pretty girl suicide

by Cameron Sheffield Noyes

The air in the studio is dead. A special kind of dead. The kind that happens after your work gets eviscerated for ninety minutes.

Is that my Troye Sivan cologne or the smell of failure?

Professor Lar Lam stares. My final piece hangs on the form. A deconstructed blazer made from vinyl and silk.

“It looks like a ghost,” Professor Lar Lam says. “Construction isn’t enough. We need to see the person inside it.”

This is followed by the rest of the class giving their pointless input on my capsule collection. I hardly listen. All I can think about is the fashion show on Monday.

Class is finally over.

Chairs scrape. People talk. The room starts moving. I don't. I look at my dead blazer.

Someone touches my shoulder.

“Tough break,” Elene says.

I don’t look at her. “It’s fine.”

“It’s really not that bad.”

“No, it is,” I say. “It is. I’m going to get an F.”

“Maybe you’ll find some inspiration over the weekend.”

“I’m gonna have to.”

“Any big plans tonight?” she asks.

“I’m sure Jax has something.”

Elene rubs my shoulder. “I heard one of the NYU frats rented space over in Bushwick.”

“If you know, you know.”

“Maybe I’ll see you there.”

“I’ll see if Jax is going.”

Elene touches the blazer. “It’ll be fine. You have the whole weekend to figure something out.  If you don’t see me at the party, text me,” Elene says, leaving the workroom.

“I will,” I call out, only half believing I’ll text her.

I shove all my stuff in my bag. Fabric samples. Sketches. All of it. I need to go. I need to be somewhere else. I need a drink. I need some coke. I need to disappear.

The hallway is glass and concrete. I see my reflection everywhere. A blonde guy wearing the right clothes. He always looks the part. It's the one thing he gets right.

I wait at the elevator. Eventually it comes. It’s full as usual, and we’re heading up to the dorms.

My phone buzzes.

Texts from Jax.

Party in Bushwick.

Your medicine is ready for pickup.

I put the phone back in my pocket. The elevator stops at my floor, and I get off. I walk down the hall to my room. A few kids loiter in the hallway trying to look interesting.

The dorm room is a small white box. Two bedrooms connect with a tiny kitchen and bathroom. It’s New York City; inside, everything is small.

My bedroom is empty. Jax is gone.

I turn on the Bluetooth speaker. Addison Rae. It fills the room. Kills the silence.

I do a quick bump of powder that I find in Jax’s desk. The world gets sharp.

“High Fashion” fades into “Money is Everything.”

It certainly is.

Addison Rae, philosopher of our times.

I pull out a YSL t-shirt and Armani jeans. I think about a jacket but then pass. It’s cold out, but not that cold.

My phone buzzes. I check it.

Jax wants me to meet him at a bar in the village.

I leave the room. The hallway lights are too bright. This elevator smells like cleaning products. No one looks at me.

Outside, the air is thick. The city hums. My head hums with it. I put in my AirPods and switch to Charli XCX.

The city shows off its restless, magnetic energy. West 12th intersects with 6th Avenue. Across the street the brick and glass facades catch the afternoon light. A siren cuts through the revving engines and honking horns. The sidewalk is alive with tourists and students, both chaotic and choreographed.

I raise my hand.

Brat summer turns to fall.

A cab stops.

I get in.

The bar is The White Horse Tavern. It’s the kind of place that smells like ancient beer and broken dreams. It’s where Dylan Thomas drank himself to death. Very dramatic, which is why Jax likes it. He also likes that hot tourists come here, and he usually ends up back at their hotel room.

Jax sits at the bar, two shots of Fireball waiting. He looks like he always does, wavy hair over his eyes, and a vintage John Waite t-shirt with a hole under the sleeve.

I pull out the stool beside him. “Professor killed my collection.”

“She always does that.”

“This time she was right,” I say, picking up the shot glass. The Fireball glistening red. I don’t wait. I throw it back. It burns my throat.

Jax watches me. “So, it was shit. Make some better shit.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It is,” he says, turning over his empty shot glass after downing it. “You worry too much. That’s your problem. You’re up in your head, trying to make everything mean something. Sometimes a shirt is a shirt and a girl is a girl.”

“You’d know all about the last one.”

“There was a girl across the bar,” he begins to recite. “Her eyes were blue.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

The bartender pours two more shots.

“What about that girl in your class?” Jax asks.

“What about her?”

“What’s her name again?”

“Elene.”

“To Elene,” Jax says, toasting.

“To Elene.”

We clink the shot glasses and down the Fireball.

