by Amy Reed
“I can’t believe you exist,” I say.
“I could stay here forever,” he says.
“Tell me,” I whisper. “About your scars.” Maybe if we tell our secrets in the water, it will make them buoyant. They will float away like leaves, like flower petals. They will leave us and we will be unburdened, weightless.
“I’ve never really talked about it with anyone. Not even the shrink my dad sent me to.”
“You’re safe with me.”
He takes a deep breath. “My mother left two years ago,” he says, and I hold him tighter. “Just left. One day, she was gone. Didn’t even leave a note. Didn’t call or write. Took some clothes and jewelry and withdrew a bunch of cash from the family checking account and we never heard from her again.”
I run my hand across the scars on his shoulder, textured like the bark of the fallen tree that is keeping us afloat.
I want to ask about DL. I want to give him my secrets. I want to give him everything. But the sound of a boat motor interrupts our solitude. The magic of the moment leaves us. Our secrets sink to the bottom of the lake.
“You two,” says the garbled voice of a bullhorn. Birds chirp in protest of the interruption. It seems impossible that such a loud, unpleasant noise could be possible here now. “No swimming allowed. Get out of the water right now and leave the park immediately or you will receive a citation.”
Several yards away is the khakied form of a park ranger in a small boat.
“Yes, sir,” Marcus says. “We were just leaving.”
We swim to shore and collect our things. Our tiny beach has been consumed by shade and is suddenly chilly with the arrival of the evening coastal breeze. The ranger motors away on his quest to ruin more perfect moments. I am wet and cold and covered in pine needles. I want to swim out to that ranger’s boat and pull him under.
“Lame,” Marcus says.
“I’m freezing.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
We walk to the car quickly, in silence, holding hands. The sunny glow of earlier has been replaced by muted shadows as the sun gets ready to set. My leg hurts from climbing the hill back up to the trail, but I say nothing. I don’t want him to worry. I don’t want his pity. I don’t want to ruin the moment any more than it already has been.
“School tomorrow,” Marcus says when we get into the car.
“Ugh.”
“I still have homework to do.”
“Yeah,” I say, even though I stopped trying to do my homework a long time ago.
“Can I drive you home? Or do you still want me to drop you off on Telegraph?”
“Drive me home, I guess,” I say, doing nothing to hide my disappointment.
“Hey,” he says, reaching out his hand and turning my face gently toward him. “We’ll do this again soon.”
I nod.
The music he plays on our drive down the hill is beautiful and sad. Just a guy and a guitar and his sweet, mournful voice.
“I like this,” I say.
“Yeah, my brother turned me on to this guy,” Marcus tells me. “One of the best songwriters ever, until he stabbed himself in the chest.”
“That’s morbid.”
“And such a cliché. Troubled genius and all that. He was a drug addict and an alcoholic, too, of course.”
“He must have been in a lot of pain.”
“We’re all in pain. But that doesn’t give us a fucking right to waste life like that.” There is a storm across his face. He is talking about something else, someone else. His mother, maybe. Or DL.
There is so much more to say, but we will talk about it later. We are driving back into the real world now. The moment for secrets has passed. Why do I feel like time is running out?
I tell Marcus how to get to my house and he drops me off in front and kisses me good-bye. A part of me thinks I should keep him hidden, as if some magic will be lost if my two worlds collide. But I am tired from the sun and wine and weed and walking. I am too tired for sneaking around.
I walk in the house and straight into my room, not even bothering to say hi to Jenica, who is studying in the living room. I lie in bed and look at the ceiling, making up stories to fill in the holes of Marcus’s secrets, until my thoughts become thinner, until they become air, until I fall into a dreamless sleep and they become nothing at all.
if.
