We'll Never Be Apart

by Emiko Jean

  Then there will be silence.

  Then there will be nothing.

  …

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF ALICE MONROE

  The fire was quick and violent. I only had a second to shield myself from the backdraft. Up to this point, the fires Cellie had set were natural burns, slow burns, but this one was explosive. It burned at the velocity of a scream.

  Instinct kicked in and I ran through the dry grass and into the back alley behind the house. It dawned on me that for the first time, I wasn’t running with Cellie and Jason. I was running away from them.

  I continued until the roar of the flames faded. I stopped four or five blocks away, when my legs refused to go any farther. I stumbled and fell, scratching my knees on the asphalt. Little rocks and dirt tore into my palms. I sat up slowly and leaned against a rickety fence. Fireworks still lit up the sky, but they were partially obscured by a huge black cloud of smoke. Sirens wailed and someone shouted. From this distance, it sounded like they were yelling underwater.

  It took another couple of minutes for me to catch my breath and regret what I’d done. I had run away from Cellie and Jason in fear and panic. Left them behind. What if they got caught? Or worse, what if they got stuck in the blaze? I had to go back. Make sure they were safe. I owed it to them. Owed it to myself. I wouldn’t abandon them like so many others already had.

  I circled back, this time approaching Roman’s house from the street rather than from the back alley. A mass of fire trucks and police cars was already there. Yellow crime-scene tape cordoned off the area. I dodged through the crowd, anxiously searching for Cellie and Jason. Two firemen were trying to hack through the walls, but the blaze was too big, too hot, and they had to turn away. All they could do, all anyone could do was try to contain it. The whole neighborhood had shown up to watch.

  Arms slipped around my waist and I jumped. “Shhh,” Jason whispered. My body responded to his soft reassurance. Despite my conflicting emotions, dark gratitude crept in.

  “Where’s Cellie?” I asked him.

  “I sent her away. She’s safe. I thought we could be alone for a while.” He held me from behind and rested his chin on the top of my head. “Don’t be mad,” he said, tucking a piece of hair behind my ear. “I did it for you and Cellie. For us. We’re free now. It’ll be so much better, you’ll see.” He kept talking, kept murmuring in my ear while we watched the house burn. He told me he’d take Cellie and me to California after graduation and we’d always be warm. He told me that he would buy us a house with a bathtub and closets big enough to sleep in. He told me he’d do anything for me. Anything.

  I closed my eyes and inhaled gasoline and ash. The backs of my eyelids were washed in an unnaturally bright orange. Jason kissed the hollow of my collarbone but then abruptly pulled away. I opened my eyes. Roman’s wife, Susan, stood next to us. She wore a white nightgown covered in soot. The hair around her face was wild, electric, forming a halo in the heated wind.

  “I remember you two,” she said, her voice haunted and dreamlike. I thought maybe she was in shock and didn’t realize what was happening. Then I realized that she knew exactly what was happening.

  “He’s still in there,” she said flatly. “Do you think he’ll make it?”

  I opened my mouth but was too stunned to say anything.

  “Ma’am, we need to take you to the hospital.” A firefighter approached us and wrapped a blanket around Susan’s shoulders. “Please stop wandering away.”

  Susan let the firefighter take her arm. But before he led her away, she leaned toward me. Her cheek grazed mine, and I felt grainy ash rub onto my skin. Her breath was sweet and warm and conjured images of candy and a rock baking in the sun. She whispered so only I could hear, “He was asleep in his chair.”

  I remembered that armchair, its scratchy patchwork fabric. He would throw beer cans at us from it when we blocked the television.

  Susan’s lips curved into a smile against my ear. “I walked right past him.”

  CHAPTER

  12

  Seclusion

  I’M NUMB. EVERYTHING IS A BLUR. A white haze of techs, nurses, and doctors shuffles in and out of the seclusion room. They fill me with medication until I’m full and pump me for information until I’m drained.

  “Alice,” Dr. Goodman says. My vision is hazy, and it’s like I’m seeing his reflection in a fun house mirror. “We need to know where you found the razor.”

