I stand up, and we face each other in a ruined silence. The sympathy flowers sent by friends of my parents cast a shadow on the green spiky heads, and side by side, you start to see how different they are.
I step closer to Bugg, too tired and too hungover to sustain a fight. “Look, it was one bad night. I’m not going to make a habit of it. I don’t even like drinking. I’m Queen Frink.”
She nods slowly. “I guess every so often it’s good to do something by yourself that you don’t usually do alone. Healthy even, like masturbating…”
“Well, thanks for stopping by,” I say, interrupting her justification. In my hungover state I greatly overestimated how much food I needed and now I’m too full, for which there is only one cure.
“Aren’t you going to come to poetry? I responded to your poem and sassy photo saying that I’d pick you up, hence why I’m here ten minutes before class.” She points to the clock on the stove, which is mercilessly shuttling our lives along. “You said that was fine.”
“Right.” I rub my temples and wonder when the drunk blunders will stop. “I’m sorry, I need to call Sara’s parents first, so can I meet you there?” I do not like the look on her face, but even less tolerable than that is the way the hot itchiness is expanding past my body in a way that feels like I’m filling up the whole kitchen.
“Whatever you need to do. I’ll see you later.” Her voice is kind, but it’s starting to feel like what was once whole between us is becoming fractured.
I don’t end up making it to poetry class. After the toilet and I do business for the last time I dig through the trash on my computer until I find the file labeled “Don’t Eat.” At You-Know-Where they were pretty clear about not having files like this around, so I dutifully put them in the trash. The thing is I never got around to emptying the trash, and you know how computers are: They never let go of anything. It’s pretty harmless, really—lots of superskinny girls running and drinking green juice and doing other skinny-people activities. It’s like how an Olympic runner might have a picture of another Olympic runner up on her treadmill, you know, for inspiration sake. The folder also has tons of vegan propaganda with studies about how the standard American diet will kill you, if not via heart disease, then via the shame of looking less like a person and more like an osteoporosis-destined model. I haven’t looked at any of this stuff in a while, and it’s having the exact opposite effect that it used to. Instead of quelling my appetite, it’s making me ravenous.
Since my dad biked to work, I get in his car and hightail it to McDonald’s, where the golden arches embrace me like a long-lost lover. I order two small fries, two double cheeseburgers, an extra-large Oreo McFlurry, and an apple pie.
“Oh, and a Diet Coke please,” I add.
“Eleven twenty-six at the next window.”
I drive up, and as the acne-struck guy sporting a visor is about to hand me my loot, he goes, “Hey, didn’t we go to high school together? Yeah, you were, like, surgically attached to that blond girl who just died. You two won class friendship.”
I nod numbly.
“Whoa, I’m so sorry about your friend. Danny, right? It’s Chris. We had ceramics class together.”
“Oh, right.” I can feel my eyes burning. “Sorry, but I’m late to pick up these kids I’m babysitting. This is their food so if we could—” I wave the twenty at him and he hands me my cure. I drive away without waiting for the change. As I try to manage opening a mayonnaise packet with one hand, I make the executive decision to stop at the grocery store too. Chris has permanently ruined my McDonald’s for me, and the hot itchiness is spreading through my body faster than the plague.
Everyone else in the grocery store mills through the aisles and picks up products as if contemplating God. I, on the other hand, walk quickly under the watchful eye of a thousand fluorescent lightbulbs, weave through carts positioned like roadblocks, and avoid everything on the bottom shelf, which little kids are certain to have left a gummy residue on. Hershey’s sauce is a must, as well as Cheetos, a four-pack of Boston cream cupcakes, precooked bacon—wait, two things of precooked bacon—and a liter of Coke. I double back and get a cake from the bakery. It’s vanilla, on sale, and says HAPPY 10TH BIRTHDAY CHARLOTTE. I also get one of those platters of veggies with dip in the center just so that the cashier thinks all this food is for a party I’m throwing.
“I always do this thing last minute,” I tell the woman as she rings in my items in the express line. “The party starts in an hour, but what can you do?”
She smiles and nods. She doesn’t care. Nobody cares.
