Last Train to Babylon

by Charlee Fam

  “Sorry about your brother,” I said.

  His jaw tightened, locking in his words, the muscles protruding just beneath his ears. His cold, gray eyes stared past me at the moths floating beneath the motion-sensor lights.

  “You’re a freshman this year, too, right?” I asked, feeling incredibly awkward. “Are you going to Seaport or St. Christopher’s?” He took another deep breath, but stopped himself before the words could leave him.

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  “Look,” I said. “You don’t have to say anything. But I’m really sorry, and if you need someone to talk to, I live just over there.” I pointed to the direction of my street, not that he’d have any clue where my house was, but it was a gesture and that was enough.

  ON THE FIRST day of high school, the Younger Sullivan stood at the corner of my street—a blue, zip-up hoodie hugging his skinny arms and a saggy backpack slung over one shoulder. He was shy, raising his hand awkwardly at me, with an embarrassed half smile. He had black shaggy hair, and this cool, blue tone to his skin and lips, like he’d been out in the snow too long.

  “Thought you might want someone to walk with,” he said, nothing like the mute, broken boy I had met the week before.

  So that’s how it happened, Adam and me. And after all those years, he never even knew that I had kissed his dead brother.

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  Chapter 9

  Monday, October 6, 2014.

  I’M SORRY FOR your loss.

  The response I get from Jonathan this morning. It’s been almost twenty-four hours, but I guess I haven’t bothered to check my in-box since I left for Long Island yesterday anyway. I wasn’t expecting anything more. His e-mails are as detached as his managing skills, and I don’t hate it, at least in this situation. But most times, it’s just frustrating. I’ll take five minutes to type up a thoughtful e-mail, minding the details, making sure to use just the right amount of professionalism with a touch of conversation—so I don’t sound too eager. But whether I write a five-hundred-word paragraph or a simple question, he always responds with a curt one, two—or in the I’m sorry for your loss case—five-word definitive sentence.

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  Jonathan’s got a thing for passive-aggressive periods. Even this one comes off as totally condescending. He’s a big guy, with a heavyset chest, balding and always in a baseball hat. If I didn’t know any better, I’d describe him as jolly, but his tone and use of the period just feel menacing.

  Me: Hi Jonathan! Just letting you know that I stayed late to make the Third Avenue fire edits. I think it came out well—given the deadline. It’s attached. Please let me know what you think, and let me know if you need me to do anything else. I’m happy to stay late again!

  Jonathan: Thanks.

  Me: Hi Jonathan! I’m really sorry, but I’m not going to be able to finish the article tonight. I have the flu and need to head home. Please let me know if that’s okay. Again, so sorry!

  Jonathan: Feel better.

  Me: Hi. Please see article I wrote on the dog park mugger. Let me know if it’s okay to post.

  Jonathan: Do better.

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  I’m up early. It’s a workday, after all, so I guess my body’s just tuned to waking up at seven. I don’t get dressed, though. That’s the nice part about being here. I stay in my glasses, yoga pants, and throw a flannel robe over my ribbed tank top and set up on my backyard deck. Karen and Eli are still sleeping, but I can see into the kitchen in case my mother decides to rise and sneak up on me. I could get used to this. It’s nice not having to drag myself down five flights of stairs just to get a cup of lukewarm coffee and risk getting spat on by the crazy homeless bitch on my corner.

  My laptop rests on the glass patio table. I think about replying to Jonathan, offering some sort of explanation, but I’m not sure how one responds to I’m sorry for your loss. Do you say thanks? Do you let him know it’s all right, we weren’t very close anyway, or would he then turn around and tell me to get my ass back to work? Honestly, what I’d really like to say is something along the lines of My loss? So now it’s my loss? I haven’t lost anything. Everything I lost happened a long time ago. There’s no loss here. Nope. If anything, I’d call it a gain!

  I wonder what kind of response that would elicit from big old, jolly Johnny boy.

  Okay.

  See you next week.

  Feel better.

