by Mona Awad
—
After Workshop, a mandatory end of semester cookie party! in the lounge area. Their idea. Because wouldn’t it be so fun? SO fun. Everyone is in attendance, of course. All the faculty. All the administration. Even the poets have been lured in by the free food.
I hover at the corners, watching everyone crowd around a long table of the Bunnies’ baked wares, growing flushed and giddy as they shovel seasonally themed confection into their mouths. Misshapen snowmen made of marshmallows regard me cruelly with their candy eyes. Lemon surprises that surely will not surprise. Spiked rainbow sherbet punch hissing and spitting in the center of them all like a nefarious cauldron. The Bunnies cackling all around it like the witches they really are, I see it so clearly now. Soon they’ll start hugging, I realize. And I don’t want to be around for that, I—
“Leaving already, Samantha?” asks Benjamin, the department administrator, as I move past him toward the door. Benjamin used to be my friend sort of. At least he’d let me sit and talk to him in his office after receptions and we would eat whatever lesser cheese the faculty left behind. But ever since the barbecue incident, he’s been colder with me. It was Benjamin’s barbecue. He kindly threw it for all of us Narrative Arts students at the end of our first year. I was supposed to go and I ditched it at the last minute. Because on the day of the barbecue, the Bunnies started an email thread. It was Cupcake, she heard Benjamin say he had a Jacuzzi, should she bring a swimsuit?
You should go naked, Bunny! :D
Ooooh what if we ALL went naked, Bunny? Would Benjamin be pissed??
No way, Benjamin is SUCH a unicorn person! :D
THEN LET’S ALL GO NAKED YAY also what snacks should we bring??? :D
Umm, all the cookie butter please?! ;)
OMG Bunny you are so fucking BRILLIANT also mini chocolate covered peanut butter cups?!?!
SO MUCH YES also pumpkin spice something?!?!?!?!?!?!?
OH MY GOD, PUMPKIN SPICE EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I watched it grow and grow—their all-caps sentences, their millions of exclamations points, their plague of winks and smileys—like a malevolent vine strangling me. I began to sweat and my heart began to pound and I simply could not rise from my chair. I watched the minutes click by in the top corner of my computer screen. Late. Very late now. I watched the sun sink. And I never explained my absence except to email Benjamin the next morning. So sorry, was not feeling well. I imagine that afternoon they won him over with story after story of my surliness, my unexplained aloofness, and now he had firsthand proof. Now he is on their side. Now he thinks I am an Owie.
I have always wanted to explain to Benjamin about that day. How I wanted to go to his party. How the email thread thwarted me. But I have a feeling he’d just blink. What?
So I tell him, “Yes, I have a plane to catch now.”
“That’s too bad.” He looks genuinely sorry.
“Well, if you won’t stay, at least take some home with you,” he says, handing me a cellophane bag of their baking atrocities.
“I believe Eleanor made those,” he says, seeing me eye the gingerbread men. “Aren’t they just adorable?”
I stare at the gingerbread man’s leering face. His warped limbs. His icing eyes capable of anything. “Very.”
I take the cookie bag, because to say No, thank you, to explain, requires words and my throat is still burning. I walk away from Benjamin like I have somewhere to be. Like I’m late. I make my way out the front door with my head down and nearly collide with a wall of flesh.
I look up.
The Lion.
“Samantha, I wondered if we could have a word in my office?”
22.
Shut the door, please.” He sits behind his desk, rearranging his papers, not looking at me. “Have a seat.”
I take the seat opposite him. Still in my coat. Clutching my cellophane bag of cookies. Swaying slightly from the wine.
He looks taller, trimmer. His mane glows in the office light. More tattoos of trees climb his forearms. More crows peering from their inky branches, watching me with white eyes.
“Samantha, we need to talk.”
He looks at me, then at the cookie bag in my fist. I haven’t been in his office since those awkward monthly meetings last winter, so formal and stilted compared to the off-campus ones we had in fall. Languorous Moroccan teas at the Middle Eastern place. Lunch in the basement pub, sometimes dinner. A drink. Two drinks. Three drinks, why not? And then—
He raped you? Drugged you? Tied you to a chair?
