by Kim Purcell
It’s a cast-iron frying pan, nearly hidden, buried under laundry. We have never once used a cast-iron pan. It must have been bought online and dropped on the floor like everything else. My mom used to be an artist, but now she’s a collector of projects she’ll never finish, a buyer of useless items online, a builder of precarious piles.
I limp along the pathway to the bathroom, sit on the cold toilet seat, and count. My pee lasts for 32 seconds. My record is 107. I wonder if you count your pee. We never talk about this stuff, but we should. Bathroom habits are fascinating. When you get back, I expect answers about all things bathroom-related. You’re such a gentleman that you probably won’t tell me, but I’m going to pin you down and tickle you until you do.
I look at my phone. Why aren’t you texting me? I read the text from Steph. It’s a picture of a stack of one-dollar bills, along with: Made a hundred dollars in poker. Eat it!
No thank you.
I text her back. I know she’s sleeping and what can she do to help, really? But she needs to know. Chris is missing…Call me
Then I leave you another voice message: “Hey. It’s me again. Can you call? Please? Everyone’s worried. I’m worried. I love you.”
When I stand up, the phone vibrates in my hand. Of course, I think it’s you and I nearly drop the damn thing in the toilet. But it’s just Steph. She hasn’t turned off her phone, unlike some people I know.
“Hey,” I answer.
“Chris is missing?” She’s slurring. Maybe she’s still drunk.
“He went for a run down by the river last night, and he didn’t make it home.” I sob and grip my mouth tight. I can keep it together for everyone else, but not her. Okay, not you either.
“Hold on. I’ll be right over.” The phone goes dead.
I put the phone on the edge of the sink and blow my nose in a wad of toilet paper. “He’s okay,” I murmur at my reflection.
My tears draw wet lines down my dry skin. It’s hard to say why I like looking at my sniveling self in a mirror, but I do.
My brain is foggy. I need coffee. You always come over in the morning and make me coffee.
Someone bangs on the back door. It has to be you! No way it’s Steph. She takes forever to get out of bed.
I run out of the bathroom, leaping over the magazines. “Chris?”
9:06 AM Saturday, Steph
It’s Steph, bursting into my house. “Oh my god,” she says. “Are you okay?” She’s rushing toward me, around a pile of Mom’s crap, arms out, like a zombie girl in a red robe and giant puffy pink slippers. Her long brown hair is all bedhead, and she’s wearing thick ugly glasses instead of contacts, and her makeup is smeared under her eyes. No idea what’s under that robe.
Suddenly, she screams out and doubles over. “Ow. Ow. Ow.” She hops on one foot and grabs her slipper. She’s hit that same damn cast-iron pan.
“Oh man, I’m sorry. I did the same thing. My mom—”
She waves her hand. “I’m fine.” She limps toward me, exaggerating, as usual. “I just broke my toe. No big deal.”
She gives me one of her power hugs. Squeezes the air right out of me. I swear, she could bottle those up and sell them. You always ask if she’s trying to break your ribs, but I know you like them too.
If she were missing, I don’t know what I’d do. It would be more obvious that something awful had happened. With you, I don’t know.
She loosens her grip and pulls her head two inches from my face. “He’s fine. You hear me?” She breathes all over me. It’s nasty.
I try to smile through my tears. “Your breath smells like ass.”
Of course she gulps in a bunch of air and blows it into my face, dragon-breath–style, right from the gut. I gag and she laughs, releasing me.
“Seriously, you okay?”
“I’m worried.” I sigh.
“He’s going to show up, goofball.”
“I know.”
She heads over to the mini-fridge, pulls out two strawberry yogurts and spoons from the utensils box, and then hands one to me. “Here.” Like it’ll make everything better.
I shove a pile of my mom’s unfolded laundry from our sagging brown sofa and we sit cross-legged next to each other. The yogurt is cold on my tongue. It feels nice.
“So he went for a run and disappeared and then what?”
