by Lili Anolik
I collapse on the bottom step of the staircase, unable to make it any deeper inside than a few feet. For a while I just sit there in the dark in a kind of blanked-out stupor, eyes drying out because I keep forgetting to blink. And then, from Amory Chapel, comes the chiming of the quarter hour. Returning to myself, I notice that the photographs have slipped from my hand, are fanned out on the floor. I pick them up, one by one, smoothing them on the flat of my thigh. No lights are on in the house, but there’s a streetlamp in front of it giving off just enough glow for me to see by.
There are about thirty photos total, each depicting the same scene: Nica, lying in the grass, dead. Unlike the one hanging in Mom’s studio, though, these are full body shots, taken not from behind but straight on. Mom must have been crying and shaking as much as she said she was because at least two-thirds of them are out of focus, the frame wrong somehow, off-kilter; and gazing at them, at their slightly askew perspective, gives me motion sickness. Or maybe what’s making me want to puke is the sight of my sister curled up, not in sleep as I’d originally thought, but in pain, clutching at the smeary horror of her stomach, the blood so thick and rich and dark it looks more black than red, a trickle of it coming out the left corner of her mouth, crawling down her chin. After holding the pictures to my face, forcing myself to examine each one, I let them fall to my lap.
I begin to imagine Nica’s last moments on earth.
I imagine her waking up, soaked in sweat, heart slamming into her chest, relieved the night before was just a dream, the panic that must’ve set in as she realized it wasn’t. I imagine her looking at Jamie, lying beside her, with disgust and, under that disgust, love, which disgusted her more, and him looking back at her with love and nothing but, which disgusted her more still. I imagine her opening her mouth and saying the worst things she could think of so he’d feel as low and dirty and full of shame as she did. I imagine her anger, so strong she wanted to kill him, and then her terror as she saw he was going to kill himself. I imagine her grappling with him for the gun, smaller than she would have thought, heavier, too, and the sound, sharp yet muffled, that hung in the air when it went off, the shock of the bullet piercing her skin, her flesh, an organ inside that skin and flesh. And as I’m imagining all this, I’m flipping through the stack of photos. I’m not looking at what I’m doing.
And then I am.
Mom had a book that Nica and I used to love when we were kids, so young we didn’t even know how to read books yet. We’d fight over this one, though. It was on Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. In the upper corner of each page was a small square with Fred and Ginger in it. By thumbing the pages quickly, you set the figures in motion, and they would perform a little dance for you. It seemed like magic to Nica and me, this moving image we could make move ourselves, make come to life, basically. Something like that magic is happening now. Nica isn’t dancing for me but she is coming to life. Her left hand is, anyway. The fingers curl, then uncurl, the movement small yet definite—a twitch. I flip through the photos again, watch closely. Curl, uncurl. And again, watch even more closely. Curl, uncurl.
I let the photos flutter to the floor, wait for my brain to make the necessary connections. After a minute or so it does: dead girls don’t twitch, therefore Nica wasn’t dead when Mom took the photos, not all the way, at least; if Mom had run home for the phone rather than her camera, Nica might still be alive; Nica had died once but been killed twice.
I wait again. This time for the sadness or rage that’s sure to follow. I wait and I wait but neither comes. And that’s when it dawns on me. I’ve been emptied. No, emptied isn’t the right word. Doesn’t convey the violence of what’s been done to me. I’ve been stripped. Scraped. Gutted. Gouged. I don’t know why it’s this horrible thing that’s doing me in, why it’s worse than all the other horrible things I’ve had to endure. But somehow it is. Without thinking, I reach for Ruben’s bag, inside my own, and unseal it. I scoop out a handful of pills and stuff them in my mouth. I start chewing, and it’s like chewing chalk, and I don’t want to do it. I force myself to, though. Force myself to swallow, too.
The chapel bell tolls the half hour, then the three-quarters. Benzos usually work fast on an empty stomach. Only tonight they’re not. And I realize that Jamie’s right, that Ruben’s been getting ripped off, that the pills are fakes. I turn to the window, find my reflection suspended in the black depths of it, just sort of floating there, attached to nothing—an image of me looking at me looking at me. I close my eyes so I don’t have to look anymore.
