Shallows

TW: Substance abuse / use

“What is it?” Marissa asked, peering down at the small pill.

“Just something to help the fun be more…fun, you know?” Ashley replied, reaching for Marissas’ wrist and gently placing the small pink pill in the palm of her hand.

Marissa stared at the pill resting in her hand, a mixture of curiosity and apprehension swirling within her. As she studied it, her friends chattered excitedly around her, buzzing with an eagerness for the night of festivities that awaited them. They had been planning this outing for weeks, and the need for a night of promised magic hummed between them. 

Yet, Marissa couldn’t help but feel a tinge of unease as she stared at the pill. She had only known Ashley and the others (Emily and Sarah) for about three months, ever since she moved and started anew at the University. They had accepted her as part of their group when Marissa single handedly saved their grades during a series of tutoring session for an advanced English class. After that, the three of them had all but indoctrinated her into their little exclusive club, enticing her with the promise of friendship.

Still, was this worth the price?

She looked up from the pill to study the girls. Ashley was like a lioness. Her golden hair was a mane of curls around her head, and her green eyes glittered with a feline-like edge. She threw her head back and laughed at something Sarah had said. 

If Ashley was a lion, Emily was a bird. Everything about her was light and airy. Her eye lashes fluttered around her robin’s egg blue-like eyes with her deep, unshared thoughts. When she was sitting, she was perched with gentle grace and looked between the three of them with her head cocked, listening attentively.

Sarah was unlike both of them. Neither a great feline nor graceful winged creature. She was more like a coiled snake. Her dark hair was always straight to a pin point and slicked down with shiny product. Tonight, she had artfully thrown the dark hair over her bare shoulders. Twin eyes, slitted and sparkled with an edge of danger in the low glow of the warm light in the bedroom. Skin like clay was always bathed in something that shined, luminous with a substance like fresh dew in the early spring morning. Her mouth was open, pearl like teeth flashed as she talked with a tongue that seemed to fork between her words.

Where all of them were these creatures, these forces to be reckoned with, Marissa was nothing like them. She was more like a shell, hollow with nothing inside except for an echo that resembled a human being. It escaped her how these three had ever deemed her worthy of their inner circle.

Marissa looked between them. They each held a pill between their own manicured fingers and a shared cup of water that they passed around as they each took turns swallowing the small capsule. When it was passed to her, Marissa wondered if this could be the switch that made her feel accepted?

She curled the pill in her hand and raised it to her mouth, popping it inside. With a slight shake in her hand she accepted the cup of water and drank deeply. The three girls squealed around her with animal-like glee.

As the pill slid down Marissa’s throat, a moment of anticipation washed over her. She waited for that feeling of connection, for the invisible barrier between her and her friends to dissolve. Instead, that feeling of unease settled in her stomach alongside of the pill.

It stayed with her all throughout the night. From the walk from the house to the party, to the first wave of the effects of the pill, to the moment she decided she could no longer be surrounded by them.

Still, she hung around longer than she had expected, watching as the trio became engulfed in a haze of euphoria and uninhibited behavior, their laughter becoming louder and their actions increasingly reckless. It transformed them from the proud lioness to a giggling hyena, from a graceful bird to a squawking mess, from a carefully poised and dangerous reptile to nothing more than a rubber garden hose. 

Marissa had felt the euphoria come on. It washed over her like thick soap poured into a bath, bubbles of laughter erupted from her mouth without her permission. She hiccuped and held it in, praying for it to be over. Whether God heard her or not, the effects didn’t last. Soon the haze lifted, the fog cleared, and the world dulled back to the mute colors of washed grey. That hollow ache resounded within her like a whistle each time her friends passed her by.

There was no doubt the pink pill had indeed enhanced their experiences, making her a temporary fool swept up in the nonsense of the party, but it also exposed a side of her friends that she hadn’t noticed before—a side that made her crave the solace she found alone with herself. Where they were part of the scenery, belonging as one, she was but a shell on the sands of their ocean. She couldn’t help but wonder would she be crushed under the weight of their fun?

