Asking for It by Louise O'Neill Page A

stop it, but when I get on to my hands and knees to stand up (I need to get to the toilet, someone help me get to the toilet) the walls and the floor melt into one, and I’m falling through it, down, down, down . . .
    ‘I thought we could trust you, Bryan, I thought—’
    And my body heaves, bile spurting out of my mouth and splashing against her low court sandals, and it’s on the rug too, and I didn’t mean it and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
    There is noise and there is blackness, and I fall into both.

Monday
    My eyes are sinking into my head as if they’re dissolving in quicksand. It is too bright. (What day is it?) The curtains are open, sunlight blasting through the windows, drilling holes into my brain. Dust is shimmering through the air. My skin feels tight, wrapping around my bones like cling film. I claw my way up to sitting, waves of static turning in my head. (What time is it?)
    I fall back down.
    ‘You’ve been a silly girl, haven’t you?’ Dr Fitzpatrick’s face flashes before me, a more lined version of Fitzy’s, except for his flat nose, broken and reset too many times over years of rugby matches. Mam is there too, trying to smile at the other patients in the waiting room at SouthDoc.
    ‘Just a touch of sunstroke, I reckon,’ Mam told Mrs Ryan, an elderly woman with hairs growing out of a mole on her chin, her fingers gnarled with arthritis. ‘She fell asleep outside. In this weather.’ Mam threw her eyes to heaven in a ‘kids today’ type of way. ‘Oh, I know, it’s terrible close,’ Mrs Ryan agreed. ‘Still, we shouldn’t complain, I suppose. We get enough rain.’ I was swaying in my seat, Mam holding me up, barely touching me with the tips of her fingers. Dr Fitzpatrick called me into the surgery, and I can see myself getting up and moving towards him, my knees buckling beneath me as I fall to the ground again. Chairs scraping back on tiles – give her room, get back and give her room to breathe – and then there is nothing.
    *
    The front of my body is painted in sunburn, curving around my arms and legs until it fades into my normal alabaster white. I place a hand on my chest, then both hands on my cheeks, my skin almost sizzling hot to the touch. I swing my legs out of bed, cursing as I knock a glass of water over, grabbing my iPhone to make sure it doesn’t get wet. One new message.
Bryan:
Seriously, Emma. FUCK YOU.
    I put the phone down, a lump of nausea squirming in my throat like a worm. Maybe if I don’t look at it, it will go away.
    I pick up the phone.
Bryan:
Mam and Dad are raging with me because of you. They’ve cut my weekly money and have taken the car off me for two months. You need to get your fucking act together.
    I read the message again. The words feel wrong, somehow, like the position of the letters doesn’t make any sense.
    The other messages were sent by me to the girls last night. There are vowels missing, and words spelled entirely wrong, there are repeated messages to Jamie, all of which are blank. But there is no response to any of them.
    Why haven’t they replied? Are they fighting with me?
    There are dozens of notifications but I don’t open them up. I don’t have the energy.
    Why haven’t the girls replied to any of my text messages?
    I try to remember. I fumble through my memories of Saturday night, but they run away from me.
    It doesn’t mean anything. I just drank too much. How did I get home? I shouldn’t have drunk so much. Why am I so sunburnt? And it was stupid taking that wrap off Paul; why did I do that? Why can’t I remember anything? I see a bag of pills, blue ones, and yellow ones, and pink ones, no, wait, what? It’s as if my dreams are swirling through my memories, making them sticky, and I can’t pull them apart to see which are which.
    Voices. Laughing. Hands grabbing at me, pushing through the black felt of the night, no bodies, no faces, just hands, white as chalk against the darkness. What happened?
    ‘Ah sure, look who