by Karen Rivers
I step on my phone on purpose getting out of the car. I like the way the glass feels when it cracks under my weight. “What’s wrong with me?” I whisper again, but Mom is already pulling open the wooden doors, gesturing at me to hurry. I grab my mat and open the car door, the heat of the day flowing over me like a tidal wave. Sweat beads up on my face. Something about it being hot makes it hard to breathe, like I’m inhaling water.
I follow Mom inside, drowning, trying to get to the surface and failing.
* * *
Piper is lying on her back on my bedroom floor. Her legs are splayed open, like a broken doll or a Vogue model. She’s wearing cutoff denim shorts and a tank top that’s too big. She has sunglasses on.
“Too bright in here?” I say, nudging her with my foot.
“Everything is too bright,” she says dreamily. “Everything is soooo bright.”
“You sound high,” I say shortly, feeling mean, wanting to pick a fight. “Take them off.” She hasn’t even mentioned what happened with Charlie. She hasn’t said a thing.
She sighs, rolling over dramatically. She takes her sunglasses off. Her eyes are red and bloodshot. “Two-day hangover!” she says. “Whooo!”
“You must have been so wasted,” I say flatly, not caring, but knowing what my line is. It’s not her fault that I’m mad. She doesn’t even know that I’m mad. I pull the curtains closed. “Better?” I say.
“Thanks,” she says. “Better. God, I spent all day yesterday throwing up. It was the worst.”
“Gross,” I say supportively. “Fried food and fountain Coke?”
“Soup brought me some on his way to work. I had to call in sick. Ugh.” She sits up and does that terrible thing with her tongue. “Sooooooooo…,” she says. “ANYWAY.”
“Tell me,” I say. My heart hurts, like it’s stretched too far, like my calves do after a long run: a charley horse in my chest. I rub it.
“Are you feeling yourself up?” she asks.
“Totally.”
She laughs. “Laughing makes my head hurt! Don’t make me laugh!”
“Sorry not sorry,” I say. “Stop stalling and tell me!” I pretend to be giddy but I’m not giddy because I’m a terrible best friend and I hate myself for feeling this way but I hate her for making me feel this way and it’s complicated, so complicated. Downstairs the vacuum roars to life, as the cleaning guy, Elvis, starts his shift. I wonder what he’s vacuuming up. I wish he could vacuum up my memory. I wish he could vacuum up my feelings. I wish I had a dog. A dog would understand me. Animals have a sixth sense. He’d be lying on my bed right now, between me and Piper, protecting me from what she has to say. As it is, I only have my camera. I pick it up off the corner of my desk and turn it on.
“Rolling,” I say. “And … action.”
Piper crawls up onto the bed like a dying man in the desert crawling to an oasis and drapes herself over me like she has a billion times before. She’s a person who likes touching. The camera tilts.
“Get off me,” I say. “Please. It’s too hot for this and I’m trying to film.”
Her skin feels cool and she smells clean. Like Neutrogena and Ivory. Pure. But she isn’t.
“Sweetie,” she says. “My tweetie bird”—again with that terrible nickname that I’ve hated since she coined it when we were six—“we did it.”
My ears ring a little bit. I’m breathing too much, too fast, like I’ve been running. “It?” I play dumb, slightly stuck on “tweetie bird,” but totally stuck on “it.”
“Me and Soup,” she says. “It. We had sex. And it was dreamy. It was perfect. It was amazing.” She bites her lip. Her face is right over mine now. “It was great. They don’t tell you how good it feels.” She comes closer, grinning, and I turn my face, fast. Her lips land on my cheek. “He made me a portrait.” She frowns. “Wait, you’d left by then, I guess? Did you even see it? I have to show you.” She takes out her phone and scrolls through, laughing at her own pictures. I don’t try to see them. “Here.” She thrusts it in my face. I get a glimpse of green and red and blue and lips before she takes it back again. “Amazing, right? He’s so talented. I think talent is sexy. There’s a name for that, I think. When you’re attracted to what someone does and not only what they look like. Anyway, Charlie took everyone off the island in his dad’s boat but he left us the dinghy, which was nice of him”—she shoots me a look—“because you stole our ride.”