  I mumble something incoherent and try to turn away from him, but my limbs are heavy, too heavy for my body, my bones too dense for my skin.

  “It’s very important that you tell us, Alice. Where did you find the razor?”

  I moan and close my eyes. Even in my overmedicated state, I hesitate to betray Amelia. But her name lingers on my tongue. It’s only a matter of time before it accidentally slithers out. “Amelia,” I say, and it tastes like bitter treachery.

  Doc pulls away and speaks to Nurse Dummel at the foot of the bed. Their conversation is muted, but there are threads of discomfort and concern. I can hear only a few words. “Search the room.”

  I fight sleep—a dark tidal wave that wants to pull me under— for as long as I can, but eventually I succumb. When I wake up again, Doc sits beside me. He checks my IV line and flips through my chart.

  “Alice?” He says my name, then calls out behind him, “She’s waking up.”

  It feels as if my heart is shedding a two-hundred-pound weight. My vision blurs and then narrows. Everything in the room is coming back together. I try to lift my arm but something holds it down. My wrists have been bound to the bed.

  “Alice,” Doc speaks. “The medication you were on is wearing off. Breathe deep. Be calm. You’re in a safe place.”

  I do as he asks because I don’t really have a choice. Even though his voice is gentle, there’s an underlying threat to it. Breathe Deep. Be Calm. Or Else. I flex my toes and move my legs, relieved that they aren’t shackled like my wrists. The blood in my veins feels as if it’s reanimating, as if it’s been set on slow motion and all of a sudden someone has pushed play.

  “How are you feeling?” Dr. Goodman asks me.

  I take in my surroundings. The room is bare, nothing on the walls and no furniture aside from the bed I’m in and the stool where Dr. Goodman is sitting. There’s a small window at the very top of the wall, and I can just make out a square of sky. Dark gray clouds are converging. Raindrops pelt the window, fat and heavy. Donny is standing in the corner, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed.

  “Alice, how are you?” Dr. Goodman asks again. They must teach this technique in psychologist school—ask the same question over and over again until you get a response. Waterboarding for the mind.

  “Thirsty.” My voice is hoarse and it hurts to talk, though not half as bad as after the fire. Still, my throat feels raw and uncomfortable.

  “We can take care of that.” Doc nods to a nurse who I didn’t notice before. She brings a small cup of water to my lips and I murmur, “Thank you.” As she tips the cup to my mouth, there’s a flash of scarlet in my peripheral vision. I’ve been red-banded. Super.

  While I sip, I take stock of the rest of my body and notice that they’ve removed my street clothes and dressed me in ratty scrubs again. When I finish the water the nurse hurries away, like I’m going to spit or start throwing knives at her.

  “Do you know how long you’ve been in here?” Dr. Goodman says. He’s got my chart in his lap, even though I’m sure he’s got it memorized by now.

  I search the room again, this time for a clock or a calendar, but there’s nothing. Then my eyes land on Donny. He’s holding up two fingers. At first I can’t understand why he’s making the peace sign, then I get it. Two. Two days.

  “Two days.” Out of the corner of my eye I see Donny shake his head. He mouths the word hours at me. I quickly try to cover my mistake. “A couple of hours, I mean.”

  Dr. Goodman swivels around and looks at Donny. “We were all very concerned ab
out you, Alice,” he says, turning back to me. “Do you remember what you did? Why you’re here?”

  I don’t see any reason to make small talk. We both know what he’s doing. Dr. Goodman is here to assess me, to evaluate my current level of psychosis and determine if I’m fit to return to the general population.

  “I cut my hair,” I say.

  “Yes.” He goes silent. I don’t know why he always waits for me to fill these conversational lulls. “I’d like to help you understand why.”

  I lay my head back on the pillow and stare at the ceiling. I wish I had a piece of origami paper. My nose itches. Involuntarily my hand moves to scratch it, but the restraints hold me in place.

  Doc sighs. “I don’t believe you meant to harm yourself, Alice. Although you did impulsively alter your appearance, and some psychologists would categorize that as a breakdown.”

  I categorize it more as a breakthrough, but something tells me to keep my mouth shut.

