Juliet the Maniac

by Juliet the Maniac (retail) (epub)

  I found nothing that mentioned the death of a young man. But maybe I was merely looking in the wrong place.

  EXORCISM

  One day I saw him in the bathroom right as I was getting into the shower. I was completely naked, and every hair on my body went up in needle pricks, so I told him to get the fuck out. Said it right out loud, like he was real.

  And he left. I didn’t see him ever again.

  I sort of missed him.

  HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE

  On 4/20, we ditched school to go to a party at this guy Shea’s house in the middle of the day. I didn’t like Shea. He had sunken-in cheeks from smoking meth, wasn’t very bright, and always threw loud, overly dramatic tantrums, the combination of stupidity and drugs. But all our friends were going, so Holly and I went too.

  In the morning we walked back to her house after we were dropped off at the bus stop, so we wouldn’t be the first ones there. We smoked cigarettes, listening to her stereo and fucking with our makeup. I did Holly’s eyes like mine, heavy shadow on the lids and smudged eyeliner. Her hazel eyes popped in the makeup, vivid and outlined and she looked just as crazy as me. We talked about what we’d normally be doing, probably sitting in the art room, drawing pictures and passing notebook pages back and forth. Dumb games of MASH, gossip in code names, recycled jokes, communism is just a red herring and Horace is pretty good looking for a choad.

  We went to Shea’s around 10:00 a.m. It seemed funny that the usual party times had been pushed up twelve hours—you could get to a party at eight, but you wouldn’t want to show up until at least ten. The sun was bright and I felt too tight in my bones, eager to get there and get high. Holly sang as we walked, the Sublime song we both liked. Her voice trilled like a princess in an old Disney movie, and I always wanted to sing with her but never did. I was tone deaf.

  A bunch of people were there already, but nobody we cared about. Holly and I went out on the patio, which was tiny, furnished only by two grimy plastic chairs that we brushed off before we sat on them. Holly pulled out the padded bag she always carried, which contained her pipe, a lighter, and the eighth of weed we had purchased the night before. We hadn’t let ourselves touch it until now.

  I loved the way Holly smoked weed. It was like watching someone who was born to do one thing. Her actions were both effortless and improbable, like a gymnast in the Olympics. With her always perfectly painted long nails she plucked a perfect-sized nug from the baggie, packed the bowl, and held the pipe up to my mouth, an offering, the first bowl of 4/20. She knew just how long to hold the lighter without looking, then took the pipe and lit it for herself. Her inhales were deep, seemingly endless, but never like she was doing it to show off. Her exhales left the patio in a fog, and she never, ever coughed.

  We smoked two bowls, more than enough to get us stoned. I felt my body settle, soft and heavy. The chaos in my mind—all the worry about who would be there and if I would act OK—was swept away. When Holly said something about Shea’s appearance—he was shirtless, despite the cold, to show off his idiotic tribal tattoo—it was easy to laugh, and I didn’t have to think if my laughter seemed canned or too short or too long, the way I found myself doing when I was sober, my special talent of overthinking just about anything.

  Shortly after, Ramon showed up, with Junk Dog and this guy named Logan. If I had a crush on anyone it would have been him. Logan was really cute, with blue eyes that seemed perpetually sleepy, long black lashes, and a kittenish jaw. He lived half an hour north of Santa Bonita, had taken his GED, and sometimes toured with a band, so he didn’t come around all that much. He didn’t say much, so it was impossible to tell what he was thinking, which of course made him mysterious. Holly claimed she didn’t like him. When I asked why, her reasons were vague, things like, “He seems skeevy,” without any evidence or specifics. I thought she just didn’t like that I liked him.

  We stood on the patio for a while, squished and smoking cigarettes, sharing a blunt. Junk Dog and Ramon went inside to get beer. Logan said it was too early for drinking and stayed outside with us. “I’ve got a little bit of coke,” he said, once the other boys had closed the door. “You guys want a line?”

  “So it’s too early for drinking but not too early for coke,” I said.

  “Yup,” he said, smiling at me. “It’s coke o’clock.”

  “We probably shouldn’t do it out here,” Holly said.

