Fever

by Carnal, MJ

  I sigh. “I know. I get it, but why isn’t anybody worried about Shea? He’s around crazy things all the time and he gets by.”

  “Because nobody cares about Shea, Brooklyn, we care about you,” she chimes.

  It breaks my heart to hear her say something like that about Shea. He’s been friends with Allie almost as long as I have and she knows that he doesn’t have many people that care about him at all. Shea’s mother is there for him, but mainly to collect a paycheck. She’s as big of a gold digger as my mother, which is probably why they get along so well.

  “Yeah, thanks,” I mumble halfheartedly. “I’ll email you the designs I owe you tomorrow. We’ll talk soon. Sorry about the workload, Al.”

  “You know I’m fine with it, Bee. I’ll let you know when it gets to be too much,” Allie says and I can hear the smile in her voice.

  I am so thankful for this girl it’s not even funny.

  After hanging up with her, I get moving and sort through the demos I have yet to listen to. I took the day off from working at the office so I could listen to them at home instead. I like being holed up in dark places while I listen to music with my eyes closed, it’s the only way I can truly feel it. Even when I go to concerts, I find myself closing my eyes the majority of the show. You would think that defeats the purpose of the ticket price, but it makes it more enjoyable for me. It emphasizes the tone in their voice and the way they hit each note. I live music when I listen to it that way. I click the button to lower the motorized shades in my room. I can tell it has rarely been used by the squeak it does when it begins to descend. I’m sure most people would rather bask in the sun and enjoy the sense of hope you’re supposed to feel as you look out into the perfect New York skyline from this high up.

  It’s a view that has been painted and photographed countless times. Postcards are adorned with this view and sent all over the world with all kinds of messages: mainly happy, hopeful, and probably delusional messages. That’s the lovely thing about big cities—the thing that I love most about them—they have this way of wrapping you up and comforting you in their blanket of beautiful lies. I guess I can relate because that’s much of how my own life has been: a basket of beautiful lies. One I’ve learned to carry around, even though I don’t like to pick from it. The moment I do, I become anguished, and when I become her I lose myself.

  Closing my eyes, I fall back onto my bed, letting the darkness cocoon me while I listen to the woman I’ve decided is my new favorite artist, thanks to Nick: Paige Chaplin. Her voice is so melodic and filled with a sorrow that matches my own. I take a deep breath and get lost in her lyrics, letting her take me back to a time where there was very little light left in me. A time that I thought I wouldn’t survive. A time where I didn’t care if I did.

  ***

  I was holding Ryan’s hand when we barged through the door of my house that afternoon. I swung the door carelessly behind us, letting it shut with a loud thump that made us both jump and laugh.

  “Brooklyn!” my mother reprimanded from down the hall.

  Groaning, I rolled my eyes. “Sorry, Mom!”

  Ryan rolled his eyes back at me, mimicking my annoyed face. I let go of his hand and pinched his cheeks the way he hated, and he moved away, laughing.

  “Ryan?” my mother called out.

  I nearly shrieked my frustration at that. She loved Ryan and loved it when he came over to our house. His parents were wealthy, old money, and that was enough to impress her.

  “Yes, Mrs. Harmon,” he responded, shrugging at me when I shot him a dirty look.

  For the past three years Ryan and I had been a pretend couple, and it had been the most fun I’d ever had. We went to parties together and the movies, he came over to my house, and I went over to his house. His parents were very uptight about the company he kept, but somehow they approved of me, probably because of who my parents were. We never gave them a reason to question what we were doing in our bedrooms, not that there was anything for them to question. There’s not much trouble a gay teen can get into with a straight teen when they’re in a bedroom together, not sexually anyway.

  “Call me Roxana!” my mother insisted, appearing at the threshold looking like her normally prim self. She was wearing an emerald dress that fit her like a glove. It had a low-cut bodice that enhanced her cleavage, and the material made her already shapely figure look more pronounced. Her face was radiant, her light caramel eyes bright and her dark brown loose waves piled up into a knotted bun. The gold heels she wore clinked against the marble floors as she strode toward us in the foyer of the house.

