by Amy Reed
Old men sat on bar stools watching a dingy TV in the corner. It looked like they had been there for years. All heads turned when we burst through the door. The bartender said, “Hey, I need to see some ID,” but you veered toward the bathroom sign. “Hey,” the bartender said again.
“She just has to use the bathroom,” I said, and followed you in.
You climbed onto the counter, lodged yourself in the corner against the wall, and puked in the sink. The already rancid bathroom filled with smells of whiskey and sadness and half-digested dinner. I tried running the faucet but it wouldn’t go down.
“Fuck, Sadie!” I said.
“Fuck Sadie, fuck Sadie, fuck Sadie,” you cried in response. Your arms hugged your knees against your chest as you rocked back and forth. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck.” You threw up again.
The bartender pounded on the door. “What are you girls doing in there?”
“My friend’s sick,” I said.
“You get out of there or I’m going to call the cops.”
“Come on, Sadie,” I said. You shook your head. Your eyes were closed, and they would not be opening for a long time.
“Come on!”
“I’m calling the cops right now,” the bartender said.
“No, wait,” I said, but he was already gone. I tried pulling you off the counter, but you wouldn’t budge. I tried explaining what was happening so you would understand, but all you did was shake your head. I tried asking you what you were thinking, but you were gone. All I could do was hold your hair and wait for whatever was going to happen.
There was a strange kind of stillness in those moments before the cops arrived. I think it’s possible to be filled with so much worry that fear takes a person full circle to where they reach this saturation point where nothing matters any more. I was worried about what happened to you in the car, worried about the cops, worried about our parents, so worried about everything that I was just numb. The world was so big and heavy around me that it couldn’t even start to fit in my head. There was only this bathroom and the buzz of fluorescent lights. There was the feeling of your hair in my hands, the smell of your insides. There was only this moment, and I was nowhere else. It was the closest to Zen I think I have ever felt.
But then the paramedics arrived with their stethoscopes and questions, their efficient kindness. A female medic told everyone but me to get out, so it was just the three of us in the dirty bathroom. She shined a tiny flashlight in your eyes and asked you how you were doing. “I’m okay,” you said in a little girl voice. “Are you going to take me home?”
“What’s she on?” the woman asked.
“Just whiskey,” I said.
“I need you to tell me everything she took tonight.”
“Just whiskey, I swear.” But maybe not. Maybe you took something else. Maybe the boys gave you something in the car.
“This is Max,” you said, your eyes still closed. “She’s my best friend. She saved me.” Your shoulders shook with sobs and tears seeped out from under your closed lids.
“Well, that was nice of her,” the paramedic said, unmoved.
Someone knocked on the door.
“This is Officer Myers,” a man’s voice said. “Can I come in?”
“Give us a second,” the paramedic said, then I swear she mumbled “fucking cops” under her breath. “What’s your name, sweetheart?” she said gently, holding your face up. You opened your mouth, but nothing came out.
“Sadie,” I answered for you.
“Sadie, you don’t want to do this kind of thing anymore, do you?”
“What thing?” you said as your head dropped back down.
“Getting in trouble like this,” the paramedic said. “This isn’t the kind of girl you want to be, is it?”
You shook your head no. Tears splashed around you.
“I’m going to talk to the officer outside for a second while your friend gets you cleaned up, okay?”
“Okay.”
“You’re too young for this shit.”
“Okay.”
“Say it,” the paramedic said. “Say ‘I’m too young for this shit.’ ”
You mumbled something that sounded reasonably similar. The paramedic looked at me sternly before she left to talk to the officer, one more person agreeing that this was somehow my fault.
“Are you okay?” I asked. You nodded. “Are you ready to go home?”
“We’re in trouble,” you said, suddenly coherent.
“Yes, we are.”
“I’m sorry,” you said. I could tell you were trying to open your eyes.
“I know.”
“I love you, Max,” you said.
“I know, Sadie.”
“You love me too.”
“Yes.”
“Say it. Say you love me too.”
“I love you, Sadie. I love you more that anything in the world.”
The paramedic returned. “I convinced Officer Myers not to write you up this time,” she said. “You girls are really fucking lucky.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you so much.”
“He is going to drive you home, though,” she continued. “And he’s going to talk to your parents, young lady,” she said, putting her hand on your arm. I remember a sudden and blinding jealousy. I wanted her hand on my arm; I wanted a kind stranger to comfort me for once. And then an instant shame like a slap in the face. My best friend was about to be taken home by the cops, and I was worried about what I wanted.
The back of the police car was dark and smelled like disinfectant. The molded plastic seat was hard and cold. Officer Myers lectured us the whole way home through the clear window that separated the good guys in the front from the bad guys in the back. You were passed out, so I was the one who had to listen to his cautionary tales of all the bad things that can happen to drunk girls in the city. It was nothing I hadn’t heard before. Every story he told starred you in my mind, running blind, flailing around and knocking things over, and I was always scrambling behind you trying to pick up the broken pieces.
