by Nic Sheff
I put my hand on her tiny waist, beneath her jacket and sweatshirt and T-shirt, and feel her warm skin, and she shivers against me. I put my other hand on the small of her back and she seems to fall into me, and I kiss her and she kisses me and I’m flushed and shaking—and then she pulls away, saying, “Come on, let’s go inside.”
I kiss her again.
“Come on, let me show you around inside.”
I pick up the two backpacks—mine and hers.
She takes my hand.
And now we walk together.
28.
CHRISTINA, ELIZA’S MOM, IS a pretty good chef, just like Eliza’s dad—though she’s not a professional or anything.
She makes us these amazing-looking grilled cheese sandwiches and a salad with roasted corn cut off the cob and cherry tomatoes.
She has black hair and green-blue eyes like Eliza’s, though her features are much more narrow and petite. She wears a long shapeless dress and a necklace with a jagged crystal hanging from the end.
She’s an old-school hippie. She always has been. She’s into the whole organic, local food movement and everything.
But, like I said, her food is awesome.
She puts the sandwiches down in front of us, and Eliza asks if I want a beer.
“You drink beer now?” Christina asks me, and I hesitate before saying, “Uh, yeah.”
Mother and daughter exchange glances, and then they both smile.
“Well, what the hell?” Christina says. “I’ll have one, too.”
She gets out three bottles of this apricot-flavored Pyramid ale, and I feel very adult suddenly. We’re all sitting together in their giant kitchen with brand-new appliances and high ceilings, and it almost feels like me and Eliza are this grown-up couple in an apartment we live in together.
The table is made up of mosaicked tile, and the colors are vibrant. I realize I’m kind of staring when Christina says, “It’s good to see you, Miles. It’s just like old times, no? Cheers.”
She holds out the beer and we all “cheers” together, and I look over at Eliza and she’s smiling back at me.
“By the way,” Christina continues, “we’re going to Carmel for Christmas. I’ve rented a suite for the week. You really should come.”
Arrow, their one-year-old bloodhound, is currently positioned under my chair, trying to get whatever scraps of food I might be able to give him. He obviously assumes, since I’m the new guy, that I won’t know the rules about no scraps from the table. And I guess he’s right, ’cause I sneak him a corner of my sandwich and he slobbers all over my hand eating it.
“Remember when we’d go up to Tahoe when you were kids?” Christina asks me. “That was such fun.”
“Of course.” I look over to Eliza to get her approval. “Are you sure that would be all right if I come?”
“Totally,” she says cheerfully.
“Then it’s settled. It’ll be our treat.”
Christina drinks down more of her beer, and so I do, too.
“Liesy’s so happy to be back,” she says. “She’s thrilled to see you again.”
I drop my head, blushing a little.
“It broke my heart to see you two leave on such bad terms. And I am so sorry to hear about all the trouble you’ve had.”
I nod my head slowly, breathing out. “Yeah.”
“It’s not fair. This kind of thing always happens to the sweetest people. But you’re in good company. Madness and genius are very closely related, you know?”
“Yeah, right. I’m the last thing from a genius.”
“Well, you are a sensitive soul. The world needs more people like you. Lord, compared to that Neanderthal Liesy was with in New Orleans—”
“Mom!”
I see Eliza’s face go flushed even more, and she has her eyes open wide like she’s trying to communicate with her mom through facial expressions.
“I’m just saying. You are a major improvement.”
Eliza keeps on staring her mom down. “Mom! Please.” Then she turns to me. “She is right, though. You are an improvement.”
I fidget some. “Gee, thanks . . . I guess.”
Eliza smiles now and looks at me very sweetly.
We look at each other for a few moments just not saying anything. I have this intense urge inside of me to tell her I love her. I mean, I know that’s crazy since we haven’t even really spent any time together in over two years. But, then again, this whole thing is crazy. It all feels so . . . so meant to be . . . so natural. Like some guiding force brought us back together.
“Oh, aren’t you guys cute!” Christina says, clasping her hands together.
Eliza and I both blush and look down.
“It’s perfect,” she continues. “Oh, Miles, by the way, I want you to write down your birthday and, most importantly, your birth time for me before you go. I want to do your charts, okay?”
“You mean, like, astrology?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Eliza says, rolling her eyes. “Mom’s super into that these days. It is kinda cool, though. You’d be surprised how right on the readings are.”
Christina smiles. “Well, of course they are. The planets control the tides, don’t they? Human beings are seventy-five percent water; it makes perfect sense the planets would control us, too.”
I nod politely. “Wow, yeah, I never thought of it that way.”
“It’ll be fun to see what it says about us,” Eliza tells me.
Christina leans forward on her elbows. She’s wearing a cardigan sweater over her dress, and there’s a strange brooch, like some kind of amulet, pinned over her breast.
“My guess is you two have been doing this for many lifetimes together, over and over. Otherwise how could you have possibly found each other so young?”