  I bring a mug of coffee to my lips. It’s a Looney Tunes mug from Six Flags and must be ten years old, at least. I inhale—drop of skim, no sugar, sprinkle of cinnamon. There’s something unsettling about autumn on Long Island. It’s like the air is too thin, too perfect, too quiet. I even find the distant sound of a lawn mower unnerving.

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  So I gulp the coffee, taking a moment to just appreciate the scene around me—the canal, the robin’s-egg sky, the grass for a change. We don’t get much grass in the city, not unless you make the trek to Central Park. It’s not too bad of a walk from where we are, but on those sunny days, it’s hard to find an untouched spot of grass without some obnoxious family picnicking within arms’ reach. I lean back in my chair, stare at a metal rowboat bobbing against our neighbors’ dock, but I don’t relax. I’m starting to think that I just don’t know how. I click out of Jonathan’s e-mail and hover the mouse over the Google search box in the corner of the screen. It always starts like this—the hollow feeling in my gut, my blood buzzing like crazy. It’s probably the most bizarre addiction that I’ll never admit to anyone.

  I type in his name. A few pictures come up—an old college lacrosse profile, Facebook, an article from the local paper naming those enlisted in the marines, army, etc. There’s a mug shot from somewhere outside of Florida, but it’s just a DUI. I know because I’ve searched the name too many times to count, each time hoping that some scandalous arrest would pop up on the screen. Some girl coming forward on a forum, calling him out as the piece of shit that he is. But maybe he’s not. And maybe I’m wrong. I pick up my coffee too fast and the mug slips out of my hands, coffee splattering all over my lap.

  “I THOUGHT I’D make dinner tonight.”

  I’m in my room—ex-room—with my back to the door when Karen’s voice hits me from behind. “That’s fine,” I say.

  “Anything special you’re in the mood for?” She stands in the doorframe.

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  “Not really.” I stand over my laptop, pretending to check my e-mail.

  “Did you meet Ashley?” she asks.

  “Who?”

  “Eli’s girlfriend. She’s really very nice.”

  “Oh, right. She’s okay,” I say.

  “I invited her tonight,” she says, and I realize now this isn’t just a casual family dinner, and the idea of socializing, even if it’s with Eli’s obnoxious girlfriend, makes me want to crawl between my sheets and fake the flu—which is already one of my backup plans for Thursday.

  I wish my mom would get a hobby, and by hobby, I mean boyfriend. She doesn’t date much, and she only brought a man home once, when I was in ninth or tenth grade. He took my mother, brothers, and me to Massapequa Bowl for a family Sunday-funday. He ordered a pitcher of root beer. I remember thinking that was weird.

  I check my phone again. Adam hasn’t called back. Danny hasn’t called either. And I’m not sure which bothers me more.

  Karen steps into the room and places a crumbling shoe box on my bed. “I found these in my closet,” she says. “I thought you might like to have them.”

  I wait until she leaves to open the box, and the first thing I see is Rachel’s gap-toothed grin beaming up into the sun. She looks about nine or ten, and her arm is draped around my slouched shoulder. I’m smiling, too. It was a Halloween parade. We’d dressed as hippies. We both wore blond wigs that fell to our butts and blue, tinted peace-sign sunglasses.

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  She wasn’t all bad. On her good days, Rachel could make me feel really special, and the girls in this photo were best friends. Sometimes I forget that. She never miss
ed a chance to tell me that either—to constantly remind me that I was her best friend. Best friend. I was all she had, she’d say.

  I heard Rachel talk about her family like that once, and that was only when I’d walked in on her sobbing over my bathroom sink when we were thirteen. We’d been having dinner at my house—pork chops and applesauce—and she’d gotten up abruptly in the middle of a conversation on how much I hated pork chops and applesauce. I hadn’t realized there’d been an issue until Karen nudged me in the shoulder.

  I had assumed Rachel locked the door, so my plan was to knock twice and wait thirty seconds before halfheartedly rattling the doorknob. Then I would report back to my mother that I’d at least made an effort and go back to picking apart my loathsome pork chop. But the door creaked open just as I was getting ready to pull back and walk away. Rachel had obviously wanted me to walk in on this scene, but she acted startled, splashed water over her face, and smiled through the tears.

