by A. R. Rivera
It was suffocating, a bitter tang that came on like a boulder rolling down a hillside. Constantly gaining momentum until it smacked into me full force. I’d tried running but it kept pace with me. I buried it underneath boys whose names I never caught but that rock-solid pain would always rise up. Drowning myself in alcohol or getting blurred with sweet smoke never worked long, either. The dulled edges would sharpen the moment my high went away—when the waves of alcohol and THC receded, it always resurfaced.
We were rolling together.
+++
I was in trouble and I knew it.
I’d held the shame too close, let it gnaw at my chest. Every minute of the day, it was consuming me. I hated that feeling—of disappearing—of being eaten alive.
I had to let it out and I was ready to use anything I could get my hands on to stop it. What ended up in my hands on one particular day was a pocket knife. It had a long, thin blade, ivory handle, and it was razor sharp.
Sitting on my front porch, I knew that no one would come looking for me any time soon.
I held out my arm. The tip of the blade pressed into the crease at my elbow. I kept it there against the thin skin, just long enough to appreciate the imminent sting. Anticipation had stupid tears filling my eyes. I squeezed them shut. The cuts worked like release valves on a high pressure pipe. If I twisted just enough to the left, just enough to let the hot trickle down my arm, some of the weight would hiss away.
As I prepared to shift the slender edge, a noise from the house carried out onto the porch: my mother and her newest soon-to-be Ex were arguing again. I tucked the knife away and hopped up, aiming for the road. At the curb, I hooked right and kept going, walking along the roadside with my head down.
It wasn’t long before I heard the hum of an approaching car. I debated jumping out in front of it, but noticed that the car was not passing, only slowing down. When I looked up, I saw it wasn’t a car. It was a beat-up van rolling alongside me.
The passenger window rolled down and Jake leaned over from the drivers’ seat, keeping one hand on the wheel as he called out. “Hey stranger, need a ride?”
I had no plans, so I shrugged. “Think you’re girlfriend will care?”
He canted his head to one side. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure that she’d want me to pick you up.”
The van came to a stop and I hopped inside. My back sunk into the seat as we took off.
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere in particular. Just felt like walking.” I examined the colored vest he wore over his green t-shirt. The hardware stores logo was sewn into the left side. “You coming from work?”
Jake took turns glancing between me and the road. “That obvious, huh? You alright?”
I nodded, but said nothing. He wouldn’t understand. I hugged my arms together tightly, trying to squeeze the pain from my chest.
The van came to a stop sign.
As I stared down at my lap, Jakes hand came to rest on my knee. “Wanna talk about it?”
A long minute passed. A horn honked from behind us and Jake sighed, slowly taking off and pulling over into the first parking lot he came across. Putting the van into park, he shut off the engine and set his hand back on my leg.
An inch above my knee.
My mind said to move, move, move away, but I could swear that the constant hollow in my chest shrank a little. Not much, but enough for me to notice. So I didn’t move.
“I’ve been told I’m a good listener.”
I set my elbow up on the windowsill. As I began to run my hand through my hair, to pull the long black strands off my sweaty neck, Jake grabbed my forearm and jerked it towards him.
“You’re bleeding. What happened?”
His question and the shocking amount of blood that had dribbled from my elbow onto the side of my shirt caught me off guard. Too surprised to think up a lie, I locked my lips together.
Jake cursed; smacking his hand against the glove compartment mounted in the dashboard. The small door fell open. He kept one hand firmly locked around my elbow as he reached for a plastic baggy inside the glove box. He mumbled more profanities while I watched him pull out a package of tissue and clean the crusting mess from my arm. Then he squeezed a thin line of greasy ointment over the small, but deceptively deep cut I’d given myself, and then sealed it with a bandage.
“What the hell are you doing to yourself?” He shoved the plastic baggy full of first-aid supplies back into the glove compartment and slammed it shut.
H e was pissing me off. Who the hell did he think he was, getting all self-righteous on me? I didn’t ask for the damn ride, or the pity.
I was about to tell him where to shove his indignation when he closed his eyes, and opened them again, suddenly holding a different expression. He didn’t look mad. He looked soft. Like he was anything but angry. His forehead was crumpled, his eyebrows knit together. His bottom lip was caught between his teeth.
The expression made me feel naked. I took my bandaged arm from him and covered myself.
“Why?” He set his palm against my cheek and stared.
The raw emotion that seemed to surface with that one word made me want to apologize. But I didn’t. “Because I need to feel better.”
He closed his eyes again, his features relaying the feeling hidden beneath his lids. He was hurt. “What I mean is, why didn’t you tell me? I thought we were friends who talked about this shit.”
“We are . . . friends.” The word felt weird coming from me. I didn’t care to have friends. One reason being they were always asking questions. “But I won’t talk about it.”
My voice carried off when he leaned closer and took my bandaged arm in both of his hands. “Friends don’t judge. They listen . . . and maybe make fun of you later on.” Jake offered a fake grin, trying to lighten the mood as he continued. “But they can’t do that if they don’t talk to each other first.”
