Tripping Back Blue

by Kara Storti

  “No,” I say, slowly, it’s the longest word ever. She’s not listening to me tell her that I have a condom in my car, it would take just a second to get it. Finn the responsible. That’s me. The distance between here and my car is like a trek across the state of Texas, but the H in my veins insists that anything is possible. Could move Texas if I wanted. Swallow it whole.

  “I know you’re clean. I know I’m clean,” she says.

  I shake my head, whisper, “You don’t know anything, babe.” This doesn’t seem to offend her, and I’m not sure if I wanted to offend. Her giggles are bubbles, they tickle my nose. She straddles me, flicks her hair, and doesn’t look me in the eye when her hand guides me in. I’ll blame it on the drugs and the shots. I’ll blame it on the brain cells I’ve lost and the blurriness in my eyes. I’m not in my right mind, and it’s so dark.

  I tell her no again, but my hands are doing nothing and she’s persistent and ready, and I can’t help but touch her, as she sinks down onto me, her breath coming out in puffs. Her hair slinks over her shoulders and curtains around my face. When she leans over to kiss me, her tongue is cool, but the rest of her is burning up so much that when I take my hand away from the small of her back, it’s coated in sweat. Her sweat mixed with some girly lotion is what I feel more than anything else—the stickiness of it, the realness of it, the now-ness. She sighs and moans softly, but the noise is far away, somewhere out there with the constellations, her voice’s echo bouncing off stars. Fake stars. Spread out on her low ceiling. The movements of her body speed up, more insistent now, and all I have to do is lie here and enjoy it. Forgetting can feel so un-freaking-believably good.

  Sunday, March 31

  Chapter Eight

  Sunlight like thumbtacks on my skin and the taste of death in my mouth. My eyes are crusted shut, and those rough sheets against my back are so itchy. How can anyone sleep here? Oh God, I think. Taylor. Sex. Unprotected. Jackass.

  “Phineas.”

  My sister’s voice stuns me into action, I sit upright to cover myself. That’s when I realize that my clothes are on. That’s when I realize that I’m in my front yard, dirt on my face because there’s no grass, just a gritty, lumpy mess of land. I now vaguely remember someone giving me a lift home. I must have passed out before I reached the door. When I press my hands into the ground to hoist myself up, my palm digs into a jagged bottle cap. I run through every variation of the F-word. Faith pushes me back down with her arms. The force of her shove is unexpected, shocking, like cold water splashed in my face. Second time this month I’ve awoken from unconsciousness to the Faith monster.

  “You’re a fucking idiot,” she says, kicking her foot into the dirt so that it sprays on me. I spit out the pebbles that are stuck to my mouth. A wave of nausea cascades through me and I’m fantasizing about taking a handful of pills and going to sleep, maybe forever. It wouldn’t be so bad, death’s just getting into another car—didn’t John Lennon say that?

  “I know, I know,” I say, putting my hands up. “I royally screwed up.”

  “No, Phineas. You are beyond that. You are planets away fucked. Peter told me he found needles in the bathroom after you and Taylor were in there for hours . . . God, Phineas. I’m just so disappointed in you.” She looks at me with her jaw clenched, tendons in her neck tight.

  I shake my throbbing head. Yeah, well, you’re not the only one who’s disappointed around here. Peter. My wing man. My ally. What the hell is he doing telling on me to my sister? I’m worried about you, man, he tells me. Then just stop. Don’t worry. Let me live my life. Let me have fun. Do you know what fun is, Peter? Do you?

  “Jesus, I’m fine. I’m alive, aren’t I? I’m just a little hungover—”

  She snorts loudly. “Don’t feed me that bullshit. I know you’ve got issues—I get it, brother, I do. But I think you need help. I think you need to talk to someone before it eats you up inside.” She looks at my scar. She never looks at my scar.

  She lets me stand up now. She’s still in her pajamas; the bottoms have clouds on them. Our trailer appears so dingy during the day: rusty railings on the broken cement steps, beige siding bleached from the sun, a striped awning that is cracked and chipped. Faith and I both have stopped seeing these details (glaring as they are) and focus on keeping our bedroom nice. If you can’t control one thing, try controlling another.

  “Where were you last night?” I ask, deciding to go on the offensive. “You said you were going to come. But you didn’t. Thanks for that.”

