by Abby Sher
“I think maybe you need to take him in to the vet,” I said timidly.
“I know!” Alli wept. She sounded like she was honestly in pain. “I’m just trying to get him out of here, but he won’t let me touch him. Which is probably a metaphor for everyone else in my life. And who knows where the hell Zoe is or how to get in touch with her. Not to mention I look like hell and am I supposed to take him to an emergency room, or do they even have those for animals? They do, right? Animals have emergencies too!”
“Yes,” I said. Even though I had no idea if it was true. Then I looked up veterinary ERs on my phone while Alli got an umbrella and tried scooting Meowsers out from under the couch again. He was sort of coughing now, pacing under the couch like a feral beast. She pushed him out just enough to grab a front paw, but he wriggled free easily. Then he started hurling himself around the living room, ricocheting off the molding and clawing at the radiator cover. It was terrifying to watch him zig and zag, tuck and roll. Alli stood in the middle of the room, turning around and trying to lure him by clicking her tongue.
“You can take him straight to Valley Veterinarians on Parker,” I told her.
“But I can’t even catch him,” she whined.
We watched Meowsers streaking across the room and skidding into an end table. Tipping over a basket of blankets and pawing frantically at the fringed edges. That basket was actually what saved us. Alli snapped to attention, crept over, and flipped the basket on top of him like a wicker cage. He was shuddering violently, tucked into a ball.
“Shhhhhh,” Alli told him. “We’re gonna get you some help now.” Then she turned to me and said, “Maybe … I’ll go figure out where Zoe is and you can just drop this guy off at the vet’s?”
“No,” I said sternly, startling both myself and Alli.
I had never uttered that word to anyone in Zoe’s family before. I told Alli that I would go look for Zoe and she was in charge of the cat. Then I helped her load Mr. Meowsers into his little travel bag and watched her drive away without saying thank you or goodbye to me. I stood in her driveway for a few minutes after she left, feeling everything vibrate around me—the echo of Meowsers’s disturbed mews, his paws scratching the bare floor. The rev of Alli’s engine curling around the corner and fading.
And further back in my memory-scape, the soft click of Travis’s key in the door and the gleeful scurry of Zoe’s feet running to greet him. The crinkling of cellophane wrappers as we dumped out our Halloween buckets on Zoe’s bedroom floor. The clang of her bathroom radiator and the whine of her kitchen faucet. Everything this house contained. All the pancake breakfasts and bubble-gum-scented pillow fights. I needed to let them all go. To pull them out of my head and heart and throw them to the wind.
* * *
It took way too long to locate Zoe.
I knew she wouldn’t answer me, so I dug out Travis’s business card from my wallet and tried texting him instead:
Hi, this is Hank. Thank you for the sleepover. Is Zoe still at your place?
HANK! Thank YOU for being such a great friend to my daughter. Zoe is at the gym.
Of course she was.
Then Travis followed up with a series of texts:
Maybe we could chat for a few minutes today or tomorrow?
No presh
It would just be great to get your perspective
Thnx
I knew he was concerned, and I didn’t mean to punish him with my silence. But I was also fielding strange new friend requests and comments about when the next PussyCat Warriors performance would be happening. I thought of poor James Hartwick III and the promise I’d already broken. I needed to get Zoe and shut off that video.
The stench at Primally Fit was particularly ripe when I walked in. I almost preferred the smell of mingling BO to all the coconut-pomegranate-ocean-mist spritzes they had blasting out of their motion-detector air fresheners. Someone new and extra-perky was bobbling behind the front desk.
“Welcome to Primally Fit! Do you want to take control of your body and your life? I’m Ashleigh and I can’t wait to help you get started!”
“Thanks, Ashleigh. Actually, I’ve come here before. I’m not a member though. I’m just looking for a friend,” I told her.
“Great! Just swipe your key fob or enter the last four digits of your social security number on the screen to your left.”
“No, that’s the thing. I don’t have a fob because I’m not a member.”
“No prob!” Ashleigh winked. “Just try your last four digits then.”
“I don’t think that’s gonna work either. Because of the nonmember thing. So can I just look around and see if my friend is here in one of the classes?”
“I’m sorry.” Ashleigh made a big pouty face to show me that she was really empathizing with my disappointment. “We only allow members or their guests into classes.”
“Right.” I sucked in a deep breath to steady myself because I felt close to tearing at Ashleigh’s smooth pink cheeks. “I am not here to take a class. I am not here to become a guest or a member. I am here to talk to someone else who is currently in a class.”
“Oh!” Ashleigh said brightly. Then she thought about it some more and went back to frowning. “Oh. I’m not sure what to tell you. Most of our classes run fifty minutes, so the next one should be getting out at 11:50 A.M.”
“Great. I’m not going to be able to wait that long because this is sort of an emergency, but if you just swipe something so I can come through, I’d really appreciate it.”
“Emergency?” Ashleigh narrowed her eyes and scanned me up and down, as if looking for an oozing wound or some other sign that I was imperiled. I had nothing to show her except a nasty nostril flare of growing anger. She picked up a small walkie-talkie from under the shelf separating us and spoke into it. “Derrick, this is Ashleigh at the front desk. We have a nonmember here with an emergency…?”
