I walked to an abandoned house at the end of our street. The owners, a couple of shotgun-toting hippies, had left after Hurricane Andrew and never came back.
I stared at the empty house. When I shook the door, it didn’t budge. Neither did the windows, still boarded shut against hurricanes. I tried the other side. A sheet of plywood dangled from a broken window. I pushed it back and scrambled inside.
I stepped down, my flip-flops crunching invisible things. Everything was left eerily in place, just before they fled the hurricane.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor, I opened my backpack and pulled out the prescription. I took out a pink pill. I studied the word, “Paxil,” stamped on one side. “Pax,” a word from a dead language. It meant peace. At that moment, I needed all the peace I could get. I washed it down with a can of warm soda from my backpack and waited for something to happen. Maybe I would lose whatever made me different from everyone else. I couldn’t decide if I liked the idea.
I hid the pills under a sofa cushion, then climbed out the broken window.
The counting didn’t stop. I counted windows in my bedroom, chairs at the dining-room table, lights in the bathroom. The list went on and on. I would be in the middle of counting something and realize, Oh, I’m counting again.
Mama was counting too. She counted how much time I spent in the bathtub. If I didn’t finish in fifteen minutes, she would knock on the door.
“You’re just trying to get attention,” she would say. As if wanting her attention was a bad thing.
All she did was smoke cigarettes and watch the Weather Channel like a robot. She’d yell at me, then melt whenever she picked up the phone and asked people to buy insurance.
If I talked about trying medication, she would fly into a rage.
“Everybody has bad days. My life isn’t fun either. You never think about anyone but yourself.” This is what Mama would say.
I needed someone to talk to. So I called Dad at work. Although he still lived in Florida, it felt like he existed in another dimension. He had even started dating. I hadn’t met her yet. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it.
Dad’s voice floated out of the receiver.
“Hello, grasshopper,” he said.
“Hey, are you busy?”
I could hear voices in the background, cabinets slamming.
“It’s a little hectic around here. Hold on.”
I waited. When he came back, I cleared my throat. “I haven’t been feeling well lately.”
Dad’s volume rose a notch. “What’s wrong? Are you sick?”
“My doctor wants me to take this medicine. And I’m afraid it will make me different.”
“What do you mean ‘different’? What kind of medicine?”
I shrugged. There were so many kinds of antidepressants and, for a second, I had forgotten its name.
“Have you spoken to your mother about this?”
“Yeah. She doesn’t want to pay for it.”
A low blow. But I had to do something.
“Put her on the phone,” he said.
“She’s not around right now.”
“Frances, this really isn’t a good time. I’ve got a major deadline.”
“Well, bon chance.”
“What?”
“That’s French for good luck.”
“Listen,” he said. “I’m here if you need to talk. We’ll go out for dinner soon with Yara, okay? Call me at home.”
Yara was Dad’s new girlfriend. How could I talk with her around?
Somewhere outside, a plane cruised seven miles above the earth. The lawnmower man was making parallelograms out of the grass. I realized I had nothing more to say.
Awake Still
For weeks, I’d been riding back and forth to the empty house, taking Paxil before bed. Dr. Calaban thought I could sleep off any side effects—the headaches and nausea. Instead, I didn’t sleep at all. I heard noises that weren’t real, like electronic doorbells. When I moved my head, their rhythm picked up speed.
On Saturday, I hid under the covers, but Mama kept banging on my door, saying we should talk. I thought she must have figured out about the Paxil. But how could she know unless the pharmacy called or something? So I rehearsed this speech about how I was almost fifteen and I could make my own decisions.
I needed to do something with my room. On the wall was a patch-eyed pirate’s head carved from a coconut. I could feel it gawking at me. I flopped on my back and stared at the ceiling fan, whirling and churning above like a blender. I used to pin a million things up in my room back in Vermont. Not posters of stupid bands or supermodels. More like dried maple leaves I found while taking a walk. Or this amazing skeleton of a squirrel. I even made a throne of Popsicle sticks for him. Mama called it disgusting. I called it art.
Here, the concrete ruined all attempts at decorating. Besides, Mama wouldn’t let me glue stuff on the walls. So I had to think of something new. I tried doodling in my sketchpad, but nothing came out right. I hadn’t drawn anything serious in a long time.
I got up and opened the window. Whoosh went the cars like drag racers, so noisy compared to my old neighborhood. I thought about where the drivers were rolling and wished they’d take me along. Then I fell asleep and thought about nothing at all.
Mama barged in and turned on the lights.
“This place is a pig sty,” she said.
“So what?” I said. “I like it that way.”
Mama was having another cleaning fit.
“What’s all this junk?” she said, dragging out my bottle-cap collection.
“It’s my crap.”
“Don’t use that word in front of me, young lady.”
We sat there in silence. I felt sorry for Mama. She didn’t know I was on Paxil or that I tapped a light switch for her, exactly the same way, every night. She didn’t know anything about my life. She seemed so pitiful sitting there, picking up my bottle caps.
Every so often, an electric zap would buzz behind my eyes. I had the same out-of-body sensation I got with the flu. I couldn’t sleep but never really woke up.
