by Amy Reed
“You’re welcome,” I say, and head back downstairs.
The hole inside me does not have solid walls. It’s more like a mesh bag. And people are mostly water; they seep right through. They need and want and take and take, and at the end of the day, no matter what I do, I’m alone with myself, emptied out all over again.
LYDIA
POOR KIDS IN CARTHAGE AND Rome don’t have a lot of options for places to hang out during the coldest winter on record. The movie theater, bowling alley, and coffee shops all cost money, and there’s no way in hell Billy and I are going to wander around BigMart or the mall with the rest of the zombies. Anywhere outside is out of the question because right now it’s approximately seven degrees Fahrenheit with the windchill factor. Gusts of ice crystals are forming over the ocean, then blowing inward at almost tornado speeds like tiny sparkling knives, slicing winter coats and exposed skin, drawing pinpricks of blood. The only indoor options that don’t cost any money are people’s houses, and Billy’s house is off-limits for obvious reasons, so that leaves no other option but Larry’s bar.
I’m sitting next to Billy at what has become more or less the official kids’ section of the bar. He’s nursing his Shirley Temple while I munch on a microwaved egg roll. The usual handful of guys is here. Even though it’s well into January, there’s still a small plastic Christmas tree in the corner, decorated with Unicorns vs. Dragons–themed ornaments. A sad single strand of multicolored Christmas lights droops over the bar.
Larry and I haven’t talked about Mom’s picture, of course. I cleaned up the broken glass, bought a new frame at BigMart that was identical to the old one, and hung the picture over the same slightly darker, unfaded rectangle on the wall where the paint had been covered for years. It’s like nothing ever happened.
“How’s practice going with what’s her name?” Billy says flatly. His skin has taken on a slightly gray, zombielike tinge.
“Good,” I say. “She’s cool.” I can’t help smiling. Both at the thought of my last few practices with Natalie, and at Billy’s fake forgetting what her name is.
“I never heard you call anyone cool,” he grumbles into his pink soda. “I thought you said she was a stuck-up ballerina.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I was wrong.”
“I never heard you say that, either.”
I look at the TV, but I’m not really interested in the news report about the King’s new logging robots getting smashed in the forest. I can feel Billy staring at me, wanting answers, wanting me to let him into this part of my life that he’s not a part of. Maybe I’m being mysterious on purpose. Maybe I don’t want to let him in. Maybe, at least for now, I want to keep Natalie just for myself.
I look at Billy and now he’s slumped over, his face in his hands. “Dude, are you crying?” I say.
“No,” he says, lifting his head and wiping his eyes on his sleeve.
“Seriously, though. Are you okay?”
“I’m just feeling a little emotional lately,” Billy says. “How long do you think it takes for someone to get permanent brain damage from lack of sleep?”
Something inside me constricts, makes me want to pull away, as if whatever Billy’s going through is contagious and I don’t want to catch it.
I feel a sharp pain in my calf. I look down and see the little girl crouched below me with a devilish look on her face, her fingers in pinching formation. She’s been doing this lately, taunting me when other people are around, like she wants me to lose my shit in public. “Stop it!” I say without thinking.
“What?” Billy says, looking more hurt than ever.
“Nothing,” I say. “My muscles were cramping.”
“You talk to your muscles?”
“It’s a dancer thing.”
Billy sighs dramatically and buries his face back in his hands.
I fidget in my seat, look at him for a moment, then away. I open my mouth, then close it. Finally I say, “Do you want to talk about it?”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
I look at Billy for a while. What happened to the guy who was always happy, who stayed positive no matter what? I’m kind of missing that guy right now, as delusional as he was sometimes. There must be a balance, something between blind optimism and hopeless despair.
Before I have a chance to say anything, Larry yells from the other end of the bar, “Hey, Billy. I’ve been meaning to talk to you. I’m thinking about contacting your granny about partnering on some tours. I have a vision for a combination Rainy Day Knife Fight and Unicorns vs. Dragons Carthage and Rome tour. People will love it! I think we could get it off the ground in time for the Unicorns vs. Dragons festival. You know about the festival, don’t you?”
