daniella and kirsten (andrew's girlfriend): a short story from kirsten's perspective

extra material from my 2019 novel Daniella (no background knowledge necessary; no need to fear spoilers)

I sat next to my boyfriend, Andrew, on the plane to Frankfurt. I was on my way to study for the summer in Germany with a group from my school.

Andrew and I had started hanging out a lot that winter. We spent a lot of evenings together at our friend Jeremy’s house. He was a year older than me, and I’d never heard of him until then. Jeremy told me that Andrew had once been a religious fanatic. But Andrew told me he was just an ordinary Christian like anyone else.

We played this one game in the basement a lot. Me and all the 10th grade girls were there with the 11th grade boys. It was always the boys who pretended to be the zombies. They’d turn off all the lights so it was pitch black. They’d find us in corners, under blankets, behind couches, in closets. They’d grab us tightly; we screamed when they found us. Andrew caught me the first night we met. He told me he was scared of the dark. We went and hid together near the couch. I laughed and we tickled each other in the dark.

We talked on the phone every night for hours. I’d tell him about my homework and my classwork projects. He laughed when I told him I was coming to school dressed up as Buddha for my philosophy class.

One weekend he went to a Christian conference in Florida, led by some theologian he said his dad liked. I asked him what he meant by a Christian conference - was it like a Bible study? He said sort of. He told me he didn’t want to talk about it. He said his dad was making him go.

Andrew knew a lot about history. He had biographies in his room about a bunch of random presidents. He told me one day he was going to be a great diplomat and travel the world. He knew the names and languages of distant nations I’d never heard of.

We were dating by May. We spent warm afternoons making out on the trampoline in my backyard and in my basement. We went on walks to playgrounds together and swung on the swings. We held hands in school; we sat next to each other in German class. I surprised him by buying him a goldfish in June, complete with a tank that had an underwater castle in it.

I told him that the PetsMart guy had been flirting with me. Andrew asked if I’d led the guy on. He told me I needed to be careful with how I spoke with other guys. He asked me if I thought it would count as cheating to hold hands with another guy. I said yes. He asked me if I thought it would count as cheating to hug another guy for a little bit too long. I said I wasn’t sure. He asked me if I thought it would count as cheating to have a sexual fantasy about another guy. I told him maybe. He asked me if I thought it would count as cheating to drink alcohol with another guy without him present. I told him I wasn’t sure. He asked me if I thought it would count as cheating to dance with another guy, even just “as friends.” He told me to never dance with another guy for any reason.

One afternoon in June after making out in my basement, he asked me if I was planning on drinking any alcohol when we were in Germany. I told him I thought it might be fun. He told me alcohol would hamper my judgment and he didn’t want me to get hurt. I told him I swore I wouldn’t drink any alcohol.

“Not even a drop, right?” he asked.

“Not even a drop,” I said, knowing I was lying.

We watched Sixteen Candles together that night. When it got dark out we made out and I took off his pants. I laughed while stroking his dick as fast as I could. I stared at it with wide-open eyes; I’d never given anyone a handjob before. I giggled at his convulsions. He got semen all over my hands and all over his pants.

He laughed the next day when he told me the story about the semen. On his way home, he really wanted a Coke at CVS. So he’d just gone in there with the big semen stain. He pulled his t-shirt down the whole time to cover it up.

It was on the plane over the Atlantic that he first fingered me while I gave him another handjob. We were on that plane with 40 other students from our school and our teacher. It felt exciting to be stroking his dick with all our friends and chaperones around us.

He was nervous that we’d be staying at different houses without access to cell phones, without any way to text each other. Everything would have to go through our German hosts. We’d see each other every day at school and with the others, but after that it would all go black. He told me he’d write me a letter every night and put Old Spice deodorant all over it for me to sniff. I told him that was sweet of him.

I met my German, Wiebke, and I went to her house that first night. I didn’t see Andrew, but I saw an 11th grade girl who knew him - Daniella.

Daniella’s German, Felix, was dating mine.

I was on two hours of airplane sleep that night with the three of them - Wiebke, Felix, and Daniella.

