Her sudden movement makes me jump at first. I ignore that I just flinched. I hold her, letting her squeeze me to the point of discomfort. I can barely breathe. Who needs oxygen? “I’m so sorry,” she says.
I put my hand on her cheek, trying to meet her eyes, and I feel the tears on her face. I wipe them away and try to pull her chin up. She resists a little, but eventually gives in. “I love you.”
She starts crying harder. “I love you. I’m so sorry.” She keeps saying that. “I’m so sorry.” She pulls me inside. In her bedroom we’re a little awkward, not sure how to move forward. I think my silence makes her think I’m waiting for more apologies. I’m not trying to make her grovel; I just don’t know what to say.
“I didn’t sell anything. A few people made offers, but they were so low they wouldn’t pay for a blank canvas. The thing is worth more before I paint on it than after.”
I just shake my head. I want to comfort her. I want to say all the things I’ve already said, but I’m afraid to.
“Mom was there, and she was just telling me everything that was wrong with me. I told her about you. Like an idiot, I thought she’d be happy for me. She wasn’t.”
I nod.
“Anyway, I was upset about all that, and then I got high and it just exploded. I thought it would calm me down, but it just made everything feel darker. And I just wanted to hurt something.” Her eyes flick to mine. “Someone.”
“I’m sorry about your show.” I feel far away. I want to have the closeness with her again, but I find myself wondering what her mother said about me and if that’s why she attacked me. Maybe for a second, she agreed.
“Forget the show. I just want us to be okay.”
“We’re okay,” I say. She wraps her arms around me again. Next thing I know she’s crying more. I put my hand on her head. “Hey, I said we’re okay.”
“I can’t believe I did that to you.” She just keeps crying harder the more she talks. “I don’t ever want to hurt you.”
Jayden’s comparison to Isaiah holds no value to me anymore, if it ever did. Isaiah never apologized. In fact, I was usually lucky I hadn’t gotten worse. I squeeze her tighter, resisting the phrase “It’s okay,” yet forgiving just the same.
“I don’t want to do it anymore,” I say. I feel her body tighten with panic.
“Do what?”
I realize she thinks I mean be with her. “Crystal. I don’t want to do it anymore.”
Her eyes soften. “Don’t do it anymore then, baby.”
We stare at each other for a while. I don’t know how to say what I want to say. I’m terrified of what her reaction might be. I’m not prepared to react myself. Eventually, she speaks for me.
“You don’t want me to do it anymore.”
I shake my head and wait for a response. She seems to be thinking it over carefully.
“I’ll never hurt you again. If you need me to stop to believe that, I’ll stop.”
“Really?”
She leans forward and kisses me. “Of course. I love you.”
Chapter Twelve
I watch Jaselle get depressed as she comes off the drugs. I hold her while she shakes. I pretend I believe her insistence it’s easy even while she gets sick. I barely leave her side.
And then one day she’s walking around again. She’s okay again. But there’s a darkness that doesn’t leave. There’s a layer of despair, not tangible but constant. It starts to make me doubt what I’ve done to her. She’s so unhappy. And our conversations are growing darker. I pretend they don’t scare me.
She’s usually so lost in her head that by the time she talks she’s so far down a chain of thoughts it seems random to me. She snaps out of a daydream and says, “When I was in eighth grade a guy that lived three houses down from me hung himself in his parents’ closet.”
“Were you friends with him?” I ask.
“Not really. Barely knew him.”
“Why his parents’ closet?”
“I imagine he must have wanted to hurt them. He wanted them to see.”
“He was blaming them?” I feel like a therapist, cooperating through a conversation while trying to discover the deeper meaning.
“That’s how I’d take it,” she says.
“How’s that for a skeleton in the closet?” I feel a little guilty when she laughs.
“I thought about doing the same to my parents,” she says. I just stare at her, waiting for more. “Well, not exactly the same. I wouldn’t hang myself. But I thought of making them find me.”