I fill her in on what I know, circling my spoon in my yogurt so the red mixes with the white. “I keep trying to think of something that’s not totally horrible. It’s not like him to go AWOL.”
She rubs her eyes under her glasses, further smearing her mascara. “Maybe he found someone else.”
“While he was running in the woods?”
She shovels a heaping spoonful of yogurt into her mouth, sucks off the top, and pulls the half-filled spoon out of her mouth. She’s never eaten everything off a spoon, not once in her life.
“Maybe,” she begins, raising her eyebrows, “there was some rich seductress lady in a skimpy red dress, sitting on a log, and he couldn’t resist her.” She flings her hand to the side, still holding her spoon. The remaining yogurt wobbles in the air. I wait for it to go flying. “And now he’s just hanging at her fancy house, sipping a latte, relaxing on her chaise lounge.”
You would never go with someone else, but the thought of your lanky body trying to get comfortable on a chaise lounge makes me smirk. “He hates lattes.”
She grins. “Hey, you hear about that forest fire?”
“No, why?”
“People were talking about it at the restaurant last night. That’s why it smelled smoky yesterday. I guess it’s taken over a ton of forest.”
“Do you have a point?”
She shrugs. “Maybe Chris ran into the fire.”
I gape. “That’s a great image, Steph. Thanks. I really like imagining my boyfriend’s body on fire.”
“I don’t mean that—I was just thinking he could have got lost out there in the woods. Maybe it was smoky and he couldn’t see and he got lost.”
“It’s not smoky today.”
“Depends on the winds.” She takes another bite of her yogurt. “But he would’ve had to run, like, twenty miles to get that close.”
“He doesn’t run that far.” Not normally.
“Okay, well, didn’t you say he missed Brooklyn?” she says. “Maybe he took off for Brooklyn.”
“Without his truck?”
She purses her lips, thinking. “He could’ve hitchhiked.”
“Hitchhike across the country? Chris?”
She laughs. “Maybe he wants to live on the wild side. It’s about time.”
I give her a mock glare. “He’s wild enough for me.”
Then, I feel this rush of sadness. I think about how you saw me at the mall, dancing with Michael, like a big weirdo. It was fun, you know? It was just goofy, stupid fun. You took it all wrong.
“What?” Steph says.
“I was at the mall yesterday with Michael. Before work? And then I saw Chris.” Each new bit of information drops out of my mouth, suspended in the air. I don’t know why I didn’t tell her. Why I didn’t call her. Especially after I saw you.
“You went shopping with Michael?” she says. “I didn’t know you guys were hanging out. Isn’t he, like, twenty-two?”
Michael and I don’t usually hang, except on the pool deck, so I get why she’s confused. “He’s like an older brother,” I say. “We were guarding on Thursday night, and I told him about Chris, and he thought I could use some retail therapy, so he said we should go after school on Friday.”
She frowns. “You could have asked me.”
I shrug. “It’s fine. Michael offered. He picked me up after school.”
“In his Mustang convertible?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think Chris followed you?”
“Oh god, I hope not. No, he wouldn’t. He’s not like that.”
She gives me a look like, really?
“He’s not,” I say.
/> “Does he know that Michael likes guys?”
“Yeah, I told him. One night, he was watching me guard, and after, he freaked out about how Michael was massaging my shoulders and flirting with me, and I told him, but it was like he didn’t believe me.”
“Chris was watching you guard?” She says it like it’s weird.
“He was waiting for me to get off.”
“I can’t blame him, really. Michael’s like a friggin model with those blue eyes. That body.” She smirks. “I’d do him.”
“You and every other girl in our town.”
In the convertible yesterday, Michael was playing with my hair. Maybe, if you saw the hair touching and the dancing, I can get why you’d be upset. “We were dancing. Maybe it didn’t look good,” I say. “I probably should have run after him, but it was insulting, you know?”
“Yep. He’s gotta mellow.” She rubs her eyes and the mascara streaks lengthen. Then she stares at the pile of laundry by her feet. Looks bummed.
