by Nic Sheff
From fucking Ordell.
He writes in all capital letters: DUDE, DID YOU PUKE ON ELIZA LINDBERG? LOL. CALL ME!!!
I read it again.
I wonder if maybe my mind is playing a trick on me—if this is just some kind of paranoid delusion like the goddamn crows.
But then, as if on cue, the phone chimes right there in my hand.
Another text.
I’m serious, dude. Call me. Everyone’s talking about it!!!
Again with the three exclamation marks.
My heart pounds loudly in my ears so that everything else is blotted out around me. A cold sweat breaks out at the back of my neck.
I strip off my apron and the sweater I’m wearing and my thermal undershirt. But still I’m flushed and sweating, and so I leave the boxes there and I go out the back door, not even caring if my manager comes and yells at me.
The day is clear and the wind is strong and the light feels distant and cold and pale. The smell of the garbage from the large metal Dumpster in the alley is sickening, so I walk around to the residential street behind the market, sitting on the curb and breathing heavily, rocking my body back and forth. I rock there and feel the cold and try to figure out what the hell I’m going to do.
Could Eliza really have told everyone what happened? I mean, it’s not that I care what other people think, particularly; it’s just disappointing that she wouldn’t want to—I don’t know—protect me?
I light a cigarette then and the smoke fills my lungs and my fingers twitch and shake.
The crows are in the branches of the bare, skinny trees planted in square patches of dirt in the sidewalk. The wires crisscross and crackle across the white stucco apartment complexes.
My eyes close and open. I try to make the images disappear, but it’s never any fucking good. My mind unravels like a ball of string rolling down an unending staircase.
There’s a dead squirrel lying torn apart in the middle of the street, and the crows pick through the still-bloody carcass, fighting loudly over the very best pieces.
I turn away and smoke and try to focus on the cold and the wind and the gritty asphalt beneath my boots. The curb where I’m sitting has been painted a dark green, but the color is faded and completely washed away in places.
A car drives past out front, and I turn to see the crows quickly scatter—only to reconvene over the mess of dead squirrel a few seconds later.
I stand up then and stamp my foot.
“GET OUT OF HERE!” I yell, feeling this surge of heat and anger from out of nowhere. “GO ON! GET OUT!”
Before I can even think about what I’m doing, I run out and yell louder, and the crows squawk at me and fly off.
I stand over the squirrel’s lifeless body and clench my fists as though just daring the crows to try to take another shot at it.
But they don’t.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, and I look to see that Preston’s calling.
I decide I can’t fucking deal with it, though, so I don’t answer. A few seconds later, the phone chimes again. A text message. From Preston.
Hey, man. You all right? I gave your number to Eliza. I hope you don’t mind. Are you sick???
I laugh at that.
Three question marks.
I don’t write him back.
I finish my cigarette and go back inside.
The boxes are waiting.
None of this matters compared to Teddy, of course.
I know that.
I do.
But it hurts fucking bad.
And so I try to figure out what the hell I’m gonna do.
19.
BY THE TIME I get home the sun has nearly set on the horizon, so the brightest stars are already shining through the settling dark and the faint orange glow of city lights.
Because Janey and I can’t start watching the movies I rented (Harold and Maude and Being There, my favorite Hal Ashby films) until after dinner, we are busy working together on a drawing on a card table set up next to the fireplace. The drawing we’re doing is part of a larger project. I mean, it’s kind of silly, really, but we’re trying to put a comic book together. It’s the story of these two characters she created—they’re 1920s flapper girls named Mabel and Pearl. Honestly, Janey draws way better than I do. But I try to keep up.
My mom has taken a pill and gone to bed, apparently, and so I put on that Washington Phillips record that I bought the other day at Amoeba. I’m not sure what my mom was talking about. The music’s not depressing at all. If anything, this guy must’ve been, like, a preacher or something, because every song is about God and Jesus and how great everything is going to be in heaven. I’d love to be able to believe in something like that. Plus, the man’s voice is so sweet and pure and beautiful.
It’s a good album.
“Hey, if you like this, you should check out these other records, too.”
My dad walks over and crouches down next to the dark wood cabinet where he keeps his vinyl collection.
“Here,” he says, piling a couple albums up on the table next to our drawing.
My dad is wearing a collared dress shirt rolled up to the elbows and open at the neck, flannel pajama bottoms, and plush, furry slippers. The pajamas are loose and hanging off him a little.
“Blind Willie Johnson,” he says, standing up straighter to show me one of the records. “He really was blind.”
Janey’s gap-tooth smile is just the greatest, and my dad musses her hair with his large, calloused hands.
“And check this out,” he says, passing her one final record. “Robert Johnson. People say he made a deal with the devil. That’s how he learned to play the blues.”
“Wow,” Jane says. “Can we listen to this now?”
“Sure.”
“Here, I got it,” I tell my dad. I take the record from him and carry it over to where the turntable is set up.
“You guys hungry?” he asks.
“Yeah,” says Janey.
“Yeah, me too, I guess,” I say.
