Juliet the Maniac

by Juliet the Maniac (retail) (epub)

  I got an idea. I told it to Alyson. She liked it.

  Christina and Angel’s room was next to ours. Both rooms faced the lake, had wide sliding glass doors that locked with a security bolt, allowing them to open just a few inches, enough to put an arm through, but not a whole body. Once it was officially bedtime, I sat in front of the door, waited until I heard someone walk out of Christina and Angel’s room. I peeked through the crack at the bottom: I could see fuzzy purple slippers walking away, Angel’s feet.

  “Now,” I said to Alyson, who was sitting on the floor next to the sliding glass window, which was closed to keep out the cold. She opened it, slid her arm out, holding the wire coat hanger we’d prepared, untwisted and stretched out, with a note taped to the hook. I heard it scraping against the glass next door. I heard the sliding glass door open. A moment passed, the door shut. Then a knock at our bedroom door.

  Christina’s short brown hair was still pinned back in the sparkly barrettes she’d worn that day. She’d taken off her makeup, and I could see her freckles, traces of blue shadow still smudged in the corner of her eyes. I noticed her lips were chapped. She looked cute, standing in the doorway, but not sexy. I told her to come in. She was holding the note, which Alyson had written in red pencil:

  “Yes,” Christina said. We stood there in the doorway for a second, the three of us, before Alyson took both our hands, led us to her bed, and flicked off the light. We sat awkwardly for a moment, Alyson’s knees pressed against mine, Christina farther apart, sitting formally, her back straight and feet flat on the floor. None of us looked at each other.

  I grabbed Christina’s chin and kissed her, her lips rough under mine. I could feel Alyson move away from me, and when I opened my eyes I saw her kissing Christina’s neck. I was jealous, which surprised me, so I stopped kissing Christina, scooted across the bed so I could put my mouth to Alyson’s. She tasted different than Christina, almost salty, her mouth hotter and dryer. I felt Christina’s hand lightly on my shoulder, her fingers trailing down to my elbow, back up, almost but not quite tickling, across to my chest. She gave my left boob a squeeze, laughed, and I laughed too, opening my eyes but not moving my mouth from Alyson’s. Then Alyson started laughing too, pulled away from me, and the three of us sat for a moment, just giggling. The only light in the room came from underneath the door, in the hallway, and I looked out our window into the dark night. You could see our outlines in the glass, the forms of three girls, three heads and three sets of shoulders, sitting together.

  I thought for a moment that that would be it, a pathetic foray, barely hitting second base, but then Christina leaned in to kiss me again, harder and more serious this time, reached to unbutton my jeans. I stood awkwardly to take them off, feeling a little dizzy. I got back on the bed. She went down on me while I made out with Alyson and it was good, better than any boy.

  I put my fingers down Alyson’s pajama pants. I had no idea what I was doing. I pushed my finger between her lips, found her clit, bigger than mine, not sure if I was doing it right, but she started to moan softly so I figured I was. Christina went to work getting Alyson’s pants off, and we both fingered her, me on her clit, with two of Christina’s fingers sliding in and out, Alyson’s breath getting faster, finally dissolving into whimpers.

  “Holy shit,” Alyson said, breaking away from our hands. “I just fucking came. I’ve never come from anyone before besides myself.”

  She leaned back on the bed, and Christina curled up next to her so I did too. There wasn’t enough room for the three of us unless we squeezed in close together, Christina’s arms around the both of us to keep me from falling off. I turned my head, pressed my cheek against Alyson’s, and everything in that room felt so still and soft.

  We lay there for a few more minutes, listening to each other’s breaths, as something buzzed around us, something I could only describe as warmth.

  SPY GAME

  One night Rosie called in sick last minute, so the only person on the night shift was Hank. After dinner, Hank said we would play a game called Spy. We gathered on the back deck and split into pairs, me and Alyson together. Each team got a flashlight, and we were supposed to hide in the woods. If another team shined their light on you, you were dead. The winner was the last team standing.