  “Oh no you don’t. You’re not going to make this about me.”

  “I want to know,” I say, louder, using my demanding parent tone, eyeing her down. “You should have been there. Maybe I wouldn’t have—”

  “Asshole,” she says, kicking dirt at me again. “I’m not even going to try anymore. All the times we’ve had this conversation, and you never listen. You’re just getting worse.” Groaning out her frustration, she piles her long brown hair on top of her head, then lets it fall dramatically. Before she walks back into the trailer, I notice that the eye patch she wears is new. It’s gunmetal gray—and right about now it feels more gun than metal.

  Monday, April 1

  Chapter Nine

  The Monday after the party, all I’m hearing about is the girl who came into the sub shop. I find out her name within minutes of arriving at school: That new girl, Stacey Braggs, is slammin’ hot. In route to the second class of the day—biology—I see her and her fly-looking self. She’s wearing tight jeans and a loose top with butterflies on it. I raise my eyebrows at her while she passes, and tip my chin as an acknowledgment; she does the same. I wait for her to stop and chat but she walks right by, like she kind of remembers me but not really.

  “Hey, new girl,” I call out. She stops and only halfway turns around. “Did you know that butterflies taste with their feet?” I point to her shirt.

  “Did you know that the world doesn’t favor guys who try too hard?” Without a moment’s hesitation, she walks on to her next class. It takes a second for me to register her comeback and then I’m every shade of flabbergasted. She just flattened me, and it’s too late for a response. Is she putting up a front? Was she insulted I called her “new girl”? Did I see a playful smirk on her face? I’m gonna say yeah. I’m gonna say, you won round one, sweetheart, but the world also doesn’t favor guys who give up.

  In biology class, Peter is sitting next to me at one of the black-topped lab tables, folding an origami crane. This is an activity he’s always enjoyed because he likes the quiet precision of it. Before homeroom this morning I bitched at him for ratting me out to Faith and he’s choosing to act like it’s not a big deal. He’s doing it in the spirit of brotherhood. He wants to protect me. Yet his posture says, whatever, Finn, just whatever. This is fine, he can throw me some shade, I just hope it doesn’t last too long.

  Our teacher is explaining how to dissect a frog in the front of the room by drawing diagrams on the chalkboard. That’s next week’s joy of an assignment. I turn my attention to Bryce.

  “Dude,” I say to him. “What’s the deal with this new girl?”

  “Stacey?” he asks sleepily, stoned out of his mind. Incense and weed is his permanent smell.

  “Yeah, her. Is she like a snob or what?”

  Bryce scratches the scruff on his chin. “Nah, man. She seems really nice. I have English with her, and when I dropped my pencil she picked it up for me. It was really far away too, like two desks away from mine. She got up, bent over, handed it to me all smiley and shit. I’m thinking about dropping my pencil a few more times.”

  Peter flashes him a look. “Bro, you’re totally weird.” Bryce shrugs it off. I expect this zany kind of comment from Bryce but I also know that him saying she’s nice means she is. Even though he’s a stoner, he’s got a good read on people. Well damn, maybe being curt to me is her way of flirting. A kid sitting across from me who I deal to on the regular looks interested in what we’re talking about. When I mouth “mind
your business,” he looks away. I know my rudeness will only draw him in more and this is exactly what I want. I failed to spread the word about the new drug at Taylor’s party, so biology class will have to do, and this guy’s got one of the biggest mouths in school; he hears you taking a dump in the bathroom and in 2.5 seconds all of D-Town thinks you have dysentery.

  “Anyway, I’ve got some news to drop,” I say in a loud whisper to Bryce.

  “Mr. Walt,” our biology teacher says, stabbing a piece of chalk at me. “Are you going to join us today?”

  I straighten up. “I’m with you, Ms. Patten. All ears. And absolutely riveted by your diagram of frog guts. I really am.”

  Ms. Patten is in her twenties, and she’s wearing this floral dress that screams appropriateness. She tenses her mouth, but she can’t hide the flush beginning to form around her collarbones. I lean my forehead against my hand and try to concentrate on the scribbling in my notebook.

  “Seriously, there’s this new stuff,” I whisper to Bryce again after a few minutes. I can see from the corner of my eye that the dude who I deal to is listening hard, as predicted.

