Black Box

by Cassia Leo

  Rina’s not supposed to be at my house. She’s grounded until next month for cutting class three days last week, but this didn’t stop her from coming to my house after school.

  ‘Climb out the window,’ I suggest and her eyes widen as she moves toward the window behind her. ‘No! I’m just kidding! It’s too far down.’

  ‘Not with the patio cover.’ She yanks the window open and smiles as she looks back at me over her shoulder. ‘Hey, I’ve got an idea. Put the poems you write here on the windowsill and I’ll come by and get them whenever my mom lets me out of jail. You can pretend you’re sending them to a fancy magazine or newspaper; something really important. But it will just be me reading them.’

  I can hear footsteps stomping up the staircase outside the bedroom. ‘Fine, fine! Just go!’

  She grins as she carefully lowers herself onto the wooden lattice patio cover in the backyard. She skitters across the cover and deftly lets herself down onto the block fence surrounding the property. From there, she jumps down into the neighbors’ yard and gives me a thumbs-up as she races toward the back of their property. Then she disappears through the wooden gate into the alley behind the house.

  By the time Crush settles the bar tab, and we stuff our suitcases and his guitar case into the trunk of a cab, I’m starting to sober up a little. Both the meth and the alcohol are wearing off, leaving behind a warm rush of anxiety that leaves me emotionally conflicted. Part of me wants to tell him I can’t get a hotel room with him. He’s practically a stranger. Another part of me wants to lay my head in his lap and fall asleep. I guess I’ll settle for lying in my own bed in the hotel room.

  ‘Park Plaza,’ Crush says to the cab driver, and I laugh out loud as I lean my head against the window.

  ‘Park Plaza? That’s a bit fancy, don’t you think?’

  ‘It’s one of the few hotels in Boston with a two-bedroom suite. Unless you want to sleep in the same room as me. I’d be happy to get us a twin-size bed to share in a hostel, if that’s what you prefer.’

  ‘Whatever. How do you know it has a two-bedroom suite? You stay there often?’

  He’s quiet for a moment, then he clears his throat before he responds. ‘My dad is the CEO of a large investment trust and they used to own a large stake in the Park Plaza.’

  I pull my head away from the window and sit up straight as I turn to him. He’s gazing out the passenger window, probably trying to avoid seeing my reaction to this.

  ‘Define large.’

  ‘Billions.’

  ‘So . . . you’re rich is what you’re trying to tell me?’

  He sighs as he turns to face me. ‘Does that bother you?’

  ‘Honestly, it’s a little intimidating . . . Okay, more than a little intimidating. But I guess it explains why you look like that, but you talk like Harvard.’

  ‘Talk like Harvard? Is that an insult?’

  ‘No way. It’s cute,’ I blurt out before I can stop myself.

  He tilts his head and smiles. ‘Cute?’

  I shake my head and look out my window. ‘I mean, it’s cool. It’s just, I go to community college. I’m used to talking to assholes who can’t form a complete sentence to ask a girl out on a date.’

  ‘Finally, my expensive education will be put to good use.’

  I get a weird urge to blurt out I love you. I get urges to blurt out inappropriate stuff all the time, but that’s the first time I’ve ever gotten that particular urge. I should probably take my meds if I’m going to be hanging around someone normal. Of course, how normal can he be with the name Crush?

  ‘Are you ever going to tell me why you changed your name to Crush?’

  ‘Are you ever going to tell me why you don’t want to go home?’

  The cab pulls up in front of the Boston Park Plaza and Crush slips the driver a wad of cash that makes the cab driver spit out incoherent mumblings of gratitude. The driver rushes out of the cab to help with the bags in the trunk and I follow right after him. But Crush is already there and the luggage is standing on the snow-covered pavement in front of the hotel. A bellman races out from under the black awning covering the sidewalk in front of the hotel entrance. Crush tells him to take my bag and I follow them into the hotel, trying not to smile as Crush holds the door open for me even though he’s the one carrying his guitar case and dragging his luggage.

