He stops chewing and considers me for a moment. A look crosses his face like none I’ve ever seen on him, a look I didn’t think was possible. Justin pities me.
He swallows. “My mom started monitoring,” he says. “She keeps the pills now.”
I feel a dead weight in my stomach, like I’m standing at the edge of the world while the rest of it is crumbling behind me, like soon all that’s left will be me on a tiny piece of dirt, surrounded by space.
“Sorry,” he says.
All I can do is nod and start walking. I am floating away, around the side of the school and into the rain. I feel the cold drops hit my neck, the wet grass brush against my ankles. That is all I feel. I have skin and nothing else. I am a shell with nothing inside it.
I walk to the pay phone in the front of the school. I call my mom collect.
“Hello?” she says. I can hear the theme music of her favorite video game in the background.
“Mom, can you come pick me up?”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m still sick.”
“Sure, okay,” she says. “Can you wait an hour? I’m kind of busy right now.”
“No,” I say. “Come get me now.” My voice breaks at the end, whiny, like a child on the verge of a tantrum.
“Okay, okay,” she says, not even trying to hide the fact that she’d rather play video games than pick up her daughter, who could be dying.
Our apartment is three miles from school. She will be here any minute. I just need to wait. I can do this. I can wait.
I hear the front door slam against the side of the building. I hear the hard voices of the gangster girls. I see them and their matching red puffy coats. I try hiding behind a pole but it is not thick enough to cover all of me. If I stand still enough, they won’t see me. If I don’t make a sound, they will never know I am here.
I can see them from where I am hiding. The big one with the face covered in pimples pulls out a cigarette and the little one with the harelip lights it for her. The fat one scratches her crotch.
I stay as still as I can, waiting for the moment my mom’s car drives up so I can run to the sidewalk and jump in. I watch the street for her but she’s not there. I look back at the gangster girls and they are all looking at me. I moved my head too fast. They see me. They are coming. All three of them are walking toward me and there’s nowhere I can go.
“Hey, bitch,” the big one says. They are getting closer. I start backing away.
“Hey, princess,” the fat one says. “We just want to talk to you.” I back into the side of the building, into the sharp edge of the sign that says Kirkland Junior High. I rub my bruised hip. There is nowhere to go.
“We heard you been talking shit,” says the little one. I shake my head.
“Why you lying?” says the fat one.
“I’m not,” I say, my voice high and whiny.
“Why you say all that shit?” says the big one.
“I didn’t,” I say, trying to back up further, trying to make the wall absorb me. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You calling me a liar?” says the big one. Her face is in my face. Her breath is cigarettes and fried food.
“No, of course not,” I stutter. She is not convinced. She is twice as big as I am. She is so close our noses are practically touching.
I see Mom’s car out of the corner of my eye. I breathe.
“My mom’s here,” I say.
“I don’t give a shit,” she says.
“I have to go,” I say. I step sideways. I find a way out of the trap between her body and the wall. I start walking. I can hear them close behind me. I see Mom looking at us, confused, wondering who my new friends are. I walk faster. They are still behind me. I am touching the door handle. I am lifting it up. I pull but there is nothing. The door is locked. The big girl’s hands are on my shoulders. Her voice is in my ears, “Turn around, bitch.” My eyes scream, Unlock the door. Mom fumbles for the button and I am not breathing and my heart is in my throat. I hear the click of the door unlocking and I squeeze my hand but it is not on the door. It is being pulled away. There is a giant girl behind me turning me around.
There are hands on my shoulders. There is hot breath on my face, reeking of rot. There are hands around my neck. My feet are not on the ground. I feel my back slide up the side of the car. I feel my weight hanging from two fat thumbs lodged in my throat, my eyes popping out of my head, my feet kicking air, my feet kicking the car. I hear the dull thuds on dent-resistant metal. I hear the silence from inside.