“Yeah, sorry,” I say. “I knew Charlie had a boat. I knew you wouldn’t, like, die out there. So please be over it.”
She waves her hand. “It was a big deal to Soup because of their fight,” she says. “He didn’t want to ask. But anyway, it is no matter.”
“No matter!” I repeat, laughing. “You’re the lady on Downton Abbey. Should I get your hat? Your gloves? Your manservant?”
“I’ve never seen it,” she says, ignoring me. She stares into the lens of the camera and blinks. It’s not an ordinary blink. It’s a seductive blink. A pretty blink. I cross my eyes and she doesn’t notice. She bites her lip. “Do you have to film this part? It’s sort of personal.”
“I’m not filming,” I lie.
“I can see the red light!” she says.
“Fine,” I say. “I lied.” I turn it off.
“Oh, you can film it,” she says. “Do it. I might love watching this later when I’m old and bitter.”
“I’m sure this will be the highlight of your life,” I say. “That time you had a two-day hangover and lost five pounds from puking.”
She makes a face. I pick the camera back up and hit record. “Okay. Filming the most memorable moment of your life, Piper Sullivan. And … action.”
She smiles and gives the lens a look.
“Are you flirting with me?” I ask.
“Stop!” she says. “I’m being serious! Anyway, cut that bit out. So me and Soup were alone. Soup had brought sleeping bags and hidden them up on the top. It was soooo romantic. He set them up on the beach. I didn’t want to remind him that the tide was coming up because it would have wrecked the moment, you know?”
I grunt.
“We lay in the sleeping bags, watching the stars. I showed him where some of the constellations were and how to find the North Star. I think he was pretty impressed.”
I make a sound.
“What?” she says.
“I didn’t say anything!”
“Then we took off our clothes. It wasn’t awkward or anything; it was like our clothes slid off us…” She sighs dreamily. “We were just touching and touching and I didn’t even think about telling him to stop and it was”—she pauses—“amaaaaaazing.” She sits up, and then in her normal voice, she goes, “I’m not kidding, you have to do it.”
“I have to have sex with Soup?” I say. “Gross. No thanks.”
“No,” she says. “You have to have sex with someone. I can’t explain. It totally changes you. It’s totally changed me. Don’t I look different?”
“You look like you have a weird lip condition,” I say. “Stop licking your lip.” I contemplate her face. “You also look dehydrated.”
“Do I?” She sits up, pushes her hair out of her face. “I drank gallons of water yesterday. I feel so bloated.” She puts her hand on her flat stomach. Her tank top is slipping off her shoulder.
“You keep doing this tongue thing,” I say. “It’s … weird. Stop doing it.”
“I do not!” she says. “Why are you being unpleasant? I thought you’d want to know, you know, the juicy deets.”
I roll over and turn my back on her. My eyes sting. There’s no reason to cry, but I’m crying. What is wrong with me? I can’t let her see my face. She’ll think it means something that it doesn’t mean or that it does mean and then everything will fall apart. “Charlie basically attacked me,” I say. “What if he raped me? It felt rapey. Was it rapey?”
She laughs. “He did NOT rape you. You were so drunk. You were being so strange, for real. He says you came on to him and then sta
rted freaking out and then you puked all over his leg. Poor guy.”
“Poor guy?” I repeat. Is she right? Could my memory be wrong? It’s blurry and dark when I examine it. I’m not sure. But I remember Seth. And the feeling of panic when Charlie was on me and I didn’t want him to be. There’s no mistaking that. I knew it wasn’t what I wanted. I told him to stop.
“I…”
“Yeah?” she says.
“Did you know that within a couple of years, there’s not going to be ice in the Arctic anymore?” I say.
“Oh!” she says. “That reminds me. You may want to rewind the tape on that camera. I think Fatty was filming you and Charlie down on the log.”