  My mouth drops when we enter the lobby. An enormous crystal chandelier hangs from the high ceiling in a space the size of four huge lecture halls. Large, square pillars line the right and left side of an open carpeted space beneath the chandelier. Beyond the pillars on the right is the reception desk. Through the spaces between the pillars on the left, I glimpse what could be a fancy lounge area. This place screams historic opulence. I’ll bet this was a great place to stay about eighty years ago.

  Crush is approaching the check-in counter and I hurry up to join him. I can’t help but feel curious about him now. I want to see how the people here treat him.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ the woman says as Crush sidles up to the counter.

  Crush nods and I swear there’s some form of silent agreement going on between these two. ‘Good afternoon, Greta. Is the Garden Suite available?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Her gaze falls onto her computer screen as her fingers move like lightning across her keyboard. ‘How many nights will you be staying with us? We have another guest booked in the Garden Suite on Thursday.’

  ‘Three nights?’ Crush replies, taking a beat to consider this timeframe. ‘That should be enough. We’re just waiting for our flights to be rescheduled. The airline should be getting us on another flight in a day or two.’

  Greta raises her wispy, blond eyebrows. ‘You got here just in time. We were told to expect an influx of guests tonight. They’re saying the storm will have all flights grounded for at least two days. Do you want to book another room for Thursday, just in case? Or do you want to wait?’

  Crush turns to me and I try not to let him see the panic building inside me. I can’t stay in Boston that long. Someone will find me. Even if I’m holed up in a hotel room booked under the name Crush. I’m sure someone working in this hotel will eventually see something on the news or somewhere with my missing person photo.

  ‘Do you want to book another room, so we don’t have any problems booking later on once the hotel is rushed with travelers?’

  I glance at Greta and she flashes me a guarded smile. I wonder if she knows Crush’s real name. I wonder if he’s brought other girls here before.

  My shoulders slump as I resign myself to my fate. ‘Book another room. I can’t leave the hotel anyway, so that’s probably best.’

  ‘What do you mean, you can’t leave the hotel?’

  ‘I mean we can’t leave the hotel. Just look at that snow!’ I point at the hotel entrance, my heart racing as I hope he doesn’t question this slip of the tongue later.

  ‘Okay,’ he says with a smile. He knows I’m bullshitting. ‘We’ll book another room for Thursday and Friday night, just to be safe.’

  ‘We don’t have any two-bedroom suites available, but we do have a junior suite. It has one bedroom and a sofa bed.’

  Crush looks to me again and I nod so I don’t say anything stupid. ‘Book it,’ he says to Greta.

  Once the rooms are booked and Greta hands Crush the card keys, I turn around and find my suitcase is gone. ‘Oh, shit! Where’s my suitcase?’

  ‘Over there,’ Crush chuckles as he points at a brass luggage trolley on the other side of the lobby.

  ‘I totally knew that. I was just trying to scare you.’

  ‘I highly doubt you could ever scare me.’

  I follow him toward the trolley. ‘You obviously don’t know me.’

  The bellman watches as we approach and he falls into step next to us. We cross the lobby and pass the pillars toward a corridor with a few elevators. He punches the call button for us and Crush smiles down at me as we wait.

  ‘What?’ I bark at him.

&
nbsp; ‘You’re not scary. Not even a little bit.’

  ‘Yeah, well, like I said before. You don’t know me. I’m . . .’

  I already told him I’m bipolar, but I resist the urge to admit that I’m off my meds. I don’t think he or the bellman could handle that kind of news.

  When we arrive in the suite, my eyes widen and I get a strange giddy feeling in my belly. ‘This place is huge.’

  Crush closes the door after the bellman. ‘Well, you wanted a separate bedroom, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, but this is too much.’ I take a seat in a stool at the breakfast bar of our very own kitchen. ‘I know you said you’re rich, but I feel like I’m taking advantage of you.’