Jake extended my folded elbow. “Friends help each other heal.” He leaned down and set his lips to the inside of my arm, kissing at the edge of the dressing.
I tugged my arm back. “How could you help, Jake?”
He straightened, looking me in the face. “Any way you’ll let me. If you need to talk . . . or whatever,” His brow scrunched again when I fidgeted. “For whatever you need, I’m here.”
He sounded so sure and sincere. Considering the way he looked at me and his attempt to help, I decided it might be okay to be friends with Jake.
+ + +
16
—Angel
The first time I ever talked to Avery, it was over the body of a dead kitten.
She had found the poor little thing and showed me. A black and white bag of bones, covered in fleas, abandoned by its’ mother, a stray cat that hung around the apartment complex we both lived in at the time. She’d showed me to an alcove behind the complex, where the trash was kept, and took me back to a dark, stinking corner where the rest of the litter laid lifeless. Four kittens in all; only one had found the strength to make it out into the grass near the playground only to meet the same fate. We cried over the tragedy and gave each a proper burial.
I used to look back at that day and find comfort in the fact that two small girls with so much working against them were able to stare into the face of death and forge a friendship. Now I look back and see it for what it really was: nothing.
I need to get back to the important stuff.
Where was I? Oh, yes . . .
+++
Avery was staying over.
The bed spread sprawled open and swayed to the floor like a lead feather. “I’ll sleep down here. That way, if Deanna checks, I can slip under the bed.”
I laughed at Avery’s silliness. The Foster worked nights and she didn’t care if I had a friend sleep over—so long as that friend shared my gender. “And what if you’re sleeping?”
Her mouth quirked to one side. “I’ll be the monster under your bed.”
“The rails are too low.
Your giant head will get stuck and you’ll never get out.”
Avery’s green eyes brightened with humor. “I’ll live on dust bunnies and lost socks.”
“I’ll bring you water once a day.”
The trailer had a way of shaking so that the slightest move shifted the house beneath your feet and squeaky floorboards. When footsteps clattered down the hallway, we knew by the beat it was my foster brother, Austen.
Avery straightened and leapt to disappear behind the door as Austen opened it. His eyes swept over me and the surfaces of my room. “Have you seen my headphones?” He kept one hand on the knob and the other pushed his overgrown hair back. It was thick and wavy and awful. He would have been so much better looking if he kept it short.
“In the living room, on top of the stereo, last I saw.”
He eyed the blankets and pillows on the floor. “Thanks. Hey, I’m going to Sheila’s, later. You’ll be okay tonight?”
I nodded, “Yeah.”
As he turned to leave, Avery jumped out from behind the door. Her eyes fierce, her smooth face twisted. “Bwahh!!” She shouted, with outstretched arms and claw-like fingers. A very convincing monster.
Austen just rolled his eyes. He’d seen that trick one too many times, I think. When he shut the door, we were rolling, laughing until our sides ached.
“Music.” Avery insisted.
I obliged her by putting on Meta Morph by none other than Analog Controller. And turned it up until the speakers crackled. When the first note of the song played, so began our feast for the ears. Our heads were quaking over jerking necks. Four hips shook, matched by thrashing feet. Now the floor was really creaking. My sneakers slipped from my feet onto the blanket.
When the next rotation started, we were thirsty and nowhere near finished. That’s when Avery opened her backpack to reveal the treat she’d brought. Her nails, colored in with black marker, were wrapped around the neck of her favorite drink.
“Schnapps anyone?” She offered.
It felt like half a bottle later when I hung up the phone with Jake. The band was auditioning another potential new lead guitarist. Some guy from Phoenix. Jake was convinced that he could either play the lead guitar or sing and wanted my opinion. He didn’t need it, though. The band already voted that a new guitarist would be an easier transition. Very few singers had Jake’s smooth and rough tones as well as the wide vocal range. I agreed that another guitar player was easier, but I never liked the idea of Jake giving up anything. I wanted him to be able to do everything he wanted. I was going to go over there, but it’d been a while since Avery stayed over. Jake was grasping, it seemed, because he really didn’t want that girl in the band. I took a measure of comfort in that and ignored the two words that were still stuck on repeat in my head. “Not yet.”
Once we sobered some, Avery, who’d borrowed her mom’s car again, drove us to our looking point, a place she and I liked to go to chill out.
There wasn’t much to do in our area so football was kind of a big deal. Not to us, but to the rest of the world. Avery parked at the bottom of the lonely mound that overlooked the away side of the high schools’ stadium. We climbed up the steep backside to our spot to look out at the empty seats. There was no game tonight, but there were always some lights on. Still, even dim and empty, the open arena was something to see from our small hill.
There was one tree and a patch of grass at the top that dried up every spring, like the rest of the state. There was also lots of sand and a few cacti sprinkled among stray rocks. A couple had ripening fruit. But, I didn’t think prickly pear would mix well with cinnamon schnapps.