  “New stuff?” Bryce adjusts his wool hat, straggly hair pressed to his ears. He doesn’t care it’s almost seventy degrees out; his drug-addled nerves are so shot he’s bulletproof.

  “Yeah. It will blow your mind.” I fan out my fingers around my head and look at Peter, the one I really want to listen, to understand. “This is what I was trying to tell you at the party. I’m not messing around with this one—it’s not one of my schemes you think is gonna fail.”

  “I don’t see them as schemes, Finn. You misinterpreted me. I just don’t want you to get too deep into something you can’t get out of.” He’s got his finished origami crane in his cupped hands, holding it like a gerbil or something, making sure it doesn’t escape.

  “Just give me a chance on this one. If I fail, I’ll never bother you with stuff like this again.”

  Peter shrugs but I can tell he’s considering. There’s my loyal compadre.

  I look at Ms. Patten. She’s got her back turned to the room and is writing up another diagram or something while she’s lecturing. I’ve got a few minutes at least.

  “I’m putting it on the market soon, so spread the word. I need a big return on this one, and if you help me, I might give you a cut of it. Or at least I’ll get you free samples.”

  “What’s new these days?” Bryce asks, biting his pencil eraser. “I’ve tried everything. Bath salts. Kroc . . .”

  Peter scoffs. “You did not try kroc. You think you did, but you didn’t. You were too hopped up on H to know. Stop wanting to sound cool.”

  “Whatever, dude. Go keep smoking your weed, you lame-ass mother fucker,” Bryce says, smiling wide, just to piss him off.

  “I’d rather be a pothead than some doped out fool with acid burns down to the bone.” He throws the origami crane at Bryce’s head, and it bounces so hard it lands at the end of the lab table. Bryce laughs, snorting in waves, fist up to his mouth to muffle himself. Peter’s not laughing but shaking his head, eyes bright with amusement.

  Ms. Patten, thank God, is oblivious, so into frog digestion or whatever.

  “Would you dickheads stop flirting and listen to me?” I whisper roughly. “This shit is clean. Goes down smooth, you come off it even smoother. It’s magic. Transformative. Transcendental.” The passion is coming out of me as I think back to the fort in the woods.

  “Magic, huh? You said that about the purple weed and it was good, but it wasn’t that good,” Peter says.

  “This is different. It is legitimately beautiful. You know I don’t use that word lightly.” I pause for effect. “I had the most intense hallucination that made me whole again. I’m telling you, this is no joke, man. I got to relive the happiest memory of my life. And when I say hallucination, I don’t really mean it because I swear, you guys, I was transported into another dimension. The memory was so real I came out of it with dirt on my hands, smelling like the woods—remnants of my greatest memory, left behind as a gift. Yeah, you heard. A gift. And I felt whole.”

  I accentuate my words by pressing a finger down on at my notebook several times. Bryce is interested, I see that glimmer, I see that my words have gone through him—touched down on an artery, on to his heart. Peter, on the other hand, is oozing suspicion.

  “Beautiful? Whole? Who are you, man?” he asks, disbelief spread across his face. Good. I want him to see a change in me, to see this was different.

  “I’m serious,” I say.

  I look deep into his eyes, give him my most piercing look that usually squelches arguments across the board. He doesn’t respond, he puts his crane off to the side and goes about making an origami frog that has a moveable mouth. Those have always been my favorite. I hate how I have such a soft spot for my best friend.

  “I’ll believe it when I see it,” Bryce says, as he crosses his arms over his chest.

  “Oh, you’ll see it all right,” I say. I’m getting more and more amped. “You’ll see it, taste it, smell it, feel it—”

  “Phineas Walt,” Ms. Patten says sternly, her hand on her hip. “Have you listened to a word I’ve said?”

  Without skipping a beat I say, “Frogs form a new ring in their bones every year when they hibernate, just like trees do. That’s how we can find out their age.” I smile sweetly; she flushes a tiny bit again. I lean my elbow against the lab table. I’m practically batting my eyelashes at her.

  “Here we go,” Bryce says, under his breath.

  “Well, aren’t you just a well of knowledge?” Ms. Patten says, wiping her hands on her dress, leaving behind chalk stains. “Do you want to get up here and teach the class for me?”

