Quad Squad
Page 26
Everything's Gonna Be Alright
Rachel what is going on???? I just talked to Maya’s mother. She says that the two of you are not there??
Mom, I’m sorry!! It’s really complicated.
Where are you, Rachel?
in a car. Outside of a party.
What? Whose car? What party?
Mom I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m trying to do the right thing
Tell me where you are
Here comes Tim he’s going to drive us back right now I’m really sorry
Rachel do not get in that car
I’m safe mom I’m sorry I’ll be back at mayas really soon i love u
“Hi, Jerry,” he heard, quietly, and somehow in his stupidity he didn’t recognize at first where it was coming from. He thought it was the phone.
“911, what is your emergency?”
“Um, hold on?” Jerry said into the phone.
He looked down. Sabrina’s eyelashes were fluttering, and she had a sort of half smile.
He said, “Are you okay? Are you alive?”
She said, “Um, Jerry?”
“This is 911, are you in danger?” the phone called out.
“Um, no? I guess not? Can I -- can I call you back?” realizing as he said it that he sounded so, so stupid. He hung up.
“Um, Jerry?”
“Yes? Sabrina?” He looked at her, lying there, on the bathroom floor, and had no idea what she was going to say next, but he had a feeling he wasn’t going to like it. She seemed to be pretty much waking up now.
She opened her eyes fully and pushed her hair out of her face, then said, “Jerry?”
“Yeah? Yes, Sabrina?”
“Can you get your hand off my chest?”
“Oh! Oh, shit! Sorry!” He pulled it back like his hand was burning.
Sabrina felt a little smile coming over her.
“It’s not that big a deal,” she said. “What are you doing here? Were you calling me?”
“Me? No, I was -- no, I texted you a bunch, though.”
She looked around, but she couldn’t remember where her phone was. “I think it’s charging, I ran out of battery,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, then stupidly added, “I do that sometimes.”
She said, “What did you say?”
“What?”
“In the texts.”
“Oh. Oh, there. In the texts.”
“Why are you breathing hard?”
“I ran. I … look, just -- you don’t have to read all that, all those texts.”
“But basically.”
“But basically -- listen, do you want to get up, maybe?”
She sighed and said, “Um, yes and no?”
He said, “You should probably get off the floor. You’re on the bathroom floor.”
She nodded, which looked weird from a sideways position on the floor. “Yeah. I think I fell asleep.”
“Oh. Okay. You didn’t…?”
She waited, then said, “Didn’t what?”
“Did you -- look, I’m sorry, but I thought that maybe you had taken something? Like, because you weren’t feeling good?”
She thought for a while. Thinking seemed to be going really slowly. “You mean like, pills? To, like, kill myself?”
He swallowed. “Did you?”
“No.”
“Oh. Oh, God, I’m sorry. I just took -- I guess I took it the wrong way.”
She said, “Actually, no, you didn’t, not so much.” She sighed. “I mean, I think about it, to be honest.” A tear slid down her cheek but she also smiled a little and wiped it away.
He said, “Oh.”
She was surprised she had told him. Maybe it had something to do with him asking about it, or coming over to see if she was okay. He was sweet.
She said, “Were you calling 911?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m not dead,” she said.
“Yeah, no,” he said.
“Not yet,” she said.
He didn’t laugh. He wasn’t sure if it was a joke. He said, “Do you want to get up?”
“Yeah, okay.”
He put out his hands and she tried to find the strength to get up. She grabbed his hands and slowly got all the way up.
“I’m sorry my house is such a mess,” she said. She walked into the hallway. He followed, not knowing what else to do.
She gave a half smile. “I’m sorry I’m such a mess.”
He didn’t know what to say to that, so he said, “Where is everybody?”
“Who? Oh, my mom and Blaine?”
“I guess.”
“Out.”
“Okay. I’m just saying, like, if there’s a problem? Maybe you should tell your mom?”
“Oh, God no,” Sabrina said. “That is, like, the problem.”
“Oh,” Jerry said.
“My room, ta da,” she said, displaying her hand toward it, palm up. “I know it’s tiny and messy, you don’t have to say it’s nice.”
“It’s tiny and messy,” he said, and for the first time she laughed.
“I guess come in?” she said. “There’s nowhere to sit.”
She sat down on her bed and he sat next to her. She grabbed her phone and said, “Look at all these texts. I think I have a stalker.”