He goes to open the refrigerator and kind of grumbles, “Hmmm, slim pickings in here. How about some fried egg sandwiches? And bacon?”
I put the record on, and it crackles and pops loudly as the guitar music starts to play. The singing is pained and full of gravel and broken glass and dust and mud. It is beautiful.
Jane keeps on drawing while I go over to the kitchen to help my dad fry up the bacon. He makes some black coffee on the electric burner and some hot chocolate for Janey, then he cooks up a bunch of thick pieces of wheat bread in the grease from the bacon and fries the eggs right there in the same pan. Really, there’s not that much I can do to help but just make the plates up.
“Hey,” my dad says to me. “If you want, maybe you and me can play some music together later. Pull out the ol’ guitars.”
I smile. “That’d be great.”
He lays the bacon and egg sandwiches out on the plates, and I pour the coffee and cocoa and then go over to turn on the TV.
Janey sits next to me on the couch, and my dad sits on the floor. He always likes to watch 60 Minutes on Sunday nights, so we all watch it together. There’s that part at the beginning where the anchors take turns saying, “I’m Steve Kroft,” and, “I’m Lesley Stahl.” And Teddy would always jump in, saying, “And I’m Teddy Cole.” He thought that was just the funniest thing ever.
But now it’s like we all have to talk over the opening so there isn’t time to think about it.
“Thanks, Dad,” Jane says. “This sandwich is really good.”
“Miles helped, too,” he answers, and she says, “Thank you, Miles.”
And I tell her she’s welcome.
We all watch the show and eat together and the fire is going and the wind rattles the screen door outside.
Everythi
ng is so nice like this, right now, with my family, and I wish I could just stay in this moment forever and never have to deal with Eliza or medication or doctors or go back to school, and never have to do anything ever again except to be here with my dad and sister . . .
And Teddy, of course . . . Teddy would be here.
He would be watching the show with us like he used to.
And then my mom would be here, too, just like she used to.
Someday it will be like that again.
Someday soon.
So I kiss Jane’s forehead quickly and take her and my dad’s plates and go wash them in the hot water in the sink. My phone is there on the counter, and I see the little blue missed-call light is blinking. I dry my hands on a checkered dishcloth and pick up my phone—even though I know I probably shouldn’t, that I should just forget everything until tomorrow.
But I can’t.
I can’t do that.
The number is one I don’t recognize, but it’s got a 415 area code, which is San Francisco. I scroll through the menu options and then dial my voice mail, waiting, my stomach tight, my lungs contracted.
Her voice sounds sweet and beautiful and sexy even through the slight electronic distortion of my phone.
It’s Eliza, of course.
She says that right off: “Miles, hey, it’s Eliza. Call me back, okay? I’m so sorry people are talking about this. Please know I didn’t mean to tell anyone. I was just worried about you last night. But I should’ve just kept my mouth shut. Can you forgive me? And . . . uh . . . please. I want to hang out with you again. And I don’t want you to be, you know, embarrassed at all, all right? You didn’t do anything wrong. Do you want to, like, get coffee after school tomorrow maybe? Okay, thanks, Miles. It was so good to see you again. And . . . I don’t know. Shoot . . . just, uh, call me. Okay? Bye.”
I erase the message quickly.
My hands tremble.
“You all right, Mie?” my dad calls from the living room.
“Y-yeah . . . I’m fine. I’ll be right there.”
“What are you doing?” Janey asks.
“Uh, nothing . . . I gotta take my medicine. It’s okay. Just keep watching. I’ll be back.”
I leave my phone on the counter and walk into the bathroom and turn the lights on. The bulb overhead is out, but the one above the small mirror flickers on after a moment. There’re some tiles with painted pink roses and white daisies all lined up at about eye level. The sink is stained and the faucet is white with calcium deposits. I open the top drawer and take out the different prescription bottles. Fluoxetine, 60 mg per day, which is just generic Prozac, an antidepressant, and then there’s the Lamictal, 200 mg a day, which is a mood stabilizer. Then there’s the lithium, 800 mg a day, and the Depakote, 300 mg a day, which build something called gray matter, whatever that is, and are supposed to help with the racing, paranoid, delusional thinking. And then there’s the Abilify, 10 mg a day, which is specifically for schizophrenia. And the Zyprexa, 10 mg a day, the newest of the drugs. It’s supposed to make you put on a ton of weight once you start taking it, but it hasn’t for me at all. I’m just skin and bones.
The mirror reflects my sunken image, my eyes swollen and bloodshot. The color around my pupils is a golden yellowish brown. I stare straight into my own eyes. I turn on the tap so the cold water can run a minute. There’s an empty plastic cup next to the toothbrushes, and I fill it with water. The light flickers overhead.
When I close my eyes there’s an image projected on the back of my eyelids of Eliza the way she looked yesterday. I see her smiling. I see her leaning forward to kiss me. I see her and I reach out and take her hand in mine. There is the smell of her there with me suddenly. I inhale deeply and take the smell of her into my mouth and down the back of my throat and into my lungs and into my belly.
