitting down to draw a messy blue-print of Summer’s one-bedroom apartment. It was an hour until bars closed, leaving the two to question what Summer would do after the club. Confident she would return home, they continued plotting. In between important points, Collins would bring out more coke, adding fuel to their anticipation. Despite Lottie’s budding anxiety, she went along with Collins and pushed her judgment aside.

Once he finalized the plan and ran through each step to Lottie, she was full of intense energy, ready to just go. Anything remotely dangerous sounded exciting to her by this point.

“Time for dress up,” she pulled at the belt loop on his pants, leading him back to his bedroom. “Good thing you’re into some kinky shit, Professor.”

Lottie, knowing her way around, went into his walk-in closet. She pushed aside hangers with suits from single to double-breasted, cuffed shirts, vests, soft flannels, and wool and cashmere sweaters. Behind hanging pleats, she grabbed two black plastic bins. Being too short and weedy, Collins instead carried them out of the closet into the bedroom.

Inside the bins were all types of costumes the two gathered from the last eight months. Lottie excitingly scavenged through the bin, pulling out different tops and wigs and holding them up at Collins laughing. Though most of the bins were filled with things for Lottie, Collins had enough from old Halloween outfits for his disguise.

Lottie threw her blonde hair in a grip band and then put on a short hot pink wig with bangs. Then she threw on a long-sleeved fishnet shirt over her black bra with a bright red sequined skirt. The skirt was itchy and left sparkles all over, so she put polka-dot tights on too. She found white tennis shoes from a nurse costume and tightly tied them. Lottie pulled out makeup from her clutch, applying heavy amounts of eyeliner, blush, and plum lipstick. She covered the rest of her face with a gold-studded masquerade mask.

Lottie pranced into the kitchen and sat on the granite counters. Collins kissed her purple lips as he stood in between her dangling legs. He handed her an old Halloween face paint kit and she began painting his entire face as a bizarre, not accurate, spider-web. She painted red and black paint around his eyes, his nose black, white lips, and a funky webbed design. When it was finished, it looked like a failed attempt at a sugar skull. Still, Lottie made him look like the Joker’s long-lost cousin. She helped pick out his costume which included loafers and a tuxedo with a black floral collared shirt. Though still in his typical suit attire, he looked ridiculous and unrecognizable. 

This is so stupid, Lottie thought.

Lottie began cutting her coke with laxatives that Collins found in his bathroom cabinet. She didn’t know what Collins was doing in the bedroom while she sat on top of the counter. While she carefully concentrated on her project, she ran the plan over again and again in her head.

“You ready to go, baby?” Collins asked while he threw his crossbody bag over his shoulder.

The two got in Collin’s matte black BMW as he drove to the south side of Babochka. Summer’s neighborhood was the Brooklyn of the city, with identical brownstone homes lined down the streets. It was nearly 3:30 a.m., but unlike Brooklyn, this neighborhood slept. Collins parked a block away from Summer’s place in an ally. Lottie’s adrenaline began to hit a new height and she started to realize she had never done this much cocaine in one night. She continuously rambled about a variety of topics, but all were somehow related to the plan they had. Collins grabbed for her thigh, hushing her, as he put the car in park.

“Okay, you know the plan now. We can’t talk anymore though, okay?”

She leaned over the center console and kissed his white-painted lips, “Let’s go.”

Collins grabbed a baseball bat from the trunk and joined Lottie’s side as they walked down the alley.

“What’s that for?” she asked, pointing at the bat.

“You never know.”

“We’re not using that,” Lottie stopped walking.

Collins gripped her wrist, yanking her forward to keep walking. “We aren’t. It’s for the window.”

Once they arrived at the back of Summer’s brownstone, Collins pointed at the old-fashioned fire escapes leading up to the fifth floor. He helped Lottie hop up and the two climbed the fire escape until they got to Summer’s bathroom window. Collins busted a small hole in the window with the bat, big enough for his hand to fit through. The glass made a loud enough crash and the two hoped it wouldn’t wake Summer. Collins pulled a towel from his bag and wrapped his hand before sticking it through the window to unlatch it. Once he opened the window, he carefully lifted Lottie through, setting her gently on the bathroom tile. He followed her through. Lottie smiled, wanting desperately to laugh at how ludicrous the entire situation was. She failed to entirely question the logic of it, fully engulfed in a gaming point of view.

Lottie led the way out of the bathroom and into the tight hallway of Summer’s small apartment. The floor creaked as they tip-toed to her bedroom. The door was cracked enough for Lottie to peek one eye in. With the only light from the moon illuminating outside, Lottie saw the back of Summer’s head sleeping in her bed. Lottie turned around to give Collins the all-clear.

As Collins crept into Summer’s room, Lottie went into the living room. Knowing exactly where Summer hides her drugs, she quietly removed the candles and plants from the coffee table. She set them on the sofa behind her before lifting the top off the coffee table. She carefully placed it against the wall, then grabbed for the small red box inside. It was dainty, but pretty with jewels and Chinese wording. I bought this in Chinatown when I stayed in New York City for the summer. Lottie could hear her bragging through memories. She opened the box and found Summer’s gram of coke. She pulled her laxative mix out of her bra and silently swapped Summer’s gram with it. She put the baggie back in the box and the box back in the hidden compartment of the coffee table. As she was lifting the top back on the table, she heard something fall from the bedroom.

Fuck, she panicked.

She picked up her pace as she finished putting the candles and plants back to how they were. She began hearing what sounded like a struggle from the bedroom from rapid footsteps to loud bangs. Lottie ran down the hallway and pushed the bedroom door open. In the poorly lit room, she saw Collins holding Summer from behind and the bat pressed against her right temple.

“What…”

Collins pointed the bat at Lottie to stop her from speaking. She hastily remembered Collins’ most important rule – don’t talk no matter what or Summer will recognize their voices. Lottie gave an ugly glare from underneath her mask while whipping her hands back and forth for Collins to stop. This was not the plan, she mouthed to him.

Tears rushed down Summer’s face as her eyes full of panic and confusion darted back and forth between Lottie and Collins. Lottie wondered why Summer refused to scream, despite a metal baseball bat pressed against her temple. 

I think I would scream, Lottie thought.