No.
Asked you to suck him off?
No.
Showed you his cock, surely?
No.
Please don’t tell me he put a hand on your knee or I’ll scream.
He said he liked my tights. And my bangs. He complimented my perfume once. He asked me if it had an amber base note.
And?
I said it didn’t. And then I said maybe it did, I didn’t know.
And?
“What was that, Samantha?”
“Nothing,” I mumble now.
“So. How’s your semester been?” he asks me.
“Good.” I nod. “Really wonderful.”
He raises an eyebrow. I shared my Fosco nickname with him one drunk night and he laughed so hard he nearly projectiled his wine into my face. “You enjoyed Ursula’s Workshop, then?”
“Yes. Very much.”
He nods. Another lie.
“How’s your writing going, Samantha?”
“Pretty well.”
“I’m concerned that you haven’t checked in with me this semester. Have you been working on your thesis?”
I think of my notebook full of eyes and swirls and fragments.
“Of course.”
“Ursula says she hasn’t really seen anything from it this semester.”
I feel myself get hot. “I’ve sort of changed directions.”
“I see.”
Silence. I lower my eyes to his desk. Dizzy. I’m getting dizzy.
“Well, can you send me some of this . . . new direction?”
“It’s in the drafting phase still,” I say to his desk.
“The drafting phase,” he repeats.
I glance up at him, expecting to meet anger, disappointment, concern. Instead, no expression. His face is literal negative space.
“Look, Samantha, I never thought I’d say this but I’m actually beginning to worry about you.”
“Worry about me?”
“About you graduating.”
“Oh.”
“You’ve really only got a few months left here. I know it may seem like a lot of time now, but it actually moves very quickly.”
I gaze at his black band T-shirt—an industrial German one we both like. The graphic features a large-busted woman getting strangled by a horned monster. The woman looks, of course, as if she is in ecstasy. They always do.
“Samantha, is there something you want to tell me?”
Yes. I don’t understand what’s happened between us. Why don’t we talk anymore? Why are you so cold with me now? Like I’m a stranger to you suddenly. Like I’m an embarrassment. Like you’re ashamed. Is it because of that weird night we pretend never happened?
“No.”
“Because if you want to talk to me about something, I’m here.”
Liar. “Okay. Thank you.”
He sighs. “You know, Samantha. I brought you here. To Warren. Because I liked your work. I liked you.”
Past tense. I nod.
“Such imagination. Such inventiveness. Such a great voice.”
He looks at the space on his desk where the plastic wolverine figurine used to be, which I stole from his office last winter and which he knows I stole. Slipped it in my po
cket when he stepped outside to photocopy some form. When I told the story to Ava, she was so proud of me I gave it to her.
“Look, Samantha, if I don’t get some writing from you by the end of the winter break, we’re going to have to have a serious talk. Do you understand?”
I wait for his icy face to crack, for his voice to melt, resume the friendly contours of the person I knew last fall, for him to tell me something softly, something kind. Nothing. Just doing his job. Checking in. What more could I possibly expect?
“I understand.”
Satisfied, he begins to pack up.
“So. Going home for the holidays?” He glances up at me, waiting. He knows, of course, about my father hiding out, my mother being dead. We both know I’m not going anywhere.
“Yes. I have a plane to catch, actually.”
He gives me a slight smile. “Have a good trip.”
23.
Back at my apartment, I fall into bed, flushed but shivering. I thought I might find Ava waiting outside my apartment door. But of course, the hallway was empty of all but the salt-stained monster Crocs of the perverted giant. A swamp of Walmart bags surrounding his half-open door—the yellow-face logos smiling daggers at me.
I recall passing the Bunnies just now in the hall, glutted with Christmas cookies and their own Bunny love, which is probably only stronger now that they have witnessed my failure. Glowing with the happy knowledge that they all have places to go. Samantha, I wonder what home means to you?