  “I don’t want to share with everyone,” Logan said. “I don’t have enough.”

  We ended up sneaking into Shea’s mom’s room, which was bare and under-furnished. Just a bed on the floor, no bed frame, and a small dresser in the corner, covered in expensive cosmetics and perfume. From there, we went into the walk-in closet, which was crammed full of clothing, the ground littered with dozens of purses and shoes. Holly flicked on the light and shut the door. We crowded into a corner, clothes parted over us and it felt like we were children playing hide-and-go-seek. Holly seemed to feel it too because she giggled, suddenly OK with Logan now that he had drugs. There was a CD in the back pocket of Logan’s insanely baggy pants. Holly chopped and lined out the coke using his Vons Club Card, her movements just as fluid and graceful with the coke as they were with the weed. We each leaned over the CD case with a rolled twenty. The coke wasn’t good. It burned, probably mostly meth. It didn’t matter too much because the high kicked in quick, a surge of electricity, and I felt good and excited to be at this party with this boy and my best friend.

  In the muted light of the closet, Logan looked so pretty, almost like a girl. I wanted to kiss him. His hands were thin and pale with knobby knuckles and splayed tips. Artist fingers. I wanted them on me, inside me.

  I didn’t know if Holly got the picture or if she was just bored sitting with the two of us, but she got up right after, saying nothing before turning off the lights and shutting the door. Not mad, but like she thought it was funny. We were alone in the dark.

  Logan laughed, and I wasn’t sure what his laughter meant but it didn’t matter because a second later and his hand was on my face, and then his mouth was on mine, and then we were both on the ground, him on top of me and me on top of something that felt like a shoe. I pushed it away. The walls in the apartment were thin, and we could hear all the voices from the rest of the party in the living room: Shea saying, “Yo yo yo,” like the poser he was, people changing CDs, never on one album for more than a song.

  I closed my eyes so I could concentrate on the taste and feel of Logan’s mouth. He kissed just like I had hoped he would kiss, like he meant it. Somebody turned off the stereo and put on MTV instead. Ricky Martin was playing. People started singing along, but turning the chorus into death metal—livin’ la VIDA LOCAAAAA—and Logan lowered his hand, unbuckled my belt while still kissing me soft and slow. I moved my hand to his pants, but then the Ricky Martin abruptly cut out. I heard somebody, maybe Ramon, say, “What the fuck?” and then somebody else, maybe Junk Dog, say, “Shut up. Turn it up,” and after that, the entire party went dead silent, the only noise Kurt Loder’s voice on TV.

  As much as I wanted to keep messing around with Logan, the silence of the party seemed more urgent. “What the fuck is going on?” I said.

  “Who cares,” he whispered into my ear, and then kissed my neck, his teeth sharp against my skin.

  “I gotta see,” I said, and pulled myself out from under him, buckling my pants and smoothing my hair as I went into the living room.

  Nobody noticed me walk in. Everyone’s eyes were stuck on the TV. The room pulsed, except everyone in it seemed caught mid-movement under glass, bottles and pipes hovering near mouths. Kurt Loder’s voice was grave, playing over footage of teenagers running across the street, hands over heads, flanked by cops. Wearing clothes like the ones we wore, sneakers and T-shirts and denim. In my drug haze, it seemed unreal but too real, hyper-real, some dystopian novel come to life. The coke-meth and weed turned, and I felt the itchiness of paranoia. The TV seemed way too loud and although I usually foun
d Kurt Loder’s voice soothing, it was all I could do to not walk across the room and turn it off. I wanted it to go back to a fun party. Logan came up behind me and reached for my hand. I wanted to push him away because suddenly he made me sick. But I didn’t move, staring at the TV, like if I looked at it hard enough it would melt away.

