We decided to take separate cabs rather than squeeze into one. The hotel was a little farther from the restaurant than any of us wanted to walk. Our legs were shot from our nerd walking, and we were willing to pay for a little pampering. Pete and Lindsey got in theirs first, and I hailed a second one right behind them. Once we were inside I gave the guy the address to the hotel and we sat in some pretty serious city traffic to get there. “Dinner was good,” she said to me.
“Sorry they didn’t have steak. Pete chose the place.”
“I eat other things besides steak, silly. It’s okay, but thanks for worrying.”
“How was the pasta?”
“Really good, actually. I’m going to need you to make that for me one day.”
“I’m pretty sure I can do that.”
“Before we get to the place I wanted to give you something.”
“What?” I asked.
Anna reached into her giant bag. She told me to close my eyes, which I did because she told me to, but I wasn’t sure what the hell was actually happening. “Are they closed?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Here.” I heard the crinkling of paper, followed by on object in my hand. I knew right away what it was, and I was amazed, but until I opened my eyes it wasn’t real.
“Holy shitballs,” I yelled as I looked down. Sitting in my hands was a signed, graded copy of Wolverine 1, signed by Frank Miller and Chris Claremont. “Is this real?”
“If it’s not I really overpaid for it.”
“Oh my God, how did you know?”
“Well I saw you staring at it for like three minutes and I kind of figured it was special to you. You didn’t do that with any other books.”
“Wolverine is my favorite. All time.”
“How come? Why Wolverine?”
“Do you know the story?” Annalise nodded. “He was this guy who got kidnapped and went through a terrible trauma. They tried to make him into this weapon—a perfect killing machine—but it was torture. He went through hell. But after he went through all of that he came out stronger on the other side. They couldn’t kill him. And not only that, he became, like, the strongest mutant there was.”
“That’s a pretty cool story.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But seriously, how?”
“My family in Peru gave me some money for my birthday. I told you they have money, right? They took care of me.”
“Yeah, but I’m sure you need the money for other stuff. You didn’t have to spend so much on me.”
“I know I didn’t,” she said, putting her hand over mine, which was still clutching the book like my life depended on it. “I wanted to. You looked so happy.” She leaned in and kissed me, and I was like a kid on Christmas morning.
“You’re the best, do you know that?”
“I know,” she joked.
Even with the crazy traffic our two cabs got to the hotel around the same time. The place was beautiful, and once we went inside we went to our neutral corners, with a promise to meet up for breakfast the next morning. Pete wanted to high-five me, but that shit seemed a little too teen boy even for me. So Anna and I checked in first and brought up the little overnight bags we had packed. It still seemed shady to me to bring a girl to a hotel and not pretend that mattered, but Anna didn’t seem to think so.
We spent the first hour or so in continued frivolity, the exact same way we had ended dinner. A combination of small talk and crappy TV shows that I couldn’t stand but Anna couldn’t seem to get enough of. She loved those panel shows, the ones where minimally talented and famous women sit around a table and yelled opinions at one another. For someone so intelligent, she had an almost insatiable appetite for bad television. I didn’t care. I was just happy to be along for the ride, and I’d lay with her as she giggled and laughed at the people on the screen, happy to be that close to her at all.
“These shows are ridiculous,” I said.
“You’re ridiculous.”
“What do you even get out of this, anyway?”
“They’re funny,” she said. “They make me laugh.”
“But you’re not laughing.”
“Inside I am. I’m a barrel of laughs on the inside.”
When the TV shows were over she seemed to open up for the first time in a while. It was one of the few times I remember her being open with me without me asking too much. I did ask her how she liked to sleep.
“Total darkness,” she told me. “If there’s any light on, I can’t sleep.”
“Yeah, me too.” That was as much of a lie as I ever told her. I was terrified of sleeping in the dark, even at seventeen. I would have slept with a spotlight shining in my face like an interrogation suspect in one of those crime shows, but I was willing to trade a little white lie so she could sleep in comfort.
“And I love my blanket. I wrap myself up like a burrito. Don’t make one of your Spanish girl jokes!”
“I promise. Well, I mostly promise.”
“Mostly promise?”
“98% promise,” I joked. “But if you set up a pun so perfectly for me, how can you blame me? Come on now.”
After about an hour I noticed a change in Anna. I couldn’t tell you exactly what it was, but something obvious enough for me to tell that things had shifted in her mood. She was quiet at first, and when I tried to speak to her she didn’t make much eye contact, and only gave me one word answers. At first I thought I’d done something wrong but then I realized that I hadn’t done anything at all, I was just lying there. We were inches away from each other, watching TV in bed, but she felt a million miles away, and I started to worry.
I remembered learning about rationing in social studies; how during the World Wars some things were so scarce that people had to use limited quantities, or be issued certain amounts by the government. Annalise did the same thing, only instead of food or clothing she rationed herself. She never gave you much, a little at a time, and sometimes nothing at all, that was all that I was ever allowed. But each time felt special. Each time she told me a story about when she was little, or let me know a preference she had in foods, or told me anything, really.
