The Adults

by Alison Espach

  “Page fifty-four, problems one through ten,” I told her.

  “Thanks,” she said, and walked away.

  And I began to understand the truth: I would always be alone like this. I had understood the idea in theory, and noticed the absence of siblings at family functions, but when the neighborhood quieted down after the suicide, and the rain fell hard and washed away my drawn family, I felt truly alone for the first time in my life. “Can you guys believe this? Dad is leaving. I can’t believe this,” I said aloud to the blurred stick figures.

  10

  We were cutting open fetal pigs in biology when the alarms went off. Two days before Christmas break and the school went into lockdown. Lockdown meant that wherever you were, you had to close the door, lock it, and not leave until Dr. Killigan came onto the loudspeaker saying you could. It was our first real lockdown and it was the most thrilling thing that had happened all semester, even though we had practice ones before and I had joked to Janice how absurd it was to practice being locked in a room. “How hard is it? You just sit there. Being locked in.”

  “Where’s Ms. Nailer?” Martha asked.

  Ms. Nailer was in the bathroom when the alarms went off. She told us she was taking this new medicine for her skin condition that made her pee all the time.

  “I’m right here, class!” Leroy Hannah said in a high-pitched voice that resembled Mother Goose’s more than Ms. Nailer’s. He was in the front of the room, wearing Ms. Nailer’s Dior glasses and her green cardigan.

  We closed the door, turned the lock.

  “Why is this happening?” Martha asked.

  “Must be a homo in the building,” Richard said.

  “Don’t be so gay, Richard.”

  “It’s sooo hot in here.”

  “I know. Don’t touch me.”

  “Rabbits are weird,” Richard said, tapping on the wired cage. “How they poop little pellets.”

  “Yeah but, I mean, so do we,” I said, standing next to him.

  “No we don’t,” Richard said. “We poop out long logs.”

  “Yes, I understand that,” I said, rolling my eyes. “But I’m sure to the rabbits, their little pellets look like long logs.”

  “I wish we could open a window,” Brittany said.

  “I wish I could take off my pants,” Annie the Bird or Bear said.

  “Should we be scared or something?”

  “According to Satan.”

  Someone turned off the lights.

  “Not funny.”

  “Anyone wanna bone?”

  When the lights came back on, Leroy Hannah was in the front of the class, pretending to sip coffee out of a beaker. Richard was next to him, announcing to everybody that he was going to give his fetal pig a rhinoplasty. “A nose job,” he clarified.

  “Oh, good!” Leroy shouted. “Class, listen up! We are going to make the pig’s nose proportional to the pig’s face!”

  Richard picked up a ruler. “Annie!” he shouted. “Come here!’

  The class laughed. Annie the Bird or Bear glared at him. “Real fucking funny, dickhead,” she said.

  “Annie,” Leroy said, still mimicking Ms. Nailer, “your nose is nearly four inches long. Have you ever considered reconstructive surgery?”

  We waited for Annie the Bird or Bear to stand up and slug Leroy across the face. But she didn’t.

  “Yes,” she said.

  She lay down on one of the empty lab tables.

  “So give me a fucking nose job already!” she shouted.

  “Uhhh,” Richard said, “technically, it’s a rhinoplasty.”

  “Don’t be a bitch, Richard,” Annie the Bird or Bear said. “Just do it.”

  “You can’t give ABOB a nose job!” Martha screamed.

  “I hate my nose,” Annie the Bird or Bear said. “But my parents are poor so I can’t do anything about it. I can’t live the rest of my life like this. So just do it, you pansy ass.”

  Richard didn’t move. He looked at me for some reason. He stared. I shook my head. Annie the Bird or Bear sat up and took him by the throat. “Do it, fuck face. Is your father a world-class surgeon or is he not?”

  He cleared his throat, straightened out his back, like he was remembering who he was. “Jesus, woman,” he said. “All right, all right.”

  The class buzzed.

  “Scalpel.”

  The fetal pigs lay still all around us.

  “First,” Richard said, “since you are alive, we’ll need to sterilize the blade. Anyone remember how to use the Bunsen burners?”

  Human Fart did. Human Fart had been Ernest Bingley’s new nickname since he farted the previous week doing sit-ups in gym. When I heard it, I was saddened and relieved all at the same time. It had to happen to someone eventually, and I was glad it wasn’t me, but poor Ernest, even though Ernest would eventually get laid on prom night, go to Columbia, and have a son who invented an electric bike that powered itself off its own energy, but still.

  “You can’t bring me into this when you get in trouble,” Human Fart said. “I’m going to be a doctor. I don’t need this shit on my résumé.”

  Richard told him to put this shit on his résumé. “This is the shit of résumés,” Richard said.

  But Human Fart made them sign a contract. Leroy drafted it, wrote down Earnest did not light the flame on the contract.

  “It’s E-R-N-E-S-T,” Human Fart said, annoyed.

  He lit the flame.

  “Smells like gas.”

  “Like ass.”

  “What if Ms. Nailer comes back?”

  “What if Annie dies?”

  “Nobody is going to die,” Richard said, holding the blade over the flame. “I’ve done this a million times.”

