by Kara Storti
“I won’t fall asleep,” she says. “I just hate hospitals.”
I hate hospitals too. I hated listening to the doctors say Faith’s eye couldn’t be reconstructed. I hated hearing the other sick patients moaning in pain, but most of all I hated hearing my sister cry. For some reason, I want to tell Stacey all of this. But maybe I’m overreacting. People have been through much worse: like finding a pig’s head in their locker, which is clearly a threat, but what on earth would a girl like Stacey have done to merit such a heavy-duty threat?
“Nosocomephobia,” I say.
“Pardon me?” Stacey asks. Her fingers are clamped around the edge of the cot where she sits. She is refusing to lie down.
“Excessive fear of hospitals. That’s the term for it. I just diagnosed you. You’re welcome.” I give her a sharp nod.
“I don’t have that.” She sounds bratty, in fact, stubborn. She’s got that fierceness in her eyes too, the type I think I have. Ms. Caven is still trying to give Stacey things—an ice pack, some Tylenol, but Stacey wants nothing to do with it. I think all she wants to do is argue, so I give her what she wants.
“You might have that exact phobia. And it’s kind of lame if you do. No offense.”
I flash her a smile. The color is leaking back into her cheeks, and it feels like a small victory.
Stacey narrows her eyes at me, and it kills me, because it’s as if she’s wondering what to do, and I might be the one with the answer. I shrug. Why do I already feel like there’s a connection here, a connection that has been here for years and years and years? Faith went to a psychic once who told her that I was her son in a past life, which was actually pretty gross, and that our souls are old and have been together in different roles during many, many lives. Maybe Stacey and I knew each other in another life, in the great before. I won’t be buying a crystal ball any time soon, just in case I found out I was her son too, but given the frequency of whack-ass events in the last couple of weeks, I’m questioning my whole belief system. The fabric of reality feels more like a thread that’s ready to break in an easy snap.
“Fine. I’ll go. But only because Finn is irritating, and I just want him to shut up.” She looks at me briefly, then up at the ceiling.
Ms. Caven beams, I lean harder against the wall for support, because I think I’m in love. I mean, it’s ridiculous, but in this moment, a rush of affection hits me so hard that it takes all my might not to fall over. Ms. Caven is pretending not to notice that I’m head over heels for this girl. Stacey is alone on the cot—she should never be alone—so I sit down next to her, but not too close.
“I’m going to be okay, right?” she says.
More cracks in my heart. “Of course you are.” I think about patting her knee like a grandmother would do, but I decide against it. God, what is happening to me? Ms. Caven is speaking to someone on the phone in serious tones. “You just went through some hardcore shit,” I say, “and here you are, all cool and calm. I’m impressed by you right now. I really am. Nosocomephobia and all.”
She smiles slightly. I smile slightly. Strands of hair are stuck to her lips, but she doesn’t seem to notice.
“You have—” I say, and before I know what I’m doing, my fingers are gently swiping her hair away from her mouth. She doesn’t flinch. She lets me. Her skin is cool to the touch. I can tell she’s about to say something, but the gesture is done, and I look away from her and feel the blood rise to my cheeks.
I don’t blush. Ever.
But here I go.
There are a lot of words that could be said right now. She could say, thanks, Finn, for being here for me. I could say, I want to take care of you, I want to protect you, and if anyone ever thinks about hurting you again I’m going to . . .
A man steps through the doorway and pauses. He’s in full police uniform with his hands on his hips. Stacey’s face lights up.
“Daddy,” she says, scrambling off the cot and making a dash toward him, collapsing into his arms. Oh, hold up. For real? He’s a big guy, pocked, rough-looking skin on his face, he’s been around the block or ten. His body swallows her up as they embrace. Something about him makes me immediately want to stand at attention, maybe it’s the way he darts his eyes back and forth between me and Ms. Caven, even as he kisses the top of Stacey’s head.
“Sweetheart,” he says softly.
