She met my gaze, and she rolled her eyes and pulled out of my grasp. She didn’t even glance at my arms.
I didn’t eat lunch. I hid in the library; hid from the dirty looks everyone gave me. I threw up the protein bar that my mother made me eat this morning. Guess what happened this weekend? Crazy Casey went to Perfect Noah’s and kissed him. Crazy Casey said she didn’t care about her best friend Mila. (What a bitch.) She seduced Noah and they slept together, but it didn’t mean anything to him, even though she was clearly obsessed with him and had been for months.
Nothing about her invisible limbs.
I went into the private study room in the back of the library. There was a girl in there, overweight with clothes stretched so tight, they looked like they were going to pop off at any minute. I was about to step back and apologize when she stood to face me. Her skin was tinged blue, almost like Sam’s. Water dripped off her. Her hair was plastered to her face. And she was getting bigger, as if she were absorbing water.
She was sobbing. “Why can’t I be pretty?”
Puffed up and waterlogged, like she’d thrown herself into a river and no one had found her.
I slowly slid my backpack around to throw at her, to make her go away like the others.
She bared her pointed teeth. “Like you!”
Then she rushed at me, hands going for my throat. I ran for the bathroom and locked the door. It wasn’t real.
She banged on the door.
I slid down to the floor. It wasn’t real.
“Give me your body,” she hissed. “Give me your pretty little head.”
“I’m not pretty.” I wrapped my hands around my face.
“Give it to me.” She gave a strangled scream.
“I’m not pretty!” I yelled into my knees. My nails bit into my tights, pinching my skin. “I’m nothing! Nothingnothingnothing!”
Silence crept up and rang in my ears. I was alone. I decided to stay in the bathroom for a while, except sitting there next to the toilet was making me feel sick. When I finally pushed up onto my feet, wobbling a few times, my vision spun. I grabbed the handicapped rail and pushed my hand against my eyes. My shirt had ridden up. I caught a glimpse of something.
I went to the mirror and lifted my shirt. There, across my stomach, as if someone had raked their hands across my navel, five long, see-through lines appeared. Like an animal had torn at me, but instead of blood and guts, there was nothing.
Someone knocked on the door. I tucked my shirt into my pants, stuffed my jacket on, and pushed out into the library again. There were kids peppered throughout the stacks, and I just kept thinking, someone heard me, someone must have heard me. But I was wrong. Either no one heard, or no one listened.
• • •
When I drove home, there was a second car in the driveway. It took me a solid minute to realize whose car it was. Dad’s.
Gordon must be getting a transplant. Or he was dying. It was the only reason Dad would show up.
I walked into the house and smelled dinner. Transplant.
Macaroni and cheese. Gordon laughed. Dad waved at me. My breath whooshed out of me, and I had to steady myself for a second.
“Hey, Case Face.”
Definitely a transplant.
“Did we find someone?” The words rushed out of me.
“Yes, the doctor’s found someone,” my mom said. “Now, sit down. It’s Gordon’s big night. Tomorrow will be a long day.”
I stared at Gordon all evening. I watched his little body moving, pictured his little bones beneath and the bullets in his blood that were tearing him apart. I watched him smile and tried to smile back, even when my family sat on the couch and my dad and mom plucked at Gordy’s toes and counted them and laughed (one two three four five little piggies), just like they used to do with me. He was too old for it, but no one seemed to care.
(It’s nothing.)
Ten times I tried to say, Something is terribly wrong with me, once for every missing toe.
• • •
I called Noah that night.
He answered but didn’t speak. I could practically feel his breath on my neck as we sat silently.
“Why did you do it?” I said. My eyes burned.
“I got freaked, okay? I keep thinking about it. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to do that to you. I really didn’t. It just happened, and I thought if I pushed you away, then you would get help. Clearly, I’m not good for you. We’re not good for each other anymore. But I could try to be better. I don’t know anymore. But, Casey . . . you need hel—”
I hung up.
