Wasted by Nicola Morgan Page A

shrinks towards Jack. He will look after her. Somewhere at the back of her mind she knows this was not how this evening was supposed to be, but she feels too ill, too strange, to care much about that. A small curl of shame hides in the pit of her stomach.
    â€œYeah, sure.” He begins to walk her away, towards home. It may take them half an hour, but they won’t get a taxi with Jess like this, and the night is warm enough. Sticky hot, thick air, ready to thunder.
    â€œWere we at a fancy dress party?”
    â€œNo. We were at a club.”
    â€œWhat about the ucinorm?”
    â€œThe what?”
    â€œUcinorm. Like a horse. White horn.”
    â€œUnicorn.”
    â€œThat’s what I said. Amazing.” She laughs. Then shivers in the heat. Jack wishes he had something to put around her shoulders but he doesn’t. He holds her more tightly, rubs her arm. “Come on, Jess, we need to get you home. Have you got any water with you?”
    â€œIn bag.” She holds it open and he takes out the water bottle, unscrews it, offers it to her and she drinks.
    â€œDon’t feel well.” And she doesn’t. Thoughts and images are flying around her head like bats. Sometimes she wants to laugh and at other moments fear clutches at her.
    â€œI know. You said. You’ll feel better soon.”
    Jess wants to explain. She feels weird, more than drunk. She can’t remember how she got out of the club. That is a time of nothingness. She has no sense as to whether it was a long time or not. And before, there is a horrible confusion, exactly like a nightmare. As though something had invaded her mind for a time. She can remember the wolves and dragons, the snake around her back, the unicorn which looked oddly like Kelly, but already she is beginning to know that none of that could be true. Though it still
feels
real.
    â€œJack.”
    â€œYeah?”
    She stops walking.
    â€œCarry on walking, Jess – we need to get home.” He keeps her moving.
    â€œI’m not drunk.”
    â€œTrust me,” Jack says. “You are. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
    â€œIt was different, Jack. Honesh.” But she can hear her words blur at the edges, can feel her body unsteady, still feels sick. Which is exactly what she knows being drunk is. And her head feels thick and heavy, which again fits the symptoms. It doesn’t take a fully trained doctor to say that Jess has had too much to drink.
    But she is right. There is something else.
    Kelly knows. Well, to be strictly accurate, she doesn’t know what it is, or not by name. She’d just asked her contact to supply something, something – anything – that would have an interesting effect when combined with alcohol. And the contact came good and supplied exactly that. It was expensive. But worth it. It makes no difference to Kelly what the effect is. If sober, she would probably have said she wouldn’t want serious harm to come to Jess – after all, the consequences for Kelly would be less than ideal if that happened. Police and all that. But Kelly is not sober, and couldn’t give a toss what happens to Jess. She is thinking only of now, and she is feeling a considerable amount of pleasure at the thought of Jess throwing up for the rest of the night and perhaps hallucinating while Jack has his night out ruined.
    And even if she had tried to look ahead, could she have seen what the consequences would be? She might have worried about Jess being seriously ill and ending up in hospital, or worse. She might have imagined Jess being caught by the police. She could have been a little concerned that Jess might be hit by a speeding car as she tried to cross the road in a spaced-out state.
    No one, least of all Kelly Jones, whose brain is not of the highest quality, could have predicted the knock-on effects of what she did when she slipped a small white pill into Jess’s drink. Or maybe it would all have