U UP?

by Catie Disabato

  “I’m sorry,” I turned my head to the right so that maybe Georgie wouldn’t see that I had tears coming out of my eyes now, hot and spilling, but when I turned I saw the wet pad of Babs’s tongue, like a cat slurping out of its bowl. Her gums were dripping with blood now, her eyes were as big as her cheeks; ghosts are real, ghosts are terrifying, I had to turn my back on her.

  Georgie was crying too, her cheeks were blotchy and she was chewing hard on her lip.

  “Oh god, Eve,” Georgie said, “I had to break the cycle somehow.”

  “You should’ve told me, I would’ve tried,” I said. “I didn’t know I was doing so bad.”

  “I was scared, I’m sorry,” Georgie said. “For what it’s worth, even though you’re not in an emotional place where you’re capable of being a good friend, I don’t think that’s permanent. You need to figure yourself out fast, though.”

  I shoved my fingers under my glasses to wipe at the tears, scowling to try to stop from crying. “Listen, I’m not trying to poison the well,” I said, I lied maybe, I couldn’t tell what I wanted to do, “but Bea’s been texting me a lot. She tries to get me to come over at night. I do too. We’ve fucked a few times since she moved out.”

  “I know, I know,” Georgie said. “She shows me.”

  “She fucking, what, shows you my private texts to her?” I said, angry again, sparking. From behind me, Babs chortled and spit and suddenly my arm was covered in ghost blood and I had to wipe it away furiously even though Georgie couldn’t see it, but she didn’t see because she’d turned away from me, embarrassed.

  “I haven’t acted right,” she said.

  “It was a fucking violation,” I said.

  “I know it was a violation.”

  “The things I said to her, those were supposed to be mine.”

  “She said she’s going to stop,” Georgie said. “She promised.”

  “I want her to stop.”

  “She’s going to. I’m not going to let her be bad to me the way she was to you.”

  That made me cry again, I sobbed before I could hear it coming.

  “I love you, Georgie,” I said. “I wanted to be your friend for the rest of my life.”

  “I loved you too,” Georgie said.

  We hugged each other tight, she a liar, me a maniac who doesn’t care who I flatten with my rampage. Her palm was hot against my back, her arms felt strong around me and smooth like a boa constrictor, I felt the whole weight of our friendship in the press of my body against hers, maybe the last time we’d hug or be friends with one another. I knew that once I let go she’d wipe her face and go back out onto the sunny porch and immediately put a big smile on her face, and no one would see that she’d just been crying and no one would know that moments ago she’d ended a friendship, because Georgie never lets anyone know if anything is wrong; so I didn’t want to stop the hug, but it didn’t matter what I wanted, Georgie leaned back and let go of me and we were done and she was gone.

  She left her drink, I downed it without tasting what it had been, it was just wet and alcoholic and inside me. Next to me, the ghost panted. I could do a little bump of Cascarilla and she’d be gone but then, but then, my phone lit up.

  Miggy

  I wouldn’t recommend following this trail any further

  i plan to disregard your advice

  Today 4:39 PM

  Oh honey, I’m so sorry.

  Good people sometimes lose track of themselves and do bad things.

  You’re not a monster, you’re just a person, and it’s okay.

  I love you.

  I took off my glasses and dug my eyes into the crook of my elbow so I could shake and sob unnoticed. I was, though, mostly focused on the heave of crying, somewhat surprised that no drunk/kind/turned-on-by-crying lesbian tapped me on the shoulder to ask what was wrong; I was making a spectacle of myself in a bar that I drank at a lot, and it was going unnoticed, as if I was as ghostly as Babs. I got myself together eventually. Or, I’d only cried for thirty seconds, but each second had been terrible, and that had made the short time stretch.

  Babs the ghost was bloated and laughing, blood dripping out of her mouth and pooling on the bar floor, like someone’s spilled beer, except unseen and unslippery.

  “Hey bitch,” I said, “Fucking pull yourself together.”

  Babs shut up and stared at me.

  “You’re having your period all over the place and it’s disgusting,” I said.

  Babs blinked, she shuddered, she shrank, the blood on the floor disappeared and her smile returned to a normal size and there was no blood in her mouth as she sat on a barstool, smoking her ghost cigarette and sipping on her ghost beer.

  “You know, I can’t really help it,” Babs said.

  “That doesn’t matter to me, because I know you get pleasure from it,” I said, sipping my own beer.

  “Nozlee understands,” Babs said.

  “I’m not as nice as Nozlee,” I said. “She has her moon in Cancer.”

  “You don’t deserve her,” Babs said.

  “Ohhhh I see, you have a little crush on her!” It was nice, after all that heavy sadness, to just be pleasantly mean to someone who deserved it.

  “No!” Babs insisted, in a way that plainly meant yes.

  “Too bad you’re dead.”

