Breathless

by Jessica Warman

  “What’s going on? What happened?” I whisper. My eyes burn as I blink, trying to get them adjusted to the dim lighting. Drew is still asleep. Mazzie has replaced my body with a pillow, and he doesn’t seem to notice any difference. She shakes her head and puts a finger to her lips.

  “It’s okay,” she mouths, and takes my hand to pull me up, holding the towel around my waist with her other hand. We go into the bathroom and shut the door. I notice that she’s left another towel on the floor where I was lying.

  “What’s going on?” I ask again, looking down at my legs. My underwear is all wet. There’s a smell.

  She looks up at me. “You had a nightmare.”

  I’m still so confused. “Oh. Okay. Why am I all wet?”

  “You were scared. You got out of bed.”

  “Why am I all wet?”

  “Katie . . . you peed the bed. It’s okay.”

  Oh, my God. “Oh, my God. Oh, shit.” I realize that I have to pee, now, badly. I take off my underwear and sit down on the toilet, naked. Mazzie looks away. I’m so embarrassed that I start crying. I feel so dizzy that I have to lean forward and put my head against my knees. When I sit up, I ask, “Does Drew know? Did he wake up?”

  “No. Don’t worry, Katie, I’m not going to tell him. He won’t find out.”

  Oh, shit. Shit. “What do you mean, he won’t find out?” I’m crying so hard that I’m shaking. I’m so thirsty. “Did I pee all over him?”

  “No. Be quiet, Katie. You’ll wake him up.”

  “What happened, then? Did I pee on the floor?” I can’t believe this. I haven’t peed the bed since I was a little kid.

  “No. You got into bed with me.”

  I don’t understand. “I got into your bed? While I was sleeping?”

  She nods, still looking away.

  “Why would I do that?”

  “I don’t know. You wanted to.”

  “Did I pee in your bed?”

  “Yes.”

  “. . . ”

  “. . . ”

  “I’m so sorry, Mazzie.”

  “It’s okay, Katie. Get in the shower.”

  “Are you going to tell everybody?”

  “I’m not going to tell anyone, Katie. Nobody has to know.”

  She’s still in the bathroom with me, taking off her clothes now, and I realize that she’s all wet, too. I wait for her to shower before I get in myself. When the water hits my face, it’s too much. I lean over and gag into the drain, but nothing comes up. I have to sit down. The water hits me right on my stomach. Mazzie throws me a washcloth over the shower door. “I’m going to get the sheets off the bed,” she says, wrapping herself in a clean towel. “I’ll be right back.” She shuts the door behind her.

  We go down to the laundry room together, finally, both of us carrying an armload of dirty towels and sheets and our wet underwear. We’re wearing nothing but oversized T-shirts, but at least we’re clean.

  Neither of us has any idea how to operate a washing machine. We stand in front of it, gazing at the control dial, contemplating the settings. I never imagined it could be so complicated.

  “I think we should use hot water,” she finally says.

  “Why?”

  “To rinse out any stains.”

  “I think you’re supposed to use bleach for that.”

  “I don’t think you can put whites and colors in together.”

  “Why not?”

  “I think they bleed.”

  “Doesn’t this thing have any freaking directions?” It does, underneath the lid. We do the sheets first, adding half a bottle of bleach for good measure. We watch the washer fill up with hot water and start running. Mazzie finds a garbage bag and stuffs the towels inside, then puts them behind a stack of boxes so nobody will find them before we get a chance to wash them. I sit on the washing machine and watch her pattering around, getting the bottoms of her feet black with basement dirt. She’s wearing one of my Woodsdale Swimming T-shirts. It’s about two sizes too big for her, and on the back somebody—probably Lindsey—has written Club 813 in uneven bubble letters with white permanent marker. Lindsey’s street address is 813; lately we’ve been writing it on everything, pretending we think it’s a big joke, but deep down I know we all feel like we’re genuinely part of an exclusive club. Mazzie is so petite, so skinny, that when she’s bent over I can see each of her narrow ribs outlined beneath the fabric.