Hot air breezed past, tossing up my mane, and relieving the moisture that kept it stuck to my neck.
“That feels nice.” I combed my fingers through my hair, pulling it up to twist in a knot.
I sat down while Avery stood, looking on at the dark. Her palms were clasped together, fingers twisted in knots.
“Those blank spaces . . . . Angel, how is your memory?”
Something large and heavy lodged in my stomach. My throat tightened. “What?”
“Forget the question, already?” She turned to look at me over her shoulder.
I shook my head, shocked that I was feeling so suddenly defensive. “It’s fine.”
I don’t care how well you know your friends there are always parts of them that you don’t question. Pools inside them that are too deep to dive into. It might be because you never thought to ask, or maybe because you don’t care. In this instance, it was more that Avery knew better. She had never, and I mean never asked about my memory problems. She knew about them, sure, but it was one of those things that were not up for discussion because there was no point. She couldn’t help me solve them. I never delved into why she was always pretending to be happy when I could see she wasn’t, or why she sometimes acted more like a mom than a friend, or about the obvious distrust she had for my meek foster brother. I never asked Avery why she felt the need to cut herself, either because she’d never tell me. So for her to up and ask about my memory problems was weird.
“Do you remember your first foster home?”
It was like the air around me went cold. “I don’t know.”
She wrapped her arms around herself and seemed to squeeze, murmuring indecipherably.
Everyone knows one person with real shit for luck. For me, Avery was that person. My life was no bed of roses, but it really seemed that all the bad stuff happened to her. It also seemed that she put herself into those situations, but that was another one of those off-limit things. I cared. I wanted to ask all the time, but Avery wouldn’t tolerate it. She’d let me stand beside her, hold her, even let me see her wounds, but she wouldn’t let me heal them. She wouldn’t let anyone in—not into that part. Only she was allowed into that black part she carried around. Her quiet storm.
As I sat on the dry ground, watching Avery’s lonely form in the moonlight, I wondered if this was a precedent, if we were going to start talking about the things that really mattered.
But that wonderment was halted when Avery turned to look at me, clapping her hands together. “Time to get the fuck out of here.”
+ + +
17
—Avery
People are fake. And who needs that bullshit?
Not me.
For a long time, though, I thought I did. I was just one of the many lonesome people that walked among the Normals, pretending to be one of them, even though all I really was, was transparent.
But there was more to it than that. When that empty part inside me opened up, it was like the second a door shut, the moment I was by myself, that black feeling would stretch over me and I became emptiness personified. A black hole. My skin, the casing that was stretching. I felt the hollow growing, pressing into me, threatening to turn me inside out or obliterate me completely. I couldn’t stand it. It hurts to be stretched that way.
All I wanted was relief, and the easiest way to make it go away was to fill it. Fillers were always temporary, though. There was nothing that could ever truly make it stop. Drinking helped, sometimes. But I couldn’t always get alcohol. Then, I’d have to grab onto the next best something. Or someone. To anchor me in place, to feel them beside me so I’d know I was still alive, because I couldn’t really be evaporating if I felt something besides the emptiness.
+++
The first time I made the mistake of letting Troy-Shithead-Bleecher get near me was at a party. It was one of those nights that I snuck out, alone, seeking something more from life. I didn’t know it was Troy’s house. To me the party house was just another brown stucco—a suburban-type place—filled with people I didn’t care to know. I just needed to get out of my head and feel something.
That night, Angel had come down with a migraine and withdrew the way she always did. There was nothing I could do for her, so I decided that I needed to party.
Strolling in the front door, the house was jam-packed.
I wasn’t there eve
n a full minute before some drunk guy—he had to have been at least ten years older than me—staggered over and gave me a lusty look, a creepy eye-rape, that turned my stomach. I acted like he wasn’t there, like he didn’t ask for my name. I refused to notice him in any way, even as he reached for my shoulder.
I broke right and walked towards a large fish tank.
There were people everywhere. Mostly kids from Eager High. The large living area was otherwise empty—no furniture except for one lamp and the giant fish tank that bordered the living and dining rooms. In the dining area, on the opposing side the fish tank, were four jocks standing over a keg. One was holding a stack of red cups, another was holding a bag. Music played from unseen speakers as I recognized Jimmy Maroney and Curt Brody. People were walking up to them, placing dollar bills into the bag Jimmy was holding, then Curt would pass a cup to each person. A third guy I didn’t recognize would pump the keg while a fourth would do the pouring. Jocks turned everything into a team effort.
The older drunk that greeted me at the door followed me over to the fish tank. Someone passing by addressed him as “Uncle Smiley.” He stood a few feet away with a hand on the tanks’ glass, seeming to watch the water bubbles gurgling from the filter.
I focused on the music. It was a new song, one I’d never heard before, but I liked the sound. It wasn’t grunge, but it was definitely good.
Uncle Smiley made a dumb comment about my jeans: how tight they were and how he wondered why I bothered to put them on when he’d heard it was so easy to get them off.