Rule #1

by T. A Richards Neville

  “We text,” West says dismissively while he searches for where he left his wallet. “It took you fucking long enough to ask Brooke out, so I was waiting on you.”

  Stretching out my legs, I lean back on the couch. “West, you’re old enough to take a girl out on your own. Don’t drag me into your sad love life.”

  “Speaking of sad.” West grabs the stray wallet from down the side of the armchair and stuffs it in his back pocket. “Where is Kempy? He’s been MIA since Saturday night.”

  “With his new mom-slash-fuck buddy?” I eye West’s freshly trimmed hair, and the casual side sweep on top. “Have you been to the barbers?”

  He sweeps his hand over the surface, making sure not to mess his mop up. “My flow was desperate. I could tie it up.”

  “What do you care? You’re wearing a tracksuit.”

  West gives me a dead-eyed look. “Shut up and move or we’ll be late.”

  West’s cheerleader’s standing outside the bar that doubles up as retro arcade when we get there. We’re not late, but it was a small, downhill hike from the parking garage, and all the street parking spaces downtown are filled.

  “Her name’s Vogue,” West reminds me as we walk. Like I’m the main target for the info when he needs a constant reminder and he’s the one talking to her.

  I side-eye him with a mystified frown. “You couldn’t remember a name like Vogue? What the hell does she see in you?”

  Ignoring that genuine question, West rushes the remaining distance. Vogue’s head turns our way, and she smiles, walking the rest of the way to meet us.

  “Hi,” she says. “I got here a little early and I wasn’t sure whether to go inside or wait out here in case I missed you.” She’s nervous waffling, and her blush reinforces she knows it.

  “Let’s go inside. It’s freezing out here, and you’re…” West glances over Vogue’s cycling romper thingy, the long-sleeved shirt tied over the top hardly a jacket. “You look great,” he adds afterward, Vogue’s expression wavering from happy to see him to slightly injured.

  “Thank you.” Vogue recovers, but not by much.

  “You’re wearing a tracksuit,” I remind him in his ear as he pushes open one of the glass doors and lets Vogue inside the retro neon-lit bar first.

  “Fuck off,” he gruffly whispers back.

  West picked the perfect spot for third wheeling, and we’re deep in a two-player shootout at the Hoopz machine, basically on a two-man date, when I realize Brooke’s here, and my next throw goes off center and almost misses the net. West grumbles when the ball rattles the metal frame and drops in, and my score goes up by another point.

  Neither of us can stand to lose to the other, and that means I only have time to flash Brooke a quick grin.

  West and I throw the basketballs as rapidly as they roll back down the slope to us, our scores rocketing on the overhead digital boards in flashes of red.

  The buzzer blares, the balls stop coming, and West’s got twenty-nine points to my twenty-seven. Any other day I’d demand a rematch, but Brooke’s here, and this isn’t any other day.

  Perched precariously on a barstool that’s found its way over here, Brooke’s wearing these black boots that extend her long legs for days. That’s the first thing I notice about her. They lace up in the front, and the heels are narrow and high. Her black jeans look like they’ve been painted on, and her sheer black top covers her from the top of her neck all the way to her wrists, the skimpy black tank underneath concealing everything, and at the same time nothing.

  The subtle glimpses of flesh just make me eager to uncover more. The tank top curves snugly around her cleavage, and she looks fucking phenomenal. A little bit like she’s in mourning, dressed all in black, but that’s one funeral I want to go to with her.

  After a breakneck second look, West’s gaze lingers on Brooke, a snap of something I can’t get a read on furrowing his eyebrows.

  “Oh, hello,” Brooke says, glancing away from her conversation with Vogue. A humorous smile touches the edge of her mouth, and she gives me a look like she knows something I don’t. “The championship game’s over?”

  West holds out his arm in a muscle pose and flexes his biceps. “And the champ was victorious again.”

  “You won by two points,” I say. “I’ll remedy that after I’ve beat your ass at every other game in here.”

  Vogue steps down carefully from her stool. “I’d like to play.”

