Without Annette

by Jane B. Mason

  You still love her, a voice said. I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing the ventilation system would ventilate me, because I suddenly felt like I was suffocating. What had Brookwood done to us, to Annette? She used to be the person I shared everything with, my best friend. I turned back to her, seeing again how thin she was, how small and frail she looked in the hospital bed. I barely recognized her. Our relationship felt small and frail now, too. But was it always? Was it once as strong as I’d believed it to be?

  The door swung open and a nurse wearing ducky scrubs came in. “How are we doing in here?” she asked in a perky voice. “Have we gone pee-pee?” She lifted a plastic bag hanging on the side of the bed. I thought it was empty, but she seemed thrilled with its contents. “Good girl!” she crowed, patting Annette’s arm with one hand and squeezing the bag slightly—as if it were a piece of ripe fruit—with the other. “You’re up to three hundred cc’s.” She made a note in Annette’s chart. “Keep up the good work and we’ll get that catheter out before we know it.”

  “Thank God,” Shannon said, coming through the door with a giant cup of coffee, its edge smeared with lipstick the color of Annette’s hair. “There’s nothing worse than peeing into a bag, except maybe the coffee in that cafeteria. We had to go all the way across the street to Dunkin’ Donuts.”

  Annette gazed woodenly at her mother.

  “But there was a definite upside!” Shannon wagged a paper bag in the air. “I got your favorite—Bavarian cream!”

  Annette turned a shade yellower. “No junk food for our patient quite yet,” the nurse said. “Her body is still recovering from the alcohol abuse.”

  Shannon flinched at the words alcohol abuse and busied herself with opening the bag. “Oh, all right,” she said. “I suppose I’ll just have to eat it for her.”

  “Or you could give it to Josie,” came Annette’s hoarse whisper. “It’s her favorite, too.”

  Annette’s mother pretended not to hear as she pulled a doughnut out of the bag and took a bite, squirting the vanilla cream out the holes in the sides. A giant glob splattered onto the floor, missing her shoe by inches.

  I stared at the blob of creamy yellow filling, noticing that it was the same pallid yellow as Annette’s eyelids. And then it was gone, smeared between the industrial tile and the sole of Shannon’s shoe.

  When I stepped through the hospital doors, I was startled to discover that life outside had just been going along normally the whole time I was in there, as if nothing crazy was happening. As if Annette wasn’t hooked up to a bunch of machines and her pee wasn’t in a bag. As if she wasn’t being shipped back home.

  I also realized that I’d forgotten to call Dean Austin for a ride. I pulled out his card, punched his number into my phone, and watched a woman navigate her double stroller over the curb while I waited for him to answer. He picked up on the fourth ring.

  “Sam Austin.”

  “Hi, it’s Josie. I’m ready for a ride home,” I said, getting a little choked up at the sound of a friendly voice. And then, Did I really just call Brookwood home?

  “I can leave right now,” Dean Austin said. “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  “Perfect,” I lied. Half an hour felt like way too long, but everything in Connecticut seemed at least that far away. I hung up and sat down to wait, shivering and doing my best to focus on the people coming and going at Eden General and not what had happened in that hospital room. Because something had happened, something more than what had actually transpired. And even if I wasn’t ready to think about what it meant, I understood that, like so many other things, there was no escaping it.

  By the time Dean Austin’s blue station wagon pulled into the circle, my butt was cold and stiff from sitting on the concrete retaining wall. I slid into the front seat, completely exhausted and only just now getting that I was about to spend thirty minutes alone with the dean of students, the person in charge of student discipline. Of course, I’d spent a half hour with him on the ride to the hospital, but I’d been so focused on seeing Annette I hadn’t registered the implication of that.

  McNulty whimpered and greeted me from the backseat with a slobbery lick, and I stroked his ear while Dean Austin steered the car into traffic. From the looks of things, the drive was going to take longer than thirty minutes. We crawled along Route 122 in silence, past the commercial buildings and houses and into the country, following the line of cars as though we were in a funeral procession.