I learned never to demand anything because forcing the issue just didn’t seem to work. Actually it had the opposite effect, like struggling in quicksand. Instead I let her come to me, I let her know that she could trust me with the depths of her secrets and that I would protect her dreams with my very life. I let her know this with every letter, with every kiss, with every declaration of my feelings, until that exact moment when she evaluated me to be trustworthy.
I leaned into her slightly, and put my hand on her shoulder to get the attention my voice wasn’t quite getting, and when I touched her she looked at me as though I’d woken her from a dream. Like I said, I wasn’t going to force anything, I was only going to ask.
“The Bleh?”
She nodded without any hesitation, and I knew that saving her the energy of saying the word would help make her honest, but what I didn’t expect was how that one little question let her open up in ways that she never did before or after that night. It was there that she opened her world to me, and allowed me glimpses, however small, behind that reinforced lead door that guarded her soul. I gave Anna the softest eyes I could I return. We understood each other, in tragedy, in love.
There, lying in bed, she told me about the Thoughts, the bad ones. She said they came late at night, when her friends and family weren't around, and they whispered to her how worthless she was, over and over, until she had no other desire than to harm herself. They started when I was thirteen, she said, and they’ve always been there since, even at times when I seem happy and light-hearted. What caused them, I asked. She didn’t know, but they came to her specifically when she fought with her mom, which was often, and usually involved hateful screaming matches, with unkind words yelled in the loudest Spanish. In those exchanges, declarations of dislike, disdain, and wishes for Annalise to never have been born rang out through the house like a cacophon
y. And after the screams, copious tears, running fast and hard down faces contorted in anger, and after the tears, the Thoughts.
“You can’t listen to them,” I told her. “You’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met. That stuff isn’t real, it’s just your mind playing tricks on you.”
“I know, but it’s hard to remember that when you’re feeling it.” She told me how convincing they were. Maybe you were a worthless piece of shit, Anna, and maybe life would have been easier on your family without you; maybe it still could be. She said they lasted hours, days sometimes, and weeks on occasion. They took up space in her mind and spoke in her mom's voice. Nothing made the Thoughts go away fully: no distraction, no social media scrolling, no amount of TV. Only one thing worked, she said, a flesh sacrifice to the Bleh gods, so Annalise gave them what they demanded, if only to get a few moment’s peace.
The first time she did it she used a small knife from her kitchen drawer. “It didn't hurt nearly as much as I thought it would,” she told me. “It didn’t hurt at all. It felt good, actually. I felt alive.” In so many words she told me that cutting herself was liberating, like a deep exhale. “When I looked down the first time there was a small pool of blood on the floor, right by my big toe.” Was that my blood, she wondered. But it couldn't be blood, she convinced herself, because when you bleed you have to feel pain; have to scream out in distress and demand to be bandaged and stitched. But that wasn't the case at all. There was no pain at all, she told me. In fact, the blood had taken the pain all away; it fell out of her body and covered her bathroom floor, and then came the silence. No more hateful words in Mom’s voice, she told me, no more telling me I was worthless. Just relief.
“The relief doesn’t last,” she said, the tears starting to roll off of her face and bathe the hotel comforter beneath us. “You have to keep doing it, and before you know it you’re doing it so much that. . .”
“That what?” I asked.
“That you know how crazy you are. But you can’t do anything to stop it.” After a time the self-loathing returned, only this time the voice telling Anna that she was a useless, ugly piece of shit, wasn't her mother's, it was her own. And then the shame. The mark that spit her painless blood onto the floor of her bathroom now reminded her of her own weakness, and she hated the way she looked when she looked in that long mirror that hung on the back of her door.
When she was done telling me all of that I went to put my arm around her out of instinct, but she recoiled. I hate that, she told me, please don't try to comfort me. I did as I was told, but all that my arm wanted to do was reach around and clutch her back, and all my mouth wanted to do was form the perfect series of words, spoken just right, so that maybe I could make everything better again. But no such thing happened, because she asked me not to comfort her, and respecting her boundaries meant more to me than acting the role of what I thought a good boyfriend should be.
She told me what it was like to be unwanted by both a father who had abandoned her when she was nothing but a protrusion in her mom's belly, and by a mother who constantly told Anna that she was worthless. Instead of telling her what I couldn't promise was the truth, I told her what was inside my heart. I let her know that anyone who didn't want her was a fool, and even if there were such people in the world—even if she called them Mom—that she wasn't just wanted, but needed by me. I'm lost without you, I told her, as I wiped a tear from her cheek, and even when the world around her was blind, I saw. I saw her beauty; I saw her kindness; I felt the warmth of her heart infuse energy into my tired body, and I told her that I wanted her more than I could ever tell her, no matter how much I wrote to her.