I must fall asleep because the next thing I know, I’m being pulled out of a dream by a knock on the door and for several seconds I can’t tell what’s real. Then I think: Damon. He heard my voice mail, got Renee to give him a ride from the hospital. Who else would be coming by the house this late besides Dad and Dad has a key?
I rise, cramp-legged and tingle-headed, a little stunned at how glad I am that Damon’s here. I walk quickly to the door, almost falling into it so eager am I to get to him. As I begin to twist the knob, though, that knock sounds again—one-knuckled, three raps, a pause between each—and I realize it’s coming not from the other side of the door but from inside the house. My arm drops, and slowly I turn, heart accelerating, clattering against my ribs, the hairs on the nape of my neck standing erect.
He’s leaning against the doorway to the kitchen, sunglasses on, yawning and stretching his back. Shep.
I’m surprised to see him, but I’m also not. Once a guidance counselor, always a guidance counselor, and I’ve missed the last three days of school. I start to ask him how he got in the house, and then stop because I already know how. Instead I ask him, “Have you been here long?”
“Hours.” He glances down at his watch. “Whoa, make that hours and hours. Oh well. Guess I Bo Peeped, huh?”
“Bo Peeped?” I repeat, confused.
“Yeah, you know, fell asleep on the job.” He pantomimes a person snoring.
Irritation fast replacing fear, I say, “You nearly gave me a heart attack is what you did. There was no need to come by in person. You could’ve just called.”
“I did call. E-mailed, too. Not a word back. I was getting concerned. Wanted to make sure you’re still alive, which, I’m happy to say, you seem very much to be. Unless I’m looking at a ghost.” He walks over and pinches the flesh of my upper arm, smiles. “Nope. One hundred percent real live girl.”
“Why didn’t you come over during the day?”
The smile turns into a frown as he lifts his foot to peer at the bottom of his flip-flop, sees something stuck there. A pebble maybe, or a wad of gum. He scratches at it with his thumbnail. “Your dad works nights. I figured you might want to talk and that you’d probably rather do that when he’s not around.”
“But I wasn’t around either.”
“No, but the door was unlocked so I assumed you’d be back soon, that you’d just ducked out for a second—a quick run to the store for ginger ale or crackers or something. Thought I’d make myself comfortable in the kitchen while I waited.” He laughs. “Made myself too comfortable, obviously. Plus, there was the chicken soup. I was afraid if I didn’t put it in the fridge, it would go bad.”
“You brought me chicken soup?”
“Made you chicken soup,” he says proudly. And then, letting his foot fall to the floor, “You eat chicken soup, don’t you?”
As those suddenly worried eyes fix on my face, I have to look away. Making soup for me, cookies for Jamie. Supplying drugs for Jamie, too. I experience a flash of sympathy for Maddie and Ruben. No wonder they used to enjoy kicking me so much. The combination of neediness and eagerness that’s coming off Shep—that must’ve come off me—is pitiful to behold. And yet I don’t feel pity, I feel revulsion. He just wants to please me and it only makes me want to hurt him.
Ignoring his question, I say, “Think we can have that talk tomorrow?”
“No problemo.” And then, as I start to move to the stairs—he showed himself in, he
can show himself out—he says, “When?”
“What do you mean, when? Tomorrow. Isn’t that what we just said?”
“Sorry, I meant what time tomorrow?”
It takes effort not to roll my eyes. “How about I e-mail you in the morning? We’ll figure it out then.”
“Sure, sure. That would work. Remember, though, that anything during school hours is tough for me. Not impossible but tough.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
He looks at me, head cocked, body statue-still. I return the look, only now I don’t bother to hide my impatience, sighing and tapping my finger against the banister. I’m hot to be alone so I can think of someone I can score pills from. Graydon Tullis? He’ll probably just have pot. Maybe, though, he’ll know who to get in touch with, the right person. But as the seconds tick by, I start to grow uneasy under Shep’s gaze, soft and mild, and yet at the same time homed-in and intense. Is he ever going to look away? Blink? At last he does both. And then he says, “You poor kid. You want to go to bed, don’t you?”