  West’s eyebrows rise in invitation. “I’m really good, mind you. So, if you cry, I did give you the heads-up.”

  “Is tonight going to get competitive?” Brooke looks at me and asks, the challenge shining in her brown eyes.

  I stand in front of her, desperate to put my hands somewhere. “Did West just threaten to make his date cry?”

  Brooke laughs. “Aw. That’s sweet.”

  “Which game should I kick your ass at first?”

  Brooke’s laugh reaches an octave higher. “You can try, but that’s all I’ll let you do. Maybe I’ll humor you for a round of air hockey.” She shrugs. “I’ll see how I feel. Based on your attitude, I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

  I creep in a little closer, resting my hands on her knees. “You’ve got big talk, Brooke. I hope you’ve got the goods to back it up.”

  She shrugs a casual shoulder, a smile in her eyes. “Guess you’ll just have to find out.”

  I’m not sure if we’re still talking about the same thing here, but I’ve got the sudden urge to blow off this neon arcade and take Brooke straight to my bed. I’d be surprised if I got any clearer confirmation on how I’m feeling or how much I’m interested in Brooke.

  The night blows by just as quickly as any time I’m with Brooke, and we leave the arcade before it gets too late and walk to the movie theater down by the harbor.

  West and Vogue walk in front, his arm slung around her shoulder. He leans down to kiss her on the mouth, navigating the cobblestone walk between redbrick buildings blindly. Poking through the fog rising from the water along the shipping docks ahead, the old gas lamps burn yellow cones of light across the wet pavement.

  Brooke’s hand wraps around my arm when she stumbles on the slick cobblestone, almost going down in one swift motion.

  “Whoops, sorry,” she says with an embarrassed smile, quickly removing her hand.

  “You okay?” I ask, winding my fingers between hers. I don’t need a reason to hold her hand, but I give myself one anyway. It’s not like I want her to fall again, and we’re on a downward slope, after a heavy rainfall.

  “I’m okay. I slipped, that’s all. These damn boots.” Brooke smiles up at me, but the color in her face has faded, her skin pale in the dim, misty light. For the first time tonight, as the color rinses out of her, I notice the burst blood vessels around her eyes, beneath her makeup.

  “Brooke, not to be a jerk or anything, but the color’s just drained from your face. Are you sure you’re okay?” I don’t know how to bring up the blood vessel thing without making her self-conscious, because I can’t figure out why they would be there.

  West and Vogue disappear around the corner of a building, and I slow the pace for Brooke because she really does look unwell.

  “I thought you were drinking soda,” I say, my gaze skating over her blanching features.

  “I did drink soda.” She draws in air through her nose and lets it out slowly through her mouth. “I feel kinda sick, but it’ll pass. I was fine a minute ago.”

  “You don’t look fine now.”

  She lowers her head to the cobblestone, her concentration reduced to taking steady footsteps, one cautiously in front of the other. “Do I look that bad?”

  “Not bad…”

  Out of nowhere, she puts one hand over the side of her abdomen, what I can see of her face contorting in pain. When I ask her about it, she plays it down, straightening her torso and pushing through whatever’s going on with her. She shuts down my offer to take her home just as stubbornly, and when we’re in the
oldest movie theater in this part of Maine, paying for snacks for the eleven o’clock showing of the latest action flick, Brooke puts her hand on the glass top of the popcorn counter and then crumples to the floor in a weightless heap.

  My mom’s been fussing over me and every, tiny, unimportant thing for two days straight. Right now she’s made herself scarce, hunting down one of the nurses to see what’s holding up my discharge.

  Clearing his throat from his chair at the side of my hospital bed, Dad pins me with a serious look, not his ordinary impartial complexion. He tends to only show emotion when the Patriots or the Flyers are losing. And even then, it’s the verbally abusive kind.

  “Should we talk while your mom’s gone?”

  Sitting on the bed, I toss the last of my toiletries and clothes that Mom brought from home into my bag. I hardly touched the clothes, but I’m wearing a pair of old leggings now and my high school sweater. Both fit looser than when I wore them in twelfth grade, and I may have had a two-day reprieve since I felt and looked like I was knocking on death’s door, but I’ve been given the all-clear now. Fluids and hospital food have been forced into my body through tubes and by hand, and I’m free to go home and open to interrogation.

