Exit Here.

by Jason Myers

  I light a cigarette and cut down to the sidewalk in front of the house. Take my phone out. I scroll through the names. I call Claire but she doesn’t answer. I call my sister and it’s the same thing. I take a drag and then I call Laura.

  “Travis,” she answers.

  Why did you do that to me, Laura?

  “Travis, I’m sorry.”

  No you’re not!

  “I am too. I love you!”

  What the fuck does that mean, you love me? What is that supposed to even mean?

  “I don’t know. I want to see you. Where are you?”

  I don’t know where I am. I’m not here.

  “Where are you?”

  I don’t know, Laura. You’re dead to me! You’re dead to me! You stabbed me in the back and you mean nothing!

  I hang up and lean over, groping my knees with my hands. My heart is racing so fast that it feels like it might break through my chest.

  Someone yells my name and I look up.

  Crossing the street in a shredded Billy Idol top and a white lace skirt, with a red bandana tied backward around her head, brown-bagging a pint of something, is this very cute girl. She looks very familiar, but I’m not sure where I’ve seen her before.

  “How are you?” she asks, lighting her own cigarette.

  I’m sorry, I don’t—

  “The Red Tie,” she blurts out. “I was your waitress at the Red Tie a couple of months back when you ate there with your family.”

  Oh yeah. It’s Maggie, right?

  She nods. “Good memory.”

  It’s like a thing with me.

  Maggie shakes her head. “What is?”

  What?

  “What’s a thing with you?” she asks.

  I don’t forget the names of pretty girls.

  “God,” she grins. “How high are you?”

  I’m, ya know, I’m pretty fucking high.

  Maggie hands me the brown bag. “Take a drink of this.”

  I take a huge drink. It’s Jim Beam. I take another one.

  Thanks.

  She takes the bottle back. “What are you doing right now?”

  I got kicked out of that party right there.

  I point at the house.

  What are you doing? I ask.

  “Well, I was at this party a few blocks over but had to leave ’cause this creepy guy wouldn’t leave me alone. He was like, ‘My parents are gone for the weekend, so if you wanted to go all the way, I really think tonight would be the night,’ so I left and I’m walking to my house. It’s just down the block. You wanna come over?”

  I’d love to come over, Maggie.

  • • •

  Maggie’s place is pretty rad. It’s like a flat in the basement of this duplex, where you have to walk down these dark stairs, trapped between two stone walls, to get inside.

  On the walk over, she told me she’s a junior fine arts major at Grant and that her favorite movie is Blue Velvet and that her favorite band ever is the Replacements—Guns N’ Roses a distant second—and I think, Shit. Sweet. Not only is she hot, but she actually likes awesome shit.

  Maggie opens the door and lets me in. Tears for Fears is on the stereo. And she introduces me to two of her roommates, this guy Dirt and Jocelyn, and three of their friends, this chick Morgan, this dude Kenny, and this other girl, Haley, who are sitting around a table playing Texas Hold ’em.

  Sprawled out on the sofa is this guy in a pink shirt and ripped jeans, with a blue scarf around his neck, wearing a visor that says “I Love the Killers,” and someone’s written “MySpace” across his chin in black marker.

  “Everyone, this is Travis,” Maggie says. “I met him at the restaurant back in June.”

  I sit down and pull out a gram, my last one, and toss it on the poker table.

  If someone wants to cut that up we can all do some.

  “The whole thing?” Dirt asks, eyes wide.

  Of course. If you’re not gonna do plenty, don’t do any.

  And Jocelyn’s like, “I love you already, Travis.”

  Maggie comes back from the kitchen with two beers and hands one to me. Lifting her foot, she softly kicks the guy on the couch. “Is he all right?” she asks.

  Everyone at the table kind of shrugs as the Tears for Fears fades into an Echo and the Bunnymen song, the one from the movie Donnie Darko that plays during the opening part, where Donnie wakes up on the edge of the woods and looks all confused before getting on his bike and riding home to his parents’ house.

