The Guest List

by Lucy Foley

Afterward, they cheer. But I don’t think they’re cheering me. They’re congratulating themselves. I feel like a child who’s been surrounded by a ring of playground bullies.

I lift the cover and slip into the bed and as I do my bare legs make contact with something. Solid and cold, the consistency of dead flesh. That seems to yield as I push my feet unwittingly into it and yet at the same time wraps itself around my legs.

it’s worked: I have created an event that people will remember, will talk about, will try—and probably fail—to replicate.

“But it’s not like that for you, is it? It’s like the past doesn’t affect you. It didn’t matter to you at all. You carry on taking what you need. And you always get away with it.”