  Suddenly, I wanted to know how Babs had died, and what her life had been like. Had she been born in Mexico, or Puerto Rico maybe? Did she kiss and fall in love with another girl, and if she did, did that girl dress like her, in tomboy pants and a pompadour, or did she wear her hair down and long like a woman’s? But with Georgie’s admonishments ringing in my ears and the pulse of bass vibrating through the bar to remind me how close that drama was to even my physical body, I couldn’t waste my time talking to Babs about herself, I was burning with the need to talk to her about me.

  “Did Nozlee ever mention the night we went night swimming?” I asked.

  “Oh you’re going to be nice to me now?”

  “I was mad about you feasting on my misery, but I’m over it now and I want to be friends,” I said.

  Babs chewed her fingernail, deciding.

  “I could’ve taken Georgie into the bathroom to talk, but I did it here instead,” I said. “For you.”

  “Bullshit,” Babs said, but weakly, relenting.

  “Please?”

  “Night swimming, you said?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “We were skinny-dipping at this house in the hills,” I said, trying to jog her memory. “It was just the four of us.”

  “You stayed up all night, just the two of you?” Babs asked.

  “Yes!”

  Babs lit another cigarette. It didn’t matter how much she smoked, the dead don’t get lung cancer, or have a sore throat in the morning from bumming a lot of Newports, or have to get their dress dry-cleaned again because the smell of smoke was still clinging to it the next morning.

  “Noz only had two Adderalls. She followed you into the bathroom and gave you the other one. The guys fell asleep in the master bedroom and the two of you went into the other room and stayed up all night talking, until the sun started to come up.”

  “Did she say what she was mad at Ezra about?”

  “I don’t understand the question.”

  “She gave me the Adderall because she was mad at Ezra,” I said.

  Babs shook her head.

  “She could only get two Adderall, so the other one must’ve been for Ezra, but she got mad at him about something and gave it to me.”

  “No. She could only get two Adderall and she didn’t mention them to Ezra at all, and she gave one to you because you’re the one that she wanted to spend the night talking to,” Babs said.

  Someone opened
the front door and the whole dark bar was flooded with sunlight; it was still daytime in Los Angeles, and the sun lit everything up.

  “Why did Nozlee ask you to follow me?”

  “She just wanted to make sure you were okay,” Babs said.

  DONT TEXT BEA

  You’re with Georgie?

  You guys are talking about me?

  Today 4:49 PM

  im at the bar, can you come talk for like 10 mins tops

  i think you owe me

  I texted Bea, and sat alone at the bar. Babs dissolved into nothing. While I waited, I checked Instagram and saw that Ezra had posted on his Stories, a picture of a strange cactus and his bare feet. His toes were gnarled, but elegant somehow.

  And then Bea sat down next to me and I smelled her, peppery and familiar; she’d been dancing so hard in the sun that her hair was matted and her tank top’s armholes were damp.

  “If you’re gonna yell at me, can we at least go out front?” she said, maybe she wanted to provoke me, but I was beyond that.

  “I just have to ask you something,” I said.

  I forced myself to look at her, and when I did she looked away from me, and when she looked back I instinctively looked down, and that’s what our relationship had been like the whole time.

  “Did you text with Ezra on Friday morning?”

  “Yeah…?” she curled her lip, confused.

  “Why?”

  “Can’t you just ask him?”

  I wanted to scream at her for being so fucking annoying and not giving me what I needed, like how she’d never given me what I needed, but if I screamed she’d walk away and not tell me anything.

  “He’s not answering his texts,” I said, my voice as calm as I could make it.

  “He was just asking if I’d pick up Leslie when I drove up on Sunday, because he was supposed to give her a ride but he decided to go to the desert early with Nozlee, which obviously you know,” Bea said.

  It was obvious, now, that he’d gone after Nozlee, and I didn’t know why, even though I’d been told it was a possibility, I’d never really entertained the idea. He’d posted a picture of a cactus and I still needed Bea to say it out loud to believe it, taking in bad news slow and direct. I didn’t want to look in Bea’s eyes, and the reticence made me feel unlike myself.

  “Why?” Bea asked. “Is something going on with Leslie?”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “I just wanted to make sure she had a ride.”

  “Was that really it?” Bea asked. She swiveled in the bar seat, stood up but didn’t leave. She was waiting for some kind of confrontation but I didn’t have anything for her anymore.

  “That’s it,” I said.

  And she gave me a funny look, but she left; I watched her as she walked away but didn’t miss her when she was gone.

  Saturday, 5:01 p.m.

  The light was a little brighter than it should’ve been, outside the bar. I switched from regular glasses to sunglasses. I drove back to my bungalow. Inside, I switched from sunglasses to regular glasses and spent an empty, quiet moment fingering the leaves of the spider plant that hung just inside my door. The leaves should’ve been a rich, deep green, but instead they were pale, bleached by the sun. The indigo tapestry that had hung on my wall was also fading out, waning like the moon. The canvas bag with a zipper I took to the beach or the desert and otherwise left hanging on a hook by my desk was both wine-stained and faded out from the sun. Is that what happened in LA? The sun beat down on everything until it either disappeared or burst into flames?

