I turned my back to them and focused on a piece of crusty something that wouldn’t come off this cast-iron skillet. Keep moving, I told myself. As long as you keep moving it isn’t real.
Tap tap tap. Keith was trying to get my attention.
“Hey,” I said. I was feeling much colder toward him than I had an hour ago.
He belched in my face. “You know what? You’re really pretty.”
That was all he said. He walked off and opened the back door to Gretchen’s deck. Then, with Tomás and me both watching, he unzipped his pants and peed into Gretchen’s mom’s juniper bushes.
He zipped up, came back in, took a blue corn chip from the platter, and dipped it in the guasacaca. “Dude,” Tomás said. “At least wash your hands first.”
What was going on? Was he into me after all? Then what was he doing with Gretchen in the bathroom just now? I was so busy wondering that I didn’t notice Gretchen herself had come into the kitchen, retrieved the newly cleaned cast-iron pan from where it was drying on a rack, and was heating water over the stove. Her hands were busy, almost flailing. One of them was cooking and the other one scratching everywhere—her arms, her legs, but mostly that spot on her scalp that she’d been digging at all week.
I won’t ask what they were doing in the bathroom. It’s her business. Let it go.
“What’s up, Gretch?”
She opened the fridge, twisted off the cap of a Moose Drool Ale, and took a deep swig. “Gotta stick to the list,” she said. And she dumped the rest of her beer into the pan with the water and a packet of unflavored gelatin. “The CorningWare’s in the left-hand cupboard,” she said.
Holy cow. She was really going to make beer Jell-O. This was silly, but at least it was something I could get behind. “The kind with the little blue flowers?”
Hah. A little rebellion, potluck-style.
I found the casserole dish she was talking about and put it on the counter next to the stove. The cooking ale lent the place the heavy smell of a brewery. When she judged the concoction ready, she poured it into the Corningware pan. “Shouldn’t it have some fruit in it? Maybe grated carrots?”
“Good idea,” she said and went to the fruit bowl sitting on the counter. She removed a banana from a bunch.
“Want me to cut that up?”
“Nope,” she said. And plopped the whole thing in, peel and all. “Now we can just let it chill awhile and voilá. Where’s Montgomery?”
Montgomery was her cat. He had limited outdoor privileges. They usually let him out around sunset to catch garter snakes and moles. He was probably patrolling now. Unless I missed my guess, he was about to get vacuumed.
Gretchen went off calling “Monty!” and scratching her temple.
There was another tap on my shoulder. I turned around and there was Keith again. “I think I’m gonna kiss you,” he said, and then went off to Gretchen’s stereo to change the tunes from hip-hop to punk.
Tomás handed me a blue corn tortilla chip. “Did you hear that?” I asked.
Tomás nodded.
“Do you think he was serious?”
“Maybe,” he said. “But don’t get your hopes up. That guy’s an asshole.”
And you’re a buzzkill, I thought.
People had started arriving by this time. Casey Burns came with a case of Bud. Allison Lehman and Nolan Chapman arrived together, but she dropped him as soon as Tomás said a timid “hi” to her.
And that was the way it went for the first two hours. People came in, I pointed to the beer and reloaded the guasacaca tray when it emptied. If anyone wanted to smoke I made them do it outside. There was no way we would be able to hide from Gretch’s mom that we’d had a party, but that didn’t mean we had to trash the place.
Finally, two hours later I was circulating a garbage bag for empties when I got another tap tap tap on the shoulder. Keith turned me around and gave me a giant spicy kiss. There was no preliminary, no tentative peck on the lips. You into this? I’m into this. No, this wasn’t about give and take. He ground himself against me, scratchy and confident. It felt more like ownership, as though he was showing to everyone in the room, me included, that I was his.
Then he pulled away from me, his hands still cupping my face. “I could make you feel so good,” he whispered loudly. And even though a tiny part of me knew it was wrong, I was oh-so ready to let him try.
