This Is What It Feels Like

by Rebecca Barrow

  “You know you’re on the wrong coast.”

  “What?”

  The girl finishes filling her cup and then points at Elliot’s chest. “Biggie,” she says, and he looks down at his shirt, The Notorious B.I.G. in his chains and crown, and for a moment Elliot thinks she’s being serious, her face is dead serious, but then she cracks. “It’s a joke.”

  Elliot manages a laugh and pulls a hand through his hair, a nervous tic he can’t stop doing tonight. “Right,” he says. “It’s my mom’s fault. She’s from New York.”

  “I guess you get a pass,” the girl says, and then she sees something over his shoulder and her face clouds over. “God, that was fast.”

  Elliot turns right as a white girl in supershort shorts stumbles into the kitchen. “There you are!” the girl sings, swaying slightly. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “Hanna, what are you doing?” The band girl has forgotten about Elliot entirely, he can tell, as she hurries to the girl he now recognizes as the drummer from earlier. “Whoa! Okay, it’s time to call Ciara. You’re going home.”

  They’re gone in a second and Elliot’s left kicking himself. He should’ve taken his chance.

  This is exactly what Nolan means when he says Elliot freezes.

  It’s 12:17, according to Elliot’s phone. He’s definitely going to be grounded.

  He waits outside for Nolan, still in the house flirting with this guy with two sharp bars through his eyebrow. It’s a hot night, the kind where you wake up in a layer of your own stale sweat, and Elliot holds his hand out into the empty air.

  “We need rain.” The voice comes from somewhere to his left, and then the band girl steps into his sight. “California’s thirsty.”

  “Right,” Elliot says, and winces. Is he capable of saying anything multisyllabic to this girl? He clears his throats, shoves his hands in his pockets. “Is your friend okay?”

  The girl makes a face that Elliot can only describe as Over It. “Yeah,” she says. “Too much to drink. She does it all the time. It’s fine.” The way she says It’s fine tells Elliot it’s anything but.

  “You played tonight, right?” he says next. “You were good.”

  She shoots him a look, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “I know.”

  Confident. Elliot decides to match her. “I’m Elliot,” he says. “What’s your name?”

  She looks him up and down like she’s vetting him, deciding whether to trust him or not. Eventually she smiles and looks right at him, these deep, dark eyes, and Elliot feels like she’s laid him open right there on the street. “Hi, Elliot,” she says. “I’m Dia.”

  Hanna

  Hanna matched her steps to the beat of the frenetic drums pounding in her headphones, stepping on every crack and flattened piece of gum. Bad luck couldn’t hurt her any more than it already had.

  Four hundred and twelve days, she thought. No; it was after midnight now. So four hundred and thirteen.

  Hanna ducked into the alley, which was dark enough to make her clutch her keys between her fingers. It had been a complete waste of time, that party, and Hanna had known it even before she’d walked in to the sight of Oscar Rush dancing shirtless on his parents’ dining table. She had only gone because everybody else was going, and did she really want to remember her graduation as another night she spent alone at home in her bedroom?

  In hindsight: yes.

  The moon was a skinny sliver above Hanna’s head, whatever light it gave off masked by neon streetlights. She skipped through track after track as she walked, sometimes letting no more than three seconds elapse before moving on, searching for something to set her nerves alight. On Hayworth Boulevard she let Brody Dalle scream about underworlds and ghost towns, and the perpetual itch that crawled up and down her spine felt satisfied, for three short minutes. But then the song was over and the yearning flooded back and she stopped, to wonder, to stare up at that crescent moon.

  If she’d known Jules and Dia were going to be there, she definitely wouldn’t have gone. But from now on, she wouldn’t have to see them, would she? At school it had been hard to avoid them, even though she tried; there were only so many places to go, and she couldn’t miss them walking the halls together. And as much as she pretended it didn’t, it hurt—hurt deep, far down, in the place she stored those shattered pieces of her heart, next to the guilt. Because it used to be the three of them, always. Sharing fries and going to watch the BMXers pulling tricks after school. Sleeping three to a bed and switching clothes and rolling into places like they were the most important people in the entire world. Singing themselves hoarse, throats raw, on makeshift stages in people’s backyards. Those were their moments, Hanna and Dia and Jules, always.