I got dropped off first. I gave the officer your address. He didn’t bother walking me to the door or talking to my parents, like he had already decided I wasn’t worth the trouble. I was supposed to spend the night at your place, so no one was expecting me home. No lights were on. I let myself in with no one noticing. I watched the cop car drive away with you sleeping soundly in the back seat like you had no idea anything was wrong. I slept well that night, not only because I was exhausted, but because I knew you were at least safe for the night and I didn’t have to take care of you.
You texted me the next day: My dad’s sending me to live in Nebraska for the summer!
Nebraska?! I responded.
It’s good news! you wrote. I’m going to live with my mom!
You had been trying to convince Lark to take you for years. You finally got your wish. All it took was drinking yourself stupid, getting kidnapped by three assholes, puking in a bar sink, and almost getting arrested.
She said you can come too!! So many exclamation points for someone who spent so much of last night puking. Ask your parents!
So I did. And they said yes. And that was that. Two teenage girls shipped off to Nebraska the summer before senior year to work on an organic farm in the middle of nowhere. This is our punishment for that night—lazing away a beautiful summer day, floating on a lake with the sun warming our faces, our own little house and yard and what I am beginning to suspect will be minimal adult supervision. I thought my parents would at least put up something of a fight when I asked, but they gave in easily, as eager to get rid of me as your dad and wicked stepmother were to get rid of you. So here we are, but I am realizing that I am the only one who is punished. I am the only one who actually sees you and the trouble that follows wherever you go. I don’t have the luxury of passing you off to a different parent and buying you a plane ticket to another state. I’m the only one who knows. I’m the only one who ever knows. I’m the o
ne who has to carry all of your secrets.
“Holy shit!” you say, and I feel you splash upright. “Look who lives right across from us.”
I lift my head, and my feet brush against something suspicious in the water. I look across the lake and there he is—Dylan, sitting on the porch of the last cabin, directly across from our trailer. He has a book in one hand and a beer in the other. A shadow hides his eyes, but I can tell he is looking right at us.
“We need binoculars,” you say.
I feel the lake boil.
A series of repeated actions: pulling and picking and setting down and turning over, left then right then up then down, over and over, one small movement after another until they add up to a conclusion—the compost is mixed in with that row of soil or these tomatoes are picked or this box is full of zucchini. We are the original conveyor belts, assembly lines, nothing but muscle and a few basic tools. This is what we’ve been doing since the beginning of civilization, taming the earth into something useful, making it do our bidding, our motions like prayer, like ritual. We massage the earth into an even greater fertility, and in return we ask for life.
There’s only so much talking we can do until we run out of things to say. Then all there is in the way of entertainment is the feel of our bodies moving, the sun on our necks, the voices inside our heads. For a head case like me, this is heaven. The rhythm lulls my noisy brain into something manageable, focused, linear; what is usually swirling and amorphous is now sharp. The soil calms me. I hold it in my hands and feel my feet on the ground, solid, connected to something bigger and stronger than me.
But you act as if you are being tortured. Every minute that passes is a lifetime. Every time I look up, you are taking a break.
“I think I’m dehydrated,” you say.
“But you already drank three water bottles.”
“I’m so tired. My arms feel weak.”
“It’s because you’re working. This isn’t supposed to be easy.”
“You don’t have to be such a bitch.”
You have always had a hard time staying in one place. There is nothing to do but be with yourself. The dirt does not distract you. These zucchini and tomatoes and greens and peppers do not distract you.
“Maybe I can get a job with the animals,” you say.
“Maybe.”
Three months of this to go. I wonder if you will ever stop complaining.
“Hey, look,” you say. I follow your gaze into the distance, beyond the rows of kale and eggplant and something that looks like a green tomato bursting out of a paper lantern. And there is Dylan, mysterious and far away as usual.
“I wonder if we’ll ever see him up close,” you say. “It’s like he’s a ghost or something.”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
“What’s that word I’m thinking of?”
“Enigma.”
“Yeah.” It no longer surprises us that I can read your mind. “Who’s that with him?”
I squint. “I think it’s Old Glen.”
“Huh.”
“I wonder where they’re going.”
Their clothes are clean, and they carry no tools. They don’t look like they’re planning on doing any hard labor.
“I want their job,” you sigh. “Whatever it is.”
I return to the zucchini, and you continue looking into the distance, as if you’re searching for something to rescue you. The spiny fuzz of the vines is giving me a rash, but I don’t mind. I’m strangely proud of it, like these red, itchy welts are battle wounds, some kind of mark for a rite of passage. Maybe the earth is claiming me as hers.
“Have you noticed that dirt smells a little bit like blood?” you say.
“Yes,” I answer, and keep digging.
• • •
We peel off our sweaty, dirty clothes the second we get back to the trailer. You have your bikini on before I even have my pants off, and you’re running into the lake as I’m still hopping into the leg holes of my swimsuit. I run in after you, feel the first shock of coolness, the sizzle through my veins, the relief like steam from my burning skin, then the embrace, my whole body submerged like yours, the ceasing of all sound, the weightlessness, the holding of breath. I open my eyes under the water and see hints of you, white flashes through the murky brown. I stay under for as long as I can bear it, and the pain of my lungs burning is almost exquisite, like it’s something I’ve earned, like it’s something you’ve given me.