  My dad’s not messing about, no matter how scrupulously my mom’s tiptoeing around her only daughter’s bizarre health scare.

  “Brooke.” He voices my name as a clear warning. It’s the tone he uses when he isn’t offering second chances.

  But I can’t speak. Tears flood my vision, and my throat constricts, pain blossoming in my chest as a wave of panic crashes over me.

  “Hey. Hey.” My dad leaps out of his chair and gathers me in his arms, his embrace stiff but suffocating, and I sob into the sleeve of his flannel jacket. The stale aroma of cigarettes and pine sooth me in a weird, nostalgic way, even though the smell’s anything but pleasant. “Stop crying now. Your mother will be back any minute, and she’ll make a whole goddamn fuss out of it.”

  He doesn’t mean to make me laugh, but I do, my tears mixing with heaving gasps of laughter, the tragic sound muffled against my dad’s shoulder.

  “We can discuss it at home,” he says quietly, reassuring me while also protecting me from the emotional wrath of my mom. “I’ll find you some tissues.” He releases me and stands up, pointing a stern finger at me. “You just stay there.”

  There’s really nowhere for me to go, but I nod anyway. My dad doesn’t know how to act around me any more than I know to act around him, and I am dreading the moment when answers are demanded rather than kindly asked for, because my mom’s already itching for the cause of my sudden admission to the ER after being told I collapsed in the foyer of a movie theater and no one I was with could get me to come around. Poor Vogue thought I was dying, and even though I was the one limp on the floor, I’m more concerned over how she is, and I’m desperate to apologize for ruining everyone’s night in such ridiculous fashion.

  I’m humiliated even thinking about it, and I’m thankful the small window of time before and as it happened is truant from my memory.

  After X-rays, blood and urine samples, and intermittent heart monitoring, my mom’s face was a map of confusion when the doctor explained my body had gone into a dangerous state of ketosis. After a deeper, less medically complex breakdown, it just sounded like my body’s exhausted and temporarily shut itself down to preserve what energy is left.

  My mom started crying, my dad just looked confused, and I wanted the bed to sink into the floor and take me with it.

  My lies have stretched so far, they’re ready to snap. And I honestly don’t know how much further I can take them. If this is the end of the road, I’m nowhere near ready to get off.

  To add insult to injury, I’m required for insurance reasons to be pushed out to the hospital parking lot in a wheelchair.

  “Thank you,” I mutter sheepishly as the male porter drops me off at my dad’s Volkswagen, then waves us off to head back inside the hospital.

  My mom’s silence only lasts as long as it takes my dad to drive us to my apartment. For the first ten or fifteen minutes, she utilizes her time by making me peppermint tea and mindlessly tidying the living room and kitchen. But when the tea’s on the coffee table, and the flurry of activity and catching-up with Maddie comes to an unsettling pause, my mom cracks and starts to cry.

  “I’ll leave you guys alone.” Maddie stands from the couch, then leans down to give me a quick hug before scarpering to her room, where I wish I could follow her.

  My dad heaves a great sigh from the other side of the couch to me. He must have been expecting this, because he makes no move to comfort her or kindly ask her to stop it. Although, I strongly wish he would.

  “Mom,” I say, softening my voice. “Why are you crying? I’m fine now.”

  Removing her hand from across her mouth, she outright asks, “Are you anorexic, Brooke? Because you can tell me. We can get you help. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “Mom, I’m not anorexic.” I keep my tone calm and neutral, but my heart’s racing out of control at the speculation. “I eat food. You’ve seen me do it.”

  She sniffs back tears. “But you look so skinny. Tell her, Ian. Doesn’t she look skinny?”

  Sparing me a mild glance ringed in apology, my dad says, “She looks healthy, Joanne. Aren’t all women on diets these days?”

  My mom stifles her crying to glare at my dad.

