Mercy by Rebecca Lim

hands in the air and screaming along with the words, every single one of which they seem to have committed to memory. Of course, being me, I have no recollection of this song and remain unmoved in the heaving, thrusting bedlam.
    Tiffany’s beat that stare finds me over the heads of the throng as she continues to belt out the words, and that cold feeling in my spine returns, the sense of being balanced on razor wire over the shrieking abyss.
    Everything a freakin’ contest.
    ‘Man, you can put that shit away!’ shouts Bailey admiringly as he watches me crush yet another empty plastic cup in my hand.
    That gives me an idea, and a moment later, I let my eyes roll back in my head as I fall to the ground. Like a tree crashing to the forest floor.
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Chapter 13
    A girl nearby screams, ‘Oh — my — GOD!’ as the boy, Bailey, shouts above me, ‘Shit, shit, shit ! Someone help me here!’
    I keep my eyes resolutely shut as a swirl of activity takes place over and around Carmen’s prone body.
    ‘How much did you give her to drink, Bails?’
    someone hisses.
    Bailey’s panicky whisper confirms I chugalugged eight bourbon-spiked colas in one sitting.
    ‘She’s probably in a freakin’ coma ,’ exclaims a girl nearby. ‘She’ll need her stomach pumped out for sure .’
    Someone bends to check I have a pulse. A touch so brief, there isn’t time for me to make a connection, and for that I am truly grateful. From the ambient smell of 113

    mothballs, however, I’m guessing it’s Laurence Barry who has taken it upon himself to gather me into his arms, cradling my head and shoulders off the floor. I continue to play dead for safety.
    As Bailey babbles to a concerned parent that he only gave me one or two soft drinks before I passed out — ‘I have no idea what’s wrong with her, I swear to God’ — I hear Ryan’s voice as he shoulders his way through the onlookers and takes charge.
    ‘I’ll get her home, Mr Barry,’ he says firmly.
    ‘She needs to see a doctor,’ Laurence Barry insists stubbornly. He continues to hold my upper body off the floor as if I am made of sugar and spun glass. For a brief moment, his grip tightens and the side of my face is crushed into the felt underside of his dusty black lapel. I almost struggle and give the game away. I force myself to stay floppy and take shallow, laboured breaths, though the smell of camphor laced with old-man body odour, coffee breath and hair oil is intense.
    ‘No, really,’ Ryan insists. ‘She’s on serious medication for her, uh, bad skin condition. She’s probably just had a mild reaction to something she’s eaten or drunk.
    Nothing sleep won’t fix. She warned my parents all about it before we left the house tonight. It’s no biggie.’
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    Though Ryan wins out, I can feel Laurence Barry’s strange reluctance to let me go as I’m finally passed from one to the other. To kick up the believability a notch, I allow my head to loll backwards and Ryan must hastily prop it against one broad shoulder. The leather of his jacket is cold and supple and I resist the urge to turn my face further towards him and breathe in his addictive clean, male smell.
    Carmen’s heart takes off again, and for a moment all I can hear is the pounding of her blood.
    ‘She’s just trying to spoil it for me!’ I hear Tiffany snipe into the microphone, cut off mid-crescendo, mid-chorus. ‘She’s always been a jealous little bitch . This is another stunt , I tell you.’
    ‘Hurry back, Ry!’ Brenda wails. ‘Why does this always happen to me ?’
    As we stride through Mulvany’s, leaving hubbub and consternation in our wake, Ryan breathes curiously into my closed eyelids, ‘Now what was all that in aid of, pipsqueak?’
    ‘Put me down! Ry ,’ I hiss as we hit the icy car park.
    I kick a little for emphasis.
    ‘Not a chance,’ he answers good-humouredly. ‘One, 115

    because you’ve still got an audience — you’ve really managed to get on that Tiffany’s