I Must Have You

by JoAnna Novak

  “What’s your problem?” says Skank.

  “Um, have you read T.C. Boyle? Oh, I forgot. Miss Defiantly definitely has the skillz of a third-grader.”

  Skank claps her hands in front of Phoebe’s face. “Are you retarded?”

  “Bethany, that’s enough,” says Marjorie. “Pass out those things before they—”

  “So do I get two?” I ask.

  “No,” Marjorie says. “And I think we both know belaboring the matter is a waste of everyone’s time. Lisa, biscuit—not every John needs Paul, George, and Ringo.”

  Skank/Bethany scowls and her nose gets puggy. She looks pleased, like Marjorie reprimanding me tastes delicious. She deposits a Drumstick into my lap.

  “What’s in your craw? Balls?” I fold my hands across my thighs and flick her two middle fingers.

  Skank/Bethany’s eyebrows reach for her hairline. “Marjorie, is retardation contagious on this Unit? Is this—”

  “Bethany, talk to Station. Right now. Give me the treats.”

  Marjorie takes the boxes. As she’s distributing ice cream to the other girls, Phoebe shoots out her palm, face up, even with my hip.

  “Side five,” she whispers. “Operation Remove One Staff Member complete.” I slap her lightly, like my touch weighs nothing, the way Cher and her crew toss their hair in Clueless. “Your departure is so bagged.”

  “I hope so,” I whisper.

  “All right,” says Marjorie, gesturing with a Drumstick. (Note to Dr. Ogbaa: no way for Staff to eat with EDP girls that isn’t Urkel annoying.) A peanut flies into the center of our semicircle. Eight pairs of eyes hone in on it. “So we begin. As feelings come up, raise your hand so we can process.”

  Marjorie takes a big bite out of her Drumstick. Old ladies have that bulletproof thing. How does she withstand brain freeze? She covers her mouth and chomps.

  The room is pre-marathon mute, the moment before the speech team judge starts his stopwatch, but the starting gun never sounds and minutes stand still. Some tongues pop out, puppyish, licking lines of ice cream, the sides between cocoa wafers. Drumsticks are more complicated. Phoebe breaks off the bottom, where we all know there’s a chocolate nugget. I hold my cone, waiting until veins of vanilla start oozing out the shell, waiting until the inside is drippy and melty, waiting until everything is so soft I don’t need to chew. I can practically suck out the insides of the Drumstick like a tube of Fla-Vor-Ice or a langoustine or—swoon—Junior Carlos’s D.

  ··

  Tell El: By the time we go to the visiting room, Phoebe and I are BFFs. I imagine, in another life, she’s my big sister. She’s attending an impossibly urbane college in a city bigger than Chicago, and she’s trench-coating me into Goth nightclubs where guys in black eyeliner clasp leather bracelets around our wrists, marking us as their skinny slaves. She’s taking me out for fifteen-inch slices of pizza that we fur with parmesan; we tear off the crusts, sniff deeply, give the waste to homeless dudes. In the morning, she makes coffee—not the sludge my dad brews—but delicious, foamy skim cappuccinos in big bowls like they use on Friends at Central Perk. She’s my Phoebe, but Courtney-Cox-sized (I’ll be Rachel). We coordinate Joe Boxer jammies. I’m reading her drafts and voicing her dialogue. Who can believe what a mature little sis that Lisa is?! She sits in on fiction workshops, comments sagely, and no one blinks an eye.

  Marjorie leads a line of us to our visits. Only four girls have parents or friends or boyfriends coming. If I weren’t so excited to see Junior Carlos, I’d feel sad for the other patients, the ones stuck in the unit with the dietician, watching a video about the merits of carbohydrates. Eating disorders are lonely without regular people. I know: My mom convinced my dad that visiting me at Carousel Gardens would be like rewarding me, making me a celebrity, giving me an undeserved prize for bad behavior. In the three months of that first hospitalization, I only had one visitor: Elliot.

  The six of us walk past the intake office. The door is closed, its half-moon window partially obscured by a ruby red tinsel wreath. Inside is a girl who doesn’t yet realize she’s about to get my bed. I know I’m in recovery because I don’t even wonder how her body compares to mine. Mentally, I wish her luck with Skank.

  Three cold fingers tiptoe across my neck. I fall in stride with Phoebe.

  “You ready?” she says. Her eyes are pregame, flinty. She looks pumped.