What I want is for this conversation to be over. But I nod anyway because going along with whatever he says is, it suddenly occurs to me, my best bet for getting him out the door.
He clucks his tongue. “You must be done in.”
“I am.”
“Really tapped out.”
“Sure.”
“Hitting one wall after another.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Just as tired as you can be.”
I’m about to say “You got it” or “Wow, yeah,” throw in a couple more nods for good measure. But there’s something about how he phrases this last sentence, or the way he spaces out the words, or the voice he uses that makes me hear it differently. And all at once I understand that I’m agreeing with everything he says because everything he says is true. I am tired. So so tired.
“You need to rest,” he says.
Yes, I do need to rest. Very badly.
“Need to get away from everybody, all the people you know who want something from you, and just conk out.”
He couldn’t be more right. Everybody I know does want something from me. And the idea of being around any of them at the moment fills me with horror. Even the urge to see Damon, so strong only minutes ago, is gone.
“It’s time for you to just sleep and sleep and sleep. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Grace?”
More than anything in the world I’d like that.
“I bet it’s hard for you to sleep, though. I bet there are nights when you lie in bed, waiting for sleep to come and it won’t. You toss and turn, stare at the ceiling, listen to the clock counting down the minutes till morning. It’s its own special kind of torture, not being able to sleep. There’s nothing worse.”
No, there isn’t. Just the thought of that happening to me now—tonight—makes my stomach drop, then start snatching at itself in panic.
“Not that sleeplessness is something you can’t get around. Is there anything in the house that can help knock you out?”
There isn’t. I’d ransacked my bathroom days ago for Klonopin—an antidepressant and a sleep aid in one—trying to find even a single pill rattling around the bottom of a drawer or skulking in the back of a cabinet. I’d come up empty. And then, remembering something, I glance down. Ruben’s Baggie is still on the second step of the staircase, where I’d dropped it. Excited, I reach for it. As I do, though, I remember something else: that the pills inside look like pills yet are not pills. The realization that the good long rest Shep has been talking about isn’t going to be mine is a shocking and painful one. Overwhelmed by my stupidity and feebleness and bad luck, I sink to my knees, my legs just giving out.
Seconds later, or possibly minutes, the baggie slips from my hand and several pills slip from it, making light pinging noises as they bounce off the hardwood floor. At the sound, my gaze, loose and drifting, falls on the end table and Dad’s trazodone, still in its bag from Arrow Pharmacy on Main Street. Staying on my knees, I lunge for it. It’s stapled shut, so I just rip it open, pull out the bottle.
Shep leans over me, frowning. “That’s prescription, Grace. I was thinking more along the lines of chamomile tea. At most a melatonin tablet.”
“Please,” I say.
He twists my hand so he can read the label on the side of the bottle. When he’s finished, he sighs. “Okay, but only for tonight. And stick to the recommended dosage—two pills, that’s it. The stuff’s more powerful than you think.”
I nod without looking at him, not wanting to take my eyes off the bottle.
“I’ll get you some water.”
I already have the two pills waiting on my tongue by the time he comes back. He hands me a glass, and I bring it messily to my mouth, the water tasting funny, though possibly that’s the pills flavoring the water, as it goes down my throat.
“Feel better?” he asks me with a smile.
I smile back because I do feel better. A second later, though, I feel worse, much worse, feel nothing but panic and fear. What if two pills isn’t enough? What if they don’t push me over the edge into sleep? What if all the Benadryl and NyQuil I’ve been taking has built up my tolerance? Shep bends over his flip-flop again, this time to adjust the thong, and I shove the rest of the pills in my mouth, swallow them down with the water left in the glass.