  ‘You’re taking advantage of me?’ he replies, opening the refrigerator door and pulling out a couple of bottles of water. He sets one on the bar in front of me and takes a swig from his own. ‘Somehow, I find it very unlikely that you would ever take advantage of me. Not that I wouldn’t want you to.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Only kidding.’

  Suddenly, this huge space feels a little claustrophobic. ‘I’m . . . I’m going to take a shower. Is that okay?’

  ‘You don’t need my permission. Make yourself at home. I have a feeling we’re going to be here for a while.’

  ‘Um . . . where’s the bathroom?’

  He grabs my suitcase and leads me past the dining area, where a fancy table is set with six sets of dinnerware, and back past the kitchen toward an open door. The bedroom is not huge, but it’s private. And the bed, with the fluffy white pillows and comforter, looks a million times more comfortable than my bed at home.

  He points at a door in the far left corner of the room and smiles. ‘Bathroom’s over there. If you’re tired, feel free to go right to bed afterward.’

  Without warning, my eyes tear up and I quickly wipe the tears away.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  I close my eyes so I don’t have to see the look on his face. ‘Nothing, I’m just . . .’ I want to say that I’m taken aback by his kindness, but that would be weird, so instead I say, ‘I haven’t taken my meds. I have to look for the bottle in my suitcase. I’ll be fine. I’ll come hang out with you when I’m done. I should at least try to stay awake a little while longer.’

  I hastily drag the suitcase into the bathroom and lock the door behind me. Taking a seat on top of the suitcase, I bury my face in my hands as I sob uncontrollably. This is so stupid. I should just take the stupid pills, but the alternative to the odd behavior, the speech problems, and the uncontrollable crying is being a zombie. I want to feel my last days on this fucked-up Earth.

  I remove my hands from my face and open my eyes. The bathroom is smaller than I expected in a room like this. It’s not even that nice, in fact, it reminds me of something. I begin to undress, removing everything but my bra and panties as I try to remember what this bathroom reminds me of, when suddenly I feel the alcohol in my belly shooting into my throat. I race to the toilet and vomit the last couple of beers I consumed. The liquid burns my throat and I taste a bitter trace of meth on the back of my tongue. I vomit until there’s nothing left in my stomach and my eyeballs are ready to pop out of their sockets.

  I attempt to stand, but the tiny lights dancing in front of my eyes have me disoriented. Reaching for the wall to steady myself, my hand misses the wall and I tumble forward. I lose my footing and my forehead hits the edge of the tub.

  The retching sounds I hear through the adjoining wall of the kitchen and bathroom cease and I breathe a sigh of relief. Then I grab the phone receiver to call room service for some ginger ale, but a loud thump interrupts my plans. I drop the receiver and rush to Mikki’s bedroom.

  I knock on the bathroom door, but she doesn’t respond right away. ‘Mikki!’ I shout this with my lips pressed to the tiny crack between the door and the frame and she still doesn’t respond. ‘Mikki, if you’re all right, please say something.’

  I wait a few more seconds before I try the doorknob. It’s locked. Fuck it. I take a step back and land a hard kick just to the left of the door handle, but it doesn’t give at all. On the second kick, I hear a small crack in the wood that gives me hope. Seven kicks later, the doorframe splinters completely and the door swings inward. The first thing I see is Mikki’s jeans, sweater, and T-shirt tossed haphazardly onto the bathroom sink. Then I see her.

  Mikki is lying on her side on the bathroom floor next to the tub, a thin stream of blood trickling from a cut on her forehead. I crouch next to her and put my fingers on her neck to check her pulse. It seems strong, maybe just a tad fast.

  ‘Mikki? Mikki, can you hear me?’