She looked back at me with her rehearsed smile and said it would be just a minute if I wanted to take a seat.
“Nope, I don’t,” I told her. Then I ducked under the metal turnstile to her left and heard the off-key warning sound that must’ve indicated GYM INTRUDER GYM INTRUDER. I put a little spring in my step and started galloping toward the steam rooms.
“Excuse me? Excuse me?”
Maybe I should’ve had a healthy dose of fear or at least unease. But when I heard Bernardo shouting in Studio B, “Are you kidding me? Stop wasting my time, ladies!” I knew I was close. And I was committed to getting Zoe out of this nuthouse.
I heard Ashleigh get called over to some lady whose StairMaster wasn’t climbing stairs fast enough. Which gave me just enough time and space to skip into a side hallway and navigate my way to the women’s locker room. There were two women in front of the mirrors discussing how a juice cleanse had saved their sex lives. Another was stepping on and off the scale repeatedly. I tucked myself behind a striped shower curtain near the row of lockers Zoe had shown me the other day. I even took off my boots and mismatched socks, rolling up my pants legs so my wardrobe couldn’t give me away.
Zoe came in last from the Sunday Booty Camp crew. I shivered hearing someone tell her, “You amaze me,” and her answering, “Bah. But thanks.”
There was a cluster of women going up to have juices with Bernardo. Another two bemoaned all the carpools they were late for.
“Tell your mom we missed her,” said someone in between gum smacks.
Then I watched all the other shadows leave the room and heard the click of Zoe’s toilet stall lock. She said, “Hello?” to see if anyone answered.
No one did.
I squeezed my boots and socks to my chest and just listened. This time, when Zoe made herself sick, I knew the sound. I winced, but I was not surprised. I waited until she flushed and came out of her stall, then I pulled open the shower curtain.
“What?” she said. “I mean, hey.”
“Hey.”
Her breath made an acid cloud between us.
<
br /> “Zoe,” I said haltingly. “How long are you gonna keep doing this?”
“What are you talking about? I’m going to the bathroom.”
“With your feet facing the toilet?” I asked.
She blinked quickly. Her skin so taut and colorless. Her lips clenched tightly as she tried to scorch me with her glare.
“You can’t keep—”
She cut me off sharply. “Thanks for your concern, Hank. I think we already went over this at Travis’s though. You don’t have to worry about me anymore. We’re done.”
She took a piece of gum out of her running-shorts pocket and unwrapped it, popping it into her mouth. Then she headed to the bank of sinks in the next room. Cupping her hands under the water and splashing her face. There were small hollows under her cheekbones. Her teeth looked slick and tinged with yellow.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she said to my reflection behind her, “I have a twelve o’clock class.”
“Um, no,” I told her.
Zoe cocked her head as if she hadn’t heard me correctly.
“No, you don’t,” I said—louder this time. I looked at her startled face in the mirror, then waited for her to turn around and face me in person.
“I know you hate me and you hate your family and your life. And you’re right—there’s nothing I can do about that. But your cat is very ill from possibly eating your pills, so I’m taking you to meet Alli at the vet’s office. And while you’re there, waiting to see whether your cat survives, you have to take down that video of us kissing.”
My words quivered and my armpits were soaking through my shirt, but at least I got it all out without collapsing.
Zoe, on the other hand, looked stony and sure. She narrowed her eyes at me. “I have to?” she said.
“Yes,” I answered, sounding less sure of myself now. I hadn’t even thought of the possibility that she’d refuse. “Please?” I added. I felt like I was pedaling frantically on a bike with no chain attached or doing one of those horrible swim tests at the Y where we were forced to tread water for two minutes straight.
Zoe didn’t answer me. Instead she called her mom and I listened as they battled it out about who wanted this cat to begin with and how much the twelve o’clock class meant to them and what sacrifice was all about.
“So stupid,” Zoe spat bitterly after she hung up. “I bet you love being right all the time, Hank. Don’t you?”
I didn’t know how to answer that, so I just stood there, waiting for her to pack up her things.
I drove her to Valley Veterinarians in icy silence. There was a big statue of a German shepherd in front whose paint was peeling around the ears. Also, a parking lot to the side and a long row of kennels stretching back into a line of trees. The howls and yowls clattering around us.
I stopped in front of the big wooden door. There were so many scratches and grooves worn into it from paws of all sizes.
There was a sign above the top molding that read: EVERY CREATURE IS SACRED.
“Um, I don’t think this is a parking space,” said Zoe.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s not. But you can get out now. I’m not staying.”
“Seriously?” I couldn’t even bring myself to look at her face as she gathered her gym bag and got out of the car. Slamming the door shut with a savage whack. It shook me to the core, but it was the closest thing to triumph that I’d ever felt with Zoe.
Only it was over before it began. I switched HOT RIC into what I thought was drive but must have been reverse. So instead of a victory lap, I rammed the back of my car directly into the statue of the German shepherd. Knocking off the statue’s snout and sending my chin into the steering wheel.
“You okay?” said a man emerging from the clinic with a yipping lapdog.