I remember that smell so clearly from when we were kids together. When her mom and dad were driving us back from the beach one time, I remember Eliza falling asleep with her head on my shoulder and her hair getting all tangled in my mouth and I wanted her to stay sleeping like that forever on me.
But last night should have been even better.
Last night she actually kissed me.
It really did happen.
I open my eyes.
I can still feel her with me.
And I want to keep feeling her with me.
I want that more than anything.
Maybe someday, after I find Teddy and he’s safely home, then I can start worrying about girls and all that normal high school stuff.
For now, I have to put that aside.
I look down at the bottles lined up there on the tiled counter.
Just the thought of those pills sticking in my throat, the taste of them going down, slowly dissolving in my mouth as I try to gulp the water down—it’s enough to make me want to throw up right now.
I pour the four capsules of the powdered lithium out into my hand. They are an off-colored, sickly pink, glossy, with tiny numbers printed along the center seam.
I put the pills in my mouth and start to swallow, but they seem caught somehow, and I cough and gag as they stick there.
I try again to swallow, but I can’t. I can’t do it.
I choke and spit the pills out into the sink.
“Goddamnit,” I say, gasping, fighting for air.
I grab the already dissolving pills out of the sink and drop them into the trash. Then I open each of the individual pill bottles and empty their entire contents into the toilet. I flush—twice, actually, because they don’t all go down the first time.
I splash some water on my face and then turn off the spigot.
“I can’t,” I tell my reflection, shaking my head. “I can’t do it anymore.”
I dry my face and hands on a ratty towel hung over the shower.
I switch the light off and close the door.
The medication is gone.
And now I am ready to make things right here—at home—with my family.
Tomorrow I will go to the police station.
I’ll talk to Detective Marshall.
And it will be all right.
20.
THE CENTRAL BRANCH OF the San Francisco Police Department is located right on the border between North Beach and Chinatown, in an unassuming two-story building behind a nameless liquor store and directly across from two different strip clubs, Big Al’s and the Garden of Eden.
North Beach is maybe my favorite part of the city. It’s a little touristy, I guess, but that’s just because it’s so beautiful. I’ve never been to Europe, but from the movies I’ve seen, I think it must look something like the streets here in North Beach. The roads are very narrow, built on the steep, complicated, crisscrossing hills leading up to Coit Tower. The Victorian-style buildings, cafés, and trattorias pressed right up against one another.
There are a few grand old churches, built out of white marble and surrounded by stone courtyards. Before Jane and Teddy were born, my mom and dad lived with me not too far from here. My dad used to take me on walks down around Washington Square Park, and then he’d write at Caffe Trieste while I drew in a notebook and drank hot chocolate and ate these raspberry ring pastry things.
Actually, now that I think about it, once I was older, my dad used to take me and Eliza to that same Caffe Trieste every Sunday to listen to opera music while he worked on his stories for the paper. Walking through North Beach after school—where I basically spent the whole day hiding—can’t help but think back on those times with Eliza.
It’s only a little after three, but already the sun is low on the horizon, setting behind the high-rise buildings along the Marina to the west. Everything is gray with shadow, and the wind tunnels down the alleyways, blowing the streets clean, as pigeons scurry like rats across the sidewalk.
I light a cigarette
, but then throw it away immediately once I see all the cops hanging out around the front of the station—since I’m still under eighteen and could probably get a ticket or something. The cops outside are talking to one another in loud voices, drinking coffee out of Styrofoam cups, their uniforms crisp and polished-looking. Police cars are parked and double-parked all up and down the street.
Inside the station is all cheap tile floors, colorless, threadbare carpeting, and dark-paneled walls. There are posters taped up advertising different police services, along with a bunch of missing person flyers and mug shots. Against the far end of the main room there’s a reception desk, where a rather large woman is sitting behind an ancient-looking computer, wearing a bright blue police uniform. There are a couple of wooden benches set up in front of the reception area, but, surprisingly, no one seems to be waiting.
A big cop with a really big mustache pushes past me so I almost fall back.
“Hey, watch it,” he says gruffly. “Don’t stand in the door.”
I take a deep breath and hold it, walking over to the receptionist lady with my eyes fixed on the ground. My heart beats fast and hard.
“Can I help you?” the woman asks, but without looking at me.
The computer screen lights up her broad face, and I can see what must be some kind of spreadsheet reflected in the framed, oversize printout of the department’s antidiscrimination policy behind her. She has short silver-gray hair and thick tufted eyebrows and quite a bit of fur on her upper lip. Her mouth is turned down at the corners, and there are deep-set lines around her eyes and crossing her waxen, pale forehead.
“Yes? What is it?” she tries again. “What do you want?”
“I . . . I . . .” My voice trembles, though there’s really no reason why it should. I guess I’m just nervous, is all. I’m nervous to talk about Teddy.
“Spit it out, kid, I don’t have all day.” She speaks in a monotone, still typing at the computer and not looking at me.
“I . . . I . . . I’m here to see . . . Detective Marshall . . . Detective Kerry Marshall.”