This is not happening. I am not here. I am not thinking about my mother as I can’t even gasp for air. I’m not thinking about my mother or the hands wrapped around my throat and the pain that runs from my jaw through my spine, my teeth gritting, smashed together, my tongue caged and thrashing, my feet thrashing against air, against dent-resistant metal, my hands clutching at smooth metal that has no holds, my hands gripping at the girl with the man-sized hands, the wrists the size of ankles. I’m not thinking about my mother in the car behind my back. I’m not thinking about the dull, deep thuds she must hear, that she is trying not to hear, even though she’s only an arm’s reach away, behind glass that does not break no matter how hard I slam against it.
I am on the ground. I cannot see. I hear the girls walking away. I breathe and it feels like bricks inside my chest. I open the door. It is not locked. I put my backpack at my feet. I look straight ahead. The car moves. Mom lights a cigarette with the tip of her old one. Her hands are shaking. She’s breathing hard. Smoke stabs my lungs. She looks straight ahead. I cough so hard I want to throw up. She turns on talk radio. Loud.
(TWENTY)
Silence like waves, undulating like nausea. Like methodical punches in the stomach, shoves, rolling earthquake. Silence in the way Mom grips the steering wheel, the way the radio voices blur into the buzz of frequencies, invisible mouths moving, nothing coming out. Shallow breaths release and are chased back in. My throat pulses.
“Mom,” I say.
Her hands on the steering wheel, her lips nailed shut.
“Mom,” I say, louder.
Her eyes squeezing shut. The car going faster.
“Mom!” I scream. The radio voices scream. My hands grab dashboard as the car brakes just inches before crashing into the truck in front of us. Horns honk from behind. The car settles into its abrupt stillness.
“We have to go to Sarah’s house,” I say.
Mom doesn’t move.
“We have to go now.”
She shakes her head slowly.
“Mom, we have to get her.”
Nothing.
“Please,” I say.
A single tear drops down her cheek. I watch its gentle journey down, watch it settle, suspended at the bottom of her soft chin.
“Turn here,” I say.
She does.
“Turn right here,” then, “Left here,” then, “Stop.”
“I’ll be right back,” I say. She nods, still not looking at me. The tear hanging from her chin has grown. Her cheeks are lined with long, glistening streaks.
I get out of the car. I close the door. I count my steps as I walk to the house. I ring the doorbell. I knock. I wait and hear birds chirping. I knock again. Nothing. I put my hand on the cold doorknob. It turns. The door opens. I smell the familiar stench.
“Sarah,” I call into the house. Nothing.
“Sarah!” I yell again. I close the door behind me and it is suddenly, eerily quiet, like this cluttered room is now all that exists, like closing the door destroyed everything that makes sound, all cars, all birds, all lawn mowers and airplanes and voices. It is just me and the house and the absence of Sarah.
“Sarah.” My voice is swallowed up by the stained carpet, the walls yellow with smoke, the cobwebby corners, the stacks and piles of garbage and broken things.
I hear slow, wet breaths. I see Lenora on the couch with her eyes closed, in nothing but her underwear and an open bathrobe.
/> “Hey,” I say. She grunts and her body shudders. I navigate across the cluttered floor. I shake her clammy shoulder. I smell the poison seeping out of her pores.
“Lenora!” I yell in her face, and her eyes shoot open and she sits up straight.
“What? What?” she says, looking frantically around the room, finally finding me in front of her.
“Jesus, girl,” she says, and lies back down, her eyes heavy again.
“Where’s Sarah?” I say.
She’s nodding off. Her eyes are closing. I grab both of her shoulders and shake her back awake.
“Where’s Sarah, Lenora?”
She looks at me, but her eyes don’t focus.
“Gone,” she says.
“Gone where?”
“They took her.”
“Who took her? The social workers?”
She shakes her head weakly. Her eyes close again.
“Her dad?” I say. “Did her dad take her?” Oh, God, I am thinking. Please God, no.
Lenora shakes her head. “He didn’t get a chance,” she slurs. “She’s the smart one. Sarah.”