“Go outside. You’re making me crazy,” said Mama.
For me, it was the other way around.
I slammed the screen door so hard, it rattled. The humidity squeezed all the air out of me. Next door, the neighbor’s twin boys were playing in their pool. Their toys floated iceberg-style: tons of crayon-colored foam sticks called “noodles,” a couple of pseudo–Native American canoes painted with wigwams.
The boys chattered in Spanish. They waved. I waved back. For a minute, I almost asked if I could join them. Their house was another McMansion. Their treeless yard was surrounded by a gleaming metal fence. On their telephone wire, a pair of shoes dangled, left over like bones on a plate after a meal.
I crossed the street, jogged a few blocks to the park, and watched the little kids play on the exercise bars. I tried to picture them grown up, with boring jobs like Mama’s, selling insurance over the phone. Then I almost crashed into two skater boys. They looked at me and I jumped.
“Yo, shortie. Where you headed?” said the first boy. He was wearing a skully cap and a chain belt.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You don’t?” he asked.
The other boy laughed. It was Thayer. He had leaves in his dreadlocks and splotches all over his hands. He was actually taller than me.
They were smoking weed and scribbling graffiti on the wall. Huge, puffed-up letters. Not spray paint. Something thicker. Like shoe polish.
“She’s gonna narc on us,” said the first boy.
Thayer shrugged. “Just chill, man. She won’t.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because,” he said. “I know her.”
He stood near me, much closer than was necessary. I could smell ashes on his breath. Thayer put his splotchy palm on me. I almost did the same to him, just to make it even in my mind. Something held me back. His hand stayed put, getting warmer, as if p
ulling me to him. Then he and the other kid took off on their skateboards.
I touched my shoulder three times. It was still warm.
Protected Species
I was living the life of a junkie. The side effects of swallowing Paxil had started right away. Sunlight hit me like noise, which only made the headaches worse.
For weeks, my dopey, drugged existence was making it impossible to concentrate on school, and my stomach was worse. I had grown used to my headaches, those brain zaps like the sizzle of a nine-volt battery behind my eyes. But I couldn’t take the ringing in my head. It hurt to turn my eyes. Aspirin helped a little, but the headache never left.
At school, I felt okay until P.E. We were going to swim laps around the pool while Coach Kiki filed her nails near the diving board. No way was I going to puke in front of Sharon Lubbitz and her personality-impaired clones. Besides. I had other plans. This was the day I would meet NERS.
Maybe NERS was already looking for me on the elementary school playground. Could I wait another forty-five minutes? My stomach flip-flopped.
The coach thought I was faking. Maybe I didn’t look as deathlike as I felt. She raised one overly plucked eyebrow and told me to “suck it up” unless I wanted to see the principal. Since I was already in enough trouble, between my miserable grades and countless lunch detentions for doodling in class, I dipped my toe in the shallow end.
I felt the whoosh of air before I smacked the ground. Afterward, I saw the scummy undersides of the bleachers. The pool throbbed.
“Give her some air,” said the coach in a quivery voice.
She told me to sit with my head lodged between my knees. I heard Sharon Lubbitz say, “She’s faking.”
The coach asked, “Can you walk to the nurse?”
I blinked twice, a telegraph for yes.
In the private recovery room, I leaned back on the cot and considered all the things to count, from the tongue depressors jutting out of a glass jar to the galaxy of pressure points swirling around a yoga poster.
Nurse What’s-Her-Name slapped an ice pack on me. I just needed to lie down. She asked a lot of dumb questions: Do you have any bleeding tendencies? Difficulty sleeping? Are you taking any prescriptions?
“No,” I lied.
When I asked for an aspirin, she said, “I’m not allowed to give out medication.”
“But it’s just aspirin. What if I took some from your purse?”
“Do you want to see me get fired?” she asked, yanking the curtain shut.
Dr. Calaban could dish out mind-altering drugs, but the school nurse couldn’t give me an aspirin.
I sat with the dripping ice pack, counting while I thought about busting out of there. The whole idea of meeting NERS was shooting darts through my stomach. She could’ve been anyone—a wacked-out painter who took a job as a janitor. Or a prepubescent genius who would beat me at chess.
The curtain slid back. There was the nurse, blinking at me.
“I heard you,” the nurse said. She had a lipstick stain on one of her front teeth. “You were counting. Over and over again.”
I looked out the window. I saw boys shooting imaginary guns at each other. My head sizzled. I needed to keep counting.
“Answer me,” the nurse said.
I counted to three. Somehow it didn’t feel right.
The nurse watched my fingers tapping.
“Frances,” the nurse said. “How long have you been doing that?”
She grabbed my hand.
“How long?”
“A few minutes,” I said.
This wasn’t the right answer. “Were you counting out loud? Or in your head?”
My blood pumped. “I’m not crazy,” I said, scooting back. The crinkly sheets on the cot smelled like dust and germs. I was clocking my heartbeats, wondering if they would stop.
“I’m calling your mother,” she said.
“Fine. She’s not home.” I hopped off the cot and headed for the door. Before I could open it, the nurse snagged my arm. Her grip surprised me.