I swallow hard. Ms. Caven introduces herself, and says softly, “Nice to meet you, Sergeant Braggs,” clearly a little awestruck by him. He’s not bad-looking, I’ll give him that. I’m no longer in the room. I know I don’t really exist when it comes to fathers and daughters in the same space, so I try to make myself as small as possible. Stacey is crying a little, not overdramatically, but just enough to show that she was really scared, but she’s trying to be brave. Her father calms her, in the way that fathers should, holding her, telling her to shush, saying that he’s going to take care of it and everything’s going to be okay. I mean, I believe him. Must be his air of authority, or how he looks precisely as a police officer should. I can’t believe I snorted up this morning. I’m irrationally worried that he knows.
I put this aside. My mind shifts to overdrive as I connect the pieces. Maybe it’s a long shot, maybe I’m over-hypothesizing.
Oink. Oink.
He’s the new cop in town, trying to be a big man on campus, rehabilitate the community and all that. Her father must have been part of the big drug bust on East Ave that landed Bryce in jail, and someone must not be too thrilled about it.
I know someone who’d be capable of this.
-----
I storm through the empty hallway, searching him out. Mike, only he would do something as screwed up as this, that sick, sick bastard. God, it must have taken a lot of effort to get a pig’s head. Where does one get a pig’s head anyway?
Vermont. Farm country. That’s where. Guess it wasn’t that hard after all.
Mike probably put Jason, his loyal, thickheaded brother, up to this. The crackdown on drug activity is affecting Mike’s business, compounded by his failing crop. He’s pretty much screwed. Jason must have given him the inside scoop of Stacey’s dad being the new sheriff in town. So why not send a message in the most hick-ish way possible, signed with love from the backwoods of VT? While Mike’s at it, he’s probably planning something for me this very moment. Him and his gimp foot.
I’m popping my head into classrooms, disrupting lectures, teachers slam doors in my face, Finn, they say, get your act together, what act, I think, this isn’t an act, and I keep going, that stupid motherf—
Bingo.
Jason’s sitting in Mrs. Buckley’s class, chewing on a pencil and scrolling through his iPhone. I raging-bull it through the classroom door and pounce, no one’s expecting it, especially not poor Mrs. Buckley, who is frailer than frail. I tackle Jason in his chair to the ground, ringing of metal, ears ringing just as hard, punching and hitting everything, his face, his chest, the chair, the floor, I don’t care if I’m missing my target, I just feel like hitting everything, so I do, and my knuckles are getting raw, and guys are pulling me off him, and old Mrs. Buckley is calling for help.
“You did this!” I yell. I go back for more because they can’t hold me down. All I’m seeing is red. Crimson. Burgundy. Vermillion. Cardinal. Cardinalis cardinalis.
Peter’s next to me suddenly. Didn’t even see him. Calm down, he says, not too loud, clamping his hand on my forearm, you don’t know the facts, Finn, you’re not thinking this through . . . I push him off. It’s too easy. It’s flicking a bug.
“Admit it!” I roar. It takes four guys to finally keep me off him, but I’ve still got a Grand Canyon full of fight in me.
“Man, what are you talking about? I did what?” Jason asks.
Jason is cowering on the floor, and for a split second I feel bad for him because he looks like cornered prey, bloodied and bruised. But we’re the same size, he can scuffle with the best of them, and oh, did I mention that he’s the one to blame? I shou
ldn’t be sorry at all. Punk-ass motherfucker. Peter’s staying out of reach of me, and Mrs. Buckley is out the door, still calling for help in a scratchy voice that isn’t used to yelling.
“The pig’s head in Stacey’s locker. That’s fucked up, man. That’s some Godfather shit.”
I try ripping from the abundance of grasps, but they aren’t letting me go. Peter tells me to cut it out, calling me by my full name, Phineas Alexander Walt, like he’s my goddamn father, saying to me it’s not worth it. Jason’s lips are practically white.
“I didn’t do it, cocksucker,” he says. “I wish I was that creative. I’d want to take credit for that shit.” He wipes his bloody nose with the back of his hand, and winces from the contact. Too much blood today.
“I don’t believe you. Mike put you up to it.” Can’t get the ringing in my ears to stop. The cocaine, my anger, my almost insanity—it wouldn’t be shocking if I dropped dead of a heart attack right here. Maybe that’d be a good thing.
