by J. Q. Coyle
Hafeez slams his locker, and we walk into the cafeteria. It smells like cabbage and something sickly sweet. It’s a riot of noise and lights and faces, people hooting and scuffling.
We slide trays down the railings, which remind me of the metal bars on the ship deck. I try not to pick at the dark red clot on my cuticle. The memory of the pain in my shoulder tingles under my skin.
“You up for this?” Hafeez asks. The lunch line is a bad place for me. It’s jammed with decisions to make—chicken or fish, pizza or pasta, side dish of green beans or not, roll? Yes or no? Relentless.
“I’m hungry enough,” I say.
“You sure you’re not going to lose it? Really sure?” Hafeez looks concerned.
“I never have flashes twice in one day,” I say, and then add quietly, “never full-blown ones. Plus, Jane told me that I shouldn’t avoid decision-making situations. I’ve got to face them.”
“The pills are nice, too, I bet,” Hafeez says, raising his eyebrows.
“They take the edge off.” The truth is that they never fight off a hallucination. The flashes used to come every few months, then every few weeks, but they were blurred and dreamy. Now they’re almost daily and fuller and clearer and more detailed, as if I dreamed up the places, but only remembered them through a thick mist, a fog, but now I can finally see them. They’re vivid and more realistic. It feels like something is being worn away and that these hallucinations are breaking through, like radio stations emerging from static on a back road the closer you get to civilization; like if I could just get there, insanity might be a place that made sense, where the signals were actually clear.
I keep this stuff to myself.
Twice, my mother sent me to some support group for messed-up kids. We met at the community center between ballroom dancing and karate classes. One of the other kids in the group pulled a knife on me in the bathroom and stole my iPod, so I begged off—not because I was scared or pissed that I’d lost the iPod, but because I had this weird sudden desire to lean into the knife, end it all right there.
“You know where people are most likely to have a breakdown?” I say. “I’ve looked it up.”
“I bet you have.”
“Grocery stores—either the shampoo or the cereal aisles.” I can feel the lunch lady’s eyes on me. She’s old, but her hands—in their clear plastic gloves—are big and muscular. And she has this scar across her jugular. Her name is Ruth, and she hates me. I keep talking to calm myself. “Because there are too many options in grocery stores. People crack. Grocery stores have employees trained to deal with mental breakdowns. Those people who are reshelving? They’re not just reshelving. They’re looking for people on the verge.”
“That’s probably not true.” Hafeez has a very deliberate way of pronouncing his words. There’s an accent in there, too, but mainly it’s his very crisp way of speaking that makes him sound important, thoughtful—like he cares. And most of the time, he does, which makes him different than most of the people I know.
“But it could be true,” I tell him.
And then Ruth starts tapping her ladle on the metal bins and running through all of the options. Gravy or not? Green beans? Chicken or fish? I can’t answer. My life reduces to this one crucial moment, and pressure expands my chest.
“Stay calm,” Hafeez says.
A fly spins near Ruth’s face; her mouth is moving. The fly’s wings are frail and frantic. I’m losing it, I’m slipping. My heart’s getting louder. Do I want gravy? I hear my own voice in my head: Stop being so stupid. Just order something!
Ruth raises her voice: “You’re holding up the line! Do I have to get Coach?” Coach is striding around with her pregnant bowling-ball belly.
“No, I got this!” I fish in my pocket for a bottle of anti-anxiety pills.
“Next!” Ruth calls, and others start to order. I’m loosening the cap when I get shoved in the back.
“Little Miss Alicia.” I know the voice before I look up. Brian Sprowitz. I turn reluctantly. Sprowitz’s eyes are sharp and glinty, a little hollowed out. He rubs his pale chin with his knuckles—red and chapped from the cold. “How about you hurry up?” He grinds his teeth like a speed freak. I see his friends in line behind him. All of them are on the Freaks Track, an angry crew. Most of them have had done a stint in juvie, or so the stories go. Someone once made a banner for them that said: WELCOME TO THE FUTURE BOTTOMFEEDERS OF AMERICA. On their whiteboard, people write things like: Where Education Comes to Die and All the Children Left Behind. Or maybe they write it themselves. Who knows? They’re usually shadowed by a big dude in khakis who’s in charge of making sure they don’t hurt anyone. I don’t see the big dude.
