When I get to the shelter, I take a quick look at the delivery receipts on the spike in Maria’s office and check to see that everything was logged on the clipboard that hangs just outside the walk-in. Then I go inside and count boxes.
You’d think no one would steal asparagus, but it happened just the other day. Junkies will literally steal anything. The woman who did it couldn’t even sell the asparagus and ended up bringing it back. Maria fed her one last time and told her she couldn’t come to the shelter any more. I could tell Maria felt bad about it as she watched the woman weep uncontrollably. Then Maria said, ‘Rock, meet bottom,’ and walked away.
The woman stopped crying immediately. Like a spigot turned off. It was impressive, but I’ve seen better.
Jinka could talk and cry at the same time. Sobs sighed in and out of her effortlessly, and her nose didn’t even run. Water flowed only from her eyes and slid off her sculpted jawbone like one of those miraculous statues that weep in everlasting perfection. And, while weeping, she’d tell her version of the story with such eloquence, how could it be anything but the truth?
‘She was starting to scare me. She was scaring all of us. She took it so seriously, like it was real, and then it just kept getting worse and worse, and we all wanted out. But she wouldn’t let us. It was like she believed it all,’ Jinka said as she wept.
And they had proof, in a way. It was in my notebook, written in my handwriting. I did all the posts online, even though the rest of the Five stood over my shoulder while I wrote. They told me how good my stories were. How amazing it was that I could come up with all of this in my head.
Jinka even called me a genius.
‘Are you OK?’
I spin around and find Maria behind me. ‘Sure. Yeah. Just counting,’ I say.
Maria raises an eyebrow. She takes the clipboard and sees that the box count is completed, and her expression changes. ‘Sorry,’ she says, ‘but you were standing so still. I thought you’d fallen asleep on your feet.’
I smile and shrug and scoot past her on my way to the chopping station. I’m not OK. Every second my body filters out more and more of the drugs. Soon, I’ll be me. Or what’s left of me.
‘Hey,’ Maria says, calling me back. ‘Why haven’t you ever asked to work out front?’
I shake my head and look at my feet. ‘I like where I am.’ When I look up at Maria, she’s searching me for something.
‘You’re really just here to help. Or for help,’ she says. It isn’t a question – but it is, too. She’s making a statement, but she doesn’t know if it’s right or wrong.
‘I’m here to work,’ I say.
Maria gives me another one of her penetrating looks. ‘I won’t say no,’ she finally says, ‘but come with me to the circle first. You don’t have to talk. Just come.’
I shrug and follow her. The rest of the back-of-house staff are waiting for Maria to start.
I’m wedged between two of the beefy Latina cooks. They grab my hands automatically, like I’m just another chicken they have to butcher. That makes me feel oddly welcome. I am here, like them. No better, no worse, no different. I hang on to them because I know they’re real. I can trust that. As soon as my antipsychotics wear off, I don’t know if I’ll be able to trust much else.
The meeting begins. Everyone communes with his or her higher power, asking to be granted the serenity to make it through another day sober.
‘We got some sad news last night,’ Maria announces. ‘The police found more human remains that didn’t fit with the out-of-state hunter. There’s no easy way to say this. It turns out, it was Sandy.’
I did hear right. My grandparents were talking about another body.
I hear mumbling of all kinds from the circle. Things like, ‘The programme is life or death.’ And, ‘But for the grace of God, go I.’
‘How’d she die?’ one of the cooks asks.
‘No word on that yet,’ Maria replies, looking down.
Everyone is silent for a while.
‘Do they know when she died?’ the other cook asks.
‘I asked, and they were shady on the details. Within the last few days, was all they said. So if anyone has anything to say to the police, speak up. Sandy had family, and they deserve answers. Even if it is just another OD,’ Maria says.
Everyone nods at the floor sadly, but it’s obvious no one here has any information. I remember my first day here, two of the cooks talking about Sandy going missing, and how she was still able to trick. I steal a glance at them on either side of me now, but I can’t tell what they’re thinking.
