by Andra Brynn
“Let me finish my breakfast!”
“Finish while you study,” he tells me. “Brain food.” He glances at my ravioli. “In a manner of speaking.”
I sigh and show him to the study table.
An hour later I am sitting in the lounge, my hands fisted in my hair. All my books and papers and notes are spread around me, and I am starting to panic. I’ve been studying for an hour, and the despair is starting to set in.
“Everything okay?”
I glance up. Daniel is lying on the couch at the other end of the room, reading his book. He doesn’t even seem to be looking at me, though he has laughed out loud once or twice.
“How can you tell I’m flipping out?” I ask.
“You’re whimpering under your breath,” he says.
Whimpering. How attractive.
“You are extremely worried,” he continues.
“Really?” I can’t help but snap at him. “It’s just life or death.”
“I don’t think it’s that dramatic,” he says.
I say nothing. To me, it is.
He tries another tack. “You are just borrowing trouble from the future if you psyche yourself out about it now. Relax.”
“I don’t get that,” I say. “How can people say that? Of course I’m borrowing trouble from the future. The past affects the present. The present affects the future. Whatever happens now will be in the past and in the future I’ll be like, ‘shit, if only I’d whipped myself a little harder I wouldn’t be giving hand jobs for crack, thanks a lot, past-me.’“
Daniel just shakes his head, and I can tell he thinks there’s no use arguing with me. But I want to argue. It’s way better than studying, and far less terrifying.
“I don’t know how I’m going to do this.” I flip my notes over, searching through them, but I’ve always been unorganized. Everything is flyaway, disordered. I have only the vaguest ideas what to study for, and I have to write ten pages for at least one class. I’m doomed.
“Just take it one class at a time,” he tells me. “Look at the notes you have, recopy them by hand, and then move on.”
“That would be good advice if I didn’t spend half my time in class drawing little comic strips in the margins.”
That gets him to look up from his book. “What kind of comic strips?”
I hold up my notes for one of my gen ed classes, a class on enlightenment and post-enlightenment philosophy. “Like this one about Nietzsche,” I say. “I know in class that day the lecture was something about slave mentality and the will to power or someshit, but all these little sheep are saying in their speech bubbles is ‘Fuck eagles!’ and ‘Let’s subvert enlightenment thought!’“
Daniel grins. “You know,” he says, “that’s a very good summary of the Genealogy of Morals.”
“You’ve read it?”
He nods. “Don’t worry. Just study.”
“I don’t want to study. I want to go poke around in haunted hospitals again,” I tell him.
He lowers his book to his chest and tilts his head. “You do?”
I look back down at my notes. “Yeah,” I say. “I... I had a dream about it last night.”
“What kind of dream?”
I shake my head. All day I’ve been feeling weird, as though I have been knocked out of place and now I lie askew across the parallel lines of the world. “It was just a dream. But the actual exploring was kind of fascinating.”
“I agree,” he says, surprising me. “I’d like to do more, too. Some of the photos I got were out of this world.”
Out of this world. That’s for goddamn sure.
“Do you want to go with me?” I ask him. “Let’s go. There’s all sorts of places out here.”
He frowns, just a tad. “That wouldn’t be... professional.”
I blink, stung. “What? Am I paying you?”
“No...” he says. He seems worried for some reason. “It just wouldn’t be... appropriate.”
“You went yesterday,” I say.
“That was different,” he says.
“How?”
“It just was. It wouldn’t be appropriate to go again.”
“But it would be awesome. I don’t want to go alone. I’ll fall down a stairwell and die. Actually, I’d go alone if you didn’t go with me, and I’ll fall down a stairwell and die, and it’ll be your fault because you weren’t there. What do you say to that?” I’m not sure why I am trying to get him to agree. He’s nosy and interfering and has some sort of complex, I’m sure. But he’s nice. And kind of funny. Easy on the eyes. And he let me tell him a ghost story. And he doesn’t talk all the fucking time.
I don’t want to admit it, but he’s right. I need someone to be quiet at me for a while.
He sighs. “We’ll discuss it after you finish studying. Which reminds me. What’s your major?”
I color. “History,” I say. It’s one step down from English as an employable major.
“That’s good,” he tells me. “History is fascinating.”
“Especially the really gruesome parts,” I say.
He purses his lips. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
I shrug. “Did you know Anne Boleyn was supposed to have three nipples?”
He lets out a surprised laugh. “No, I can’t say I was ever privy to that information.”
“Right? That’s a sordid little detail no one ever talks about. And what about the Black Death.”
“What about it?”
“Like whole towns died. Every single person.”
He frowns.
“See?” I say. “History. Just as funny as Moby Dick.”
He closes his eyes and shakes his head. “Just study. You’re getting sidetracked.”
With a sigh, I know he’s right and I try to buckle down. I try not to think longingly of a glass of wine to drink while I study. Just one would help me relax, would keep me from jumping out of my skin with anxiety. Everything rides on this. Sort of a do or die moment, I guess.