“Mom, please.”
“I’m sorry, dear. You’re right. It’s not good to talk too much about these things. I do have a tendency to overanalyze everything. Are you spending the night, Miles?”
The question startles me a little, and I choke, coughing. I mean, God, how I want to. And, God, how I don’t want to tell them the truth, that my mom would probably freak the fuck out if I asked her. She thinks me seeing Eliza again is going to mean me going batshit crazy again—maybe hurting Jane this time like I hurt Teddy last time.
But I do want to stay. I want to stay so badly. Everything here is just . . . just exactly the way it should be. I think about that Washington Phillips record. It seems so strangely coincidental that I would be listening to all this gospel music and suddenly it’s as if there really is a power like God in my life.
There is that cool breeze blowing through my mind, and I feel as if there might actually be a power coming to take away all my pain and suffering and the suffering of my family. I’m not sure how that’s going to happen. But it is going to happen. I will be with Eliza and I will find Teddy.
My mom will be upset at first. But soon she’ll come to see. She’ll come to understand.
I swallow and look up at Eliza.
“I’d really like to,” I say.
“Good,” Christina says. “Because you’re welcome any time. It feels good having a man around the house again, doesn’t it, sweetie?”
Eliza smiles and blushes some more and shakes her head. “Yeah, Mom, Jesus. That’s enough, all right? Come on, Miles, you want to go outside?”
“Yeah, sure.”
I take my plate over to the sink, and then Eliza and I head out to the front porch to smoke.
That breeze is there, cool and gentle and calming.
I open the door.
We both step outside.
29.
THE PORCH IS PAINTED a dark red color, and we sit on the top step. There is no one on the street and no cars driving past.
“I’m sorry my mom is so intense
,” Eliza says, dragging on her cigarette. “She means well.”
I kiss the back of her neck and her lips and she tastes like apricot beer and cigarettes. I wrap my arms around her and hold her close.
The wind is blowing the fog in around us, so we are covered in this blanket of mist and it grows ever thicker. We are alone in the middle of a dream. There is nothing but the fog and Eliza and me, and whether I say it or not, I know we are in love, that this is love, an ancient soul love that was given to us by a power greater than either one of us.
We kiss and are lifted up together.
The fog carries us away into the night.
Nothing can touch us.
We are sacred.
We are chosen.
Her body is pressed against mine, and it’s like I can’t get close enough, like I want to stitch my skin together with hers so we are together like this forever.
I thank God.
I say it out loud: “Thank God.”
Her eyes sparkle in the damp.
This is heaven.
Right here and now.
30.
THE SUN STREAMS IN bright through the window in the morning, and I turn and see that she really is still there next to me. Eliza is there. I mean, she’s here—sleeping, curled on her side, wearing a white tank top and underwear.
It’s very early still and there are birds chirping loudly from the surrounding rooftops. Eliza seems to be sleeping heavily, but when I kiss her cheek she blinks her eyes awake.
All around us the room is white and clean and perfect, and the bed is white and soft, and she leans forward to kiss me and we kiss together and she tastes clean and perfect and I close my eyes and we kiss more. Her body is so soft and warm beneath my hands and beneath my body, and I kiss her all around her neck and shoulders. She makes little noises, and so I keep going and kiss down her body around the softness of her belly and her hips jutting and down the heat of her thighs.
“Is this okay?” I whisper.
And she whispers back, “Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, yes,” she says. “I’m sure.”
She seems so tiny underneath me, and I kiss her for what feels like hours, and the room fades out all around us and the walls crash down and it’s like we are floating there, and then we make love and it is more perfect and pure and incredible than anything I could’ve ever imagined, or ever dreamed.
When it is over we lie together intertwined like that and we breathe heavily, and then finally . . . finally . . . we fall back to sleep. Or I do, anyway.
I fall asleep.
And I dream.
I dream that I am at the beach.
At Ocean Beach.
But the tide is so low, I have to walk for what seems like miles and miles to the water. The sun is bright and warm like the day Teddy went missing.
I walk out, trying to reach the ocean, and suddenly I see him, standing there with his back to me. His red hair is shaggy, and he’s wearing those same floral-patterned board shorts and the same loose-fitting T-shirt.
He is walking toward the ocean, too, and I am walking behind him, and I call out, “Teddy! Hey, Teddy!” But he doesn’t answer or turn back toward me.
I keep calling and calling.
He won’t turn around. He won’t turn around or acknowledge me.
And as I run to try to catch up, he just keeps getting farther and farther away.
Until finally he is in the ocean.
I yell, “Stop, Teddy, come back!” Getting more and more frantic.
It does no good.
He disappears beneath the waves.
I scream.
Then all at once my legs begin sinking into the sand. The sand is like quicksand, pulling me under. I sink down to where my chest and lungs are compressed from the pressure of the entire beach closing in around me. I sink down.
