by Karen Rivers
“Two zero seven Adam,” the radio interrupts. “Please respond.”
The kitchen chair squeaks on the floor.
I am you, Piper says.
The feeling I get before a migraine floats onto my skull and settles there like a cat, delicately kneading with his claws pulled in.
BEFORE
Piper is sitting on the edge of her bathtub, her hair pulled into a ponytail. My iPhone is playing top European dance music. We’re trying to get used to it, to enjoy it. We want to like it so that when we’re in Europe, we can say, “Oh, I love this song,” which right now is a lie. The music makes me think of veins, squeezing blood through extremities, under high pressure.
I’m sitting on the counter, the camera pointing at Piper. I’m trying not to laugh, trying to let the music be the only sound. She snips the scissors in the air three times and they make a swift scything sound.
Then she reaches behind her with the shears and I can feel as much as hear the sharpened blades slicing through it; I can see her head lift up suddenly like it’s floating, untethered, a balloon. I gasp, which I’ll have to edit out. Her ponytail falls into the tub with a sad thump. She grins. “And … cut,” she says. “See what I did there?”
I stop recording. “Ha ha,” I say. I feel light-headed. I look in the mirror to make sure my own hair is still there.
Piper stands next to me. Her hair falls jaggedly to her chin. “It’s cute, right?” She sounds doubtful, and she should.
I nod. “Maybe lighter blond,” I suggest. “It would look more intentional.”
“Yeah,” she agrees. She reaches up and touches her hair. She lifts it and drops it. I touch it, too. Then we are both touching it, mussing it, messing it up. She’s laughing, but suddenly, she’s also crying. “I’m a woman now!” she shouts. She shakes her head vigorously, an animal, a wild thing.
I laugh and start filming again, the twirl of her hair against the light, me beside her, my hair still to my waist; it looks like gold. I’m the pretty one now, I think, and then the familiar surge of self-loathing sweeps over me like a curling wave. Later, when I watch the video, I’ll see the moment that my facial expression changed, which will make it seem worse somehow.
The thing with the hair—our hair—is that it’s so easy to hide behind. You don’t have to worry so much what your face looks like, or your body for that matter, when your hair is long and blond, a gleaming golden curtain. Behind that, you can be anything. You can be anyone. Piper looks naked now. Her neck is long and skinny, like a plant that hasn’t been exposed to the right amount of light. The battery light on my camera flashes.
“It’s dead,” I say.
“Hair?” she says.
“Well, that, too, I think,” I say. “But I meant the camera.”
“Oh, man,” she says. “That sucks. I wanted to say why I did it, on film.”
“But people will see it!” I laugh.
“I think people should know,” she says. “Why is it always a secret? It’s not shameful. I’ve had sex!” She looks at her face in the mirror, leans way in until her nose is practically touching the glass. “I’VE HAD SEX!” she shouts, and her breath makes a cloud on the glass. She stands up straight. “So there,” she adds.
“It’s kind of crooked,” I say. “Want me to straighten it?”
She scratches at her skull. “Nope,” she says. “It still feels way too long. I think I’m going to shave it.”
“Shave it?” I repeat.
“It’s just not enough like this,” she says. “I still look like a little girl. And I’m a woman now.”
I laugh. “Do you even hear yourself?” I drop my voice and mimic, “I’m a woman now. You don’t even remember it!”
She gives me a hard stare. “Sure, but I’m different. Fundamentally. I should look different. I should look as different as I feel.”
I shrug. “If you say so,” I say. “I’m a dumb virgin. What do I know?”
She frowns. “We really have to fix that,” she says. “It’s time.” She pulls her remaining hair back from her face and looks closely at her nose in the mirror. “My pores are gross.” She reaches for a washcloth, soaks it in hot water. Then she carefully lies down in the empty tub, and lays the cloth over her face. “Om…,” she says.
