That’s what I would do anyway, if Mom would just go. “Do you know what’s going on with Sadie?” I demand. “What’s happening? Where is she?” Then, answering my own questions, “Never mind. It’s not like you’d tell me if you did know.”
Rising, Mom turns to study me. She’s going now, finally—only, her face is strangely blank, this moonlit movie screen. Her forehead creases like when she’s working up to explaining something important. Likely logistics. Our lawyer’s latest media defense strategy. Meanwhile, shots of me outside the hospital, cowering in Mom’s armpit, will be forever slathered across the internet. S’MOTHER DEAREST, the headlines read. Now she steps forward, reaching for my hand.
“Koda.” My name creaks out.
And I dissolve. It’s not a voice you use to explain anything reasonable. It’s the voice you use when somebody might be dead.
* * *
Astoria is gloomy this early in the morning. Filled with pigeons, and old people who look like pigeons. Everything smells wet, even though it hasn’t rained.
A man in the vestibule of Sadie’s building is doing something complicated with extension cords. He lets me in. No questions asked, just a curt “Morning.” For all he knows, I live here. Thundering up the stairs, I call, “Forgot my keys!” over my shoulder. Really selling it.
3F looms at the end of the hall. I knock once. Twice. A few times. “Sadie?” I quaver. “Hello?” There is a peephole. I know how they work—but I try looking through it, just in case. “Sadie, it’s me. Are you home?” I press closer to the door, only of course there’s nothing there, just the grain of wood scratching my ear, and heat. I pull back. “My mom said…” She said Sadie had gone from the hospital straight to drug rehab. Which, okay, is not death. But close. Death-adjacent. Same with any other place that’s away from me. I knock more on the door. Pound until my palms sting. Frustrated, sweating, I scream, “Dammit!” wrenching the doorknob.
It’s open.
Open.
Thank you, thank you, beautiful paramedics.
The apartment looks the same. Flooded with sunlight, and in the two days since I’ve been here last, I forgot how good that feels, like pressing my face into my favorite pillow, breathing deep. There’s the couch. Bookshelves. Clutter, of course. Her blanket lies crumpled on the rug. I fold it carefully. A bird, definitely a pigeon, coos on the fire escape.
She isn’t here.
Mom didn’t lie. I’m the untrustworthy one. Snuck out of the office the moment Mom got swallowed up by meetings, hailed a cab to another borough when I promised, promised, I’d focus on schoolwork. The take-home packets arrived today. I guess I just had to come here. Had to see for myself that this is real, and Sadie is gone, gone forever. For months. The thought trips some kind of wire inside me. I stumble blindly for the kitchen, her voice scraping through my head. Can you cook an egg?
Frankly, Sades, I don’t have time for eggs. If Mom’s meeting ends at ten, that leaves me just over an hour, but I do finish folding the blanket. I wet some paper towels to scrub at the blood crust in the bathroom, and then I open the medicine cabinet where the pill bottles are and fling them against the wall. I dump the pills out, an entire freaking rainbow of colors and shapes that I smash with my heel. We’re talking worse than smithereens. I use the dustpan to sweep them up and flush them down the toilet. There’s more. Once I start digging, I can’t stop. I flush it all. Midol. My antacids. Everything but the baggie I find in the Tampax box, because there’s only residue left. Grainy white powder. I flush the baggie, too.
Bloodshot eyes watch from the mirror. I press both hands to the glass, then cover my forehead. The coolness takes time to seep through.
Across the hall, her bedroom door stands ajar. The guitar must be lonely. Same as the unmade bed, which I wade onto. The pillows still smell like her, and I lie against them contemplating what it means when somebody calls you baby. Lindsay would never call me that. Mom, neither. It must be a name for somebody special. Somebody you kiss and bleed all over but never meant to abandon. No way Sadie would make a decision as major as attending rehab without telling me. We need each other too much.
I snuggle deeper into the pillow, my phone balanced on my cheek. Time for another voicemail. I dial and wait.
Her nightstand buzzes.
Wait—not her nightstand. The drawer. I yank it open, and there it is. Her ancient flip phone, the battery nearly out of juice. 109 MISSED CALLS from “KR.” A musical note dances on the tiny display screen. VOICEMAIL BOX FULL. The note has eyebrows. They wiggle as it tangoes back and forth.