And then I hear it.
The voice.
The voice from the bathroom that day at the beach.
The sound of it makes me want to pull my skin off and scream so there’s nothing left inside me.
“Miles,” it says, whispering—eating through my brain. “Miles, stop. Stop fighting. This is what you want.”
“N-no,” I gasp, but then the sand covers me.
I close my eyes and there is only this intense heat and this crushing feeling and I can’t breathe.
And then I jerk awake.
It is late, I can tell right away—the afternoon sun warm and orange-colored.
Eliza is still next to me, but there’s this sick feeling in my stomach. I’m not sure why the hell her mom didn’t wake us up for school. I stagger to the bathroom and run the faucet and try to get the world to stop spinning.
That voice from the dream is still there, whispering at the back of my mind.
I thought it was the voice of some power like God guiding me toward Eliza. But it is the opposite of that. It was tricking me. It made me forget. It made me spend the night here instead of going home, like I should’ve, to be with my family. They need me. Teddy needs me.
This, with Eliza, it is a distraction.
It’s going to make me hurt the people I love.
I lied to my mom and dad. I told them I was spending the night at Preston’s. How could I have done that? I see it so clearly now. After everything I put them through, this is such a betrayal.
My heart is beating fast now, so it’s almost painful in my chest.
I go back to Eliza’s room and start putting my clothes on.
“What . . . Where are you going?” she asks, sitting up.
“I have to get out of here,” I say, my voice shaking. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have stayed.”
She pulls the covers up around her. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing. I’m sorry. It’s not . . . It’s me. It’s my fault. This is all my fault. I’m sorry. Once I find him, once I make it right, then we can be together. But I shouldn’t be here now.”
“I can’t believe this is happening,” she says, but like she’s talking more to herself, the sobs choking her, the tears coming down.
“I’m sorry.”
I put on my shoes then, fast, and start toward the door.
“Miles, wait,” she calls.
But I can’t wait. I can’t.
I have to get out.
I have to get out right now.
And so I run down the stairs and out into the warmth of the afternoon sun. The wind has died down. The city is still and shimmering in the soft light.
This was a mistake, but I will make it right.
I will tell my family.
And I will make it right.
That voice is there whispering in my mind again—but it is different now.
“Stay away from her,” it tells me. “Stay away.”
It tells me that until I find Teddy, I can’t have anything to do with her.
Being with Eliza, that was a test. I almost got sucked in—drowned in the quicksand.
But I got out.
And now I’ll go off to school—even if I’m late. And it will all be all right.
Soon I’ll have Teddy back. And the voice will be silenced. And maybe then I will get to be with Eliza again.
But for now, that doesn’t matter.
Nothing does.
Except for my family.
Except for Teddy.
31.
“YOU WHAT?” MY MOM yells. “You spent the night at Eliza’s? And you missed more than half the day at school?”
She and my dad are standing there together.
“Were her parents there, at least?” my dad asks.
“Her mom was, yeah.”
The sun is low over the trees of the Presidio, and the house is all dark gray, c
overed in shadows.
“Why did you lie to us, Mie?” my dad asks again.
My mom cuts me off before I can answer. “What difference does it make why? He lied to us. After everything. Jesus Christ.”
“Mom, I’m sorry.”
I sit down on the couch then and notice Jane watching us from her room. I say, “I know I screwed up. I know it. But I’m gonna make it right. I promise.”
“How can you?” my mom yells. “You can’t. You can’t make it better. You lied to us. All we do is worry about you, and you lied to us. It’s unforgivable.”
My dad sits down on the couch next to me and puts a large hand on my shoulder. “No, no. It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not okay!” my mom yells. “Sam, don’t tell him it’s okay. I’m sick of you always making me be the bad guy.”
My dad sighs loudly. “Sweetie, that’s not it. He told us, didn’t he? He knows he shouldn’t have lied.”
“But he did,” my mom says. And then, turning to me, “You did lie. That’s the point. It’s unacceptable.”
“You’re right,” I tell her. “Mom, you’re right. I’m not arguing with you. And I’m so, so sorry. I promise you, I’ll never do it again.”
My mom gets right in my face. There are tears in her eyes—and in mine, too.
“Why should I believe you? How can I believe you?”
“I’m sorry,” I say dumbly.
She sits down next to me on the couch, buries her face in her hands—and cries and cries.
“It’s all right,” my dad whispers, putting his hand on her back. “Please, sweetie, it’s all right.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell them both. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
My mom continues to cry.
“I just . . . ,” she says through her tears. “I can’t take it.”
Bringing my knees up to my chest, I rock back and forth slightly on the couch.
“I’ll make it up to you,” I whisper, more to myself than to them. And then, louder, “I’ll make it better. I promise. I’ll make it all better.”
“It’s okay,” my dad tells me. “Why don’t you go to your room for a little while?”
