by Karen Rivers
I lie down on the floor and start doing crunches. Faster and faster, my abs burning in protest. More and more. A hundred. I lose count. The ceiling spins above me. But I don’t stop. If I stop, I might die. That’s how it feels. Like death is right there, on the other side of my door, waiting to come crashing through, to take me to where I’m not ready to go.
“I haven’t even barely started,” I say, between crunches. “I haven’t done anything yet! Not yet, not yet, not yet.”
I keep going. I go until I feel like throwing up, until my back is drenching the carpet with sweat. I only stop when Mom knocks. “Are you coming, Sloaney?”
“Yes,” I call. I’m already gasping for breath. I go out to join her, trying to pretend that hot yoga is a totally normal thing for me to do on a Saturday afternoon, in the last summer holiday of high school, on a day when everyone else is on a beach, Frisbees flying, music playing, the ocean lapping at the tide line, pushing the dead onto the land, a graveyard of jellyfish corpses shining under the light of the relentless summer sun.
* * *
Piper appears the next day. Sunday. Like I knew she would.
Mom and Dad are spending the day with Grandma. It’s her birthday. I made up a lie about why I couldn’t go, I just couldn’t. Grandma used to run a business empire. Now when she leans forward, sometimes a string of drool hangs from her lip and she doesn’t notice. She never wipes it away. I know Mom and Dad wanted me to go but I also knew they wouldn’t make me; it wouldn’t fit their “cool and understanding parents” shtick they have going on. I’m not proud of it, but I used that to my advantage.
They left.
I waited.
The house has been empty with only me in it, vibrating with anticipation. I showered and dried my hair. I straightened it with the straightening iron, but then it looked too serious, so I dampened it and curled it. I redid it until my arms ached.
Since then, I’ve been waiting.
I’m relieved when Piper comes right in through the French doors off the living room. I’m lying on the couch, about to put dark blue polish on my toenails.
“You don’t knock?” I say, faking a mad voice, and she laughs in a way that says that she forgives me. The line between who is mad at who is so blurry that I can’t even see it. I don’t even always know. But I do know that it goes away.
It always does.
“Are you going to chicken out?” she asks. She makes a chicken noise. “Here, let me do that.” She puts down the drink tray holding two huge iced mochas and takes the polish out of my hand. Then she goes over and turns up the air-conditioning. “Too hot.” Her short hair is spiked up with sweat or product, I can’t tell which. “I’m so tired of being hot. Sweaty is not my best look.”
“You need to use those blotting paper things. Matte is the new black,” I say.
“That doesn’t even make sense,” she says. “Racially? Is that a commentary on the state of the nation?”
“No,” I say. “A commentary on shiny skin.” I lean my head back on the leather armrest. I lift my foot up and balance it on the coffee table so she can reach my nails from where she’s sitting on the floor. “Am I really going to do this? What if he doesn’t want to? I mean, this is our plan, nothing to do with him. Maybe it will just be like, hi, let’s get to know each other. Maybe he won’t even want to do it with me. What am I supposed to do, jump on him?”
“He’ll want to,” she says. “Of course he’ll want to. Look at you. You’re all long blond hair and a bikini. And soon-to-be-stellar toenails. What’s not to want? Your hair looks amazing, by the way.”
“I want to be more than hair and a bathing suit.”
“You are! That’s the point! But you’re more than hair and a bathing suit to the first guy who matters. James doesn’t matter. That’s why he’s in the picture. Because for him you are a body, some hair, and a bathing suit. For the next guy, you’ll be you. You’ll be the Sloane who I know and love.”
“I love you, too,” I say. “Even when you’re mad at me.”
“I’m sick of being mad at you. It’s boring.” She stretches out luxuriantly. “I miss you when you’re being moody. God, air-conditioning is the best. I have to come over more often.”
“You’re always at work! And the mall is air-conditioned.”
“Not today,” she says. “Today, I’m here for you. To be your witness.”
