For My Friends

by S. C. Mills

11 minutes reading time (2,500 words)
Content Notice: gore, misgendering
Originally published in Last Girls Club (Issue 18)

* * *

A chill wind ripples the alpine lake below our rental’s patio. It’s too cold for sitting outside if you ask me, but the girls didn’t. I tug my hoodie’s zipper higher and hunch over the lukewarm remains of our dinner—fancy pasta with sausage and red sauce.

“Do you want another helping, Jude?” Gem beams at me. “It’s girls’ weekend. Indulge!” Gem’s bright purple hair is backlit by the setting sun, like a supernatural fire glows around her head.

“No, thanks,” I say. Overeating expensive food makes me feel guilty. I hug myself, trying to hide how freezing I am. The wind ruffles my bangs and raises gooseflesh on my bare neck. Gem’s smile fades.

“Not just girls’ weekend.” My fiancée, Esme, leans over from her wrought-iron patio chair and throws an arm around my shoulders. She’s wonderfully warm. “It’s girls’ and Jude’s weekend.”

“You don’t have to,” I murmur. I hate sticking out, but I love her for trying.

“No, no, Esme’s right.” Faith tucks her tiny auburn braids behind her ear. “Jude isn’t a girl anymore, but they are one of us anyway.”

I pull my lips back in a smile. Esme must’ve given them a talk—it’s almost enough to make me feel accepted. I’ve never been invited to hang out with her whole friend group before, much less spend a weekend with them.

“Sure, but I mostly meant it’s their birthday,” says Esme. 

No one looks surprised.

“You said you wouldn’t tell,” I whisper.

Esme laughs. “But you deserve a party, sweetheart.” She runs a warm hand over my back and smooths down my jacket’s hood. Her touch reminds me that I’m supposed to be relaxing. Having fun. I’m always too serious. I need her to balance me out. I lean into her arm and don’t argue.

“Do you want a beanie, Jude? You look cold.” Kaira springs up. “I’ll grab you one from my room.”

“Oh, no,” I say. “It’s so many stairs.” Our rental is built into the side of the mountains. It’s four stories. Kaira, last to arrive, is up in the top bedroom.

“Anything for a friend.” Kaira disappears inside, curls bouncing behind her.

“Let your new friends take care of you, hon.” Esme squeezes my hand, pressing the sharp corners of my new ring against my fingers.

“We’ll do our traditional birthday game when Kaira gets back,” says Gem. “We’ve been playing it together since high school.”

“It really took off while we were in med school,” says Faith.

“You’ll love it,” adds Esme. 

Their chatter continues, but I give up on staying involved. They’re all wealthy doctors, and the conversation centers on favorite vineyards and exclusive restaurants, Faith’s upcoming “plant medicine” retreat in Peru, Gem’s vacation in Europe. I have nothing to contribute. I stare out over the glimmering lake at the snow-capped mountains. Part of me wishes I were back home in my room with my headset and my internet friends. The rest of me feels guilty for wishing that. Esme loves these girls.

“Jude!” Kaira’s returned from her long trek upstairs. “Surprise!”

I snap back to look at her. My heart sinks. Instead of a beanie, she’s carrying a tiered red-velvet cake with two lit candles: a two and a seven. She plunks it on the table with a gleaming nine-inch chef’s knife and a stack of little plates.

I’m speechless. Esme promised. No surprises, no gifts, no forcing me to be the center of attention—

“Gem picked it up for you.” Esme’s muscular arm squeezes me again. The birthday candles flicker in her glowing brown eyes as she leans in. To be fair, she deserves my cake. She just finished months of preparing for her bodybuilding competition, living on practically nothing but protein shakes and stolen handfuls of my testosterone gel.

“Thank you, Gem. Everyone.” I collect myself and inhale, wishing—

“Wait,” says Gem, and everyone freezes. “Game first.”

“Game first!” The others echo her. Esme claps and squeals along with them. I pray this’ll be over quickly.

“Okay. Our game is called Hot Seat.” Gem draws herself up in her chair. “We’re going to take turns roasting you.”

“What?” Oh, no. This is a nightmare. My heart starts pounding. “You don’t have to do that. You already got me dinner and cake. I don’t need—”

“You do need this.” Gem’s tone precludes argument. “We do this on everyone’s birthday.”

“It’s our group tradition,” says Faith.

“It brings us closer,” says Kaira.

I look at Esme. Her bright expression has crumpled and her cheeks are turning blotchy red. I remember her words in the car ride here: I just want everyone I love to get along.