“Why?”
“Because they were always trying to change me, what I wore, how I spoke, what I did, who I loved. They still do. I wanted to just say, ‘Fine, you hate me. I get it. I’ll put you out of your misery. I’ll let you get back to your American dream, but first I’m going to bleed all over your white picket fence.’”
I nod, understanding completely the feeling of being rejected for who you are. But why kill yourself? Why punish yourself? Leave. That snarky voice in my head taunts me for always thinking running away is the answer, but then, isn’t killing yourself the ultimate running away?
She seems to interpret my silence. “Death is so easy. It’s ridiculous how we fear it. All the pain stops. What’s so scary about that?”
“You don’t have to die to escape the pain.”
She chuckles, thinking I mean drugs, scoffing at me for mentioning the one relief I took from her. “You can detach from it,” I say. “Don’t let people make you feel like shit. They don’t like who you are? Cut them loose.”
“By that logic shouldn’t I have told you to go fuck yourself when you asked me to stop doing crystal?”
That stops me in my tracks like a kick in the face. I roll around in space trying to recover for a second. “I asked you to stop because I do love who you are, not because I don’t. I wanted you back.”
“We did drugs together from the beginning. When did it start hurting you?”
“When it took priority. When it made you angry.”
“You’re my priority, and the drug wasn’t what made me angry. It was the failure. It was feeling like a loser, again. It was my mother having more ammo to shoot at me when she already has way too much.”
“I’m your priority?” I should be focusing on the fact that what really made her mad was the evidence that the drug wasn’t good for her, but I don’t.
“Haven’t I proven that?” she asks. “I’d do anything for you. I stopped for you. I wouldn’t do that for anyone else, not because I couldn’t, because I didn’t need to. But that didn’t matter because you were upset, and I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“And you’d do anything for me too?” she asks.
“Anything.”
“Then talk to me.”
“Talk to you?” I ask.
“Yeah. You don’t tell me anything. Who the hell are you? I don’t even know where you’re from, or who your parents are, or your middle name, or—”
“Okay, okay, I get it.” I take a deep breath. I always knew she’d probe one day. She’s so patient and gentle, but eventually everyone gets too curious. “My middle name is Marie. Rainey Marie Shimmer.”
“Rainey?”
“Yes. I turned it into Rainn.”
“Sounds preppy.”
“That’s why I changed it.”
“Rainey. Sounds like a rich kid name.”
“We were rich,” I say.
“How rich?”
“Maids, cooks, private schools…”
“Gate around your mansion?”
“You got the idea,” I say.
“You look embarrassed.”
“I am.”
“Why?” she asks.
“Because it’s disgusting. I hate the wealthy. Pretentious, ostentatious, covetous bastards, so wrapped up in their silverware and curtains and landscaping. And everything is a trophy. God forbid your children have aspirations of their own or personalities.”
“
Gave you quite a vocabulary though. Throw one more ous word for those bastards at me, it’s sexy.”
I laugh and gradually lean over her as I search for another word. “Uhh, avaricious.”
“Mmm.” She giggles and kisses me. “You really do hate money, huh? Is that why you wanted to live in the alley?”
“I don’t hate money. I hate what it does to people.”
“I think people are either just assholes or they aren’t. I don’t think it’s the money’s fault.”
“Maybe,” I say. “But an asshole with a ton of cash has more ability to impose their asshole will.”
“They become a super asshole,” Jaselle says.
“A new breed of asshole.” I chuckle and kiss her neck.
“I’m not done with you.” She kisses the top of my head and pushes me back up. “What about your dad? I don’t think you’ve ever said a word about him.”
“He wasn’t around. He shot himself,” I say. Jaselle looks jarred. I feel like I can see her poring over our little suicide discussion. I put her out of her misery before she starts to feel bad. “I was a baby. I never knew him. Mom could have told me he had a heart attack and I would have never known different. She probably should have told me something like that.”
