A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares

by Krystal Sutherland

  Esther thought about what she wanted for herself after school, but as hard as she tried to visualize herself as a college freshman, or maybe traveling through Asia on a shoestring budget with nothing but a backpack, all that kept coming back to her was a single thought: Eugene. Eugene was an anchor. A small, dark part of her knew that he wasn’t stable enough for college, and wouldn’t be able to leave home after school. As long as Eugene was sick—as long as the curse had him—she was going to be stuck here.

  Esther wanted to save his life, but she also wanted to give herself a chance at her own.

  “Tell me about your parents,” Jonah said. “What were they like before the curse?”

  Esther smiled as she thought of Rosemary and Peter as they had once been. “My dad’s favorite things in the world were poetry and Christmas. Just so embarrassingly nerdy. I’ve never seen a grown man so excited for Christmas morning. And the poetry—he used to recite limericks to us every morning on the drive to school. A new one, every single day. I have no idea if he wrote them himself or found them on the internet and memorized them, but they were always terrible, and they always made us laugh.”

  Jonah smiled. “And your mom?”

  “Mom used to grow plants in boxes outside our windows. Said they were gardens for fairies that would keep us safe while we were sleeping. She still works as a horticulturalist, but it’s not the same. I mean, she used to be able to grow anything, anywhere, without sunlight or water. She used to be magic. I was obsessed with that woman. We went everywhere together, and she used to talk to me about everything. She was my best friend. And then . . . nothing. Bit by bit, she kind of shut down and fell away and left us on our own.”

  Jonah reached out and held her hand, and she was too tired to stop him, too tired to stop herself from wondering if this was what people felt in the beginning, if this is what she’d felt like before, when they were children. Esther had loved him once, in the way kids love, of that much she was sure. For a small amount of time, he’d been the bright light in the darkness.

  And God, the way he smelled. She’d bottle that scent and touch his perfume to the pulse slipping beneath the skin of her neck every day if she could. As they drank warm beer, Esther supposed that it would be very easy to fall in love with Jonah Smallwood again. It would be very easy to let him become a part of herself again, and therein lay the problem. Esther had no illusions about who or what Jonah was: he was a pickpocket, a skilled petty criminal, an underage drinker (then again, so was she), a public nuisance, and also—undoubtedly—the very best person she had ever met. Jonah was good in a way that baffled her, and she feared that if she let him get too close, came to rely on him as a shield once more, the way she had before when she was a little kid, that he would disappear again, and she would be left to mend the broken bits on her own.

  Esther could have fallen in love with him that night, but it was safer not to, so she did the only thing she could do: she rested her head on Jonah’s shoulder, drank the beer he had brought her, and dreamed about the day she would be flung beyond the event horizon at the speed of light, never to return.

  “I’m still waiting for the secret weapon,” she said after a while.

  “Just you wait,” he said. And that’s when Jonah Smallwood stood and started dancing in the middle of the road.

  “Sweet Caroline, bah bah bah,” he crooned as he moved, “good times never seemed so good. Oh sweet Caroline, bah bah bah. The last girl I brought here was Caroline andIdidn’thavetimetolearnanewsongforyou.” The last part of the sentence he tried to squash into a single word to make it fit the tune.

  Esther shook her head. “I cannot believe any girl, ever, has been impressed by you.”

  “Come dance with me, bah bah bah.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Why not, Esther Solar?” Still to the tune of Sweet Caroline.

  “Because they did that in The Notebook and it has therefore been done.”

  “They didn’t dance like this, bah bah bah.”

  “I know. I’m aware. That’s why it looked good.”

  “That cut me real deep,” he sang, but didn’t stop dancing. Esther took out her phone and started filming him, which only made him really turn it up. “SWEET CAROLINE, BAH BAH BAH,” he screamed to the night sky. “I WISH I’D LEARNED A SONG FOR ESTHER.”