I didn’t get a chance because there was Tomás, prying him off me, his eyes fiery with rage. He slammed Keith into the fridge, forehead first. It was so violent, I kept thinking: This can’t be him. He would never… he doesn’t move this fast.
Keith got up, his forehead bleeding, and tackled Tomás, running him backward into the dining room table. Blue corn chips went flying everywhere. “Asshole!” Keith dealt him one good punch in the eye. There was a crunching sound that didn’t come from tortilla chips. Tomás kicked against him hard and the two went flying back through the kitchen.
I heard myself shriek, “Do something! Do something!” But I didn’t know who I was talking to. People gathered around the two of them, but no one tried to pull them apart. Some were even tugging on cans of Budweiser, like they were watching a Mariners game. This was ridiculous. I tried to grab Tomás from the back but when he cocked his arm I got an elbow in the nose. Man, that stung. I let go and waited for my eyes to stop watering before jumping in again.
I was getting ready to make another run at pulling them apart when there was a tap tap tap on my shoulder, and there was Allison Lehman, hopping on one foot. “I know this is a bad time, but some of us have to pee.”
“Why are you telling me?” I spat.
“The only bathroom’s been locked for an hour,” she said. That got my attention. I skirted the fight and ran down the hall. “Is anyone in there?” I called as I pounded on the door. No answer. I tried the lock; it rattled but didn’t give. I shouldered the wood but it stayed firm.
And I didn’t need la llorona to tell me something was wrong—something worse than a brawl. From the dining room came the sound of shattered glass and heavy bodies slammed against the floor.
Allison was still behind me, openly holding her crotch. “I don’t care what you have to do—get Tomás out of the scrum,” I told her. It might just be a problem with the lock, in which case Tomás could fix it in a jiff.
In the meantime I sprinted outside to find another way in. This was no time to wait and see what happened. I could feel my heart pounding, ba-doom ba-doom ba-doom, as though a starting pistol had just gone off with a loud crack!
I didn’t know what was happening behind that door. I only knew that this time I had to be fast.
From far away came the sound of the river. Run, Ronnie, run!
17
I count the number of windows until I find the frosted pane of Gretchen’s bathroom. It’s closed tight. I tug on its runner to see if I can knock it into sliding open. I even brace myself with one shoe against the frame—but even though I pull until my fingernails crack and bleed, it won’t budge. I’ll have to smash it.
I look around the flowerbed for something to lob against it. God damn it, why don’t these people have gnomes? There’s nothing. Then I notice the black sealant around the glass is rotting. I give it a good tug and it whips off in long black strings. The window slides down the wall and shatters on the beauty bark. Shards fly up and embed themselves in my pant legs. I feel sharp stings up and down my thighs and know that a few have broken through.
No time to worry about that. I hoist myself up onto the sill, which is high and skinny, and do a front roll over it, landing in the shower with a hard blow to my back that knocks the wind out of me. The plastic rubber ducky curtain comes down on top of me, wrapping me like a shroud.
Wincing, I dig myself out and look around. Gretchen is unconscious on the floor. There is vomit everywhere. The smell is sharp—like puke and worse. Gretchen’s jeans are wet around the crotch.
She is so still, I flash back to Karen’s body on the riverbank.
Oh no. Not again. I can’t do this, I think. But I know I have to. I offer up a silent prayer to someone to intercede with the gods of CPR on my behalf. Karen? Help me out here? Then I roll Gretchen over on her side, fishing around her vomity mouth. I don’t pull out anything because she’s already thrown everything up. It’s in her hair and on the tile.
“Gretchen!” I yell, pounding her back. “Gretchen, wake up!”
Her eyes don’t open.
Then I notice the mirror. Someone has taken it off the wall and spread it over the sink. There’s a dollar bill unfurling on it and white residue.
Whoosh! Terror runs through me. She and Keith weren’t in here having sex—they were in doing hard drugs. I am so over my head, I’m drowning.
Shit. I put two fingers to her neck and get a pulse like a jackrabbit’s. Ba-doom. Ba-doom. BADOOMBADOOMBADOOMBADOOM. I’m glad her heart’s still beating but really really wish it were slower and more regular.
