Wednesday morning started out a beautiful day, but by lunchtime heavy ominous clouds hung in the sky, and by the time I left work for the day it was pouring outside. I hadn’t bothered to check the weather before I left for work in the morning which meant my umbrella was home where it was totally useless to me. A few raindrops didn’t bother me, but the rain was coming down in sheets, so I decided to wait under the awning of the community center until it stopped.
Twenty minutes later the downpour had only gotten worse and I was half-tempted to just make a dash for the train station. The cool raindrops would probably feel good. Justin, who was just leaving work, noticed me waiting.
“Who would’ve thought it was going to rain like this today?”
Unlike me, he had an umbrella with him. “You must’ve.”
“No.” He winked at me. “I just keep a spare one in my office.”
“And you’re about to tell me this is my lucky day and you have an extra umbrella for me,” I said, half-joking.
“No extra umbrellas.” Justin shook his head. “Why don’t we just share a cab instead?”
“Sure, okay.” The words came out of my mouth before I thought about what I was saying. A taxi all the way to Brooklyn would be expensive. I was getting regular paychecks, but a cab from Justin’s neighborhood to Brooklyn was not in my budget. Before I could think of a way to back out Justin had already hailed a taxi. I reluctantly followed him inside.
“You all right?” he asked. I was terrible at hiding my feelings and, at that moment, I was mentally trying to calculate if I had enough cash on me to cover the ride into Brooklyn. Maybe I could ask the driver to drop me off a few blocks from Justin’s and then I could take the train home from there. Pleased with the solution I’d come up with, I relaxed.
“I’m fine.” I stared out of the window at the rain coming down. “Just hoping this rain clears up by tomorrow.”
“There will be a lot of July Fourth plans that get messed up if it doesn’t.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. The AC in the cab was either off or not working, and it was really hot and muggy, the worst combination. I reached into my bag for a hair tie and pulled my hair back into a messy ponytail. In the summer when it was really hot my long hair felt like a thick blanket on my neck and shoulders. As a kid, my hair was always short thanks to my dad’s awful haircuts. In the group home I’d got my hair cut a total of one time in four years. It wasn’t until after I left that I found out that the other girls and I were supposed to get money every three months for haircuts. Turns out one of the workers at the group home pocketed our money instead. Now I just didn’t have enough extra money to spend on getting my hair done, so I just wore it long.
I looked at Justin out of the corner of my eye. He was wearing a t-shirt and his usual track pants. He always wore pants, even on the hottest days. I didn’t know how he could stand it.
“Can I ask you something?” Justin’s question interrupted my thoughts.
“Yeah, sure?”
“I know the two of us are pretending to be dating, but I was kind of wondering, do you have a real boyfriend?”
“No, no real boyfriend, just you, my fake one,” I replied with a wry smile. “What about you? Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Nah. I’m not exactly what anyone would call prime dating material.”
“What makes you say that?” His assessment of himself surprised me. We’d known each for about a month and I had yet to discover any flaws. Not only was he strikingly handsome, he was funny and kind.
“Uhh. . .guy who still lives with his parents.” He held his hand up like he was introducing himself at a group meeting. “Remember?”
“Yeah, but you’re cute enough to pull that off. . .I think.”
“You think I’m cute?” He sounded genuinely surprised.
“Oh come on now,” I said. “I can’t be the first girl who’s ever told you that.”
Justin had no time to answer. The taxi pulled up to his building and he got out. Earlier in the week when Justin told me about his parent’s rooftop deck I figured they had money, I just didn’t realize how much. I didn’t spend too much time in fancy New York buildings, but I recognized one when I saw one. Justin finished paying the driver and waved to me as he walked inside his building.
“Your address?” the cab driver asked as he pulled away from the curb.
“Umm. . .can you just drop me off by the nearest train station?”
“Man told me take you to Brooklyn, he pay me for ride all the way to Brooklyn,” the taxi driver said in a broken Indian accent.
“He paid my fare?”
“Yes, and big tip, too.” For a moment I was too flabbergasted to say anything. “Your address, ma’am?”
“Oh yeah,” I said before telling him how to get to my place.
On the drive home I dialed Justin’s number. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Do what,” he asked, innocently.
“We were supposed to be sharing a cab,” I said. “I didn’t expect you to pay for my fare all the way home.”
“Yeah, but it was my idea, it wouldn’t be right to stick you with the fare.”
“I guess I owe you again.”
“Again?”
“Once for lunch, then for rescuing me from Don, and now this.”
“You don’t owe me a thing, Jesse.”
“Yes, I do, and I always repay my debts.” I wasn’t exactly sure how I would with Justin, but I didn’t like charity, and I didn’t like feeling like I owed someone. If Justin was just about any other guy I knew I would’ve sworn he was just being nice because he wanted something, but Justin was generous with everyone. He regularly showed up with coffee and doughnuts for everyone at work. Sometimes he’d get pizza delivered to the community center at lunch and he never let anyone chip in. It was just his way, and it was starting to cast a spell over me despite my best efforts to talk myself out of it.
I was surprised to find my brother in the kitchen when I got inside our apartment. He sat at the table with a container of take-out in front of him. His hair and clothes were soaked and his fingers were coated with rib sauce.
