by JJ Strong
Yes, I thought.
“I’m choking. Choking. Choking.”
This is the way.
“I’m trapped.”
This is exactly the way I need to do it.
Brielle
I HAD A NIGHTMARE during this time where I was playing basketball in gym class. Play had been suspended amid a lot of confused chaos. Blood was all over the floor and had been smeared on some of the girls, including me. It was sticky in my hair and trickling down my neck. We were looking for the source, until gradually, horribly, it became clear the blood came from the sides of my head—I’d cut my ears off that morning in the shower, my dream-self remembered, and had tried to cover up the wounds with two tragically inadequate Band-Aids. There was laughter. Someone whipped the ball in my face. Katie and Scarlett—whom I hadn’t spoken to in real life since the incident with Cullen in the lunchroom—appeared as two floating, disembodied faces, cackling like banshees.
It was infuriating that I still couldn’t leave them behind like I wanted to. I tried not to think about them all day. I told myself I was fine eating lunch all alone in the freezing cold on the back steps of school while trying to complete some last-minute chemistry homework, not brave enough to face the lunchroom, let alone find a spot to sit or try to converse with some new group of potential friends. But it didn’t work. Katie and Scarlett still haunted me. The memory of our lost friendship waged a constant war in my psyche, fighting for space, reminding me what life had been like then and that I was kidding myself now in thinking being with Cullen was enough.
I started sneaking out of my room at night, slipping through the woods with a flashlight, and arriving at the cellar door of Cullen’s house. The sex was fun. Freeing. Each time a little less awkward than the last. Sometimes we’d start like two little kids, playing, giggling, naked under the covers, lurching on his ridiculous waterbed, experimenting with new ways to make skin touch skin—hand on neck, knee between thighs, fingertips on back, chest against chest. At some point, inevitably, mysteriously, it would turn serious, and we’d engage each other solemnly, in slow motion, almost like we were praying.
But always afterward came these inexplicable waves of shame. And why? What were these post-sex demons that came for me? Where did they come from? Was it because of Amir? Didn’t we deserve to be going on with our lives? Exploring new ground? Finding new pleasures? Or maybe it had nothing to do with that. Did Cullen feel the same? Did everyone? Is this just what sex was like? Maybe after being as close as you could possibly be to someone—physically speaking, anyway—the adjustment back to being alone in your own body was always an unsteady one.
I had no answers. It only felt like all the things I’d been doing lately were things a normal girl—a good girl—should not be doing. Which left me wanting to do those very things over and over. It left me wanting to make a clear break away from the field hockey girls once and for all. To do whatever I needed to do to erase them from my dreams.
“I need your help,” Cullen told me one night, post-sex.
He explained that he had one final, guaranteed-to-succeed plan for Ray—how to save my brother from himself once and for all.
“Look.”
The basement was connected to a crawl space, and from that space, Cullen, wearing only his boxers, dragged into the room a poorly constructed homemade casket: Ray’s casket.
“We’ve been building this. Together.”
Cullen detailed the plan. The idea was to bring Ray to the very brink, even to let him jump, so to speak, and then to watch him pull himself back over the edge. I tugged a sheet up to my shoulders and stared at twin tubes of fluorescent lighting on the ceiling. Even as I continued to sneak out and undress with this boy and do things with him I’d never done before, I was still stuck with the same old question I hadn’t yet found an answer to: Do I trust him?
“So,” Cullen said.
“Hold on.”
“Okay, but—”
“Hold on! Please. You just showed me a freaking coffin in which you plan to bury my brother, so please don’t talk for one minute.”
I was angry. Partly I was angry at Ray. I’d forgiven him the awful moment in the castle with the piece of glass—chalked it up to a desperate notion on a horrifying day. And I knew Ray had gotten into trouble at school, even knew what he’d said at Amir’s mass. But there was a part of me that didn’t want to believe he was still serious about this. I was hoping Cullen’s scheme to disrupt his confession had allowed Ray to get it out of his system without any permanent harm. Now Cullen was telling me that Ray was, in fact, very sincerely committed to disappearing and leaving me here, alone, with Dad—and with Mom, and I couldn’t even in my wildest dreams imagine what she would do or what kind of total wreck she’d turn into if Ray killed himself. That was a kind of shock from which someone like her would never return. And I’d have a hard time forgiving Ray for doing that to her, and to me.
Also, though, I was mad at Cullen—bitter that he knew this about my brother before I did and had, in typical Cullen fashion, stoked the fire rather than making any reasonable attempt to snuff it out.
He handed me a glossy suicide-prevention pamphlet.
“Pick your favorites,” he said.
“Huh?” Still naked, suddenly so cold, I reached over to retrieve my underwear and a sweatshirt from the floor.
Cullen opened the pamphlet for me. Inside were ten warning signs of suicide. “From the list. Pick one or two.”
“For what?”
“We’re not gonna plant Ray out there and just hope he comes back on his own. I will not let this one go wrong. We’re going to give him a damn good reason to save himself and never think about suicide ever again. So, Brielle O’Dell, you may not know it yet, but you are in the business of offing yourself. What are your warning signs?”
