Paris: A Memoir for Young Women in the Age of Influencers

by Paris Hilton

I kept saying, “I’m good with my Sprite.” But he kept coming over to me with this wild berry wine cooler, wild berry wine cooler, wild berry wine cooler. He kept saying, “Don’t be a baby. It doesn’t even taste like alcohol. It’s hardly anything. Like Kool-Aid. Look, you have to drink it now, it’s already open. We can’t waste it. Just take one drink.” I took a sip. It was syrupy sweet, tinged with blue. After that, I don’t remember much. Broken pieces. Fragments. Echoes. White noise. Black silence. I became aware of a crushing weight on me. Suffocating me. Cracking my ribs. I felt a jolt of panic and tried to get up, but the impulse was lost, as if something had severed my spinal cord. When I tried to scream, there was no air in my lungs. All that came out was a small, raspy “stop . . . what’s happening . . . stop . . .” until this guy clamped his hand over my mouth—like, aggressively—like, hard. He clamped down on my face and whispered: “It’s a dream. It’s a dream. You’re dreaming.” That creepy whisper in my ear—like a mosquito. And then . . . nothing.