Bunny

by Mona Awad

  I hang my head. But I have to ask. “What did you say to Ava?”

  I can tell by the hardness in her dark, lovely eyes that oh you’re crossing a line, Bunny. But she humors me.

  “Who?” she asks. Fake confusion followed by fake recollection dawns over her face.

  “Oh. You mean your friend. She is your friend, isn’t she? Eva? Ada?”

  “Ava,” I say, and immediately feel like I’m giving her something I shouldn’t give her.

  “Ava. That’s right. Such style. A little dark and over the top for me, of course, but great for what it is. Perfect, really. Exactly what I’d picture.” All the sorrow in her expression is making me ill. “How come you never told us about her before, Samantha?” she asks, playing the concerned therapist, leaning forward so that I can smell all the essential oils in which she bathes.

  “What did you say to her?” I ask her again more forcefully, surprising myself.

  The smiling edges of her mouth go hard, her eyes become little black pits.

  You are so, so beautiful, I told her in tears just the other night. Even though in that moment she was not beautiful to me at all, but terrifying. Her silver hair and her so-dark eyes.

  “We were talking and then she just walked off.”

  “She just walked off? Just like that?”

  “I did ask her what pets she’d had as a child. Just to make conversation. But I don’t know how that could possibly have set her off.”

  She shrugs. Helpless. Oh, Samantha, how can I possibly be expected to understand the weirdo ways of you and your gritty ilk? “She did seem like she was in a hurry. I assume she had some other place to go? I didn’t ask.”

  I run across the lot, scan the street for her, but there’s nothing there. Dark clouds drifting over weathered houses. Withered people waiting for a bus. This is a place of despair, Smackie. This is a place of fucking despair.

  I turn to face Eleanor, who has walked out onto the sidewalk and stands watching me, her face awash in a condescending sympathy and something else. Pity? Curiosity? Something that is making my skin crawl.

  “Oh, hey. Look. Isn’t that your friend Jonah over there?”

  “What? Where?”

  “There. Hi, Jonah! Hey, come over here! Jonah!” She waves and waves and I follow her gaze to where Jonah’s hunched figure leans against a car, smoking, a book open in his other hand.

  “Jonah! Jonah!” she calls.

  Shhh, I want to say.

  But Jonah looks up. He squints and sees Eleanor waving and looks around him, because she can’t possibly be waving at him. But she is. He smiles and waves back uncertainly.

  “Hey, Jonah, come over here!” Eleanor shouts.

  He shoves the book in his pocket and shuffles over. Smiling at Eleanor and me with what I can only describe as undisguised joy.

  “Hi, Samantha. Hi, Ellie.”

  “Jonah,” she says, clapping her hands like he’s an approaching parade. “It’s so good to see you.”

  He looks at her with surprise. It is? Really?

  “And Samantha was just talking about you.”

  “She was? That’s cool, Samantha.” He smiles at me, but I can’t bring myself to smile back. “I was just thinking about you. I saw you earlier today and tried to say hi but I wasn’t sure if you saw me. You seemed sort of busy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I hadn’t seen you around in a while. I guess you’ve been writing and stuff.”

  “Oh, Samantha’s deep into the Work, the Process,” Eleanor says. “Aren’t you?”

  I say nothing.

  “Cool. Me too,” Jonah says. “Were you guys writing at the diner? I go there to write sometimes too. Everyone in there is so nice. Dolores is always giving me free coffee and stuff. I like the shark a lot too.”

  “The shark?” Eleanor says.

  “Yeah, there’s this fish in the aquarium that sort of looks like a shark.”

  “Wow. A fish that sort of looks like a shark. So interesting. I can’t even imagine it. Can you imagine it, Samantha?”

  I look at Eleanor, smiling at me so falsely, her hatred of me as clear and deep as the glacial eyes of Beowulf IV. As naked as Jonah’s joy. I see it plainly now, just as I saw it before.