“Just go around,” I say, trying to breathe normally over the pain in my chest.
In his slight accent, Hafeez tries to be disarming. “She’s got this condition that affects her ability to make choices.…”
I shake my head. No, Hafeez. Jesus!
Sprowitz’s eyebrows shoot up. “You want to go, Al-Qaeda?” Hafeez is called a terrorist almost every day, even though his parents left Pakistan twenty years ago and he was born in the same hospital as most of us here.
Hafeez lifts his hands, and I don’t blame him.
Sprowitz walks up close to me. He moved in across the street from me two years ago, into a house with insulation-sealed windows, a place where lots of foster kids come and go. He whispers, “I know all about Alicia and her little secrets.”
That I’m kind of a junkie and crazy like my father? “You don’t know shit about me,” I say, but my voice sounds weak. Pain shoots through my lower ribs—the short ones at the end of the rung, like someone’s boring holes through them.
“Just leave her alone, please,” Hafeez says, too polite to sound even remotely tough.
Sprowitz ignores him and takes a step closer to me. “Too bad about the Butlers’ dog,” Sprowitz says to me, and I know who he’s talking about—Mr. and Mrs. Butler’s dog, Arnie. He came home one night just last week, dragging his leg. It was so pulverized the vet amputated.
“What about Arnie?”
“I couldn’t take it yapping in the backyard like that, and I stole a bat from the batting cages, so…”
I can barely breathe, barely see. “You’re sick,” I say, but then I immediately realize he is sick, that awful things must have happened to him as a kid to make him this way. I feel sorry for him all of a sudden, and then I kind of hate myself for it.
Sprowitz whispers, “I know it’s just you and your hot mom in that house.”
I shake my head. I’m trying to stay on my feet, trying to turn my face away from Sprowitz’s sour breath.
Sprowitz slaps the pill bottle out of my hands. It smacks on the floor and rolls to the wall and stops.
Hafeez moves to pick it up but Sprowitz stops him with a look. He turns back to me and, for a second, he looks tired. Maybe he’s tired of being Sprowitz but feels like he’s locked in. I know the feeling. “Do you want me to fuck you up or your towelhead bitch?” he says. “How you like those choices?”
I don’t like those choices at all. In fact, I’ve stopped breathing. My heart’s seized.
I know Hafeez wants to bolt, but to his credit he stays.
Then I hear Ruth yelling for Coach again. Her gravelly voice swings louder and then muffles in my ears.
I wish I had a real father who would teach me how to get bullies to back down. I grab my own shirt, as if this will keep my chest from exploding. I feel this pressurized fear. It’s like some dark shadow on a lung that’s absolutely cancer. I’m afraid I could burst open, burn shit down around me. I’m more scared of myself than Sprowitz.
I look over at Hafeez, who’s terrified. He knows what happens when a guy like Sprowitz gets you in his sights.
“Who am I gonna fuck up? You gonna pick or what?” Sprowitz says.
“Me,” Hafeez says. “Okay? Fuck me up. How’s that for a decision?”
I shake my head at Hafeez—I want to s
ay no but I can’t speak.He’s already wincing, so I know the punch is coming.
He turns away but Sprowitz’s fist connects anyway. Hafeez’s head snaps back, and I lose my balance almost as if in sympathy for him. I grab one of the silver rails where our trays still sit, but I end up on the ground next to Hafeez, who’s on his knees, hands over his face.
Sprowitz stands over us. “How was that?” he asks, and he looks like he’s ready to do more, but for some reason, I can picture him as a little boy, just a scared kid trying to look tough.
I hear Coach’s whistle. Boots and sneakers scuffle around us. Hafeez’s lip is split and bleeding.
Coach is shouting, “Brian Sprowitz! Over here! Now!”
“You’re bleeding,” I tell Hafeez.