I shut the drawer.
My head feels heavy, the pillow emitting its own gravitational force. But I can’t sleep now, no matter how far away she is, or how gummy my eyes feel. I need to think. First I pop a Tums. Let it dissolve slowly.
Then—dimly—jingling. A dog? No… keys. I sit up. “Sadie?” I get tangled in the covers, splat to the floor. “Sadie!” I shout. She didn’t go to rehab? She’s back? I race for the living room to find a blond woman in a T-shirt and metallic down vest, tatted arms snug around a cardboard box. My heart hits my boots.
“Koda,” Em says, perfectly nonchalant. Like of all potential disasters awaiting her in Sadie’s apartment, I’m not so horrifying. She takes Sadie’s jacket off its peg—the leather jacket with pins and sheepskin lining—and tosses it into the box. “I saw the news. Surprised your mom’s let you out unsupervised. If you were my kid”—she drops the box onto the couch and picks up the blanket I folded, looks at the box—“I’d never let you out of my sight again. Like, ever.” She rolls the blanket into a sausagey bundle.
“I’m eighteen. Or—will be, in a month and a half. Either way, my mom doesn’t control me. What are you doing here?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” She raises her free arm as she pushes past me, covering up a repulsively chunky cough. “What else could drag me off bed rest but a one-way ticket on Sadie’s hot-mess express? She called me this morning. Apologies, list of demands, I know the drill. Figures she’d melt down this close to our deadline, but… here I am, to the rescue again. Don’t tell me she gave the same orders to you. Otherwise, I’ll feel redundant.”
“You’re lying,” I say, unable to conceal my jealousy. “Sadie can’t call you. Her phone’s in the bedroom.”
Em looks at me. “Listen, Koda, and I don’t mean to blow your mind, but sometimes, phones aren’t smartphones. Sometimes, they’re hooked through a series of cables—”
“I know what a landline is!” My chest burns. I shouldn’t have flushed the antacids. “I just don’t buy that Sadie would call you first. She’d call me. You don’t…” Sadie doesn’t care about you. The real you, that I know. Em swings into the bathroom, but I’m right behind her. “Probably Sadie would’ve called me, but couldn’t risk my mom finding out. I’m sure she’s memorized my number.” My justifications are thin, heart arrhythmic. If Lindsay’s right…
Em ignores me, picking through the pill bottles on the floor, rolling them label up with her toes. “You trashed all these, didn’t you? Damn—alprazolam too. I’m sober, been sober for ten months, so I shouldn’t be talking like this, but trust me, benzos are fun. Figures Sadie would find a means of getting her hands on a prescription. Ain’t that legit.” Scooping up a bottle, she recites: “Sarah V. Pasquale: Take One Orally at Onset of Symptoms. Huh.” The bottle clatters to the linoleum. “Must be for her anxiety.”
I grab the bottle and set it on the sink. Anxious? Sadie? That doesn’t compute. Em assesses various options for shampoo and conditioner before placing her selections in the box, saying more quietly, “Are you perplexed? The V stands for Vittoria.”
No. Wikipedia told me months ago. But I say nothing. Dig my tongue against my teeth.
In the bedroom, Em moves—not purposefully, but with authority, filling the box with scrounged-up jeans and sweaters while I sit on the bed, arms wrapped around my aching stomach. You’d think she’s been here before, or something. None of t
he clothes she collects off the floor. She discovers them in dresser drawers, closet compartments, even turning her back to me once so I won’t see her with a bushel of black underwear. “She didn’t mention how long she’d be away,” she mutters to herself, folding up a fairy-green bathrobe that I can’t fathom Sadie wearing. “Does she need another sweater? A real coat? On a scale of one to ten, ten being cutting glass—”
“Cutting glass?”
“You know, like how hard your nipples get?” Em chuckles at my blush. “You’re a prude, then. Cute.”
“I’m not a prude,” I say hotly. “I just—Sadie’s going to be gone forever. Okay? The websites all say the typical rehab stay lasts ninety days.” Her eyebrows jolt together, igniting a flash of triumph. At last, I’ve found my edge on her. “So if I were you, I’d get another box.”
Em smirks. “Rehab? Like… drug rehab?”