• • •
I awoke in a sweat with three pairs of eyes and three sets of broken teeth on me.
My hand was in the boy’s mouth. I saw my flesh disappear between the yellow-white knives of enamel. It didn’t hurt. It just was.
My skin was there and then it was not.
“Please don’t,” I whispered.
The boy gave a smile, but it ripped right past where his lips should have been.
“Please don’t,” he mocked.
All three of them chanted the words. The girl from the library fell on me and held my arms against my chest. The weight was crushing. The boy grabbed my legs. They still laughed and pretended to plead.
Sam walked up to me. She knelt down by my head. I could see her neck, still raw and burned. “You need help,” she said.
Stupid.
Her jaw opened wide, unhinged, like a snake.
“You’re nothing.”
“You’re ugly.”
“You bitch.”
She descended toward my throat, to shut me up forever, I hoped. I could finally stop hurting people, stop hurting myself. I could join Sam and the other kids who lost themselves, and then none of this would matter. I could finally stop pretending.
A knock sounded on the door.
The ghosts vanished.
I made sure all of me was covered before I peered into the hall. Gordy stared up at me. He was crying. He put his hand on his lips, to shush me. Dad was on the couch downstairs, so we had to be quiet. I opened my door wider for him.
He crawled into my bed and shook. Slowly, I wrapped my arms around him.
“Casey.”
“Yeah, Gord?”
He kept his eyes shut tight. “I’m scared.”
I pet his head. “About the transplant?”
He nodded.
“I’m scared too.”
He took my hand, the one that had just been bitten off, but his eyes were still closed.
“Why do Mom and Dad sleep in different rooms?”
“Sometimes people stop loving each other.” The words felt thick in my mouth. Surely they had said as much to him? I couldn’t be the first one explaining divorce to Gordon.
“Do you not love me anymore?”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
“I want to see you.”
I squeezed his hand. He burrowed into me.
“I miss you.”
I looked up from Gordon and saw the ghosts standing against the wall. Waiting their turn. They wanted to finish me off, and I almost let them. (I let them in.)
“I’m sorry, Gordy. I’m so sorry.”
I felt something in my toes, in my stomach, in my wrists. When I looked down, I could see them again. I could see the scabs. I could feel the burn from the cuts.
Gordon put his hands around my scars.
Rachel Tafoya is an author, a teacher, a huge nerd, and a bookseller. She is a graduate of the Experimental Writing for Teens class, which she now teaches at the Doylestown Bookshop. She also works at that bookstore and crams in as much writing time as possible between those two jobs. She is the author of The Night House, and has been published in Radius Magazine. She is the daughter of author Dennis Tafoya. She and her adorable dog make their home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
Website: todaysemotions.tumblr.com
Twitter: @RachelTafoya
Facebook: facebook.com/Rach
elTafoya
* * *
Death and Twinkies
ZAC BREWER
* * *
Jeremy Grainger had nothing to lose. His mom was never home, off spending her hard earned, bar-waitress cash on bingo and booze instead of groceries or rent. His dad had split before the words “I’m pregnant” could cross his mom’s lips. The three assholes since who’d tried to take his place had been of a similar, slimy sort. Apparently mom had a type. All three had been unemployed in the legal sense, but sold drugs out the back of their piece of crap trailer. Only one had ever hit Jeremy. One had hugged him a little too long, a little too tightly. The other one just yelled. The best of the bunch was the yeller, Jeremy supposed. So what did he have to lose? The torn clothes he was embarrassed to wear, which he washed out in the kitchen sink with dish soap every night? The friends he didn’t have? A shred of dignity, or even a splinter of hope? Neither of which he’d ever experienced. No. Nothing. Jeremy Grainger had nothing to lose.
Nothing at all but the pulse in his veins.