  As soon as Hank yelled GO! Alyson and I ran down the path that went around the entire grounds of the school, out to where the trees were the thickest. We whooped, and then we were laughing, our feet thudding fast on the dirt at the same rate as the beat of my heart. We got into the brush and I felt wild as a wolf, darting through the snow and sticks by instinct. Once the light from the house was just a tiny dot we stopped and got quiet. My face was hot and I could feel the blood pulsing through the veins in my throat.

  It felt so good to run, and to yell. Ever since I got on the Buspar, I felt sluggish and thick, like there was a swaddling of cotton around my body. But that night, the cold air cut clean into my lungs and my eyes blinked tears. The moon glinted off the snow in bright swords, and the branches of the trees webbed black and still, and the only thing I could hear besides my breaths and Alyson’s breaths were the far-off shrieks of my friends. For once I felt alive and I felt sharp and I hadn’t felt either of those things in so long.

  We made a plan. If we walked on the path, someone could spot us in the moonlight. If we walked in the forest, the snow crunched under our boots. It was prey that spent their lives running and hiding. If we wanted to win, we would have to think like wolves. So we decided to lie in wait.

  It was pitch black next to the trees, so we found an especially dark patch close to the path, figuring someone would walk by sometime. We crouched back-to-back so no one could sneak up on us. For a moment everything emptied and stilled, and the only things that existed were the blackness of the forest and the movement of Alyson’s shoulders rising almost imperceptibly with her breaths, at the same slow, steady rate as my own.

  I was just starting to get bored when we heard it. Movement. The crunching of snow, the snapping of branches.

  We both stood up, slowly slowly slowly, careful to not make a sound.

  It was Beto and Luke. They were headed our way, padding down the path.

  “What should we do?” Alyson whispered.

  “Stay here. We can see them, and they can’t see us.”

  “You better kill him,” Alyson said. “I don’t care if you love him, you better shoot him.”

  “Shut up.”

  It was hard not to laugh at them as they crept down the path, whispering to each other to be “stealth” and “chill.” They looked so stupid and blind. I had to squeeze Alyson’s hand to keep from giggling. We waited in silence until they were about ten feet away, and then I flicked on the flashlight.

  “Bang bang, motherfuckers,” I said. And then Luke and Beto were dead.

  It turned out that their team and ours were the only ones left. Which meant we’d won. Not Kiran or Gavin, who knew so much about the grounds from working with Bill. Not Luke, who was so fucking smart. Not Beto, the former soccer star. But us. We won because we thought like wolves.

  All the others were waiting on the porch. Hank had two big ice cream sandwiches for Alyson and me that he’d stolen from the deep freezer in the supply room. Everyone else got freezer-burned Otter Pops. I split mine in half to share with Luke, and we ate our ice cream out there in the snow, flat on our backs, staring at the rippling black sky—all fifteen of us, Hank included. It was twenty degrees but it was the best ice cream I’d ever eaten. It tasted like victory.

  After that, we went inside. Hank got out hot chocolate, three liters of Pepsi, and two party-sized bags of chips he’d bought for us on the way over. We took the boom box out of the office and turned off the lights and it almost felt like being at a regular party. We started to play Never Have I Ever, but since we had no alcohol we took shots of Pepsi instead. We could say things like “Never have I ever killed a cat with a pellet gun,” and “Never have I ever been beat by my dad,”
and somebody would have to take a shot.

  We were about ready to start playing Fuck Marry Kill when I noticed that Christina was no longer in the room. Then I noticed Hank wasn’t either. I said I was going to the bathroom but I decided to find them instead.

  I went to her room, but it was empty. I went to the bathroom. I went to the kitchen. I went to the office. I went downstairs, into the boys’ room and the boys’ bathroom. I tried to get into the schoolroom but it was locked. The only place left was outside.

