by Damien Boyes
Boundless
Damien Boyes
June 13, 1983.
Buffalo, New York.
1
Blue Monday
My brain hates me.
No joke, from the time I was born it’s been trying to kill me. I had my first seizure when I was six weeks old, graduated to grand mals by three, and spent the next ten years in and out of hospitals while every doctor in the state tried to figure a way to keep my overloaded epileptic neurons from frying each other.
I’ve tried every kind of medication. Pink ones, blue ones. Ones they poured directly into my veins. To speed me up, to slow me down. To rearrange the chemical soup in my head. Nothing ever worked.
Eventually the doctors said the only solution was to cut my brain in half. They planned the surgery and everything—but at the last minute they found one last drug to try. And then, little by little, I was better.
All thanks to this.
The pill is light in my palm, pale green like a hospital wall. I started taking these beautiful green diamonds four years ago, right before my fourteenth birthday—a new medicine on a clinical trial—and slowly, the seizures disappeared.
I haven’t had one for more than three years now. Mom and Dad have even relaxed a bit. They’ve let down their guard, I can feel it—can almost see it on their faces when they look at me. Maybe their daughter isn’t going to die. Maybe we can all be a normal family for once in my life.
It’s almost too much to ask, but it’s been years. Maybe I can believe that I’m better. That I can start living my life.
But either way, whether the seizures come back or not, I need to stop letting the possibility that they might determine what I can and can’t do. I want the same freedom everyone else has to not worry that I might convulse into traffic at any second.
As far as Mom is concerned, my future’s already planned out for me. Graduation. Community college. Crappy, boring job. Nothing stressful, nothing that might trigger a relapse, and never more than thirty minutes away from her protection for the rest of my life.
And the thing is, I’m even willing to do it her way. I owe her and Dad that much at least—they gave up everything for me. I can never repay them for it. But they have to see I’m more than just this fragile little girl in need of constant babying. They need to loosen their grip, just a little. That’s all I’m asking.
I’ll be eighteen in less than three weeks. June 30, 1983. The day I become an adult. I’ll be a high school graduate, on my way to college. I’ll have the right to vote. To join the Army if I want.
If I can die for my country, I should be allowed to make my own decisions, whatever they may be.
So I’m making a decision: New Order, my favorite band in the world, is coming all the way from England, and they’re playing a show at the Paradise Garage next month in New York. I’m going to be there.
I didn’t get a chance to see them when they were Joy Division—what they called themselves before Ian Curtis, their previous lead singer, died—and then when I read about how he’d killed himself, and that he’d had epilepsy too …
They’re like my spirit animal—if a spirit animal could be a new wave band from Manchester. They’re both a worst-case scenario—my epilepsy one day killing me—and an inspiration—that death isn’t the end. The phoenix rises from the ashes and life goes on and all that stuff people say to be nice but is actually kind of true.
Either way, whatever the outcome, they taught me I don’t have to be afraid.
Plus, their music is killer. Joy Division and New Order both, and they’re playing at the Paradise Garage, the coolest club in New York. Gabriel’s told me all about it. No way am I missing this show.
I know the risks. I know the arguments.
It’s in the city. At night. What if people are drinking? What if there are drugs? What if something happens?
Always. What if something happens?
I toss the pill in my mouth and yank a Dixie Cup from the dispenser next to the sink.
Well, what if something doesn’t?
What if something never does?
I fill the cup with a splash of water and wash the pill down, crumple the cup and drop it into the garbage, then check myself one last time in the mirror and pull a loose strand of black hair back behind my ears.
I’ll give Mom and Dad one last shot. I’ll ask if I can go. I need to know they can see past their knee-jerk smothering overprotection and allow me the chance to live my life. If they can do that, if they’re willing to accept that I’m growing up—and have been for a while now—then I’ll stay and do it their way. College, living at home, the whole thing.
And if they can’t, well, then they don’t leave me any other choice—I’ll just have to go on without them.
2
Love Will Tear Us Apart
I grab my bag off the hallway floor and head downstairs. Mom has breakfast waiting—eggs and rice, as usual. She’s at the sink, already dressed in practical beige slacks and stretched out blue cardigan that hangs over her hips, with her apron tied around her waist and her curly auburn hair held back by a kerchief.
She’s humming something, but I don’t know what. Probably one of those folky flower-power songs no one’s ever heard of. She literally has the worst taste in music.
Dad’s home from the night shift, still in his scrubs, dark smudges under his eyes. He always looks like he’s about to collapse—they run the nurses off their feet in the ER—but somehow, he always manages to smile.
“Morning, Minnow,” Dad says, squinting a smile at me over his paper. I drop my bag on the floor and take my seat across the table from him. He’s called me Minnow my whole life, and I don’t even know why. Far as I can tell it’s a dad joke about my name that took on a life of its own. I don’t even like fish.
Mom sets a plate in front of me and absently tousles my hair like I’m six, and I have to straighten it back down and tuck it away again behind my ears. She’s never going to let me grow up.