As he made his way down the dirt road that led out of the trailer park, he passed Bernie’s truck and caught a glimpse of his reflection. Bernie was a mean guy. He managed the trailer park, but made most of his money cashing in his elderly mother’s social security checks. He was fat and smelled faintly of spoiled tapioca. But he was always smiling. Maybe because he knew what he was—a no-good piece of crap—and he was just fine with that. It must be nice, Jeremy thought, to know what you are and to be okay with that. For the most part Jeremy had no idea who he was. Unless you counted the passing thought that his own reflection whispered into his mind. I’m a loser, he thought. A worthless loser.
And he was a loser. Born from a long line of losers. The furthest any of his relatives had gotten in school was his uncle who lived states away in Cincinnati, working as a mechanic. Everyone else made it to high school, but dropped out. Many of his relatives couldn’t even read by that time. And the sad thing was that none of them seemed to care.
Jeremy had cared at first, but he learned quickly to give that all up. If he got good grades, he’d be accused of thinking he was better than them. If he interjected something he’d learned in school that day, mockery followed instead of praise. So Jeremy stopped caring and accepted his fate. He was a loser, and no one would give a crap if he threw himself off the Johnson Street bridge.
Inside his right front jeans pocket was a bus ticket to Saint Louis that he’d swiped from the purse of Mrs. Stevens, his English teacher. Sticking out of his left pocket was a flask filled with something that smelled like his mom’s breath whenever she “worked late.” He hadn’t yet decided if he was getting on a bus or jumping off a bridge, but he was hoping the stuff inside the flask would help him make up his mind. Because Jeremy was done accepting the hand that fate had dealt him. He was going to take responsibility for his own life, no matter how little of it might be left. It was now or never. If he was going to die, he’d better get moving. The bus was leaving the station at five past midnight.
He didn’t even know why he had the ticket with him. No bus could take him away from his problems, away from his pain. They would follow him around like a morbid shadow, always licking at his heels. But something made him take it, and that same something made him put it in his pocket right before he walked out the front door. Either way, he wasn’t going back. Not to that trailer. Not to that life.
He moved out of the trailer park gate, and as he spat on the rusty sign that read WELCOME TO SUNNYVALE MOBILE HOME COMMUNITY, a strange question slipped into his thoughts. Had he said good-bye to everyone? To everything?
It was strange, only because Jeremy had no one and nothing. No pets, no family who cared, no friends. He was all alone in the world, so who would he say good-bye to?
The sky above was as clear as it could be, a blanket of stars above him. The air was warm enough to skip wearing a jacket, but cool enough to warrant a hoodie. Large oak trees lined the two lane road outside the trailer park, casting huge black shapes against the backdrop of perfect stars. Jeremy shoved his thumbs in his front pockets and walked down the road, glimpsing up every now and then to admire the stars. He’d always liked nighttime.
The Johnson Street bridge was about a mile from the trailer park. It was a train bridge, but as far as he had ever seen, no trains ever used it. The metal was rusty, and weeds grew up along each end, poking through the cracked pavement where the tracks of the bridge met the tracks embedded in cement on either side. Like everything else in this town, it was used up and forgotten.
He stepped onto the rails and balanced his way to the center of the bridge before moving to the side that faced away from town—the side that showed nothing but trees and the river and the calm serenity of night. Ducking under, he made his way to the edge, holding on to the bridge with his hands, his feet poised on his toes. He leaned over a bit, just wanting a moment to look and to think before he jumped. But no thoughts came. He’d been expecting a crashing wave of doubt or a bright reasoning of why he should live. But there was nothing. Nothing but him and the bridge and his ripped up sneakers. Nothing but the night and a light breeze in his hair and the smell of goddamn dish soap on his clothes. There was nothing.
Nothing.
He leaned farther forward, relaxing his grip on the metal rails. This was it. He was going to let go. No more pain. No more loneliness. Just the emptiness of what comes with death. He was ready.