  “It’s finals week soon,” I say, “I’m under a lot of pressure right now and I guess I didn’t realize I wasn’t looking after myself. It wasn’t intentional, and I certainly didn’t want to waste your time and drag you all the way out here.”

  “Are you worried about your grades?” Mom’s still concerned, but it’s directed in another, safer direction now, and that’s where I want to keep her.

  So, I lay it on thick. We go through my portraits, my digital prints, and she reassures and gushes over how amazing it all is.

  Tears dried, and her pale complexion brightened with a smile, she heads out to the grocery store to buy stuff for dinner.

  A little over two hours later, she places a heaving bowl of beef and vegetable stew in front of me that makes my stomach curl up to crawl out of my mouth and get as far away from the stew as possible.

  I dig my way through it, poking at the steaming chunks of meat and eating what I can manage without barfing into the bowl.

  “I’m really not that hungry.” I push the bowl away from me. I must look as tired as I feel, because Mom just smiles and takes the leftovers away, then tells me to go lie down.

  I don’t expect my lies to land and stick as effortlessly as they have, and I don’t feel good about it either.

  In my bedroom, I swap my leggings for cotton shorts and climb into bed leaving my hoodie on.

  Maddie comes in as I’m drifting into my own head. She closes the door and lies on the bed, turning onto her side and sliding her hands under her cheek.

  “Can I say something without you chewing my head off or getting upset?”

  “Okay,” I say, cautiously.

  A beat of hesitation whips me into silent dread, then Maddie says, “You’re getting smaller and smaller, right in front of my eyes, and now you’ve ended up in hospital.” Sliding one hand out from beneath her cheek, she grabs my pinky finger under the quilt. “When you feel ready to talk to someone, will you please think about coming to me? I’m here for you, Brooke. And I’m really frightened right now.” A tear drips from the corner of her eye and runs across the bridge of her nose. Her tears make me cry, and I nod in answer.

  Maddie pushes the quilt down and gets under it, and we both spend the night in my bed.

  If I can’t get better for myself, I at least want to try for her.

  As stringent as my mom is on me taking Friday off college, I argue my case it’s too close to finals, and remind her I’ve already lost two days being stuck in the hospital.

  She gives in with a resolute sigh, throwing my dad a look like it’s
his fault I won’t listen to her, disregarding the fact I’m almost twenty years old and capable of making my own decisions.

  She’s flabbergasted when I tell her I’m going into work that night and not calling off sick like she obviously expected me to.

  “Ian, do something,” she demands, standing in my living room in a show of disbelief. They’ve been staying at a nearby bed and breakfast, and now my mom’s decided she’s staying in Skahlake until my exams are over, so she can nourish me and personally see to it I don’t collapse again.

  My dad’s driving back to Vermont tonight because he can’t take any more time off from his job, but really I think he’s trying to cut me some slack and not breathe fire down my neck like my overbearing mother.

  “What?” he says, mildly irritated and a lot like he’d rather be somewhere else. “Let the girl go to work. She can’t stop living because of one mishap. She’s fine, Jo. Look at her.” He flicks through channels on the TV, leg bouncing from boredom.

  I’m unclear if he really believes that or he genuinely doesn’t know what to do with me or what to say, and feigning ignorance is just easier for everyone, a speedier way for life to go back to normal. Mostly, though, I think he’d rather not make me cry again. Whatever it is, I’m grateful to have him back on my side.

  My exhales through her mouth, a look of exasperation on her face. “Then if you insist on not listening to a word I say, I’m driving you there and I’m picking you up.”

  “At two a.m.?” I question, tamping down my smile. My mom falls asleep on the second page of her book sometimes as early as eight o’clock.

  “I’ll set my alarm,” she says stiffly, and I know she isn’t budging on this, so I leave the argument there, accepting defeat.

  I don’t want to give my mom any more to worry about, so I change into the silver Ring Girl outfit at work. I shimmy into the tightest, skinniest pants in the world while Maddie slips into the shorts no problem.

  With the freedom of being on campus all day and in classes, I’ve avoided my mom’s many snacks and meals, and I wear that hollow feeling like a safety blanket as I get to work and put the last few disastrous days behind me.