  I scoop her up in my arms and that’s when I see it. I nearly drop her onto the bathroom floor at the sight of it, but somehow I manage to hold onto her slender body as I carry her into the bedroom. Every step feels like a thousand and I can’t seem to get to the bed fast enough. Finally, I get there and, as I lay her down gently, she begins to stir.

  ‘I’m calling an ambulance. You need to get your head checked,’ I say, though I feel as if it’s someone else saying the words.

  ‘Don’t go,’ she mutters as her eyes attempt to find me through the haze of the blow to the head. ‘Please don’t . . . don’t call.’

  I stare at her in utter fucking disbelief. It’s her. I knew it the moment I heard her sigh in the café, but I had hoped with everything inside me that I was wrong. I glance at the dozens of scars on the tops of her thighs – proof that I failed her – then I quickly look away.

  Her eyes seem more focused now and she finally seems to realize what’s going on. I turn away as she scrambles to hide herself under the covers.

  ‘I can’t just ignore the fact that you injured your head,’ I reply, unsure how I’m going to bring up the fact that I saw the tattoo on her chest. The same one I saw in that parking lot three years ago. The same image that she used for her Twitter profile four years ago.

  ‘You saw me,’ she whispers, and the shame in her voice makes my skin prickle.

  ‘I didn’t see anything,’ I reply quickly, still facing away from her toward the bedroom door.

  Fuck. I didn’t think that she would be okay after what happened, but I never expected this. I don’t know what to say to her. For the second time in my fucked-up life, I’m speechless. Only this time, it’s not by choice.

  ‘You did. Yes, you did. You saw.’

  I grit my teeth against the raw emotions threatening to overtake me. ‘I’m going to turn—’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Mikki, we need to talk.’

  ‘No, just please don’t call anyone.’

  ‘I’m not going to call anyone. I need to talk to you about . . .’ I turn around and her eyes are wide with fright as she clutches the blankets up to her chin. ‘About April fourteenth.’

  I have this recurring dream that I’m swinging on a wooden swing high above the city. And I’m scared, obviously, but I’m also excited. So I keep pushing myself to swing higher and higher. Finally, I feel that flip in my stomach and a split-second moment of weightlessness. I’m falling, but only for a second because that’s when I wake up.

  Maybe that’s the way life is. We spend our lives going back and forth between courage and fear, afraid of something bad happening. Afraid of falling. Afraid of dying. But what if death comes so fast that it’s over before you even know what’s happening?

  There’s a part of me that believes in love and happy endings. A part of me that wants to see the Grand Canyon and swim with dolphins. There’s also a part of me that wants to wear sweatpants and lie in bed all day. A part of me that fantasizes about jumping off that swing.

  I’m type-two bipolar. I was diagnosed just over a year ago when I got a strong urge to tie my purse strap around my neck – anything to make it stop. I didn’t actually tie my purse strap around my neck. Instead, I logged into my secret Twitter account and sent out a mayday signal.

  I couldn’t log into my real Twitter account.
I had deleted that profile months before to stop the harassing tweets. This new account was safe. I didn’t expect anyone to respond to a tweet from an unknown person with a cartoon bunny profile picture and the Twitter account name @burninbushytail. But he responded, whoever he is, or was. And I’ll never forget it.

  @burninbushytail This Black Box is yours to keep, to stash your troubles away. Just lock it up and call my name, and I’ll be there always.

  Instead of ending my life thirteen months ago, I went to my mom and told her everything. I told her about the purse strap. I told her about the bullying. I told her about feeling overwhelmed by my classes. I told her about my anxiety and the confusion, and how I was beginning to feel like there were too many people and too many voices. I told her about the nightly hallucinations and how I just wanted it all to end.

  Diagnosed bipolar at age fourteen. Now, more than one year and three different medications later, I’m almost normal. And I’m about to go to my first ‘normal’ teenage party. Of course, what the hell is normal when you’re fifteen?

