Last Train to Babylon

by Charlee Fam

  I didn’t go far, just to the bathroom, where I stared myself down in the mirror, clenched until my back muscles spasmed and my whole body shook. When I came back, he was gone. I sat on the edge of my bed, my hands on my knees, my chest seething with each breath. I didn’t want to text him. I didn’t want to be that girl. I had nothing to apologize for and he had everything to.

  I’d known it was coming. I had felt it brewing in the thick space between our words for months: his moods, his condescending tone, the way he threw himself into work. I felt stupid for not seeing this shift for what it was. I was leaving. I was leaving and he was staying. No Vermont. No Canada. No snow falling like stardust into a dark space where Adam and I would live out our fairy-tale ending. Our heaven. None of that. Just one last summer on Long Island.

  My first text was a passive-aggressive test, just to give him a chance to apologize: So this is how it’s gonna be, Adam?

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  My second text was a peace offering: Call me.

  My third text was slow-burning fury: No, really, GO FUCK YOURSELF.

  “HE’S RIGHT, AUB,” Rachel said as we drove out of the school parking lot. “You’ll regret it if you don’t do it now. At least you love him.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “It means,” she said, “that once you get to college, no guy is going to love you like that. Nobody wants a relationship in college, you know. You’re gonna end up losing it to some random guy.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” I said. Rachel raised her eyebrows and sipped her coffee drink through the straw. “He won’t even talk to me. It’s his birthday tomorrow. What am I supposed to even do?”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” she said. “Just do it.”

  “That’s pretty hard if he won’t even return my texts.”

  “Tonight. Everybody will be at O’Reilly’s. You’ll definitely see Adam, and you can tell him to his face. Sort of like a ‘Surprise! Happy birthday! Here’s my vagina!’”

  “It’s the principle,” I said. “I don’t want to just give in.”

  “Oh, come on,” she said. “Now you’re just being stubborn. You know you were going to do it anyway.” She was right. I was. I’d planned on it at least. But I’d also planned on staying with him, and the lack of trust my own boyfriend and best friend had in my ability to show some self-control was sort of obnoxious.

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  Most of the college kids were already home for spring break, and O’Reilly’s was the place to be—whether you were still a senior in high school or part of the I’m too cool for this town but still not twenty-one college freshman crowd. It was just a dive bar, nothing fancy, strung up with white Christmas lights, and built against the train station. And as bland as the place was, Rachel was right; it was my chance to straighten things out with Adam.

  I let my body relax back in my seat and lifted the tab of my coffee, careful not to spill on my white sweatshirt.

  “Fast Car” started to play. I reached forward and turned up the volume.

  “Really?” I say, acknowledging the song.

  “You know you love it,” Rachel said. “It’s our song.”

  “Yeah, but I just didn’t expect to hear it after ‘Milkshake.’”

  Rachel grinned, her cigarette between her teeth. “I made you a copy,” she said, nodding to the dashboard. I opened the clear, plastic case, and true to her word, there was a burned CD that said Spring Mix 2009. I slipped it into my bag.

  “So how was the paper brigade?” Rachel asked as we pulled up to a red light, and I hated the way she said it, the implications of shame.

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  “Oh, you know, the usual,” I said, veiling the tiny bit of self-reproof she’d put onto me over the years. She never really gave me her blessing when I started writing for the Seagull, but she hadn’t been trying to get into Brown either. Extracurriculars were never really her thing, unless, of course, it was cheerleading, and even her own days as a cheerleader were numbered. She showed up late to practice, if at all, and her coach caught her cutting class to smoke cigarettes on the great lawn. The first time she got a warning. The second time she was suspended from the squad for a week. Next time she’s off for good.

  Rachel accelerated onto Wantagh Parkway, and we careened past a blur of trees—lush and green and broken and brown, all at once. The colors of South Shore Long Island. As far back as I can remember, the grass never grew along the beach parkways, no matter what time of year. Just dry, cracked dirt along the side of the road surrounded by thick shrubs and shades of green, so many shades of green, everywhere but the ground.

