Birthday Dance

We came out the other side, to where the corridor opened up into the club itself. Though you’d never be able to tell from the outside, the place was packed with people. Every inch of the dance floor was taken up by couples grinding against each other in the darkness. You could see their silhouettes joining together then breaking apart, like amoeba coupling under a microscope.
Blue lighting haloed their undulating forms as pinpoint laser spots darted throughout the crowd, catching a pair of lips here, the curve of a neck there. The music was so loud it struck you in the chest like a fist, forcing your heart to beat in time to its pounding rhythm. Whatever individual song lines there were to the music all blurred together into this single pounding noise, which struck again and again in the solar plexus.
“Where did you find this place?!” I had to shout it three times before he could make out what I was saying.
“I read about it!,” he shouted back. “In a magazine! Pretty fabulous, huh?!”
“Yeah,” I shouted, my throat growing sore, “pretty fabulous!”
“I’ll be right back!,” he called, dissolving into the giant amoeba on the dance floor. When he returned several minutes later, he was carrying two tall drinks in his hands that he had scored from the bar.
“What is it?!,” I asked, taking one of the glasses from him.
“What difference does it make?!,” he said smilingly, reaching into his pocket and coming up with a tiny pill that he dropped into the bottom my glass. I held it up and watched as the pill fizzled like an Alka-Seltzer tablet and dissolved into the clear liquid. “Now drink up,” he said, winking his eye before gulping down his own fizzling drink.
Of course I knew it was the wrong thing to do. Every leftover brain cell from my former days as an athlete/scholar wanted to cry out, “Stop! No! Drugs are bad!” But seeing the look of expectation on his face as he drained his glass and nodded for me to do likewise, I realized I would’ve done anything at that moment to not disappoint him. He had worked so hard to make this a perfect birthday celebration for me, I felt like it would be ungrateful to start saying no now. And though we’d never discussed drugs before — although I gathered from a few stray comments that he’d made that he generally disapproved of pot, finding it low class — I trusted that whatever he put in my drink wouldn’t be too powerful, and I drank it down in one gulp, as I knew he wanted me too.
Before I knew what was happening, the night exploded all around me into a million scattered pieces. Sometimes I was dancing with Evan. Sometimes I was dancing on my own. But I wasn’t afraid. I felt part of the crowd now, like I’d pushed my way towards the warm heart at the center of the amoeba. And though I would miss him when he went away, there was always the shadows flowing all around — pressing close, brushing against my back — to keep me safe until he returned. The shadows would protect me. I was part of their family now, so there was nothing to fear.
I felt as though this was the thing that I’d been searching for my whole life, the missing part that’d left me feeling empty for as long back as I could remember; this feeling of oneness with the people around me. And I wanted the feeling to go on forever, to never stop.
Alone but for the first time not alone, I closed my eyes and tried to push myself even further towards the glowing center of the thing, to feel its absolute truthfulness. When I opened them, Evan was standing there in front of me, looking as though he were about to cry. I drew him into my arms and we moved together in a slow circle, the shadows closing all around us. And though I somehow knew, even in my euphoric state, that the music must still be continuing, the only thing I heard now was his voice in my ear, every word sounding as clean and clear as a bell.
“Do you know how incredible you are?,” he whispered, as the shado