“You can’t watch,” I say. “That would be creepy.”
“I won’t,” she says, winking.
“Pipes, seriously. Don’t invite Soup over and have both of you gawking. That’s beyond creepy. I think it’s illegal, actually.”
She makes a face. “Soup’s at work. I won’t watch. But I want to be here for you. In case he turns out to be a psycho.” She rolls her eyes, takes a long sip of her drink. “I wonder how much sugar is in these things? They’re really disgusting, but also delicious. How can something be both disgusting and delicious?”
“Proof,” I say, raising my cup and gulping. She’s right: both disgusting and delicious. I inspect my feet. My big toe is already smudged. I check the time on my phone. One o’clock.
“I can’t do this,” I say. “Not for real. How well do you know this guy? Really?”
“What? Of course you can. I know him well enough. Sometimes he comes in and pretends to be a customer. He’s funny in a sarcastic, dry way. He takes a while to get used to. Anyway, I brought the clippers. We’ll get your hair cut right afterward.”
I blink. “Do you try clothes on for him? Do you twirl?”
“What? No! We talk. He’s an interesting guy. He’s from Texas. Or maybe Arizona. I forget now. One of the states that have cactuses. Do they have cactuses in New Mexico?”
“So you’re really close, then?” I say sarcastically. “So this isn’t like you’re setting me up with a total stranger? What if he has syphilis?”
“For one thing, no one has syphilis anymore, that’s from Ye Olden Tymes. For another thing, even if he did, it’s not like that would have come up while he was telling me about the time his dog ate a rattlesnake. Or a rattlesnake ate his dog. I forget. But no matter, he’s cute and seems like a no-strings-attached person who is perfect for this. That’s the main thing.”
“Is it? Because seriously, Piper, I’m not sure I remember what the main thing is anymore or why I’m doing this. This is crazy. I can’t do this.”
“Are you joking or serious?”
“Both?” I start hyperventilating.
“Are you hyperventilating?”
I nod, waving my hand toward the kitchen. She pulls herself up and goes to the drawer and gets a paper bag. “This is so funny!” she calls. “I didn’t know you still hyperventilated!”
“I do,” I gasp. “Sorry. Is not funny. When it’s. You.”
She passes me the bag. I put it over my nose and take deep breaths; the papery smell of it makes me feel safe. I keep breathing into it for a few breaths beyond what I need, the crumpling loud sound of it filling the space.
“Come on,” she says. “Keep it together. Remember who we used to be? Go big or go home!”
“Yep,” I manage. “I know. But you love Soup. So it’s different.”
“Doesn’t matter.” She shakes her head impatiently. “Remember when you started your period and I got mine the next day? We are in sync. We have to stay in sync.” She seems agitated. “We’re the same, Sloaney. We have to be the same. When we’re not, everything is wrong, don’t you see? We’ve been off, this whole summer, you and me. It’s not working. Because we’re out of sync.” She looks like she’s going to cry. “You have to do this.”
I lie back on the couch and close my eyes. I think about everything that I know about sex, the technicalities of sex. “What does it mean, anyway?” I say. “I probably don’t even have a hymen or whatever to break.”
“Right,” she says. “It’s just bodies. But you’ll see. It’s more than that.”
“How do you know? You don’t even remember!
And you haven’t done it with him again. Why haven’t you?”
“I can’t! I’m waiting for you to catch up!”
“That doesn’t make sense!”
“I know, right? But it also does, because we’re us!”
“We’re us,” I agree. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m freaking out. I don’t even know him!”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “I know him. I have a feeling about him. A good feeling. Like he’s the right one for this. He’s meant to be connected to us somehow. We have to intellectualize this. We have to be the smart girls we used to be before I fell in love like a dummy. And we know that sex is nothing more than a physical connection, a click, just … friction.”
“Friction?” I say dubiously.
“Well, meaningful friction.”
“Like rubbing a magic lamp!” I laugh. “Do I get to make a wish?”
“Basically,” she says.
