The Intoxicated Years (3)

We circled the punk boyfriend, looming over him. Lying on the ground with his eyes half closed and his chest covered in blood, he seemed insignificant. He didn't move. Paula slid her knife into her jeans pocket; it was practically a toy, a little knife for spreading jam on bread. “We're not going to need it,” she said.

“Is he dead?” asked Andrea, and her eyes shone.

Someone put a new record on back in the house, which seemed so far away. Paula took the ribbon from her hair and tied it around her wrist. Together, she and I went back into the house to dance. We were waiting for Andrea to leave the boy on the ground and come back to us, so the three of us could be together once again, waving our blue fingernails, intoxicated, dancing before the mirror that reflected no one else.