He touches his lip and his fingers come away bloody. “I’m fine,” he says, but I can see tears in his eyes, and this is where I wish I could make a comment about the state of today’s youth, but then I feel a series of pains pulsing all over my body, starting in this strangely familiar pattern—my collarbone, the back of my neck, my arm.
“Alicia?” Hafeez says, and I realize he knows what’s happening. He grabs my arm. “Alicia, don’t.” But I’m feeling dizzier—the blood on his face, his grip, as if he could hold me in place, the bone-deep pain. The pain zeros in on my upper arm, a pain so deep there’s no way to get at it. My heavy head jags to one side.
The cafeteria noise dims. My vision reduces to a narrow tunnel, a single beam, a small white dot.
And then I’m fading out.
My brain lights up, and the hallucinations are there, pressing at the edges. I say deep inside myself, Go ahead. Take me out. Go on …
* * *
… And there, in my face, is an ancient bulldog, panting. Its jaw juts out with a bank of crooked teeth.
I’m lying on the floor of an apartment. I sit up.
As my eyes adjust to the darkness, I see an old man in a rocking chair. The room is nearly empty. In fact, it looks like it’s been looted.
The bulldog stares at me and whines. I pet him, my hand sliding down his knotted backbone. An undeniably real backbone.
The old man says, “You think they won’t rise up here too? Fat cats left us nothing. This is class warfare, honey.” It feels like part of a long muttered speech. He pulls a flask from his pants pocket, unscrews the lid, and takes a swig, then rests it for a moment on his hardened belly. He has soft jowls, shiny blue eyes, and a few light tufts of gray hair.
I wish I could see what I look like in this hallucination. But then I concentrate and I know what I look like—shorn hair, pale arms, too skinny. Suddenly, I remember the old man’s name. Gemmy. What kind of a name is Gemmy? “Where’s my father?” I ask.
“They got him. You know that.” Gemmy screws the lid back on the flask, then, thinking better of it, unscrews it again and takes another sip.
I’m straining to remember other things. My thoughts are just out of reach.
“And here we are—sitting ducks.” Gemmy shakes his head.
I get up and walk to the window. One pane is cracked. Cops on the street below are pulling over cars. The air feels alive with a buzzing noise. A flash of metal glides by the window, the size of a hummingbird. It zips off before I can get a good look.
Where the hell am I? I feel lost and disoriented. It’s terrifying not to recognize where you are. I know I’m in the United States—I can see battered green highway signs. In the distance, smoke billows from what must be massive fires. I reach my hand toward the splintered window, like I expect to feel the heat. Pain shoots through my collarbone.
An image from a Plath poem appears in my brain. It’s about a window that’s brightening with light and then swallowing stars.
My vision fogs and blurs, is swallowed whole.…
* * *
… My hand is still pressed to a window, but I’m not looking down on a city street. Instead there’s a ruined courtyard, a cityscape beyond, flickering as if behind some kind of gauze, like it’s there and not there at the same time.
I turn around. The old man and the bulldog are gone. I’m in a bedroom with a rumpled queen-size bed, posters for bands I don’t like, the stereo with speakers as wide as doors. In the mirror above my dresser I see myself—bleached hair, dark roots coming in, a black shirt, and expensive sneakers.
I know that this is my room and that in other rooms in this house there are thick carpets, tall slanting ceilings, heavy drapes. Beautiful, but it’s all falling apart—cracks in the walls as if it’s a problem deep down in the foundation.
I’m not a prisoner here but it’s not safe to leave. I’m full of fear, the kind that never really goes away because it’s burrowed down so deep.
I look through the large windows. Below, in the ghost-glow of an emergency light clamped to a flagpole, I see a drained, cracked pool, a moss-veined wall, and beyond it, a hulking black Humvee—the glint of a cannon-size gun barrel mounted on its side.
Two guards stand beside it.
And then I spot a boy, around my age, climbing over the courtyard wall. He’s lean and quick, his shaggy dark hair gleaming.