  “You’re embarrassing yourself. I won’t be part of this tomfoolery. Please stop singing that god-awful song.”

  “Only if you join me.”

  “The people driving past will see me.”

  “No they won’t. They’ll see Woman with a Parasol, facing left. Nobody is going to care.”

  “I care.”

  “Too much. About too many things.”

  “You’re a ridiculous human being,” she said, but she supposed he was right. She watched the cars as they passed, and thought about what they’d see if they looked out their windows: a ghost dressed in white, a flash of red hair. Not enough, she hoped, for anyone she knew to identify her. Finally she stood and finished her drink and fell in line next to him. “Don’t watch me.”

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  Then she started line dancing, just the way her grandmother had taught her when she was little.

  Esther knew the exact moment Jonah broke his promise and peeked at her, because he collapsed face-first onto the asphalt, his favorite move whenever he found her particularly preposterous. “You dance like Elaine from Seinfeld,” he said a minute later when he could finally speak again through his laughter.

  “I hate you,” she said, but she didn’t stop dancing, and he didn’t stop dancing either, not for a while, not until he held her hand and spun her around and pulled her close to him so they were in the waltz position. Jonah hummed as they slow danced, his head resting against hers. Esther liked the way he felt against her. Liked the way he made her stomach flutter like a storm of orange butterflies.

  And that, of course, was the problem.

  Esther put her hand on his chest and gently pushed herself away. “I can’t do this,” she said quietly, unable to look at him. Her heart felt strange. Painful, somehow.

  “Why not?”

  “Because . . .” Why? So many reasons. Because she wasn’t good enough. Because something inside of her was rotten and broken and unlovable. Because Jonah would figure this out eventually, and why bother starting something if the end of it was inevitable? Because he’d had to leave once before, and it had sucked, and maybe it had only sucked because eight-year-olds can be real dicks and the bullying that happened in his sudden absence had left its mark somewhere deep in her soul. Whatever the reason, she couldn’t fathom giving anyone that kind of power over her again.

  Esther tried to tell him all of this, but some error occurred in the translation of thought into speech, and all she could manage to say was, “Because . . . I just can’t, okay?” Sometimes it was better to not get what you wanted. Sometimes it was better to leave beautiful things alone for fear of breaking them.

  “Okay,” Jonah said quietly, and he stroked her cheek with his thumb but didn’t say anything more, because you couldn’t convince someone to love you if she wouldn’t.

  The hurt in his voice killed her, because pain was a language she’d learned to speak well, but she couldn’t give him what he wanted. Couldn’t give herself what she wanted either.

  “Sweet Caroline, bah bah bah,” they sang together, much softer now, because they were almost the only words they actually knew. “Good times never seemed so good.”

  20

  8/50: OPERATING AUTOMOBILES

  “SO YOU’VE never even been behind the wheel of a car before?” Jonah asked.

  Esther was sitting in the driver’s seat of Holland Smallwood’s hideous squash-colored ’80s station wagon, refusing to start the engine because she didn’t want to a) kill herself, or b) get murdered by Jonah’s father. �
�I tried once, but I had a panic attack, so I added it to the list and never looked back.”

  “Let me get this straight. As soon as you come close to failing at something, you decide to never do it again?”

  “Exactly. Then I can feel really, really good about never having failed at anything. It’s all perfectly psychologically healthy. I’m a genius.”

  “You’re gonna learn today,” he said, nodding at the gearstick. “Holland drives stick.”

  “I cannot drive stick.”

  “Man, my dad is halfway retarded and he can drive stick, so you can too.”

  “You can’t say retarded. It’s politically incorrect. Besides, if I crash Holland’s car, he’ll kill me.”

  “Nah, he’ll kill me. Then you. Then your family. So you got enough time to flee to Mexico before he starts hunting you. Start the engine.”

  “No.”

  “Esther, look at your costume. Look who you are today. Would Kill Bill have been interesting if the Bride refused to so much as drive a car?”

