by Nic Sheff
We both laugh at that.
“You know . . . I . . . uh . . . Your dad . . . I mean . . . he was always pretty distant. And he was terrible to your mom . . . and to you . . . really. So maybe you guys are better off this way?”
“That’s exactly what I told my mom,” she says. “I knew you’d understand.”
She takes my hand in hers for a second, and the feel of her is warm and electric all over my body.
“Well,” I tell her, “I am sorry this is happening to you. I know it must be hard.”
“Yeah, thanks.” She tilts her head to one side. “Anyway,” she adds, “at least we got to move back here, right?”
I nod, thinking that maybe I really should make getting food a priority—because the nausea is not letting up. The pain is still in my stomach, and now the veins in my skull feel all swelled with blood, squeezing in at my temples so goddamn tight. With each beat of my heart, it’s like the veins clamp down even harder and I see this bright light flashing in the darkness when I close my eyes.
“Hey, are you all right?” she asks me.
“Yeah . . . no,” I say, standing up as slowly as I can so I don’t do anything embarrassing, like maybe pass out completely. “I’m fine. You wanna . . . you wanna go get something to eat?”
“Sure,” she says, smiling.
“I can make something inside,” I tell her, not wanting to make her leave if she doesn’t want to. “Or we could go to Video Café. They’re open twenty-four hours.”
She nods. “Okay, yes, let’s do that.”
Her body brushes against mine as she starts to walk, and I feel this warmth in me just from the slightest touch. That strange rotting smell has gone, and I think maybe this might actually work out. After all, she seems the same. I mean, different—but the same. The same Eliza. And I think maybe I’m not that different, either.
It’s just like it used to be.
But then Preston’s front door opens and a bunch of kids holding forties come pouring out into the courtyard with us. They’re seniors I know only by sight, but tonight, because of Eliza being so goddamn beautiful, they seem eager to talk. In fact, one of them even knows my name.
“Yo, what’s up, Miles? Who’s this you got here?”
He’s sloppy drunk, but still handsome, I think. At least, I imagine Eliza must think he’s handsome. He has his hair all shaved around the sides and long in front, sticking up straight, kind of like a pompadour. His teeth are bright white in the darkness, and he smiles big and reaches out a hand to shake Eliza’s.
“Hey, I’m Kevin,” he says.
She shakes his hand, and then the other guys all introduce themselves, too—to her, not to me.
Besides Kevin, I don’t process any of their names enough to remember what they are.
But then the one dude with the stupid hipster straw hat pulls out a blunt from behind his ear and asks us if we want any.
Eliza presses in closer to me and kind of looks up for approval, as if somehow it’s up to me—I guess ’cause I was the one who wanted to leave so bad.
“Yeah, go ahead,” I say, and she smiles and leans against me, and the guy fires the blunt up and it’s like someone is driving nails into either side of my brain, and so I press the palm of my hand against my forehead.
Eliza hits the blunt and then she coughs real cute-sounding and all the guys laugh.
She hits it again before passing it off and then standing up on her tiptoes and whispering in my ear, “Hey, you wanna go to that restaurant now?”
The two of us walk out through the iron gate and down the street past the wall of boxwood hedges surrounding the golf course.
Beyond the protection of the courtyard, the wind is blowing even stronger, and I shiver.
“Here,” she says, handing my coat back to me.
I want to take it, but I feel like maybe she’ll think I’m lame or something if I do.
“No, it’s okay,” I say. “You keep it.” But the cold is all the way inside me now, and that headache has gotten so bad that it’s like whatever had been pounding there before has now just clamped down, so I have to keep my eyes pretty near shut.
I throw my cigarette out, but that doesn’t help, either, and as much as I want to be hanging out with her, I’m suddenly wondering if maybe I should just go home and lie down.
So I stop and I breathe and I grit my teeth together, putting my hands on my knees and saying, “Hey, Eliza, look, I’m sorry. I want to hang out with you and get dinner and everything. I really do and . . . and it’s so great seeing you, but I have this terrible headache right now for some reason. I think maybe it’s all the medicine . . .”
I force my eyes open enough to see her smile, and her teeth are white and straight and perfect.
“Yeah, you look a little sick.”
I breathe, straining. “I’m so sorry, ’Liza.”
She nods. “No, I understand. I’ll let you go. It’s just so great to see you again. And, look . . . uh . . . Miles, I know I was terrible to you when we were younger. Really, I’m not sure why you put up with me like you did, but I am so, so sorry.”
“Please, no,” I say, but hoarsely, so I have to clear my throat before continuing. “You don’t need to apologize. I understand. Anyway, I wasn’t putting up with you. I loved—I mean, I . . . I liked hanging out with you.”
She touches me, just for a moment, and I feel it coursing through me again.
The sound of the wind is like the ocean waves breaking through the treetops.
The fog light at the mouth of the bay flashes across the dark silhouette of Eliza’s body pressed close to mine.
“I think I was just too afraid then,” she tells me, looking straight ahead.
I laugh through my nose. “Afraid of me?”