  “I would. I really would,” I reply; my confidence has confidence. I revel in showing off this stuff. I stand up, swagger to the front of the room and pick up a piece of chalk. Ms. Patten is so stunned she does nothing to stop me.

  “You’re going to give us a lecture?” she asks a little nervously, having started something that has now gotten away from her.

  I hike up my pants a little, feeling the weight of my wallet in my back pocket. I like how it feels; it reminds me of how it’s only going to get heavier when I find this mysterious drug.

  “I’m gonna do more than that. I’m gonna tell you kids why frogs are the shit. Okay, listen here, right?”

  Ms. Patten winces and is about to say something, until she notices everyone leaning in toward me. She knows I’m one of those smart kids with a lot of promise who doesn’t apply himself; she wants to give nonconformists like me a chance.

  My memory unloads on them, and soon I’m on a rant about how there’s a type of frog that carries its young around on its back until they become adults, how frogs absorb water through their skin so they don’t need to drink, how some can jump up to twenty times their own body length in a single leap. Then I hit them with this: a substance two hundred times the power of morphine was recently found in the skin of a frog. Yeah. That blows their minds quick. I’m on such a roll that even the slacker students are listening intently, and Ms. Patten’s uncertainty has morphed into an all-out smile. My hands are gesticulating, they’ve got minds of their own, I’m telling the classroom the story of when my pop and I tried to fry our own frog legs, and no, they didn’t taste like chicken. I glance at the clock and am surprised to see it’s almost time to go and then my attention is drawn to the door.

  She’s standing there.

  Stacey.

  Watching.

  I accidently fling the chalk over to the doorway, a moment of nervousness on my part, after which there’s a moment of silence, the clock ticking as loud as a bomb. She bends over, picks up the chalk, walks over, and places it in my hand. This time our fingers touch and suddenly I don’t know what’s up or down, left or right. The bell rings and the class collectively jumps up and Ms. Patten yells about a homework assignment.

  “Here you go, wiseass,” Stacey says, wiping her hand
on her pants, leaving behind a dash of blue. She smells faintly of nice-smelling soap. I think about telling her that I meant to throw the chalk across the room, as a final statement, to really make my point. For drama. I bite my tongue.

  “Thanks,” I say. When she smiles, it immediately becomes a new favorite memory and I do feel weirdly whole. This is the beginning of a better version of me. A version that a girl like Stacey would be into.

  Okay, maybe Peter is right. Who are you, man?

  Saturday, April 6

  Chapter Ten

  It’s Saturday morning finally, and a whole week has passed since I saw the old woman. The sky is overcast and primed for rain. I’m sitting at my usual spot in the cemetery and praying that she’ll show up in spite of the weather. My binoculars are glued to my eyes, and I’ve been watching Jimmy’s gravestone for an hour straight, but she still hasn’t shown. This is not good. Everyone’s hassling me about the mysterious drug, I’ve been talking about it nonstop, even Peter’s interested. To add to the stress, Taylor lost her shit in the school parking lot and slapped me across the face because she had to get the morning-after pill. I told her, that’s great babe, I’m glad you’re being responsible, and then she goes and blames me for not wearing protection, even though I’m good and sure she was the one who insisted I didn’t. She’s just all butt-hurt that I don’t want to be her boyfriend. Everyone knows I’m not boyfriend material. I’m crazy busy, I got shit to do.

  To distract myself, I start counting gravestones, only the pinkish ones. There aren’t that many so I count the black ones, which takes a little longer. Usually a house or clothes or a car can tell you something about a personality, but can a gravestone? Does a really elaborate one mean something? Or a really plain one? I make a mental note to find out if there are any studies on it. I’ve got nothing like that tucked away in my bank of knowledge. Might be a tidbit to impress someone.

  The first raindrop falls, a big splat on the bench, like a bug flattened against a windshield. Great. Then I see her puffy hair before I see her. Her walk is slow and steady and her coat swells as it traps the wind. She’s carrying a package under her arm. When she approaches Jimmy’s gravestone, I make my way down the hill. It’s now raining sheets of mist and I pull the hood of my sweatshirt tight around my head. She kneels on the grass in front of the grave, tilts her head up, and opens her mouth.