“You think so?”
“Sure, beats the hell out of thinking your dad would rather throw in the towel than raise you.”
“Yeah, I guess it does.”
I can tell she’s holding back what she really wants to say. She doesn’t want to upset me. I say it for her. “But it’s not the truth.” She nods somberly. I don’t let myself fall into depressed silence the way she seems to want to. “So, anything else you’d like to know?”
“Why’d you leave?”
My ears start ringing with my mother’s voice. I can smell her Chanel perfume and feel my fingers ripping out her bleached hair.
“She asked me to,” I say. She screamed at me to. Physically pushed me and told me I was a useless, evil piece of trash.
“Why?”
Mom’s voice comes full force into my head again, washing Jaselle away, a slight indentation in the sand after the wave. “He did every damn thing you did. If you and your idiot friends had never gotten to him he would be alive right now! You killed him! You killed my baby boy! Did you have fun getting high, Rainn? Was it worth it?”
I struggle to come back to Jaselle. Her face is smooth. I wonder if she’ll ever have wrinkles. My mom’s face was smooth until Michael died. Then she got ugly. The creases went deeper. Or maybe she just stopped covering them. Maybe she just didn’t care anymore.
“Things just couldn’t work after Michael died,” I say. Her dissatisfaction is palpable. I take another deep breath. “I guess we both blamed each other.”
“Why?”
“I thought she strangled him, tried to force him to be the little businessman she was expected to raise. She didn’t care about what he wanted; it was all about her.”
“And what did she say about you?”
“That I led him wrong. I was supposed to protect him, guide him. I let him fall in love with all the wrong things.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Jaselle says. Everyone says that. But she says it so soon, with so little information. She doesn’t even know what happened. How can she know it wasn’t my fault? Maybe it was.
Chapter Thirteen
South Park is on TV. Cartman is rattling off about Jews, and I’m watching the ice cubes in my glass melt under the rum. When I look over, Jaselle is digging in a small plastic bag. In between her fingers is a rock of meth. My stomach clenches, and I watch her go through the routine of putting it in her pipe and digging for a lighter.
She doesn’t make eye contact with me until the pipe is to her lips and her hand is raised to light up. She looks over the glass, waiting for me to do something, I guess. Am I supposed to offer my consent? It’s not going to happen. Finally, she drops the pipe back down to her lap.
“What?” she says.
“How long have you been doing this?” I ask.
“I haven’t. You think I’ve been hiding it from you?”
“I didn’t know you even bought it, so yeah.”
“No. I haven’t done any since I told you I’d stop.”
I look at the plastic bag, wanting to ignore its worn appearance and believe her. “So why now?”
“I enjoy it. Haven’t I proven I can handle it yet? I completely stopped when you asked.” She snaps her fingers to demonstrate the speed. I just look at her, wanting to argue, but anxious. She continues. “You like to drink sometimes, right? Does that mean you’re an alcoholic?”
She enjoys drinking more than I do as well, but I get the point. I understand the situation all too well. She wants to do this. If I tell her no, she’ll put it away, but for how long? Will she just start doing it when I’m not around? Do I want her to feel like she has to lie? She did stop when I asked. Maybe I’m being paranoid.
I don’t know if she reads all of this on my face or if my silence somehow conveys defeat, but she leans over and kisses my cheek, then puts the lighter to the pipe, rolling the pipe from side to side as she heats up the bowl. Back and forth, back and forth, not letting the flame stay in any spot too long so as not to burn the meth.
It doesn’t bother me once she’s smoked and puts it away. She makes me laugh until my sides hurt. I guess as long as it’s not in my face it doesn’t worry me so much. And my last memory of her being high and angry seems further away now that she’s high and happy.
I force myself to relax. I force myself not to be controlling. I force myself to realize the harder I squeeze, the faster I’ll lose her. I can’t stand the thought of losing her. Trust her. She says she’s fine. She quit. She’s fine.