“Yup,” I said numbly. Or really, the opposite of numb. Like everything felt so hot and close and I couldn’t find any place soft to land. I reached up to check that my head was still attached to my neck. It was. Also, there was no blood.
“You popped a taillight,” the man said.
“That’s okay,” I yelped, speeding away.
A brief list of side effects from this “rehabilitation” process that these same health professionals just neglected to mention:
1. Approximately 80% of my waking hours here are spent crying.
2. My ankles are so swollen they don’t fit into any of my socks.
3. I’m not allowed to look in the mirror, but I can feel myself aging exponentially.
4. I miss my mommy and daddy.
5. I miss who I was when I had a mommy and daddy instead of an Alli and a Travis and all their bullshit excuses for parenting. Sometimes I think we would all be better off if they had just left me on some tour bus for Beauty and the Beast and I was raised by a pack of wild stagehands.
6. And that’s not a cue for you to say no no! or to try to save me in some way. I’m just in a moment.
7. I miss you, Hank.
8. A lot.
9. And even though I want to hate you and stab you with one of my plastic sporks or pelt you with butter patties in your sleep, I hurt all over with missing you.
10. Yesterday I asked Dr. Yogurt-Breath when I would be set free and he looked at my weight chart and said possibly by the holidays. Which should make me shout hooray and dance a celebratory jig, right? But at this point, I don’t know what to expect from the world outside.
I mean, I haven’t been able to go to the bathroom unattended or look in a mirror for almost two months. I go to sleep at ten and I wake up at seven. My biggest responsibilities are writing in my meditative journal and finishing my dessert. I wear flannel pretty much day and night. I have no idea what I look like or what those numbers in my weight chart say. And I have to admit, I feel safer that way.
So, there’s that.
CHAPTER 18
writing the script
Travis wasn’t expecting me.
I wasn’t expecting me either.
I could blame it on the brain jangling I’d just endured from smacking into a canine statue. But really, my heart is what led me back to the turnpike and up to the Sycamore Estates. I really felt like I’d run out of other options. At least that’s my version of the story. And I’m sticking with it.
* * *
“Hello, hello!” Travis answered his intercom before the first ring was complete. Making it impossible for me to bail.
“Hi, Travis. It’s Hank.”
“It’s who?”
“Hannah. Levinstein.”
“Oh! Yes! Did you leave something here?”
“No. Maybe. Could you just let me in?”
“Of course. Of course!”
I took the stairs two at a time. I needed to do this and get it over with as quickly and painlessly as possible. If that was possible.
Travis had the door already open for me. It looked like he was in the middle of trying to feng shui his three pieces of furniture. Maybe so he could cover up the soda stains on his beige carpet.
“Sorry about the mess,” he said. “I didn’t know I was having company.”
“I’m not company,” I said—a little more curtly than I’d intended. “I’m just here because I have to tell you something and it won’t take very long but … yeah.”
Travis closed the door behind me and gestured toward the futon, which was now in the middle of the room with a lamp on the floor beside it.
“You wanna sit down?” he posed.
“Sure.”
I waited for him to sit down first so I could perch myself on the other end. Not so much because I feared being next to him. It was more that I felt like I needed as much space as possible to unknot all these images in my head.
“Okay,” I said. “I have to tell you some things that are not fun and I’m sorry to be the one telling you this but…” I took in a big gulp of air and tried to get out everything in that one breath. How sick Zoe was. How she was wearing clothes that fit her in the first grade and posting videos of us that
made me nervous. How much she was hurting and lying and overexercising and puking. How I’d witnessed her pillaging his medications and seen those cuts too symmetrical to be from a cat.
“No.” I heard Travis moan. “Oh, no no no.”
“I’m sorry,” I muttered.
“No, I’m sorry,” he told me. “Okay, so let me just get a few things straight,” he added. Then he started firing out questions at me, like did I think Zoe was doing this to get back at him? Did I think she was taking other drugs too? Could it be that she’d lost weight just from stress? What about, did she ever talk about … trying to “end it all”?
“Not that I know of,” I answered slowly. “But I do think that she needs help. Like, professional help.”
“Right. Right. So would that be like a therapist or…?” I didn’t even try to answer that one. I just wanted Travis to take charge and fix the situation. Only he obviously was not picking up on my frustration. “Okay,” he told me. “We got this. You and me, Hank. We can get her the help she needs and save her. Right?”
We got this. We can get her the help she needs.
I shook my head no. I had been part of this we-some for practically my whole life. ZoenHank. BFFAETI.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “I don’t think I can do this anymore.”
“Oh no. You have to!” barked Travis. I felt my chest tighten and my gut seize. Travis cleared his throat and started over. His voice dropped to a soft sorrowful tone. “Sorry. What I meant was, please, Hank. I know this can’t be fun for you either. Zoe has been your pal for so long now. Can you just help me find her or figure out what to do next?”
He got his laptop from the kitchen and started googling information on self-harm and eating disorders. He kept muttering and opening up new tabs. It was clear he was completely overwhelmed.
“Can I just try something?” I asked.
“Please!” He pushed the laptop at me. “I’ll get us both some water.”