“Let go,” I said, jerking away.
I wrestled out of her death-claw grasp and bolted outside. I didn’t know where I was running. The elementary school playground seemed like the safest place.
I saw a boy hunched on the swings. There was something familiar about his punky sneakers, holes blasted into the sides from doing flip tricks, ollies, or whatever they’re called. This was all I could detect of his identity. If I stared long enough, he would talk to me. Sure enough, his eyes tilted up, turning clear for a moment. He coughed. Thayer.
“I’m collecting audio evidence,” he said. He showed me his tape recorder.
I stared. “No kidding.”
I had seen the tape recorder in class, assumed it was a lazy student’s method of note taking. But when Thayer played back the tape, I heard the relentless thump of the school’s vending machine, wind muttering in the hallway, the metallic clang of a locker. On tape, these noises sounded like an alien language. They were all in 4/4 time.
His splotchy hands were covered in marker stains.
“You’re NERS,” I said. Four letters. One boy.
Thayer bowed. He looked like a homeless kid. The cuffs of his ratty jeans were tucked into his sneakers, the mesh tongues flapping over the cuffs. His dirt-caked sweatshirt was ten sizes too big. Not to mention, it was way too hot outside.
I tried to picture him in the girls’ bathroom, sketching undersea murals with felt-tipped markers. I checked out his hands. They were swarming with ink.
“What exactly does NERS mean?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Why does everything have to mean something? It sounds fast and it’s easy to write, in case the cops show up. So now I’ve got a question for you.”
“Okay.” I waited.
“You didn’t answer,” he said.
“What?”
“I asked if you wanted a bite.” He held up a half-eaten Moon Pie.
“Well, I didn’t hear you,” I said.
“That’s because I said it inside my head.”
“You mean, like, psychically?”
His smile was an explosion of pink gums. “So you did hear me!”
Geez, this boy was odd. He motioned to the swing beside him. I thought about running. Instead, I eased myself into it.
Thayer grinned. “You don’t seem like the type to cut class,” he said.
“Is that what you’re doing?”
He didn’t answer. “Let’s take a walk.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere.”
Thayer jumped off the swing. He was smiling at me.
“I don’t have time for this,” I told him.
“Time is a human invention,” he said. “There is no such thing. Look at the stars. It takes millions of years before their light reaches earth. By then, they could already be gone. No use wishing on them.”
We walked past the principal’s office and the gum-caked water fountains, endlessly gushing l’eau du tap. We passed through empty halls, the basketball court, and a barren row of lockers.
“Where is everybody?” I nibbled my thumbnail.
“Teacher’s prep day,” Thayer said. “We get out early.”
“Oh. Right.” I giggled. If we had only a half day of school, why was Thayer still hanging around? I was so busy chewing on this question, I didn’t even notice that my headache was gone.
He grabbed my hand. “I want to show you something.”
I looked at Thayer’s ink-smeared fingers. He might have been crazy, but what did it matter?
Attention Deficit
Thayer led the way. The ground was littered with cigarette butts and beer cans stripped by the rain. It was like visiting another planet. Clouds hung in the sky so thick they might’ve rained milk. I could see the moon, a hangnail sliver, although it was still daylight. I used to think it was following me, until Dad explained that it was always there, even when we couldn’t see it.
“Where are we going?�
� I asked. “I mean, we should be getting back.”
He grabbed my hand and pulled me along. “Who said we were going anywhere?”
“Oh. Okay.”
We settled close to the edge of the canal. It wasn’t far from school, but I’d never noticed it during my rides to class. This is how Florida used to look: a marsh lined with tall grass and windswept mangroves, their roots folded like hands.
“The water is so clear,” Thayer said.
I turned and saw he was watching me.
When we reached the shore, I spotted a chain of pelicans on a rotten deck.
“Shh!” Thayer hissed. He held me back, his arm flung across my collarbone. “Be very quiet,” he said in a low voice. Thayer reached into his jacket and pulled out a small metal pipe.
Thayer said, “Being bored alone is sad. But two people being bored is okay. It’s going to rain again. Those telephone wires are going to give us cancer. Want to smoke?”
I stood in the shade and tried to look bored. “No thanks.”
“You smoke trees?” he asked, and took a quick drag. Fumes spilled from his mouth.
“Yeah,” I lied.
“I steal from my mom. She keeps her weed in a coffee can.” He coughed so hard, it sounded like he was breathing through a straw.
“Doesn’t it, like, mess with your asthma?”
“How do you know I have asthma?”
“Your inhaler.”
“Yeah,” he said. “But I usually use buckets, you know? Gravity bongs.”
He jerked the pipe at me. I shook my head.
“You straight-edge or something?”
Most edgers didn’t even “use” caffeine. They drew X’s on their hands and listened to hard-core bands like Black Flag. I almost wished I could relate to them, swear off aspirin, become a born-again vegetarian.
Out on the bay, a boater had run aground. He gunned his throttle and I thought about the manatees grazing in the shallow water.
“Weed should be legal,” said Thayer. “I mean, have you ever met a violent pothead?”
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