  “Obviously. This is what I want.”

  “Marjorie.” Phoebe’s tone is over-the-top. “Why did Bethany call me a retard?”

  Marjorie pauses at the double-doors that separate the locked unit from public areas. Her ID card dangles on a pink lanyard. She rubs the card, then claps it between two fingers, like she’s killing a flea. Her hands shake.

  “It would be easy for me to say you were annoying her, wouldn’t it?”

  Phoebe shrugs.

  “Yes, you were. And I’m not sure why you seem proud of that. But, emotions aside, I see no circumstance … no reason for any—patient or staff—to use that word.”

  Marjorie hunches close to the sensor. She doesn’t remove the lanyard to swipe her ID. When the two doors pull apart, like ghosts in a supermarket, we follow her.

  “I definitely was annoying,” Phoebe says.

  To get to the visitation room, you cut through the lobby. Today, except for at the front desk, where a receptionist is reading Bridget Jones’s Diary, the room is empty.

  Noise is the main change when you cross the border between committed and free. It’s quiet. For fourteen chairs, there are four TVs on Mute: Jerry Springer, some soap opera, Jerry Springer. Pinky and the Brain.

  Phoebe pauses in front of the cartoons and starts humming the theme song.

  I fakesy-punch her ribs. Through her dark-green sweatshirt, I feel her bones and her muscles, wiry, breakable, a stretched-out Slinky. “Geek.”

  “Geek’s a chicken eater.”

  On the tube, the Brain wears an ACE bandage around his head like a turban.

  “Huh?”

  “Geek—it’s like a guy at a carnival who bites the heads off live chickens.”

  “Ew! Why do you know the randomest stuff?”

  “Well, that’s what writing—”

  Marjorie shakes her wrist: no watch. “Eating into visits, girleens.”

  If they could, other EDP girls would probably love that: eating time. They’re like me—terrified and exhilarated by counting down to the end. If someone said, super power: you can gobble the minutes until you die, who would binge and who would starve?

  I observe everything, like catching clues on Ghostwriter. White wall, two placards: Chapel to the left. Visiting to the right. Which means, in moments, my escape route will be Exit, turn right, left into Lobby, beeline for Junior Carlos’s Bimmer.

  Marjorie and the other girls keep walking. But I’m nervous. I pause. I don’t know why I’m so scared. With every beat, my heart burrows deeper and deeper into my chest. I wait for it to break through my back, hatch from me like an alien.

  ··

  Hardcore PDA is frowned upon in visiting rooms: now I know. Sure, we’re told not to accept gifts or foods without running them by staff, but no one’s said anything about making out.

  Junior Carlos clutches a bouquet of hot-pink roses with one hand, my waist with the other. He tastes like orange soda and aftershave and breadcrumbs. He kisses me. We’re in a play, live-action, one-take, all-in, now or never. Tongue, tongue, tongue.

  “Ahmmmm,” Marjorie says. “Greet and move on, Lisa. Please.”

  I float down from tiptoe. Two pairs of parents are shooting death rays from their bovine eyes. Phoebe, blank-staring at her mother (equally skinny, thicker blacker hair, no nose ring), flashes me a thumbs-up.

  “That’s my friend,” I say to Junior Carlos. We walk over to the table closest to the door. It’s set like this is a luncheon, with vases of daisies and ivory lace placemats. The room would be more civilized if it were like the Oak Room, downtown, where my grandmother and I used to get tea
and popovers. He pulls out a chair for me. I lift my chin in Phoebe’s direction. “The pretty one.”

  “Lee-Lee. There’s only one pretty one in this room. In this hospital—”

  “You’re gonna make me hot.”

  He nods, all sexy and skeezy. “Then you haven’t forgotten what I like.”

  Junior Carlos twists the pink ski tag dangling from his zipper. The paper comes off in his hand. He looks at it, crams it in a pocket, and unzips his coat. Underneath, he’s wearing a T-shirt—under that, I can tell from the collar, another T-shirt. This is something boys, who don’t have to worry about the bulkiness of layering, can do.

  “So … what’s the weather like out there?” I eye Marjorie, who’s seated in the far-most corner of the room, diagonal from the door.

  “Not stuffy like in here.”

  “Yeah … stuffy in my brain.”

  “Your parents call? Do you know what’s up with your grandma yet?”

  “Hah. Ha-ha. That would involve them being conscious.”