  I never could stand when people cried around me. It was never a secret. There was never anything that made me feel more uncomfortable and useless. And Rachel knew this, so when she saw me easing my way back out into the hallway, she reached out and pulled me toward her.

  “You’re my best friend, Aub. You know that?” I nodded, my body stiff in her embrace. “You’re the only person who gives a shit about me,” she said. “My mom wishes I were dead.”

  “Why would you say that?” I managed to mumble.

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  “She doesn’t have to say anything, Aubrey. I’m not an idiot. I see the way they look at me and the way they look at Chloe. You’ve seen it, too. I know you have.” She splashed more water on her face, and I put my hand on her shoulder awkwardly. “You’re so lucky to have your mom,” she said. “Fuck my family, Aubrey. You’re my family.”

  I bend the photo in my hands and wonder how such a young girl could hold so much power, how she could simultaneously make me feel so needed and so useless. I take a hard gulp of wine and scoff to myself, feeling a little bit like a survivor of battered-wife or Stockholm syndrome. I survived. I survived Rachel Burns. I should have a T-shirt made or claim my own color of a Livestrong bracelet. It would have to be black, like Rachel’s soul.

  It’s easy to see now, how crafty Rachel had been with words, playing off my emotions, ever-so-elegantly tipping the scale of power in her favor. And yet, I continued to make excuses for the girl. Especially with Adam.

  I don’t understand why you’re friends with her, he’d say. Why do you let her talk to you like that?

  You wouldn’t understand, I’d say. That’s why you have no friends.

  I thought you were my friend.

  I’m your girlfriend. That’s not the same thing.

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  Chapter 10

  September 2005.

  FIRST FRIDAY WAS a tradition in Seaport. It was on a level with homecoming, graduation, maybe even prom. On the first Friday of the new school year, the new seniors would throw a blowout. Location was a direct correlation between the social stature of the individual and the size of his or her family home. So the hotter you were, and the bigger your house, the better your chances of hosting the First Friday of your senior year. And that was a big deal. If you hosted First Friday, you could basically have your pick of fresh meat or senior ass for the rest of your high school career.

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  There were impostor versions around town, of course, and they took the form of low-key gatherings in smoky garages with cans of Bud and not enough cheese and crackers. But there was always only one real First Friday. And if you were a freshman, then your level of sluttiness that night pretty much determined your reputation for the next four years.

  That first, First Friday was thrown by Jason Dowd, who opened his sprawling three-story estate on the marina up to the class of 2003 and the brave underclassmen who dared to show up. Earlier that summer, I’d survived Freshman Friday—a traditional day of hazing for the incoming freshmen on the last Friday of the school year. I’d gone with Ally Marlo, and about twelve other girls in my grade, but Rachel managed to dodge the day altogether, which didn’t sit well with the new seniors. It wasn’t terrible. We were blindfolded, loaded into the back of a truck, and dumped off at Clear Pond Park, where we ran laps around the baseball field while the senior girls doused us in mayonnaise, threw garbage at us, and called us filthy, freshman sluts. The boys in our grade had it much worse. Marc’s friends spent the summer driving around, trawling the streets for freshmen, and when they found them, they’d slam the shit out of their asses with a paddle.

  At the party, I took a drag of Rachel’s cigarette while a group of us freshmen stood on the dock. I held a Solo cup to my lips, my arms crossed tightly across my chest. The September air was thick, humid, and smelled like wet wood and ash. I could already feel my hair frizzing, sticking to the sweat on my back, so I tied it back in a low ponytail.

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  I’ll never forget the feeling of my first, real high school party—the way my blood buzzed through my veins, the feeling of not knowing, of having absolutely no fucking clue who I’d be for the next four years. I had an idea, though. I’d announced to Rachel and Ally that I intended to stay single through high school—that I would not be tied down by any of the lackluster options in our town. A bold statement, because I think I was just worried no one would date me anyway. But as I stood on the dock, on that First Friday, passing the cigarette back to Rachel, I secretly hoped that some stubble-faced senior, on the verge of manhood, had already spotted my glistening back sweat from across the yard and had been so struck by my grace that he was already plotting our first kiss.