  She leaned in and gave me a quick hug and kiss on the cheek before turning to Ryan and doing the same.

  “You’re coming to the party tonight?” she confirmed with Ryan.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ryan said with a smile. His face always flushed when he spoke to adults, making his strawberry freckles blend in with his cheeks.

  “Good,” she said then turned to me. “Brooklyn, you’re going to dye your hair one color for tonight, right?”

  “Yes, Mother,” I responded.

  My hair was blonde at the time, which I could pull off because of my green eyes, but I had streaks of pink all throughout. She tried to get me to dye it back to just blonde or my natural chocolate brown as soon as she saw it, which was two weeks after I’d dyed it the shades of pink to begin with.

  “Good, because it’s embarrassing. I don’t know how such a good looking kid like Ryan puts up with it,” she said with a tsk.

  I ground my teeth together, my eyes downcast.

  Ryan put his hand over mine and threaded our fingers together, squeezing. “I actually really dig the pink, it’s cute.”

  “For Halloween maybe,” my mother retorted.

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m dying it back by tonight,” I said with finality.

  “Okay. I’ll send your dress up for you in a couple of hours. Ryan, you remember it’s a white party, right?” she said as she took down the pins that were holding her hair up.

  “Yep. I’ll be here in all white,” Ryan said.

  My mother nodded at us, seemingly happy enough with our conversation and pivoted to leave, swaying her hips and her arms like the true model that she was.

  When Ryan and I were in my room I went to my ensuite bathroom and took out the box of hair dye I had under my sink, deciding I should do that first.

  “Your mom is a bitch, but she’s still better than mine,” Ryan commented, knowing I was still brewing over our encounter with her.

  I let out a loud breath. “I know. What the hell did we do to deserve them as parents?”

  Ryan shrugged. “Be born, I guess.”

  I walked up to the bed where he sat shaking my old Bambi snow globe. I lay my head on his shoulder.

  “It sucks,” I said.

  “Yep,” he agreed.

  He helped me dye my hair as we danced to Britney Spears. Ryan loved Britney. When Nina, who was staying with our Uncle Roy in San Francisco for the weekend, got to my house, Ryan went home to get dressed.

  “Such a shame,” Nina commented. “The cute ones are all gay. You should see how many hot guys there are in San Fran. Do you think they even look at me?” she asked in dismay.

  I laughed, knowing it was true. I’d gone to visit my uncle and his boyfriend a couple of times and noticed the same thing. It was just funnier when Nina said it because she thought everybody was supposed to admire her beauty.

  “Did Uncle Roy come with you?” I asked distractedly as I dried my hair.

  “Duh. How would I have gotten here? Oh my god, and if I had to hear one more old Spanish song I was gonna die. He says it reminds him of his mom, but holy shit, Bee, the music is like lullaby music putting me to sleep,” Nina said, groaning.

  “Maybe that’s what he wanted, to shut you up so he could drive in peace,” I said, laughing when she threw a pillow at me.

  “Whatever. Uncle Chris really outdid himself this time,” she commented.

 
I rolled my eyes at that. Everyone said that every time there was a White Party. My dad was known to host the best parties and he always “outdid himself” from the last one. I couldn’t really disagree with them; each party was more lavish than the last. He really thought he was The Great Gatsby or something, and that’s not even a joke. He would actually say, “This is going to be a Gatsby party.”

  I was wearing a robe, waiting for the dress my mother promised me, when there was a single knock on my door, followed by it opening.

  “Hey, Nina,” my mother greeted, “you look pretty.”

  “Thanks, Aunt Roxy,” Nina said with a smile.

  “Maybe you should let your cousin in on your little diet secret since she refuses to listen to me,” my mother went on, handing me a dress bag without even looking at me.