“What?” I ask.
“I can’t believe you didn’t call me,” she says.
“You were at work.”
“Not till six.” That’s all she needs to say. The truth is I didn’t think of calling her. That’s how bad it’s gotten.
“Sorry,” I say.
She gives me a quick smile, but I see the hurt in her eyes. It’s something she and I don’t talk about, how we’ve been growing apart. She’s always with her restaurant people, and I’m always with you.
“Well, what do you think happened to him?”
I decide to tell her the truth about that night. “I’m worried some guys beat him up,” I say.
“Why would anyone beat him up?”
I hesitate. You didn’t want anyone to know, but that’s stupid. You told Steph you fell, and she teased you, said you’d joined a fight club, called you “Gandhi” with quote fingers, but she believed you, I could tell she did.
“Remember the black eye a couple weeks ago? He got jumped. Bunch of guys from the Heights, down by the Pitt.”
“No way! I friggin called it!” She slams her palm down on the sofa cushion. “What the hell, Jessie? I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”
A year ago, I never would have kept any secret from her. “I’m sorry. It’s just, we haven’t been hanging out alone since then.”
“We have to fix that.”
I nod. “I’m sorry. He didn’t want anyone to know. He said Tim and them would want to get revenge, and it would start up a whole thing. You know him. He’s such a pacifist.”
She’s mad. I can tell.
“Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not.” She smiles briefly. “I can’t be mad at you.”
“Steph, it’s just, I’m so worried. What if they threw him in by the rapids?”
“Holy shit, Jessie.” She lifts her hands palms up, telling me to stop. “Don’t be such a drama queen. Those rapids are dangerous. They could kill someone. Nobody swims there. They’d know that.”
“Maybe they grabbed him and thought he could handle it. Maybe it was a joke.” In my brain, a bunch of blond guys, like the one you pointed out to me in the bakery, are holding your arms and legs and flinging you into the water, laughing, loving it, yelling “Yeah!” The rapids. Sharp rocks. The tunnels under them. Those boys who drowned, that’s what happened to them. They got sucked under.
Oh god, I hope I’m not psychic.
“He’d fight,” Steph says. “If he was having trouble, they’d get help. They’re not going to let him die.”
“Why isn’t he answering his phone, then? He always answers.”
“I don’t know, maybe he got wasted somewhere and he passed out.”
“He doesn’t drink,” I remind her.
“He probably does now. You couldn’t blame the poor guy after this week.”
I stare at her, all wide-eyed, give her “the look.” I really love her like a sister, but man, sometimes she can be so thoughtless. After this week? What the hell does that mean? She never thinks before she says shit.
I didn’t tell you this, but right after I told her we were going out, she started dancing around the piles in my rec room, twerking, singing in a country voice, “My man is hung, and I like to ride him, ride him, ride him.” I got pissed at her and she told me to relax, she was just joking. I told her it wasn’t funny. I guess she thought she could say anything to me, but she can’t say shit that’s racist. That’s not okay. She never said anything like that again, but I’ve wondered if she thinks it and if other people do too. Guys stare at me more, for sure. They look at me differently than they used to, and I wonder what they’re thinking. Do you know that people say you only went out with me because you thought I’d put out? I know that’s not true. But why did you go out with me, anyway?
In my brain, you say, it’s obvious—because I’m beautiful. That is just what you’d say if you were here. Man, why you gotta be so sweet to me? Nobody ever said I was beautiful before.
“He’s going to show up, J,” Steph says. “Don’t worry. He’s fine. Maybe not fine-fine, but he’s not dead, for god’s sake.”
“Maybe I should call in sick and head down to the river to look for him.”
“In the woods? When there might be some assholes down there?”
“Maybe he’s waiting for me in our spot.”
“Then he should answer his friggin phone,” she says. “Go to work. If he wants to talk to you, he should man up.”
“If we hadn’t gotten into that fight, he’d be here right now.”