“Thanks, Mom,” I say, then lean toward Dad. “So how many kinds of stupid went on at the hospital last night?”
He comes home with the craziest stories. I’m amazed by the absurd things that happen in the hospital—both with the patients and the staff. People think teenagers do dumb things, but that was a full-grown adult who walked into the ER with his thumb in a jar of ice because he tried to remove a wart with a band saw.
“Seven,” Dad whispers over his paper, then shakes his head and waves it away. All part of the job.
He doesn’t like to complain. I think that’s where I get it from, but still I know he’s frustrated to be working as a nurse. He knows more than the doctors, and the doctors resent him for it.
All his life he only ever wanted to be a surgeon. He was born in China and his parents were of the lucky few able to send their first-born son to a medical school in New York. He was an exceptional student, well on his way to an illustrious career. Then he met Mom.
She was in school too, creative writing. She was pretty and funny and free-spirited. She planned on being a writer, and from what little she’s let me read, she was pretty good too.
The story I get is they met at some kind of student mixer and he was this dashing exotic genius and she this ball of energy and they fell for each other. No one approved, of course. I figure it was probably meant to be a fling—Mom was headed for the West Coast and Dad had a career in medicine ahead of him.
Then I came along and knocked everyone’s plans out of orbit.
The pregnancy was difficult. Mom tells me all the time about how they thought they were going to lose me, all the two-in-the-morning dashes to the hospital when the cramping became unbearable. She was on bed rest for the last two months, and then after I was born, those scares became tri
vial.
First came the twitching and the spasms, but no one could figure out what was wrong with me. When the seizures started to affect my breathing and heartbeat, the doctors diagnosed me with acute cryptogenic epilepsy. They said they’d never seen a case as bad as mine and admitted they didn’t know whether the seizures would stop on their own or kill me. So Mom and Dad put their plans on hold to sit by my bedside and wait to see if I’d live or die.
After a year the seizures hadn’t stopped, but I wasn’t dead either, so Dad switched tracks and entered nursing school—he was still years from becoming a doctor—and with his training he plowed through in eighteen months and took the first job he could find, in the Emergency Room at Buffalo General. And that’s how we ended up here.
Mom dropped out of school and devoted herself to keeping me alive. I became her new life’s work. I’m all she has.
It’ll break my heart if I have to run away from them. It’ll crush them—Mom especially. They’ve both sacrificed so much for me, left their dreams and families behind, took jobs they didn’t want to pay medical bills they couldn’t afford.
They’ve done so much for me, I know I’m a jerk for even thinking about leaving. But I didn’t ask for any of this—and I’ve done the best I could, haven’t I?
I’ve tried to make up for all the trouble I caused, been a good girl, kept my head down and my nose clean, but I’ve barely had a life of my own. I’ve never been to a sleepover. I only have one real friend. I didn’t go out for Debate or the Math Team even though I knew I’d be good at them and could handle the stress. And I’ve never even had anything remotely like a boyfriend.
I’m seventeen and never so much as held a boy’s hand. How lame is that?
I move my breakfast around on my plate then stab a piece of egg and glare at it on the end of my fork.
Mom’s been so terrified that I could die at any second she hardly lets me out of her sight. Drama Club was the only concession she’s ever made, and only then because I kicked up such a fuss.
I keep testing, keep hoping that maybe one day her determination to keep me in a bubble will weaken—but if anything, it’s only gotten stronger as graduation’s approached. She can sense my frustration. We’ve talked about it a few times already, this isn’t something new.
I wanted to go to school in New York, to Columbia, like Dad wanted to, but it was decided that community college was better. I’d be closer to home.
They have to see that I’m nearly an adult now, that I won’t die the second I’m out of their sight. If they can do that, then I won’t have to make the grand dramatic display of slipping away in the middle of the night. Otherwise …
Ugh. I’m stalling.
This is it. One way or another, my life is about to change.
“Mom,” I say, “I’ve been thinking …” I bite the egg off my fork, force myself to chew and swallow.
“Mmm,” she replies absently from the sink, her yellow-gloved hand scrubbing away at the rice pot. “What’s that, sunshine?”
“I’m going to be eighteen—”
Dad lowers his paper and gives me a sly smile. “You want to have a party? You could have Gabriel over, maybe some of your other friends from school—from your play. We could have pizza—”
“A pizza party? No, Dad, I’m not twelve.” I take a breath, resisting the urge to say something sarcastic. “I’m too old for pizza parties.”
“No one’s too old for pizza,” Dad counters. “I love pizza.”
He doesn’t get it.
“I want go to New York. There’s a band I want to see and Gabe’s going and the tickets are on sale today and if I want to go I need to buy one this afternoon before they sell out ...”
It all comes out in a garble but it’s done. There, I said it.
And now I realize I’m holding my breath.
“You want to go to the city?” Mom asks. She’s set the pot back in the sink and is looking at me with her lips narrow and her eyes scrunched up, like I just told her I got a job delivering packages for Sketchy Ralph—who’s twenty-two and still hangs out with high school kids.
