What is Real

by Karen Rivers

  Then show the wheelchair again, the highly polished silver shine of it. Then show the city where Mom lives. The highly polished silver shine of that. (It should be raining in the city. Vancouver shines in the rain. At night. Slick black roads.) Show the slick black leather of the wheelchair’s seat.

  And…

  CUT.

  chapter 5

  september 6, this year.

  It is the first day of school, twelfth grade. It’s meant to be exciting, but it feels like the end of everything. Something has to come next, after, and I have nothing.

  No plans.

  No goals.

  No fucking dreams.

  Just this. This rainy, dreary, depressing day. And I have to get myself to the illustrious Main Street School in the center of town within the next fourteen minutes or else. Everything is far here, even though the town is small. Main Street School is miles away. The farms make the whole place spread out like butter on toast, and our place—Our Joe ’s place—drips right off near the edge. I’m going to have to pedal hard to make it, but I’m fast and fit so I probably can.

  Maybe.

  If I cared.

  The thing is that it’s raining and the “or else” doesn’t mean anything more than nothing. Even though school is better than home, I can’t make myself go.

  What is the point?

  For a split second, I am my dad on the grain elevator, and suddenly the sky is the ground and I’ve fallen. But I’m not going to kill myself, because that would be easy and obvious. And besides, I don’t want to die. I just want to be someone else.

  I can be someone else.

  I am someone else.

  I look in the mirror and try to see myself. The mirror is dirty. I look fine. I am not sick. I do not need to be at home. Gary is already here, walking heavily around the living room, boots on. He never takes them off, leaves mud everywhere. It pisses me off, the soles of his boots leaving diamonds of shit all over the wood floors.

  But he’s here.

  So, fine.

  Kids who are fine go to school. They do normal shit. They are normal and they are fine. But I do not believe that I am fine. I know I am not. This is not right.

  I am not right.

  I look like I always look—hair, eyes, cheeks, nose, lips, teeth, idiotic glasses that remind me of who I am not and never will be.

  I practice smiling like a normal person. Like someone who has something to smile about. I show all my teeth, which are straight and even and white, and I try to make my eyes move accordingly.

  Fail.

  If I had fangs, I’d be a vampire, trying to look human and not succeeding, fooling no one, dead by the end of the first scene.

  I am an asshole in a bright blue T-shirt advertising a band that I’ve never heard play. My eyes are red and flat and have too many veins and too-small pupils. The dust on the mirror is thick and gray. I use my finger to smear a smiley face into it and successfully fight the urge to punch it with my fist just to feel something.

  I have to simmer down. I can’t always be on a low boil. But I am.

  Something huge is missing but it’s not obvious what it is, unless it’s just whatever switch is needed to change from hot-headed to calm and cool.

  I kick the dresser, probably breaking my toe. The mirror shakes but doesn’t break.

  I touch my hair, my lips, my skin. I have a zit on my cheek that hurts, just below the skin, waiting to be ugly. I need to shave. When I rub my stubble, I feel old. How did I get so old?

  I touch my eyebrows. My forehead. The skin of my eyelids. I clean my glasses. I stare hard at the stretched hole in my ear and take out the stretcher and replace it with an ammonite plug, which both hurts and doesn’t. It’s disgusting and it’s not. I like the pulling feeling of my flesh as the cold stone slides in.

  I used to think that ammonites were dinosaur snails. But when I was a kid, I would never have had a hole stretched so wide in my earlobe that I could jab one in there for decoration.

  When I was a kid…

  I am a fucking kid. Aren’t I?

  Old people start to lose things, right? Their memory. Brain cells. Spinal fluid.

  I am losing things, but not those particular things. I’m shedding pieces of me like someone with some kind of invisible leprosy.

  One of the first things I lost was “funny.” Feral took that with him on March 16 last year when he stuck that needle into his arm and then looked up at me, eyes sleepy, and smiled and said, “Ahhh.” Like he had never been so relieved in his life. And just like that, I lost him forever.

  My brother.

  Me.

  Gone.