Maria asks if anyone wants to share, but no one does. They’re looking at me, but not in a judgemental way. They’re all just waiting to see if I’m going to say something. When I don’t, the meeting ends with the usual ‘Keep Coming’ chant that I’ve heard a bunch of times, and then we all break off to get to work.
Aura-Blue finds me in the back before she starts her shift. She gives me one of her coconut-scented hugs and tells me she has so much to tell me, and how did I like riding my bike all this way? And then she realizes she’s got to get started on her side-work because Mila was late picking her up again because she was up all night.
There’s a lot hanging in that statement, and I’m assuming it has something to do with the new guy Mila’s fooling around with, but my brain is flashing with so many lights, and everything seems so loud, that I can’t manage to squeeze out anything more than an, ‘OK, see you later.’
Aura-Blue grabs me and hugs me one more time before she says, ‘You’re still coming out with us after to get ice cream? Right?’
‘Of course,’ I squeak, and I go back to my station.
I see my hands shaking and rub perspiration off my upper lip. I think I’m having a panic attack. I breathe in and out and start arranging my vegetables. Carrots, celery, kale, the dreaded onions, and potatoes should keep me occupied and calm.
Nothing to freak out about. I’m just going to chop.
The beam of light on me gets brighter and hotter. I tear up the kale. Sweat beads between my breasts. I peel the potatoes and then cut them into neat little cubes. My teeth grind. Time for the goggles and the onions. My leg bounces uncontrollably under the table, and my head pounds. I remember what they said in the circle about taking it one day at a time, but right now I’m only taking it one vegetable at a time.
I’m not going to think. I’m not going to remember. I’m not going to take myself apart sin by sin or give in to the whispers in my head. I’m just going to chop these onions, and then I’m going to do the carrots. That’s all I have to do right now. Right now is all I can handle.
I go to the pots without being told. I get there before there are any pots for me to scrub, and so I start scrubbing the sink. I feel a hand on my shoulder and startle.
‘This too shall pass,’ Maria whispers in my ears. I meet her eyes. She gives me a nod and walks away.
I repeat that phrase in my head over and over. And it helps. I manage to keep it together until I think of Rachel and the bat mitzvah I couldn’t be bothered to go to and barf all over the pots I’m scrubbing. The first thing I think is, There goes another half-hour of drugs. I don’t know if I’m happy or sad about that.
I feel warm, rough hands and solid arms guiding me to sit on an overturned crate.
‘Cold turkey?’ one of the cooks asks me. I don’t know her name, but I should. One of her painted-on eyebrows is raised in an even higher arch.
I nod. Her face softens with . . . no, not pity – with, ‘Been there, done that, and it sucks.’
‘What’s your name?’ I ask.
‘Gina,’ she answers. ‘Drink a lot of water. It’ll give you something to throw up.’
She hands me a glass of water and leaves me to get back to her station. No one here is going to hold my hair and stay with me while pressing a cool washcloth to my fevered brow while I puke. But no one will think less of me for puking, either. I down the water and stand up. Back to work.<
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I clean up my barf and then start in on the huge pile of pots I’ve allowed to accumulate. I’m in the weeds, and I have to hack my way out of them alone. Good. This is why I like this place. This is why I’m here. Honest, straightforward, backbreaking work. Work that serves someone other than me.
I’m not done when Mila comes into the kitchen with a hand on her hip and a surprised look on her face.
‘Do you want us to wait for you?’ she asks, and not in a snide way. I get the feeling if I told her to wait, she would.
‘You guys are still here?’ I say, like I have any frigging clue what time it is. ‘I’m so sorry. I got behind today. But you go on ahead.’
‘You sure?’ she asks. ‘Do you want me to help?’
She actually walks all the way into the back and looks around for a rubber apron, but there isn’t another. ‘Go,’ I say. ‘I’ll see you the day after tomorrow.’
