by S. K. Falls
One Last Song
S. K. Falls
New York Boston
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For K.Z., who flung open a door.
Acknowledgments
Fun fact: It is ridiculously hard to write the acknowledgments for a novel without turning them into a small book of their own.
Firstly, I’d like to thank my husband. Without his unending support, without him saying, “No, babe, your writing most definitely does not suck large, rotten potatoes,” about twenty thousand and twelve times, I would never have finished the thing in the first place. You’re my lobster.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank one of the most amazing critique partners in the world, Aimee. My sister from another mister, my evil twin across the nation, thank you.
I’d also like to thank my amazing secret writers’ group. I could tell you about this group, but then they’d kill me. And you. And probably Bigfoot.
One big thank-you, too, to Laura of Bookish Treasures. She is the reason this book found me my agent. It’s because of book bloggers like her sharing the books they love that authors like me can write the books we love.
And last, but most definitely not least, I’d like to thank my agent, Thao Le, and my editor, Leah Hultenschmidt. Without these kick-ass ladies, this book would have been a mere shadow of its current self. Thank you both for believing.
Chapter One
I ate my first needle when I was seven.
You’d think something like that would be preceded by a major emotional moment, perhaps the slowing of time itself or some other heavy-handed bullshit. But no, there was nothing. I just remember thinking it was much too quiet in our seven-bedroom house. My mother was present—in a physical sense anyway—but I hadn’t seen her since she’d put out my breakfast. I was out of school, it being another glorious summer here in tiny, bucolic Ridgeland, New Hampshire. The oak tree, bowed over the roof like a curling hand, tapped on my bedroom window.
I opened my drawer, the one where I kept all the goodies I found—discarded plastic gemstones, spent toy gun pellets, dried earthworms—that I thought, for some unknown kid reason, were worth saving. There lay the sewing needle, a perfectly small, lethal sword. I wanted to be a sword swallower, like the ones in the circus. I knew people came from all over the world to see them.
So I put the thing in my mouth. It was cold, and the sharp point pricked my tongue on the way down my throat. I imagined it seeking the softest spot of my stomach to pierce. I imagined my stomach filling with blood, imagined it gushing out my mouth and nose and ears, and then even my mother would be forced to look at me.
But I waited and waited, and nothing of the sort happened. I couldn’t feel the needle anymore. I opened my mouth, knelt on the tufted stool before my painted white vanity, and peered into the dark cavern of my throat. I didn’t see any rips. Where the heck had the needle gone?
I went searching for my mother, my (sadly unbleeding) stomach twisted in knots of excitement and dread. What would she say? What would she do?
Tucked away in the corner of the dining room, she was reading the newspaper with a cup of tea at her elbow. She was East Indian on the surface and English at heart, my mother. I don’t think she’d ever forgiven my dad for whisking her away to the States when they married, though from what I understood, she’d gone willingly enough. Her black hair was pulled back into a sleek ponytail—the kind of thing that my mass of curls refused to be. She didn’t even look up when I slid into the chair beside her. I remember grabbing her sleeve and pulling.
“What, Saylor?” Yanking her arm away, she turned a page and kept reading.
“I swallowed something.” I wiggled in my seat. What if it came out of my butt when I pooped? Would it hurt?
She kept reading.
“I swallowed a needle.”
There was a pause. I thought maybe she hadn’t heard me. But then her head turned, and I saw her eyes: the deep brown coated with a mixture of fear and anger and irritation. An actual flurry of emotion.
She grabbed my shoulder. “You what? Why on earth would you do something like that?”
I shook my head, still astounded at the sheer weight of her hand on my skin, the warmth of her breath on my face.
Mum pushed her chair back and ran for the phone.
The rest of that episode came back to me in waves every now and then. An image here, an image there, scattered through the trails of my memory. I remembered going to the hospital. I remembered them putting me in some scary machines, looking at pictures of my stomach. I remembered Mum reading to me in the waiting room, out of some kids’ magazine, her breath still sweet and metallic from her tea.
I remembered I never wanted it to end.
* * *
I stood with my hands in my hoodie, looking down at the street below. New Hampshire was pitching a hissy fit complete with sleet that refused to be rain, the kind of weather that made people want to curl up inside with coffee and a book. I, of course, was a different story.
I love this kind of weather, but not for the reasons most people did. I liked it because the lines in the hospitals were usually shorter, as sick people decided to risk taking their at-home medications one more day. I liked it because the doctors lingered longer in my room; the nurses were more likely to make small talk. I liked the way rain sounded against Plexiglas windows.
“I’m double-parked, so hurry. We don’t want to be late.”
Turning, I nodded at Mum. I trailed my hands along the boxes the movers had arranged by the door. My first apartment, and I was leaving it already. I’d honestly planned to stay here more than six months.
I supposed I should’ve seen this coming. My grades had taken a steady nosedive since the beginning of the semester. The freedom had gone to my head. The credit card my parents had given me, and probably never checked before paying off, had been going to medical supplies more often than not. Though, had they thought to check, they’d probably assume I was buying condoms or tampons at the local pharmacy.