  Jonah beams at us. He sees nothing, of course. Two girls smiling at one another. It’s nice.

  “So, Samantha, how’s Workshop going?”

  “Jonah, it’s fine, okay?” I snap. But then I feel guilty, so I add, “I mean, it’s a little overwhelming. I’m kind of drowning a bit right now.”

  I feel Eleanor slipping away beside me.

  “Oh, that’s too bad, Samantha. I’m sorry.”

  “It is. Look, I should really—”

  “Is it because of those rabbits?”

  “What?”

  “Earlier this fall, you were talking to those rabbits. Remember, on the green? You looked sort of freaked out.”

  “The green,” I repeat, watching Eleanor and the Bunnies gather and pile into Eleanor’s SUV. One of her golden retrievers is barking and wagging his tail happily in the back. Watch it or they’ll turn you into Ryan Gosling. I try to wave at her to tell her stop, wait, but she just gives me a smiling wink like I’m leaving you here not because I’m a fucking cunt but because I’m being socially mindful of your chat with the freak boy.

  “I mean, I didn’t overhear it or anything,” Jonah is saying.

  “Overhear what?”

  “Your conversation with the rabbits. Was it intense?”

  “Yeah. No. I don’t know, Jonah.” The rain starts falling again, heavily. Ava. She could be anywhere by now.

  “I’m sorry but I have to go.”

  “Wait, Samantha. It’s raining pretty hard. Do you need a ride somewhere?”

  18.

  We’re in the car he calls the Whale. Jonah is driving about five miles an hour, smoking and smiling beatifically at the windshield. Cranked on the stereo is a weird jazz that consists mainly of horn sounds and squeaks.

  “I hope you don’t mind this music,” he says.

  “No.” I want to take the CD and throw it out the window, possibly setting it on fire first.

  “I love jazz so much,” he says.

  We’ve gone to the bus station, the train station, Ava’s house (empty), then back to the bus station.

  “You leaving town, Samantha?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Where are you headed?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Just being spontaneous? That’s cool.”

  But she wasn’t at the bus station or the train station.

  “Decided not to leave?” he says, when I return to the car after circling the bus station like a zombie for a second time. I nod at the windshield.

  “Cool, Samantha, I’m glad. Well, where to now? You want to get like a tea? I think you could use—”

  “Could we just drive around more maybe?”

  She can’t have gone far in this weather, could she? Then I recall those monsoon nights in June. Us drunk beyond comprehension on the roof. Her staring up at the storm like it was a bright blue sky.

  Let’s go for a walk, she’d say.

  Are you fucking kidding? In this? But she was already gone.

  Hours later, I’d wake with her face dripping over mine. Black clothes soaked to her skin.

  Morning, Sunshine.

  “Sure, Samantha. We can drive around. Like where?”

  “Like just all around?” I’m looking out the window but I don’t see anything but gray sky, water sploshing the windows.

  “Feeling a little wanderlusty, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I get that way too. Sometimes I’ll just drive around for hours. I won’t have a destination or anything. I used to go to
bookstores but I can’t go in them anymore because I buy too many books. Last time I went into Ada books, I spent almost a hundred bucks. More than a hundred probably.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Yeah, except I was broke after. But it was worth it. I got these amazing poetry books and jazz books. This crazy New Age book called Moonchild by this insane guy from 1900. It was crazy. Pretty cool, though.”

  He’s looking at me so I nod. “Sounds cool.”

  If the storm would just clear I’d be able to see her. What could Eleanor possibly have said to her?

  Samantha told me she secretly hates you, by the way.

  Samantha has us now. She doesn’t need you.

  But I can’t picture her saying that without teasing her hair and giving the whole scene an eighties movie soundtrack. And why would Ava even care what Eleanor said? She already said she was leaving. I start to feel sick.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re not leaving, Samantha. Haven’t seen you around much this semester. I guess you’re been hanging out with Eleanor and them a lot now?”