She comes around with a jerk.
“Get them off me!” she yells, digging at her arms, violently scratching as though she is being devoured alive. I hold her right arm out, the one that’s bothering her. There are big red furrows where she’s scratched them raw, and they’re oozing yellow smelly pus. Something reddish black flares out under the skin, like a spider web. I can’t tell if it’s blood or poison.
At that moment there’s a crash and the door explodes half off its hinges. Tomás comes barreling in. “Jesus,” he says, taking in the scene. Three kids try to follow him in but he holds them back, blocking their view. I hear a murmur, then Tomás responds forcefully: “Use the bushes. We’re busy in here.”
Gretchen stops scratching her arm and moves up to the spot on her temple I’d seen her digging at before. I pull back her bangs. What I see is like a scene from a horror show. Gretchen has scratched herself so deeply that her skull is showing, and she’s still digging at it.
I pull her hand away and pin it to her side. “Stop! Let me go!” she screams hysterically. “The spiders! They’re still there! They’re crawling all over my body! Somebody take them off!” She smacks at me, trying to get me away from her so she can scratch herself raw. We wrestle until we’re both covered in vomit.
“Help me!” I squeal. “Hold her down!”
Tomás takes over my spot and, pulling my cell phone from its handy spot on my belt, I finally get a clue and call 911. I know I am getting a lot of people in trouble but I don’t care. Gretchen’s in a bad way and I don’t know how else to help her.
Let me tell you, nothing clears out a party faster than sirens. Within ten minutes we hear them; within eleven everyone has peeled out and the entire night sky is flashing red. A troop of burly uniformed medics, none of whom looks older than me, comes through the door.
“What seems to be the problem?” the first one says. He can’t be more than twelve. I don’t have a ton of faith in their ability to deal with what we’re dealing with.
A second guy takes Tomás’ place holding down Gretchen. “What did she take?” a third hurls at me.
All I can do is look dumb.
“Meth,” Tomás says. I look up, he’s leaning against the half-broken door. How does he know for sure? White stuff on a mirror could be anything.
But one look at him tells me: He knows. He’s talking from experience. I don’t know how, but he knows exactly what meth is and what it does to a person.
Then I notice the rest of him, like how the skin around his right eye is puffy, as though sprouting something, and how he’s clutching his chest in pain.
“Do these guys need to take a look at you, too?” I say.
“Focus, Ronnie,” he grunts, as though even speaking is an effort. “I’ll live.”
And those words scare me more than anything I’ve seen so far tonight. Damn it, not Gretchen. I already had someone I love die this week. Statistically, shouldn’t two be impossible? But I know it doesn’t work like that. There’s no limitation on how much a person has to bear.
The medic kneeling over Gretchen is saying something into a walkie-talkie, having a conversation in code with a doctor on the other end.
They fire more questions at me like how old is she, how much does she weigh, and is she allergic to any medication. I answer the best I can. Sixteen. Not much. No.
“Get them off me!” Gretchen is yelling. It takes two burly guys whose thighs are bigger than my waist to hold her down.
The one who’s been questioning us asks, “How much did she take? How did she take it?”
I point at the mirror and the unfurled dollar bill.
“We don’t know how much,” Tomás says.
“Can you find out?”
“No,” Tomás says.
I take in Tomás’ swelling eye. “He chased off her source.”
He looks Tomás up and down. He finally says “Dude!” in a way that sounds as though he would like nothing better than to smack down some drug dealer, but since Tomás has beaten him to it, the medic can only bask in admiration. Then he turns to me and says, “I recognize you. You were the girl who discovered the last body.”
“No, she isn’t,” says the one who is holding Gretchen down while the other squirts some kind of thick liquid out of a syringe. “That girl was Veronica Severance and as a non-family member she can’t ride with us in the ambulance. Try again.”
The Dude turns to me, his face now somber and efficient. “What is your relation to the victim?”
I say slowly: “I’m her sister. And this guy is her brother.”