Miserably, I nod. “My mom said this would be a wonderful opportunity for her.” Sadie is sick, Koda. She’s been very sick, for a very long time. “Do you know the name of the place?” I googled frantically last night, after Mom broke the news, but the links I tapped only led to reviews. Conflicting info about counselors, and the lack of vegetarian dining options.
“Shit, Koda.” Em’s laugh gives way to more coughing. “Sadie’s not in rehab. She’s up in Dutchess County. With Ted.” She flips the box shut to show me the address scrawled on top. T. DeRoche, 432 Broome Road, Dutchess Hills, NY. “Not suggesting your mom’s lying to you, of course. I’ve read practically all her old interviews—was always struck by her sincerity. In addition to, shall we say, her more salient qualities.” Her eyelid does a little skip that’s almost a wink. “God, wait, that’s weird, right? It’s weird to hit on your mom in front of you. My bad. But she’s so gorgeous! In fact”—Em crouches over the box—“I remember when I was in college and that whole thing with your dad went down, her face just like, blasted all over the TV, and…” She shrugs. “I credit her with helping me realize some things about myself.”
So Mom did lie, which inexplicably hurts worse than anything. Even the slap. Even if that’s all she does now—lies and lies and lies. Only, that’s not where my head’s at right now. I get off the bed, looming over Em while she folds and refolds sweaters. “You’re queer?” I venture.
She blinks up at me, nudging her rose-gold glasses with the back of her hand. “Bi, yeah. Was that not obvious?” Then she sighs, fake-wringing her hands at the chaos around us. “Of all my exes, Sadie might just be the most functional. I’m starting to think that says more about me than them. Pass me that shirt, please. Not the gray one. Black with the—yes.” The shirt depicts a tarot card. A man sprawled facedown with ten swords stuck in his back. Em takes it, the cotton whispering against my fingers.
“You and Sadie…”
“Oh, did you not know?”
No. I never would’ve… but it… makes sense? I guess. All their murmuring and ragging on each other. The goodbye kiss. Italian manners my ass. “Sadie didn’t tell me,” I say.
“Not surprised,” Em goes on as I bolt for Sadie’s nightstand, the picture placed facedown there. “To be honest, I never really thought of Sadie as having a specific sexuality? Mostly, she seems to go where the feelings and drugs take her. That’s from Christmas,” she says as I flip the photo over. Like I’m an idiot. Like I couldn’t have figured out from my father’s jingle bell earrings, the pink in his and Sadie’s cheeks, that this picture was taken over Christmas. Four months before I was born. “Their last, I think? Seems wildly counterintuitive that you’d go through the trouble of framing a picture only to never look at it, but what the hell do I know. Sadie’s a mystery. You ask me…” I glance back at Em, and she clears her throat, maybe to hide the sadness creeping up with the phlegm. “Rehab might be the better choice.”
I set the photo down.
At least it’s not of Em.
Shirts properly swaddled, she pats the side of the box. “You didn’t happen to spot any tape on your path of destruction, did you?”
When I shake my head, she wanders off to the living room.
Tingling, I pick the picture frame back up, run my thumb along its curved edge. Christmas. He had to have known he was going to be a father by then.
Leave before you get left, Sadie told me.
But he went back.
CHAPTER 28
ACTUALLY, GRAND CENTRAL IS GRANDER than the name implies. Massive. Bustling. A blue whale heart. It’s just after one p.m. Tourists push past me, dragging children and wheely suitcases, stopping every five seconds to gawk and take pictures. I crash into the same family twice before realizing directions are inscribed on the marble archways. GRAND CONCOURSE. DINING CONCOURSE. OYSTER BAR. Gross.
On a hunch I head toward the Grand Concourse, checking to make sure my hood’s still up and hair tucked away. Got to exercise caution in this swarm. The Grand Concourse thrums with echoes. A giant board posted in the middle lists departure times and track numbers. Inching closer to investigate, I notice a tourist point up, and my eyes follow automatically. The ceiling arched above us is covered in constellations. Green as our pool in LA was, before Mom hired that last groundskeeper.