“So if I do this with James, are you going to start doing it with Soup again?” I can’t make eye contact while I wait for her answer. Instead I watch the gardener, who is trimming the hedges. The hedge trimmer is loud and almost drowns out her answer.
“Oh,” she says airily, “I’m thinking of breaking up with him now.”
And just like that, the air is sucked out of the room, out of my lungs, out of the house, out of the world. My vision goes gray, like I’m going to faint. I drop my head between my knees.
“What?” I say. “I’m going to faint, don’t mind me.”
“You’re not,” she says. “I totally love him, but really, we’re too young to fall in love.”
“I’m…,” I say. “What happened to ‘He takes my breath away’?”
She laughs. “He does. But I don’t want him to be the only one who does.”
“Oh,” I say. “I—”
The doorbell rings.
The doorbell rings, and the air in the room starts to shake.
The doorbell rings, and I start to shake.
The doorbell rings, and everything in the world starts to shake, an earthquake that cleaves the island in two, that cleaves us in two, that cleaves everything in two—who I am and who I’m going to be.
Piper jumps up and hugs me, hard. Tight.
“I love you,” she says. “Remember.”
Piper disappears up the stairs and I walk slowly to the door and open it, and there is a boy I barely know, James (not Jimmy, never Jim, according to Piper), smiling crookedly, holding a six-pack of beer and one of those furry blankets that I’ve seen on Amazon with a wolf on it, its mouth grinning, half open, tongue hanging out.
“Hey,” I say, trying not to sound as terrified as I feel. I run my hands through my hair. His eyes drift down from my face to my body to my bright pink bikini.
“Hey,” he says.
He leers. So he’s definitely the kind of boy who leers. I shiver.
His skin is covered with pockmarks that look like divots in the ground, the kind made by clams and geoducks at the beach.
“It’s so great to meet you,” I lie. My voice sounds like someone else’s voice. “Want to go to the beach?”
He smiles wolfishly.
He nods.
I reach out and take his hand.
I close the door gently behind me.
We head down the beach trail.
NOW
Mom knocks and then comes in without waiting for me to answer. She puts a cloth on my forehead. The cloth is wet and ice-cold water seeps into my hair. I’m already too cold but I don’t know how to tell her. My mouth isn’t making the right words.
“Mom,” I start, and then I’m crying and crying and choking and crying. I’m strangling on sadness. “I don’t know what happened,” I say around the impossible lump that’s in my throat. “Tell me what happened to her.”
She shakes her head; she strokes my cold, damp head.
“I’m sorry, Slo,” she says. “I’m so, so sorry. It’s the worst thing. It’s an awful thing.”
“Tell me,” I choke.
She gets up and opens my curtains. My eyes slam shut. It’s too bright. So much sun. How can there be sun when Piper is dead? Mom sits back down, and she strokes my hair like she used to when I was little. A crow lands on my balcony and starts to caw. I feel like he’s telling me something. His feathers gleam in the sunlight.
“He’s trying to tell me,” I say.
“Honey, it’s a crow,” she says. “It’s only a crow.”
But what if it isn’t? I think but don’t say, What if it’s Piper?
It’s not, says Piper. God.
“Mom, Piper is dead.”
“I know, shhhh.”
The crow caws again.
“Shut up,” I say ferociously. “Shut up, shut up, shut up.” I am clawing at my ears and I hear the crow and Piper and I can’t make them stop, either of them, and Mom is pulling my hands away.
“Stop,” she says. “You’re scratching yourself! Honey, no.”
The crow stops suddenly, like a slamming on of brakes. The silence is hard and huge. There is my breathing and Mom’s and the breeze rustling the curtain and the sound of my heart lolloping crookedly. On my bedside table, the battery light on my camera is flashing. I swallow bile. The crow stretches his wings. I can hear the tock-tock-tock of his feathers separating from one another, and my heart is pounding so wrong and so faintly that I think for sure I’m going to die, too.
I want to.
