Fade Into You

by Nikki Darling

  “What? Seriously?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t even think I know what that is.”

  “It’s when you don’t see your own shitty actions as being shitty and live in a sort of unawareness of how you might hurt or affect other people.”

  “See, I just don’t understand that.”

  “Yeah, well. Exactly.”

  “You’re really being serious.”

  “Okay,” she says softly. “Bye, Nikki.”

  I feel something inside my chest jostle and a strong wave of it washes over my head and I’m high on it. A thin film of gray. “Bye, Sarah.” And she fades away.

  ×

  I pick up the phone and dial. I’m sitting on the washing machine in Grandpa’s old room, which is Lyla’s new room that she hasn’t been staying in. Staying instead somewhere in the Valley with some friend of our cousin, and Mom is sick about it. I’ve been masturbating with the electric back massager and listening to death metal. Specifically Nausea, which Dan turned me on to. It rings a few times then he picks up. “Yo,” he answers.

  “Is your mom in Venice?”

  “Till Monday.”

  “Do you want company?”

  “Like, to blaze?”

  “No, like, to make friendship bracelets.”

  “Yeah, come over, we can make lanyards.”

  “Okay, rad. I’ll bring the trust fall. You get the canoe. Oh, hey, I have Thin Mints. Got ’em outside the Ralphs.”

  “Uh, his name is Raaaaaallpphh,” Dan says Cheech-style and we both laugh.

  ×

  “Daniel Martínez, did you take a shower?”

  “Oh yeah,” he says, touching the tips of his wet hair, “don’t tell anyone,” and flashes an award-winning smile.

  “Anyway,” I say packing a new bowl. The night is groovy and we talk amongst his posters and books. The Ramones’ Rocket to Russia, Garbage Pail Kids thumbtacked to the wall, Big Gulps like small moat towers guard the bed.

  “Nausea is not that metal sounding.”

  “That’s because it’s not metal. You’re packing it wrong, you gotta press it in more otherwise it blows out.”

  “Blows out or blows out?”

  “Like, away,” he says, grabbing the pipe from me and jamming the weed into the bowl with dirty fingers. “It’s hardcore. I told you that.”

  “Oh. Well I don’t like it.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He sparks up. “You talk too much, Nik.” He smiles slowly, weirdly. “Hey, you want a beer?”

  I do but I don’t. “Maybe,” I say. My heart races and I grab for the weed. My pulse is a thing. He stands and walks to the hall, comes back, and sits next to me on the bed. He cracks one and I get goose bumps as he places it in my hand, beads of water sprouting on my palm.

  “It means you only like the Pixies and shit like that.”

  “That’s not true, I like punk. Real punk, like the Misfits and the Cramps.”

  “You like all that twangy rockabilly ‘Rat Fink’ shit. That’s all musical theater, of course you like that shit. You don’t like destruction.”

  “Oh don’t I?” I ask, taking a gulp. Beer is so gross. “I love destruction. I think it’s fucked and brilliant. I think it’s way more complex than anyone talks about.”

  “I do too. I think it’s bunk and refreshing.”

  I laugh. “Way bunk.”

  “The Bunky Bunch.” He blows smoke and takes my chin. His fingers are warm and we’ve paused.

  “I’m a virgin,” I whisper. I don’t even want this, I just want something different than what I’ve got.

  “I know,” he says, pressing his mouth to mine, passing the smoke. He exhales and I pull away. Hold it in. “We talk about it all the time. Blow.” I do and he sparks the pipe, takes a new hit, inhales. He gestures for me and I lean in, he blows I hold. “Blow.” I do and he places his hands on my neck lightly, his thumbs pressing into the crest of my breasts. “We should fix that,” he whispers. I soften and everything around me speeds up again and his tongue is moving in and out of my mouth and we lie back, him on top and he’s taking off his pants, shoving his legs out of them and then mine and he’s hard. I gasp. I feel him on my stomach and it’s strange and unreal. My friend Dan has his naked dick on my stomach. I’ve never been pressed up against life like this. I see him in the motel, the bathroom door swinging open, his friend, blond girl, sad and weepy on the toilet seat, he starts to knead his hips against mine, his hand pushing my legs apart gently yet persistently, moving his other hand toward my shirt, trying to pull it over my head, he’s in motion tethered to nothing and suddenly I understand, he’s good at this, he excels. I see him on the couch at parties, girls melting into his side. He’s Peter Pan with a needle and thread and I’m his shadow. He starts to move faster, more aggressively, his hand is in my bra sort of massaging my nipple, his eyes are open and we catch each other and he doesn’t smile, we don’t make a weird face or laugh, he seems outside himself, otherworldly and I want to tell him, I can just hug you instead, but I don’t.

