mrj1991

For part I, click here: The Unwilling Party Girl, Part I For part II, click here: The Unwilling Party Girl, Part II For part III, click here: The Unwilling Party Girl, Part III: Josh's Story For part IV, click here: The Unwilling Party Girl, Part IV For part V, click here: The Unwilling Party Girl, Part V For part VI, click here: The Unwilling Party Girl, Part VI For part VII, click here: The Unwilling Party Girl, Part VII For Part VIII, click here: The Unwilling Party Girl, Part VIII I'm lying in bed. Awake. At 3:00 in the morning. Snapped awake by a clap of thunder that apparently didn't even phase Josh. I can hear him slowly breathing next to me, out of rhythm with a slightly off-balance ceiling fan that softly clicks, each rotation. The rain hasn't started yet, but it's coming. One of the things that nobody thinks of about paralysis is the idle time like the middle of the night. I can't even get out of bed if I wanted to. I've learned to try and maximize the stillness and the

Apartment 1b Victoria realizes she's fucked at exactly 5:42 p.m., which feels unfair because she's just finished fixing someone else's mess. Her cursor blinks at the end of a paragraph about the "resilient festive spirit of Brooklyn in the face of extreme weather," which now reads like a personal attack. Outside the living room window the world is just...white. There was a city an hour ago, sirens, bus brakes, a guy yelling into his phone outside the laundromat. Now it's just this thick, swirling nothing, like someone stuffed cotton into the streets. Her laptop sits on the height-adjustable table clamped in front of her wheelchair. The microphone icon on her screen idles with quiet, patient judgment. "Full stop," she says. The cursor freezes. For a moment, everything is fine. The article looks good. She's chief editor of the Brooklyn Register, whatever that means anymore, half community noticeboard, half underfunded therapy project for overeducated interns. She's still that person