  “Still, it’s against the rules to have razors without staff supervision. And anytime a patient is caught with a dangerous object, necessary precautions must be taken.”

  Doc asks me if I’m hiding anything else.

  I shake my head no.

  He asks me if I’m ready to go back to my room and be with the other patients.

  I nod my head yes.

  He asks if I’m feeling sick.

  Again, I shake my head no. My stomach feels queasy and I still feel a little sluggish, but I attribute that to the amount of drugs cartwheeling through my system. Doc says something to the nurse about releasing me. He wants to send me back to my room, but he is going to restrict my privileges.

  The nurse unbuckles my restraints and I rub my wrists where there are red marks. She offers me a wheelchair and I fall clumsily into it. My legs are watery, and I’m not sure I can stand just yet. Donny wheels me to my room and helps me into bed. I lie on my side and face Amelia’s bed. The mouse is gone and the bed has been slept in. Amelia must be back. I wonder if she got in trouble for the razors. I look over to my dresser, where my little paper zoo is supposed to be, but it’s gone. So is my stack of origami paper. I close my eyes and curl into a tight ball. Sour darkness has crept in. It fills the space where Jason used to be. Now there’s only dust, dry dust that fills my throat. One of these days I might just let it choke me.

  …

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF ALICE MONROE

  Some kids from the neighborhood told me that the cops found Roman’s body among the black and charred ruins, his hand still clutching a beer. Uniformed men carried the body out in a bag, but the thick plastic couldn’t contain the smell of toasted skin and sour beer. The odor got into the trees and hung around the neighborhood for days.

  The day after the fire, Jason got his first tattoo. While the scent of gasoline still clung to his T-shirt, we went to Tiger Lily, a tattoo and piercing parlor where the owners didn’t check IDs and in exchange customers didn’t check the cleanliness of the needles. The floors were sticky, and it reeked of cigarettes and other things people smoke. It was the kind of place where hepatitis and gonorrhea meet to have parties.

  Jason slipped the tattoo artist some cash and told him what he wanted done. Then he pulled off his shirt and lay across the table. I stood in the corner while Cellie flipped through the tattoo books. A giant guy with inked sleeves offered Cellie and me a beer. I shook my head but Cellie nodded, giggling as the guy handed her a cold one from the mini fridge.

  “Thanks.” She tipped the neck of the open bottle toward him. He did the same and their bottles clinked together in cheers.

  The giant guy lifted a blond eyebrow at her. “You wanna see my tattoo booth?”

  “Lead the way,” Cellie said. She turned and followed him, vanishing into a back room. I started to go after them. I was worried about her.

  “Alice.” Jason called to me.

  I chewed my lip and hesitated, my eyes refusing to leave the doorway Cellie had disappeared through.

  “It’s okay, baby. Leave her be. Come hold my hand.” He reached for me. I didn’t take his hand but I moved so I was close to him. I watched the needle work into his skin, turning pink flesh into black ink. I thought about the three of us in that closet all those years ago. I worried that Jason had somehow hung up his soul in there, and since then he had never really figured out how to put it back on.

  When the tattoo artist was done, Jason stood, flexed his broad shoulders, and showed me the tattoo. The words God’s Will were scrawled between his shoulder blades in an Old English–style font.

  Over the next year, Jason got more tattoos. They were all trophies of the fires he’d set. A thicket of trees spanned his lower back. A unicorn covered his wrist. All the familiar images were wrapped in fire, the flames lovingly intertwined like the arms of a mother.

  Jason got a job working construction under the table. He managed to scrounge up enough cash to buy a beat-up Oldsmobile from a woman down the street who needed the money to bail her kid out of jail. The car was a clunker and made a strange wheezing noise whenever it braked, but it provided us with a freedom we had never thought possible. During the summer, we’d load up the trunk with blankets and drinks and head down to the river.

  The river was a yawning eighty-three-mile tributary that stretched from old-growth forests to agricultural fields. When it got hot enough, locals would gather at its rocky beaches with makeshift rafts and coolers of beer. Every summer the coast guard would issue warnings about the dangerous current, and every summer some drunk kid would decide to go for a swim or jump off one of the rocky cliffs and drown.