“You should’ve just asked them to deliver,” I said.
“Picked this up on my way back from the train station.” Mike looked me up and down. “How’d you stay so dry?”
“I took a cab. Shared one with this guy I work with.”
“You mean Justin?” I’d mentioned him to my brother a few times. I just hadn’t realized he’d actually been paying attention to me at the time.
“Yeah, how’d you know?”
“I’m a guy, J. I know the way we think.”
I frowned, not sure what my brother was getting at. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The guy likes you. I can’t believe you haven’t figured that out already.”
“You just say that ’cause you don’t know him. He’s nice to everyone, that’s just how he is.”
“Ok, whatever. But after he asks you out I expect you to tell me I was right.”
My brother firmly believed that females and males couldn’t be just friends. If a guy was being nice, it meant he wanted something, but hadn’t worked up the courage to ask for it. I wasn’t ready to admit that he was right, even though when it came to Justin I found myself sort of hoping he was.
“So what’s Mel’s mom going to do if it’s still raining tomorrow?”
“You know Mel’s family. They’ll just bring the party inside.”
Melanie came from a huge family. Her mom and dad weren’t together anymore, but when they had been they’d made five children together who all still lived in Brooklyn. Parties at Mel’s mom’s house were always crowded affairs with loud music, usually a mix between hip-hop and merengue since they were Dominican, and lots of food. If it rained tomorrow someone would still be grilling, and the party would still be on one way or another.
Luckily, by morning the clouds and rain had cleared. Mel came over early and my brother h
elped her in the kitchen to clean and season some chicken that would get grilled later. By noon the three of us headed for the train station. I could smell grilled meat almost as soon as we got out of the train station. The music was already blaring by the time we got to Mel’s mom’s place. Mel and I brought the chicken she and my brother had seasoned earlier to the backyard before going back inside.
I found Mel’s mom in the kitchen, half cooking, half dancing.
“Hi, Mrs. Vergara,” I said.
She turned around and hugged me. “Go get some food, mija.”
The dining room table was covered with a mixture of Dominican and American dishes. There was rice and beans, plantains and empanadas alongside hot dogs and potato salad. I helped myself to a plate of food and sat outside in the backyard watching Mel’s brother and cousins playing dominoes. With all the beer at the party, it didn’t take long for more than a few people to get kind of drunk. After yet another one of Mel’s cousins suggested we’d make pretty babies together, I decided to go hunt for my brother.
I found Mel in the living room on the couch with her hands folded across her chest, she looked pissed. “Where’s Mike?” I asked.
“Don’t know, don’t care.”
That meant the two of them must have got into an argument. “What happened?”
“What happened is your brother is an asshole.” Mel knew she could talk to me like that because half the time I agreed with her. My brother was a good guy, he never lied, and if you counted on him for something he always came through, but he could push a person’s buttons sometimes. I understood him and I understood why, but that didn’t always make dealing with it easier.
I sat beside her. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Just mad.”
“And you don’t want to tell me why?”
“Mike saw me talking to some guy and got jealous. We got into an argument about it so he went up to my brother’s room with a few other guys to get high. He knows I don’t care if he smokes, but at my mom’s house. . .” She shook her head. “That’s just not cool.”
I couldn’t argue with her. Truthfully, I didn’t really care that much that my brother liked pot. He had a job and went to school, so it wasn’t like it interfered in his life, but I couldn’t stand the smell of it. And smoking at your girlfriend’s mother’s house, Mel was right, that wasn’t cool. It seemed like Mike and Mel got into the same old argument at every family party. My brother had a jealous streak because, even though he never admitted as much, he was scared to death of losing Mel. She and her family had become his family, his anchor, and a part of him was afraid he wasn’t good enough and that he didn’t deserve her. A lifetime of hearing that from your parents tended to have that effect on a person.
I wasn’t able to find my brother anywhere, and he didn’t answer any of my texts so I said my goodbyes. I felt kind of bad leaving Mel when she was so upset, but she had her family—tons of cousins, her mom, her brothers, and Mike and I only had each other.
“If I see Mike do you want me to tell him to call you?”
“Nah, don’t worry about it. He’ll call.” She sounded totally unworried, which wasn’t surprising, Mel knew my brother was head over heels with her.
Going home to look for Mike was going to be a waste of time, I knew my brother well enough to know if he was pissed he wouldn’t have gone home. He would have gone to one of his friend’s to either drink or smoke some more. By three in the morning, I couldn’t stay awake any longer. Mike hadn’t shown up and he hadn’t answered any of my calls or texts. The only thing I could do was pray that whatever my brother was up to he wasn’t getting into the type of trouble he couldn’t get out of.
Sometime before the sun came up my brother finally made it home. I heard him as he fumbled through my room in the dark on the way to his bedroom. I drifted back to sleep and woke up a few hours later. It took me a minute to recognize the noises coming from my brother’s room. He was puking his guts out, probably from all the drinking he’d done. Mike ignored me when I knocked on his door—I went in anyway. He was lying in bed curled into the fetal position and he looked like shit.
“Exactly how much did you have to drink?”