I sit down on the toilet and balance my feet on the edge of the tub. “I don’t like anyone right now,” I say. “I don’t want to sleep with someone for the sake of it. What are the options? Anyway, the boys at school are basically different versions of Charlie. They want to grope a boob and tell everyone about it.”
“They aren’t,” she says, her voice muffled and her face hidden by the cloth. “You’re so hard on people. You know Soup and Charlie had a huge fight about you? They aren’t even talking anymore. Besides, who says you have to like the first guy you sleep with? If you choose him, if you choose it, then it’s empowering. It’s not like how most girls lose it, drunk and accidentally. It’s purposeful.” For a minute, she sounds like her old self. Her pre-boyfriend self. Her powerful self.
I nod. “I guess.”
“It’s not like he—whoever he is—won’t want to do it. Boys want to do it. They’re pretty much at the mercy of how much they want it. But think about it. Your choice, you’re sober, you’ll really know what sex itself feels like without being too drunk to remember or too caught up in feelings.” She sits up straight and the washcloth falls off her face, which is now bright red, and onto her lap. “It’s feminism, if you think about it. It’s taking charge, before everything gets confused by love. I’m messed up by love. Look at me! But I think it’s the sex that made the difference, and it would have even if I didn’t love Soup. I feel unlocked.”
“Unlocked!” I repeat. “Well, why didn’t you say so?” I pull out my phone and fake dial a number. “Hello? Yes? Will you please come over and unlock me? I will shave my head! And be transformed!” I start to laugh but she’s not laughing along with me. “Come on,” I say. “Hey, remember those Hare Krishna people from the airport? I bet they’ve been … UNLOCKED.”
“Shut up!” She glares at me. “I’m serious. Oh!” She reaches up to the back of the toilet and grabs her phone. It has a big crack across the middle. Her phones are always broken and she never gets them fixed. She starts typing frantically.
“What are you doing?” I say. “That’s rude.”
“I totally had to tell Soup that I’d done it,” she says, biting her lip. I fight the urge to throw a bottle of shampoo at her. “Selfie!” She tilts her head to the side and makes a kissy face. “Stage one. That’s what I’m telling him. This is just the first step. God, he’s cute. Don’t you think he’s cute?”
I shrug. “He’s fine.”
“Yeah, he is.” She raises one eyebrow. “You think so.”
“I don’t like your boyfriend,” I say, blushing. I can see it in the mirror. I know she can see it, too. I hate her for being able to tell, for knowing. “Stop trying to make it sound like that’s what I’m saying!”
“I’m not!” she protests. “But I have an idea. A terrible, wonderful idea. Let’s go to a movie tonight.”
“Wow,” I say. “That’s thinking out of the box. What a wild idea.”
She throws the wet washcloth at me. “I’m serious!” she says.
“For the air-conditioning?”
“Yeah, totally,” she says. “For the air-conditioning. Now pass me the clipper things. Go big or go home, right?”
“Sure,” I say, passing her the clippers. “Go big or go home.”
NOW
Once, in third grade, I threw up on my desk. The teacher had been reading Old Yeller out loud. No one should read a book about a dog dying to children. I kept swallowing the sadness but it found a way to get out.
The puke pooled and then started its slow slide toward my lap. Piper got up and took me by the hand. Other kids were screaming. There was basically a riot whenever someone threw up in the room. Piper took me to the bathroom, like a mom would. She
held a wet paper towel to my forehead while I puked and puked and puked until I was nearly inside out. She held my hair out of the way. She told me, “I’ve got this. I’ve got you.”
I threw up again on her shoe, something purple that I drank at lunch.
“The dog shouldn’t die!” I kept saying. “The dog isn’t ever supposed to die!”
The next day, when she threw up at recess, I wasn’t there to help her. I don’t know how it was contagious, but it was. I’d thought it was sadness, not norovirus, but I was wrong. It was the timing that made it seem like it was the dog’s fault.
When Piper puked, I was at home on the couch crunching on ice nuggets, my feet on Dad’s lap, cartoons playing on the TV that hung on the wall.