The absence of air is what makes that first breath so delicious. The withholding, the starving, the torture—it’s all for a purpose. We work all day for this, we endure pain for this: relief. This is something I’ve never been able to explain to you. We’re opposites in this way like so many others. You are on the eternal quest for instant gratification, the now-now-now of stimulation, while I can wait for it forever, like the waiting is part of the pleasure, like I’m building a nest for it, making it a perfect home.
I wait until I can’t stand it, and then I finally surface and breathe. It is a perfect breath.
“Look,” you say.
He is there. Of course. Dylan. Across the lake, sitting in the late afternoon shadows under the eaves of his cabin. He leans back in his chair with his feet up on a milk crate, taking up as much space as possible, like you do. Even from this distance, I can tell that he is clean, like he hasn’t lifted a finger all day.
“We’re swimming over there, Max.”
“What? Wait. No.”
“Why not? We’ve got to meet him sometime.”
“But we’re wearing swimsuits.”
“I know. It’s perfect. Don’t worry. You’ve got a hot bod.”
Sometimes I think I could I hate you.
You part the lake with your body and pull me along in your wake. I panic for a moment when I realize we’ve reached the middle, that there’s no turning back, that we’re equidistant from the past and the future, and the only thing that makes any sense is going forward. There is no room for negotiation. We are at the deepest part of the lake and we don’t know where the bottom is. It could go on forever, to the center of the earth, farther, strangled by water plants and all kinds of grabbing things. So we swim in the only direction left to us, and there is the shore, and there are his boots and his long legs in black jeans, and there is Dylan, watching us with a smirk on his lips.
The water spills off of you as you rise out of the water. You make it look effortless, as if you are being pulled up by some invisible force. You are shimmering, you are covered with diamonds, and I think this is what makes men believe in mermaids.
“Hello,” you say in your liquid voice.
“Hi,” he says, and his voice sounds exactly like I imagined it. Low and rough, like it is made out of gravel.
I follow you onto shore, but my feet stick in the mud, and I slip. I catch myself, but my legs and hands are covered with brown muck.
“Crap!”
“It’s slippery there,” he says.
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“Are you okay?” you say. How is it possible that your feet aren’t even muddy?
“I’m fine.”
“What are you reading?” you ask him. He holds out the book. Being and Nothingness, by Jean-Paul Sartre. How much more hipster can someone get?
“Sar-tree,” you say. “You read that for fun?”
“He’s a smart guy.”
“That’s, like, philosophy, right?”
“Yeah, it’s like philosophy,” he says. There’s something snakelike about him. Slithery.
“Max reads philosophy, don’t you, Max?”
“A little.”
“Oh yeah?” he says. “Like what?”
“Just the ancient Greeks and Romans, really. Like Socrates and Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus and Lucretius, Seneca. Stuff like that. Mostly just for historical context.”
“Max speaks Latin,” you say.
“No one speaks Latin,” I mumble. I hate it when you do this, when you put me on
display and show me off.
“Ask her anything about ancient Greece and I bet you she knows the answer,” you say.
“Didn’t they speak Greek in ancient Greece?” he says, leaning into his chair even farther, flicking a speck off his pants leg. I can’t help but imagine that I am that speck.
I can’t look him in the eye. “They don’t offer ancient Greek as a language at our school.”
“Yeah, that’s generally not a class they have in high school.” He is smiling, but it is not a nice smile.
Sadie seems completely unaware of Dylan’s disdain. “Max is going to be a classics major. She’s already, like, best friends with the head of the department at Oxford. That’s in England. They’re practically begging her to go there.”
His smirk gets even smirkier. “Why would anyone want to study the classics?” He reaches over the side of his chair and lifts a silver flask from the floor of the porch. He takes a big swig, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “How irrelevant can you get?”
I am speechless. How am I supposed to answer quite possibly the rudest question I have ever been asked?
“Ooh, can I have some?” You reach out your hand, wiggling your fingers, too distracted by the shiny flask to even notice that your best friend was just supremely insulted.
He lifts his arm but doesn’t move to hand it to you. “Come and get it,” he says. You step forward and reach for the flask, slow and deliberate. You wrap your fingers around his before you pull it away. You have begun your mating dance. You drink too much, and your face reddens. I can tell you are trying not to cough. You are showing off for him.
“So, what do you do here?” you say.
“Things,” he says.
“What kinds of things?”
“Various things.”
“What were you and Old Glen doing today?”
“Stuff.”
“You don’t work in the fields?”
“Nope.”
“You’re lucky.”
He doesn’t say anything, just looks at us with disinterest.
“Do you ever get dirty?” you say. Oh God, Sadie. I am going to pretend you did not just say that.
“Sometimes,” he says. He is looking at you with half-closed eyes.