  I went through the boys’ back door so no one upstairs could see me. I couldn’t hear anything so I walked around to the front. Nothing. Totally quiet, totally dark. I’d almost given up when I saw a tiny flash of movement.

  The windows in Hank’s truck were fogged with condensation and there were no lights on, but the movement I’d seen was a hand. It had made finger-shaped trails along the glass. I couldn’t really tell what I was seeing, but I thought I saw Hank’s face, and Christina’s face too, pressed up against each other like maybe they were kissing.

  I didn’t know what I saw.

  I snuck into the house through the back door and went straight to my room without saying anything to anybody. I tried to read, but I couldn’t concentrate. I was about to paint my nails, just to have something to do, when I heard a knock at the door. It was Hank. He told me it was bedtime, that I needed to take my medicine.

  I looked him in the face and it didn’t seem like he was hiding anything. He was acting the same as he always did. I followed him into the office and he handed me my pills. “Did you have fun tonight?” he asked.

  I told him the truth. It was the funnest night I’d had in I couldn’t even remember, the funnest night I’d ever had without drugs. He smiled at me, like he was genuinely happy he’d been able to make me happy, and I couldn’t say exactly how I felt about him overall, but in that moment he was simply my friend, someone who wanted me to know there were still things in this world worth enjoying that had nothing to do with getting high.

  Still, I wanted to check on Christina. I decided to say goodnight to her and Angel, which was a little weird because I never did that, but it had been a different sort of night, so it wouldn’t seem strange. I knocked on their door, heard laughter, and then Angel’s voice telling me to come in.

  Angel was already in her bed, tucked underneath the covers. I don’t know what I expected from Christina—crying seemed too dramatic—but she was just sitting on the ground next to Angel’s bed, like the two of them had been talking. I tried to figure out if it was a serious conversation, but it didn’t seem to be. I looked closely at Christina. She didn’t look like someone with a secret. She smiled at me, her expression soft, like absolutely nothing could be wrong.

  HORIZON

  I had mixed feelings about Christmas break. I wanted to go home—to see my friends, my parents, my room, to have a choice about what I did that day and the freedom to decide what I’d eat. To see the water and the canyons I’d missed so much. To not have to put on socks, boots, long underwear, a sweater, a coat, gloves, a hat, a scarf, just to go outside.

  The only thing was: Luke would be gone. He was leaving the school five days after me, for good. We didn’t talk about what was happening until a few days right before I left. We were in the great room, the weak winter light staining everything in pastels. Rosie’s country music was coming in tinny from the kitchen, and we’d discovered that if I lay on the couch upside down, my head where my legs should be, I could make my voice sound not dissimilar to Patsy Cline’s. My hair was dangling on the floor, next to where Luke sat on the ground beside me. He was stroking the ends, removing tangles, when he suddenly grabbed it hard. It hurt, but I didn’t say anything.

  “What are we going to do?” he said.

  I forced my voice bright. Like I had no idea what he was asking. Like it was October, November. Not December. “About what?”

  “Me leaving.”

  I wanted to make him say it. “What do you want to do?”

  He didn’t say anything for a while. I sat up, watching the top of his golden head, not his face.

  He wrapped his hand around my heel, and I felt it, the magnets locking us in place, simple as science. “I want to stay together.” His voice was quiet but firm.

  I worked very hard to keep my face neutral. But inside I felt ecstatic. I’d won. He loved me more than Julia. He was willing to wait for me.

  “I don’t know when I’m leaving, though,” I said. “My parents just said sometime in the spring, maybe early summer.”