When I got back to school, everyone seemed to have forgotten that I’d started the barf sickness, and the nickname Piper Puker had stuck to her. Luckily, it didn’t live through the summer and re-stick in fourth grade. But still, every once in a while at a party, she’ll drink too much and someone (usually Fatty or one of his idiot clan) will bring it up. “Uh-oh,” he’ll shout, “look out for Puker!”
Jerk.
I hate everyone.
No one will ever call her that again.
Because now she’s dead.
Piper is dead.
The fact of her death scrolls over everything in the room, like a ticker tape. There’s the coffeemaker, half full of cold coffee from this morning, and Piper is dead. There’s the sink, shining in the sunlight, and Piper is dead. There is a plate of cinnamon buns covered with plastic wrap, the icing flattened and sticky against the cellophane, and Piper is dead. There are my fingernails, painted blue for the party last night, now chipped, resting on the table, and Piper is dead. There are two cops with pens and notebooks and Piper is dead dead dead dead dead
dead.
You’re going to have to get used to the idea, she says.
“I can’t,” I mutter, teeth clenched.
It was supposed to be you, she says.
“It was supposed to be me,” I echo.
“Are you okay?” one of the cops says, trying to sound sympathetic.
I shiver. “No,” I say. The migraine gives me a tiny preview, fireworks that burst across my field of vision like sparklers.
He averts his eyes.
“Sorry,” he says.
We wait.
And Piper is still dead.
Well, duh.
* * *
I’m glad that I’m not the dead one.
This makes me a bad person.
Right?
I guess that I’m guaranteed a longer life because only the good die young.
* * *
Answer the questions.
Well, I would if someone asked one.
* * *
Question: If you’re comfortable, just answer this one thing. Do you know…?
Answer: WHAT HAPPENED? TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED?
Statement: PIPER.
The word “Piper” is not a question. Piper is not a question. Or an answer. Piper is a fact. The fact is that Piper is dead.
I look for a question on the floor, near my feet. The hardwood lies there solidly and does not bother to answer.
If I died, the floor would keep existing. I’m simply not in the floor’s future for as long as the floor will have one.
Unless the house burns down, I guess.
My skin is hot.
I could burst into flames.
And then what?
All of our futures are the same anyway.
Dead.
Everyone Dies at the End, a documentary by Sloane Whittaker.
* * *
Remember: the best way to stave off a panic attack is to find something to see, something to feel, something to hear, something to touch.
I touch the table.
I feel the table: crumbs, something sticky.
I feel dizzy.
I feel sick.
I hear nothing.
I hear static.
The Internet lies.
I hear the sound of men who I don’t know breathing in the air of the kitchen that belongs to my parents, not to them.
I hear a vacuum cleaner.
I see two men.
I see the table.
I see the window.
I see the sky, which is the blue of Slurpees that stain my teeth, and I want to get up and close the blinds but I’m trapped on a kitchen chair, the backs of my bare thighs stuck to it. I’m still in my pink bikini and this is all wrong and the panic isn’t subsiding and I sort of wish I could have a drink.
The Slurpees I’ve been drinking lately have been heavily spiked with vodka from Piper’s mom’s endless supply, which she keeps in the freezer so that it’s always tooth-achingly cold. Those Slurpees taste like something inside me is loosening its grip.
I need something inside me to loosen its grip right now.
Its grip is ice cold.
I shiver.
I’ll never drink again if you make her not dead, I bargain with God. I’ll quit. I swear.
God laughs.
The Slurpee I haven’t drunk seeps around my heart and freezes.
* * *
It’s like that.
Did I invite these policemen into the house? Did they ring the doorbell? Did I open it and say “Yes?” Did I say “Come in?”
The migraine is like the tide, inevitable and all-powerful.
That seems impossible. Another impossible thing on a long list of impossible things that seem to be happening, that are happening, that have already happened.