Stella,
I’m screwed. I’m seriously fucking screwed. Not only am I out of pills, but my parents and Dr. Jacobs and the whole fucking world knows I was stealing them and now everyone thinks I’m a drug addict and a criminal. I don’t know if Mom forgot about Dr. Jacobs’s speech about tapering off the pills, but she tried to refill my prescription even though the bottle said no more refills. Some red bells probably went off on the pharmacist’s computer that said “Warning! Warning! Drug addict alert!” Then Dr. Jacobs called and the shit hit the fan.
You would never have let things get this far. You would know how to keep things cool and under control. But everything I do seems to run away from me and get bigger and bigger, way bigger than me. I’m no match for it. All I ever wanted was to be free and brave like you, but it’s like I traded in one prison for another.
The worst part is, Mom isn’t even mad. She just sat on the couch crying like I broke her heart. “You were stealing them, Evie? You were sneaking into our room and stealing?” she kept saying, as if it did not compute, as if wires got crossed and she was getting an error message. She was practically comatose when she told me Dr. Jacobs wants me to come in and see him. She got real small and practically whispered, “He thinks maybe he should refer you to an addiction specialist,” as if saying it quietly enough would make it less true.
I wish she would scream. I wish she would get angry and cruel so I could be mad at her. This is so much worse. “I don’t know how to help you,” she whimpered. “What did I do wrong?” And then I started comforting her. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Mom,” I kept saying. “It’s all my fault. I screwed up.”
Then that’s when Dad chimed in, “Damn right you screwed up,” which made Mom cry harder as he yelled, “What the hell is wrong with you?” at me. And I kept saying I don’t know, I don’t know, which is the only true answer I can think of. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t know why I have to keep taking these pills. I don’t know why I had to steal. I don’t know why I turned into this twisted version of the girl I used to be. I don’t know why I have to keep smoking pot and not telling them where I’m going and not doing my homework and not studying for tests. I don’t know why I do anything anymore. Stella, if you were here, I don’t know if you’d even like me anymore.
“How can we help you?” Mom said, which really made Dad lose it. “Help her?” he screamed. “Are you insane? Are you a fucking idiot? First, you don’t even notice her stealing from you, now you’re treating her like she’s still sick? She’s manipulating you, Pam. Are you really that stupid?” Jenica ran in from where she was hiding in the kitchen and started yelling at Dad to stop yelling at Mom, and Mom was hyperventilating, and Jenica started screaming how I’m destroying the family, how Mom and Dad never fought until now, and then Dad started crying, and he started apologizing to Jenica, and to Mom, and then they were all crying, a big, wet heap of sadness on the couch, and me by myself facing them, everyone crying except for me.
I felt nothing but shame, and shame doesn’t make me cry; it just makes me want to roll into a ball and eat myself alive until I’m gone, destroyed, nothing. But I was still there, still in the living room, watching the people I love unravel because of me. All I could say was “I’m sorry.” I said it over and over until they were quiet, until my voice was the only sound in the room. I couldn’t face them, couldn’t look any of them in the eye. But I could say those words and mean them. I managed a few others—I’m having a hard time; I feel like no one understands me; I’m going through a lot; I never meant to hurt anyone. I said I’d try harder. I said I promise. I said I’m sorry, I�
��m sorry, I’m sorry.
My family’s breaths returned to normal; their eyes dried up. I don’t know exactly what I promised them, but I know it means quitting the pills. Maybe this was meant to happen. Maybe this is a sign. It’s my chance to make good on my promise to Marcus, to quit the drug I promised him I’d never even try, to really be the person he can trust. If it weren’t for him, I don’t know if I would have enough reason to quit. Even without my prescription, there are always other ways to get things.
I will try to be good. I will try to be nicer to Jenica and join my family’s conversations at dinner. I will try to start doing my homework again, will take my teachers up on all their offers for after-school help. Maybe I will find my way back to become someone resembling the perfect daughter I once was.
But I am not hopeful. That girl is gone. Maybe I can pretend just enough to keep them happy. Maybe I can work harder at my secrets. Maybe I can show them who they want to see, someone they love, and they can keep that mask, they can hold her and love her and she can take my place at the dinner table and fill up my space in the family, and no one will notice that I’m really gone, that I’ve become someone they cannot recognize at all.