  “Now,” Annie the Bird or Bear said. “I want you to shave off the bump. I want a Grecian nose. I want a one-hundred-degree angle.”

  Annie lay back again, her feet hanging off the end of the table. Richard put on the white lab coat Ms. Nailer never wore. Girls tee-heed from behind. Richard grabbed two rulers and took measurements of her face. We couldn’t even speak. Someone yelled at Martha for breathing too loud. I stood in disbelief. This whole time, I had truly believed Annie the Bird or Bear was okay with who she was, as though she had somehow accepted her position in life and was, in that way, above everyone else. But here she was, lying on a table ready to be split. Of course she wanted a Grecian nose. We all did.

  Richard began. He hummed while marking her with a purple marker, circling the bump on her nose. He pulled out a flask from his pocket, and everybody gasped, as though he had pulled out a rabbit holding a loaded gun.

  “Drink this,” he said to her.

  “You’ve had that this whole time?” one of the Other Girls asked.

  Annie the Bird or Bear opened the cap and sniffed like it was poison.

  “The Bird’s scared of a little whiskey?” Richard taunted.

  “Hell no, I’m not scared,” Annie the Bird or Bear said. “Just making sure it’s real liquor.”

  She threw her head back and gulped. She smacked her lips. “Good stuff.”

  People passed the flask around. At some point, I took a sip.

  “Okay,” Richard said. “Leroy. I need you to hold ABOB’s head against the table. She’s going to move when we break her nose.”

  Leroy stood behind her.

  “Break my nose?” she cried. Her long red hair was hanging off the sides like a tablecloth.

  “Reset it,” Richard clarified.

  “No,” she said. “Just shave the top off. That’s all.”

  “That’s not how it works,” Richard said. “Trust me, I know what I’m doing. Maybe a book?”

  One of his friends got his Spanish book with ¡Bienvenidos! on the cover and Annie the Bird or Bear looked scared for the first time since I had met her. “Uhhhhh,” she said, “nobody is breaking my nose.”

  “What’d you think was going to happen?” Richard asked. “That it wasn’t going to hurt? I’m changing
your entire face.”

  “You can’t just throw a book in my face! This is supposed to be precise, do it surgically!”

  Annie the Bird or Bear went to sit up, but Leroy had his hands on her head and held her to the table. “Don’t move,” Richard said, holding the book above his head, and a sudden panic striped my heart. “Don’t you move!”

  Human Fart’s hand was on the door. “Guys, I hear Ms. Nailer coming down the hall. I’m going to open the door.”

  “You open that door I’ll kill you myself!” Richard shouted, his face red, the book high in the air.

  “Get away from me!” Annie shouted.

  “I’m opening the door.”

  “You can’t open the door!” Martha shouted. “We’re in a lockdown! That could be a school shooter on the loose. We’ll all get shot. And die.”

  “I’m opening the door!”

  Richard slammed the ¡Bienvenidos! book into Annie the Bird or Bear’s face and she cried out exactly as we imagined she would, she squawked and squealed and howled. The moan was loud and never-ending, like a wolf watching the moon explode in the middle of the night, the blood we never knew she had instantly dripping off the sides of her face. “See, I told you she has rabies,” one of the Other Girls whispered behind me.

  Annie wildly kicked at Richard and Leroy and we were all searching for something to do, some way to help her without moving. Leroy held her down, and Richard approached her with the scalpel. “Now,” he said. “We can shave the bump off.” And still, nobody was doing anything, not even me, who was standing there, me, who was always just standing there watching with my mouth open wide.

  Richard pressed the knife against her skin.

  Afterward, in Dr. Killigan’s office, everybody agreed:

  Annie’s blood was so red, it looked just like a girl’s.

  Annie’s blood was so red, it was like she was alive.

  She was just a girl with her wrists pinned; she was a girl with hair and eyes and a mouth and in the end, I couldn’t bear it. I grabbed the Bunsen burner that was still lit on the table. I waved it in front of Richard and shouted, “Richard, stop it!” He ignored me. So I put the flame to his arm, and the flame caught on his shirt. He looked at me with wild surprise, and then, in the time it took for a single flame to turn into a fire on his chest, he shouted, “Fuck, you stupid cunt!” He grabbed his shirt by the collar and tried to rip it off. He couldn’t. He ran to the emergency shower and someone pulled the cord. The smoke rose off his body toward the ceiling, and everybody was so distracted, Annie sprang free, her blood preceding her out the door, where Ms. Nailer was standing, suddenly, tucking her shirt into her white pants.

  “What the hell has happened?” she asked.

  Nobody spoke. Then, from the back, there was a voice.

  “Human Fart lit the flame.”

  The Other Girls couldn’t figure out why I lit Richard on fire. They kept saying, “But he’s an honors student.”

  When my mother got the call from Dr. Killigan, she kept asking, “What?” and then, “What?” My father asked me if this was about what happened in October. “Do we need to be worried about you, Emily?” and I yelled at him from behind my bedroom door: “I don’t know! Probably!”

  My mother told me I had to see Ron the psychiatrist. When I refused, she looked at my father, who said, “We’ll all go, as a family.” It almost sounded pleasant. I agreed.