“Why would he do that?” I ask, my blood running cold.
“Well, you were really going at it, for one thing.” She raises one eyebrow at me. “You were all over him. He probably forgot that it was your camera and you weren’t likely to post it to Snapchat or anything.”
“Charlie was all over me, you mean,” I say. “Soup saved me. Charlie was an octopus with his stupid man-tentacles and strength. Did you know that octopuses don’t have a brain but they can solve puzzles and play games? They’re really cool. Unlike Charlie.”
“Isn’t it octopi?”
“No, octopuses.”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t start screaming for help until it went prettttty far,” she says.
“Are you kidding me? I told him right away to stop!”
She taps the camera. “Watch the footage,” she says. “The camera doesn’t lie.”
“Well, it adds ten pounds,” I joke weakly.
“If there’s no ice and the sea levels rise, I guess everything we have will be underwater. Like Atlantis. If that’s really going to happen and not just, you know, media or whatever, then we should leave artifacts for future divers to find. A time capsule.”
“The world is such a mess,” I say. “And it’s true that it is. Why would anyone make that up? Nothing matters. There won’t be anyone to find it. Everything will be extinct. Do you ever think about how humans are basically animals in captivity? But we do it voluntarily. Like we live in houses, which are basically cages, and we perform acts of going to work and whatever, but we’re not exactly living in the wild. Did you know there are only forty red wolves left in the wild but thousands in captivity? It’s messed up.”
“Wow,” she says. “You’re like young David Attenborough or something. Surely you can cash in on your weird fixation with THE END OF TIMES.” She leans her head over mine, her hair falling like a curtain in front of my face. “Should I call existential 911 on the emo phone?”
“Ha ha,” I say. “I’m not. I shouldn’t have brought it up. Forget it.”
Piper imaginary dials her phone. “Yes, hello, existential operator? We’re having a crisis here over on Holly Point Drive? Come quick! Send pizza. And alcohol.”
I laugh, even though it’s not really funny. “Give me that!” I say. “Who did you really call?”
“No one, you nut,” she says. “I was only playing. But don’t you want to know more? About me and Soup? Forget about the apocalypse for, like, five minutes.”
I sigh. “Fine,” I say. “I hope you used a condom.”
“Are you my mother? Duh. The last thing I want is little Soups. Souplets. Cup-a-Soups. That would wreck everything.”
“Truth,” I say. I get up and turn the fan on and we both watch for a second as the curtains lift and billow like Halloween ghosts.
“Okay,” she says. “It was like this…”
I wait. “Come on,” I say. “You wanted to tell, so tell.”
“Sloane?” she says. “The thing is…”
“WHAT?” I say. “You’re driving me nuts. Spill it. Dreamy, et cetera. Remember?”
“I can’t remember,” she whispers. “I drank too much and I can’t remember anything between us taking our clothes off and him chucking the condom into the nettles.”
“Into the nettles!” I repeat, horrified. “That’s so gross! Mr. Aberley is going to find that thing!”
She makes a face.
“And you said it was dreamy! You said it was ethereal!” I throw a pillow at her. “Liar!”
“It might have been!” she says, laughing harder. “I didn’t want to commemorate for all time the fact that I can’t remember it! And anyway, stop, I’m going to wet my pants! When you do it the first time, you have to be sober! For both of us!”
“Don’t pee on my bed!” I say, clutching my side, which is cramping from laughing so hard. I pull the curtain open and we’re blinded by the sunlight, which pours in everywhere, hard and bright. The camera falls off the bed and onto a pile of laundry and I don’t pick it up. “Ethereal!” she shouts, and we’re laughing like we’ll never ever stop.
NOW
The police have questions. I have questions. Everyone has questions.
I hate these cops. I hate Piper. I hate everyone. I don’t know where it’s coming from: the hate is leaking out of me. Hissing. Can the police hear it? I’m not someone who hates. My heart skips a beat and mumbles.
I want to break something. I look at my thin wrists and think about how easy it would be. I press my thumbnail into one of the blue veins. It leaves a little valley in my skin, a crescent moon.