  Rina picks me up at eight o’clock. My light-brown hair is pulled up in a neat ponytail and I’m wearing skinny jeans and a white hoodie with the name of some taco bar in Cancun where my family went on vacation two years ago. This is the hoodie I wear when I want to feel normal. It’s a conversation piece. People always ask if I’ve been to Beto’s Cantina when I wear this, so it’s good for a party where I’ll know absolutely no one but Rina.

  Rina, short for Katrina, is my new best friend. My old best friend, Lucy, ditched me last year so as not to get caught in the bullying crossfire. I changed schools seven weeks before the end of my freshman year. Tomorrow it will be exactly one year and four months since I started going to alternative high school.

  Alternative. Why don’t they just call it what it really is? A school for kids who’ve fucked up so royally that they can’t even be put in the remedial classes at regular high school. I ditched so many classes last year to avoid Brad and Nellie. It was hard to care about AP Biology when all I heard as I walked the halls were the whispers . . . slut . . . cum-dumpster . . . hole.

  Nellie’s boyfriend, Brad Winthrop, sat next to me in history class. I was always pretty quiet, but Brad had a way of asking just the right questions to get me talking and laughing. He flirted with me on Twitter for weeks before he came into class one day looking really upset. He said that he and Nellie had broken up and he had been counting on her to help him with a history essay. Being the idiot that I was, I offered my assistance. Little did I know that Brad was just using me to get back at Nellie for not having sex with him. Brad and I never had sex during our study session, but the truth didn’t matter once Nellie believed the lies Brad told her.

  Eventually, the bullying got so bad, online and offline, that Lucy began avoiding me and I quit going to school altogether. I deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts and basically refused to get out of bed. That was when the purse strap started looking very appealing.

  But that was over a year ago. I’m at a new school now. Rina is nothing like Nellie, or Lucy. I don’t have a reputation here other than being a bit quiet. I’m actually getting all As, which isn’t very difficult considering the teachers at this alternative high school aren’t allowed to give us homework. This may not be what I envisioned for my high school experience, but it’s getting better every day. My therapist warned me yesterday that I may be entering a manic period, where everything seems great and I’m motivated to do normal things, like going to parties.

  As Rina turns her twelve-year-old Toyota onto Centre Street, my phone vibrates in my back pocket. I slip it out and check the screen. It’s a text from my mom.

  Mom: Don’t forget to text me when you get there and call me if you need me to pick you up. Gold

  My mom signs all her texts to me with the word Gold, and I’m supposed to sign all my texts to her with whatever code color we’ve agreed on for the day. Tonight, I have to sign my texts with the word Black. This is her way of making sure that I’m not lying in a ditch somewhere while some murderer texts her pretending to be me. Sometimes, I think my mom is almost as crazy as I am.

  Rina glances at my phone then looks straight ahead. ‘That your mom?’

  Other than Rina, my sister Meaghan, and my chemistry lab partner, my mom and dad are the only people who ever text me.

  ‘Yeah, she’s just freaking out a little.’ I shoot my mom a text telling her I’ll call her if I need anything. I end the text with goodnight, then my code color, hoping this will prevent her from texting me again later. Rina smiles the way she always smiles when she’s trying not to make fun of me. ‘What? You know my mom is a freak.’

  She shakes her head. ‘That’s not why I’m smiling.’

  ‘Then why are you smiling, weirdo?’

  ‘I’m giving it up to Heath tonight.’ The car swerves a little as she adjusts the radio station and settles on ‘Nothing On You’ by B.o.B.

  ‘Tonight?’ I want to say, When you’re supposed to be holding my hand through the scariest social outing of my life? But I don’t.

  Rina and Heath met in the computer lab this year. They’ve been dating less than two months, but she’s been talking about losing her virginity to him since day one. They’re so wrapped up in each other that Rina and I have been hanging out at Heath’s lunch table with all his stoner friends for the past month.

  Despite all the shit I went through at Franklin High last year, I never did drugs. The only time I ever drank alcohol, I got so sick my parents had to take