“Where is she?” I am losing my patience. I want to slap this woman. I want to hit her hard.
Lenora opens her eyes, and for a moment she seems sober. She looks into my eyes and says with a completely blank face, “She’s dead, girl. She took all the pills in the house.”
There is a numbness that’s greater than all the others, one that is different than floating to the ceiling, different than a wall of fog or an empty shell or stoned stupor or blank space or sheer will. It is numbness that starts with the sharpest pain you’ve ever felt. There is a dull knife that cuts your heart out. There are giant fists that smash it into a bloody pulp. But then you are left with a cavity, an empty, aching space that can feel nothing but loss, a word, loss, abstract and unspecific.
And this is the greatest movie so far. The shot is perfectly composed. The lighting is sinister. The props are all expertly placed: the piles of trash, the cigarette butts, the liquor bottles, the empty fridge. The only sounds are Lenora’s wheezing breaths and the dripping faucet in the kitchen. Then the voice-over: “She’s dead, girl,” again and again until you have to believe it, until the credits roll and the lights come back and you can leave the theater and return to your safe, normal life, untouched by anything, where you can shake off the dying residue of feelings that have nothing to do with you.
She’s dead, girl.
She’s dead.
“I told them I didn’t want her,” Lenora says, and her voice sounds far away, fluttering and drab like moth wings. “So they took her. What do you think they’re going to do with her?”
Her fingers brush my arm. My skin feels like it’s across the room. I see her touch me, but it is seconds before I feel it.
“Hey you,” she says, slapping my hand weakly. “I asked you a question.”
“I don’t know,” I say. I am staring at the sweating window, at the smears of color contained in the tiny droplets of water. “I don’t know what they do with the bodies.”
Bodies. A body. Not Sarah. Just another girl’s body that is not useful anymore.
“The bodies,” says Lenora as I walk slowly to the door. I can see my legs moving, but I do not feel them.
“Cassie,” she says. “Is that your name?”
I keep walking.
“Cassie. Cassandra. What an ugly name.”
The birds are still chirping as I walk to the car. My legs are weak, like I have been walking for days. It is not them carrying me. They move out of habit, because they don’t know what else to do. I am floating. The birds are somewhere close, but I do not see them.
I open the car door. I get inside. I buckle my seat belt. Mom stares at me. Her face is drenched with fear and love.
I start screaming.
(TWENTY-ONE)
The other day, I found one of your hairs on my blanket. I could tell it was not a hair you pulled out, not part of a clump you tore out of your scalp. It was a single hair, one that fell out naturally, one you never knew was missing. I held it in my fingers and thought it strange that it could exist without your body, that it was the last piece of you anyone would ever see.
Sarah, I put the hair in my mouth. I don’t know why, but I pushed it in until it curled on my tongue. I drank stale water from the cup by my bed and felt it slither halfway down my throat. It’s a strange feeling to have a hair stuck in your throat, half-tickling, half-choking, like it’s trying to climb its way back out, like it’s trying to reach sky and air and light.
I drank more water until I couldn’t feel it anymore. It was somewhere inside me, but now it’s gone. Disintegrated. Turned into nothing.
I wake up these days suspicious, wondering why I slept so well. Then I remember the pills Mom gave me to make me calm down. Then I remember the car ride home. Lenora. Alex. The screaming. You.
And that’s when it hits me, the punch in the stomach, the carving out of my insides. That’s when I realize that none of this is a movie. I will not go out with a bang. There is no ending. There are no credits. I will wake up and I will keep waking up and this will always be waiting for me.
Or maybe not. Maybe this is the movie where Cassie wakes up to the sound of walkie-talkies and hard knocks at her door. The mother’s voice filtered through sleep-fog, “Honey, please wake up.” A montage of memories: crowded hallways and big girls, the feeling of choking, the sound of birds chirping, the smell of damp cigarette smoke and rotting food.
You, pale and lifeless. You, with your stomach full of poison. You, sitting on your mattress with a packed suitcase next to you, waiting for someone who never came.