I get home excited and full of dread. When I get to my room, I realize that all of this would taste better with vodka. Wasn’t it Sara who told me that a little more alcohol is the best way to cure a hangover? Yes, I should absolutely honor Sara, so I go downstairs and get some liquor. Back in my room I dump out half the liter of Coke and fill it the rest of the way with alcohol. A few sips and I feel much better, so I place the cake on the desk and remove its plastic lid. Poor Charlotte. I hope she had a good birthday.
“Look away,” I tell the yet-to-be-named Venus flytrap that’s sitting on my windowsill next to the picture of Sara and me. I use the fork as a shovel and guide the icing flower into my mouth. The sugar takes over. Then I break into the cake part itself: spongy vanilla heaven. I’ve hardly swallowed before I’ve started the next bite. And then I add the bacon, wrapping it around the piece of cake so that the frosting squishes out of my little roll-up. I am pretty fucking happy so I put some music on, cheerful stuff that Sara would’ve liked to dance to. It’s loud and I have my food spread out around me and I’m happier than a pig in shit.
Except then the door opens, and I try to hide the cake and the Cheetos and the bacon and the Coke full of vodka. I try to disassociate myself from the crime scene, but it’s impossible and it’s worse than being walked in on while masturbating. It’s worse than being walked in on while masturbating to PBS Kids. It’s my greatest fear actualized and there’s nothing I can say, no way to cover my tracks. The proof is all over my fingers.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Bugg’s head emerges first and then her body. “Danny?”
“No one by that name lives here,” I say, running to my bedroom door and trying to close it.
“Danny…” She sounds exasperated.
“Beep… BEEP… BEEPBEEPBEEP.”
“DANNY,” she says, finally pushing the door open.
“You can’t be here.” I slump against the wood of the door and lick the frosting from my fingers. “You’re supposed to be at poetry class.”
“It just ended. I was worried because you never showed up.”
I watch her take in the components of the crime scene.
“Well, you have to get out,” I say rudely, hugging my knees into my chest and trying to shrink to something microscopic. Even though I’m being the worst host/sort-of girlfriend ever, she doesn’t leave.
“Danny, it’s okay.” She sits on the floor across from me.
“No, it’s not.” My voice breaks, and the next thing I know I’m crying like an idiot. “You weren’t supposed to see. No one can see this.”
She reaches into her tote bag and hands me a piece of scrap paper. “You have a bat in the cave,” she says, and I proceed to blow my nose into the most painful substitute for a tissue.
“Well, just so you know, a study was done very carefully that adhered to all the rules of the scientific method and it showed that bacon enhances the flavor of every food.” I sniffle. I’m so deep in my own world that the edges of the real one are fuzzy, no matter how many times I blink. “Every. Single. Food. So it’s not weird. None of this is weird.”
“I don’t think it’s weird.” Bugg’s voice is so tender I can’t bear to look at her, especially not when she’s surrounded by all my wrappers.
“But it’s gross.”
“I don’t think it’s gross.”
“You don’t have to lie about it.” I get up
and plop facedown on the bed, trying to blend in with the comforter. My mom has this book that says the whole secret of the universe is visualization: If you picture something long enough and hard enough, it comes true. So I stare intently at the pillowcase and imagine my body flickering itself invisible. Wouldn’t you know it, not a goddamn thing happens.
“Don’t sweat it. Everyone does weird shit when they’re alone. That’s why life should come with a Clear History button. Can I have a sip of this?” she asks, picking up the Coke.
“No!” I take it from her quickly. It’s not that she hasn’t had a drink in my presence before, but I never know when it could be a problem. Besides, I told her about fifty minutes ago that I wouldn’t drink. “It’s not just Coke.”
“Danny,” she starts, then grabs the bottle from me and sniffs it. It’s exactly the tone of voice my mom uses. “You’re drinking in the middle of the day? After blacking out last night? I know you’re going through a hard time and I can’t even begin to imagine what it’s like, but you can’t let yourself spiral out of control.”