“Who doesn’t?” Billy says.
“Oh God,” I moan. Now is so not the time, Larry.
“This is the first annual,” Larry says proudly. “I helped the Carthage Merchants’ Association plan it. I was on the committee. Did I tell you about the attraction I’m going to build? I need to dig some holes in the back, but the ground’s too frozen.”
“We could help you,” Billy offers. “Right, Lydia?”
“I’m going to kill you.”
The TV is showing grainy pictures caught by a security camera at one of the King’s logging sites. Blurred giant figures—some black, some white—dash around in the dark of night. It almost looks like they’re herding the robots together.
“Don’t be too disappointed if she’s not interested, Larry,” Billy says. “My grandma’s not really a team player.”
There’s a huge burst of fire on the screen, then it turns to black with the caption VIDEO CAMERAS DESTROYED. The screen cuts to the newscasters’ professionally blank faces. “The culprits behind the destruction of the equipment are still on the loose, and investigators so far have no leads. Sources say Royal Industries’ losses are already in the tens of millions and that the King intends to reevaluate the company’s plans in the region. This could be good news for local businesses and workers who were hoping to capitalize on the opening of the forests to logging.”
“Those weren’t no people on that video,” says a guy at the bar.
“It’s that Sasquatch again, I’m telling you,” says another guy. “He’s pissed. And now he’s got friends helping him.”
The unicorns and dragons in the posters hung around the bar seem to be laughing.
“Billy, I’m getting kind of worried about you,” I say.
“I’m fine,” he says, sucking on an ice cube. “I just need some sleep, that’s all.”
All of a sudden Old Pete emits a wet snort from his booth. The moss in his beard has thickened and spread all over his face and head. Only a small oval containing his eyes, nose, and mouth is still skin. “The most humane way to cook crabs,” Old Pete mumbles, “is to chill them first. You gotta lower their body temperatures slowly so they get numb and drowsy. Then they won’t feel it when you spike them in the head.”
I shiver. I think that’s the most I’ve ever heard him speak, and I’ve known him most of my life. It’s nonsense of course, but it feels important.
“Just drink your beer, old man,” says one of the guys at the bar.
Larry slides two new bright pink Shirley Temples in front of Billy and me. “With double cherries,” he says with a wink.
“How festive,” I say, rubbing the rim of the glass clean with my fingers.
Billy looks at the TV, his eyes blank, momentarily distracted from his feelings by what’s on the screen. He needs something and I don’t know what it is, or how to give it, or if it is even mine to give. What are you supposed to do when someone says they’re fine but you know they’re not? I’m so used to him being transparent, telling me every little thing that goes through his head. He’s not the one who’s supposed to brood and hold things in. That’s my job.
There’s a part of me that wants to say, “Fuck it,” that doesn’t want to deal with his feelings, that only wants mine to matter. It’s the par
t of me that’s shaped like my mother.
Why is this shit so hard? Does anyone know what they’re doing, or is everybody faking it?
The little girl is sitting on the counter now, between me and the TV screen, forcing me to look at her. “Really?” I say. One of the old guys at the bar looks at me like I’m nuts, but I don’t care. Why can’t she just talk? Why can’t she just tell me what she wants? Why does she have to be so goddamned passive-aggressive?
I could say something right now, could ask Billy to tell me more. But I don’t. I just let him sit there and watch TV. Because maybe this, whatever this is that Billy’s going through, is something he needs to do alone. Maybe my job as his friend is to let him.
The girl smiles at me mockingly, digs her finger inside her nose, and then sticks it in my drink.
I look over at Billy, and he’s fallen asleep sitting up.
After I get back from dropping Billy off at home, I hurry into my studio. But something feels off. Something is missing.