Tomás can only nod in agreement. He is shaking now, leaning heavily on the door. Something inside him has cracked.
“What are you doing to her?” I say as the one guy jabs a needle into Gretchen’s arm so hard blood drips out.
“This is nothing, ma’am. Just a mild sedative. It’ll calm her down for the ride. Hopefully they’ll clean her up at Salem General.”
But Gretchen is still writhing and screaming. She’s out of her head in pain. I don’t know how much more I can watch, and yet I know I won’t leave unless they make me. I have to keep her together by willpower alone. “How long til it takes effect?” I ask.
“A few minutes,” he says. “Now let’s go.”
I look behind me. There are another two burly kids wheeling a gurney toward us down the short hall. It’s time for me to get out of the way and let people who know better do their work—people who maybe don’t have a lot of years behind them, but at least are comfortable around needles and aren’t flummoxed by hallucinations or vomit or rotting flesh.
I walk over to where Tomás is standing and wrap an arm around his back, knowing that he’ll probably kick me away, this big macho hero vigilante. “Come on. You can lean on me.”
Instead of shrugging me off, he brings his other arm and lays it over my shoulder, then gently leans against me.
The two of us together follow the gurney outside, step, hobble, step, hobble. Tomás is gripping his side and he’s so heavy. But I don’t mind. Moving slowly like this brings my heart back to normal speed. And just as we climb into the ambulance, I can feel that racing whoosh! slow down to a strong and steady beat. Which is just as well. I can’t keep up this panic that makes me feel as though I were sprinting even when I’m standing still. If I’m going to help the people I have left, I have to pace myself.
18
At Salem General they abandoned the idea of Tomás and me as Gretchen’s family and wouldn’t let us go with her into the treatment room while she was being “stabilized.”
Sensing I was about to pitch a hissy fit, one of the medics took me aside and said, “She’ll live. But starting tomorrow she’s in for a world of hurt.”
While they were speeding Gretchen through triage and into an empty bed, some burly guy nurse with a Semper Fi tattoo and scruffy hair caught sight of Tomás wheezing, clutching his ribs, and sprouting a massive black eye. He said, “Man, let’s get you looked at, too.”
He tried protesting but Semper Fi Guy led him b
ack to the triage nurse talking gently the whole while, as though he were dealing with some lumbering and nervous animal.
I was left alone in the waiting room with a saltwater aquarium, a woman in full burka with a screaming baby, and reruns of Friends playing on the wall-mounted TVs. I’d left my purse at Gretchen’s so only had my cell strapped to my belt. I tried calling Dad but they wouldn’t let me because it interfered with medical equipment, so they booted me out to the parking lot.
When I finally reached him, he was alert—almost combat-ready. I looked at my watch. No wonder. It was way past our curfew. “What happened to you, Ronnie? Your mother’s tearing her hair out. We heard the sirens but by the time I got to Gretchen’s everyone was gone. I got your purse, by the way.” I listened to the tone of his voice, trying to gauge his mood, and how much I should disclose. I was afraid if I told him everything it might push him into some dark abyss.
“How much anti-anxiety meds you on, Dad?”
There was a pause on the other end as he braced himself. “Enough,” he finally said. So I came clean.
I told him about the beer Jell-O. I told him about the mirror and the hard drugs. I told him that I should’ve seen the signs but didn’t because I thought she had allergies and kept baker’s hours. And I should’ve known that she was stealing my stuff because how many other people had access to my locker and nightstand, where it had all gone missing?
He kept quiet through the whole thing. And when I was done, I held my breath and waited for him to react. Would he yell? Cry? I just dumped on him a whole lot of civilization, and he moved us to Hoodoo to escape civilization.
“Dad?” I prompted.
“You did the right thing,” he said, sounding like his old, competent self. And the idea that after all these months he might be able to back me up again made me want to cry more than anything that had happened so far tonight. I had my back to the ER window. I leaned on it and slowly dripped down, til I was squatting in a mushy heap on the ground.
“Ronnie? Are you okay?”
The River Page 11