Meeting Daniella for the first time, I remembered one of my last nights in America. We were in Jeremy’s basement with Jeremy and some others. We were playing zombies and Jeremy caught me. In the pitch black, with the screams in the background of others being caught, he whispered to me if I wanted to hear something that scared him and might scare me. He told me that Daniella was a sorceress or a witch or something. He said she had cursed people to death. I laughed at him and said that’s impossible. But he didn’t laugh. He told me she carried out sex rituals in graveyards. He told me she mixed menstrual blood and semen to summon demons. He told me she drinks it from a golden chalice. “I saw her doing it,” he said. “In that graveyard by Brewster.” I told him to shut the fuck up, that’s fucking nuts.

“She used a ritual to kill Cameron,” he said. “That’s how Cameron died so suddenly.”

“Why are you fucking with me like this?” I asked him.

“I’m not fucking with you,” he said. “I’m as scared as you are.”

“You really believe she killed Cameron?” I asked.

“I know she did,” he said. “I helped her do it.”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I told him.

I had a few beers with Daniella, Wiebke, and Felix that first night in Germany. “Don’t tell Andrew,” I made them promise. Wiebke and Felix seemed confused.

I was half-delirious when I got into bed. I was so tired from my jetlag that I was in pain, and the pain distracted me from falling asleep. The church bells in the small town kept waking me up throughout the night. I looked up at the skylight above my bed and saw Daniella there looking down at me from the roof, swaying back and forth, her hair blowing in the wind. She was naked and touching her own breasts while the church bells rang. A creature just a couple feet tall stood beside her. I couldn’t move. I don’t remember how I fell back asleep.

I told Jeremy about the nightmare. He seemed scared. He said he didn’t want to talk about it. “It’s not a dream,” he said. “It’s real. I’ve seen her at night, too.”

It’s normal in Germany for teenage lovers to sleep over at each other’s houses. So I saw a lot of Daniella that first week. Sometimes we stayed the night at Felix’s place; sometimes we stayed the night at Wiebke’s place. We polished our limited German by speaking with Wiebke and Felix. Daniella always spoke better than me, like she’d been studying it since she was a toddler. We had dinner with their parents. We talked about life in America. They asked me sometimes if I wanted them to call L, Andrew’s German, and have them come over, too. “He’s your boyfriend, right?” they asked me. I always said yes he is, but no. They told me it’s good to have some space.

Daniella asked me a lot of questions about Andrew while we drank beers with some Germans on Felix’s balcony. She asked me if he was still a controlling misogynist, like he had been with his last girlfriend, Erica. I asked her what a misogynist was. She said it’s someone who tries to control women and belittle them. She asked me if he was still obsessed with things like alcohol and hair-dye and Jesus. I told her he was very averse to alcohol. I told her not to tell him I was drinking. She told me I should dump him. She told me she was going to make me stronger.

I looked at the note Andrew had given me that day at school. It reeked of Old Spice deodorant and was three pages long. He told me he loved me a dozen times. I thought about how he hovered around me all day on our tours around own and in the classrooms. Always holding my hand. Always putting his arm around my waist. Wherever I stood in the big group, he was there beside me. Wherever I sat in the classrooms, he took the chair next to me. Whenever there was a moment of silence between us, he told me he loved me so much, more than anything in life.

“You haven’t drank any alcohol, right?” he asked me.

“Not a drop,” I always told him.

I woke up in the middle of the night in my bed to a bang on the other side of the wall. The sleeping bag next to my bed where Daniella had been was empty. I heard a girl moaning in the other room. I heard faint feminine voices in English - two of them, one with a German accent and one with an American accent. I heard Felix. I remembered Daniella looking down at me from the skylight. I thought about walking over to the other room. I thought about the chalices full of menstruation and semen that Jeremy told me about.

I remembered that creature that stood beside her on the roof. “It was a nightmare,” I whispered to myself. “They’re just having a threesome.” Just having a threesome? I reflected on the state of my standards of normalcy. And then I got horny thinking about the three of them. They were breathing so loud. I told myself over and over - get up and go over there, maybe this chance will never happen again. But I never got out of bed.

I started questioning myself as I fell back asleep. I convinced myself there wasn’t any threesome happening over there. They were just watching a movie.

One of the Germans hosted a party for all the Americans and Germans at their house that first weekend.

Andrew had written to me the day before about the party. He warned me to be on my guard.

Sometimes I couldn’t believe the things he said in his letters. “Be weary,” he wrote, “of immoral, socialist German influences that could lead you astray and destroy our love for each other. Do not forget our eternal future, my love. I know our love will survive for all of eternity.” He reprimanded me for only having written him one letter.