“Yeah, totally. You always seemed so perfect or something. Like you had this perfect family and you were so . . . good . . . so sweet . . . so perfect.”
I stare down, suddenly, at the hole widening on the side of my boot where I can see black sock starting to stick out.
“Yeah, well, not anymore. Now I’m just crazy.”
She looks up and her eyes close and open, and she whispers, “I like you, so much, Miles. I’ve always liked you.”
She lifts up on the balls of her feet and suddenly she’s pressing her full lips into mine and she’s kissing me.
It’s happening so fast, and I want to be able to just hold on to every fucking second. I mean, I’ve been waiting for this kiss with Eliza for my whole life, but now that it’s actually happening, it’s like I feel strangled somehow. We slide our tongues in and out, but the lack of oxygen to my brain is making the veins swell and pound and fucking press down even more. I feel dizzy, and something gags me at the back of my throat and I have to push her away.
I drop to my knees, hitting the pavement hard as vomit comes charging up out of my throat.
“Oh, my God! What’s happening?” she yells.
I throw up over and over and over, retching, spitting up chunks of stringy I don’t even know what—like pieces of shredded kelp and seaweed, all green and reddish purple.
Gawwghh is the noise I make. And then, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
And then the vomit comes again.
I lie with my face on the cold, rough concrete.
I spit and punch the ground with my fist.
“Just go away,” I finally say. “I’m sorry. Please.”
Her voice comes out pretty hysterical-sounding. “No. I’m not leaving you.”
But there’s barf everywhere, and I’m so sick and disgusted with myself, I yell at her, “I want you to leave, all right? Just go away.”
She takes a step back.
“GO!” I yell.
I hear what sounds like her bursting into tears.
And then her boots runni
ng away from me down the street.
15.
SOMEONE CALLS OUT FROM behind me and I turn, angry at first, just wanting to be left alone.
“I’m all right,” I groan, struggling to get to my feet.
“Jesus Christ,” the voice says. “What happened?”
I turn to see Jackie, wearing a wool hat, gloves, and a big knit sweater, walking quickly toward me.
“Nothing,” I tell her. “I’m all right.”
She smiles and shivers and crosses her arms and says, “Brrr, it’s so fucking cold out here. Come back inside. We can hide out in Preston’s room.”
The streetlamp overhead switches on so that Jackie is silhouetted by the soft glow and the fog coming down. She reaches out to take my hand and I do not pull away. Not from her.
“I’m sick,” I mumble. “I just got sick.”
“Yeah, no shit. Come on. We’ll clean you up.”
I fumble to get a cigarette lit, and Jackie takes one from my pack.
“I gotta go home.”
“Well, then let me drive you.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“What are you doing out here?” I ask. “Did you see Eliza?”
She speaks softly, like you would to a child—which, I guess, is kind of what I am. “Yeah. I ran into her coming in. She told me you were sick.”
“Great.”
“Anyway, I needed an excuse to get out of there.”
“You mean the party?”
“Yeah, yeah . . . the party. And, I don’t know . . . Preston, too.”
We cross over in front of the golf course and walk down onto the carefully manicured lawn toward her little Volkswagen.
While I may have barfed on the girl of my dreams and totally humiliated myself, I think, at least I have Jackie.
And she has me.
I walk quickly around to the passenger side of her car. There is vomit still wet on my shirtfront. And I still want to fucking cry.
16.
MY MOM IS AWAKE when I get home—sitting in the dark, drinking white wine, and watching Double Indemnity on TV for, like, the billionth time. She seems a little drunk, honestly, as I stumble in, and I guess that’s probably why she doesn’t freak out at the sight of me as much as she normally would. Because me coming home covered in puke like this would be just the type of thing to send her into a panic. Seriously, my mom is absolutely the worst person to be with in any kind of crisis situation. She completely loses her shit—going from zero to full-blown hysteria in, like, half a second.
But tonight, surprisingly, she remains relatively calm.
She pauses the movie and stands up, coming around to put her cool hand on my hot forehead.
“I think you have a fever. Are you okay? What happened?”
The smell of her is so familiar and comforting that I choke up. “I got sick,” I say, and then I burst into tears.
“Oh, sweetie. Come here, love,” she says, putting her arms around me.
“But I’m all gross.”
She tells me not to worry, and so I cry into her sweatshirt and the warmth of her as she holds me and I feel so tired—so completely exhausted.
“What happened?” she asks. “Were you drinking?”
I sniffle. “No, it’s my medicine. I forgot to eat before going to the party and I took all my meds at once and . . . I got sick.”
“Hey,” she says, kissing the top of my head and shushing me gently. “It happens to everyone, all right? Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
Oh, yeah, I think, tons of people decide to take their psych meds all at once and then blow their only chance to be with the girl they’ve loved basically forever by puking on her.
Happens all the time.
I feel like digging a hole in the backyard and then curling up in there and just wasting away until there is nothing left.
“Here,” she whispers. “You go get cleaned up, and I’ll make you something to eat, all right?”
“No. Don’t worry about it.”