  Esther looked down at the yellow and black leather ensemble she’d chosen for today and took a steadying breath. “Channel Uma,” she said with a nod. “Channel your inner badass.”

  It didn’t go too badly at first, to be honest. Esther wasn’t as terrible a driver as she remembered being, and although she didn’t have even one-fifth of the coordination required to operate a motor vehicle, she didn’t crash into anything. Jonah kept her out of traffic and away from intersections so she wouldn’t have to stop and start too much. They mainly stuck to the smaller roads on the outskirts of town, ones that were long and straight and had no traffic lights or stop signs.

  The day might have ended very differently if it weren’t for the erection of a mall out in the boondocks and the subsequent roadwork that was taking place to facilitate the white behemoth’s construction.

  A woman in a high visibility vest brought them to a stop while a truck crossed from one side of the construction site to the other. Esther found herself at the front of a line of cars. While she waited, she adjusted her rearview mirror so she could count them all. There were six, with more braking behind her every few seconds.

  “I can’t do this,” she said quietly as she made mirror eye contact with the man directly behind her. “Swap seats with me.”

  “What?”

  “There are too many people watching me. They’re all looking at me.”

  “No one cares, Esther.”

  “They’re all going to get angry if I stall.”

  “Look, she’s telling us to go. Come on.”

  And she was. The construction worker had flipped her STOP sign around to SLOW and was waving them through.

  Esther shoved the car into first but let the clutch out too quickly and it lurched forward, stalled. The man behind them beeped. The construction woman took a step back and laughed.

  “I told you I couldn’t fucking do it!” Esther said. The eyes of the drivers behind her were like a spotlight, heating up her blood.

  “Yes you can, Esther,” Jonah said, and she must have looked panicked, because he was clasping her shoulder and speaking low and clear. Her skin strobed between warm and freezing. There was a familiar tingling in her fingers. “Listen to me. You can do this.”

  The driver in the car behind them leaned on the horn again. Jonah rolled down his window. “You want me to come back there? I will come back there, asshole! She’s learning!”

  Esther restarted the car and put it into first gear. A strap around her chest was tightening, squeezing her ribs smaller and smaller. She tried to ease the clutch out, but her legs were shaking and she was sweating inside her yellow leather outfit and the sun was beating down through the windshield, searing across her skin. There was no air.

  The car jolted forward and the engine gutted out. A violent stall. Several drivers behind them beeped in unison. Esther didn’t realize she was hyperventilating until she couldn’t breathe. Her hands were shaking and she couldn’t breathe.

  Couldn’t breathe.

  Couldn’t breathe.

  Jonah was already out of the car, leaning across her to unbuckle her seatbelt. The car was an oven and her skin was prickling all over and everyone was watching her, everyone could see. The tingling in her fingers rolled up her arms to her neck, where invisible hands clamped down on her esophagus.

  You’re dying, you’re dying, oh God, you’re dying.

  This was it. All these weeks they’d been looking for Death, and finally he’d decided to show up to the party, and all Esther could think about was what a stupid idea this was and how much she really didn’t want to die.

  The car was moving then and her cheek was pressed to the hot, cracked leather of the back seat. She couldn’t remember how she’d gotten there. Time had warped. There came the sound of running water every few seconds, which she soon realized was her vomiting. There was no heaving. It leaked out of her without effort and trickled into the footwell.

  You’re dying, you’re dying, you’re dying.

  Then the car stopped and Jonah was pulling her out of the back seat. He left her under a tree.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she managed between sobs, but Jonah was already gone, and she wondered if he was going to leave her for dead like Bill had done to the Bride, which was fair enough, she supposed. She did vomit in his father’s car.

  Actually, she was kind of surprised it had taken this long for him to get sick of her. There were only so many times you could have panic attacks in front of people before they wrote you off as a lost cause. Too fragile. Too much hassle. Too painful to be around. Hadn’t she done the exact same thing to her father? Why did she deserve any different?