Late at night at Felix’s house during the party, I was sitting on the couch with Andrew beside me holding my hand. I watched Jeremy stumble through the living room in front of us. He had just taken another shot of something.

“Look at him,” Andrew whispered to me. “You’ll never be like that, will you? Not even a drop. I love you so much. I love you like I’ve never loved anything. Sometimes it really scares me how much I love you.”

I looked through the screen doors and saw Daniella, Wiebke, Felix, and several others outside smoking cigarettes. They were holding bottles of beer in their hands. I told Andrew I was going to go talk to them for a bit. I suggested he spend some time with his own friends.

“But what about our love?” he asked.

I told him his friends were important. He reluctantly agreed to split up. “But only for a moment,” he said.

“They have cups full of alcohol out there,” he said.

“I know,” I said, letting go out of his hand.

“Not even a drop,” he told me. “Just look at Jeremy. That’s what will happen to you. Look me in the eyes and promise me.”

I looked him in the eyes. “I swear to God,” I told him. “I promise you.”

I got up and walked outside into the warm air.

I stood out there on the patio with the Germans and Americans. I looked behind me and saw Andrew walking to another room with some of his friends. He couldn’t see me anymore. I asked Daniella if I could try a drag of a cigarette. I coughed as soon as I inhaled, but I felt cool about it anyway. We all laughed.

“Was ist mit deinem Freund?” Felix asked me.

“Er ist… Er ist…” I struggled to answer. “Er ist sehr verrückt.”

The Germans broke out laughing. “Dump his ass,” Daniella said. Then she went for it in German. “Die Beziehung ist fertig! Die ist schon vorbei! It’s finished! You guys are done! I’ll make you strong, sweetheart. Ich weiss, wie ich das machen kann. I can do it, Schatz.”

I looked at her and Felix and Wiebke laughing and lightly touching. I wondered if they’d really had a threesome or if I’d just been dreaming again. I wondered if I was going to be in a threesome during this trip. I’d never even considered it as a possibility before.

“Guck mal,” Felix chuckled, pointing toward the reeds in the backyard. “Ich kann es kaum glauben,” he said. “But it’s true - Americans really have no drinking experience!”

I saw two of my classmates walking back toward the house. She had semen all over her mouth. She had nettle scratches on her skin. He was zipping his pants and tightening his belt. They slurred something incomprehensible as he led her past us, into the house, into the bathroom. I watched them go in there and close the door.

“Just try a sip,” said Daniella, thrusting her cup toward me. “You drink when he’s not there anyway. Er ist nicht wichtig.”

“What is it?” I asked her.

“Oh, who cares?” she said.

I looked into the house and saw Andrew wasn’t there. I thought I saw Daniella pour something else into the drink as I turned my head back. Something red, from a vile. It made me remember what Jeremy said about her chalices and her rituals and how Cameron died. My God, I thought, I need to fucking sleep. I looked at her and she smiled. I grabbed the cup, chugged a quarter of it, and handed it back to her.

“Gut gemacht, mein Schatz,” Daniella smiled at me. She squeezed my hand.

I walked back inside and saw Jeremy against the wall with an American girl. He was kissing her on the lips. He unbuttoned her pants and shoved his hand into her underwear. She moaned and leaned into him.

I walked into the kitchen where my friend Aliya and a bunch of Germans were.

“Want a drink?” she asked me. “We’ve both made out with Andrew, right?” She laughed. “God knows you need one.”

I nodded. I took her cup and chugged half of it before quickly handing it back to her.

“Don’t put up with his shit,” Aliya said, ushering me into a corner away from the others. “I used to think I could reform him. I thought I could change him. You know he was a total lunatic of a Christian for a while, right?”

“He told me that’s an exaggeration,” I said.

Aliya laughed. “Absolutely not,” she said. She handed me her cup. I took it and drank another quarter. She refilled it. “Absolutely not,” she repeated. “He was psychotic.”

“Give me a shot,” I said.

“Of what?”

“I don’t even care,” I said.

She poured me a shot of vodka. I downed it and then I took another one.

I listened to Aliya talk about Andrew for a while. She told me how one day he’d suddenly stopped being a radical Christian. She told me some stories about him dry-humping her in somebody’s yard. Within minutes, though, I couldn’t keep my eyes focused on her.

I closed my eyes. I opened them and my vomit was all over Aliya’s chest.