  I see her face, its sharp, dainty bones, the eyes like jeweled pits, and then I remember that she is the Duchess. How could I have called her by any other name? She was looking at me with such hideous . . . what was it? Knowledge. She was looking at me with knowledge. Like she had the most delicious secret morsel on me. So sweet. So creamy, velvety good. I know you, Bunny.

  “Sort of,” I say.

  “That’s cool,” he says. “Sort of weird, though,” he adds.

  I look at him. “Why?”

  “Because you hate them, don’t you?”

  I feel myself go red.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Yeah you did,” Jonah says. “Remember? We were at the spring party and you and I had a smoke outside. I gave you a cigarette and then you lit the filter, remember? I tried to give you another one but you wanted to smoke that one, which was cool. I guess you were pretty drunk by then. So I asked you how things were going and you said, ‘Terrible,’ and I said, ‘How come, Samantha?’ and then you said, ‘The girls in my year are Cuntscapades, Jonah.’”

  The moment comes back to me now. The terrible smell of burning filter and my own singed hair. The Bunny-induced bile rising in my throat. My drunk heart hammering with whatever mix of drinks I inhaled at that sad excuse of a party. The alley getting weirdly narrower. The night tilting slightly to the left. The rage I felt coursing through my arms at watching them repeatedly congeal into cooing huggy swamps as they bewailed having to part for the summer. Their tipsy proclamations. I’ll miss you, Bunny! Bunny, I’ll miss you too! I’ll miss you, Bunny! No, Bunny, I’ll miss you most.

  Cuntscapades!!!

  “I didn’t say that,” I say, staring at the windshield.

  “I’m pretty sure you did. I remember I was sort of surprised, but I thought, Okay. She probably knows because she has to go to more classes with them. But I don’t really notice those things. I try not to anyway. They seem nice to me.” He turns to me and smiles, so happy in his bubble where everyone is nice. Everyone must mean well. Surely.

  “They aren’t nice,” I suddenly hear myself say. “Actually.”

  “They’re not?”

  And I’m about to tell him they make fun of you all the time. They say you walk around in an Antabuse cloud and the only reason your poetry is any good is because you’re so fucked up. They made fun of your sister’s outfit when she attended your reading last year. Actually texted me about it even though they never texted me. Did you see that hat, girl? Monkey covering its eyes. Monkey covering its mouth. Laughing crying cat face.

  “No,” I say turning to him. Looking right at him. “They’re not.”

  “Huh.” He raises his eyebrows. “So how come you’re friends with them then?”

  Yes, Samantha why? This is actually such a fucking good question.

  “I—”

  Out of the corner of my eye, through the watery windshield, I think I see Ava. Her black leather back walking hurriedly along the sidewalk.

  “Jonah, stop!”

  I run out into the cold rain the moment he pulls over, slipping on the slippery sidewalk that is fast becoming ice but I run until I’ve caught up with her. Ava. I tap her on the worn leather shoulder.

  A stranger turns to face me.

  * * *

  —

  When I come back he’s waiting for me in his car squawking with dissonant sound. I sit in the ripped-up passenger seat with my wet head in my hands.

  “Samantha, are you okay?”

  “Yes. No.”

  “Are you looking for drugs?”

  “What?”

  “First the bus depot, then the train station, then that weird house you went into and then the bus station again? And just now you ran out of the car toward that dealer? Also, you kind of look like you’re on something. I mean, I’m not judging if you are, but—”

  “This isn’t about drugs, Jonah, I promise. I just . . . I lost something.”

  “Oh no, what did you lose?”

  So concerned and well meaning. I can’t tell him. Don’t have the words or the breath to even begin.

  “A book,” I tell him.

  “I’m sorry, Samantha. Was it like a favorite book? Like one you carried everywhere?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, how about I take you to a bookstore? Maybe we can find it there.”

  “It won’t be there.”