  “You’re gorgeous,” some strange voice I don’t recognize says and I turn my face to deflect the compliment because it seems ill-suited to my current nakedness. He’s on his knees, completely hard, veins and arms and feet and phallus. He is a statue, the Rodins outside the Norton Simon. His sandpaper fingers slip inside, I gasp, ripples rising on my body, tiny alarm sensors going off. I see his Garbage Pail poster, Diaper Dan, on the ceiling above us. Diaper Dan. I shove him off and he topples onto the floor with an unsexy thump, like in a romantic comedy I’d be forced to watch on an airplane. I freeze, motionless. Disbelief would best describe his look. I cover my face. I hate every second of this. “What is wrong with you!” he finally shouts and I roll over, stunted by his anger. I don’t say anything just lie there, staring at him. He stands, dick soft, and pulls his underwear on. He walks into the bathroom and slams the door. “Fucking go home!” he shouts.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, gathering my clothes. “I’m so sorry. I got scared.”

  “Go home, Nicole,” he says from behind the door, this time louder, more insistent.

  “Are you mad at me?”

  “Can you go the fuck home?” he shouts again and this time it shakes me into motion. I pull my clothes on and walk through the house toward the front door and survey the surroundings as if on a movie set. The fridge is buzzing and I open it. Inside a twenty-four pack of Bud Light, a block of cheddar cheese, some tortillas, and Oreos. The counter space is covered in SpaghettiOs cans, ashtrays, and fallen soldiers. I take a gulp of air and look behind me toward the back of the small Spanish bungalow, where Dan has lived unattended for nearly three years. His mother’s boyfriend’s house. One of two, the one he lives in while they stay together at the other house in Venice and his older brother and father survive in El Monte working odd jobs trying to get by. Dan has gone to good schools. Maybe this Spanish Bungalow was the one that got him into the right school district. Before he transferred to LACHSA. Maybe this was his mother’s bottom line. Her only demand. There is so much that I don’t know about anything or anyone. Like, how did your life get this way? When did it pivot to the place it is now? Was it hard to say goodbye? Did you know that goodbye was even coming? I want to go back and sit with him, hold his hand and say, It’s all right. I’m alone too. Watch Bill and Ted, get baked, and sleep beside one another. But I don’t. I open the front door and walk into the windy street toward the car, the streetlights fluttering, the edge of South Pasadena, the last city before Los Angeles, the border of the SGV, the Santa Anas kicking up the dusty screams of all of us, gathering them together like a party, just to blow them out into our faces.

  I drive home in a daze and swear to god as I turn the corner onto my street, signs blowing hectic against the storm, a coyote emerges from the dust, eyes shining, and gallops toward the hills.

  ×

  A glare of sunlight fills the len
gth of King Hall. Everything is empty and it’s early, well, not so early. Class is in session. I’m not sure if I’ve been kicked out. My mom hasn’t called Principal Gaines and I haven’t spoken to her. They’ll have to track her down and until then I’m still coming. You’ll have to drag me out of here, motherfuckers. My backpack is over my shoulder and I walk carefully past the classroom windows, not to let the teachers see me. The faces of my comrades looking up with rapt attention. School. Heh. What a joke. Or maybe not. I long painfully to want nothing more than just good grades. It seems so long since I’ve felt an order to the universe. In fact, I’m convinced I’ve never felt it. Cruelty is the randomness with which life picks its victims. I am the least of its struggling and yet I feel its weight. All around me, on my shoulders, caught inside my throat, pressing on the backside of my neck. What am I doing trying to stay in this place. They’re doing me a favor. I should hop the fence, toss my books behind me, and run wild into the sunset. Hitchhike to New York and never look back. When you’re from LA, where else do you go?