I glanced at the pamphlet, not committing yet, not even fully understanding the idea.
Talking about wanting to kill oneself
Increased use of drugs or alcohol
Loss of interest in things one cares about
Sudden, jarring changes to appearance
Saying goodbye, settling affairs, or giving away possessions
I shook my head as I read.
“Just hear me out,” Cullen said. “Can you do that? For Ray?”
I fiddled with the pamphlet. Ran a finger across the eyes of the sad-looking woman on the cover being comforted by a man who was presumably her husband.
“First of all,” Cullen said, “Ray wants to kill himself. I’m sorry to be blunt, but that’s what he said. And he means it. See for yourself. Talk to him. I promise he means it. So he needs help. And we’re the ones who have to help him because, you know, who the hell else? So that’s my plan. To save Ray. And if you don’t want to be a part of it, I totally get it. That’s cool. I don’t blame you after . . . well . . . Anyway, it’s your choice. But the thing about Ray is . . . he’s crazy about you. Maybe you don’t see it—probably he doesn’t even know it. He takes it for granted that you’ll be there. Because you’re always there for him, Brielle. You’re the only one. And if we can shock him into action by making him think that maybe you won’t be there, if we can make him believe that you need him to save you . . .”
“I do need him.”
“I know.”
“Not to save me, but . . .”
“Say no more. I get it. So, look. This is the best way I can think of to show him what his life means. Why it matters. If you’re not into it, I’ll find another way. But I promise you that plan B, whatever it ends up being, will not be nearly as effective.”
It was a good argument. Cullen had been crafting his case for days, maybe weeks. And he made all the right appeals except one—a quiet murmur trembling deep within me, just like the one I’d felt before I decided to go along on Christmas Eve. I wasn’t even aware of it enough to recognize it or
put words to it. But I felt it nonetheless. It came in ecstatic waves full of possibility and menace. The feeling told me: You’re doing this for Ray, but also for yourself. Because, whether you’re willing to admit it or not . . . you like it. You need it.
I couldn’t help but wonder, even though he hadn’t said as much, if maybe Cullen knew that about me too.
“I want complete access,” I said.
“To what?”
“Your plan. No tricks. Nothing like the after-Christmas stuff.”
“Done.”
“No lies. Not to me.”
“I promise,” he said.
“Fine.” I pointed to the pamphlet. “This one.”
Cullen sat at the edge of the bed. The liquid rolled beneath us. He leaned over to see where I’d pointed and read it out loud: “Sudden, jarring changes to appearance.”
* * *
Two nights later, after bombing my French and chemistry tests because I’d spent all my time thinking about how, exactly, I should go about suddenly and jarringly changing my appearance, I was back at Cullen’s with rubbing alcohol, a needle, and an eyebrow stud.
I sat in a folding chair in the middle of the room. Cullen sat on my lap, facing me, pulling over the bedside table, on which lay all the essential items. He rubbed an alcohol-soaked cotton ball first over my eyebrow and then over the needle. Then he touched the ice cube to my brow. He held it there until it was so cold I told him to pull it away. He pinched the skin of my eyebrow and tugged it away from my face, holding the needle in the other hand.
“Okay?” he said.
“Okay.”
“Sure?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re gonna look so badass.”
I offered a frightful laugh, trying not to move my face too much.
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay.”
He inhaled, exhaled, and then plunged the needle through. I felt the pressure of the needle and afterward a dull burning, and that was about it. It hardly hurt at all. Cullen dabbed a tissue at the blood, reached for the brow stud—a thin rod with a red ball at each end—and secured it into place. He tapped the tissue against the piercing, and it came back with more spots of blood.
“Done,” he said. “Take a look.”
I rose to look at myself in the mirror. The numbness went away, and the pain crept in. I dared a finger to the two red beads above my eye. Tilted my head to see myself from different angles. Is this me? I thought. Are we real? Am I here?
“What do you think?” he asked.
“You say first.”
“Fucking beautiful,” he said.
“Yeah?”
He nodded, eyes shining suggestively beneath his brow.
“You mean it?”
He nodded again, slowly.
I took a step toward him. I felt like I’d jumped from some great height and was falling and falling and didn’t want to ever stop falling.
“I want to dye my hair too,” I said.
The doorbell rang. We stared at each other. It was twelve thirty A.M. The bell rang again.
“Who is that?” I smeared blood off my eyebrow, rubbing it onto my jeans. The bell rang again and again and again. Cullen didn’t move. Please, I thought. Tell me you know who that is. Tell me this is a scheme. Something you have planned down to the last detail. To the very second. Something that will work out in the end.
Silence. No more ringing. We exhaled. Entertained the fantasy that it was over, that maybe we’d imagined it. Cullen handed me a tissue. I patted my eyebrow. And then a knocking. The kitchen door, upstairs.
“Shit,” Cullen said. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“Would they come for you now? In the middle of the night?”
“I don’t know.”
A furious knocking boomed out on the basement hatch. My breath left me. Cullen raced to the doors—they weren’t locked—but in the next moment the steel doors creaked open, clanging against the backyard patio.