  Until they weren’t.

  For four hundred and thirteen days, she’d been sober. For all that time, plus eight months more, they had not been friends. Things had changed, fissures and cracks becoming an all-out chasm so quietly and slowly that Hanna almost missed it. And when she’d realized, it had been too late. Nothing she could fix.

  And she was alone.

  Hanna sped up as she started down the long hill that eventually turned into her street. That was then and this was now, and now she was free. She didn’t have to see them anymore, as long as she avoided their parts of town. And in September she’d start working full time, doing admin at a medical company, and she’d save all the money she made, and in a few years she’d be able to leave. And leave so much behind—her ex-friends, her mom’s constant criticism, this whole town.

  The music in her ears sped up, some discofied girl band, and Hanna matched her pace to it. She was almost running when she passed the Dempseys’ place with its front yard of wildflowers, the biggest burst of color on the block. Finally her key slipped soundlessly into the lock of her own house and Hanna stepped inside.

  It was still and quiet, and Hanna exhaled into the comfort of it. “You are okay,” she whispered out loud, fast breaths. “You are here. You are okay.”

  She waited until her heart had slowed to its normal rhythm before climbing the stairs. She bypassed her bedroom and eased open the door plastered in pretty flower cutouts.

  Molly’s eyes flickered open as Hanna entered, as she slipped off her shoes and stole under the covers into her little sister’s bed. “Hey, birdy.”

  “Hey, birdbrain.”

  Hanna flicked Molly’s arm. “Shut up.”

  Molly’s laugh turned into a yawn, her tongue peeking out catlike. Molly hated all that, Hanna knew—the nicknames and being told how adorable she was—now that she was thirteen. But being annoying was Hanna’s prerogative as big sister, right?

  “Did you have a good time?” Molly whispered, her eyes shining bright in the dark. “Were there cute boys there? Or cute girls? Did anyone get in a fight?”

  “Parties aren’t like they show them on TV, Moll.” Hanna tucked her hands under her armpits and screwed up her face. “Trust me, you’ll understand once you get to high school. They’re another ridiculous way for people to decide who’s cool and who isn’t, and to get drunk so they can do things they don’t have the courage for otherwise.”

  Molly’s eyes searched her face, cautious trust in that look. “You didn’t, right?” she asked, and her voice held the fear that her face did not. “Get drunk?”

  See, she might be thirteen, but sometimes she sounded thirty. “No,” Hanna said, and god, the crushing wave of guilt that broke with Molly’s words, it could have drowned her. She wasn’t really asking, Hanna knew; Molly knew her drunk. She wouldn’t have to ask. It was more like she was checking, making sure, that she could really believe the sister in front of her eyes. And Hanna knew that was nobody’s fault but her own. That was what happened when you let your little sister find you unconscious among empty bottles. “No, I didn’t. Don’t worry.”

  “I wasn’t worried,” Molly said. “Just wondering.” She rolled onto her back, blond hair mussed around her face, and did her trademark shoulder-shrug-e
ye-roll combo. “If you don’t have anything good to tell me, then why did you wake me up?”

  “It’s my right as a big sister.” Hanna smacked a kiss on Molly’s cheek before slipping out of the twin bed. “It’s late,” she said. “Go to sleep, okay? I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Will you go with me to the bookstore tomorrow?” Molly widened her eyes. “Please?”

  “After work, sure,” Hanna said. “Whatever you want. Now go to sleep.”

  She left the room and pulled the door almost closed, and then she stood there watching through the gap as Molly fell asleep, a ball beneath the covers. Only when Hanna was satisfied that her sister was absolutely asleep did she go to her own room. She stripped to her underwear, put on an old shirt, and climbed into bed.