  “I applied to UCSD,” he said. “I’ve got the grades, the SAT scores.” In January, Luke would go back to his regular high school and graduate at the end of the year. That was all I knew. He hadn’t told me anything about his college plans because I hadn’t asked. Sometimes at night before falling asleep, this dumb picture of Luke wormed its way into my brain, him holding hands and kissing some blond college girl at an ivy-covered school, a pink cashmere sweater straining over big tits. But now the picture floated away. Instead, I saw myself visiting him in his dorm room, us doing grown-up things like having coffee, staying up late with old books, reading the best parts aloud to each other. We’d take our medicine but not drugs. I could bring up my GPA, go to UCSD too. I saw myself piecing back together the picture I’d held at the beginning of my freshman year. I wouldn’t be in New York and I wouldn’t be in San Francisco but the image looked bright, this future with Luke. It would work. The two of us. Happy and sane together.

  FLIGHT

  I had to leave for the airport early, 5:00 a.m., two hours before wake-up call. I brushed my teeth, washed my face, pulled on my clothes, and wheeled my suitcase into the hall. Luke was waiting for me, sitting on the ground, his face tired and glistening with tears.

  “I’m going to miss you so much,” he said.

  I ran to him, and he wrapped his arms around me and I breathed him in. I didn’t want to forget that smell. I thought about our future selves, Luke and me under the eucalyptus trees that grew all over the campus, kissing and smiling. The two of us stable enough to do things like go to class, have jobs, turn whatever we had in boarding school into a real relationship. Not end up in institutions. It didn’t seem impossible.

  We stood there for a long time, statues, motionless and wrapped in an eternal embrace, until we heard Carly clearing her throat, signaling it was time to go.

  HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS

  I would be home for ten days, an unfathomable length of time to be out in the world. In order to keep myself from crying, I spent the flight planning the days out in my head, the meals at the Mexican restaurant down the street from my house, the parties, my friends, the walks in the canyon, sitting in the sun, listening to the ocean waves. It had been five long months since I’d really seen any of them. Before, I’d never cared about the beach—the only time I liked going was at night, when it was dark and empty. But I’d missed the sound of the waves crashing while I slept at night. I liked knowing it was there, that to one side of me there was always water—roaring, wild, the end of the map.

  Then I got home. It wasn’t like that. My parents had rules in place, boundaries, obstacles. I tried to convince them there was nothing to worry about. I hadn’t gotten high in months, didn’t even want to. I showed them my new sixty-day coin. Still, they were concerned about “temptation,” “peer pressure,” so I had to be with them most of the time. I was allowed only two hours with friends every day, and the latest I was allowed out was ten. It was worse than not being home at all. Close to normal, but not normal at all.

  And when I was allowed to see Holly, she brought this girl named Kate with her, who had started hanging out with her since I’d been away. Her version of Alyson. The person she’d been spending all her time with that wasn’t me. I wondered if they’d ever been at Holly’s house, sitting together for hours, like they were on an island.

  Kate was bigger, boyish, used to live in Germany and loved techno. Had a car. She and Holly would come insid
e, smile, do their best to look wholesome for my parents, and then we’d go eat, or see a movie, or drive around while they smoked weed and I smoked cigarettes. Kate was very nice, and I appreciated the rides, but still. As we all stood around in the kitchen that first day, the thin December sun streaming through the sliding glass windows, I looked at this strange girl, with her baggy jeans and stringy hair, and all I wanted to say was Who the fuck are you?

  * * *

  —

  But there was a certain beauty to inhabiting the world with this barrier around me, a space bubble. In it, I was a child. My mother was on break too, and so if I wanted to go outside she had the time to go with me, supervise. We walked in the canyons, her my shadow. I showed her the rope swing hidden by the hills, and we took turns, laughing and skidding our feet, until our legs were brown with dust and there were blisters on our fingers. I showed her the bluffs, bright sandstone pale and looming like clouds, a startling brightness out of the dull greens and browns. I showed her the elephant slides that ran along them: these narrow grooves in the rock—I don’t know if they were natural, run-off from rain, or manmade—that curved down, and you could put your foot in them, the grooves just wide enough to fit, and slide down the sandstone like in The Jungle Book. Mom followed me through all of it like we were the same age, like she wasn’t a mother acting as warden to her crazy daughter—just a friend.