  “Are you sure? The bookstores in this town are pretty good because of all the students who come through. We could go to all of them if you want. Just don’t let me go in with you, otherwise—”

  “I know. You’ll buy everything.”

  He smiles. A smile so kind I almost cry.

  “Jonah, I’m sorry, I really am. Making you drive me all around in the rain—”

  “I get it, Samantha. Books, they’re like old friends. When I was here this summer, I carried four or five with me all the time.”

  “You were here this summer?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I went to visit my uncle in Vancouver for a week, but that was it. I went a bit crazy, I think. I stole a cat.”

  I laugh. “You stole a cat?”

  He smiles at the windshield. His soup-bowl hair is longer, I notice, shaggy around the edges.

  “Just for like a day. Three days. For like a week. Then I gave it back. I felt bad. The owners were so nice to me. They wanted to give me money and stuff. I told them, keep your money.”

  “How come you didn’t go back to Alaska?”

  “Because if I did I’d drink. Hey, it’s snowing.”

  I look through the windshield. It is snowing. I watch the tiny flakes swim through the air like quick fish. We’re by the canal now, and Christmas lights are strung along the bridges, climbing up the streetlights. You better sit tight, my father said, through the waterfall of static, when I brought up the holidays on the phone. But I really want to see you, I had to repeat, louder and louder until he heard me.

  I know. We both know he can’t visit me, as he’s told me in multiple delicate ways. That he’s evading someone—investors, creditors, possibly the authorities, god knows who. I’ll never get the full story. Something about partnering with people who raised money for some resort, then disappeared with the funds, leaving him holding the bag. Investors wanted their money back. Some of them were the kind of people you should never borrow money from, he said. Until things simmer down it’s probably best if I lay low.

  Well, what if I come there then? I asked him.

  Silence. More waterfalls.

  It’s probably best if you stay put. For now.

  But I just want to know you’re okay.

  I’m fine. But I heard the tremor in his voice. His heavy breathing. I could picture how gray and worn he was, sitting a
t the telephone with his endless cigarette. Dogs barking in the background. Roosters cawing.

  Is there a friend you can stay with there? he asked me.

  Through the windshield, I watch all these people who aren’t Ava walk by.

  “I was here this summer too,” I tell Jonah.

  “You were? I wish I’d known. You didn’t go visit family or anything?”

  The word family never fails to make me feel like I’ve been punched. Conjures an iron gate, tall hedges around a house with lit-up windows, me so embarrassingly obviously outside looking in. Pretending I have people to see, somewhere to go.

  “My dad’s out of the country on business.” I instantly regret my phrasing. Wince before he even asks.

  “And your mom?”

  And then she’s right there in my mind. Cigarette smoking between her fingers. Dark hair aggressively chic. Calling my name from the living room. Encouraging me to join her instead of writing or playing whatever imaginary game I was playing in my room. Earth to Samantha. Time to come down out of the clouds, please.

  “She’s dead.”

  “Fuck. I’m sorry, Samantha.”

  “It’s okay.” It isn’t. “It was a while ago.”

  “How did she die?”

  Just running to the store, be right back. The way she said it—so light and quick and already out the door—the familiar roar of Grace Slick as she started her car, the bright blue of the sky that day, I didn’t imagine anything. I didn’t imagine anything for once but that she’d be right back.

  “Car accident.”

  “Jesus. How old were you?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “My dad died when I was seventeen. Lung cancer, so we saw it coming. Still, it was rough.”

  “I’m sorry, Jonah.”

  “It fucked me up pretty good for a while. That’s kind of when I started going off the rails. You know, with drugs and stuff. I mean, I was into them before but after that I kind of lost it, I guess. Like there was no ground anymore, you know?” He smiles at me, sadly.

  “Listen, why don’t you come over? I could make tea and we could listen to records. Maybe I even have a copy of that book you were looking for. You never told me the title.”