  What she’d told Molly was true: parties weren’t like they were on TV. Hanna used to love them—they’d been fun for her. Not so much for everyone around her, having to hold her hair back and pick her up off the floor and rescue her from her whirlwind of destruction. But being drunk made her feel invincible, gave her cover for so many things. She said whatever she wanted, she did anything and everything that she got the urge to, and when she fucked up (often, and in big ways), she’d brush it off: “I was drunk! It’s no big deal.”

  Until it was a big deal, a rubber tube down her throat, no-oxygen-to-her-brain kind of big deal.

  Hanna had thought that getting sober would make everything better. Turn her into this shiny, new Hanna. But she’d realized pretty quickly that the girl who said every little thing that came into her head, who did whatever she wanted without thinking, who was careless and said and did things that really hurt the people around her—that wasn’t because of the drinking. It was her, the way she was wired.

  She’d thought she’d be happy sober. But her problems didn’t go away; they shifted. Now she was always working out how to keep herself in check, to not say those awful things, to not act out. How to rewire herself so her instinct was not complete and utter self-destruction. How to not let the guilt and resentment and anger sweep her up and carry her to the point of giving up, giving in, letting herself drink again because at least then she could forget about it all.

  Hanna sighed into the dark. Every night now this happened to her—no sleep, thoughts racing. So she did what she usually did: got out of bed and crouched to yank open the bottom drawer of her nightstand. Inside, thin black notebooks stacked up, some battered and creased, some shiny-new.

  Hanna pulled out one with the spine cracked but not yet falling apart, and a pen that always leaked black ink all over her fingers. This was the best way she had to combat the self-loathing—well, the best that wasn’t relapsing. She sat with her back against her bed and flicked to a clean page, past all the words that sometimes felt like poetry, sometimes self-indulgent ramblings, but in the end, were always songs.

  She and Dia and Jules weren’t friends anymore, no. They didn’t make music anymore, no. But they did not own her writing; the lyrics that came from her brain and heart and pit of her stomach were Hanna’s and Hanna’s alone.

  Without thinking too much about it, she scratched out a first line.

  She wears your face—I’ve seen her.

  Jules

  They left the party when it got sloppy, spilled drinks on the living room rug and vomit in the kitchen sink. The last bus only took them as far as Dia’s, and Jules walked the rest of the way home, exhausted when she finally got there. She crept in quietly, then stood over the kitchen sink to eat a bowl of cereal, the milk turning pink, and closed her eyes when she thought about having to go to work in five hours.

  She rinsed her bowl out and tiptoed upstairs, past her parents’ bedroom, past Danny’s door. In her room she changed into a tank top and pajama shorts, and pushed her windows open as far as they would go. The still air inside her room had a suffocating thickness to it, and Jules could feel sweat already starting at the base of her spine. Tomorrow was the first day of . . . what? Summer? The rest of her life?

  In the bathroom she wiped off the little makeup Dia had put on her and brushed her teeth, peed, piled her braids up, and secured them beneath a leopard-print satin scarf, and when she got back to her bedroom her phone was flashing.

  Jules reached for the phone, expecting it to be Dia saying good night, and definitely not expecting the name that she actually saw.

  Delaney Myers.

  Jules sat on her bed, shuffled back until she was pressed into the corner, and crossed her legs. The slightest breeze blew through the open windows, a welcome coolness on Jules’s clammy skin.

  Ignore it, she thought. I should ignore this. I’m going to ignore her.

  Jules had to tell herself that, had to remind herself of the decision she’d made six months ago, when she’d told Delaney that they’d be better apart, that she was done. She had to remind herself of why she’d broken up with Delaney: she and Jules were not good together. It was as simple as that.

  Okay, so it was a little more complicated.

  One: Delaney was not out, and Jules was. That was okay—Jules was not interested in pressuring Delaney into coming out or doing anything she wasn’t comfortable with yet. But it did mean that they didn’t go out much, and when they did go out, they didn’t act like a couple.