I can’t do this without Piper.
I need her.
Come with me, Piper says. She twirls in the water, making it look pretty. My mouth tastes like salt.
“Leave me alone! You aren’t real.”
So why don’t you know what I’m going to say before I say it? I’m real.
“I don’t believe in you.”
You don’t? I know. I mean, I knew. I knew you didn’t. You didn’t even like me anymore.
“Mom,” I struggle to say. “Help me.”
But what comes out is not that. What comes out is a scream. The scream starts somewhere in my core and I can’t stop it and it splits me in half and I’m turning inside out and I want to know what happened and I don’t want to know what happened and I’m thinking terrible things, all of the terrible things that could have happened and I’m maybe saying out loud, or maybe not, what happened what happened what happened.
“Shhhhh,” Mom says. She sits next to me, her back perfectly straight, like the dancer she used to be. Her hand is calm and cool and everything I’m not. Her calm, cool hand strokes and the cloth is cold and sinking into my forehead, which is melting and cold at the same time. My brain is frozen and numb and no one can shiver like this and survive.
It’s going to be okay. Don’t get hysterical.
“Please don’t be dead.”
I can’t help what I am. It’s not so bad.
“It is. It is so bad.”
No one saw, so it didn’t happen.
“That’s not how it works! It’s not!”
Shhhh, calm down. Hold my hand.
“Shhhh, calm down. Hold my hand,” says Mom.
I’m either holding my breath or not, I can’t tell, and I’m with her and I’m underwater and we’re drowning, we keep seeing sky and knowing we can’t reach it, is that you, Piper, I say or think or dream. It’s us, it’s us. We are. We aren’t.
We aren’t any longer.
We aren’t anything.
The water, the water.
I’m dreaming.
I’m not dreaming.
Mom holds my hand.
Piper holds my hand.
We’re dancing.
We’re drowning.
The crow caws.
Dad comes into the room. I can smell his cologne, his crisp cotton shirt, the Dad-pressed smell of him. He talks to Mom in a quiet way that I can’t decode. Everything is a different language.
Anteeksi, I think.
There is rattling, gentle hands, a pill dropped under my tongue.
Let it dissolve, they say, and I do, particles of me seeping into the blue of the sky and into the dust and into the bed and into the water and into the crow and into everything.
Blood dissolves, she says.
We dissolve.
I trip and crash into sleep by accident, headfirst, my skull crumbling. I dream of oceans and waves covering me, water all around me, in my mouth, and then it is blood and a dancer in a red silk dress that fades to the palest of pinks, twirling and twirling, and look at me and the dress is empty and falling from the hanger to the floor in a wisp of air and I choke and wake up and dream again and the whole time Mom’s hands are there, stroking my forehead, erasing, erasing, erasing me and what we did.
“Sloane,” she says. “Shhhhh. Sloane, you’re going to be okay.”
But she’s wrong; I won’t be.
The crow rises up suddenly and flies so hard into the glass that it cracks.
The crow falls.
The crow dies.
Piper dies.
We die.
Everyone dies at the end.
BEFORE
Afterward, I feel completely different and no different at the same time.
It’s not necessarily a good thing.
I feel like a balloon that someone has accidentally released, floating toward a bad fate.
I also hurt in places I didn’t expect to hurt.
Why didn’t I expect it?
Dumb.
I feel violated.
I thought about telling him to stop.
There was a point when he looked angry.
I was scared.
Is that a lie?
I said yes.
I want to erase it all: the wolf blanket, how cold the water was, how I thought about screaming so that Piper would save me.
Did I need saving?
Why couldn’t she tell that I did?
I hate her.
I hate myself.
In the mirror, my face is exactly the same. I have a pimple on my chin. The sun exposure has made my freckles flare.
“Do freckles come and go, or do they only darken in the sun?” I ask Piper.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I think they are always there. I had a mole removed, remember? In sixth grade. Anyway, the doctor showed it to me afterward and it had a root.”