I sneak a glance at Daniel, but he’s buried in his book again. I could get up, tell him I’m going to go to the bathroom, and sneak some wine or a swig of that awful whiskey in my room. Just a little something to make me unwind. I’m going to go crazy, looking at all these notes that make sense, but only when I’m reading them, and half of them I was hung over or still drunk from the night before. The other half are a series of disconnected words and phrases, vaguely outlining the concepts. Could they be the basis for an in-class essay exam? I don’t even know.
I’m winding up again, tight. I sneak another glance over at Daniel. He lazily turns a page. I glance back down at the notes from my Vichy France class. Black market, and small farms, and rations—it all makes sense in my head, but I have no idea if I can actually put that sense into words on paper.
I’ll go into class. I’ll sit down. I’ll write up my essays. And if they aren’t good enough, I won’t get an A.
No A, no hope to pull my GPA up.
No GPA, and I’m back home again.
Back home again...
I’m going to fail.
I stand up, without quite meaning to. “I have to go to the bathroom,” I say.
“Take five,” Daniel tells me. He doesn’t even look up.
I walk out of the lounge, through the small hall, and into the foyer.
It’s still a quiet Saturday morning. No one is up.
I climb the stairs.
I shouldn’t do this, I think. It’d be stupid to do it. I have all I need to succeed in front of me, I don’t need to feel better about things. Numbing the fear is what got me to this point in the first place, isn’t it? Give someone enough morphine, and they’ll work themselves to death without feeling the pain. Destroy the fear, and you destroy the drive to survive. The wires are cut, the warnings never go off.
The steps creak under me, and I reach the top landing.
I’m not really doing this, I think. I’m really not. I should go to the bathroom instead, like I said I wo
uld.
I put my hand out, find the doorknob. I turn it and sneak inside. Tanya is still asleep, passed out on her mattress.
I tiptoe across the floor to the closet. Twitching the curtain aside, I peek in, my eyes immediately finding the bottle of whiskey half hidden under a pile of shoes.
I hate whiskey. Or perhaps I hate eleven dollar whiskey. This whiskey is terrible, and yet I’ve already drunk about half of it. I drink it when there’s nothing else to drink. It’s hard not to puke it back up immediately. I should never, ever want to drink this shit. Ever.
But of course I am on my hands and knees, pulling it out from under my oh-so-hipster-retro saddle shoes.
I look at it. The bottle is cradled in my palm, a heavy, shifting weight as the liquid inside rocks back and forth.
Don’t do this, I tell myself.
I turn to look at Tanya. Wake up, I think. Wake up and stop me.
But she doesn’t.
My fingers are on the lid, unscrewing it. It comes away in my hand, and the sharp, acrid smell of terrible, cheap alcohol hits my nose.
I bring it to my lips. With just one hit, I can make the fear go away.
And then I think: Will Daniel smell it on my breath?
I slam the lid back on, screw it on tight, and drop the bottle on the floor. Turning, I sprint to the door, exit as quietly as possible, and run.
Then I am in the bathroom, and I don’t know how I got there. My hands are empty, but I think I should be holding something, and panic is in my brain, infecting me. I try to get out, but I turn the wrong way and slam into the shower stall at the end of the room. The impact brings me back into the moment. I turn and sprint out of the bathroom and then pound down the stairs, running, running, running into the lounge.
Daniel looks up, frowning, as I stop myself in the doorway, hanging onto the door frame as though I’m afraid the house will fall apart without me here to hold it up.
I’m breathing hard. “We have to leave right now,” I say. The fear is welling up, turning into silver streaks of blind terror across my brain. Thoughts are interrupted, everything is put on hold. I am utterly derailed. “We have to go.”
Daniel frowns. His sweet, stupid, beautiful, naïve face all concern, all worry. “What’s wrong?” he says.
Help me, I think at him. I’m always thinking it, never saying it. I don’t know if I can. So I tell him the truth. “Get me out of here. Take me somewhere else, or I am going to run up those stairs and slam a whole bottle of whiskey down my throat.”
He rises from the couch, his body crouched and wary, as though I have turned into a tiger. “I thought...” He trails off. “I’m here to help you study,” he says.
I’m so frustrated I could scream. “If you’re so fucking fired up about saving a damsel in distress,” I say, “then get me out of here right now. You said you wanted to help, you said you didn’t get to choose how. Help me.”
There. I said the words. I didn’t spontaneously combust. But I feel like I might as well have. My skin is hot, a full-body flush, bone-deep humiliation.
I’m so weak. I need to physically leave so I won’t hurt myself any more. I don’t know how to stop. I don’t know how to stop running away from classes I should be throwing myself into. I don’t know how to stop fucking every guy I meet, hoping one of them will love me, even just for a little while. I don’t know how to stop trying to numb the pain. If it wasn’t alcohol, it’d be something else. Pot, or Percocet, or heroin.
My life has run away from me, and I know it. An afternoon spent studying for midterms isn’t going to change that. It’s like slapping a Band-Aid on cancer.
I will never catch up if I don’t leave, right now.
Daniel stares at me for another moment, then straightens, something in his eyes hardening. “You’re right,” he says. “You’re absolutely right. Let’s go.”
My heart is fluttering so fast in my chest I think it’s about to take flight, carrying me with it. I am as light as a balloon, and just as hollow. It would be nothing for me to float into the air.