‘OK,’ she says, genuinely disappointed. ‘But then we hang out for sure.’ She points at me with raised eyebrows until I smile and promise.
‘For sure,’ I say, giving her a one-armed hug so I don’t get her smeared with greasy water from my apron. As she leaves I wonder why she likes me so much. After she’s fully gone, I hear Gina speak close to my ear.
‘Don’t do it,’ she warns. ‘That one just looking to party. She’ll drag you in again cos she need pretty friends to take to the parties and get that shit for free. You feel me?’
I don’t know Gina, but I know that AA has strict rules about never drinking again if you get sober. My problem was never partying. I never got into illegal drugs or got drunk that much, not even when the bartenders and the DJs were throwing all kinds of substances at the Five of us just to get us to stay and keep their club hot. I’m sweating out an addiction that was forced on me. But I can’t say that to Gina or anyone else here.
‘Getting sober’ won’t fix what’s wrong with me, and if even the most on-point Manhattan nightclubs couldn’t lure me into a world of alcohol and drug abuse, I doubt going to a keg party with Mila, where the strongest things offered are Jello shots, is going to make me a fiend for meds I never wanted to take in the first place.
I nod and pretend I’m taking Gina’s advice to heart, because at least she cares enough to say something. That’s more than most. More than my parents. They haven’t even called me since we made the arrangements for me to come here and live with Grandma and Grandpa.
I go back to my grandparents’ house just as the sun is going down. I’m riding west, so a big fat sun, sinking into orange gorgeousness somewhere behind the exhaling trees, is my compass. And that will have to be enough. A little bit of beauty to kick my ass across the finish line of today. It’s more than I deserve.
My cheeks are wet with tears, and I ride faster and faster to dry them, or to outrun them. I was waiting to feel something, anything, and here it is. I asked for this, so no complaining.
I pull myself together before I get home. I run the grandparent gauntlet and text about nothing important with Rob for a few minutes before I’m allowed the privacy I need to unravel.
Somewhere out in the woods, there is a perfect boy named Bo. Someday I’m going to be good enough to deserve him.
But first, this.
28 JULY
Bo sees me across the river, and, first, I watch the same rush that’s filling me filling him. Then he sees me better, and his expression changes. He meets me halfway to help me through the river.
‘What happened? Are you sick?’ he asks as he sweeps his eyes over my face and body.
I rub at the clammy paste of oily come-down sweat that’s forming on my face and look away. My pores are oozing toxins. I’ve never felt this disgusting in my life, but at least I’m not hallucinating. My ghosts chased me all the way out here, but now that I’m with Bo they’ve vanished.
‘No. Well, yes,’ I admit sheepishly.
‘My dad can help,’ Bo begins, but I cut him off.
‘Your dad’s already given me something, and they’re helping. I think,’ I say. I watch his face go from confused to wary.
‘When?’ he asks me. ‘Am I missing something here?’
I nod and gesture for Bo to sit. ‘Let’s spread out my blanket first. I have a lot to tell you.’
He sits with wide, rabbit eyes – so round and open, and only just now realizing that the well-spoken stranger across from him is, and always has been, a fox.
‘Your dad gave me pills to help wean me off the weapons-grade prescription meds I was taking right up until yesterday morning.’ I take a deep breath. Bo waits. I continue. ‘Until three weeks ago, I was in a psychiatric hospital for a total nervous collapse that left me catatonic. I was hospitalized for nine months.’
I watch the fear in him melt into concern. But he’s too quick to feel compassion. I wave off his reaching hands and tell him why I went catatonic.
Bo freezes. I sigh and smile because it feels so good to tell him. To finally say what a monster I am. Once I start, I can’t stop. I tell him everything about the Cultural Outreach Club.
The more saddened he looks, the more honest I become about my own inner monologue. I tell him not just what I did, but what I was thinking while I did it – which was usually along the lines of how I could make it benefit me, even as it stole from others. I open him up and twist him inside out. I am now to him what I have been to myself for a long time.