  We were cruising, and cold air streamed through my cracked window. I rolled it down all the way. The wind rushed in and tangled my hair.

  “So what’s our game plan for tonight?” Rachel asked. I shrugged. I hadn’t thought about it.

  We rumbled over the first drawbridge, over the silver stretch of bay beneath us. I stared out toward the marshes. It’d been too cold for recreational boating, but a few brave Jet Skiers and fishermen zipped around in the distance. I could see our town sprawled out against the marshes—the marinas, boatyards, and a few massive homes at the edge of the bay.

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  I breathed in the cool, salty air—the unmistakable smell of the ocean. It was like our own slice of paradise, away from the suburban blight of high ranches and split-level homes lining every neighborhood, Italian delis, nail salons, bagel joints, and pizza places in every shopping center. All of that faded away once you hit the parkway. It was like the landscape changed. The grass grew differently; it was all sedges, Salix, and sometimes a subtle burst of color—a single hibiscus, goldenrod—but it was all a blur of green as we drove through. Green and thorny.

  “You haven’t thought about it at all?” she asked. I shrugged again and gulped the last sip of my coffee.

  “Not really,” I said. “I was just sort of planning on going with the flow, you know?” The road narrowed as we rolled over the second bridge, and I squeezed into myself. The amphitheater came into sight up ahead.

  “First,” Rachel said, “we need to get you liquored up. You’re gonna want to be numb. Trust me.” I agreed. I had heard tales from Rachel and Ally—tales that involved tearing hymens and significant amounts of blood. Liquor sounded good.

  We made the loop around the Jones Beach Pencil—a Long Island icon—and pulled into Field 4. I reached behind me into the backseat for the crumpled jersey-knit sheet. The wind came in hard off the Atlantic as the sun went down. We smoothed the sheet out a few feet back from the tide and sprawled out with our oversized sweatshirts and equally oversized sunglasses.

  It was March 31, the first real spring day of the year and our first trip to the beach. I sat up, dusted the sand off my leggings, and clutched a plastic water bottle full of gin and tonic in my hand. The beach was empty, except for a couple of power walkers and a lone cyclist up on the boardwalk.

  “So, are you nervous?” Rachel asked.

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  “Not really,” I said. I was. But not so much about the planned dual deflowering. How bad could that be? Rachel had done it—or so she claimed. Ally had done it. Adam and I were in the minority as V-card carriers. So it just felt like going through the motions at this point. But it was the possibility of rejection that ignited my nerves—the fear of giving it all up and learning that’s all he’d been after—the what happens next in a relationship that maybe isn’t going anywhere after all. Things had been tense with Adam lately. But things had always been tense with Adam. He was just an intense kind of guy, and I liked that about him. It balanced out my blatant lack of intensity.

  “Well, while you’re off doing that, I’m thinking about hooking up with Eric tonight,” Rachel said, her voice muffled as she lit the cigarette pinched between her lips. “I mean, if you’re getting laid, then I probably should, too, yes?” She flashed a Cheshire cat grin around the cigarette. “But if you’re gonna do it,” she said, “you gotta show a little more
boob.” She grabbed at my chest. I swatted at her hand and reached for her pack of Parliaments.

  “Do what you have to do, Rach,” I said, lighting up. “But be careful, people are going to start to think you’re a slut.”

  “Hey,” she cackled, throwing the crumpled plastic bottle of gin at me. “You’re lucky I like you.” She took a long drag off the Parliament, and her face got all serious. “I mean, I’ve wanted him since like second grade.”

  “Right,” I said. “Ever since he taught us all about hard-ons.”

  “Speaking of heart-ons,” she said. “How’s the tat?” She lifted up her own shirt, pulled down her pants just to her crotch line, and peeled off the gauze. Her skin was still raw and red, and the black ink still raised and bumpy. We’d gotten them the week before, when she turned eighteen. I peeled down my own bandage to show her, the cigarette hanging from my lips.

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  “Looks good, right?” I mumbled, smoke streaming out of the corners of my mouth. It hadn’t hurt too bad. I actually thought it had felt kind of good. But it had itched and burned that whole week—no matter how many times I slathered my hip with Lubriderm.