“Believe what you want. I didn’t do it,” Jason says. “You are going to be so sorry for this, especially after what you did to my brother.”
I pull a Scarlett O’Hara by telling myself I’ll think about that tomorrow. As for now I want to know.
“It’s Early, right?” I say. “What about Early?”
Jason’s alarm is clear as a bell on his face.
“What do you know about him?” he practically squeaks.
Someone is shouting my name. I turn around. He’s coming at me with cuffs.
Stacey’s father. Perfect. He’s so deft I’m handcuffed before I can protest. The metal is icy and not altogether unfamiliar. I’ve been cuffed a few times before for dealing, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t talk my way out of. Just another occupational hazard. But this. I’ve got no words for it.
Everyone stares as the metal locks around my wrists, their eyes like locks too, they’ll relate this image with me for a while. God, Finn, what were you thinking? I don’t feel like myself. Where did I go? I’m spinning, spinning, spinning.
Then I look beyond Stacey’s father and see Stacey herself, standing in the hallway with a friend, watching, blood streaking her jeans, and I can’t figure out if she’s upset, no, that’s not it, or if she’s disappointed, no, that’s not it either.
Those pretty green eyes are registering my true colors, oh, lookie here, the bastard reveals himself, full monty. I decide the way she feels is something between sadness and disgust. No. Longing and regret. That sounds about right. And shit upon shit, I realize that the friend standing next to her is none other than my very own sister, Faith. Of course they’re friends, Stacey the doctor, Faith the prodigious entrepreneur. I haven’t told Faith that I’m into Stacey, and I definitely won’t be telling her now.
Stacey’s father shoves me down the hall. Faith’s emotions are so dense it’s like she’s saying it out loud. You could be so good, Finn. But you’re kind of an asshole. You’re preaching to the choir, sister, you’re preaching to the damn choir.
-----
I lay low for the next few days, don’t deal, barely talk, squeaky-clean Finn over here, a husk, a shell, an empty chrysalis, that’s me. Peter, instead of my sister, was with my mom when she came to pick me up at the police station. He wouldn’t really talk to me because of how I pushed him off me in the classroom, and it looks like I actually sprained his wrist or something, but at least it’s a show of brotherly attention—my sister was so disgusted by my behavior she didn’t want to see my face. She said to me afterward, “You think that tiger pit was bad? I’m growing claws the size of machetes for you and you alone. Anti-tinamous clause my ass.” Now she won’t talk to me. Mom says she is “appalled” at my behavior, but her scolding is half-hearted and ineffectual. “I don’t know what to do anymore, Phineas. You’ve gone so far off the rails they’ll find you in the Atlantic.”
I heard Nurse Caven put up a solid case for me when the principal wanted to suspend me indefinitely. “He’s a good kid at heart,” I imagine her saying. “He’s struggling, but we can’t leave our struggling kids behind. That’s how it gets worse for them.” Whatever she said, it worked—I got slapped with a week of detention and that’s it. I wrote her a sweet-ass thank-you note with a box of Godiva chocolates I know she likes.
It’s nice to have one cheerleader in my corner, but it doesn’t even begin to balance out all the people who think I’m a certified dirtbag, starting with my own sister, my former best friend, and ending with Stacey and her police officer father—along with the twenty or so other people in between.
I need to find where that powder came from.
Saturday, April 20
Chapter Eighteen
Saturday can’t come soon enough, and you bet your ass I’m at the cemetery first thing in the early morning, waiting. Mrs. Klaski never arrives. Yes, I want to ask her about Birds of America. What’s her favorite print? I’m still figuring out mine. And yes, of course, I want to ask her more about the drug. About Early. My plan for the next move isn’t materializing, yet I’m still sniffing out this Early character and thinking maybe she’s my best lead. If only I hadn’t beaten the shit out of Jason, I could have pumped him for more information. If only, if only, if only. I’m tired of defaulting to this all the time. There’s got to be another angle I can approach in finding this dude.