  I snatched it from her and walked into my closet, drowning out their conversation with my humming. I would rather not listen to the discussion about how I was so fat that size two jeans were starting to look snug on me. It wasn’t my fault that my butt had a mind of its own when it came to developing. I let the robe pool at my feet as I stood in front of the mirror to look at myself. It’s not like I had a fat stomach or anything. My boobs were smaller than I wished they were, but the combination of my flat stomach and thin waist made my butt look bigger than it actually was.

  I opened the garment bag and took out the dress, a short white dress that had embroidered detail at the top. I raised my eyebrows at the material, which was much like the green dress my mother had been wearing earlier that day, so I knew that meant that it would stick to me like glue. I wore it anyway, even though I felt overly exposed. My regular wardrobe consisted of loose ripped jeans and vintage band Tshirts, so anything that showed off my legs was going to feel like it was exposing me.

  Nina’s words to me were: “You look pale.”

  “I’m tan, Nina,” I argued.

  “Yeah, but your hair is blonde, almost white, and you’re wearing a white dress. You look pale as fuck. Why didn’t you dye your hair back to your normal color?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Didn’t feel like dying it back yet.”

  She shook her head. Her dark hair was cut to her shoulders and styled straight, so when she shook her head that way it would swing into her eyes. “When are you going to stop dying your hair weird colors?”

  She’d asked me the same question every time she’d seen me for the past six months. Each time I gave her a different answer, usually one that I knew would shut her up. I never told her the reason I thought it did it. In the beginning I did it because I wanted a change—I was bored of the same old hair. Gradually it became more, though. It meant I could escape and become someone else for a little while, and I liked that. Mainly because obviously the person I was wasn’t good enough for anyone.

  “When I figure out who I should be, I guess,” I responded nonchalantly with a shrug.

  Nina, who had never been one to pay attention to detail when you spoke to her, stopped applying her makeup and looked at me, eyes wide. “What’s wrong with who you are now?”

  “Everything, apparently,” I mumbled under my breath. “Nothing,” I said louder, shooting a reassuring smile at her.

  She looked at me for a second longer before going back to her eyeliner.

  The party was the same as they always were: loud and cheerful. There were actors, musicians, rock stars, movie directors, producers, DJs, Hollywood agents, models. Anybody with a known name was there.

  “Who’s that?” Nina asked, tugging my hand just as Ryan joined us.

  “Who’s who?” Ryan chimed in.

  “That,” Nina said, pointing at a guy, about our age. He was dressed in a white T-shirt and dark washed jeans. His hair was dark brown and ruffled. He was thin and shorter than Ryan, but Ryan was tall for his age. It wasn’t his looks that made him attractive, though, it was just him. The way he was smiling at the pretty model he was talking to. The way his eyes lit up at his own jokes. He just had that fire in him that made you want to get to know him, and when he looked at me, I did.

  “I dunno,” I mused and was about to say something dumb, like, “but I want to.” I didn’t get to finish my sentence because my mother glided up to us. She walked like she owned the world, which was something I tried to practice, but never got down. The thing was, I realized later, that my mother really did think she owned the world and everybody that walked it. Everyone was a puppet to her and she was pulling all the strings.

  “Brooklyn,” my mother said cheerfully, wrapping her arm around my shoulder and pulling me into a hug. I remember wishing I could go to a party every day so that she would hug me. “Let me introduce you to a couple of people. Excuse us, Ryan … Nina,” she said, giving them each a pointed look.

  I walked off with her, catching their baffled looks when I shot them my own confused glance over my shoulder. My mother handed me the drink she had in her hand, I figured for me to hold.

  “Drink it,” she insisted. “You’re at home, might as well enjoy the party properly.”

  It’s not like I hadn’t drank alcohol before. I was sixteen years old, living in Beverly Hills. I’d gotten drunk a handful of times. Hanging out with child actors at adult parties will do that to a kid. Still, I’d never been given permission from my own mother to drink. I took it and brought it to my mouth, wondering where she was going with this whole thing. I smelled it first; it smelled fruity, much like the drinks I’d had before, so I took a cautious sip. As fruity as it smelled, it went down heavily, burning my esophagus, but I liked it.