Out of the corner of his eye something moved. Instinctually, he tightened his grip on the cool metal once again, leaning back and turning his head toward it. Sitting on the bar to his right was a boy about his age, with shaggy black hair and skin so pale that it almost glowed. He was dressed in black slacks in need of ironing, a black sports coat with the rolled sleeves pushed up to his elbows and patches all up and down the sleeves, a T-shirt from some band called The Smiths, and on his feet purple Chucks that had seen better days. He didn’t speak. Just sat there, looking down at the water, as if he were contemplating something deep and meaningful. Or waiting. Jeremy couldn’t tell which.
For a long time Jeremy didn’t speak. For one, he didn’t really want to engage in conversation with anyone. Anything he’d had to say, he’d already said. For two, he didn’t really want to leave. This was it. The bridge. Him. The end.
So he stood there, occasionally glancing at the boy, wondering what he was doing there, how he had gotten over the rail and stood beside Jeremy without him noticing, and what the odds might be that they were both there for the same reason. He didn’t think he could go through with it with an audience, and certainly not with another participant. But he wasn’t exactly sure what to do. There was no going back to the trailer, and the bus ticket wouldn’t get him anywhere but onto another bridge, in another town. It had to be tonight. He needed peace. But he needed to acquire that peace alone.
He parted his lips and took in a breath, but before he could speak, the boy said, “It’s a long way down, isn’t it?”
Jeremy nodded and practically breathed out his response. “Four hundred twenty-seven feet to the surface. And the water’s sixty feet deep.”
“The surface is pretty still for a river. Almost looks like a reflecting pool on a night like this.” He inhaled on his cigarette and blew a faint haze of smoke out into the night air. His eyes remained focused on the water below. “A good night for reflecting.”
Jeremy furrowed his brow. Who was this guy, anyway? He watched as the boy inhaled again, the paper of the cigarette burning away, the ember brightening before returning to its normal glow. Jeremy didn’t smoke. He’d tried it a few times, but everyone around him smoked, and not smoking just felt like the right thing to do. He didn’t want to be like them. He wanted to be different. And if he couldn’t be that . . . then he didn’t want to be, at all. “You shouldn’t smoke, y’know.”
“Why?” The boy took another drag and, as he exhaled, the corner of his mouth lifted in a small smile. He turned his head, meeting Jeremy’s eye
s for the first time. “Because it’ll kill me?”
If it had been anyone else speaking those words, Jeremy might have brushed them off. People said it all the time. Mostly because they heard it all the time. But this boy . . . something about him made the words seem more poignant, more immediate, more . . . real. “What are you doing out here?”
“Waiting.”
Curiosity got the best of Jeremy. He looked at the boy and cocked his left eyebrow. “For what?”
“For the inevitable.” He shrugged. Briefly, his eyes swept the shadowy treetops in appreciation. “It’s kinda my thing. Waiting. For whatever’s going to happen.”
“Doesn’t sound like much of a hobby.” A cigarette was starting to sound like a good idea. Jeremy was wondering if the kid was ever going to leave.
“It’s more of a job, really. So . . .” The boy reached inside his coat and pulled out an old pocket watch. After noting the time, he put it away again and looked at Jeremy. “It looks like we’ve got some time. You wanna tell me what you’re going to do?”
“Do?” Jeremy blinked in confusion. “What do you mean?”
The boy watched him for a moment, as if waiting for an admission that would never come. When he spoke, his voice was low and almost gravelly. “Well, you walked out here all determined, but the bus ticket in your pocket makes me wonder if you’re serious or not.”
Jeremy’s heart picked up its pace. No one could possibly know what he’d been planning. He’d been so careful. He hadn’t told anyone or left any clues. There was no way this guy had any idea that he’d been planning to jump. No way. “Have you been following me? What are you, some kind of stalker or something?”
“Heh. Yeah. Because I have all the time and interest in the world to follow around some sixteen-year-old kid who can’t even make up his mind about whether or not he’s jumping or getting on a bus.” The smirk on his mouth was sharp and meaningful.
Jeremy stood up straight. “Kid? You’re what, sixteen, seventeen? I’m not a kid. Or if I am, so are you.”
The smirk remained, untouched by Jeremy’s words. “Let’s just say I look younger than I am.”