Focus.
The police (who are now in the kitchen) have questions. Some. A few.
The police, who are looking around at the cherrywood floors and new cabinets and stainless steel appliances and granite countertops, have very important questions.
The police, who think this is a “nice place,” have some/a few/very important questions.
I’m someone who can answer their questions.
Am I?
I’m a minor. They can’t ask me questions without a parent present. Where are my present parents? If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, how many present parents did Peter Piper pick?
I’m wearing a bikini.
My bikini is bright pink. A bright pink bikini does not seem to be the right thing to be wearing to answer questions or to wait to answer questions, as the case may be. My eyes are impossibly dry. My tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth. The air conditioner is pulling goose bumps out of my skin by the millions. All of that is happening.
Oh, and also, Piper is dead.
It’s all jumbled up.
It doesn’t make sense.
It’s about Soup.
It can’t be about Soup when Piper is dead.
Can it?
“Soup,” I whisper. “Call me, call me, call me.”
He can’t help me now, in the kitchen, with these cops, shifting and breathing and making noises and interrupting the calm air in here with their importance and radios that blast short bursts of static.
I love you, Piper says. What is supposed to happen next?
I’m imagining that. I must be.
I’m crying.
I’m not crying.
I’m asleep.
This is a dream.
A nightmare.
The waiting questioners’ eyes skate over my body, slipping and sliding. They are men, after all. Adult Charlies, reducing me to a sum of my female parts. The uniform doesn’t change that. I cover my skin with my hands. Too much skin. Not enough hands. The men stare at my too-small hands and what they are hiding.
They have tiny notebooks.
They have big pens. Ready.
Time is hiccuping. Too fast, too slow.
It was always about you, Piper says. Anteeksi.
* * *
“I’d die without you,” Piper said.
I was twelve.
I was lying in a hospital bed. That was the year the migraines started. The headaches so bad that I could barely open my eyes. I couldn’t eat or sleep or move. Mom and Dad thought it was a tumor. I’d lie awake and hear them talking late at night in hushed voices that somehow I could hear like the volume had been turned up, bathed in static. I thought I was going to die.
&nbs
p; But the MRI showed my brain was clear of flaws, the gray matter folding neatly like stacked towels. There was nothing wrong with it. “It’s a perfect brain,” the neurosurgeon said.
There was everything wrong with it, but what was wrong with it didn’t show up on the scan.
Now that I’m seventeen, I think I understand that the migraines were the way that my anxiety looked when I was younger. A panic attack was a headache. A headache was what I feared. So I was scared all the time, of the headache that meant I was scared.
I was so scared.
Piper was the only one who I could tell. She always got me. She was always with me, my parents bringing her to the hospital the way the girl in the next bed’s mom brought her a huge green teddy bear.
The walls of the room were a terrible mint green and my gown was a terrible mint green and the sheets were the same terrible mint green and now even the sight of mint green makes me queasy. I was drowning in mint green. I was dying. The pain in my head was a huge, blossoming flower that grew and grew and grew until I thought my skull would burst.
Piper lay beside me on those green sheets with her orange Chucks on, her head on my shoulder. I wanted to go climb inside my headache and curl up in it. In my mind, the headache was a cramped room with a fire that burned too hot.
“Dying,” I’d burbled.
“You won’t,” she said. “I’ll die before you, anyway.” She grinned. “The good die young.”
“You’ll live forever,” I said. I tried to say something funny, but all that came out was, “Singing funeral.”
“Ha ha,” she said. “If you die, I am totes going to sing at your funeral. Something fierce, maybe Beyoncé”—she paused—“or Justin Bieber.”
“NO!” I managed. “I’m going to haunt you so hard.”
“Deal,” she said, and then we both laughed and my head hurt in a different way and the bed spun around on the ceiling and made patterns with light that scrolled across my line of vision and then my parents came in and then the doctor. Within a few days I was fine again and now I’m in the kitchen and she’s going to have a funeral because she did it, she died first.