  “What is it?” I asked curiously, watching her delighted face from the corner of my eye.

  She stopped walking and turned to me, fake smile still plastered on her face. “Liquid courage,” she said. “Just drink the damn thing and don’t eat any of the fried food.” Her eyes did a swift take of my body. “The dress looks perfect on you. Much better than I thought it would. Don’t mess it up,” she snapped, smile still in place, but her light brown eyes were drilling into me.

  I nodded, taking a bigger sip of her liquid courage. “Yeah, God forbid I don’t look good enough to be your daughter.”

  “Exactly,” she remarked. She either missed my sarcastic tone or chose to ignore it. Probably the latter. “Mind your posture, walk with your head held high, not looking at the floor. If it’s below you, it’s not worth looking at.”

  I rolled my eyes inwardly and let her lead me through the crowds of people, introducing me as we went.

  “Oh, she’s beautiful,” some said in reference to me. My mother especially liked the “She’s as beautiful as her mother” comments. My favorite was, “You’ve raised her well.” That made my empty stomach turn.

  We circled our way around until we reached the “cute guy” Nina pointed out earlier. He was speaking to my father, who looked at me, his big green eyes smiling warmly when he caught sight of me walking with my mother.

  “Hey, baby girl,” he greeted.

  “Hey, Dad,” I responded, leaning into his arms for a moment. My mother was now holding my hand and pulled me away from him quickly.

  “Chris, I was just about to introduce Brooklyn to Shea,” my mother explained.

  My father narrowed his eyes for a quick moment before nodding. “Shea, this is my daughter, Brooklyn,” he said, turning toward the guy who was indeed a little taller than me in my heels.

  His messy hair fell into his eyes when he tilted his head to appraise me and I was done for. One tilted head, charming smile, twinkling eyes look was all it took for my platonic crush on Shea to set.

  Then he opened his mouth and spoke. “So good to meet you, Brooklyn,” he said, his voice velvety and silky. I just wanted to bathe in it for days. His greenish-brownish eyes were set on mine. They were the oddest color, like green grass with patches of mud on it. Muddy green, I would later call them. “Chris, if you would’ve told me you had such a pretty daughter, I would’ve gotten here sooner.”

  Done. For. It. That’s wha
t I was.

  You can’t really blame a girl, though. I was sixteen years old with hormones spurring out of control. I got no attention from anybody in my house, the only people I could count on were: my brother who was never there, my cousin who lived in New York, and my gay best friend who was battling his own demons at home. I thrived for attention the only way I knew, which was by going to parties and being the party girl. The “it” girl everybody wanted to be friends with, but not real friends, just friends on the weekend. They didn’t give a shit that I was hurting; they didn’t give a shit about my life. All they cared about was getting invited to parties, getting drunk, and being able to say they knew Chris and Roxy’s daughter.

  “Brooklyn,” my mother cooed, facing me to her and holding me at arms’ length so she could look at me. “You know what would be great? If you could show Shea our studio. Why don’t you introduce him to your friends?” She pulled me close to her again and placed my face on top of her chest. I was shorter than her, so that’s where my head landed anyway. But it was such an intimate gesture, the way she held me there and ran her fingers through my hair the way she did when I was a child. I remember thinking in that moment that I would do anything for her. Anything to have her hold me like that. Anything to have that smile on her face when she looked at me and her approval when she touched me. So when she asked me to be nice to Shea, listen to his music and to please report back to my father about anything he said to me, I agreed.

  I often wondered if she knew the destructive path I was already treading at that point, and whether or not she would have ignited the gallop, had she sensed how serious it was. I wondered if she knew what Shea’s friends were most likely carrying around in their pockets when she handed me to the wolves that night. I wondered if she even cared.

  Ryan and I walked to the studio hand in hand, Nina following not far behind, already talking to one of Shea’s friends. He was shady, that friend of his, his name was Drew. I’ll never forget the way his dark eyes looked at you like you were already dead. It was an odd look he had, a dazed one.