  Mrs. Trenton threatened to put me in jail for the rest of my life. She tried to hold a town meeting about it, until Dr. Killigan threatened to sue the Trentons since Annie’s parents were suing the school. Dr. Trenton was so afraid of what this negative attention would do for his reputation in the medical community, he urged his wife to calm down. Let it be. Kids will be kids.

  I took a sigh of relief, a verbal slap on the wrist. Dr. Killigan expressed extreme disappointment in me, and then I was sent to lunch. Punishment enough, I thought.

  At lunch, everything that happened during the lockdown came out slowly, like bedbugs crawling to a warm body at night:

  Richard Trenton cut off ABOB’s nose.

  Emily Vidal lit Richard on fire.

  A human fart lit the flame? Is that at all related to the group fingering in the girls’ bathroom?

  “I don’t even know what that is supposed to mean,” Janice said to me, biting down on her carrot.

  She explained what really happened during the lockdown: Principal Killigan got a call saying someone had a gun. “But it turns out,” she said, “just one of the special ed kids. He saw a security officer with a gun in his belt, called the main office, and said he saw someone in the building with a gun.”

  I stared at her blankly.

  “I know,” Janice said. “I didn’t know retards took everything so literally either.”

  11

  All I remember about Ron the psychiatrist was that we went right before my father left us for good, and his house was decorated with silver New Year’s streamers, and we sat down underneath them on the couch in his living room. A long peacock feather bursting out of a vase tickled my ear, African masks lined the fireplace, and there were books on everything from Christ to Andy Warhol to why men hate whores to Italian cooking. There was an entire wall made of glass, purple velvet couches flat as pancakes, a television emitting a virtual fire, lights that weren’t supposed to look like lights but rather boxes, and a painting of an Asian woman handing a white woman a dildo over the fireplace, and on the way home, my father drove faster than the speed limit and got angry at stop signs. “What kind of lunatic hangs pictures of Asian women holding dildos?” he asked.

  My mother swatted my father and mouthed “dildos” accusingly.

  “And that book on his bookshelf,” I said. “Why Men Hate Whores. Did you guys get a load of that?”

  “He must not have any children,” my father said.

  “Three,” my mother said. “I saw a photo.”

  “Well I’m not going back there,” my father said. “I don’t trust a man who decorates his house with genitalia.”

  “I thought he was nice,” my mother said.

  On New Year’s Eve, we took down our tree together for the last time like it was a celebration. We spent the night recognizing the origins of ornaments—Nana, Jane’s Boutique, Russia—and the ends of ourselves.

  “You know,” my father said, sprinkling nutmeg on his brandy Alexander, “if you sniff too much nutmeg, you could die.”

  “You can die from anything, really,” my mother said. “You can die from eating too many apricots.”

  They were officially divorced. Relief jingled in the air.

  “Too much vitamin A,” my father said. “Makes sense.”

  “How many apricots?” I said, afraid that the World’s Most Pathetic Death could happen to me.

  “Some inhuman amount,” my mother said.

  “Blowfish,” my father said. “Now, they have poison sacks. Tons of people die every year in Asia from eating blowfish.”

  “Or get paralyzed!” I added. “They’re called fugu zombies. Sometimes, people think they’re dead, and they get buried alive.”

  Nobody even flinched. We were taking comfort in the ways death could find us, beating it to the punch.

  When the clock struck twelve, my father put down his brandy Alexander. We clanked my mother’s new pans together, jumped up and down. My mother stared at the television, which was turning into virtual confetti, and put her hand over her mouth, as though she understood exactly what would be lost if she cried out, “Do you two know how much those pans cost?” She would have been accusing us of not understanding the value of things. So she was quiet, even though we all felt something drain out of us during the celebration. And then the phone rang.

  “What?” my father shouted into the phone.

  Mrs. Resnick was in labor. “This is two months too soon,” my father said. He was worried, but I couldn’t tell what exactly about. He had the same look on his face when the dishwasher leaked water all o
ver the floor. My father kissed me on the forehead. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said, grabbing his coat. I sipped on my apple cider and thought that if I didn’t know my family at all, it would have been nice to see my father at the coat rack and my mother sad to see him go.

  I woke at six in the morning to a cold frost covering our lawn and my father making a loud noise in the living room. He was sitting on the couch, with his hands on his knees. My father’s face was always wrinkled, regardless of whether he was laughing or crying, and on a morning like this, it was hard to tell what he was doing.

  I did not touch him or ask him any questions. I just stood at the window.

  “Things will be different now,” my father said, wiping his tears.

  “Things have been different for a long time now,” I said.

  I put my nose to the window and everything outside looked so vacant, even the icicles, Ms. Nailer had told us once, were made primarily of nothing. The weather was the circulation of invisible forces, colliding over and over and over again, throwing dead leaves against the sides of our house like a stoning.

  “I love you, Emily,” my father said. “That’s one thing that won’t ever change.”

  My mother walked into the room with a bag of soaps, and my father suddenly clammed up and said, “Well I don’t suppose anyone cares, but it’s a girl.”

  My mother put the soaps down on the table.