Jax orders a Guinness.

I pass.

“She might be at the party tonight,” I say.

“How do you know where we’re going?”

“Elene said some NYU guys rented a space out in Bushwick.”

“I see. I see. Look at you, putting one and one together.”

“You know me, basically a math major.”

“Just so you know.” He leans in closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. “I got the good stuff tonight. Pharmaceutical grade. Clean. No cut. It’s going to be a beautiful war. Here, have a little for yourself.”

He slides a small, folded envelope across the table. Like a note passed in class. I slip it in my pocket.

“That will solve your problems,” Jax says, not looking at me, scanning the bar. “You get all tight. All wound up. You need to break the shell, man.”

“She said my blazer had no one inside it.”

“You need to find your muse. Did I tell you how I got our amazing stash tonight?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Good. I need to protect the guilty,” he says, looking at his phone. “We’re going to be late for our executions. Remember, find your muse.”

I follow Jax out of the bar. He flags down a cab. I get in after him. I feel the folded envelope in my pocket.

The taxi pulls away from the curb.

The night, vast and pulsing, is just beginning.

Next stop.

Frat party.

“I bet it’s exhilarating until you hit the pavement,” I say to the redhead next to me, Sarah, as I look out the open window of the warehouse in Bushwick, as she talks about a girl who they say jumped from her balcony freshman year. I notice the keg in the middle of the room spitting foam.

The girl’s mouth is moving, but all I can think about is the empty keg and where my next beer will come from. Her whiny voice breaks through my wall of indifference when I realize she’s still talking about the dead girl. She says the dead girl had a threesome after a party and that’s why she killed herself.

I stand over the keg, performing last rites. Two frat guys from either NYU or Hofstra heave it out the open window into the alley. They flex as several ZTA girls send the video out on Snap, while another girl I don’t recognize, though she looks almost like a girl I tried to pick up last week, makes pouty faces at her phone before asking her followers which Sigma Nu boy she should take home.

She’s sporting a David Yurman bracelet, a pink Balmain shirt, jeans by Diesel and sneakers by Jimmy Choo. I like her outfit, except for the shoes.

I look around for Jax, but don’t see him. I want more blow. I wonder if he’s left with some random girl already. I look around for Elene, but don’t see her either. I wonder if she decided not to come.

Sarah is back and can’t believe the girl who I almost recognize is doing her TikTok game, and that forty-year-old women sit at home and live vicariously through her by voting on which guy she should smash. I notice, as Sarah talks, she uses slay a lot. Everything slays. The more she talks, the more I wonder if it would slay to smash her.

I decide against it and start thinking about the dead girl and how she’s become an urban legend. I wonder if it slays to be remembered. I wonder if it slays to be immortal.

The TikTok girl chooses her winner, his name is Rick, and they disappear up the stairs to the third floor. I go down to the kitchen. It seems the best place to start looking for a freshly tapped keg.

I’m in luck as a newly rolled keg is brought in. I need a Valium or a Zoloft. Sarah gives me both. I pull down the YSL sunglasses perched perfectly on my wavy blonde hair as I play the part of rogue designer and wonder if I should have worn my navy Burberry shirt.

Mark, who I recognize from a Music, Media, and Society class that I got a C in, tries putting the moves on Sarah, but she blows him off and instead snorts a combination of Valium and Zoloft off the kitchen counter. I wonder if it’s real granite or particleboard.

Outside, someone screams.

No one reacts.

Despite snorting the pills, sadness washes over me when I remember that my capsule collection sucks. This makes me want to snort more Zoloft. Sarah offers to take me back to her apartment. I almost accept.

I ask what the dead girl’s name was, and one guy thinks it’s Anna. Another thought it was Beth, and Sarah thinks it’s Addison. I like Addison best, so I start calling the dead sorority girl Addison. Sarah brings up her Instagram, and I look at Addison’s posts. There’s one from last week. She’s wearing Spinelli, Newton, YSL, and Dior. I recognize the buildings. I think they are near the Upper East Side.

Sarah starts saying how Addison was banished from ZTA because the threesome was with Margie’s boyfriend, and no one wins going up against Margie. She’s the chapter president. Margie made sure Addison was put on the highest floor of the dorm after being kicked out of the sorority because riding the elevator twenty-eight floors is a bitch. Especially when you’re drunk.

I’m confused and ask if Addison is dead or just kicked out of the sorority. Sarah replies, “What’s the difference?”

Photo of Cameron Sheffield Noyes

BIO: Cameron Sheffield Noyes is a student at The New School. He lives in New York City.