Late October 2004, I lost my cousin Nisa to a senseless act of cruelty. Her wake was on Halloween; her burial was on Dia De Los Muertos.
Prior to her unexpected death my friends and I made plans to go out for Halloween. We bought our outfits, set up a time to pickup my car from my Nana’s because I decided stupidly not to pay to park on campus and since none of our six friends drank (myself included) we were sure to get home safe and sober.
My Mom has this idea that I am a different person I believe. Every time I have lost someone in my adult life I have plans that can be very easily broken but she says “(fill in name here) would have wanted to see you having fun, she/he wouldn’t want you to sit around being sad.” Almost guilting me into keeping the plans, but knowing I will just be Debbie Downer wherever I go.
Niccole’s boyfriend Jose came down unexpectedly-uninvited, which in any normal relationship would have been fine, but our plans were to go to a guys house that Nicc had every intention of hooking up with. At the time Jose was gripping at straws to keep her and I suspect he knew that. Somehow it was determined that Jose would drive Niccole and her friend Gina to the party (in the middle of NOWHERE by the way), and I would drive the rest of us to the party. We followed Jose’s car to the destination, he let the girls out then drove off.
“What’s going on?” I asked Nicc just before we went into the mansion of a house.
“I told him to get lost.” She said, like it was normal that a girl’s boyfriend drive 2 hours to see her, only to drop her off at a party over an hour away, and not attend said party.
I distinctly recall hating the guy who threw the party before we even went to his house; inside people were literally climbing the walls and I never considered they were on drugs until just now. Niccole disappeared in a sea of people that all looked like monkeys. It was a surreal situation. Our group sans Niccole migrated into the kitchen and twenty minutes later Nicc reappeared, sloshed. The host-guy I hated, held her up, smiling at us like he had won a prize and from that point all hell broke loose.
Gina and Crystal tried to negotiate with Niccole to leave. Alex, Steve-o, and Lance all looked like they were going to start punching people out. I started to panic, I knew all of our friends wanted to leave but Nicc wanted to stay and I couldn’t leave her there with that creep, so I spoke to her sternly and explained that we were exiting. She looked disappointed but she began to follow me. Then the host said something and she snapped, she backed away from me like I slapped her in the face and began screaming that she wouldn’t go anywhere with us. As if we were the ones that were going to rape her and not the skivvy host. He walked up to her and put his arm around her, with a wild smile he said “Don’t worry I will take care of her.”
“Niccole I swear to God, if you don’t come outside with us right now I am calling Jose and having him come pick you up.” I yelled at her. The entire party was quieting down to listen to us.
“Go ahead; he knows not to come until I am ready anyway.” She said and disappeared.
Outside I called Jose, told him some of the situation what the girl code could allow.
“Sonya, I hear you… but Niccole told me not to get her until she said and I am not going against her wishes.”
“Jose, seriously it’s not safe here. I will wait for you, but you have to come now!”
“You do what you have to do, I am not coming.”
“So you are just going to leave her here?!”
“Yes.” Then he hung up the phone. At that time cell phones didn’t light up when you were hung up on, so I talked to dead air for quite some time. There was nothing more I could do, I felt like everyone was in danger and I was the only person that could save them, so we left.
I was at Niccole’s dorm when she came trudging up the stairs with Jose hours and hours later. She looked like she had been hit by a train, her dress was torn, her hair was frizzy, her makeup shifted over to the left a bit, and one of her shoes was broken so she walked with a limp. I held the hallway door open for them and Jose gave me the look of death.
“Is she ok?” I asked Jose as they passed and he practically spit on me.
***
The next day at Nisa’s funeral, I thanked God we wouldn’t be having another funeral for Niccole. I was broken up about everything and infuriated when I got a nasty voicemail from Niccole explaining how shitty it was that I left her behind. Everything she said to me sounded just like Jose. Crystal and I got together and wrote a letter to Nicc. I basically said that the only way for our friendship to move forward was to trust one another, when I say she is in a bad situation to know that I am looking out for her not trying to boss her around. What Crystal brought to the table was a royal scolding about underage drinking, while I didn’t feel as strongly (or hardly anything at all) about that I signed my name to the letter like I did.
***
Nicc and I didn’t speak for days after she tore the letter up in my face. I packed up all her belongings that had accumulated in my dorm and some of the stuff that had been left at my parents’ house in high school. At the time scrunchies with perfectly curled hair were all the rage, I thought it looked like a rat and I absolutely hated it but somehow it ended up at my dorm. I was beaming from ear to ear to get that out of there.
I carried a cardboard box full of Nicc’s stuff from one side of the university to the other. When I got up to Niccole’s room she opened the door to reveal a box of my belongings, like a bad breakup, it was over. I sadly handed her the box, she handed me mine. We didn’t say anything to one another; we just stood in her room sad and silent looking at all the photos of five years worth of friendship that littered her walls.
We didn’t know this guy at all.
Scavenger hunt, take a photo in a cop car.
“Do you want a soda?” She broke the silence.
“No, I am good thanks. I should probably get going.” The pain of staying there too long was getting to me.
She grabbed herself a coke and walked to the door to hold it open for me. The unopened coke slipped out of her hand and landed on the floor splitting open just enough that it projectile vomited sticky carbonated coke all over the room. The photos were getting drenched with soda as it hissed away uncaring about the damage it was creating.
“SONYA MAKE IT STOP!” Niccole screamed at me helplessly while she blocked some of her favorite photos from getting ruined.
“HOW?” I was laughing hysterically, sticky soda all over everything and it wasn’t slowing down. “How much soda is in that shit?!”
“Make it stop!” She was laughing so hard she was crying.
“I am not putting my hand over it; you put your hand over it.”
“What if it explodes?” She asked.
“Exactly.”
The coke let out one final scream before it settled and we lay in the wake of its hissy fit.
“You know, you don’t have to take that stuff back if you don’t want to.” Niccole said, pulling my box over toward her as I had set it on the bed in the syrup war.
“Well Niccole to be honest I cannot take this shit back to my dorm with me.” I said rummaging through her box until I found what I was looking for. “Seriously if I look at it one more time I am going to beat it to death with a hammer.” I handed her the fake hair scrunchie.
“Fair enough. Fair enough.”
That night I took her stuff back to my place and we have been friends thanks to Coke ever since.
-ducksoup- 