As the night wore on, Marissa felt more and more like an outsider in her own group. She couldn’t shake the feeling that the pill had created a catalyst of knowledge within her, one that knew this wasn’t a genuine friendship. This was something else, an artificial connection amplified by the effects of the pill. The more they lost themselves in the effects of it, the more disconnected she felt.

She stood at the edge of the party, observing the chaotic scene unfolding before her. The music blared, bodies danced wildly, and the air was thick with a sense of recklessness. Marissa’s heart pounded in her chest as she made a decision that would change the course of her friendship with Ashley, Emily, and Sarah. The trio that had sucked her into this world of bright, blinding lights and now, drugs with their insatiable appetites.

Taking a deep breath, Marissa mustered her courage and walked away from the party, leaving her friends behind. The night air felt cool against her skin as she made her way through the quiet streets, her mind racing with conflicting emotions, and her body alight with nerves from the pill she had taken.

As Marissa ventured further away from the jungle of a party, a newfound clarity began to emerge. With each step, she shed the weight of the artificial connection she had forged with her friends. (If she could call them that.) The pill had magnified their flaws, their superficiality, and the shallow nature of their bond. It had caused a temporary illusion of closeness, but Marissa craved something more. Something that fed her soul and filled her shell with more than just a whispering echo of a girl she hardly recognized.

Her footsteps sounded loud in the empty streets as she wandered aimlessly, past the house, towards nothing in particular, her mind wrestling with conflicting thoughts. The pill, her friends, the silence, the solace of being alone. The night seemed darker, quieter, and she relished in the stillness that surrounded her. It was in the solitude that Marissa began to unravel the truth that thrashed inside of her.

She had helped them, once, and become situated on a pedestal for what she could do for them, what she could offer them with her book smarts and wits. Their grades had rested on her shoulders. Sarah on the brink of academic probation, Emily on her third round of spending her parents money to get a degree she couldn’t keep up with, and Ashley, the worst of them all who saw the University as a game to be played.

Under the scope of her feline-like eyes, Ashely had led the group to see Marissa as an asset, as someone to keep around to gain from, and someone to sink their claws into and drag into the pit with them. They were like animals in their nature, slowly taking from her and leaving her a dried up husk of the person she was underneath. They didn’t fill her up, they didn’t elevate her, and they most certainly didn’t offer her anything she couldn’t do for herself.

As Marissa walked, the effects of the pill continued to dissipate, and she felt clearer than she had in the past few months. She settled down onto a cool bench, the change in temperature a comfort as she began to sweat in the warm summer night. With a shiver, she glanced around, the environment different than what she had been used to, the streets unfamiliar.

Above her the stars sparkled, the trees swayed in the gentle night breeze, and crickets chirped around her. The world continued to turn as she wrestled with who she was and who she wanted to be. The pill, the friends, all of it wasn’t what she actually wanted. Sitting here, in the quiet cover of night, alone, and with her own unheated thoughts it all felt more natural.

She had been blind to the dynamic that unfolded within her friendship. They had merely seen her as a means to an end, a tool to help them achieve their own goals. It all made sense, in keeping her close by, they ensured their own survival in the cutthroat ecosystem of the University. And what did that make Marissa? Was she only just a shell? Or was the echo she heard indicative of something more?

Listening to herself, her inner voice, the echo within her, she realized something. The reason she heard the ocean within was because she, herself, was vast and endless. She was the ocean, she bore depth and greatness they could not see nor touch. She was a force of nature, capable of creating ripples that would resonate far beyond the boundaries of their shallow friendship. She was not a shell she had come to believe she was.

With determination in her eyes, Marissa stood up from the bench. The weight of her need for friendship and the pill-induced illusions fell away, leaving her feeling light and free. She stepped forward, guided by the whisperings of her own inner voice, ready to create her own waves, to make an impact that went beyond the shallow confines of the friends she had tied herself to. No longer yearning, or lonely, but sure of herself, she strode forward towards her future, alone.