  “Who is he?” Maggie asks.

  And Dirt goes, “Chris and Mark brought him over here last night. I can’t remember his name, though. He’s been sleeping since before they left.”

  “God,” Maggie groans, twisting the cap off her Miller Lite bottle. “Someone should really do something with him.”

  “We should drag him outside and strip his clothes off and leave him in an alley,” Haley smiles. “Let the crackheads have at his body.”

  “We shouldn’t do that,” Jocelyn says.

  “Well, alls I’m saying is that we need to do something else besides putting ‘MySpace’ on his fucking chin,” Maggie snaps.

  We could write Good Charlotte lyrics on his back and have someone come over and tattoo them into his skin.

  “We could definitely do that,” Jocelyn says.

  “Or we could draw a picture of Richard Simmons on his chest and have someone tattoo that on him,” Morgan laughs.

  Kenny takes his cell out. “My buddy Eric has a gun and ink. I can call him right now. I guarantee he’d do it,” he tells us.

  “Call him,” Maggie says.

  Everyone in the room looks around at each other. No one says not to. So Kenny makes the call while Dirt starts chopping up the blow.

  “I got his voice mail,” Kenny says, setting his phone down. “He’ll call back.”

  The front door opens suddenly and these two girls walk in, hammered and loud, falling all over the place. They sit down on the other sofa in the room. It seems that they’re friends with Haley, or Morgan, or Jocelyn, or maybe they’re friends with all three of them or none of them. But they ask if they can have some lines and I tell them it’s fine, which it is, until the tan one with fake breasts and black hair starts shouting over everyone about how she knows this guy whose cousin knows this girl whose boyfriend used to roadie for the White Stripes and that if everything works like it could, if the stars are aligned just right, she might be able to get some sort of passes for the acoustic show Jack White’s playing, if he indeed is playing one.

  This pisses me off. I start grinding my teeth and walk into the kitchen and lean against the counter next to the fridge and light a cigarette.

  Maggie walks in, swigging from her pint. “Are you feeling okay, dude?” she wants to know, handing the bottle to me.

  Why does everyone always ask me that?

  “I didn’t know everyone always did.”

  I take a drink and choke it down my throat.

  Is it not okay to be not okay?

  Maggie slips the smoke from between my fingers. “I could give a shit less, Travis. It’s just something to ask. It’s like a conversation starter, an ice breaker,” she says.

  I swallow another pull and she takes the bottle from me. Tells me to open my lips. I do. Then Maggie slides the cigarette between them again and goes, “I haven’t shown you the rest of the pad yet. My room is pretty rad.” She smiles, taking my hand. “Would you like to see it?”

  Uh-huh.

  I trail Maggie into her room, the walls painted a dark shade of red. She closes the door behind us and goes straight for her bed, sprawling out across the top of it.

  Taking a seat on the small sewing stool across from her, I make a comment about the Devo poster hanging from the wall above her bed and she mutters something about how she was supposed to go see them play in LA last year with her cousin, but a week before they were going to fly out to the coast, her cousin’s stepmother put her cousin in rehab ’cau
se “she’s a fucking queen bitch like that.”

  I chug my entire beer and Maggie picks up a remote for her CD player and turns it on, and this band the Knife starts playing.

  There’s a knock on the door.

  Maggie tells whoever it is to come in. It’s Dirt. He’s holding a book with lines of coke on it and he says that we should go first since the coke is mine, and I’m thinking, God, I’ve done a ton of blow tonight.

  Dirt sits down on the edge of Maggie’s bed and hands the book to me.

  Does anyone have a straw?

  Maggie hands me one. I blow two rails and then Maggie does hers and then Dirt leaves and Maggie pats the mattress beside her. “Why don’t you come over and sit next to me?” she says.

  I get up, kick my boots off and crawl next to her, resting my back against the headboard.

  “Is there any more coke?” she asks me.