  Which didn’t help problem two: Jules was a romantic, the worst kind, the kind who dreamed of kisses in the rain and bouquets of beautiful flowers bigger than her body and running hand-in-hand from the weight of the world. She wanted the kind of love her parents had, still giddy after so many years. And Delaney? That was not her at all. She tried sometimes, but it was always lacking—the wrong coffee from Starbucks, wilting flowers from the gas station. She just didn’t get it.

  And really, that was problem number three: They had very little in common, besides finding each other attractive and that one murder mystery show they were both obsessed with. They couldn’t agree on what movie to watch, what music to listen to, what food to order. And in a weird way, Jules kind of liked when they bickered about all that. It felt like Delaney cared, at least. So sometimes she’d pick a fight over nothing in particular, to piss Delaney off, and afterward she’d kiss Delaney extra sweet to make up for it, and she kidded herself that it was passion.

  For almost six months, Jules had managed to keep the illusion going. But one day, on the bus, sitting on opposite sides of the aisle and arguing over fucking Twizzlers or Red Vines, she’d realized.

  This was not good for either of them.

  This was not what she wanted.

  This was not what she deserved.

  So she’d ended it not long after, and hadn’t really spoken to Delaney since—sometimes a hi in the hall at school, but that was about it.

  (Okay, and one slipup, after a late night at work. But everybody called their ex to come pick them up and then fooled around for forty-five minutes in the back parking lot at least once, right?)

  Jules smiled despite herself, shaking her head as, against her better instincts, she opened the text.

  Four small words:

  You looked good tonight.

  Jules grasped at the hem of her tank, feeling heat race through her. Had Delaney been there, at the party? Jules hadn’t seen her anywhere.

  You looked good tonight.

  That meant Delaney had been looking for her, though. Watching her. Deciding that she looked good. Deciding to tell her.

  Why?

  Jules slid down until she was lying on her side, one arm wrapped around her body. “She’s drunk,” she whispered to herself, to her empty bedroom. It was perfectly quiet, aside from the rushed in-and-out of her breathing, the air in her lungs crackling with confusion. “She’s drunk and she thinks this is a good idea but it’s not. It’s a very bad idea. And she’s drunk. That’s all.”

  Saying it out loud made it easier to believe.

  It didn’t make it easier for her to stop remembering what it was like to kiss Delaney. She slipped her fingers beneath the neckline of her sh
irt, sighing as she pressed her hand to the space between her breasts, to feel her heart pounding there. Kissing Delaney was soft summer wind and a sugar rush of sweetness, the hot thrill of shoplifting and the want drumming-thrumming-humming in parts of her body that before then only Jules had reached. It was rushed and urgent and intoxicating.

  Jules could get wild high from a minute of pure Delaney.

  But that was all it was, really—physical, a brief relief from the way Jules felt almost all the time, ready to combust, this pent-up energy scalding inside her. (And she could give herself better relief; she was good at that.)

  It was not, as her overindulgent brain and heart conspired to tell her, a sign of how much Delaney loved her. And this, tonight, this text? It was not some part of Delaney realizing that Jules was the only person for her, the start of some grand gesture for getting Jules back. For the entirety of their short relationship, Jules had gone along in the naive belief that this was only their beginning, the hard part that came before the movie climax, when Delaney would suddenly realize what a mistake she was making and chase Jules down, tell her she loved her, fight for her.

  The sheets whispered as Jules rolled over and squeezed her legs together to ease the tension between them, rubbing her thumb across the words on the screen.

  No more naivety. This was not a movie. And Jules deserved way more than alcohol-fueled texts in the middle of the night.

  You looked good tonight.

  She pressed Delete.

  Dia

  “Dia!” Her mom’s voice came loud and insistent through the bedroom door. “Do you not hear your daughter crying? Come do something about it!”

  Dia winced at the volume of her mom’s voice mixed with Alexa’s sharp wail. All Lex had been doing for the past three days was crying: when she had to eat, when she had to get dressed, when her pacifier fell on the floor, when Dia read her favorite stories. According to the books, this meant Lex was going through a “developmental leap,” but now they were all starting to get frictiony and Dia was wondering when she might leap into quiet.