  Jason sprawled out on a blanket and rested on his stomach while I rubbed sunblock on his back. I traced the letters of his God’s Will tattoo and thought about our time at Roman’s house, how Roman would preach on Sundays, his hands always curled into fists that came crashing down like fire and brimstone.

  “Do you believe in God?” I asked.

  He turned his face toward me and closed his eyes, squinting against the bright sun. “No. I don’t believe in anything. Not anymore.”

  His answer made me sad. “Nothing?” I finished rubbing in the lotion and wiped my hands on the blanket.

  He popped one eye open and smiled at me. “Well, maybe not nothing.” He grabbed my wrist. “I believe in you and me.”

  I eyed Cellie, playing in the water. She was looking for crawdads. Jason had said that if she caught enough, we could boil them. He said they made a funny noise in the water, like screaming. Cellie had already found two and deposited them in our cooler. She turned to me and waved, but her happiness quickly dimmed as soon as she saw that Jason and I were holding hands. She’d been a little more clingy than usual lately. After setting the fire at Roman’s, she’d stayed closer to me. I thought she was worried about Jason’s reappearance in our lives and how close to him I had become. Sometimes she’d pull me aside and remind me of my promise all those years ago, that we would never be apart. I’d do my best to reassure her, stroke her hair or pat her arm, but I was starting to feel like she didn’t believe me. And Jason’s words, I believe in you and me, were worrisome because I wanted him, needed him to consider Cellie, too, when he thought about us.

  “And Cellie, too. Right?” I asked him.

  He brushed some hair back from my face. “Of course, baby. You, me, and Cellie. Always.”

  CHAPTER

  13

  Comatose Mix

  I DON’T FEEL LIKE TALKING. It’s been twenty-four hours since I’ve been released from seclusion, and I’ve stayed in my room the entire time. Aside from getting up to go to the bathroom, all I do is sleep, and when sleep doesn’t come, I lay in bed and watch the rain hit the window. Dr. Goodman comes and says I am being uncooperative and only hurting myself. I tuck my chin and let my eyes flutter shut. He can’t even imagine how much it hurts.

  Just as I thought, Amelia has come back from the Quiet Room. But she’s not the same. She sits across from me and seems lost. She is a wisp of smoke,
a husk of her former self. All that pixie energy has fizzled and gone flat. She reminds me of Susan, Roman’s wife, already dead on the inside. While I watch the rain, she watches me. She’s waiting for me, I know it, waiting for me to come out of . . . whatever this is. But I don’t have it in me, not right now. Not yet. Maybe never.

  Someone enters the room. I don’t look up to see who it is. I can’t even muster interest or concern. But based on the slow, hesitant footsteps, it’s not a tech, a nurse, or Dr. Goodman. Their strides are always self-assured and mission driven. A smell of fabric softener precedes the person. It’s Chase, using his handy key to come check up on his super-special friend. Me.

  “You can’t be in here,” Amelia says, but he ignores her.

  Chase comes and stands in front of me, so that his thighs are at my eye level. One hand is jammed in his pocket and the other holds his giant headphones and his iPod. I squeeze my eyes shut and press deeper into the pillow.

  “I dig the new look,” he says. “It’s very Bettie Page.”

  Amelia snorts at the end of the bed, and I imagine an eye roll along with it. There’s the sound of angry footsteps followed by the door slamming. Chase and I are alone. For a moment the pitter-patter of rain fills the room. I wish he would go away.

  “Don’t feel like talking? That’s all right, I understand.” He pauses for a moment, and I can feel him studying my profile. “I just came to bring you something. My sister, she got into moods like this. I made her a mix. It’s mostly awesomely bad eighties hits. It always helped her, made her smile.” There’s the feeling of someone’s skin close to mine—a slight change of temperature in the air and then the cool plastic of cushioned headphones resting over my ears. “Just make sure you hide it if they come in and check on you.” He pulls away, but before he does, the music begins. He touches the red band on my wrist, gently. Then he’s gone.