  “How is she?”

  I was so startled by the question, I didn’t answer right away.

  “Josie?”

  I pressed my palms together. “I’m not sure,” I said, realizing with a stab just how true my answer was. “Okay, maybe.”

  He flicked on his blinker and turned, passing a farm enclosed by a low rock wall. “And how are you?”

  A pair of stones lay on the half-frozen ground, stones that had fallen away from the structure like fugitives. Or failures. I knew Roxanne would tell me to say that I was fine—A-OK, thanks for asking. And maybe I was. But I couldn’t tell, and I didn’t want to lie. I was so tired of lying. “I’m not sure,” I repeated.

  McNulty momentarily nuzzled my arm before getting back to his drool work on Dean Austin’s shoulder. “Two honest answers,” the dean murmured. I waited for him to tell me what a difficult situation this must be, or give me a lecture about the dangers of reckless behavior. But he just drove.

  When we finally turned into the main circle, I involuntarily flashed back to the day Annette and I arrived. The Brookwood sign was the same. The buildings, hedges, and elm trees (with the exception of the leaf color) were the same. Everything still looked exactly like the catalog. But it all felt completely, utterly different. For one thing, there were only two of us in the car.

  Dean Austin pulled into a parking space and I reached for the door handle, eager to get out, to get away. “Thanks for the ride,” I told him with fake cheerfulness.

  He turned to me, his eyes rueful. “You’re welcome, Josie.” He seemed like he might keep talking, so I quickly climbed out of my seat and closed the door between us before hurrying toward my dorm. Campus was relatively deserted, and for once I was glad that everyone spent Saturday afternoons on the athletic fields—I wouldn’t have to deal with anyone.

  I pushed open the door to my room and immediately saw Grandma Ruby’s dress hanging on the closet door, neatly packaged in its dry cleaner’s plastic. My stomach somersaulting, I shoved it into the closet without removing the plastic or checking to see if the stains had come out. When I turned around, Becca was standing in my doorway, a tiny bit breathless and wearing her cross-country uniform.

  “How is she?” she asked, her turquoise eyes not quite meeting mine. “Is she okay?”

  How many times would I be asked that question?

  “She’s recovering,” I said, leaning against the closet doorframe. “It was pretty bad.”

  “Really?” Becca fidgeted, something I’d never seen her do. She seemed authentically distraught, which was good, because it meant she was human. And bad, because it also meant I’d have to treat her like a human, when it would have been much easier to treat her like a Soleet. “Like, how bad?”

  It was just like her to want the gruesome details, as if this were fiction we were reading for Professor Drake, and not something that had happened to an actual person.

  Not something that had happened to Annette.

  Becca was watching me out of the corner of her eye, and I could tell she wanted me to exonerate her, to tell her that Annette wasn’t her responsibility. To promise that it was fine. But it wasn’t fine, and some of it was her responsibility. And Annette’s. And Brookwood’s. And mine. We all had our parts in this.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I finally said. “She’s sober and she’s going home.”

  Becca’s head shot up. “Home?”

  Wait. Wasn’t that public knowledge?

  “Yes, with her parents. As soon as she’s well enough.”
>
  That was the normal course of action, right? Annette couldn’t be the first person to be suspended, or hospitalized for alcohol poisoning at Brookwood …

  “Her parents are here?”

  “Yes.” It was becoming clear that Becca wasn’t getting it, that she thought this was just another drunken episode. “They flew in this morning and are with her at the hospital. They had to intubate her.” My voice slithered over the word intubate just like Shannon’s had, and I felt a flash of guilt. Was I treating Becca the way Shannon treated me?

  Becca’s face was blank—she still wasn’t comprehending.

  “A breathing tube—she wasn’t breathing when they found her.”

  Becca’s face shifted into understanding and she slumped onto my desk chair. “This is bad.” She looked so deflated that I found myself trying to think of something to say—something kind, or at least neutral. But she spoke first.

  “What did you tell Thornfeld?” she asked, as if just remembering our meeting with him this morning.