When I get home from the cemetery, I know I can’t resist anymore. No one’s talking to me, whatever I thought Stacey and I could be was for shit, and the oxys aren’t going to do it. I dial Taylor’s number.
“Please forgive me for my abominable behavior,” I say with flourish when she answers, milking each syllable. There’s no response from her. “I want to be in your good graces again. I’m begging you.”
“Who said you were ever in my good graces?” Now that she’s speaking, I can tell she’s high.
“What can I do to make it up to you? Why don’t I come over tonight? Make amends. I want to see more of your pretty face, smell more of that vanilla scent you wear. Can you allow me that?” My voice is smooth, laying down my best game, I’m really Sinatra-ing it.
“Finn,” she says. I enjoy the way she says my name, like it’s an answer to an important question. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“It probably isn’t.” I lean in closer to the phone as if she can feel my body heat. “We need to chill. We’ll talk. I want to hear about what colleges you’ve gotten into.”
“I haven’t gotten into any colleges,” she snaps, irritated that I don’t know the minutiae of her life. “I’m staying in D-Town.”
“So am I,” I say automatically. “That’s good, we’ll get to know each other more after we graduate.” I deserve to be flogged, as I’m fully aware that this is the last thing I want. But I haven’t shot up in a while, and tonight I need the needle—the direct hit, the instant satisfaction, the two-second pause and then, aaaah, who am I again?
My comment about getting to know each other softens her. She’s not the only one who will be left behind.
“My parents won’t be home tonight. I guess it’d be okay if you came over.”
It’s almost too easy, and I’m not proud of being an expert-level scumbag.
“I’ll be there at five,” I say.
When I get there, Taylor’s not looking so fresh. She’s wearing a pair of paisley printed boxers and practically swimming in a Red Sox T-shirt. No hello, no hey Finn, how are you, nice seeing you, just a gesture to come inside. Hostess of the year. In the kitchen, she hops up and sits on the granite counter-topped island in the middle of the room, a throne of sorts, expecting me to say something interesting, to entertain her, her own private court jester.
“You all right there, babe?” I ask.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just not feeling great.”
I walk over to her and slide my hands up her bare thighs, tuck a piece of hair behind her ear.
“I know what would make us feel better,” I say. Heroin’s a mood thing, only temporary, I reass
ure myself, connect to the phases of the moon, appropriate when the stars are aligned.
Taylor eyes me with hesitance, glances at the clock on the wall. I caress her face with my fingers, light touch, thumb stroking the bottom of her lip. She lets out a sigh, and I go in for a kiss that she receives passively, part of her isn’t here. An absent ghost of a kiss.
“I got some,” she says. “Let’s go up to my room.”
-----
Even the needle feels good going in, warmed up from Taylor’s touch. Seconds of ecstasy feel like a year’s worth, I’ve just kissed God himself, the world is exquisite, right on. Down, down, oh Lord, the free fall has never been so sweet, I could plummet forever, good-bye mind, see you never, you weren’t that great anyway. Had a way of being a record that skips, the same part playing over and over again. All that exists is now, I’ve caught it in my hand, here you go Finn, a baseball-size now that I never want to throw to home plate.
The fact that we’re sharing the needle seems sacred, we’ve made this pact, we’re blood brothers and there is no going back. I’m in her good graces again, dammit, I’m beyond her good graces, I’ve reached her pearly gates, though not in a sexual way. The gates are open where nirvana is attainable. We’re in this together, and this billowing cloud of calm hugs us in a womblike circle, to nourish, nurture, and rebirth. The ashen pallor of Taylor’s skin disappears, revealing an awakened tone, a cotton candy pink that I want to lick off and have for myself. I get the urge to write a poem, compose a song, paint on a canvas.
We lie on her bed, feet dangling off the end, gazing up at the ceiling decorated with glow-in-the-dark stars. Our breathing is in sync, we touch each other’s hands every other minute or so, just to make sure this is real and solid, that there’s ground to land on once we come down.
Taylor turns her head and is staring at the side of my face. She reaches out to touch me but thinks better of it. Somehow we ended up stripped down—she in her pink underwear and matching bra, me in my black boxer briefs. But it’s innocent; we just want to be free.