“Uxolo,” I mumble.
“Sorry?” says one of the cops. “What did you say?”
“Sorry.”
“What?” he says again.
On the wall over the table there is a photograph that my dad took of me and Piper on the beach at sunset. We are maybe eleven in the photo. We were kids. The two of us are silhouettes, facing each other, the wind lifting our ponytails symmetrically, perfectly. We look like mirrors of each other, our ponytails floating upward as though just outside the shot, a giant UFO is about to pull us up and away from all this.
Right after that photo was taken, I tripped and sprained my ankle. Piper carried me up the beach in a wobbly piggyback. She kept nearly but not quite falling, and I was scared but also laughing and I held on and the gravel came closer and receded and eventually we got to the car, stunned by how funny everything was even when it wasn’t.
Did I ever look after her?
Well, no.
The policeman clears his throat. He looks worried. Well, he should. I’m worried, too. My migraine starts to hum, increasing in volume.
The two men are too big for this space, for this table. They make everything look wrong: Too bright. Too shiny. Too new. Too expensive.
These two men in police uniforms—dark blue shirts, pants, black belts, guns—are sitting at the kitchen table, where Mom and Dad would be if Mom and Dad were home. There is a newspaper open on the table and a bowl of half-eaten yogurt and three empty coffee cups and a spray bottle of SPF 60. There is a pile of drying-up orange peel and an AA battery and a handwritten note that reads, “Dentist @ 11, don’t forget to FLOSS.” There is a single red sock.
“Can I go upstairs and get dressed?” I ask. My voice is too thin to penetrate the thick air.
One of the men clicks his pen. Click, click, click. I can feel that click in my teeth. Please don’t click, I want to say. I might say it out loud. I don’t know. Something is happening between the voice in my head and my actual voice. I don’t know which is which. There’s a weird prickling feeling over my entire scalp, like my head has gone to sleep. He doesn’t stop.
I have to lie down.
I need a pill.
I need my mom.
I need Soup.
* * *
I get mixed up.
Everything swirls: The past. The present. The future.
The migraine is a flickering light show and
everything I’m seeing is melting against it, smearing at the edges.
I feel sick.
Mom is home.
There is hushed conversation.
There is louder conversation.
She nods at me. I have to say what I know.
I tell them what I know, which is my name. I know my name. My name is Sloane. Piper-and-Sloane. Sloane-and-Piper. Slo-and-Pipes. Pipes-and-Slo. “Sloane Campbell Whittaker.” And my age. “Seventeen.” And yes, I did know Piper Sullivan. I totally know Piper Sullivan. Yes, Piper Sullivan is my best friend. Is, was, will always be, never was, I don’t know.
Mom answers their questions.
I answer their questions.
There was a party.
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
She was mad.
I kissed her boyfriend.
I don’t know! I don’t know!
I don’t know who that is.
(I do.)
Well, maybe he’s a bit familiar.
(Oh my God, not him.)
No, he isn’t.
(He is.)
Who is he?
(I know who he is.)
He did what?
Why can’t I know?
Mom?
My ears are full of sand and broken glass. I’m cold. I need to get dressed. I keep thinking about seaweed. I don’t know why. I can’t stop it. My brain is seaweed. The chair is stuck to my legs.
Mom is saying that it is enough.
One of the men is not talking and one of them is talking but his voice is getting mixed up with the ringing in my ears.
She floated in on the current from somewhere. Where?
The island, the island.
He was sleeping on the island.
My island.
Our island.
Mr. Aberley’s island.
I can feel the seaweed on my skin, flat and clammy like a hand.
A woman comes into the room. Who is she? Now there are two cruisers in the driveway. The woman is not in a uniform but the way she moves gives away her police-ness. It’s the square, rigid way she holds her shoulders. The way her mouth has settled into a flat line. Her no-nonsense ponytail pulled so tight that her roots are showing. She says to the men, like I’m not even here, “What have you got?”