As I lie here, suddenly so tired, I imagine them leaving. Hopping back to the various states they came from. Purses of the softest leather slung over their camel-coated shoulders. Sleek little suitcases being wheeled in the snow by kid-gloved hands. Blowing air kisses to each other as they slip into airport-bound taxis. Cashmere scarves getting tangled as they faux-hug good-bye. Good-bye, Bunny. Wait. No. Not good-bye! Let’s taxi pool to the airport! Should we? Can we, please? Because I just can’t bear to be away from you, Bunny! Because I’m not ready to say good-bye to you yet! I’m going to miss you so, so much! Text me every day, okay? I’ll text you too.
They will not text me. I have proven I am not one of them, that I am capable only of making bunnies hop away.
Fuck them, Ava would say.
It makes me smile for a second. Until I realize Ava isn’t going to text me either.
I turn off my phone, close my eyes.
* * *
—
When I wake up, the sky is dark and blowing snow. I am burning, I am freezing. My limbs are stiff. My throat is a red, pulsing fist in my neck. Chills all through my body. Water. I need water but the sink’s far away. I can’t bring myself to rise from my bed, which feels like it’s breathing beneath me. I feel it rise and fall as though we’re adrift. I reach for my phone. No texts, no missed calls. What did I expect?
Outside, the snow’s falling sideways.
Everyone’s long gone now, they must be. The Bunnies. Jonah probably. Even the Lion is probably on a plane back to whatever craggy, mist-covered isle he comes from. And Ava? Definitely gone. Maybe gone farther than the Lion by now. And I let her go, let her leave, just sat there in a kitten dress, watching her say, I’m leaving. Gave her no words to come back by, no words to come back for. Just sat there with my mouth open, all my words still inside.
I feel the fist in my throat tighten. Burning, pounding head. Singing chills, skipping heart. Which I deserve.
Absolutely.
* * *
—
Nights pass into days pass into nights.
Every time I open my eyes, it is darker outside, colder. The city earns all the names I came up with for it, and as I lie shivering in bed, I come up with more. RancidAquariumLand. Jailville. BlackSkyGrayEarth. ZombieCity. Outside is actual hell and the internet confirms this. I watch weathermen making apocalyptic gestures at maps. Behind them, footage of blowing snow, icy unplowed roads. News of violence escalates. My in-box floods, as it did last summer, with alarming crime-alert messages from campus security. Shooting in the early evening. Sodomy in the morning. Decapitation at 3:30 in the afternoon. I wonder when is a nonbeheading time to go out and buy ginger ale.
I close my eyes. I dream of cold medicine. Dark green as forests. Chilled to mind-nullifying perfection in my fridge that is not empty, it’s full of beautiful, bubbling things like the amberest ginger ale. Right there on the shelf, not at all a mirage. I dream of water that comes from mountains, from pure, cold-sweet streams. Poured into a tall clear glass like a vase. A magical hand bringing it to me. Setting the glass on the floor here by my head. A water-chilled palm laid softly on my face. I close my eyes the better to feel its cool, tender touch. Whose hand? Whose touch? Ava’s? You don’t deserve that hand, Bunny, we’ve been over this. Father? Father has his own problems. Father is farther away than the sink. Mother? Never again but don’t go down that road. Jonah? Can’t drag poor Jonah into this, don’t deserve that hand either. One of the Bunnies? Maybe before but not anymore. Forget about whether you like them or hate them. Ship’s sailed either way, Bunny. Thanks to your embarrassingly unmagical mind that can’t even make one fucking bunny boy, that can only make a bunny hop away. So. No Bunny hands for you, Bunny. Sorry-not-sorry. The Lion? God, no.
No hands left.