  I will never be funny again.

  My dad took a bunch of me when he decided to jump. When he thought about it. When he didn’t say goodbye. When he drove himself to the elevator. When he climbed to the top.

  I think he was doing it to me. He was probably hoping for “sad” or “sorry,” but I stopped caring about anything on March 16, so it was his bad luck that by June 30, I no longer gave enough of a shit to be sad.

  I am losing my ability to tell what is real from what I’ve made up. That’s the scariest one. Cue the crazy-guy music. I haven’t told anyone. Who would I tell? Dad?

  As if.

  I should tell Tanis. I could tell Tanis. I won’t tell Tanis. She wouldn’t get it. Or, worse, she would. I don’t want her to. Tanis is smarter than me. She is smarter than everyone. She is smart enough to not be my girlfriend. And I need her so bad that I can’t tell her the truth or anything. I can just hold on tight to her body and tell her all the things she wants to hear just to make her stay right there, holding me up without knowing she’s holding me up. And I swear to god I would die without her and I don’t even love her or really even know her. And I don’t want to, it’s like that.

  Enough, I say to myself. Stop. It’s enough.

  I’m late. I need to hurry. My heart is racing like it’s already rushing. But I sit down on the edge of my bed. My sheets stink because I never bother to wash them. My room is dark because opening the curtains is mostly too much trouble and I don’t want to see the goddamn corn. So now it’s like the room itself has accumulated extra darkness, storing it in the corners and under the bed.

  There are a bunch of dishes on the floor. There is something that looks a lot like mouse shit in the shadows.

  I open my laptop because I can’t help it. There are stickers all over it advertising brands of skis. I can’t remember why I stuck them there or which brand I liked best or really what it felt like to ski. Most of the stickers are half worn off, ripped. Wrecked. Like me.

  I can’t stop myself from doing this, from opening it, even though there is so much here I should delete. I shouldn’t have a laptop anymore. I don’t use it for anything except this. I don’t check my mail or Facebook or any other fucking thing. I don’t look at YouTube or play games or update my goddamn status. Instead, I open my video library, but I never watch the films. Not anymore. It’s enough to see the dates. The tiny squares. The things I could watch if I wanted to.

  Which I don’t.

  I have lots of footage. Mostly of me and Feral, being us. The lame band we cobbled together that “everyone” said would probably make it big. How we sort of believed it. You can see it when we’re playing, our faces taking it a little too seriously, considering it sounded like shit.

  The laughing, the amount of laughing, you’d think that life was just the most hilarious thing. You’d think that it was a TV show and everyone was good-looking and happy. And eventually you’d change the channel because all that happiness could get boring and you might not realize, wait, there is more going on here. Things are about to get ugly.

  Look, my so-called talk show:

  Me: Tell me what you’re going to do with your life, young man.

  Feral: I’m going to…STAR IN IT. (Canned laughter and applause; Feral runs around the stage doing a victory lap.)

  Me: And what will that get you?

&n
bsp; Feral: Laid! (More canned laughter.)

  The real-life footage:

  School neckties flapping in the wind in the Saab convertible Feral got for his sixteenth. My girlfriend, Glass, her hair pale purple and silky, looking like one of the commercials she ’d starred in, spitting the wind-whipped hair out of her mouth, fake lips sticky with fruit-smelling gloss. Laughing eyes.

  Then we ’re at the mountain, in the lodge. The white glare of the snow outside. All that money made us think we were adults. All that money made people treat us like adults. Fucking idiots. What they let us get away with.

  We were sixteen. It was spring. The last snow before the ski season ended. The mountain was white but the sky was blue.

  I am learning to hate blue sky.

  The fire was orange. We all had red, sunburned cheeks. The music was loud and livid. People were dancing and making out. There was the flash of someone’s tits. There was a needle in Feral’s arm.

  It was my birthday. March 16.

  The song that was playing. What was it?

  There was the way I kept filming. What kind of asshole keeps filming?

  “You,” I say to myself, sitting on the edge of my disgusting bed, late for school. The sheets are wet from my sweat. “You are the asshole,” I say.