This is a side of her I didn’t think could exist, because it chafes against the image I have of her, smoking a cigarette in her tutu and smuggling weed to high schoolers in tampon applicators and getting drunk a few months out of treatment when she’s “technically not supposed to be drinking.”
“What about your manifesto?” I demand. “What about fun and being carefree and not having all these rules?”
“There’s a distinct line between carefree and dangerous.”
“No, there’s not! You draw the line as you go and expect me to walk it with you.”
She gets up and the dark liquid sloshes against the sides of the bottle, but I think I feel it in my stomach. “Can I dump this out?” she asks.
“No, I’ll do it later. You should team up with my mom, though. She loves trying to impose order on my life.” I’m antsy with anger, and Bugg walks over to the flytrap and provokes it heartlessly, offering her finger then retracting it as soon as the plant bites.
“No need to, bitchy mcbitch bitch,” she says.
“Bitchy mcbitch bitch, really?” I point toward her. “Will you stop doing that? Plants have feelings too, you know.”
She puts her hands in her pockets and looks at me. Her hair is greasy and more limp today, or maybe I’ve just never noticed that she’s prone to dirty hair like the rest of us.
“I want to be Team Danny, your ride-or-die, go-to girl. But I can’t be around you if you’re drinking all the time. It’s bad for me and I can’t risk going down that road again. I can’t let you drag me down.”
When she says this I remember Veronica yelling at Bugg during the moon festival. “It’s exactly like Veronica said,” I say, shaking my head. “You’re the one who’s gotten me drunk the last couple of times, and now you’re trying to use one bad day against me, because it’s easier to blame me than to take responsibility for yourself. Well, I’m not falling for your hypocritical bullshit.”
“Do not bring Veronica into this.” Bugg’s voice is like ice. “It’s one thing to drink at a party or with another person, but you’re not drinking for fun, Danny, and when I drink alone I get into some shit, real shit—not just eating by myself in a room and maybe throwing it up.” She says it like we’re in a competition to see who has it worse. As she swipes a lick of frosting off the cake, I decide I hate her.
“Get out,” I say, but she’s already opening the door.
“Gladly.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Over the next few days my mom notices that something is up: She catches me hoarding snacks from the cupboard in my room, then doing the elliptical at odd hours of the night. Even though I tell her I’m swell, she mandates that I see Leslie every day instead of twice a week. To avoid talk of medication I try to be obedient and hold it together. The one caveat, and maybe it’s not a caveat at all, is I’m doing this for my mom and not for me. I lie to Leslie and tell her I’ve been doing all the normal things, like eating, when in fact it’s been thirty-eight hours since I’ve consumed anything besides a Tic Tac. I sprinkle our conversations with funny memories of Sara and do not let on that I am petrified because I don’t actually know what “dead” means. The one problem with trying to hold it together is that probably at some point you can’t hold on so tightly anymore.
A week after the fight with Bugg, my parents and I are having dinner. Well, they’re having dinner and I’m having lettuce, and they decide to bring up Harvard stuff, which is so insensitive of them. On top of everything else, do they think I want to discuss the precarious nature of my academic future right now?
“Your dean called to let us know you haven’t registered for classes yet,” my mom says. It marks the hundredth time this summer that I’ve regretted agreeing to the terms of my medical leave. Literally no one else’s parents are as overinvolved as mine are. Most parents don’t even know where their kids go to college, let alone have play dates with faculty members. “You only have a couple more days to make the cut for fall term.”
“Right. I’ll do it tomorrow,” I say, and dump balsamic vinegar on a piece of lettuce, hoping it will drown. “Don’t worry,” I add half-heartedly.
“It’s our job to worry about you,” my mom says, which makes me want to say, Well, if that’s true, why do you keep getting paychecks from these places claiming to be your employer? “It’s because we love you,” she adds. “And you need to eat something more than lettuce, Danny, please.”
“I told you I had a huge lunch. It’s not healthy to eat when I’m not hungry.” I pierce a stem and it makes a satisfying crunch.