“You guys are always fighting,” she says. “Nothing’s happened before. He gets all needy, you yell at him, and then he goes off and pouts, and finally he comes back and begs for forgiveness. Stop worrying. He probably ran into some other friends and went to Seattle or something. Maybe he lost his phone. Wasn’t there a protest in Seattle last night?”
“I don’t know.”
“I saw something on the news.” She gives me another super-powered hug. “I’m going to sleep. Call me later, okay?”
After she stumbles out the door, I sit there for a while and think about what she said. We are not always fighting. Are we? I guess what she said is kind of true, at least lately. You never used to need me to be around all the time, just the last few months. It’s been kind of driving me crazy. But besides that, our relationship is damn near perfect.
Our first day was the most perfect day ever.
Except I lied.
I’m Not a Wild, Naked Girl
Ever since that first day in mid-October, you thought I was a wild girl who swam in the river naked all the time and did all kinds of other crazy things, and I let you think that because it’s sexy, but it’s not true. I’m not wild; I’m scared all the time, and even though I’d gone swimming in the river tons of times, I’d never taken my clothes off before.
This is the truth about how I ended up nearly naked.
It started out first thing in the morning. My house was a mess, like always, and I couldn’t find a stapler, and I got crazy mad at Mom because everything disappears in our house. I freaked right out, like a goddamn stapler is the biggest problem in the world. On a scale of 1 to 10, I was a 9.5. I called my mom a disgusting pig. Said I hated her. Her green eyes blinked like I’d slapped her. I will never forget that look on her face.
Of course, I felt bad, but I ran out of the house, jumped on my bike, and rode for a long time down by the river, wavering between feeling mad at my mom and then guilty for being a jerk, until finally, I found myself at this hidden, grassy spot by the riverbank that Steph and I discovered when we were kids.
I was dripping with sweat and knew the river would make me feel better. Only I didn’t have a suit and I didn’t want to ride home all wet T-shirt contest.
Then I had a brilliant idea—I should swim naked. It would be daring and fun and so not like my mother. The thought of it made me laugh. Mom would scream in terror if she knew; she’d say I was going to be raped. Maybe I s
hould text her a picture of myself naked next to the river with the message: This is how you live!
I peeled off my sweaty leopard-print T-shirt and then my black leggings and finally my bra and hung them on the bush. I was about to remove my pink underwear, but I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t scared of rape, exactly, more that someone would see me and take pictures and text them to everyone at school. So I left them on and took a giant leap into the river.
My body plunged underwater. The water was freezing but exhilarating. The current tugged at my feet. The weeds below waved at me. Beckoned. Bubbles flowed out of my mouth, downstream, sucked my anger with them. The water tasted of silt and some other faint chemical, probably pollution from the mill.
Above, through the bubbles in the water, the blue sky gleamed. Weeds tickled my feet. I kicked to the surface. My face burst out. I sucked in a breath of air. Then I put my face back under and floated on the water, kicking slowly to keep from drifting downriver.
My breasts floated to the sides like balloons. The icy water streamed under them. It felt so free, compared to wearing a bathing suit. You don’t know what a bother these puppies are.
I vowed: I’m never wearing a suit in the river ever again.
Then I started to count, just to see how long I could float without taking a breath. You know how much I love counting.
Probably at that same time, you spotted my bike by the trail and came into the clearing and saw me in the water, facedown, the sun shining on my white back and pink underwear. I looked dead, I see that now.
At the count of fifty-three, something sharp jabbed in my back. I screamed and jumped up, trying to stand on the slippery rocks, spitting out water.
You were standing above me, holding your pointy stick spear, waving it around. Your face was twisted with fear, unrecognizable, not the normal face I saw at school, the guy with all the friends, laughing, joking around, Mr. Jovial, Straight-A Student, Super Athlete, Mr. Popular.
I screamed as loudly as I could. You dropped the stick in the water and waved your arms in the air. “Stop!” you yelled. “It’s me, Chris, from school.”