I don’t know what’s going to happen now that the pills are gone for good. I’ve always managed to get enough just in time, before the want turns into need turns into pain. I’m scared, Stella. I’m scared this is going to hurt. I’m scared of needing something I’ll never get. I’m scared of opening the hole where pain lives. I’m scared that once it is open, it can never close again, and it will always be empty, I will always be empty, and the absence will just grow and grow until it takes over everything and I am really, truly gone.
I am going to quit. I am going to get off the pills. This is not who I am. I am not someone who steals from her mother. I am not a drug addict. I will not let these pills own me like Marcus warned. I am done. I am done. I am done. If I say it enough it has to be true.
God, I wish you were here. You would know exactly what to say to me right now. You would know how to zip me back up and stuff myself full of confidence. You could convince me I deserve to exist.
Come back, Stella. I need you. I need you really bad.
Love,
Evie
twenty-four.
THE WORLD IS AS SMALL AS MY MOTHER’S LAP. ALL I FEEL are her fingers in my hair, their mindless back and forth. All I hear is the faint echo of her heartbeat, the mysterious gurgles of her stomach. I am a child, home with the flu. I am taking a sick day. She will make me soup and I will try to eat it and I will let her think she’s making me feel better; she’s loving me back to wellness like she used to, when sickness was something far more simple, when it was a little virus you caught like everybody else.
Never mind the throwing up, the sweating, the cramping, the diarrhea. Never mind that a virus has nothing to do with this. Never mind that I brought this on myself, that this is purgatory, that I deserve none of my mother’s kindness.
Is it normal to forget how to breathe? To have anxiety tie me up from the inside until I’m gasping for air?
My legs threaten to walk away without me. My hip is engulfed in a white cold fire. I am burning up from the inside, but instead of flame, I am made out of ice. My bones are brittle with icicles. I will never be warm again. You could crack me open and see the frozen rivers inside me.
I have come too close to pressing send on the wrong texts to Marcus, words written by desperation: Are you sure you don’t want to try a few Norcos with me? Are you sure you can’t get me any Oxy? Just a little? Just immediately? Just RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE BEFORE I TEAR MY FUCKING HAIR OUT? Are you sure? Are you sure? ARE YOU SURE? All erased, just in time. All of it, other words for Help me.
But he is not the one to help me. Not with this. Marcus knows the other me, the one who is fearless, the one who glides through water. He cannot know this puking, shivering girl. He must never see her.
He is the reason I’m doing this. He is the only reason strong enough for me to endure this. Because I made a promise. Because he’s taking a chance on trusting me.
I want I want I want
I need something to take this pain away.
“This is a bad flu,” Mom says, her voice far too chipper for the end of the world. “I really hope the rest of us don’t catch it.” She knits the angora of my hair with her fingers.
Mom is happy. She has something to do now. She has her sick daughter back. She knows how to do this. There are things mothers do that no one else can do. Her fingers in my hair. Her directionless humming. But she cannot help me. No one can help me but a pharmacist or a drug dealer.
She leaves to get me some Advil from the kitchen and I make plans to jump out the window and rob the nearest drugstore.
I have the flu, I text Marcus. I feel like I’m dying. I want to tell him to bring me drugs. I want to tell him I’ll take anything. Why hasn’t he written me back yet?
How is this even possible? How is it possible to want something this bad?
I should be back in the hospital. This could be the cancer come back for revenge. Except now it’s in my heart. Now it has broken my soul and thrown it around the room and I can’t get it back, I can never get it back.
I’m dying. I’m dead. I’d rather die than feel like this.
This is the definition of hell.