  The images seemed to float out of the screen: flickering security footage stamped with the time and date, just a few hours before, as boys dressed like characters in video games, gloves and boots and harnesses and guns, skulked around a cafeteria, a bunch of black blobs in the background, barely recognizable as people, maybe dead, hiding behind fallen chairs, food abandoned on tables, police standing around a body on the ground, a shot of a sprawling, institutional-looking school, surrounded by a gigantic parking lot and a perfect lawn, so similar to Carmel Heights, a sign in front of the school reading GOOD LUCK BAND, betraying the normalcy of the morning, boredom and routine and the insular world of high school, suddenly blown up by the gaze of all of us, invading the privacy of that one school, no longer a school but a spectacle. If we hadn’t ditched to get high, had parents that raised us in Colorado instead of Santa Bonita, we could be dead. The only difference between us and those kids. The things they’d always told us were dangerous—they were wrong. Instead, the dangerous things kept us safe.

  AN EXPERIMENT IN DUMPSTER DIVING

  One night in May, I was spending the night at Holly’s. Her mom was really sick, cancer or something. She fell asleep early a lot. We’d snuck out and had a bonfire off Black Creek Road. The cops broke it up. Most everyone else went home. Me, Holly, Ramon, Junk Dog, and Rachel went back to the Palms—we were all that was left. It was late, really late, two or three in the morning. I don’t know why we decided to look in the dumpster. We were back in the dark alley behind the Walgreens because we didn’t want the cops to find us and make us go home.

  The first thing we found was the clothes. They were lying right on top of the garbage in cardboard boxes. A fake fur jacket that fit me perfectly, some miniskirts and tube tops and sparkly dresses, expensive brands like Guess? and bebe, all new, some with the price tags still attached.

  We didn’t notice the blood at first, not until some of it had smeared onto Rachel’s hand. It wasn’t much. Maybe it was paint.

  Underneath the clothes was a single pair of shoes, Nine West with the heels worn down to stubs, and a purse. In the purse were girl things—a few tampons, some lipstick, a folding mirror. I got to keep the mirror. There was also a wallet, some receipts. A bunch of credit cards, an ID. No cash. The receipts and the ID all had addresses in Arizona.

  We stood there for a while, trying to figure out what to do.

  “We could call the cops?”

  “We’d have to give everything back.”

  “Maybe the credit cards work.”

  “Not worth it.”

  In the end, we divided up the clothes. In addition to the jacket and the mirror, I also got a skirt, some brand I’d never heard of but real cute, with the tag still on it. Rachel got the purse and the nicest clothes because she needed them the most. Holly got all the tops and a bleached denim jacket.

  We never talked about the things in the dumpster, just looked at each other with secret smiles when we wore the clothes. Whenever people complimented me on the jacket, I just said thank you, but in my head, I added, I got it from a dead woman. I tried to feel bad about it, but it never worked out. I really loved that coat.

  THE DRUG TRADE

  I was so angry. I couldn’t figure out why. I was getting along with my parents, Holly was great, it was nearly summer and my horrible freshman year was almost over. Things were fine. I was fine. It was terrible.

  I was in my bedroom, curled in a ball on the floor. I couldn’t stop shaking. I wanted to cut myself or break something, but I was sick of cutting myself and I was sick of breaking shit. Everything was pointless. The diseased feeling was erupting again, spilling filthy out of my chest. I was broken.

  I got up, went downstairs into the garage. We had a lot of shit in there—old toys, Christmas decorations, tools, stuff from my mom’s classroom. Camping equipment. I opened the door. Tents, sleeping bags, pots in a bag that all folded into themselves like nesting dolls. A lantern. A tiny stove. An ax. An ax!

  It was really a hatchet. Small, heavy, in a leather sheath. I’d watched my dad take the blunt end to hammer in tent stakes so many times. It was perfect.

  I unsheathed it. The blade was rusty and didn’t look sharp. I swung it at the wall. The noise it made: Woosh-chink. The slice was dark and perfect, a nice even line. I hacked again and again. Woosh-chink. Woosh-chink. The anger faded into something contained in that noise.

  I realized if I did it too many times, my parents would notice. I was right in front of where my mom parked her car. I wanted to chop more. My closet.

  I only chopped a few times, on the wall behind my dresses, before the phone rang. It was Eli. He told me to come over. He had something I’d like. It sounded like drugs.

  The only problem, though, was the ax. I didn’t want to put it away. It had made me feel OK again, and I wasn’t sure it would stick. I put the ax in my purse, but the handle stuck out.