“Okay,” I whisper. “Let’s play.”

Gem clears her throat. “Good. Me first.” Her purple hair flickers as the setting sun passes behind it. “Let’s be real, Jude. You don’t deserve Esme.”

My jaw drops. I look at Esme for help, but she stays silent, her expression blank.

“You don’t. We all know it.” Gem looks around, and everyone nods. Even, with visible reluctance, Esme. “You’re a loser, Jude. All you do is sit around playing games so your so-called ‘friends’ will give you spare change. We all know Esme pays more than her share of your bills.”

“She’s a surgeon!” This is deeply unfair. Tears burn in the corners of my eyes. “And her parents—”

“The way Hot Seat works is that you don’t defend yourself,” says Faith.

“Don’t you want to be part of our group?” asks Kaira.

I snap my jaw shut, so I guess I still do.

“That’s all I’ve got.” Gem shrugs. She picks up the chef’s knife for the cake and offers it to me, handle first.

It’s over. Thank God. I take the knife and inhale again, leaning toward the candles—

“No!” says Faith, and Kaira makes a rapid chiding noise in her throat. I pause mid-breath.

“Not yet, Jude,” says Gem. “First, to show you accept the roast, you have to do a dare.” She tilts her head back and forth. “Cut off your first finger on your right hand. Your mouse finger.”

“What?” I drop the knife. It clatters onto the iron table.

“That seems fair, right?” Gem looks around at the group. Faith and Kaira nod. 

Esme looks from friend to friend, brow knit, and fiddles with her silver hoop earring. A white scar trails down from where it’s pierced. “That’s kind of—”

“You need this, too, Esme,” says Gem. “Now, Jude.” She dips her chin at the knife. “I’d accept your ring finger, too.”

“What? No.” I lift my hands, palms up. Boundaries. My therapist is always saying I need to have boundaries.

“If you were a real friend, you would do it, Jude,” says Kaira.

“This is embarrassing, Jude, honestly,” says Faith.

“No.” My voice wavers, but this isn’t the first time a group of girls have hazed me like this. “I know you’re messing with me. I get it.”

“No. You don’t get it.” Gem grabs the knife. 

I stand up so fast my chair legs screech on the deck. I glance over the rail at the steep rocks down to the lake. To my other side is a door leading toward the garage, but Esme has the car keys. Worse, Kaira’s car is blocking us all in.

“Nobody’s going to force you to play, Jude.” Esme speaks to me, but looks at Gem. Slight rising tone. Question, not statement.

“Right. I’m just going to show you.” Gem splays her manicured fingers on one of the dessert plates. “Real friends make sacrifices for each other. Real friendship has a cost.” She shoots a dark look at Esme. “Sometimes, it requires cutting something off.”

“Oh.” Esme’s voice is quiet and small, so unlike her. “You don’t have to, Gem. I get it.”

I have no idea what they’re talking about. I’m too focused on what Gem’s doing. She lines up the knife with the line between her palm and pointer finger. Surely she won’t do it, though. Surely—

Gem slices down through her knuckle. Blood spurts from the joint and slows to a trickle as she saws back and forth. She sighs, looking bored, then holds her stub up to a candle’s flame. Cauterizing it, I guess. I’m too stunned to speak.

Giggling, Faith picks up Gem’s oozing finger. Blood drips onto her floral wrap dress. “Imagine thinking this little thing is a big deal.” She drops the finger in a glass of ice water.

Kaira gives me a pitying look. “Poor Jude. I bet she— they’ve never had real friends.”

“Wait your turn, Kaira.” Faith picks up the knife. “I’m next.”

“I need to go.” My fingers feel numb. My brain feels like cold sludge. I look at Esme. “Can we leave, babe? Please.”

Gem glowers at us both. “Esme…”

“I’m not leaving.” Esme stands up, too. “Are you going without me, Jude?” 

I chew my lip and twist my diamond ring around my finger. I can’t do it. I can’t leave the person I love alone here with these awful people who are, somehow, her lifelong best friends. Tears slip down my cheeks and dry in the thin mountain air. I let Esme wrap her arms around me.

“Don’t worry, everybody.” Esme sits back in her chair and pulls me into her lap. “We’re all going to figure this out. Together.”

“Right. Now, ‘Jude’.” Faith makes air quotes. “Esme says you’re religious, but I know you’re a faker. You’ve never sacrificed anything for a higher power. I changed my name for my spiritual beliefs. You changed your name for yourself. Do you even know who your namesake was?”