I try not to think of Billy as I do a quick warm-up. I try to ignore the little girl darting around the room like a kid who ate too much sugar. But the more I try to ignore her, the angrier I get.
“You’re useless,” I tell her. “All you do is get in the way.” I want the cruel words to make me feel better. I want to hurl my pain onto her. But as she cowers in the corner, I just hate both of us even more.
I take a deep breath. Too much thinking. I cue the music and move to the middle of my spliced-together dance floor to practice the ballet choreography Mary’s been building over the last few classes. I focus on my turnout and force myself into the unnatural shapes ballet requires, these torture devices disguised as beauty.
I imagine myself as a hollow-boned bird, light as air, a girl who is empty, waiting to be filled with whatever role I am supposed to play. I try to imagine myself as a ballerina, as someone pretty and perfect and pure. I try to feel the magic Natalie says she feels.
But I am not like Natalie. I am a dancer who hunches her shoulders. I am a dancer with no goddamned turnout. I am a dancer who rolls on the ground, barefoot, sweat-drenched and covered with bruises. I am not pretty or perfect or pure.
I stop dancing. I stand completely still as I listen to the rest of the classical piece playing on my cheap speakers, the soaring violins and flute and piano. I have no idea what this music is supposed to make me feel. Does this music even have a story? It’s a soundtrack to lives that are nothing like mine.
I pull off my ballet slippers and change the music to something loud and fast. I throw my body around the room, and the little girl follows me. Fuck my turnout. Fuck the French lexicon. Fuck Billy and fuck Larry and fuck my mom and fuck that little girl who won’t leave me the fuck alone.
I try to find the anger, the rage I use like fuel. But something heavier has taken its place and it’s weighing me down, throwing me off, messing with my balance. Rage, I can deal with. Anger, I can use. But not this, whatever it is. Not this feeling like a tiny hand squeezing the blood out of my heart.
I use my reflection in the mirror to spot a series of turns. I laser my focus on the image of my own eyes. I turn once. I turn twice. But the third time I whip around, my eyes are no longer there. I am staring into nothing, not even a reflection of the wall behind me, not even black. Just nothing. Just the absence of myself.
I have no breath. The wind has been knocked out of me from the inside. I am sobbing, gasping for air. I reach for my throat, but nothing’s there.
The whole room is empty. It’s the Halloween fire all over again. The world has disappeared and I’m in a vacuum and the only thing I can see is the little girl cowering in front of me, long black hair cascading over her shoulders, skinny brown arms wrapped around pink-covered legs, the tights never designed to match skin like ours.
Alone. Totally alone. A whole world between us and everyone else.
I look away. This is too much. I don’t want to see this, don’t want to see her. I don’t want to care. Why can’t I just dance this away? Why can’t this be enough anymore?
“I hate you!” I scream. “Leave me alone!”
These are not my words. This is not my voice.
Everywhere I turn, the girl is still there, daring me to look at her. “What the fuck do you want?” I scream at the mirror.
The girl looks up, face streaked with tears. She makes no sound when she speaks, but the word painted on her lips is undeniable: help.
My muscles give out. I am not strong enough to fight this. I surrender. I let go.
My sobs shake the rickety room. They make the earth move. They make the one place in the world where I feel safe fall apart.
Is this the big earthquake we’ve been warned about for years? Will it tear the Olympic Peninsula off the rest of the state and send us drifting out into the ocean? Or have I caught what Billy has? Is my home going to drive me to madness? Is this the end of what little I have left that makes sense?
As the room shakes, the mirror fragments I glue-gunned and bracketed on the walls start shattering around me. The duct tape holding the particleboard floor together splits, and the boards buckle and shift like tectonic plates. I back into the corner, arms covering my head from the glass raining down, while everything I worked so hard to build is destroyed.
I am the shattered glass on the floor. I am the puzzle with too many pieces missing.