  We’d successfully hidden our new ink from both of our mothers. I just had to make it to college, I thought. Just make it through the summer. And when I came home for Thanksgiving break, she’d think I had just gotten it at college. Rachel, on the other hand, was going to Hofstra and living at home. I don’t think she was too worried, though; her mom pretty much ignored her anyway.

  “You think I can pull it off? With Eric?” she asked.

  “If that’s what you’re into, go for it. I don’t see it, though,” I said. And I didn’t see it. Eric was stocky, with bad teeth and too many freckles.

  “I forgot you like them scrawny and brooding,” she said.

  I felt my face go hot and my tongue swell, the way it does when Rachel says just the right thing to make me want to knock her teeth in.

  “Rachel,” I said. I said her name because it adds a condescending element that you just can’t get without saying the person’s name before a statement. If you ever want to make someone feel incredibly stupid and small, then start a sentence with their first name. “He’s had a pretty fucked-up life. His brother fucking hanged himself, remember? Give the guy a break.”

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  “Oh, right,” she said. “The brother you sucked face with right before he offed himself. Are you still withholding that little piece of information from lover boy?” Her tone remained sarcastic, playful even, but I still wanted to smash her face in.

  She must have sensed it because she took another drag of her cigarette, let out a self-satisfied snort, and said, “Relax, Aub. You know I’m only kidding.”

  I lit another cigarette and shook my head at her. “Not okay.”

  “Fine,” she said. She winked and put her cigarette out in the sand.

  Rachel’s dirty-blond hair fell just below her shoulder blades, and her bangs swooped over to one side. She’d thinned out around the middle of ninth grade, just around the time I’d started to thicken around my ass and thighs. Her cheeks were dusted with freckles, but you’d never know. She hid them well.

  “We should go to Montauk tomorrow,” she said, her voice raspy. “To celebrate.”

  “Montauk. Mon-tawk,” I said, twisting a hollowed stick into the sand. “This is why we talk like this. Montauk. Wantagh.”

  “Yeah. Walk the dawg and get some cawfee,” Rachel said. “Blame the Indians.”

  “Ugh,” I said. “I could go for more coffee.” I clutched the almost empty Poland Spring bottle of gin and tonic and swished it around. It had tasted like a dream, what I imagined clouds might taste like, dry and airy, but I cringed at the thought of that last little gulp and poured it into the sand.

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  Chapter 17

  Tuesday, October 7, 2014.

  COME WITH ME, come with me, he says.

  I wobble on the balls of my feet, twisting my car keys in the door. It doesn’t open. Smoke streams off the end of my lit cigarette. It’s clenched between my teeth.

  It won’t open, I say, my voice muffled. I collapse into a hysterical fit of giggles. I’m on the ground, my sweater lifts up and the asphalt scratches my bare back.

  Come with me, Aubrey, the voice says. Let me take you home.

  There’s pressure under my arms—hands, I think, lifting me back on my feet.

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  The streetlights buzz, the keys rattle and fall to the street. His hand comes down and swoops them up. I can’t stand, I feel my weight start to shift, and Ally’s house stands like a giant pink elephant on the cul-de-sac.

  The streetlights spin, I let my face fall into his chest. I breathe in coffee and cinnamon.

  Let me take you home.

  My car, I say. I think I say it. My car. But my insides spin and the streets swirl around me and I feel my center of gravity churning up from my guts, up through my chest and lodging in my throat. I fall to my knees, and retch: Karen’s roast chicken, Jack, and half a bottle of Pinot splatters onto the street.

  The hand rubs my back. The keys rattle in his pocket. He’s lifting me to my feet.

  THE SUN SHRIEKS through a crack in the curtains. My insides feel hollow and dried out. I open my mouth, and the air hits my tongue. It feels like I’ve been chewing on sand, puke-flavored sand. A thick, groggy fog envelops me, and for a moment I don’t remember where I am, or why I feel like shit, and then it hits me like a bag of bricks, and panic sweeps over me.