  I shoved my hands into my pockets, marveling at how quickly this girl could turn everything back to herself.

  “Thornfeld?”

  “What did you tell him?” she repeated, her voice rising. She sounded vulnerable now, as if I had power to wield. The realization that this was actually true dripped into me slowly, like Annette’s IV fluids.

  “Where did she get the bottle of Skyy, Becca? From the back of your closet?”

  “Everyone drinks!” Becca shouted. “It’s how we survive here.” That was true, of course. Even geeks and major jocks downed shots of hard alcohol. And I knew Annette better than anyone at Brookwood—I knew she wasn’t an experienced drinker, and that her mother was. Wasn’t that a big part of why we’d come here—to get Annette away from Shannon’s drinking, her abusive behavior? To keep Annette safe?

  I looked away and willed myself to keep my cool, but I suddenly felt like a free diver at 150 feet—like a giant column of water was crushing down on my head. What an unbelievable mess. “I didn’t tell him anything,” I finally said. “I’m not a rat.”

  Becca exhaled through her mouth, her gratitude spreading between us. But it felt all wrong—sticky and treacherous.

  Becca got to her feet. “Did Thornfeld say whether she is suspended or expelled?”

  Do you actually care?

  “He said she wouldn’t be coming back to Brookwood when she was released from the hospital, but I’m not sure she’ll come back even if it is just a suspension. Her parents are freaked, and they weren’t too gung ho about her coming here in the first place. And anyway, the school might not want her. She’s not a legacy, and she’s on scholarship.”

  “They actually need the scholarship kids. They’re good for PR, and—”

  I wasn’t sure exactly when it happened, but Becca’s voice had shifted, her confident, superior cadence filling the room just in time to set the record straight, to put Annette and me in our PR, scholarship places.

  I held up a hand. “You don’t have to explain—I get it.”

  Her eyes held mine for several seconds while she fingered her pearls, considering. I reached for my own necklace, forgetting for a moment that I no longer had it. “We’re going to dinner at Joe’s later if you want to come.”

  Seriously? Other than having dinner with Penn McCarthy, that was the last thing I wanted to do. What I wanted was for her to get the hell out of my room.

  “We’re heading into town at seven thirty.” She smiled then, the first real smile she’d directed at me in over two months.

  I reeled. Had she accepted me now because she’d screwed up so badly with Annette? Did she think we were friends? Or was I some sympathy case? I curled my fingers into fists, amazed at her audacity, her confidence, her Soleetness.

  “I’ll see you later,” she chirped.

  Or not, I thought. But I said nothing as I forced my hands open and watched her disappear out the door.

  Professor Drake had asked us to start our first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, over the weekend, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do any schoolwork. I couldn’t even bring myself to get out of bed.

  “You can’t hide up there forever,” Roxanne pronounced on Monday morning.

  She is absolutely right, Josephine, my dead grandmother added.

  “Wanna bet?” I replied—to both of them—into my pillow.

  “Sure.” Roxanne yanked my comforter off of me in one fell swoop, leaving me coverless and cold on the top bunk.

  “Hey!” I threw out an arm and caught a corner of the duvet, but it slipped through my fingers. Just like Annette, I thought as I watched it fall in a heap at Roxanne’s feet.

  Was that what happened? I wondered as I shivered and sat up. Did she slip through my fingers? Or did I force her away? In the middle of my sleepless night, it had occurred to me that maybe Annette wanted to be free of me as much as she wanted to be free of her mother. I’d forced that thought out of my head the instant it surfaced, because it hurt more than anything else. “Can I have my comforter?” I asked.

  Roxanne arched a dark eyebrow. “Will you get your ass out of bed?”

  I lay there unmoving except for my eyes, which landed on the large paper sheets of gray, green, and blue that were waiting for the next stage in Roxanne’s latest project—an installation—and then the shelf above her desk. I noticed right away that her self-portrait was gone.

  “Hey, where is your painting?”

  “I got tired of it. Sort of like I’m getting tired of trying to get you out of bed.”