Then Daniel passes me, takes one look at my face, and grabs my hand.
“Come on,” he says, and then he’s towing me out of the lounge, out of the hall, out of the house into the cold autumn air. My breath is coming so fast I see spots blacking out my vision, and I hear Daniel talking to me, somewhere far away.
Then he’s guiding me into his car. I sit down and stuff my head between my knees. My door slams. Then the car dips as he gets in on the other side, and I am suddenly hit with a wave of déjà vu.
All of this has happened before, I think. Reset, record, rewind.
Then the car roars to life, and we are peeling out of the parking lot and into the unknown.
.0.
I know all about fate.
Some people believe that you will meet the same souls over and over again in each life because you were born together from the ether, and will travel together until enlightenment—or to the end of time. They say that this is why you meet people in this life, and they seem so familiar to you. It is because you have known them since time began.
In Japan, they say there’s a red thread of fate that binds people who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. It may tangle, it may knot, it may stretch or fray, but it will never break. It is a future as indelible as the past.
I hope that isn’t true. I pity anyone destined to meet me.
.10.
We drive north, out of the town and toward Nompton. It only takes a few minutes for me to get my breathing under control, and now that the distance between myself and my temptation is growing I am starting to feel sillier and sillier.
“I’m an idiot,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Daniel says. “You needed to get out of there. So we’re out of there.”
I watch the landscape rolling by. “Where are we going?”
He doesn’t answer for a moment. “I don’t know. Where do you want to go?”
I shake my head. “I have no idea.”
Silence comes between us. Then:
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I swallow. I don’t want to talk about it. I mean, I could... but how can I explain that there’s no words for it? The words needed to explain myself haven’t been invented yet. “I don’t know,” I say, because I don’t want him to turn around. “I can’t... It can’t be just you asking me questions. We have to have a conversation.”
“Okay,” he says. “Any particular reason why?”
“Too much therapy,” I tell him. “I can’t stand it when someone’s just sitting there listening to me and my stupid problems.”
“It’s pretty clear your problems are not stupid. They are very real.”
I shrug. “But it feels like a waste on me. It’s not going to get better. You should try to help someone who can be helped.”
He inhales sharply at that, and see him stiffen from the corner of my eye. I have touched a raw nerve, though I’m not sure how.
“I think you can be helped,” he says, but he doesn’t sound sure. “Anyway. If it has to be a conversation, that’s fine.
I bite my lips. “I mean it. You have to, like, tell me shit about yourself.”
Daniel is quiet, his eyes watching the road. “That’s... unprofessional,” he says.
“I bet.” I know it’s unprofessional. I know it. I don’t want him to be professional with me, though. Even if we don’t ever make contact, don’t ever kiss or touch beyond hugs and handshakes, I want to connect. That’s all I really want. I need to connect, even as I run away from it.
He swallows. His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat, and I note that he already has a little bit of stubble growing on his skin. It makes him look a little unkempt, even though he’s still impeccably dressed as always.
“On the other hand,” he says suddenly, “you aren’t paying me, as you pointed out. It’s not like I’m a professional. It seems... inappropriate...”
> I sigh with exasperation. “Why?” I say. “You’re twenty-four, I’m nineteen, almost twenty. There’s nothing inappropriate about it. You’re in grad school, I’m in college. I have friends older than you.”
His full lips purse. “Friends.”
I want to roll my eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those douchebags who thinks men and women can’t be friends.”
He shakes his head. “No, quite the opposite, actually.”
I narrow my eyes. What did he mean by that? Perhaps he’s gay.
Well, it doesn’t matter. It’s fine. “I just feel like... I could open up to a friend.”
“Why not one of your existing friends?”
I look out the window. “Because I’d feel bad about it. No one wants to hear you bitch and moan about your dumb problems.”
“But you wouldn’t feel bad unloading them on me?” The words are accusatory, but his voice is wry, and I have to let a small smile cross my face.
“Well, duh. Of course not. You already know I have problems. Big ones. That’s how you flipping met me.” Which makes me think of something. “And if you have problems, I can listen, too. I can try to help you. Sort of a quid pro quo thing.”
I can see he’s thinking about this, really thinking about it. I realize that he gives a lot of thought to what he says and what he agrees to. Daniel is a thoughtful person. I like that about him. I want to be like that.
“All right,” he says at last. “Let’s go somewhere and talk. Maybe you’ll be able to study after you unload a little.”
I nod. “Sounds good.”
He keeps driving. Fifteen minutes later we’re in Nompton, and to my surprise he pulls off the highway and straight into the old residential neighborhood I parked in yesterday.
“Are we going back to the hospital?” I ask.
He gives me a rueful little smile. “How about we just walk and see where our feet take us?”
I nod. “Okay.”
We get out. Daniel is wearing a sweater and a jacket, but I’m just in a t-shirt and jeans. Daniel pops his trunk and fishes out a sweatshirt, this one with his old Alma Mater on it, or so I assume. MassArt. Some art school in Massachusetts. Photography. Makes sense. I put it on, Daniel locks the car, and we start to walk.