She smiled of course, and whispered that she loved me. It echoed in a soft, bittersweet tone that made kissing her a mandatory act. And as I did, the feeling of her lips induced my heart to beat with that rapidity that only happened when I kissed her. I told her that as long as I was alive, she'd never be unwanted, and even though I couldn't ease the pain of her mom's cruelty, I could at least offer her a counter narrative. And that narrative was as follows: I loved her like I didn't know was possible, and every glance at her face left me breathless and insecure, because who the hell was I to deserve her? How on Earth could there be someone who made me so happy and in love? I told her that while I didn't know the answers to these questions, I would never stop asking, because she was my own personal goddess in human form, and her being unwanted was unfathomable.
She kissed me again, shifting her weight on me with a bump of her hip, forcing me to my back and throwing her legs over me. I was surprised at first, mostly at her agility and grace, let alone the fact that I was underneath her. She kissed me so intensely that I didn’t know what to do with myself, her hair ticking the skin of my face. It was as if everything she never was able to tell me with words were expressed through the touch of her lips. In them I felt her passion, her love for me, and the connection we’d made with one another.
What happened next is for Anna and I, and that’s where I’ll keep it, forever.
<><><>
The next morning I woke up way before Anna. I’d slept like the dead, but I’d also woken up pretty early. I couldn’t remember a better night’s sleep, but it was also kind of a weird feeling to be rested. We all spent so much of our time under slept, overwhelmed, and generally in a slow and steady process of burnout that to just sleep well with no interruption or stress had me feeling weird. A good weird, but weird nonetheless. I was never able to stay in bed once I was awake, so I left Anna to her dreamland and washed up. After that I stood by the window of our room that overlooked the parking lot and reflected on the previous night. It was one I knew I’d remember forever, and technically the whole experience wasn’t quite over yet. After a few minutes of staring at the people coming and going in the lot I turned and gazed at Anna. She looked angelic; peaceful.
After a minute she stretched her arms over her head as she slept, and that’s when I saw them—two flowers tattooed on her right inner forearm. She'd told me about them before when we first met but like so many things with her, it took a while for me to truly see them. Two flowers, each representing a different time she overcame the struggles in her life. Her ink, which she was technically still too young to get legally, represented an anniversary of sorts, the day she’d recovered from her eating disorder and cutting issues. They were simple designs, but as I looked at them, scarred onto her arm, I realized that we all bear scars of the past. She was just creative enough to commemorate them.
“Morning,” I said, when I saw her start to open her eyes.
“Uhhh,” she groaned, stretching her arms up. “What time is it?”
“Six-Thirty. Pete and Lindsey are up, sort of. They’re getting up, anyways. I just spoke to him. They wanna get breakfast after we check out.”
“How dare you wake me up at such an obscene hour,” she joked. Well, it wasn’t really a joke; this was probably the earliest she’d been up in a while outside of school.
“Sorry,” I said. “Do you forgive me?”
“Okay, fine.” She smiled at me and I sat down on the side of the bed next to her. In the creeping of light from the window hitting her face, she looked magical to me. Her black hair fell to one side of her shoulders, and the vulnerability of waking up made her smile lighter than it normally was. I took a mental picture of her then. It’s still my favorite one of her.
“How did you sleep?”
“Great,” she said. “Like a girl wrapped in a burrito in total darkness, sleeping next to the guy she loves. How could I go wrong?”
Her words hit me in a way that made me fall in love with her all over again, as words can sometimes do if they’re spoken by the right person. For once I decided not to speak with my words, and to instead just lean over and kiss her as deeply as I could, in a way that let her know what she let me know last night; that I loved her more than the waking world, and that when I was with her nothing else existed.
“Now I’m hungry. Where are we goin
g?”
“The diner,” I told her. “Where else?”
“Right,” she said. “We have to go back don’t we?”
“Back where?”
“Home. I guess we always have to go back home.”
“They say that it’s where the heart is, you know?”
“Who are they?” She asked.
“You know, they.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know,” I said, frustrated at the fact that she was actually demanding a source for my crappy attempt at inspirational words. “I heard it somewhere. They said it.”
“The Council of They again.”
“Who?”
“That’s what I call them. My sister does that all the time. She’s always giving me the ‘they says’ to prove a point, but she never knows who they are. Sometimes it’s them instead, like according to Them, or whatever. Why do we say that?”
“I don’t know. You’re right. I actually don’t know who they are, but I know someone once said that home is where the heart is. I’ll look it up later and get back to you.”
“Whoever said that was full of it, or maybe they just came from a happy house. I hear those exist somewhere.”
“Me too,” I said, pretending that she was joking. “Maybe no one comes from a happy home at first, maybe it’s something that you have to make for yourself one day.”
“Maybe,” she agreed. “But remember that every messed up Mom and Dad said that. They made their own homes, and look how it turned out.”
“I think we’re generalizing a little bit,” I said, but I took her point. I wanted to change the subject because I knew she could go down this bitterness rabbit hole where interesting conversation could easily devolve into just being jaded. But I felt the need to be the light to her dark, so I kept it going for a few more exchanges. “Not everybody comes from a messed up home.”
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