  There’s always more fucking coke, but I don’t have any more on me.

  “That’s probably for the best,” she says, then asks me how old I am.

  Like twenty-one.

  “Really? The ID you used at the restaurant said you were twenty-three.”

  It did?

  Maggie nods, setting the pint of beam on the nightstand beside her. “How old are you really?”

  Nineteen.

  She starts laughing. “Wow.”

  Should I leave?

  “No,” she says. “It’s fine. You’re cute. I want you to stay and get me off.”

  Maggie leans over and kisses me and I awkwardly put a hand on her waist and push her on her back. We start undressing each other and everything seems to be fine until I slide my underwear off and notice how small and shriveled and soft my penis is.

  Maggie looks at me. “Are you going to be able to get that up?”

  With some help.

  Sitting up, Maggie puts her mouth over my cock and gives me head for like twenty minutes, but nothing happens. I try jerking off. I spit on myself and she tries jerking it off. She gives me more head and I still can’t get it up.

  “Fucking great,” she snaps.

  An hour passes.

  Nothing.

  “Will you at least eat me out?” she asks.

  Yeah. I can do that.

  So I crawl in between her legs and stick my tongue on her pussy and start to give her head, but like five minutes into it, she shoves me away.

  “What are you doing, Travis?”

  What?

  “That doesn’t even feel good. You didn’t touch my clit once.”

  I didn’t?

  Maggie groans loudly. “Are you a virgin?”

  I shake my head.

  “Well, you need to learn a few things. I’m serious.” She reaches into her nightstand and pulls a dildo out and tells me to put my underwear and pants on.

  I’m sorry, Maggie.

  “Shhhh. Quit talking.”

  I lean against her headboard again.

  “Do not say another word,” she sneers. Then she squirts some lotion onto her dildo and starts fucking herself with it and I sit there and watch her. She gets off four times in like twenty minutes and when she’s through, she throws the dildo on the ground, turns so that her back is facing me, and shuts her lamp off.

  I feel like an asshole.

  I don’t even know what to do so I just sit there, my arms above my head, and like two hours later, Maggie flips over and goes, “Will you please leave?”

  You want me to go?

  “Yes. I don’t know why you’re still here. Just go.”

  That’s pretty fair actually. I respect that.

  I grab my things and walk out of the room and no one is up still. Even the dude on the sofa is gone. I look at the clock. It’s almost six in the morning. I turn my phone back on and there are five messages from Michael wondering what happened to me.

  I call him back.

  “What do you want?” he snorts. “I’m kinda busy.”

  Doing what?

  “Dave and I are showing this Delila chick those David Lee Roth videos on YouTube, and then we’re gonna tag-team her and two of her friends.”

  So you’re not up partying anymore?

  “What are you even saying, Trav? Watching David Lee Roth and then fucking three girls with your roommate is a party. Quit being lame.”

  I don’t say anything back.

  Like thirty seconds of dead silence pass before Michael grunts, “Do you wanna come over and fuck them too? Is that what you’re trying to ask? Because if you want to, then just come out and ask and maybe I’ll say yes, and you can come over and finish them off.”

  Thoughts of my sister being fucked by two guys, one right after the other, smash through my head. And I tell Michael that I’m probably not going to come over and he goes, “What does that mean, though? You still might? You’re either coming over or you’re not.”

  I’m not.

  “Fine,” he snaps. Then: “Travis, sometimes you can be about as cool as an after-school special.”

  What the hell does that mean?

  “Think about it,” he groans, while some girl in the background giggles. “Just think about the way you’re acting.”

  Click.

  I put my phone away and walk outside.

  The rising sun makes me cringe and groan. It makes me hate myself and makes me hate this world, and while I numbingly contemplate the best way to hail a cab back to my parents’ house, I hear someone crying.

  I look to my left and it’s the kid who was passed out on the couch earlier.

  He’s sitting in this white plastic lawn chair that’s missing half its back left leg, holding his face in his hands.