A murderer.
I tell him about Rachel, and what happened.
Jinka pulled away from me suddenly.
One moment I was her hero, the cleverest girl in the world, her best friend. The next day, I felt her detach, like the Space Shuttle jettisoning a used rocket booster. She floated, and I fell.
She must have checked the website early that morning before school. She must have seen what Rachel posted.
That morning, I felt Jinka distancing herself. Then she turned me in. She went to the principal and wept out a self-absolving confession, which they filmed and later showed me. Trying to get me to confess, I suppose.
I went to the principal’s office with no idea what waited for me. As soon as I walked in, it was like invisible hands wrapped around my face. Everything was muffled.
Teachers, parents, counsellors, even a uniformed police officer was there to inform me that a body had been found. Fraud was the least of my worries. They all wanted someone to blame for the death of a thirteen-year-old girl.
When the officer started asking me questions about Rachel, I honestly had no idea who he was talking about. He had to read my online conversation with Rachel aloud, and even still it didn’t ring a bell.
The officer had to explain to me that Rachel had written a five-page plea for my club to come to her bat mitzvah.
The plea began with the words, ‘I’m thinking of having a bat mitzvah, but I don’t have any friends, so I don’t think anyone will come. Do you think I should have one?’
After that, the message trailed off into ellipses. I would have had to click on those three little dots to read further, and – honestly? – I couldn’t be bothered. I had close to fifty messages in my inbox that day. I wrote back a quick ‘Go ahead’ and went on to the next message.
Had I read the rest of the message – which I didn’t, which no one wanted to believe because they so desperately wanted to turn this story into another headline about the consequences of online bullying – I would have learned that Rachel went on to promise to kill herself if we didn’t come.
No one went to Rachel’s bat mitzvah.
Rachel literally had no friends.
She filmed the nearly empty hall. She filmed all four members of her small family sitting at one table, and then table after table of empty seats. She filmed the hollow dance floor.
Then Rachel went into the bathroom and filmed herself slashing her wrists. She filmed herself bleeding out. With her dying breath, she posted it on my website – the website for the Cultural Outreach Club. Right under my comment that said, simply,
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‘Go ahead.’
Because I couldn’t be bothered to click on three little dots.
When I realized what I had done, inadvertently or not, the invisible hands wrapped around my body and closed me off. Nothing could come in or go out.
I stayed in that cocoon for months.
When I told Maeve, I wasn’t really feeling it. I was just reporting it to her, like it happened to someone else. But now, telling Bo, I feel it for the first time, and it hurts. And I’m crying. But, finally, I feel clean again. I pull my sandals back on and stand up.
‘So, that’s it,’ I say.
Bo stares up at me with an empty look that I could never have imagined on his face without seeing it first. And I realize, that’s it. He and I are over.
‘Thank you for listening. I’m sorry,’ I say.
I pick up my backpack and stoop to gather the blanket, but Bo hasn’t moved.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he asks.
‘Uh. Home?’ I hazard.
‘I don’t get to ask any questions? I don’t get a say?’ he asks. The sharp ridges of his cheekbones flush red with anger.
I sit back down on the edge of the blanket, giving him all the space I can. ‘Sure,’ I say, nodding. ‘Ask me anything.’
‘Are you OK?’
‘Not really,’ I admit. Then I take a deep breath and sigh. ‘But I feel like something is thawing inside me, and maybe that’s a start.’
His jaw clenches. ‘Are you still in touch with her?’
‘Jinka?’ I ask. When he nods, I say, ‘No.’
‘Good. She manipulated you, and then betrayed you,’ he says angrily. ‘Are you still in love with her?’ he asks. It comes out strangled and concerned, but not for himself.
How did he see that when no one else did? I’ve had my head shrunk by the best of them, but they all missed that. I missed that. Jinka was the reason I did it, and I did it to impress her. To win her. In a twisted way, I guess I was in love with her.
What She Found in the Woods Page 11