I don’t want to think about Mom now. The next train to Dutchess Hills departs in eight minutes, and she’ll flip an absolute shit once she reads my texts. It’s a risk I have to take. I meant what I told Em about being practically eighteen already, Mom not controlling me. I can do what I want, go where I please, and in the three days that have passed since I ransacked Sadie’s apartment, Lindsay’s started posting latergrams with Peter. The two of them kissing, all hearts and brain-dead lyrics.
Except Sadie, nobody wants me. Not even this stupid city. Which is why I have no choice but to go and be with her. Wherever that is.
Nearby, some guys my age are arguing about what is either a sport or a video game. One smiles my way, a perfectly benign, being-friendly-to-a-stranger smile, and I push quickly past them, guitar case aimed in front of me. “Hey!” they shout. “Watch it!” I mouth a silent thanks to Sadie, for helping me become so train-savvy.
* * *
The train drops me off just to the left of nowhere. A desolate, waterlogged field. The rain picked up as we were leaving New York City, and now it’s really belting down. Luckily, Teddy’s farm isn’t that far from the train station, according to Google. Three miles. I head north—what my GPS eventually insists is north, after several false starts—squishing along the side of the increasingly busy road, sidestepping roadkill and headlights. A bridge appears, so I cross it, not stopping to examine the churning gray water below. Em wasn’t kidding. It’s chillier here than down in the city, my throat slick with snot. A ninety minute train ride shouldn’t make that big of a difference. Fields unfold on either side of me, darkened to velvet by the rapidly setting sun. After what feels like hours of trudging, the fields start to come with white fences. I find a mailbox carved in the shape of an alpaca.
The driveway is steep and rutted as hell. I climb carefully, one hand thrust in my coat pocket and the other lifting the guitar case extra high to avoid the mud. Gradually, the house comes into view. Yellow. Two stories. A wraparound porch with a swing, and two upended tricycles. My fingers knit themselves around my mouth. I breathe on them fast, hard, but how can I focus on getting warm when the house is right here, and okay, maybe not the kind of house you’d expect rock stars to inhabit, its vinyl siding the color of old gum, but they’re inside just the same. Lights are on, and I’m here, I’m here. All I’ll ever need is locked inside.
The doorbell croaks. Nobody answers. I nail my finger to it, and the croaking echoes all through the house.
“Okay!” somebody yells. A man. Teddy? But I don’t really know his voice. He never sang. “Okay, okay, coming!” The door flies open, revealing a man in jeans and a Beatles T-shirt with the sleeves pushed up. I start to introduce myself, only to close my mouth mid-hello. His eyebrows swoop. Recognition.
“Where’s Sadie
?” I ask.
Before he can answer, a little boy runs up, sees me, and dives behind Teddy’s legs in terror. My excitement plummets. I forgot he had kids.
“Um,” I say. Teddy’s staring at me, his gaze bright but no-bullshit, exactly like in the pictures. He tells the boy to stay inside, bending to whisper instructions in his ear that I don’t catch. Then he joins me on the porch, shutting the door firmly behind him.
“What are you doing here?” he demands.
“I—”
“This is private property. You’re trespassing.”
My stomach clenches. I didn’t think he would be like this. Serious, yeah, but not… furious. I shove my hands in my sweatshirt pocket. It’s not the same one Sadie bled all over, my JV swimming sweatshirt that I’ve lived in for months. This sweatshirt is charcoal gray. Artfully distressed. I thought it might complement the guitar. “I’m sorry. I know you’ve probably seen the news about us, and I get that Sadie’s your best friend and you think you’re protecting her, or whatever, but Em told me she was here, and—”
“Em?” He grimaces. “Who? Look, yes, I am very aware of what happened—” He reaches for me but stops, fingers just shy of closing around my shoulder. “I’m afraid you need to leave. Really.”
“I can’t—”
“Please. I’m sorry, Koda Rose, this isn’t easy for me, either.…”
No. Fuck this. I didn’t come all this way to get chucked off Teddy DeRoche’s property like some crazed stalker fan. How do I tell him that? How do I explain that I might do something really stupid if he doesn’t cut the crap and let me see Sadie, something like—I don’t know, lie down slowly in that disgusting river? But this is exactly what I say, and in that pause that follows, I become aware of a gentle patter. Rain? Again? A drop slides off my nose and I realize, I’m the patter. Soaked and shivering.
The Mythic Koda Rose Page 21