  I walk closer to him and ask him if he’s okay.

  He lifts his face. His eyes are super red and puffy. “Who did this to me?” he sobs. “It hurts.”

  Did what?

  “This!” he screams, standing up and ripping his shirt off, exposing the portrait of Richard Simmons giving a thumbs-up signal that’s been tattooed onto his chest.

  I take a step back.

  And the kid says, “Do you know who did this to me?”

  No, man. I’m sorry.

  “It hurts,” he cries, saliva falling from his bottom lip. “It hurts so bad.”

  Maybe you should go to the hospital.

  The kid slams the palms of his hands against his skull. “I can’t. I’m not even eighteen. Someone will call my parents and they’ll find out I’ve been out doing drugs. My dad will kill me!”

  I take a few more steps back, telling him that I’m sorry and that I don’t know what he should do. The kid falls back into the chair. He stares vacantly in front of him, then looks back at me and says, “Why would someone do this to me? Why would someone tattoo Fred Durst onto my chest? I don’t understand. I’ve never done anything to anyone. Why would someone hurt me like this?”

  Fred Durst? I think that’s Richard Simmons, man.

  “Same fucking thing,” the kid whines. “Why would anyone do this to me?”

  I don’t know.

  I take a deep breath.

  But maybe you shouldn’t wear a visor that says you love the killers on it anymore. Maybe you should just be better than that.

  And the kid goes, “What?”

  I jump the front porch stairs and run all the way, like three blocks, up to Redmont Street.

  I hail a cab and take it to my parents’ house, staring at my dirty hands and my dirty fingernails, and tasting my shitty breath, the entire way there.

  39.

  I WAKE UP AND IT’S dark outside and I don’t know how long I’ve been sleeping or what day it is. My head is pounding. It’s like there’s an army of tiny men inside of it banging my skull with hammers, and my mouth is dry. My throat kills. It hurts to swallow. Very slowly, I peel my tongue from the roof of my mouth. It feels like my skin is being torn away and I want to cry but my body won’t let me.

  I’m cold and I’m hot.

  I’m shivering.


  Sweating.

  I get out of bed and the nausea hits me right away. Whatever I have left inside of me is about to come up, so I run into the bathroom down the hall and drop to my knees and I wait.

  I know it’s coming, but I have to wait, and waiting is the worst.

  Thoughts of Laura begin to play in my head. I think about how much I hate her. Then I think about how much I wish she was here.

  My mouth pops open.

  My body tightens.

  My stomach starts pushing and thrusting.

  Small chunks of my stomach lining fall into the toilet covered in this brownish colored liquid.

  Same thing happens again.

  It happens again and then again and then again but nothing comes out on the last heave. I have nothing left to give. Nothing at all. And I fall to the ground and wipe my eyes and wait for something even worse to happen, but nothing does.

  • • •

  I walk down to the kitchen later that night to get some ice water, and my sister and her friend Amy are sitting at the dining room table playing war, drinking Zimas with Jolly Rancher candy sitting in the bottom of the bottles, a Gwen Stefani DVD playing full-blast on the television in the living room.

  “Mom and Dad wanted to talk to you earlier,” my sister says. “But your car was gone, so they figured you were out.”

  Are they here now?

  “No, they had dinner plans with some friends from out of town.”

  I grab a glass from the dishwasher.

  Do you know what they wanted?

  My sister shrugs. “No. But Dad was glowing about you actually applying to USC.”

  I fill the glass with water and look at my sister. For a moment I think about asking her if it’s true what those girls told me in the bathroom at the party the night before, but then I decide not to because I’m sure it is true, in fact I never thought otherwise, and at this point I really don’t care—not anymore.

  Amy flips her last card over. “I won, bitch,” she says. “Drink up.”

  My sister sticks her tongue out and starts chugging the rest of her Zima. When she’s done, she slams the bottle down and burps really loud, then looks at me and goes, “Do you have any coke, Travis? I could really use a line to sober me up.”