  “How long do you think those are going to take?” She means the sheets.

  “I don’t know. I have no idea. Five minutes? Maybe ten?”

  “Do you think we should wait here?”

  “I guess so.” I make some room for her on the washer. “You can sit up here with me.”

  We can feel the washer vibrating beneath us. Mazzie reaches up and turns out the light so it’s like we’re not even there.

  “When I was a baby,” I say, “my mom used to put my car seat on top of the washing machine when I wouldn’t fall asleep. She says the vibration calmed me down.”

  Mazzie leans her head on my shoulder. “Do you feel better now?”

  “I guess. I have to put some sheets back on the bed before anybody wakes up.”

  “I’ll do it.” Then she asks, “What was your nightmare about?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t remember.”

  “Not at all? You were trying to say something. You seemed so scared when you woke me up . . .”

  In the dark, I think Mazzie might be crying.

  “Mazzie,” I say, closing my eyes even though it’s already dark. “You’re my best friend. You can talk to me, you know?”

  I can feel her tense up. She doesn’t say anything for a long time. The washing machine switches cycles underneath us.

  We sit there for what feels like forever. I wonder what time it is. I am so thirsty that it’s getting hard to swallow. Everything is warm. After a long time the washer gets louder, suddenly, and comes to a halt, and we relax against each other. Even my toes uncurl. I hadn’t realized I was so tense.

  She says, “You have to understand, Katie. It isn’t personal. There are some things I’ll never tell anyone.”

  “But you can trust me. You know that.”

  She reaches up and pulls the light cord. We squint at each other, the room suddenly bright. She looks pale and impossibly tired beneath the bare lightbulb, half moons of darkness beneath her eyes. “I don’t know how you remember all these little details you’re always talking about,” she says. She almost sounds angry.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, the way your mom used to put your car seat on top of the washing machine to get you to fall asleep. All the stories you tell, about when you lived in the woods and you’d help your mom make bread or pick blueberries or all those other happy things? I bet you remember all of it, don’t you?”

  We are both so silent for a moment, I can hear the house settling above us. “Yeah,” I admit. “I remember everything. But only because I don’t want to forget the way things were, before my brother got sick. I want to remember when we were a family—”

  “I never had a family. Not like yours. My parents both worked. Your father disappeared, slowly. You think it’s funny to call him the Ghost, don’t you? My parents were always ghosts.” Her eyes are red. She won’t look at me. “And now my mother isn’t anything. She worked her whole life and went to school and did everything she knew how to do to succeed—my dad, too—and now my mom is just plain dead.” She rubs the bottom of her nose, which is running all over the place. “And you know the worst part about all of it?”

  I can barely force the word out. “What?”

  “I’m going to do exactly what they did. Go to school, be a surgeon, work so hard that I don’t have time for anything else.” She shrugs. “I don’t know any other way to be.”

  Before I can respond, she stands up and says, “We should put these sheets in the dryer. It’s going to be morning soon.”

  The sheets don’t look quite ri
ght to me, but at least they’re clean. We sit on the dryer together, silent for a long time.

  Finally, I can’t stop myself. Maybe it’s just morbid curiosity, but I don’t think so. I remember how it felt when I told her about Will. I remember how good it felt to finally tell someone. “Mazzie,” I press, “how did your mom die?”

  She pulls her knees to her chest. Staring at the lightbulb, she says, “It doesn’t matter how she died. She’s dead, Katie. She’s never coming back.”

  I want her to trust me, to spill herself into me the way I have for her. But I know her well enough to know that if I push any more, she’ll only run away. I guess everybody deserves to have their own secrets, if they really want them that badly.

  When we finally get back to the third floor (it takes the sheets forever to dry), I help her put clean sheets on her bed, in the dark. We go into the bathroom and shut the door, and sit on the edge of the tub and run warm water over our feet, watching dirt swirl down the drain, and then we wipe our feet against the bathmat and put on our clean underwear and go back to bed. It’s starting to get light outside.