  The way he died.

  What do you do with video footage of your favorite person, your fucking brother, doing that?

  So yeah.

  I hold up a pretend camera on my shoulder. I point it at the mirror.

  “Take a good look at yourself, Dex Pratt,” I say out loud. “What you’re missing might be your soul.”

  That sounds funny and also not. Funny enough that you laugh. But it comes out like a kid’s hiccuping sob.

  You are silent. You stare at yourself.

  You know the truth:

  You left yourself in Vancouver in the garbage can in the airport, where you chucked the bag containing your camera— the fucking amazing camera that you loved—on your way back to Nowhere, BC, to look after your dad, fresh out of rehab and ready to live on his own. “His own” meaning “with you.” Like doing that kind of penance was going to save you.

  Almost ten months ago, exactly.

  Are you saved yet?

  Taking care of Dad is a whole world outside of what you thought you’d ever do, ever be asked to do. Yes, you offered, but you thought someone would stop you. Didn’t you?

  You can’t even take care of yourself.

  The airport smelled like a hospital.

  You pretend not to be angry but you can’t help it. How can you help it? Or maybe you are pretending to be angry. It’s hard to tell anymore.

  Think of something funny, quick.

  But nothing is funny.

  “Stop it,” I say to myself, dropping my pretend camera. “Shut up. Shut your fucking brain up. You will go to school. You will play basketball. You will be normal.”

  But what else?

  You will run a grow-op in the basement of your rented house.

  Your dad will sell drugs through an “organization.”

  You will look in the mirror every fucking morning and try to remember who you are.

  Now go, get on your bike and go to school. You command yourself to go. “Get on your bike and go to school. NOW.”

  I go.

  My bike is light. It weighs nothing. It skims through the puddles, and the spray of water and shit goes up my back. Mud crusts over the concert dates on my shirt. I ride faster and faster, the bike gripping and then slipping in the mud, and I want to fall but I don’t. I take the shortcut through Maxim’s land, a dirt tractor road ripped deeply with tread marks, and my bike looks like it’s been dipped in chocolate. The mud sprays thick and far, and the ruts are so deep they hammer me up and down, like riding down stairs. I go faster and faster until it feels like I’m flying.

  I’m cold and soaked with sweat, but by the time I get to school, I feel almost like myself again. Or so I say to myself.

  I am the director.

  I am the writer.

  I am the actor.

  It’s funny though—the one thing I never wanted to do was act.

  chapter 6

  september 6, still.

  I walk into the school twenty-two minutes late, out of breath, heart pounding, stinking. The halls are empty, which is the way I like it. For some reason, crowds make me nervous. They make me think of maggots. Fat white worms swarming over something dead. I never used to think like this and now I can’t stop.

  Things like the maggots. Why am I thinking about maggots?

  I don’t even hate maggots. I like to know they are there, under the dirt.

  Waiting.

  Oh, fuck you, Dex.

  I think about maggots, and then I wish there was a crowd. At least Tanis. Or T-dot. T-dot was my best friend when we were kids. I went to Vancouver. He stayed here.

  I changed.

  He stayed the same.

  The thing is that he wouldn’t understand about the maggots.

  Tanis might. But Tanis would have been on time for class. Tanis is a girl who is on time for things.

  The emptiness in the hallway is freaking me out. My breath is loud and scratchy, and my mouth is as dry as sandpaper. I stop at the fountain and drink gum-flavored water until I’m sputtering. I come up coughing.

  I go to the office to grab my schedule from the wooden tray on the front desk labeled SCHEDULES. Someone’s turned the heat up too high in here and my glasses steam up and I’m already overheated and sweat runs into my eyes. I practice breathing normally. The air is muddy and too thick. I am probably gasping, so it’s lucky there is no one there. I concentrate on the paper.

  The paper is pale pink with my name at the top, handwritten. Dex Pratt! Exclamation point! The whole schedule is peppered with exclamation points. Is it supposed to make it more fun to go to Math! than just math?