Laxatives were cheap and easy, and my condition baffled the doctors. I’d forgotten the kind of high I got from seeing a new doctor—the one in my hometown was so used to seeing me. That wide-eyed sense of honest-to-God wanting to help was so rare now.
But they’d done blood tests. Of course the laxatives had showed up. I thought they’d metabolize quicker than they actually did. It had been a mistake on the website I’d used as my guide to getting sick; I definitely wouldn’t be using it anymore.
* * *
The car purred as we crossed downtown, spraying parked vehicles and light poles with muddy slush. The steady squeak and drag of the windshield wipers was lulling. I inhaled deeply, breathing in Mum’s tea rose perfume.
“Is it a left here?”
I nodded.
When we parked, she got out and slammed the car door behind her. I tried to hold in a smile. She was angry. She was here.
* * *
The college psychologist stood when we walked in, her hand outstretched, stubby fingers waiting. Next to my mother, she looked mannish and ridiculous in her cheap black pantsuit and gelled cropped hair.
“Mrs. Grayson, it’s nice to meet you. Have a seat.”
“Please call me Sarita.” M
um grasped the collars of her cream-colored coat and pulled them together at the base of her throat, as if she was trying to protect herself from what was coming next.
I sat next to her, positioning the toe of my boot so it was right next to her shoe. I looked at our feet, side by side on the threadbare carpet. They were the same size.
“Sarita.” Dr. Milton looked down at the folder on her desk, shuffled a paper or two, and then sat back. “Are you… aware of the nature of Saylor’s ailment?”
Mum glanced at me. “I’m aware she’s been lying about her health again. She’s been doing that since she was small, exaggerating how bad things are.”
Shame and anger turned my blood to molten lava. Just the way she said it—as if I were intrinsically broken or had come defective without a receipt.
“It’s unfortunately a bit more serious than that.” Dr. Milton cleared her throat like she’d done the past couple of weeks every time she was uncomfortable. I wanted to rip her folder into pieces and shove the pieces down her throat. “Saylor has what’s called a factitious disorder. That means she creates symptoms in order to play the role of the sick person. But the thing that concerns me most, as a mental health professional, is that she could put herself at some serious risk if she’s not careful.” She paused, scratching her chin. “As I said in my phone call, the campus clinic found traces of laxatives still in her bloodstream, which explained the seemingly untreatable upset stomach she reported. But Saylor still denies her involvement in her disease. In addition, she’s doing poorly in all of her classes, something that’s to be expected from someone with such a chronic condition. I’m afraid it’s only going to progress and get more serious until she accepts help.”
Mum refused to look at me, but I saw the lines bracketing her mouth. The lines that emphasized just how disgusting, how disturbed, she thought I was. “We’ve made her a series of appointments with one of the best psychologists in her home city.” She rose.
Dr. Milton stood, too, speaking quicker when she saw we were about to leave. “While that’s excellent, I’d really like to encourage you and Mr. Grayson to go to these sessions, too. Factitious disorder is really a disorder of the family system, and—”
“Thank you. We’ll look into it.”
We strode out, me at Mum’s heels, breathing in her scent.
Chapter Two
My ex–new apartment was about an hour away from my parents’ house, the same house I’d grown up in. When we pulled into our gated community, I felt that familiar breathless excitement, sort like before a ride at an amusement park begins. It was how I’d always felt in my own skin, in my own life: heady, giddy, as if I could fall at any minute and never get up again.
I watched our giant two-story Southern-style house get closer, its vinyl siding more gray than light blue under the spitting sky. As Mum pulled neatly into the garage, I watched with my head tilted back against my seat. It looked like the house was swallowing us whole.
She turned the car off and we sat in the suffocating darkness, listening to the engine’s tick-tick-tick as it cooled down. My eyes adjusted, and I saw Mum take a swig from the water bottle in her cup holder. The sound of her swallowing was thunderous.
“Won’t you miss your friends?” she asked after a moment. “We had to pull you from school. What are you going to tell them?”
Putting my forehead against the window, I laughed. The glass fogged up, obscuring my reflection. “What friends?”
After a pause, Mum got out and closed the car door behind her, a soft, final thunk.
I followed her in the darkness, neither of us bothering to turn on the lights.
* * *
The house still smelled the same, like glass cleaner and paint, even though I’d been gone half a year.
I’d had to do my first semester at New Hampshire State as a commuter student. My parents insisted on a trial run because, according to them, I wasn’t “reliable”: the politically correct term for “batshit crazy.”
I’d gone all of last semester with only a few incidents because I’d wanted out that bad. Even crazy chicks need their independence. But once I got what I wanted—a place of my own—I’d given in to the urge again. Why? Attention, love, curiosity. Take your pick.
You might think it’d be hard to disappear in a state the size of a freaking bread crumb, but it’s not. It’s actually really easy to be overlooked.
When you’re an only child, you spend all your younger years worried that, when you finally go out into the big, bad world, people won’t like you. You haven’t had years and years to practice social cues with a sibling. You haven’t been honing your manners or reactions or whatever the hell it is that keeps humans so well separated from the other animals on the totem pole.