The wall is crumbling, and a long dark scar runs across the backyard, as if the earth itself has cracked. I’ve never hallucinated anyplace quite like this one. It’s cast in a different kind of light, brighter with darker shadows. The air is filled with static, a low hum, like a hive. Some part of it is buzzing deep down in its core.
On the other side of the wall, barren, dirt-packed land leads to what looks like a trailer park surrounded by a chain-link fence. Then the boy turns and looks up, straight at me. He has a square jaw and a handsome face, but it’s too thin—he looks hungry and tired. There’s a streak of dirt on his forehead and on one cheekbone. I feel some strange connection to him, an electrical current snapping between us. It’s not good or bad, just strange; he’s setting off some kind of alarm inside of me, but I don’t know what the emergency is—fire, earthquake, terrorist attack? I feel a rush of adrenaline.
He’s daring me to do something or say something. His eyes are a bright-water crystal blue.
I open the window to call to him, but he shakes his head and starts walking off.
I hear the Humvee’s radio, an announcer’s voice saying something about martial law in Miami. What is happening to this place?
I have to tell him something—what, I don’t know. I run to my bedroom door, pull it open.
Then I hear a cough somewhere down the hall. It’s my mother. And I know immediately that, in this disintegrating house, she’s sick. She’s very sick. I can’t save her. I know this has been true for a long time. I feel panicky, helpless. I hate this world as much as I love something about it. It’s surreal, damaged, maybe even doomed.
I run the length of the hall, down the stairs to the back of the house. I open a back door. The air is hot and stale.
A guard opens the door to the Humvee and stands on the chrome running board. “Hey! Get inside!”
“I’m not a prisoner, am I?”
Am I?
The guard thinks about it and then gives a nod. “Not back in five, I sound the alarm.”
I sprint across the courtyard, climb the wall, jump to the ground. I’m ready to keep running, but the boy hasn’t gone far. He hears me running and turns to face me.
I’m not a stranger to him, but we aren’t friends, either. He’s waiting for me to say something, maybe explain myself.
He looks out across the blanched landscape. “Your father’s wrong. It’s not too late.”
Too late for what? The dry wind whips at our faces. I wish I could help. I don’t know anything except that I want this hallucination—this nightmare?—to last. This world has a hold on me. It’s uglier and more beautiful than anyplace I’ve ever seen.
“You know if something doesn’t give, it’s over,” he says. “Someone’s explained this to you, haven’t they?”
“What’s over?”
He rolls his eyes, disgusted with
me, and he starts talking, but I can’t hear him. Everything’s gone silent. I can still see his lips moving, his bright teeth. He’s talking quickly, urgently.
But then everything is bright, like an extra sun has bounced into the sky. It’s blinding. I feel the searing pain in my shoulder again, but also my neck, and I know I’m moving on.
And it’s that sudden—he’s gone.
I’m gone.
Windblown …
* * *
… Surrounded by water.
Deep pain coursing through my shoulder blade.
I’m with my father. This time we’re shoved down in the back of an old speedboat, hands duct-taped behind our backs, a freezing wind going right through my shirt, which is blood-soaked from the gunshot wound, drilled into my shoulder blade.
The cold is so sharp the pain seems to be fading—everything is going numb. My ribs feel like they’re cinched too tightly. My body is shaking.
The men from the cruise ship are only a few feet away, arguing over a GPS, cradling their guns loosely. The motor is loud. They must have moved us from the cruise ship to this speedboat as hostages of some sort.
My father has found a ridge in the rusted hull and is sawing at the duct tape around his wrists. I don’t say a word. My father rips through the last bit of the duct tape. He pushes up the sleeve of his jacket revealing the raw skin of his inner arm scrawled with the curled edge of a tattoo. He presses hard where the tattoo curls near his wrist. He cups my face with one hand, and says, “Go back! For now, go back!”
The speedboat starts to shudder and vibrate. I try to keep my eyes open—the boat is shaking apart; we’re going to drown after all or get shredded in the motor—but the gunmen don’t reach out to steady themselves. It’s not the boat trembling. It’s my own vision of the boat, the river, the shoreline studded with houses, people on the river’s edge walking along the roads in bulky hazmat suits.