She pulls off her gloves and hangs them over the faucet, then dries her hands on her apron and comes to stand beside Dad. “That’s eight hours on the train. You’d have to stay overnight.”
“Gabe has a place for us to sleep,” I say, and when I see the “no” already forming in her eyes, I try one last time. “I’ll be eighteen by then, about to start college. I think I’ve earned a little freedom …” I start, but don’t finish the sentence. I know it’s no use.
Dad purses his lips like he’s actually considering it and looks up to Mom, but I can already tell what she’s going to say by the look on her face.
“I don’t think so, dear,” she says, putting her hand on Dad’s shoulder. “What if something happened?”
“I’m taking my meds,” I counter, giving her one more chance, one last chance to change her mind. “I haven’t had a seizure in years. Please?”
She takes a moment, a moment longer than it usually takes her to say “no,” and I feel myself hope, for a flicker of a second, that maybe she’s reconsidering—but then she shakes her head.
“I’m sorry, Jasmin,” she says. “Maybe next time.”
But there won’t be a next time.
“Okay,” I say. “I understand.”
I take another bite of egg, chew and swallow, but don’t taste anything.
I know enough not to argue. I’m a good girl, I know my limitations. My boundaries.
The answer is “no,” and there is no further conversation.
So, I guess that’s it.
I’m officially running away from home.
3
One Way or Another
I meet Gabriel at his locker after homeroom.
“I’m leaving,” I say, and don’t have to explain. I’ve been flirting with the idea of taking off for a while now.
He steps up to me and grabs me by the shoulders. “Good. For. You,” he says and pulls me into an awkward hug. Gabriel Bennet is the coolest guy I know. He doesn’t give a crap what anyone thinks about him, but for some reason physical contact completely weirds him out.
I let him hug me and then he lets go and smooths his shirt back into his chinos. He’s gone full preppy today—deck shoes with no socks and a salmon-pink polo shirt buttoned to the neck, with the sleeves rolled up over the dark skin of his forearms and up past his elbows. He smells like he just came from the mall.
Sometimes I’m amazed we’re even friends. Gabriel has never made a bad fashion choice in his life, and if it weren’t for my uniform of jeans, music T-shirts, and my Doc Martens, I’d still be in my pajamas. I’m wearing the Unknown Pleasures shirt today—which, come to think of it, I wore yesterday too. I’m surprised he didn’t say anything.
Gabe has an eye for fashion that I just don’t. He was the one who found these cherry Docs for my birthday last year. I don’t know where he found them—he takes off on weekends and goes into the city to comb the vintage shops and always comes back with something great.
He does what he wants and no one stops him. I guess that’s the upside of having so many brothers and sisters, you can kind of lose yourself in the crowd.
“What happened? Tell me all about it,” he says, eyes cocked, but he knows me well enough I’m pretty sure he could already tell me exactly how it went.
“They’re scared I’m going to die at any second.”
He looks me up and down and finally raises an eye at my rerun T-shirt. “While many things about you scare me,” he says with a smirk, “you’re too way stubborn to die.”
I slug him on the shoulder and he pretends it hurts.
“You can still get me a ticket to the show?” I ask.
“Of course. I’ll call my friend and tell him I need another,” he says cryptically. He’s been making a lot of new friends lately. Sometimes he goes down to the city on Friday afternoon and I don’t see him again until Tuesday mornin
g. He’s leaving Buffalo one weekend at a time. He might be gone before I am.
“Come on,” I say, teasing. “You don’t have any other friends.”
Gabe’s been my best friend since elementary school, really the only friend I’ve ever had. One day in the first grade, when no one would play with the kid who flopped around on the ground all the time, he took me by the hand and made me play in the sandbox with him. We’ve been close ever since.
I had a huge crush on him for a while a few years ago—he’s basically the perfect guy. Funny and quick and a great actor and a good student, everyone loves him—but I kept it to myself, never seeing even a hint that he might feel the same way. I thought it was odd that he never had a girlfriend—not that they didn’t try—but it wasn’t until years later that I finally clued in and realized why.
He didn’t like girls.
We’ve still never talked about it. He’s my best friend and he still hasn’t told me, but I think I know why: I’m his shield of normalcy. There were rumors that we were boyfriend and girlfriend, or that we’d even gone all the way, but neither of us ever tried too hard to deny anything, and that kept anyone from asking too many questions about the good-looking black kid who dressed better than everyone else in the school. He’s never told me, but he’s never had to either. I think that’s why we get along so well.
“Ground Control to Major Jas,” Gabe says, snapping his fingers in my face, and I realize I’ve been staring off into space again. I get like that sometimes, lost in my head. “You still here?”
“Just thinking,” I say as Gabe grabs his books from his locker and swings it closed. We merge into the stream of kids funneling through the halls. “Maybe we can get a place together in the city?” I suggest. “We can leave right after graduation. Summer in New York?”
“I’m in,” Gabe says, without hesitation. “My friend probably knows where we can find a room to share.”