Last night I dreamed of Stella. She was running through the Oakland streets, dodging the honking, screeching cars, her middle finger raised in salute, her big black boots shaking the earth with their stomps. She was dancing with danger. She was so fast, so graceful; she was practically flying. I called her name but she couldn’t hear me. We went up and up until we were on top of the world, until all of our problems were tiny specks far, far away. And I thought, This is it! This is what we’ve been waiting for. But she kept going, she kept flying up, even though there was no land left, even though I couldn’t follow, and she was singing, she was so happy she didn’t even notice I wasn’t coming with her, and I called for her but she couldn’t hear me, and she kept flying up until she was only a speck, as tiny as everything else, and then even farther, until she was nothing.
I was on the ground, full of rocks, so heavy I couldn’t move, I would never move, I would be stuck in that place forever as my punishment. I have stolen something that wasn’t mine to have, something that should have been Stella’s. It was me who was supposed to be the disappeared one. It was me who was supposed to be taken. I was the one who stopped treatment. I was the one who had already given up. Stella never stopped fighting. She should still be on the ground, dancing, singing, running through traffic. It should be me flying away, becoming invisible. I am the one who was supposed to die.
I woke up screaming, drowning in a pool of sweat. “Oh, Evie,” my dad’s voice said in the dark, then I felt his arms around me, and I let myself soften into a seven-year-old version of myself, a tiny girl my dad could still love, a girl who hadn’t yet done anything to terrify him, hadn’t yet pulled on his hope and terror and disappointment, a girl who was still innocent. He held on to that girl and I almost believed I could stay as her. “Daddy,” I said, and for a second I believed I was worthy of his forgiveness.
But then I remembered why I was sick. I remembered I am not innocent and never will be again.
“Stella!” I cry now. It is day, but it is still so dark inside me.
“Oh, honey,” Mom says. “Oh, my love.”
Stella, we are sitting side by side getting chemo again. It is your hand in my hair. You are telling me a joke and I laugh even through the sickness.
“Do you want me to call Will?” Mom says. “Do you want him to come over?”
I say yes. I need someone who knows how to love me when I’m sick.
Help me help me help me
“Will,” I say, and let him wrap me in his arms.
It is months ago. It is before everything changed. It is back when I was dying, back when everything still made sense. Death is simple. Death ma
kes everything clear. It uncomplicates love.
“I missed you,” I say, and it doesn’t feel like lying.
I am someone who still loves Will. I am someone his embrace makes safe. I am someone who says “I’m sorry” until he kisses my wet forehead. We make sense like this. When I am dying and weak and he is healthy and strong, and he is in love enough for both of us.
The worst of it is over now. It’s been five days and my stomach is starting to feel normal again. I’m finally able to eat a little. I’m finally getting over that “flu.” It should be obvious what it really was to anyone who’s ever watched a TV cop show or seen a PG-13 movie. My parents aren’t stupid, but they choose what they want to see, and no one wants to see their kid going through opiate withdrawals.
One second I’m a cancer survivor, the next I’m a drug addict. How did I ever let this happen?
Most of the physical symptoms are gone, but I’m exhausted and the cravings still knock me over with their power. They come out of nowhere, a tidal wave of sadness and desperation and need and every bad feeling imaginable, tons and tons of it, headed straight for me.
I feel emptied. I am hollow. I am only half here. The other half is in some different dimension I can’t even imagine, let alone find. But I have to get used to this. I have to if I’m going to be good again.
I want to. I want to be good. At least I think I do.
The house is the calmest it’s been in a long time. Even Jenica felt sorry for me while I was sick. Kasey came to visit, and seeing me sweaty and pale and weak made her forgive me. Will resumed his place at my bedside and was everything solid I came to rely on during my year of cancer. I let him hold my hand. I let him rub my back. I don’t want to get back together, but maybe there’s room for something else, something like friendship. Maybe there’s room to let him love me just a little.
He asked me to go to prom with him and I said yes. I made it clear that we would be going as friends, and he said he understood, but I’m not sure he really believed me.
