Bunny (Bunny, #1)

by Mona Awad

Behold the lavish tent under which the overeducated mingle, well versed in every art but the one of conversation.

Or as Ava and I call it, the Lair of Cthulhu. Cthulhu is a giant squid monster invented by a horror writer who went insane and died here.

Their skins glowing with health insurance as they all crouch down in unison to collectively coo at a professor’s ever jumping shih tzu.

Diego is an imaginary panther-footed man we dream will one day come into our lives and whisk us off our very large feet. He has the smoldery, dangerously mesmeric looks of Rudolph Valentino but with the trustworthy eye crinkle of Paul Newman, the smiling insanity and very long torso of Lux Interior of The Cramps, but with the swoon-inducing earnestness of Jacques Brel.

“Whom you call Cuntscapades.”

Ha!

I am staring into the eyes of the one I call Cupcake. Because she looks like a cupcake. Dresses like a cupcake. Gives off a scent of baked lemony sugar. Pretty in a way that reminds you of frosting flourishes.

She looks so much like a cupcake that when I first met her at orientation, I had a very real desire to eat her. Bite deeply into her white shoulder. Dig a fork in her cheek.

Creepy Doll, aka Kira. Vignette, aka Victoria. And of course, the Duchess, who in another life is merely Eleanor.

I look into the amber eyes of the one I call Creepy Doll. Because she reminds me of the creepy dolls I used to want when I was little, with their saucer eyes and their velvet dresses, their Shirley Temple curls of blood-red hair and their Cupid’s-bow lips molded into little pink oh!’s of wonder at the world. Writes fairy tales about girl demons, wolf princes, the cozy phantasmagoria of her native New Hampshire.

Vignette, their sexy punk. The bluntest of the Bunnies. Her dainty dress countered by combat boots, unbrushed hair, a half-open mouth that never closes. Her cloudy gray eyes full of fuck you. Writes for shock value.

They both look over at the Duchess, who is sitting on a loveseat upholstered in a soft plush velvet. Her head cocked to one side. Her long silver locks eerily luminous, swept up here and there, with what appear to be birds of paradise. She’s wearing a white bell-sleeved smock trimmed with lace as though she is a graven image of a C-list moon goddess or one of those watchful-looking egrets I saw in the weeping willows at the zoo.

That not being understood is a privilege I can’t afford. That I can’t believe this woman got paid to come here. That I think she should apologize to trees. Spend a whole day on her knees in the forest, looking up at the trembling aspens and oaks and whatever other trees paper is made of with tears in her languid eyes and say, I’m fucking sorry. I’m sorry that I think I’m so goddamned interesting when it is clear that I am not interesting. Here’s what I am: I’m a boring tree murderess.

But I doubt you did any of those things unless you have a mullet or a deep sense of irony.

never known how to be in this world without most of my soul dreaming up and living in another.

“Oh yes. I’m a ghost now, Samantha. I died of a broken heart. I died of grief. It’s in the autopsy. And it’s all your fault. My tombstone reads, Friend Deserted for Evening. I didn’t invite you to the funeral because I figured you wouldn’t care.”

Dramatic much?

“That was me,” Creepy Doll says. “Sometimes I scream.” I watch her sloppily pour more punch into my glass, then into hers. “It’s sort of a disorder.”

They call me Bunny. I’ve forgotten all their names, but they help me remember. The edible-looking girl with the golden bob is Caroline. The blunt, veiny, pretty one who looks like another century is Victoria. And then the one who is their queen, who resembles evil Icelandic royalty but who is gazing at me so very kindly today, is Eleanor.

“Venez avec moi,” Victoria says soothingly to Odysseus, over his banshee cry. “Ici, ici, dans la salle de bain.” She takes his hand and drags him to the small bathroom. He follows her, still screaming his head off.

Sometimes you have to kill your darlings, you know? In fact, that’s what we sometimes call them. Darlings.

But what sort of date is it, really, Bunny? I thought. I mean, if you never even touch hand flesh, let alone fuck? Isn’t that more of a Disney ride than a date?

HA!

Their cheeks are plump and pink and shining like they’ve been eating too much sugar, but actually it’s Gossip Glow, the flushed look that comes from throwing another woman under the bus.

And that’s when I realize that whatever pain I have, whatever true want I have that lives under all this greasy, spineless needing to please isn’t something I want to give them.

But I am happy to see Jonah. From his shaggy hair to his parka to his smell of cigarettes so comforting and potent that for a second I want to smoke him.

Laughter is a rabbit hole and I’m falling, falling like Alice. There is no way up or out. The only way is down, down, down.

Ava laughs. Such a card, he is. “I wish. Just these cultish girls Samantha was involved with for a while. They tried to eat her soul like a placenta.”

A pause so pregnant it delivers, consumes its own spawn, then grows big with child again.