  I’m in my own bed.

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  I can barely read the digital clock on my nightstand, but if I squint, I make out a blurry outline: 7:51. I’m almost sure it’s 7:51. And the light streams in through the window; it’s the bright, unnatural morning light, the kind that comes all at once. I groan and roll on my side. I’m simultaneously hot and cold, drenched in a dizzy sweat. I kick the covers off, but feel exposed in a Brown T-shirt and shorts; I don’t remember putting on either. So I pull the blanket back up over my head, will myself to just vanish into the sheets, and retrace my steps from last night. I can’t see the clock, so my contacts are out. That much I know. At least I’d been somewhat responsible. But other than that, there’s nothing—just a black hole of nothing and this throbbing pain in my temple.

  And then it starts to come back to me. Piece by piece. There was dinner.

  There was Ally’s.

  I remember falling, vomiting, and that smell. Coffee and cinnamon. There’s only one person I know who smells like that. So that part must have been a dream. I’m sure of it.

  I need water, but I’d rather shrivel up and die before walking out into that kitchen right now. There’s no doubt in my mind that Karen is setting up an intervention at this very moment. I can just see it now: Eli, Ashley, and Marc seated around the living room, Styrofoam cups of coffee lined up on a folding table, the kind reserved for holiday parties and beer pong. They will each have prepared a speech, how my sudden erratic behavior has affected them in some way.

  I know we hardly know each other Awwwbryy, I can just see Ashley saying, but I feel like we really have a connection. You know? And I want to help you.

  Maybe even Ally will have come down. If she even cared enough to see if I made it home all right. Which is doubtful. She didn’t follow up five years ago and she won’t follow up now.

  I turn over to face away from the window, my head still throbbing, and I see it. It’s there on the edge of my night table—a mason jar, filled to the brim with water.

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  Chapter 18

  March 2009.

  RACHEL LEANED UP against the bar, sulking. She kept staring over in Eric’s direction, but he was too busy talking to his lacrosse buddies to notice her. A local college band tuned up on the stage. She whipped around, flagged the bartender for a shot, and sighed, hard.

  “He’s not even looking at me,” she said. “I don’t get it.”

  I shrugged and nursed the Bud Light in m
y hand. I already felt unsteady on my feet. We’d been drinking all day. I checked my phone. Still nothing. I smoothed my dress over my thigh.

  I had worn a dress to make the whole seduction process a bit more methodical. I bought it from Urban Outfitters back in January with my Christmas money, but the weather hadn’t been warm enough to wear it yet. It was simple—black cotton, with a sweeping neckline, and it fell around midthigh. There was a thin string that I tied around my waist.

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  “You look so hot,” Rachel had said when I tried it on.

  “It’s seventy dollars,” I said. “I mean, it’s just a black dress.”

  “Shut up,” she said. “It’s actually flattering.”

  So that night, I wore the dress with a dangling heart necklace and cheap black, sequined, mesh flats that I’d bought from a bin in Chinatown. Rachel picked me up at six and we parked at the train station, right next to the bar, and sat in her car, downing Monster energy drinks and gin. It tasted like pine needles and chemicals. I winced with each gulp, but could feel my blood start to buzz.

  “What if he doesn’t show?” I said, after a particular sour swig.

  “Then fuck him,” Rachel said. “I mean, not literally. Just fuck someone else.” She wore a light green tank top that squished her breasts together, black skinny jeans, and bright pink come-fuck-me pumps. Her ash-blond hair swooped over her face and fell into flat waves down her back. She looked thinner than she had earlier at the beach, but I didn’t tell her that, I just eyed her when I climbed into the car and said, “Nice shirt.”

  Adam still hadn’t responded to any of my voice mails. “Ad. It’s me. Want to talk,” was all I’d said. I wanted to wait until we were in person, for him to see me, dressed like a lady, ready and willing. I couldn’t wait to see his tongue swell up in his mouth, like the first time he saw a pair of tits in Titanic. Yet, it was nearly midnight and I was standing in the middle of this crappy bar so that Rachel could make eyes at Eric and his buddies.