All the Germans and Americans in the kitchen stopped and stared at me. I heard people singing along to music in other rooms. I heard glasses and bottles clinking. I saw Daniella smile at me from the one place in the living room from where you could see this corner of the kitchen. Her mouth was moving, her fists were clenched, but she wasn’t talking to anybody. It was like she was chanting something at me. I saw her walk toward the yard. I threw up again, this time all over the kitchen floor.

I tripped, but Aliya, with vomit all over her cleavage, caught me. “Oh my God, sweetheart,” she said. “We need to get you to the bathroom… Come on, come on…”

I shook her off from me and felt like I might cry. I pushed my way through all the people in the kitchen and out into the living room. I slid through the people dancing in the dim lights. I went out into the backyard. I walked to the reeds. I collapsed onto my knees in the grass. I coughed and heaved but nothing came out.

“How could you!” I heard behind me. It was Andrew. “Did you fucking drink? Did you fucking drink?” I felt his hand on my back as I tried again to puke. “You promised me! You promised me not one fucking drop!” I rocked back and forth and just kept looking at the grass. “Oh my god,” he said. “Oh my god! You’re going to die of alcohol poisoning! You’re gonna fucking die!”

“Take this fucking idiot home,” I heard Daniella say behind me.

“Call the ambulance!” Andrew screamed. “She’s dying! She’s fucking dying! Oh my God!”

“You should be killed,” I heard Daniella say. “Someone needs to put you out of your misery.”

“You fucking bitch,” Andrew said.

“Come on, Andrew,” I heard Andrew’s host sister say. “It’s time to go.”

I couldn’t follow the rest of Andrew’s shouts and protests. Finally, I had puke coming out. I made a little pile of it in the grass. And at some point, Andrew was gone.

Later, I was in bed with Daniella beside me. A pot was on the floor. She told me she’d be there all night to look out for me. “Wiebke and Felix are next door,” she said.

I closed my eyes. I couldn’t keep them shut because everything kept spinning. I threw up in the toilet in the bathroom. Daniella helped me drink water and she guided me back to bed.

Suddenly, I hated Andrew more than I thought I could hate anyone. I dreamed about killing him.

I woke up and couldn’t move my limbs, only my eyes. Church bells were ringing. I heard Daniella and Jeremy - but how? why would he be here? he hadn’t come back here with us. They were whispering in a language that wasn’t German or English on the other side of the room. I saw glowing light from candles. I tried to turn toward them. A great weight pinned me aggressively to the bed. I could only see their blurry figures in the corner of my eye. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t turn my head.

I was naked. There wasn’t any blanket over me. My period had started… I needed a tampon, I needed a pad… I couldn’t move. I remembered then that someone had taken these blankets off. They’d taken all my clothes off. They’d spread my legs apart. They had told me they would give me power if I’d let them have some of my blood. Yes, I’d said to them, take what you need. Take my blood. But when did that conversation happen? What did they take? Why couldn’t I remembered more than just a few words? I heard Jeremy groaning. I heard Daniella chanting in another language. All I could see clearly was the open window on the ceiling above me.

Suddenly, Daniella was naked and standing over me. Still, I could only move my eyes. She parted my lips and dumped the contents of a chalice into me. “This will make you strong,” she said. “This will make you hate him.” I swallowed all the warm semen and blood, and then I was asleep again.

I woke up late the next morning in the clothes I’d worn at the party, as if I’d never been naked at all. Daniella wasn’t there. I examined the sheets and they were clean. I decided I was going to rip up all of Andrew’s letters. I hated him. I wanted him to die. I rushed out of the room to wash and put in a tampon. I saw Daniella sitting watching German TV with Felix and Wiebke on the couches.

“Guten morgen, mein Schatz!” she said to me. “How do you feel?”

I smiled and went into the bathroom. I realized I didn’t have a headache. I looked in the mirror at my face.

He will never tell you what to do again, I thought to myself. I didn’t feel nauseous at all anymore. I grabbed a tampon from my bag and took off my pajamas.

I’m not on my period, I realized. For a few moments I didn’t move.

A dream, I realized. Jeremy didn’t even come back here with us.

I walked out to the living room. I walked toward the back of the couch on which Felix, Wiebke, and Daniella sat. And then, as soon as the floor came into view, I saw Jeremy sitting there on the carpet. He was laughing at something Felix said. For another few moments I didn’t move.