Phnom Penh 2012

We came as four but left one by one. we were replacements. We were girls.

Hi, New Girl.

Hi, New Girl Two.

This was the Cambodia Daily. This was news. We’d come to replace a dead girl. Or we’d come to replace three boys and a girl. (Always, it’s the girl who dies.) The four of us, we knew nothing, or we knew not to ask. We knew the headline from the local paper: Foreign Reporter Dead. We heard whispers about drugs, about the three boys in the room—fired or fled, we didn’t know. We looked at each other and wondered who was who: who were the boys, the dead girl, the ghost? Secretly, we all thought she was us.

We huddled around desks, elbows touching. We got shouted at. We got stares. We did everything wrong. On the street, we got offers. Lady, tuk-tuk? Smoke-smoke? Killing Fields? At the Killing Fields, we walked like sleepwalkers among the skulls—some smashed, some whole. The mud retched up a piece of cloth, and we gasped. We’d believe anything: the dead coming up out of the ground. We all thought she was us. When the king died that October, we ran outside to see his face in the moon.

She died with her head tilted back. We knew her name. We knew not to ask. We learned Khmer from the local news. One of our first words: Bauk. Gang rape. It was always in the paper: three boys and a girl. Or maybe four boys, five. It happened all the time. We were told not to point at the moon: Bad luck. It happened all the time.

Which of us was the ghost? We crashed our motorcycles. We got into scrapes. We were too pretty or we were not pretty enough. We were too quiet. Too loud. We laughed at jokes—Who put the hyphen in rape-murder?—then cried in the bathroom. It happened all the time. We talked to the dead girl’s ghost.

They fell in love with us. They hated us. We were sleeping with our bosses, our sources. We were sleeping with men from the other paper. We were probably sleeping with each other. They shouted. They stormed off and forgot to pay their tabs. We talked to the dead girl’s ghost. Some of us fell in love with the ones who shouted most.

We called to report gossip. We called to ask what kind of mood he was in. At bars, we sat on the same stool, then shouted that we were not the same person. But can I just point out that you’re sitting on top of each other right now? We debated the coming coup, jumped at dark spots scuttling across the floor. We fell in love with the ones who shouted most. The dead girl understood.

We kissed in tuk-tuks and drove through floods. We made human pyramids in bars. We lost all our money at the Chinese casino, then stumbled home drunk to make instant noodles at 3am. The dead girl understood. We passed out in each other’s beds whispering things we wouldn’t remember.

They talked about us. Who was pretty. Who was fat. Who dressed like a ladyboy. Whose ass had that thing that made you want to look. We stayed late. We threw up in the bathroom. We never once called in sick. They called stories sexy and we hated it. They called stories sexy and we did it too. We said things we wouldn’t remember. In the morning, we woke up hung over.

We got in with the right tuk-tuk drivers. We got into the right girly bars. We spotted license plates, eavesdropped in bars. We got invited to private islands. We got our fortunes told. In the morning, we woke up hung over. We were told we’d live a long time.

We slept with everyone. We slept with no one. We ignored messages and cried in the bathroom. We slept with someone finally just to prove that we could. We were...