Then I feel the warm imprint of a smaller back leaning against mine, the birdlike spine fitting into the grooves of my own. We are two pieces fused together, two pieces that fit nowhere else, holding each other up while the world crumbles around us.
And there we sit until the room stops shaking, waiting for the stillness after the storm when everything is broken and done, when there is only one set of choices: give up or build something new.
BILLY
IT’S CLOSE TO MIDNIGHT AND Grandma still isn’t home. I’ve been calling her phone all night, but she won’t pick up. She doesn’t exactly have an active nightlife, so this is totally out of character. She’s never stayed out this late.
I’m trying not to panic, but I’m not really in the optimal condition for staying calm. I can’t remember the last time I had a decent night’s sleep. All these thoughts keep banging around in my brain, spiraling down faster and faster and faster, and now Grandma’s missing, and when I turned on the AA channel, Lynn A. wasn’t in her usual seat by the coffee maker. She wasn’t anywhere. I stared at her empty seat for a long time, waiting for her to come back from the bathroom or something, but the screen just cut to a new shot of a poster with a message in bold cursive writing, YOU’RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS, which is pretty much the understatement of the year.
These things happen sometimes. People have lives. Maybe Grandma went out with her chain-smoking old lady friends and didn’t bother to call home, which would totally make sense since we leave the phone off the hook most of the time these days to avoid all the people asking questions about Caleb, and Grandma probably wouldn’t call even if the phone was on. Maybe Lynn A. had family business somewhere. Maybe she’s in an airplane right now, flying to some city where she has a grown-up kid with a brand-new baby waiting to meet their grandma.
I look at the painting on the wall of my bedroom. It has changed from the beautiful hypnotic swirl to something darker, more black than blue now, faster and more violent than before, like an out-of-control tornado that wants to destroy everything in its path. The throbbing center is no longer warm and inviting. It’s too hot. The pull is stronger. It wants to suck me in and burn me up.
Things aren’t going well. Not only am I sleep deprived, not only are Grandma and Lynn A. missing, and not only is tomorrow Monday, meaning the usual problem of having to go to school, there is also now the additional problem of my only winter coat, which wasn’t that warm to begin with, having a huge hole in it after being slashed open by a splintered board that shot out of the wall right as I walked by, barely missing my body. By the time I get to school tomorr
ow morning, I’ll be an icicle. If the house doesn’t kill me first.
I know I could buy myself a new coat. Ever since Caleb started paying me to run his errands, buying things is a strange new freedom I haven’t quite accepted. Nearly all of my money, besides the large chunk I set aside to secretly pay for Lydia’s dance classes, is still wadded up in a shoebox under my bed. The last time I counted, I had over sixteen hundred dollars, and my hands itched the whole time I was handling the cash and I swear I had heart palpitations, like I’m allergic to it or something.
Lying in bed now, I feel uncomfortable just thinking about it. I’ve heard of money burning a hole in people’s pockets, but is it possible to burn holes in people’s beds? Could it spontaneously combust under there and set the bed on fire right under me? Am I sleeping on top of a fire hazard? Despite the fact that I’m freezing, being burned alive is not an appealing proposition.
For some reason, I cannot bring myself to spend the money. My money. There’s never been such a thing as “my money.”
I’ve run to the store daily, sometimes multiple times a day, for whatever Caleb’s requested. I’ve cleaned bucket after bucket of piss and shit. I’ve endured Caleb’s insults and bad moods. I’ve kept an entire person a secret and bought illegal drugs, for Pete’s sake. But somehow none of that is enough to convince me I deserve a ten-dollar secondhand coat so I don’t freeze to death walking to school in the middle of the coldest January ever recorded in Fog Harbor.
But worse than possibly freezing to death is the fact that I’m pretty sure Lydia is sick of me. It was bound to happen, I guess. She found someone better to replace me. Natalie and Lydia certainly have more in common than we do. What do I even have to offer? Right now the only thing about me that’s useful to Lydia is my money, and she doesn’t even know it exists.