  EzraIsTexting

  Yesterday

  if u don’t answer imma come over to your place

  ezra please i’m getting so stressed

  Today 1:11 AM

  for real you post that pic but you won’t text me back?

  Today 5:05 PM

  i know where you are and if you don’t text me back in 10 minutes, im driving to Two Bunch

  After unloading so much at Verdugo Bar, transitioning from the loud crush of girl-bodies into my quiet apartment where everything was mine, I felt a strong calm and self-possession. These were heightened moments and I could allow myself heightened responses.

  I unzipped the canvas bag; I packed my black one-piece, my blood quartz hand stone, and a toothbrush. I packed everything I would need for Sunday. I took off my glasses and washed my face with cold water and shivered. I changed into my striped shirt. I looked at my phone. Nothing from Ezra, nothing at all, the whole world gone as still as in the moments before an earthquake.

  I drove to the glowing blue Chevron at the corner of Echo Park and Morton Avenues and picked out one big bottle of water and one little Topo Chico sparkling water and a bag of Haribo Twin Snakes gummies for the ride. At the counter, I asked the familiar clerk, a slow and fat man, for a pack of Marlboro Reds, like Nozlee had a few days before me, in a different Chevron, an echo of this Chevron. I thought I was a cowboy.

  I couldn’t tell if I was angry or sad or restless or desperate. While the slow man charged me for my supplies, I opened my Messages app.

  Miggy

  You’re not a monster, you’re just a person, and it’s okay.

  I love you.

  im going to the desert

  is that a bad idea

  You want my opinion now?

  yes

  This, no playfulness, no avoidance, this could maybe be my apology to him, if he was willing to take it.

  Miggy

  What you need to do is unblock noz

  i cant yet

  like, emotionally

  Then proceed at your own risk

  warning signs noted

  The man handed me back my card and I gathered my various items into an unruly bundle in my arms; I barely managed to carry it all back to my car and get the door open without dropping anything. I tossed my items on the passenger seat and sat for a few long seconds in the car, stuffy, baked from the heat; I let it warm me inside. Then I ripped open the bag of gummies and ate four snakes really fast, until the sweet taste flooded out anything hot or bitter.

  The last time the four of us were in my car, the sky was so blue, the palm trees flickered in the breeze, Miggy sat in the front seat, and Ezra stuck the AUX cord into his phone and controlled the playlist from the backseat, ignoring Noz’s suggestions for songs to add, smoking out the window. I was barreling down the highway at like ninety miles an hour on my way to Miguel’s house-sit in the Hills, and Miguel was shouting at Ezra to roll the window up so he could roll a joint, and Noz was shouting that she had a vape pen in her purse, and Miggy said he wanted to smoke actual cannabis flower, and Ezra and I were singing out loud really loudly to the JEFF the Brotherhood song he’d put on: I know everybody stays up late / I know everybody stays up late. We were so loud, but we could all hear each other, each one of us perfectly in tune with all the others for that bright loud moment. If Nozlee had given Miggy that Adderall and stayed up with him, would it have helped him even a little, maybe just enough to keep him from killing himself the next weekend? If Nozlee had given Ezra the Adderall, would they have fused together their bond that night, laying a strong enough foundation that they wouldn’t have broken up a year later? Nozlee picked me, she followed me into the bathroom, our hair was still wet from swimming, and we took the Adderall together with sips from the faucet, and then we stepped out of the bathroom into the master bedroom, where Ezra and Miggy were already lounging on the bed, and they pointed at the big picture window and we all saw the lights of Los Angeles spread out below us. “Look at that,” Ezra had said, and we all did. Then Nozlee said, “I want another beer,” and I said, “I do too,” and she and I went into the kitchen and then into the bedroom and didn’t come back and didn’t see the boys again until the next day.

  Mi
ggy

  Then proceed at your own risk

  warning signs noted

  do you remember nightswimming?

  Lol the REM song?

  lol u fuckin dork

  real night swimming with noz and ezra and me at that house sit place in the hollywood hills

  I remember.

  noz gave me an adderall and she and stayed up all night together

  I know

  We talked about it after

  did you love us then?

  i loved all of you guys that night

  it felt like it could just be the four of us forever and that would be the best possible life

  You can’t build a moat around the things you like and live there

  It doesn’t work

  I know, I tried

  I loved all three of you so much

  But it wasn’t enough to keep me alive

  We could romanticize our romantic friendships. We could replace sex with the stronger feeling, desire. We could curl around each other like a litter of kittens and bite at anyone who tried to separate us. We could have the best night of our lives together, singing in the car, drinks at a bar, swimming in warm water at night in our very own pool. But none of it, and maybe nothing, was big enough to keep Miggy alive, to keep Nozlee and Ezra safely together. Safe for who? Safe for me.