“The patron saint of lost causes,” I whisper.

“Just like you.” Faith scoffs and offers me the knife. “Can you believe in what you can’t see? I think you know what to do.”

“You can’t mean what I think you mean.” I lift my hands, pressing my glasses tighter against my face. This has gone beyond reason. I can’t.

“Show them.” Gem taps on her finger’s blackened stub and frowns.

Faith shrugs. She lifts the knife and pokes her own brown eye with the knife’s tip, quick as popping the lid off of a beer bottle. She twists, and a wine-red glob falls to her lap.

“Oh, God. Oh, God.” I’m barely aware I’m speaking. My entire body is numb now. 

Kaira offers Faith napkins.

“Thanks, girl.” Faith smiles and dabs at the bloody hole in her face, then scoops up the remains of her eye. She folds it all into a neat pile on her dessert plate, wipes off the knife, and hands it to Kaira.

“Esme,” I moan. “Please, babe, we have to get out of here. Together. I’m begging you.”

“These are our friends, Jude.” Her grip tightens around my roiling stomach. “And Hot Seat is a normal party game.” No rising tone this time. No question.

“This is normal?” My voice sounds hysterical, but this isn’t normal. It can’t be tradition. Esme has some scars, sure, but they can’t have ever taken it this far before.

“My turn.” Kaira twirls a sandy curl and flashes a smile. “Jude. You talk too much. Good friends listen to each other. Here, I’ll show you.” She sticks out a pink tongue at me, waggles it back and forth, and then pinches it between two fingers. She hacks at it with the knife, sawing back and forth. She rolls her eyes back and forth, too, like she’s annoyed at how long it’s taking.

I tear my eyes away to find Gem is staring at me—no, past me. At Esme. Her eyebrows twitch, like she’s having some intense, wordless conversation with her.

Kaira drops her tongue into the ice-water with Gem’s finger.

I taste vomit in the back of my throat. I wiggle free of Esme and run to the railing, where I spew oily red sauce and chunks of farfalle and sausage down to the rocks twenty feet below. I almost follow the disgusting mess with the rest of me, but hands still on the banister, I hesitate. 

“—all we’ve done for—” Gem’s accusatory whisper barely reaches my ears. 

I picture Gem’s fiery glare, of how my strong fiancée backed down just from the tone of her voice. Maybe this is normal for them. Maybe their wounds are cleverly hidden by glass eyes, false teeth, metal pins in their bones. They’re all doctors, after all. Surgeons.

Maybe I’m the weird one. It wouldn’t be the first time.

I wipe my mouth and turn around.

Esme stands within arm’s reach, holding the knife. Her bicep twitches beneath the cutoff sleeves of her cropped hoodie. Her face is screwed up tight. Her long black hair lifts in the wind.

I take a step back. The railing presses into my hips.

“Tell them,” says Gem. 

Esme nods. “I love you, Jude,” she says, “but you’re so selfish sometimes. Like right now, it’s clear you don’t care how much my friends mean to me. You’ve been trying to take me from them from the day you and I met.”

The group nods in unison. There’s a triumphant gleam in Gem’s eye. 

Esme points the knife at her own chest. “I’m going to cut out my own heart to show you how much I love you, Jude. I’d dare you to do it instead, but I know you would never. Not for me.”

“No, no, no, no.” The words spurt out of my mouth, faster than thought. I can’t let this happen. “Don’t. Please don’t.”

Esme doesn’t move or respond, but I know what I’m supposed to say. I’ve failed as a friend three times now. I can’t fail as a partner, too. I can’t fail Esme. 

“I’ll do it instead,” I say. “I accept the roast. I’ll do the dare.”

Gem sighs and whispers awww, and everyone smiles. Weight falls off my shoulders. I finally have real friends.

“Really?” Esme is practically glowing with pride. My selfish, traitorous heart pounds faster. I hope I’m strong enough for this—that my love is stronger than my flesh is weak.

“Yes.” I wrap my hands around hers on the black resin hilt of the nine-inch, full-tang chef’s knife. I turn it toward me.

She’s right. They’re all right. I don’t deserve Esme. Her friends have been with her longer, her whole life. They’ve done more for her. They deserve her.

And she deserves me. Me, and my heart.

Esme guides the knife to point to my sternum, then slides it to my left, to a spot between two ribs. The tip cuts through my thin hoodie and pricks my skin.

Maybe it was a test. Maybe I don’t actually have to—

“Together,” she whispers, and helps me drive the steel into my heart.

* * *