  I have to rearrange myself against Drew so that he won’t know I’ve been gone. It takes a few minutes. I wiggle myself against him and pull both of his arms around me. While I’m trying to get comfortable he gives a little moan in his sleep and wakes up a little bit.

  Maybe he can tell something’s different. He blinks in the almost-dark, confused. “Katie? Are you awake?” By now the sun is really beginning to come up, light slowly filling the room.

  When I don’t answer, he gives me a little shake. “Hey, Katie. You all right?”

  “Drew,” I whisper, almost hoarse from thirst, “will you please, please, please get me a glass of water? I’m so thirsty.”

  “Of course, baby.” He strokes my hair. He frowns. “Your hair is wet.”

  “I was hot,” I lie. “I splashed water on my face in the bathroom, and I got some in my hair.”

  “Are you still hot? Do you want me to open a window?”

  “Sure. That would be nice.”

  He gives me a gentle kiss on the cheek. His breath is bad. “Did you get a good night’s sleep?”

  I nod.

  “I bet you feel so much better now.”

  “Yes. Drew?”

  “What is it, baby?”

  “Will you open the window and get me some water?”

  Once he goes downstairs, I turn to look at Mazzie. I know that she’s still awake from the way she’s breathing. She has her back turned to me. I get up and stand over her, just watching, until she finally opens her eyes and says, “What is it?”

  I sit on the edge of her bed. “I just wanted to, you know, say thank you.”

  “No problem.”

  I don’t move. She opens her eyes again. “What, Katie?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, when you figure it out, tell me then. I’m trying to sleep.”

  “Sorry.” I get into my own bed, waiting for Drew to come back with my water. I want to say more to her, but I know she’ll only be annoyed. So all I say is, “Good night, Mazzie.”

  “Good night, asshole. Try not to pee the bed again.”

  Drew comes back with a coffee mug full of water and sits down beside me, giving me a shake. “Here you go. I’m up. I’m going home.”

  “Thank you.”

  “No problem. Hey, do you want to come to church with me later?”

  Do I want to go to church with him? “No. Definitely not.”

  “All right. Don’t come crying to me when you’re burning in hell.” He acts like he’s only kidding, but we both know better.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t.”

  He leans over and kisses my forehead. “I’ll call you, sweet pea.”

  I do my best to smile. “I’ll be counting the minutes.”

  He slams the door on his way out. I can hear his loafers pounding down the stairs, threatening to wake the whole house. Then it’s quiet again. I’m so tired that my eyes are burning; maybe from thirst, too. I drink my water, then go to the bathroom and fill it up three more times before I start to feel better. Once I’m finally in bed again, I push a pillow between my legs and lay facing Mazzie, her back still turned to me.

  I’m almost asleep when she says, “So Drew thinks you’re going to hell, does he?”

  “Yes.” We’re both so sleepy that our voices are barely more than murmurs. “He thinks you’re going to hell too.”

  She doesn’t say anything for a while, and my eyes begin to flutter shut. Then, just as I’m slipping into sleep, she says, “If we both end up in hell, at least we can still be roommates.”

  I smile. “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Doesn’t sound so bad,” she murmurs. And then she’s out. I lay there for a while, listening to the sound of her breath, and finally fall asleep to the sound of tooth grinding against tooth through a thin layer of plastic, like a purr that I can feel in my whole body.

  chapter 10

  My parents don’t protest at first when I tell them I’m not coming home for winter break. My mom is quiet on the phone, more quiet than usual, but I don’t think much of it. A few days later, though, I get another call from the Ghost.

  When I answer my phone, his receptionist says, “Please hold the line for Dr. Kitrell.”

  It’s, like, five o’clock in the morning. If there were some kind of pill to let people go without sleep, the Ghost would be the first in line so he could work around the clock.

  After a few seconds of Kenny G, my dad says, “Your mother is upset. She wants you to come home for Christmas.”