  Eli noticed it right away. “What the fuck is that?” he asked.

  We were standing in the doorway of his house, me still on the porch, him blocking the entrance. I could see his dad behind him, sitting on the couch with a gigantic book. I’d met him plenty but he was acting as though I wasn’t there. He was a philosophy professor at UCSD and was always doing things that didn’t make sense.

  “We’re going to get pizza,” Eli told his dad. “Eat it at the beach.”

  His dad looked up, confused. “OK,” he said and returned to his book.

  We walked down the road in the direction of the pizza place. “Sorry,” Eli said. “I didn’t know he’d be home.” Then he pulled a little white baggie out of his pocket.

  “Coke?” I asked him.

  “Nope. K.”

  I’d never done ketamine. I only knew it was used by veterinarians as a tranquilizer, and too much of it would put you in a “k-hole.” I didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded kind of nice.

  Where to do it. We decided on a power box a couple streets over. It was positioned off the sidewalk in the bushes, on the hill I used to walk down to get to the bus when I was in elementary school.

  We had to rail it out, so I took out the little dumpster mirror. It was small but it worked. There wasn’t a lot in the baggie, just enough for three little lines each.

  The K was weird. It wasn’t a high exactly—no warm fuzzy feeling, no giggles, no rush. All it seemed to do was separate my body and the space it inhabited, a strange disconnect I found pleasant. The anger became an object, something placed beside me. The sun splintered in streaks, warm and golden on our faces, as a bumblebee dove drowsily through the air. The cars on the street flew by in a roar. I pulled the hatchet out of my purse and swung the weight of it against my hand, solid and heavy. I don’t know how long we sat there. Eli didn’t mention the hatchet.

  Then his pager went off. “Shit,” he said. “I forgot I was supposed to meet these guys. You want to come?”

  We walked down to the Circle K to use the pay phone. A few minutes later, two of Eli’s friends pulled up in a big Suburban. I knew who they were—Dylan and Luis—two older guys who dealt drugs. I’d bought weed and E from them, but we’d never hung out before. They kind of scared me.

  They looked at me warily, like they hadn’t known I would be with Eli. “We have to go on a run,” Dylan said.

  “Can you guys drop me off at the Palms?” I said.

  Junk Dog was sitting at the circle, along with Ramon and some of the younger boys. It was still early. Junk Dog was saying he wanted to visit his sister in Vegas, but his car was broken and he didn’t have the money to fix it. He was trying to get Ramon to take him, but Ramon wasn’t having it. Then they noticed the hatchet in my purse and started making fun of
me, calling me crazy. I didn’t care. I was used to it. The ketamine made their voices sound far away. “Uh oh,” I said.

  Nobody had anything to drink or smoke, so we went over to Walgreens, me and Ramon spotting Junk Dog as he tucked a bottle of coconut rum into his sweatshirt. Then we went to Togo’s, where our friend worked, and he gave us free lemonades to mix with the rum. We drank our drinks and more people showed up and it seemed like it would be a good night—two parties, both in houses.

  The whole time Junk Dog was attempting to harass anyone with a car into driving him to Vegas. It wasn’t working. Right before it got dark, he announced he was going hitchhiking. I tried to tell him it was stupid and dangerous, but he said he’d done it plenty before. The only thing was, he didn’t have a weapon for protection. I hadn’t eaten anything all day and was pretty drunk, no longer angry, so when he asked to borrow the ax I said yes.

  Junk Dog came back a few days later, with this big long story about how he’d gotten a ride with someone in a Jeep, and they’d taken it off-roading in the desert. The Jeep had flipped and wrecked, the ax lost in the wreckage. Junk Dog’s jaw had been broken and wired shut. He could only eat things from a straw for the next month, couldn’t talk clearly, wasn’t supposed to smoke, sometimes drooled. I felt bad for him. It was hard not to.

  But the minute the wires were taken out, I was on him. “That was my dad’s ax,” I said.

  “It was an antique, belonged to my great-grandfather.” It was a lie, but the ax looked so old I hoped it was believable. He needed to pay me back.