“You need to eat,” she says. “It’s no problem.” And then, “Only, uh . . . try to be quiet going in your room. Jane wanted to sleep in there ’cause she was having a bad dream. Is that okay?”
I nod.
It makes sense; she’d been sharing her room with Teddy since she was three years old. No wonder she can’t sleep in there.
I go into my room and manage to get out some pajamas from the drawer without waking Janey up. The sound of her breathing is soft and calming in the darkness.
By the time I take a quick shower and brush my teeth and put on my pajamas, my mom’s already finished making me a grilled cheese sandwich and some hot chocolate. I thank her, and then we sit down together on the couch. My mom turns the movie back on, and I eat silently and lean against her.
I watch Fred MacMurray climbing the steps to Barbara Stanwyck’s Spanish-style house somewhere in 1940s Los Angeles. When he rings the doorbell, I know that she will answer. And I know that by the end of the film she will have killed him.
I settle in to watch the movie, trying not to think of anything else. Fred MacMurray is being suckered into committing a murder for this woman he barely even knows—but has fallen hopelessly in love with. For him, the money is secondary. All he cares about is her—and all she cares about is herself. It’s an old story. Adam conned by Eve into eating the apple.
The images flash black and white across the screen.
My mom whispers, “I love you, sweetie.”
I close my eyes and open them. “I love you, too, Mom.”
We watch the movie together.
And for now, at least, that is enough.
17.
THE SOUND OF JANEY screaming wakes me up early, before it’s all the way light outside. She’s sleeping in my bed, and I’m on a blow-up mattress, so I get up onto my knees and put a hand on her sweating forehead.
She jerks and twitches in her sleep, yelling, “STOP! STOP!”
“Jane,” I say. “It’s just a dream.”
Her eyes open slowly.
“Miles,” she says, wrapping her small arms around my neck and crying out. “It was awful.”
She hugs me, and I inhale the smell of her, which is like peppermint and fresh-cut grass.
“You had a bad dream?”
Her head nods up and down as she pokes her bottom lip out and sniffles. “Sharks.”
A shiver runs through me, thinking about the ocean that day—about Teddy.
“I’m afraid of sharks, too,” I say.
She smiles.
Posters of different jazz musicians are hung up against the patterned wallpaper that looks like some kind of tree with branches like lungs and leaves like a hundred eyes wide-open. There’s a mirror on one wall that reflects the wallpaper pattern on the other so it looks like a framed painting. I also have a collection of taxidermy insects behind glass cases. Beetles, mostly, and butterflies—and a bat framed with its wings spread out hanging next to the open closet with no door. There’s a replica of a human skull on my dresser next to a set of blown-glass medicine bottles from the twenties or thirties.
“Hey,” I say, standing all the way up and stretching. “You wanna go out for coffee and donuts? Or, uh, hot chocolate and donuts? I have a little bit of money left from my last paycheck.”
She smiles and nods excitedly. Her eyes get brighter.
“All right, well,” I continue, “go get dressed warm and we’ll go. But be quiet, okay? So you don’t wake up Mom and Dad.”
She pushes the covers back. “No way. I won’t wake ’em up.”
She hops out of bed, wearing a flannel nightgown our grandmother sewed for her, and tiptoes over to the next room while I throw on clothes and an army-navy surplus dark blue peacoat. I peer out the blinds and see the
tall grass and overgrown weeds are wet and heavy with dew. The sun has yet to rise over the curve of the world to the east, but its rays fill the morning sky with white light turning gray around the edges as it fights to overtake the darkness of night.
It will be a clear day. I can see that already.
There are no clouds. No fog. The sun filling the white-gray sky with the beginnings of color.
I feel an odd sense of hope.
But then I see the crows, gathering on the telephone wires—waiting, watching me through the window.
Their black eyes dart in every direction. They scratch and claw. They call out. They cover the wires, just as the wires cover the skyline.
Janey tugs on the sleeve of my coat, startling me a little. “Wow, look at all those crows.”
I close the blinds, take a step back from the window. “What? What did you say?”
She smiles sweetly. “The crows. Those are crows, right? Or are they ravens?”
I crouch down closer to her. “You can see them, too?”
She laughs. “Of course, silly.”
I stand up straight, feeling relieved.
I take her hand and lead her out into the still, early morning. We cross the street and the sun is bright and I think that here, with my sister, everything is okay.
18.
WORK DRAGS ON FOR fucking ever.
The manager has me working in the back room, unloading canned goods—checking their different prices and sticking stickers on them with a pricing gun and marking off the quantities on the invoice sheet. It’s dark, and I squint my eyes and wish I were home and keep checking my phone to see what time it is, even though that just makes my shift seem to go all the more slowly. Not to mention that a boring-ass task like this gives me that much more time to replay last night’s events over in my mind—an endless loop of me saying stupid shit to Eliza and then barfing on her, again and again, over and over.
So I go on unpacking the boxes and pointlessly trying to block the memory out—until I finally check my phone again and I see that I have a text message I somehow missed.