“She’s right,” my dad pipes up, which makes me feel like a pile of poop for lying. “Hey, how about you and I spend some time together after dinner? I want to clear up some, uh, treatment, stuff with you.” With everything that happened with Sara I’d forgotten all about being mad at him until, oh, right now. In six seconds he goes from my favorite half of the parent team to the absolute worst.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I say flatly. I extended the olive branch of forgiveness weeks ago; what else could he have to say about it?
“We have to talk about Harvard,” my mom says, slamming her water glass onto the table. “If you’re not feeling up to registering for classes, you’re not going to last a minute on campus and you’re going to end up having to take more time off. Jim, tell her what Leslie said.” She doesn’t wait for my dad to say anything. Her snowball of anxiety is so tangible I can almost feel it hit my chest. “She thinks you’re concerningly depressed.”
I squint at her. I don’t know if that’s an actual diagnosis or if there’s a version of “depressed” that isn’t “concerning,” but my parents, as you can imagine, look concerned. My dad rubs the top of my mom’s wrist with his thumb and that seems to calm her down.
“Leslie has spiritual warts and not going back to Harvard isn’t an option,” I say miserably. Don’t they understand what a failure that’d make me? If I don’t go back now, I never will. “I can’t live in this weird limbo any longer. I won’t be able to stand it.” It’s so tense at the table that even the utensils are sweating. My parents look at each other and share one of those annoying looks that makes me think they telecommunicate 86 percent of the time.
“We thought you might say that, which is why we’d like you to be open to talking to a psychiatrist about medication. It’s another thing we were talking about with your therapist, and she thinks it could help.” My mom reaches for the salt as if this is a dandy time to adjust her pasta seasonings.
“I told you guys the medication made me feel weird. I don’t want to go on any medication. I don’t need medication. My best friend just died. I’m sad. I’ll live.”
I throw my napkin down and hate it for landing so softly, so imperceptibly on the table. Despite my compelling argument, my mom starts listing the medications the therapist apparently thinks I’m bat-shit-crazy enough to require. Why can’t everyone accept th
at I’m just another person aged eighteen to twenty-four who’s miserable as balls?
“So she’d have you treated for each disorder,” my mom says. “The obsessive-compulsive thoughts, the purging—”
I cut her off. “It seems to me,” I begin, “that as a technique, separation has become rather popular. Take the business of dairy.” My voice is calm and my whole body is still, but something about it feels dangerous, like being stuck in the eye of a hurricane. “You go to any grocery store and there are all these different types of milk: nonfat, whole, one percent, two percent, half and half, light cream, even nonfat cream, but all it does when we divide everything up is trick us into feeling more secure, like we have some agency the milk gods don’t.”
My parents are no longer nodding.
“We separate it, homogenize it, fix it to our liking, right? And the same goes for bulimia, anorexia, depression, anxiety, and what is it now? Eating Disorders Not Otherwise Specified? Fucking stop it. It’s compulsion wearing different colored riding hoods. It’s dis-ease, disease, destruction. I wish you’d leave me alone in mine.”
The sweat is all around my armpits. Somehow I’ve moved from my seat at the table to the windowsill, where I’m gripping the ledge and looking out at the stupid neighbor walking his stupid dog as if life is one long stroll.
“I probably had orthorexia or whatever before I got treated for bulimia and then what happened? They kept trying to fix me by fixing whatever label they’d slapped onto me, and it hasn’t worked yet. You know why? Because of the octopus.”
“What octopus?” my mom interrupts, as if an octopus is as unfeasible as a UFO.
“I heard once that dealing with craziness is like trying to make an octopus go to bed. Just when you think you’ve done it, another tentacle wakes up and pokes out of the covers: depression, overeating, mutant snacking. I live with her, this giant octopus with infinite arms. She wants to get me the hell out of human reality, which by the way, means being sad some of the time. You think she cares how I do it? She thinks you’re hilarious, you and all your therapies and treatments and bedtime stories. Guess what, she wins that way. She wants to remain in disguise so that she can entirely overtake my body, but it’s not going to happen because I’m onto you. I’m fucking onto you.” I swipe my dad’s keys from the counter in an angry rush before they can try to stop me. “If you’ll excuse me, I have some business to attend to.”
Love & Other Carnivorous Plants Page 16