Drain You by M. Beth Bloom

see your best friend?” She stopped in front of me and stroked under my chin, holding my face in her hand.
    “Yeah, this is great.” My voice was trembling. I prayed for James to come later, because if he came now, there’d be no way to explain what he was seeing. I couldn’t understand it myself. Libby was the living dead. She wasn’t there. I felt like if I reached out my hand it would pass right through her skin.
    “Do you want to talk about the bandage on your wrist, or what? I’ve seen this episode. Dateline calls them ‘cutters,’ you know.”
    More twirling.
    “What’s with the melodrama? You came here in a nightgown?”
    “I never got dressed today. Long night.”
    “Right. You’re high, and it’s bad stuff. I’ll go inside and get you a Diet Coke or something. Triscuits. Whatever. You need a nap and a bag of chips, pronto.” I started for the house, but she danced over and blocked me from the steps.
    “I’m meeting Stiles at midnight, so you can go find Morgan and—”
    “Look,” I interrupted, finally pissed. “You’ve gone crazy, obviously, which would normally only sort of be my problem except for the fact that you’re not here to visit me, you’re here to drive me crazy. What the hell is wrong with you?”
    I was panting, livid. Libby and I had only been in onefight ever, in the eighth grade. She’d promised to go with me to the culmination dance. We’d agreed together: no dates, no matter what. Then two nights before the dance she called and pretended to be too sick, claiming Stella wouldn’t let her go because she might be contagious. Then five minutes later, Jordan Justman called to invite me to the dance as his date. He’d bribed Libby to bail on me so he could swoop in. Then when I wasn’t into him groping me behind the gym, Jordan admitted to the whole scheme, swearing Libby had given him the green light. She and I didn’t speak for that entire summer before high school. But eventually I had to forgive her. I still remembered her crying over the phone to me, “We’ll go to a dance together next year.”
    But by next year she was with Nathan. So whatever.
    Then Libby’s face changed. Suddenly she looked sad, puzzled, like she didn’t know where she was or how she’d gotten here. She fingered her nightgown like it was the first time she’d seen it. My anger gave way to sadness. My eyes welled up for the second time tonight.
    I reached out my hand to Libby, but she just sat on the ground and began humming again softly to herself. I could see her bare feet, dirty and cut up. She started to hum a little louder, and then I could make out some of the words.
    “‘One baby to another says I’m lucky to have met you,’” she sang.
    I knew the song. Libby and I knew all the same songs.
    “I’m worried about your wrist. You don’t look good. Talk to me. I won’t tell Stella, I swear.” A few tears ran down my cheeks, but she didn’t notice. I wanted her to cry with me. I had that sick feeling again. It was that top hat in the dirt. I didn’t want to ask, but I did: “Did you do it to yourself, or did…someone…do it to you?”
    She ignored me, sang more. “‘It is now my duty to completely drain you…’”
    Nirvana.
    I got on the ground too and hugged her and held on tightly, pushing her face in my shoulder. She felt light and breakable. I felt like I could break her bones if I hugged hard enough.
    But Libby’d never broken a bone, and I knew that. I knew everything about Libby, but everything I knew about Libby was about some other Libby, a younger, different version that didn’t exist anymore. Up until now our friendship had been slowly dissolving in a totally normal, undramatic way, because of time and distance and the general growing-up-ness and growing-apart-ness that happens in high school. But losing her like that wasn’t the same as having her ripped away. It wasn’t at all the same as having her just taken from me.
    At some point Libby chose boys