Better just lie here. Alone on the breathing bed. In this room that is too hot then too cold then too hot, depends entirely on the whims of the radiator god. Chills singing through my body now like an aria. Listen to the opera girl in the apartment above sing along even though I know she is long gone for the holidays. Promise myself not to look at the Bunnies’ holiday photos on the various social media. Stare at pics upon pics of them donning chunky sweaters of a wool so soft I can see the lamb being shaved. Slouched in the depths of couches like velvety seas beside blazing fireplaces, tastefully decorated trees, the similarly attired people who spawned them in the background. Posing in aerodynamic snowsuits at the foot of absurdly majestic mountains, wielding glinty pink poles.
And then their captions:
Mulled wine and Mariah Carey’s Christmas yes please ☺ #amwriting
oops i just ate a fuckton of spice cookies sorry-not-sorry ☺ #amwriting
WHEN YOU ARE SO EXCITED FOR SANTA YOU ALMOST PEE ☺ #amwriting
Elf porn’s hot #realtalk #amwriting
Each post followed by mile-long threads of comments, OMG, Bunny you are SO CRAY! OMG I miss you!!! Come here! You come here, Bunny! No you fucking come here, please!
Kill me now, Ava would say. She would feel no shameful tugs of longing to wear their camel coats (boring). To don their fur-lined gloves, their knitted hats (I’d rather be fucking cold). No awful itch in her mesh fingers to steal their soft purses. To slip into their creamy skins and live there. To lie in their just-right princess beds with the clean white cloud sheets and dream their bland dreams. To be welcomed through their pillar-flanked doors by their Wonder Bread mothers and fathers. Who are alive. Who are not in debt. Who are not hiding in the mountains of Mexico among the emaciated dogs and the sunbaked dust. Who are not wanted for fraud or corruption.
What’s home to you, Samantha? I wonder what’s home to you.
Ava. Ava’s home. I need to get there. I get out of bed even though I’m shivering and when I step outside, the air is so cold it takes my breath away. But I can’t remember the way to her house. All the twists and turns she would take, there were so fucking many. Cutting through gardens. Cutting through alleys. Did we cross a river? I cross three just in case. Brave all the streets I am normally too scared to walk down alone. Cars roar past, sometimes slowing down ominously. I ignore them. I keep going the way I used to when I would follow her back to her place in the dark. Just follow me. Keeping my head down, scurrying like prey from some unknown but imminent beast, what shape it will take I have no idea.
Why the hell are you walking so fast? Ava would ask me.
I don’t know. I just feel like it, I guess.
Even though I couldn’t see her face, I could feel her smiling in the dark.
Okay, Bunny, she’d say. Then she would start to walk slowly just to piss me off. Stop to look at a tree or the moon. What a moon. Don’t you think?
* * *
—
I wander for what feels like hours, days, weeks. My eyes hunting the blurred, shifty streets for any sight of her familiar house. For the flowers dying outside it. For the raccoons on the roof. Shouldn’t I know where it is? Didn’t I live there? Maybe she took it all with her when she left. Packed it in her snakeskin suitcase along with her holey fishnets and her lucky magpie feather and her lady-shaped flask with the missing eye. So I’d never find it again. She was that disappointed in me. I picture her folding up the walls of her house like a sweater. All folded up and carried away.
I roam past the city, to the ocean. She isn’t in the ocean. Or the sky. Or in this dumpster. Or behind this tree.
I skulk back to my apartment, which I have no trouble finding, despite how far I roamed and how much the city spins and tilts. I sit at my desk chair telling myself I will write, I must write, now is the time to write. Instead I stare through the window at the bricks. I see a crew-cutted old man through the window of an apartment across the way, also sitting at his desk chair. He sits very, very still. Hours pass, and he does not rise from this chair or even move. Perhaps he is dead.
I crawl back into bed, defeated. Stare at my phone. A home-screen pic of five fuzzy Bunnies in a snuggly heap. It used to be a picture of me and Ava on her roof, cheek to cheek, unsmiling but soul happy. When did I change it? I can’t even remember is the saddest thing.
I text her where are you? Then erase it.
did you really leave? Erase. im so sorry for everything i have not bin in my right—Erase.
I know i havent been the best Erase.
i have been the shittiest Erase.
Erase erase erase erase.