  Roxanne and my grandmother aside, I knew I should get up. Get on with it. But that feeling I’d had when I came out of the hospital—that things were just going along normally even though nothing was the slightest bit normal—was making me want to stay in bed. Forever.

  Annette and I had been two halves of a whole for almost a decade, and now she was gone.

  “Hello?” Roxanne was getting impatient, her spiky hair looking extra spiky. “I’m hungry, and first period starts in twenty-eight minutes.”

  I groaned and threw myself back on my pillow.

  “Josie,” Roxanne said, my comforter a nest at her feet. “There’s no question that this completely sucks. But life doesn’t have a pause button, and right now you’ve got to get your butt out of bed and some food in your stomach. The administration is on high behavioral alert for all of us, and especially you. The last thing you need is to start skipping class.”

  Annette smiled at me from the photo of our ninth-grade school carnival. She was everywhere … and nowhere. Except for the sex on her terms, which I cherished and despised, things wouldn’t be that logistically different without her here. And yet every fiber of me knew that she was gone, and mourned it.

  You’re such an idiot, I told myself. I’d somehow stupidly believed that as long as I’d been able to see Annette, to touch her, there was still an us, that we still had a chance.

  Roxanne simmered in the middle of our room. “Josie, you need to get up. Now.” She was done messing around.

  I sat up just as she closed in, jumping past her into the comforter-nest, which didn’t provide the soft landing I’d expected. “I don’t suppose I have time for a shower?” I asked, raising a hand to my filthy, frizzy mat of hair.

  “No way. I’d never get you out of there.” She threw a pair of corduroys and a long-sleeved shirt at me and I pulled them on while she mercilessly shoved my books into my backpack. Roxanne grabbed my elbow.

  “I don’t need a police escort,” I joked halfheartedly.

  “You might when we get to Soleet central,” she said as she hefted her own bag.

  Something in the tone of her voice made me consider either (1) taking a flying leap back into my bed or (2) asking for alcoholic sustenance. Since the first was clearly not going to fly with Roxanne and the second was the thing that got us into this mess, I ignored both urges and allowed myself to be led into the hall. Roxanne’s grip on my arm could only be described
as authoritative. “I’m good,” I said, shaking her off as we approached the stairs. “Really.”

  She shook her head slightly but didn’t reassert her hold as we started down the stairs. “Really good,” she repeated. “I like it. Keep telling yourself that.”

  When we got to the bottom of the stairs, my head automatically turned toward room 108. She wasn’t there, of course. Wasn’t anywhere I’d see her.

  Roxanne took my elbow again, but gently. “We need to go.”

  I felt leaden as she steered me across the drive and to the dining room, where everything was basically a blur. Dean Austin spotted me from his seat at the staff table, and pushed his chair back with a heavy scrape.

  “He wants to talk to you,” Roxanne said as he approached. “I’ll get you a plate and be right back.”

  I felt like a marionette without its puppeteer as the dean approached. “Good morning, Josie,” he said, studying my face. I had no idea what he was searching for, so I attempted to don a bland expression.

  “I thought you’d like to know that Annette is doing much better.” He touched my arm. “They expect her to be released tomorrow. Her parents will be coming to campus this afternoon to pack her things.”

  “Her things?”

  “They have decided to permanently withdraw her from Brookwood.”

  The news hit me like a slap even though it wasn’t really a surprise, and I steadied myself on the back of a chair. Of course that was what Shannon would do—yank her out of here as quickly as possible. And, at this point, who was I to object?

  “Thanks,” I said, staring out one of the leaded glass windows in an effort to halt the Tilt-A-Whirl I was suddenly riding. “Thanks for letting me know.”

  “My door is open if you need to talk, Josie. You have my cell—call anytime.”

  I nodded mutely as Roxanne approached carrying a tray of food I’d never be able to eat—just the smell of the dining hall was making my stomach lurch.

  “Thanks,” I repeated, moving away. I numbly followed my puppeteer-roommate to our own table and sat down.