“I don’t know,” he said, his speech slurred. “Four, maybe five, or ten.”
He was making no sense. It was almost ten in the morning and he’d been home for a few hours already. Which meant that even if he’d been drunk when he got home most of the alcohol should have left his system already. That made me wonder if something else was going on.
“What else were you doing besides drinking?”
“Took some. . .” Mike pointed to his bedside table. “To help me sleep.” He was speaking in broken sentences that I couldn’t make much sense out of. There was a pill bottle lying on its side, completely empty. I picked it up and held it in front of my brother’s face.
“What the hell was in here?” The label that had been there was torn off.
Mike didn’t answer. I shook him to try and wake him up, but all he did was moan and try to knock my hands away. I stared at him for a moment trying to figure out what I should do. What if he’d overdosed on something? Panicked, I ran to my room for my cell phone. If I called whichever friends he’d been hanging out with they’d know what was in that bottle, but I wasn’t sure who to call and my brother was too out of it to answer any of my questions. Before I was able to figure out what to do, my phone, which was still in my hand, started ringing. I picked it up without even bothering to see who it was.
“Hello.” I could hear the panic in my voice.
“What’s wrong?”
“Who is this?”
“It’s Justin. Did I call too early?”
“No. . .no, it’s not too early.”
“You didn’t stop by yesterday.”
I glanced at my brother who was still and pale. I tried shaking him. “Mike, Mike.” He didn’t answer. “Can I call you back, Justin? Now really isn’t a good time.”
“What’s going on? You sound really upset.”
“It’s my brother.” I was too worried to keep my mouth shut. I felt like I was on the verge of tears, but I bit them back as I spoke. “I think he might have overdosed on something, but I don’t know what.”
“Did you call an ambulance?”
“No. I can’t do that. What if they think he tried to kill himself or something and make him stay in the hospital?” I’d seen it happen more than once to some of the girls I lived with at the group home. “He’ll kill me for doing that to him.”
“Give me your address.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m coming over. I can help you figure out what to do better if I see him.”
“No. I don’t think that’s a good idea.” I didn’t want Justin seeing the neighborhood I lived in, much less the inside of my piece of shit apartment, and I seriously doubted there was anything he could do. Maybe he was right, I should just call the paramedics. “Besides you’re not a doctor, you’re a coach.”
“I was a Corpsman in the military, remember? Believe me, I’ll know what to do.”
Mike turned on his side and let out a groan before doubling over and dry heaving. He probably had nothing left inside him anymore.
“Fine,” I relented and gave Justin my address. Making sure my brother was okay was more important than Justin’s opinion of me, and realistically how much longer could I keep up the façade I’d been trying to since the beginning of summer? It was only a matter of time before Justin found out that the two of us were not in the same financial bracket, not even close.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can. Call me back if anything changes before I get there.”
Every few minutes I got up and peeked through the window blinds to see if Justin had arrived. When he finally did, I ran to open the door to my building. He followed me inside and then into my brother’s room. Mike was still sprawled across the bed, he seemed a little more awake.
“Oh shit, you weren’t kidding. He looks like cr
ap.” Justin sat beside my brother and reached for his wrist. It took me a second before I realized he was counting Mike’s pulse.
“Well?”
“His pulse is a little fast, but that’s probably because he’s dehydrated from throwing up.” He turned towards my brother and shook his arm. “Hey bro, can you tell me what you took, what was in that bottle?”
“Zan. . .something.” His eyes closed and he turned to his side. “Oh fuck. I can’t remember.”
“I can’t make sense of anything he’s saying,” I said.
“It sounds like he’s trying to say Xanax,” Justin explained.
“What’s that?”
“You really don’t know?” Justin asked.
I shook my head.
“God, you’re innocent. They’re like sleeping pills.” Justin reached into his pocket for his cell phone.
I grabbed his arm. “Who are you calling?”
“Poison control, they’ll know what to do.”
They came on the line a few seconds later and Justin started to explain the situation to the person on the other end of the phone. A minute later he was done with the call.
“Well? What did they say?”
“They said that Xanax is supposed to be short-acting. As long as he didn’t mix the Xanax with a bunch of other stuff your brother should be better pretty soon. I can stay with you and help you keep an eye on him until he’s more coherent.”
“We don’t even know how many of those things he took, though.”
“The lady from poison control said it’s pretty hard to overdose on Xanax. It’s a sedative, that’s why he’s so out of it.” I turned away from Justin so he wouldn’t see the worried expression that was still on my face. He put his hand on my shoulder. “If he gets worse the only other choice is to call the paramedics.”
“Oh my God.” I sat on the edge of my brother’s bed. “I can’t believe he’d be this stupid.” I covered my face with my hands. It wasn’t even noon yet and I was already tired. Ninety percent of the time my brother was funny and nice and my hero. A year ago when I’d made the huge mistake of moving out of the dorms and in with my then boyfriend it was my brother who’d come through for me after our break-up. I had nowhere to go until my brother offered to give up his studio apartment in Alphabet City so we could find a two bedroom to rent together. There was no way I could’ve afforded a place on my own, and the dorm had a waiting list to get back in.
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