I watched, of all people, my father march into the room. I held a trembling hand to my eye as he inspected every element before him: Cullen, daughter, folding chair, needle in Cullen’s hand, bloody tissues on the floor, a freaking casket against the far wall. His eyes came back to his daughter. Her face. Her eyebrow. Her blood.
“What is happening in here?”
Cullen said nothing. He shrank into the corner. He knew, I could tell, there was no use in explaining.
Dad came closer, inspecting my face. His eyes went soft. His shoulders drooped. “Beaker,” he said. “My God, what are you doing?”
“I’m fine.”
He put a hand out to touch the piercing. “Beaker . . .”
“Please!” I said. “Dad. Stop calling me that.”
He pulled the hand back and looked like he might cry, but I didn’t feel bad about what I’d said. We know things you don’t, Dad, I thought. This isn’t even real. We have the situation totally under control.
Cold came in through the opened hatch. I shivered. Dad’s gaze landed on the casket again. I thought for sure he’d ask about it, but he quickly turned back to me and said, “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Where? Home, Brielle. We’re going home.”
I scoffed, like that was the most preposterous next step he could have proposed. He reached for my arm, but I pulled away.
“You’re gonna drag me out of here? Is that your plan?”
“If I have to.”
“I’m fine.”
“We’re going home now.”
“I. Am. Fine!”
“You are not fine! Nothing about this is fine! You obviously need help!”
“Oh, okay.” I said. “Thanks, Dad. Who’s gonna help me? You?”
“What does that mean?”
“Forget it.”
“I’ve been here, Brielle. I’m trying. You have to meet me halfway.”
“Oh God, Dad. You’re so far off. Can’t you see that? You’re not even fucking close to halfway right now.”
“Look at yourself! It’s the middle of the night. You weren’t in your room. How do you think that makes me feel? And so I . . . I have to go looking for my daughter? And I find you here? With him?” He turned to Cullen. “Is there even an adult here? Where’s your grandmother?”
“It has nothing to do with him.”
“Everything! It has everything to do with him. This is not—”
“Mr. O’Dell,” Cullen said.
“Don’t interrupt me.”
“Okay, but listen—”
“You . . . you of all people . . . do not dare interrupt me right now.”
Cullen nodded. He went silent. We were all silent.
Dad was seething. He breathed hard, wiped a hand across his face, and looked at me in a way he had never looked at me before. “You,” he said, “are a child. Do you understand? You are . . .”
He slowed himself down and gazed at the ceiling, exhaling mightily. Then he looked at both of us in an earnest, desperate manner, as though this were the most essential piece of information he would ever deliver to us.
“You are children,” he said.
A muffled thump sounded from upstairs. I hardly noticed it, thinking, more subconsciously than not, that it was just one of those noises an old house makes. Dad didn’t react either. But Cullen, I saw after a moment, had gone rigid. He looked at the staircase, put a finger up to my dad—as in Sorry, just one second—and then raced up the steps.
Dad turned to me, confused. I went after Cullen.
At the top of the stairs, I heard Cullen saying, “Okay, okay, okay,” in a quiet, panicky voice.
I hurried into the living room, where Cullen kneeled over his grandmother, who was on the bottom step of the stairs, collapsed against the wall.
“Oh God.”
“She’s okay,” Cullen said. He was lifting her off the ground.
“Cullen, don’t move her! If she fell—”
“She’s fine,” he said. “She just got dizzy and sat down a little quickly.”
I turned to find Dad right behind me, moving toward Cullen. He took one of Nana’s arms, and he and Cullen eased her down on the La-Z-Boy.
“What are you doing out of bed?” Cullen asked.
Nana coughed. “Asshole,” she said, sucking for breath.
Cullen smiled. “Huh?”
“Ass . . . hole,” she said again, coughing more. “At the . . . door.” She jabbed her index finger like a person pushing a doorbell over and over again. Cullen grabbed a plastic mask from the coffee table drawer and hooked it up to the tube running from the oxygen tank.
Dad cleared his throat. “The doorbell,” he admitted. “That would be me.”
Cullen slipped the mask over her face. “There you go,” he said. “Get some air.”
I watched Dad as his eyes swept across the room—the old, torn couch, the dusty La-Z-Boy, the oxygen tank, the mold on the ceiling, Cullen holding his grandmother’s hand, Nana breathing, coughing wetly, her eyes awake but mostly lost, focused on nothing. The look Dad gave me was a question—even without words I knew what he was thinking. And I nodded: This is what it’s like.
Cullen
AFTER SCHOOL, for three weeks, Roman, Ray, and I locked ourselves in my basement bedroom for two and a half hours to construct the coffin. We taped black garbage bags over the tiny rectangular windows near the room’s ceiling. We didn’t tell Ro the plan. He never asked. After what happened to Amir, he didn’t want to know, and he didn’t want to be there when whatever we were planning went down. But he liked hanging out, so he lifted some tools from his dad’s garage workshop and sat in the corner of the basement, alternating between watching us and playing video games. He was surprised as hell, of course, when he found out the thing we were building was a casket, but even then he didn’t ask questions or demand to know what the plan was. He only shook his head and laughed, grabbing the controller and unpausing his game, saying, “You two are some crazy, crazy dudes.”