That’s a solid thing to worry about, really. But the problem is, it never occurs to you that there’s something even worse: that people may not even know you exist. You could be as substantial as smoke hovering in the air. People could walk through you.
I didn’t like being insubstantial.
I took my wet boots off in the mudroom, discarded my coat on the hook. Meandering through the kitchen, I walked to Mum’s craft nook. It was where she spent her days on her dollhouse-making hobby. I saw the bill once. She spent thousands of dollars a month on those little creepy things.
At the moment she was working on a bright yellow house with a tall, pointy roof and white scalloped trim. It looked like she’d been laying wood plank flooring inside. A tiny bottle of glue sat neatly capped on the table.
“That’s real mahogany,” she said, coming up behind me. “Three-eighths-inch thick.” She stroked a plank, caressing the wood grain as if it could feel.
“Mm.” I tapped on a window, traced a scalloped edge. “It looks like a kids’ gingerbread house.”
Her face froze at the insult, and then she rearranged her features to exhibit nonchalance. “I’m putting the kettle on. Would you like some tea? I can bring some to your room.”
I grinned and shook my head, pulling out a chair. “Nah. I think I’ll stay here with you while you work. Is that all right?”
She crossed into the kitchen without turning. “Of course,” she called. “But you’ve got an appointment with your new psychologist in half an hour.”
That was how we were: taunting each other, making snide comments, being passive-aggressive. But as long as my mother hurled those words at me, as long as she provoked emotion—any emotion—within me, I felt like I was home. I felt like I belonged.
* * *
After about twenty minutes, I knew it was time to go to my room and get dressed for the meeting with the psychologist. Besides, I had something I needed to do. As I made my way upstairs, my heart began to pound in my chest and my palms got sweaty. I imagined that athletes probably felt the same way before a big game. That burning anticipation, it was almost like a drug.
I dumped my duffel bag on the pink-flowered bedspread and gave the drawers in my nightstand and dresser a cursory look, but they were what I’d expected: empty. I’d taken the best of my stuff with me to college anyway.
With one eye on the door, I opened the side pocket of my duffel and slipped my fingers into the “secret” pocket I’d created with my scissors. There it was, nestled inside, my newest toy. Cupping the syringe in my hand, I walked into my bathroom and closed the door with my foot.
I slipped my hoodie off and stood in front of the mirror in a thin white t-shirt and jeans. The yellow light from the sconces made me look sallow, maybe even slightly jaundiced. There were dark shadows under my eyes, but I rubbed them with my fists anyway to make them a little redder. Appearances were important.
Pulling the plunger out of the syringe, I spat into the empty casing before replacing the plunger. Once I’d tugged the neckline of my t-shirt out of the way, I inserted the needle into a thin blue vein on my chest and pressed down on the plunger. Heat and pain scorched my skin; I bit down on my lip to keep from crying out. I set the syringe down on the bathroo
m counter and rubbed the spot I’d just injected. It was red and a little swollen already.
See, the Internet was my best friend. I’d just found out that the human mouth contained more bacteria than the human rectum. Ergo, when you injected saliva into your veins, it created abscesses. In direct contrast to the Internet, my biggest enemy was my body’s own immune system. It was a frustrating feeling to go through the trouble of exposing yourself to chicken pox or bronchitis and come away with only a vague sense of a stuffy nose.
But the Internet solved most of those issues for me once I realized there were people out there just as sick as me. It was like a wonderland with information on the most harmful drugs, on which parts of your own body could be turned on themselves. Seeing the worry on the doctors’ and nurses’ faces was a glorious, religious experience.
Sometimes I wondered what other people did with their time.
“Saylor.”
I put my hoodie back on and slipped the syringe into my pocket before opening the bathroom door. “Yeah. Coming.”
Mum was in my bedroom doorway, hovering like an unwanted insect. She never entered my room when I was in it. “Time to—”
“Go get shrunk. Yeah, I know.”
This wasn’t the first time my parents had gotten me “help,” and it wouldn’t be the last. The key was to go a few times, just to show them I was willing. It was easier for them to look the other way and for me to continue to do what I wanted to do if they thought they’d put in a reasonable amount of time to my “rehabilitation.”
* * *
When we got in the car, Mum turned on the radio to her special BBC station, a sign that we weren’t going to engage in conversation. My first thought was: “Fuck that.” I turned the dial so the posh guy’s voice muted. Mum glanced at me, her threaded eyebrow arched above her Prada shades.
“Am I ever going to be allowed to drive again?”
“Not until you can prove you’re capable of acting like an adult, no.” She uncapped her water, took a swig. It drove me crazy when she put on her “completely calm and collected” face. I knew she did it only to make me feel like I was the most insignificant worm to have ever crawled the earth. The worst part was that it worked. I wished she could feel the rage that boiled through my bloodstream, the rage that made me want to hurt her in any way I could, even if it meant hurting myself. I wanted to grab the steering wheel from her and crash the car into a mailbox just to see if she’d do anything besides raise her eyebrows.