  The sun makes everything silhouettes, but even in the brightness that surrounds her Claire’s body is clear to me. The long thin arms toned. I know that she is from Alhambra. I know that she is a broken mold, her former husk lying on some nighttime road, with skateboards and broken 40s, cluttering up the gutters with its fragile shape. I know that she has been playing clarinet for many years. That her mother came here to have her sister who was inside her, and who was challenging the one-child rule, and whose secret sonogram confirmed her gendered doom. I know Claire worked at Claire’s at the Montebello Town Center and everyone thought this was really funny and that she was fired for stealing an ear-piercing gun. I know that Claire is beautiful and that people say she’s mean. I know she doesn’t like many people. I know that Claire might like me and I’ve clung to this, I’ve clung to it as evidence that might incriminate me, but only to myself.

  At the end of the hall in front of her locker she looks like a movie poster for some sad flick about high school kids at risk, like Lean on Me, or Stand and Deliver. Like Claire’s got some lesson to teach us all, except the lessons Claire would teach aren’t the lessons being taught by the people in charge. And that’s why Claire isn’t a movie poster. That’s why Claire is real. That’s why I am real. That’s why all of this is so much more than shapes and shadows. I close my eyes, open them, and Claire is gone. The lockers are now metal chairs with thick vinyl green plastic I can feel, sweaty beneath thin bare child legs poking through my shorts. I’m in the hallway of the hospital. The morning sun rises through a grated window high along the wall. A prison I will never leave. My parents’ voices which at one point were both so clear are now and forever garbled beneath the water of our future lives and nothing they will ever say makes sense again.

  When I was five years old my sister killed herself. Lori. She was Lyla’s twin. She was twelve. She’d had a fight with dad and things must have been bad for her. I say must have because we have never once as a family talked about it, her, even individually to one another. We talk around it, we say things aimed at it but never close enough to hit the mark. In this way we have never stopped talking about it. I wonder if my thinking about it and writing about it and imagining it is my way of trying to be sure it ever happened. If she existed at all or was just a memory I manifested. The picture basket has never had a single photo of her and I know my mother has gone through and removed them all. The only face of hers I see are baby pictures with Lyla where they are shoved together like otters, floating on their backs. She is a paranormal presence like the TV in Poltergeist and I hold my hands up to movies, books, and air trying to find her. Feel her. She slit her wrists after coming home from school one day. She was in the seventh grade. It was quiet, sunlight turning on the ceiling across the floor. I was in the living room, on the avocado-colored carpet, watching Mr. Rogers, the large window bright with midafternoon sun, the river in the distance, the thick cluster of bright green tops pushing against dark clouds, black crows swirling against the wind. My mother’s shriek fills every pore of our home, every tiny minutia of our home, our clothing, our toys, our food, our air, our pillows, our pockets, our memories, our mouths, are filled and will be filled always with that scream. We are drunk in it.

  My father is on his feet flying into the house from the garage where he’s been building a bike. He’s followed us after the long drive to Los Angeles, after a summer of living with our grandparents in New Mexico, after three months of saving, we came back to LA, and after all of that he followed us, and she let him in. “It’s his father’s house,” she shrugged, “after all.” My mom is in my sister’s doorway now, heaving and covering her mouth, my dad pushes past her and starts yelling and moaning, “No, oh no, no,” loud embarrassing sounds I wish he wasn’t making, she’s in his arms, Lori, his face is contorted and white, her wrists exit first, flapping around her flag uniform, polyester and soaked bright violet red. It’s drippy, my mom is spinning in on herself down the hall. My father hoists Lori over his shoulder like a heavy bag of cement and is on the phone. Her eyes are whites and she sees me, hanging upside down, she moves her mouth, she’s hanging and upside down it looks like a smile. I shake my head and cover my eyes. My mother grabs me and I’m tossed on my bed, the door slams.

  When my grandmother pulled me out of the corner of the room I was surprised to see my things, my dolls, my toys and bed, and know that they weren’t really mine. The person they belonged to didn’t know them anymore. They had transformed, like the Velveteen Rabbit. Turned real overnight and everything they had been before didn’t matter after that.