  “Dad, we talked about this, like, seventy-two hours ago and—”

  “Just Christmas,” he says. “Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. You don’t understand what it means to her, Kathryn.” I hear him take a swallow of something—I’m sure it’s coffee. “She doesn’t want a Christmas without children.”

  I know he must be serious; the Ghost is never this open.

  I glance at Mazzie, pretending to be asleep in bed, her heavy Calc II textbook open on her chest.

  “I take it my brother won’t be home?”

  “No. Not this year.”

  So I find myself sitting alone at the top of my parents’ stairs on Christmas morning. Once the Ghost has made coffee, I’m allowed to come down and start opening my presents.

  All the ornaments on our tree are handmade, either by me or Will or our mom. There are photos of us from elementary school glued to glittered plastic seashells, candy canes made from red and white pipe cleaners, garlands of old buttons and artificial pearls strung together on fishing line.

  Mostly I get clothes, along with a new swimming bag (which I can’t use because it isn’t Woodsdale colors, but I don’t mention that to my parents) and a new laptop and a whole stack of books with titles like ACCEPTED! How to Get into Your Dream School and SAT Prep for the Advanced Student.

  On the other side of the tree, there is a small stack of presents that I know are for Will. My parents will visit him later in the day. I don’t even bother asking; I know they won’t let me come with them. Anyway, I don’t want to see him.

  Back at school, I give Mazzie a bag of gifts that my parents bought her.

  “How thoughtful of them,” she says, opening a box containing a sweater identical to mine, except for its monogram. Her voice is laced with saccharine sarcasm. “I should send your mother a nice thank-you card.” She pulls the sweater over her head. “Did you explain to your parents that I’m a Buddhist? Do they understand I don’t celebrate Christmas?”

  I shake my head. “They’d already bought the presents.”

  She opens another package. It’s a pair of pink footie pj’s, patterned with tiny kittens playing with balls of yarn.

  She looks at my own stack of presents, piled on my desk. “You got exactly the same pair.”

  “I know. I think she got us two of everything.”

  The collect calls continue, once a week, every
Wednesday morning between two and three.

  For over a month I stay up late on Tuesday nights, waiting for them. I don’t know why. And every time the phone rings, I pick it up and listen to the same recording: “Will you accept the charges for a collect call from . . .” and then Will’s voice, his message always similar.

  “Katie, please talk to me. It’s horrible in here, Katie, I need to talk to you. They’re going to get you next, Katie, I can’t—” Beep. He always gets cut off before he has a chance to finish.

  One night the phone doesn’t ring. I wait up until almost four in the morning, before I finally pass out against my will. When I get back from school the next day, I pick up the phone to call Drew. There’s no dial tone. Mazzie has unplugged the phone.

  I imagine my brother, trying to call, only to receive a message that my number has been disconnected or is not in service at the moment or whatever it might have said.

  I plug the phone back into the wall and stand back, staring at it, willing it to ring.

  But it doesn’t. And even though I check and double check to make sure it’s plugged in, it doesn’t ring the following Wednesday morning, or the Wednesday after that, or the one after that. But I still lie awake on those nights—I don’t know why, exactly—waiting, imagining my brother’s sunken face, part of me hoping that he’s staring at his own telephone miles away, the invisible thread between us still connected no matter what I do, tugging at me sometimes so hard that my whole body aches.

  There are nightmares almost every night now. Terror winding across a field and down a highway, flattening itself like a tapeworm to wriggle through cracks in the windows, snaking under my covers, up my leg in a ribbon of slime and into my ear. Trying to wake myself up has become like trying to crawl up a down escalator on all fours. After almost two months without any calls from Will, when I can’t stand the nightmares anymore, I get in the habit of staying awake and watching Mazzie. Since the collect calls from Will started, she sleeps in my bed most nights. She is like a doll, limp and flat, her face flawless and seeming to invite bright red circles of color drawn in lipstick on her cheeks, or bright plastic barrettes in her hair, the low clackety-clack of her jaw keeping time with the creeping of the lazy moon outside.