  “What is this?” I asked, staring down into my cup—an endless pool of neon-red liquid that could only be vodka and Robitussin.

  “Jungle Juice,” Rachel cut in. “Pretty nasty, huh? Diane drinks it all the time.” I raised my eyebrows at Ally and we shared a knowing smirk. Rachel had always used Diane to make herself seem a little less inexperienced. It had become somewhat of a running joke between Ally and me: Blow jobs? . . . Diane showed me this awesome technique on a banana like five years ago. Cocaine? . . . How else would Diane stay so thin? What do you mean you never heard of Jungle Juice? . . . Why, Diane invented Jungle Juice!

  Neither Ally nor I had ever actually ever met this Diane. She was a legend—like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster.

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  “So, ladies,” Rachel said. Pulling our attention back to her. At some point when we weren’t looking, she had situated herself at the center of the semicircle. “Who is everyone going for tonight? This is our night to lock our boys down.” Her smile lingered as she swayed her head from side to side, making sure to include each of us in the conversation. That was one thing Rachel was good at, making everyone feel comfortable around her. Must have made it easier for her to run the show.

  “Aubrey here has sworn off men for the next four years.” She winked at me, and she touched my shoulder, a gesture that felt oddly soothing. “Probably because the last guy she hooked up with hanged himself.”

  I felt my stomach twist, Ally and the other girls stifled a laugh, shaking their heads to feign disapproval, as if that made it somehow okay. Sasha Coyle crossed her pudgy arms over her chest and smiled up at me, her eyes cast down at her feet.

  Sasha was Ally’s new sidepiece. She was a hefty girl, who made up for it with an expensive wardrobe and a willingness to share her father’s credit card. It was depressing to watch, but she seemed happy to be a part of the group.

  “But,” Rachel went on, “I think this is my year with Eric.”

  Rachel believed every year was her year with Eric Robbins, ever since he taught us what a virgin was back on Ms. Price’s Magic Carpet. I never saw anything in him, even before he went and fucked everything up for us. He was a year older, stocky, freckled, with a space between his two front teeth that sort of made him look like a comic-strip character. But Rachel had been obsessed with him. Maybe it was his douche-y and aloof d
emeanor. Maybe it was his coveted spot on the lacrosse team that appealed to her. I couldn’t tell you. I didn’t see it.

  “Well, I was thinking I’d try and go for a senior. Jason is kind of hot,” Ally said, shrugging all cool and effortless.

  “Yeah, right,” Rachel said. “Never gonna happen.” She laughed—a lascivious sound that prompted matching scowls from two senior girls on the other side of the dock.

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  “Take a picture,” Rachel called out, before leaning back into our circle and muttering, “Bitches.”

  The other girls didn’t know this, but Rachel had hooked up with Jason that day on the mattress in the woods. She’d drunk his tequila, and he’d felt her up and never spoken to her again—clearly not something to brag about.

  “Who knows,” Ally said, ignoring the senior girls. “Maybe I’ll get lucky if I put out.” She leaned forward and pressed her breasts together, exposing awkward, not quite developed cleavage. I looked up at Rachel, it was subtle, but something flickered in her eyes. I couldn’t place it. “But I feel so bad for him,” Ally went on, suddenly going all solemn. “I mean his best friend killed himself this summer.” Rachel crossed her arms over her chest and took a sip of jungle juice, the look in her eyes fading, and then I knew. Rejection. It was Jason’s rejection.

  “Do you know what I heard?” Ally leaned in, her voice going real low. She looked around as if anyone else cared enough to listen in. “Well, I heard my dad on the phone, saying that some girl’s father accused Max and Jason of, you know, taking advantage of her.” She looked around again, all coy and shifty. “You know. Like right before Max killed himself.” Ally’s father was a cop, so her story could have been plausible, but that girl was always overhearing something he said on the phone to someone.

  “Shut the fuck up,” Rachel said, pushing Ally’s shoulder. “Who said that? Who was the girl? Like take advantage how?”