“Cassandra.” The girl hears her name. She is not as beautiful as she was at the beginning of the movie. She gets out of bed and opens the door. There are a man and a woman in blue uniforms. All she can see are the guns on their belts. All she can see is the man staring at her nipples through her thin pajama shirt as he says, “We just have some questions to ask you, dear.” He sounds kind even as he looks her up and down.
This is the kind of movie where the cops take notes in their little notepads. The mother tells them about the phone calls the girl missed while she was sleeping, death threats from the former best friend. Then it is the girl’s turn to explain how it all came to this. This is when everything comes out. This is the purging, the moment of truth, when all secrets become not-secrets, when the cops take notes and make them official. This is the movie with the weeping mother, with the father bursting through the front door at just the right moment, the father who never before left work early, just when the man cop is saying, “We know that family well. We’ll make sure she never bothers you again,” just when the lady cop is patting the girl’s knee, cooing, “It’s not your fault.” Then the girl cries, falling to the floor in gratitude at this excellent timing, at this synchronized concern, at all of these ears listening. The end.
Or maybe the girl feels nothing. Maybe she is doing what she must to make the phone stop ringing, doing what she must to make the cops go away, to get her house back to normal, to make everything silent like it should be. This could be the movie where nothing changes, where everyone ends up exactly where they started.
Another moving van. Another new school. New girls and new boys who still want the same things.
The daughter on a couch in a small, sterile office, staring at a therapist’s leg hair stubble sticking through nylons, staring at the clock on the wall. The sound of tick, tick, tick. The walk back to the car, the mother’s hopeful face.
“What did you talk about?” the mother asks.
“Nothing,” says the girl.
Tick, tick, tick.
A doctor and a prescription pad lined with scribbles. A bottle of pills glittering with hope. The girl puts one in her mouth, swallowing. The pill settles into her stomach. The girl waits for hours for it to kick in, “to take the edge off” like the doctor said, to make everything go away.
But you are still there.
And then it is winter again. The edges of the lake have frozen over, all the life below hidden, suspended. And there is the girl, Cassie, on the shore, just breathing.
Or what if this is a different kind of movie? What if this is a kind of movie that hasn’t even been made yet? What if this is my movie, really mine? What if I am the one with the camera in my hand, my fingers on the buttons? What if it is my voice saying stop, go, action, cut? What if I am the one giving all the directions? And I am the actor. And you are the actress. And this is our set, our soundstage, this place that doesn’t exist yet, a floating island out in the middle of the ocean, warm water lapping against the sandy shore. This is a place where it is never winter, where there is food everywhere, hanging from trees, waiting for us to eat it, perfectly ripe. We shower in waterfalls. We watch the birds do somersaults in the air, the most beautiful birds you’ve ever seen, with wings as long as we are tall, red, yellow, orange, feathers like flame. The feathers fall to the ground for us to put in our hair, for us to weave together to make our clothes. There are lakes so clear we can see the bottom lined with diamonds.
There are no shadows, no caves, no dark places where things can hide. There is only you and me and the birds with flame feathers, only soft sand and warm sun and moss for us to sleep on. We will lie on the beach and write songs on each other’s skin. We will sing them to the birds and they will sing back. When the sun sets, it will be a different kind of dark. Not dark like suffocation, not like everything gone. Not a dark that can be used against us. It will simply be dark like sleeping, dark like heavy eyes.
We will build a fire with feathers. We will watch the light dance on each other’s faces. It will keep us warm but it will not burn us. Because it’s fire that is ours, fire that we made. Can you feel it? Hold your hands out and wave them a little. Look, you can wave the smoke in any direction, into any shape. These are our smoke signals, puffs of white in the night air only we can read. We will build a fire bigger than any fire that’s ever existed. The smoke will be strong enough to cross an ocean. Maybe one of our smoke rings, one of our Morse code letters, will travel somewhere we haven’t been yet. It will reach land and someone will see it and they will wonder what it means.