That night I hold her as close to me as I can. Even when I’m hot and want to roll over, I refuse. I just hold on. I smell her hair, rub her arms, kiss the back of her shoulder. A tear rolls down my cheek. I’m not exactly sure why.
Chapter Fourteen
Michael bursts through the front door. My brain immediately goes to the dent in the white paint he just made, how Mom will use that as a constant reminder of how reckless we are, how little value we hold for our nice things.
Mom and I look up. I lift my fingers off the piano keys. The pressure of Mom’s fingers on my shoulders releases though her hands stay in place. We’re frozen, waiting for Michael to explain the abrupt entry.
“I’m not playing violin anymore,” he says.
“Yes, you are.” Mom doesn’t even pause to think.
“No, I’m not. I don’t like it. I don’t want to do it anymore.”
“I’ve already invested thousands of dollars in your violin, your lessons, your recitals, your—”
“I never asked you to do that. It’s a miserable, boring instrument and I won’t play another note on it. You can’t make me.”
“You’re already signed up for auditions. You’re going to the academy in the fall. It’s already done.”
“I’m not going.”
“Michael, yes, you are.”
“No, I’m not! And I’m not going to law school either!” he screams.
“Oh really?” Mom starts to laugh. “And what is it you’re going to do then? Be a janitor?”
Michael looks at me. I burn my eyes through as many layers of skin as I can penetrate, willing him to shut up. Don’t say it.
“Well?” Mom asks again.
“I’m going to be a drummer. Rainey and I are going to LA, and our band is—”
Mom holds up her hands brusquely to stop him. It’s a small gesture, but the fury is enough to make Michael pause. I shake my head at him, trying to ask him why he would do this. Mom drops her hands from my shoulders finally and walks to the side of the bench so she can make eye contact with both of us.
“Your what?” she growls.
“It’s just something we do messing around,” I say.
“No, it’s not!” Michael yells. “We’re good
, Mom. If you would just listen you might even be proud.”
She starts laughing again, that evil hyena laugh. “What? You’re going to be rock stars now? Is that it? I send you to the finest schools and tutors, have world famous musicians come to our house to teach you real music, and you want to bang on drums and scream?”
“It’s not all trash just because you don’t like it. It takes all the same skill.”
Mom spins on me so fast I don’t see her lash out, a snake striking and recoiling back into herself before I know what happened. I just feel my neck turn too far, a shocking sting spreading through my face, the warmth of my cheek flushing. The sound of it echoes in our hollow stone mansion.
“You did this to him,” she snaps. “It’s one thing that you run around with your drug addict friends, but now you’re bringing him down with you?” She keeps ranting on about how my music is dark and corrupt, how I refuse to behave, how I’ve ruined my life and now am trying to ruin Michael’s too because I can’t stand to burn alone. Her words start to blur together, faded and far away next to the ache in my face where my hand still clings to my wet skin.
“Leave her alone!” Michael’s voice is thunderous and pulls me back into the moment. He storms to the corner where his violin is propped. He opens the case and pulls it out, grabbing it by the neck and flinging it with everything he has so that it flies into the wall and bursts into splinters, the neck and body only held together now by the sad strings.
Mom’s jaw sags, and she stammers for words. Michael points the bow at her. “I hate you! You think just because people aren’t who you think they should be that they’re trash. Not everyone wants to be you, okay? I’d rather die than be you!”
“Settle down!” She desperately tries to take back control, but he won’t have it.
“Who are you to laugh at people’s dreams? You make people feel like shit, Mom. No wonder Dad killed himself. You make me want to kill myself.”
I can feel her go rigid beside me. I’m not sure I can breathe either while I wait for something to happen. Michael’s face is hard, showing no sign of remorse or guilt. His pupils are dilated, I finally realize.
Shadows of a Dream Page 11