“What, no that’s --”
“I’m just kidding, Jerry.”
“Oh. Yeah, I know.”
She read through the texts. Jerry thought about stuff, including mostly A. The fact that she had basically admitted she was suicidal and B. The fact that she had basically said that it was her mother’s fault, so now she probably wasn’t going to tell anyone except maybe him, and C. The fact that was sitting on a bed with her and even thought it was totally, totally inappropriate he was getting a, like, physical response, or whatever?
She said, “I’m so tired.”
He said, “I was thinking, maybe you should call someone?”
“Someone who?”
“Like, because you feel bad?”
She thought for a while. “You mean a psychiatrist, like?”
“Oh. I guess that. But I was thinking a hotline, like? They had those people, in health?”
She thought, and then said, “I was probably absent.”
“Yeah, I guess.” He tapped at his phone. “You could call these people? Here, you can use my phone.”
“I don’t want to call a suicide hotline, Jerry.”
He still had his phone held out, so he just sort of left it there, hanging in the air.
“That was intense!” Mike said, pulling and pulling on the handle of the back door of the car, which was locked.
“It wasn’t that big a deal,” Tim said, glancing back up to the house.
“Dude!” Malik said, running up to them. “Andrea, you alright?”
“What? Malik? Yeah, nothing…”
Maya said, “Hey, Malik.”
Andrea thought: God, now you show up?
“Malik,” Tim said.
“Malik. What’s good?” Mike asked, then immediately regretted it because it sounded like he was trying too hard, he knew that, but he couldn’t take it back now, plus it sounded like he wasn’t taking this whole crisis seriously, but he was, but was it really a crisis, or basically when you got down to it was it just Andrea had just gotten drunk?
“Oh, my God!” Rachel said, jumping out of the car. “We have to go right now, Maya!”
“What? What is it?”
“What the fuck?” Tim demanded.
“My mom is freaking out!”
“Shit,” Maya said.
“Oh,” Tim said.
“Can I get a ride?” Malik asked.
“What happened to Ray?” Andrea asked.
“Exactly!” Malik said, kind of hyperventilating. “I think he ditched us. His car’s not here, he isn’t answering texts…”
“Who’s Ray?” Mike asked.
Tim said, “What happened?”
<
br /> Malik said, “There was this fight and these racist dudes who own the house were all up in Ray’s face and then Vinh showed up and flashed a piece!”
“Fucking Vinh,” Tim said immediately. “Way to escalate shit.”
Mike thought, you flashed a knife, but didn’t say anything.
Maya said to Malik and Tim, “Can we get out of here already?”
“Yeah,” Tim agreed, running around behind the car, but Maya, thinking fast, said, “Here, I’ll drive.”
Tim stopped. “You sure?”
“You don’t have to,” Rachel said quickly, maybe too quickly, like she didn’t want to insult Maya, but her driving?
“No, it’s my mom’s car, I should do it,” Maya said, calculating. There were five seats, two up front, three in back, and with Malik and Andrea now there were six people, which meant that someone would have to sit on a lap and that would obviously be a girl and Maya did not want to have to end up on Malik’s lap and definitely definitely did not want to have to end up on Mike’s lap, so if she drove that would be someone else’s problem. A girl could sit on a girl, that was normal, but if you insisted that it had to be that way then people would take it weird like you were avoiding sitting on somebody’s lap for a few minutes and that would be even weirder, and all she had to do to avoid all that was drive.
Tim gave her the keys. Rachel sat up in the front passenger seat where she had been and Mike and Malik got in the back.
Andrea said, “Tim, can I sit in your lap or something, we need to crunch in?”
“Not a problem,” he said.
All Andrea knew was that she didn’t want to sit on Mike or Malik’s lap, those were way complicated, and she didn’t consider that you could sit on Rachel’s lap in the front until it was too late and they were all in and she was on one side with Malik next to her looking scared and Mike on the other side looking out the window away from her for obvious reasons of avoiding her and Maya both, and Tim just sitting there under her pretending like he didn’t have a boner. She didn’t even feel like dealing with any of that right now or any more, goddamn guys and all their -- that guy in the house had been -- she didn’t even want to think about that kind of thing any more.
Suddenly she started crying, pretty hard.
The guys all just looked super uncomfortable. Rachel reached back and pet her head. Maya turned around a few times and said stuff like, “Everything’s gonna be alright.”