  I flick the paper with my fingers and there is a thwack sound in the silence of the room. The thwack brings me back to myself and I am okay. It’s like I just slipped out of the frame for a minute but now I’m back. I’m okay. There is a clock ticking. The empty sound of people’s absence.

  “Hey, Stacey,” I say. Her chair is empty, at a half-spin, like it just propelled her out the door. I fold the paper into a plane. You have to check in with Stacey when you’re late or else risk the wrath of Mr. V. I know the drill. I’ve always been late. Before. Then. Now.

  I’ve never really given a fuck, to be honest.

  “STACEY,” I say, louder.

  Someone clears her throat and I turn around. And she is there. Her.

  Not Stacey.

  My girl. My imaginary girl.

  The Girl.

  The room twists and heaves.

  I say something. It’s probably, “No way.” Then I choke on nothing, really choke, an I-need-a-Heimlich kind of choke. For a second I totally can’t breathe. The air clusters in my throat like clay and hardens. I gasp. No air.

  Panic.

  Then my lungs right themselves.

  The pink paper in my hand is shaking. Dex Pratt! Math!

  The girl has blond hair, wavy, like she’s just been surfing. Skin so white it looks like porcelain. Same glasses as me. The girl who can’t possibly even exist smiles at me, and even her teeth are exactly as I had pictured.

  I nod at this imaginary girl and say, “Hey.” Just to see if my voice is working or if this is one of those dreams where you can’t speak, can’t move, eventually die at the hands of an ax murderer or a doll with a chainsaw.

  My voice sounds normal. I move my legs. Also normal. I guess I’m crazy then. I don’t know what to do with that. I jump up on the balls of my feet and look behind me. Where is Stacey?

  “You got what you need there, Dex?” Stacey says. I didn’t see her come in. She’s looking at me like she ’d like to eat me, and pounces into her chair, which squeaks in protest. Stacey is an eyeful. Not in a good way. In a leopard-print-cardigan-over-leggings way. She lick
s her lips, which are a shade of bluish metallic pink that shouldn’t exist. Her tongue makes me think of sea cucumbers. “You’re muddy!” she says, like this is a good thing.

  “Got it. Thanks much,” I say, just as she’s saying, “You’re late, Dexter Pratt.”

  The hair on the back of my neck is prickling. I pretend it isn’t. I scratch my neck hard with my nails. I can’t say to Stacey, “Hey, so I’m hallucinating the girl in that green chair in the corner and I’m completely freaking out here.” My brain sends me a random electrical jolt that shoots down my spine. Which is fine; I understand that, at least. It’s a symptom of coming off the antidepressants that I’ve been taking for a while. My doctor calls it a brainstorm.

  I like how that sounds.

  “Just put that I had to help my dad,” I tell Stacey, for the record. I shrug. “Put that down for every day, probably.”

  “Sure, sweetie,” she says. Her eyes never once drift over to the girl in the corner.

  So she is a hallucination.

  A side effect.

  She couldn’t be there.

  She isn’t there.

  That’s okay then. I take a deep breath in and hold it, like toking an imaginary fattie. Hold your breath. There. It’s all good. It’s fine.

  Safe.

  Stacey slowly pulls out the ledger to write my excuse down. She writes with her left hand in a fist, like a kindergartner struggling with chalk. While she writes, she says, “How is your dad?” Her pen makes a horrible scratching noise on the paper. The hairs on my arms stand up.

  I shrug and go, “Same old.”

  She smiles and says, “He’s such a survivor.” There’s lipstick on her teeth. I can picture her applying that ugly lipstick in the rearview mirror of her car, and it makes me fucking sad, that’s what it does. I know she’s faking herself too. She’s just a character. We’re all just characters.

  I swallow hard. “Yeah,” I say. “I guess.”

  “Oh, he is,” she says. “He really is.”

  I shrug because is it supposed to be heroic when you survive a jump you made by choice? I mean, come on. Give me a break. Maybe if you half died to cure cancer, people should be nice about it. But a failed suicide attempt doesn’t warrant applause.