  I’m on a couch in front of a television, neighbor Margaret is asleep in her velvet-blue recliner, her mouth ajar, I am watching Sunday Night Disney, it’s a rerun, Walt, the 1960s, his vision. He says, “Tomorrow,” like it’s a place we might get to. A set of plans, the old faces, the old names, animatronic magic, a diorama of a fantasy he wants to bring to life. The door opens and it’s my mother. She raises her finger to my lips and scoops me up.

  Lyla has been taken to a psychiatric ward. She walks out in a paper gown, like I’ve seen on General Hospital. She looks different. My mother gets up from where we’ve been waiting and walks to her. They hug. My sister looks at me and her face, right side up, is frowning. My dad is in the hallway on the pay phone talking to my grandmother. He sees Lyla and sets the phone on top of the counter with the phone book. He walks to me and sits. Takes my hand and pats it softly, staring forward. My sister sees us and starts down the long hallway with my mother who has placed an arm around her shoulder and guides her slowly. My father stands, pauses, then follows.

  “Your grandmother is on her way,” he says and then he too is engulfed in the shadow of the hallway. I sit and look at the flat Easter baskets taped to the wall. Fuzzy to the touch, pastel-colored eggs inside. The kind inside my kindergarten classroom. Other girls walk through, they are in gray sweats and pop gum, shuffle by in slippers, they have Bibles and Bop magazines and banana clips and friendship bracelets in neon pink and green. The fluorescent lights buzz and blink, the linoleum blue gold and gray, flecked and shining.

  My grandmother Gail is beside me. “Don’t ever need to come here,” she whispers, lifting me into her arms, and we’re headed toward the parking lot, the gray sky still swirling, wetness hanging from all the tree things. Black-birds peck at rainbow puddles of oil and water, and the sun, a spool of gold glowing in the sky, blinds me with confusion. And I never do.

  When I was very small Lori snuck into my room, opened the window, jumped out, turned around, held a finger to her lips and said, “Shhh.” I had no idea she meant forever.

  “Hey,” I say, leaning down beside Claire.

  “Hey,” she says, without looking up. She’s got an honest-to-god motherfucking hospital bracelet on and I gulp.

  “You wear that thing to look cool?”

  She glares at me and rolls her eyes, holding a History book. “Nikki,” and I jump, hearing my nam
e in her mouth. “I know your name, asshole.” I nod. “You got very bitter very quickly,” is all she follows it up with and turns back to the locker rummaging around and pulling out old papers and assignments, a small Beanie Baby cat with the Ty tag still on. She rips off a magnet mirror, a fake California license plate with her name on it, CLAIRE. A palm tree sticker beside a pink cup that holds glitter bubble ink pens. She shoves these things into her backpack.

  “What does that mean?” I ask softly, unsure.

  “Never mind,” she says flipping her hair.

  “No, I mean …”

  “What do you want from me? What are you standing here gawking at me for? You want some wise ching-chong wisdom?”

  “God Claire, come on. I’m not like that.”

  “Sure, sure. No one is. I’m the one who’s crazy. I’m the bitch.”

  “Are you okay? I mean, no one’s seen you all semester, how you left it was, really intense. I just want to know that you’re okay.”

  “Why?”

  “God, I don’t know. Because I care about you. I miss you. I mean, I miss you being at school.”

  She blows her bangs out of her face and stares at me. “You want to know that things are going to be okay? The future’s so bright you gotta wear shades? Look I don’t know. My mom is downstairs and I’m going back. Don’t get wiggy in the hallways, that’s all I’m saying.”

  “That’s what Chelo said.”

  “Consuelo Medina?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What a biter. I said that shit first.”

  I don’t know what she means by this, that Chelo could somehow be a lesser person, a person someone like Claire thinks is uncool, that anyone could think Chelo is desperate, desperate enough to bite anyone else to make herself sound cooler, but also because now I’m not sure if it was déjà vu, or if in fact Chelo ever said this, and that frightens me. Claire tilts her head and a softness tugs at the edges of her mouth and she kind of more or less seems to understand that something bigger is going on and in this moment decides to be straight with me, and that in this straightness she is being kind.