  Esther looked around, sure that Jack Horowitz would be there waiting to snatch up her immortal soul, and her panic folded in on her again.

  But then Jonah was back with a bottle of cold water in one hand and a box of tissues in the other, and he sank to the ground beside her as she peeled off her yellow jacket and lay down in the grass and tried to slow her breathing.

  “You’re okay, you’re okay,” he said, pressing the damp tissues to her forehead.

  Maybe it wouldn’t be this time, or the next time, or the time after that, but Jonah would eventually get tired of her. Eventually get so frustrated by her inability to be normal that he would leave. Maybe if she was sexy, or confident, or her skin wasn’t covered in a minefield of freckles, then she could justify being crazy and broken and weird. As it stood, there wasn’t anything alluring enough about her that she could imagine making him want to put up with her bullshit for any great length of time.

  People got tired of mental illness when they found out they couldn’t fix it.

  “Your bedroom,” he said.

  “What?”

  “That’s number four. On the list of most interesting things about you. Your bedroom.”

  “That’s really lame. You’re making this up as you go along, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah. Trying not to get too sappy with this shit either, you know.”

  “Number one’s probably gonna be like ‘The shape of your toenails’ or something.”

  “Nah, that’s number three for sure. You do have some lovely toenails.” When she finally felt well enough to sit up, Jonah said, “I’ll take you home.”

  Esther shook her head. “Not home.”

  “Okay. Uh . . . I showed you my favorite place. How ’bout you show me yours?”

  They got back in the now vomit-smelling car (Jonah drove, of course) and she directed him to the parking lot of the local mall.

  “Yeah . . . this is a parking lot,” he said as he parked.

  Esther was still shaky and sweaty and generally a mess. Man, fuck panic attacks. “When we were eleven, Mom brought us here on Christmas Eve morning.”

  “Last-minute shopping?”
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  “Not quite. She explained to us in the car that she hadn’t been able to buy us any presents that year. It’d been two months since Dad went into the basement, and Reg was already in Lilac Hill, and she’d been laid off from her job, and we didn’t have any money. Like, any money. Not even enough for food.”

  “How’s this a happy memory?”

  “We spent the whole day here together, just the three of us. We walked up and down the lot in a grid, going from level to level, picking up any loose change that we could find. We didn’t collect much, only a few dollars, but by the afternoon we had enough for a gingerbread man each. Mom didn’t have enough left over for herself, so she kept the two quarters she found; she said they were lucky. She wouldn’t even take a bite of our dessert, and later, when we went home, she cried all night.”

  “Stop me if I’m missing something here, but still kinda struggling to see this as a fun time.”

  “It’s the last memory I have of her being her. The last time we were really a family, you know? Even though Dad was in the basement, for some reason, Eugene and I really believed he’d come out on Christmas Day and surprise us. Dad loved Christmas more than we did, and he’d never missed one before. We didn’t care that we weren’t getting any presents, or that we’d spent Christmas Eve scrounging for coins, because we had Mom, and Dad was coming back to us the next day, and we got gingerbread for dinner. Life was pretty great.”

  “Your dad didn’t come outta the basement.”

  “I think that’s what broke her. Christmas Day. Waiting and waiting and waiting for something that wouldn’t come. We ate at my Auntie Kate’s every night for a week, and then Mom won three grand on a slot machine. The lucky quarters she found really were lucky. God, she came home with so many late Christmas presents: cell phones and books and a feast, everything she’d wanted to buy us but hadn’t been able to. The only thing she got for herself was a tiger’s-eye necklace for good luck.

  “I don’t hate her for what she’s become. I want to, but I can’t. I love her too much. That’s the problem. That’s what’s wrong with love. Once you love someone, no matter who they are, you’ll always let them destroy you. Every single time.” Even the very best people found ways to hurt the ones they loved.