As he straightens, he looks at the bottle, an opaque orange, thankfully. But his eyes linger on it and, when they do, dread begins to rise in me. Does he see that it’s empty? Casually, I screw the cap on the bottle, slide the bottle in my pocket. To my relief, he returns his gaze to my face.
“Think you can shut off the lights, close your eyes now?” he says.
I’m sure I can do both those things so I nod. Almost instantly, though, doubt sets in and I’m not sure at all. Then more panic, more fear. I don’t want to be by myself in the dark. If I know nothing else, I know that.
As if reading my mind, he says gently, “Would you like me to come upstairs with you, sit with you until you fall asleep?”
A lump is forming in my throat and I’m unable to speak, so again I nod. Shep opens his arms. I fall into them. As they close around me, I break down in grateful sobs.
Minutes later I’m climbing the stairs, eyes dry, washed clean, heartbeat measuring every step. I hear Shep’s soft-footed tread behind me. Reaching the second floor, I start to turn into my room, then stop. I turn instead into Nica’s, untouched by me—by anyone—since I took the clothes from her closet the night of Jamie’s Fourth of July party. Without switching on the lights, I crawl into the still unmade bed.
I think Shep is going to sit in Nica’s desk chair. He doesn’t, though. He pushes to the floor the fleece I’d placed at the bottom of the bed those many months ago, its sleeves tucked tidily under its torso, its zipper zipped snugly all the way to its collar, and arranges his long body at my feet. The room is quiet, so quiet it starts to unnerve me, and I’m hoping he’ll break the silence by talking, and when he doesn’t, the panic and fear I thought I’d managed to quell are back, are stronger than before, than ever. But then he takes my hand in his and leans over me, smiling. His smile is full of kindness. And even though he’s wearing his sunglasses and I can’t see his eyes, I can feel them. And as soon as they touch mine, I experience an instant of communion. I swoon to it.
The pills are already beginning to take effect, the room and everything in it, including me, getting slow and distant and hazy. As the blood in my veins turns to sludge, and my heartbeat slackens to a thud, muffled and thick, then to an ache, dull and monotonous, I continue to look at Shep. I want to keep feeling his kindness, keep feeling that sense of communion while my life grinds to a halt. But it’s not his face I’m seeing. It’s my own, two of them, reflected in the lenses of his mirrored glasses. And my face is not kind and it doesn’t inspire a sense of communion. It’s appalling—eyes doped-looking and glazed, mouth hang-jawed and spitty—and all it inspires is disgust. Quickly, I fix my gaze to the ceilin
g. Seconds go by, and more seconds. Minutes go by, and more minutes. And then I experience an exhaustion so powerful that to not give into it is physically painful.
So I do.
The bed grows meaningless beneath my back. Gravity rolls off me and I’m no longer inside myself. This is the moment of my death, I think. This is when I die. My gaze, hoisted up over Shep’s head, begins to slip. And as it drops down to his face, I’m waiting in dread, expecting to see my own ghastly one, doubled and staring back at me. I don’t, though. Or I do, but it’s not doubled, and it doesn’t look ghastly. Nor does it look like mine. Not quite, anyway. I peer harder. That’s when I realize: it’s Nica’s face.
It’s Nica’s face!
Quickly I put my hands behind me, half raise myself. She doesn’t move forward to embrace me. She doesn’t move backward so I can sit all the way up. She doesn’t call my name. She doesn’t faint. She doesn’t do anything, just stares at me. She looks the same as she did in my car that night in front of Damon’s grandmother’s house: cutoffs and halter top from when she was eleven, bullet hole in her stomach, cigarette dangling from her lips. Her eyes, though, are dark, darker than I’ve ever seen them, so dark they seem to glitter.
At first I’m disappointed that she’s not as excited as I am. Then I realize that she’s probably too shocked to be anything else. “Nica?” I say gently.
At the sound of my voice, her eyes turn darker still. “What are you doing here?” she says in an ugly hiss-whisper. Hearing it, I understand that it’s anger her eyes are dark with. That she shouldn’t be happy to see me after all I’ve gone through to get to her seems terrible. Tears sting my eyes. I blink them back.