  “Conscientious?”

  “Whatever.”

  “Well, no news is—”

  “So is it snowing?” I say. My voice is slippery. “Will I need a jacket?”

  Junior Carlos stretches his arms out wide. His eyes are glued on me. He wriggles out of the coat and puts it on the table, a bright green heap between us. Without it, he looks vulnerable. Halfway undressed.

  “Dude, your fly is open,” I say. I kick his chair leg with the heel of my shoe. The metal thwacks flatly. “What’s that say—Ar-man-i. Is that a phoenix?”

  He flushes. His black stubble is more subtle when his skin has some color.

  “It’s an eagle. These are cheap. Emporio.”

  The girls and their parents talk in low, guiding voices. I can’t hear anything specific anyone says, but I get vibes: doubt, concern, hope, horror. With my fingernail, I scratch a black fuzzy on the placemat. I glance at Phoebe. She’s pressing her pinky into her nose, screwing her nose piercing. In the corner, Marjorie leans against the wall. An Agatha Christie novel is open on her clipboard.

  “Wanna take off?” I say to Junior Carlos.

  You only need codes if you care about what other people think.

  He nods. “After you, beautiful.”

  I stand up and push over my chair. It clatters against the floor. Junior Carlos pops up.

  “You okay, baby?” he says. He sounds stagey. He’s a bad actor.

  “Oops.” I smile at the room, like a curtsey, thank you, thank you, enjoy the performance. I pick up the chair. Make a show of pushing it back into the table until its maroon back pad is an inch from the lacy placemat. I grab J.C.’s green coat. It’s heavy. I tuck it under my arm and saunter toward the door.

  “Lisa,” Marjorie says. “Where—”

  “Skank, bitch, fuck, shit, shit, dammit, cunt!” Phoebe yells. I hear her fists pounding the table like it’s a bass drum. “Oh hell! Fuck! Christ sandwich! Balls!”

  I scurry into the hall, shuffling, my red Converse loose and annoying without their laces. Junior Carlos is behind me.

  “Don’t lose a shoe, Cinderella.” He rushes ahead, pushes open the door to the lobby, and we bolt. The receptionist’s eyes land on us.

  “Left the car running,” Junior Carlos says to her. He doesn’t stop moving, but he grins, and it’s one of those looks that can totally bust a woman’s kneecaps. Smooth.

  “You can’t just go outside with a patient, young man,” says the receptionist.

  I run through the automatic doors, and break into the cold. Snowflakes dump thick and heavy from the sky.

  “Fuck!” I say. “Where are you?”

  Junior Carlos grabs my elbow and pulls me with him.

  “Right by handicapped. It’s open. C’mon!”

  “Lisa Breit, get back here,” a woman shouts. Her voice quavers like a viola. It’s Marjorie. But only idiots turn to see who they’re leaving behind.

  Junior Carlos’s BMW is flicked with snow, parked between a white van and a red pickup. I open the door and throw myself in the passenger seat. The car is warm and damp feeling. It smells like chlorine and locker room. He opens the driver’s door and slides in.

  “Oh shit!” he yells. “Why don’t I steal more often?”

  I laugh. “Let’s go! Go! Go! Now!”

  I slap the volume on the radio. “Rock the Casbah” starts. I press “>>” and “>>” and “>>” until I get to “Lost in the Supermarket.” Junior Carlos backs out. The car swings, and we’re heading toward the parking lot’s perimeter. Somewhere behind us, an ambulance siren yowls.

  “Oh my god!” I sweep my hair into a ponytail. I feel giddy. Alive. Like every vocab word: Resplendent, adrenalized, enraptured. “How did that just work?”

  “Mad props. That was like Speed or something. Un-believable.”

  I settle back into the seat and buckle up. Something bunches under my butt. Flippers, goggles, towels, trunks: I’ve sat on his swim stuff. This time, though, I reach around and grab a set of black leather gloves.

  “Swank.” I smell them. They’re perfumey. They feel like brushing against a baby’s cheek. “Whose are these?”

  Junior Carlos’s glance goes akimbo. “My mom. She told me she lost those. She’ll be … relieved relieved. Stupid expensive.”

  I toss the gloves from hand to hand. “Nice. I mean, she might not miss ’em.”

  “Oh no. You don’t want to know what those bad boys cost.”

  “‘And if you don’t know, now you know, nnnnnnn,’” I sing. “Don’t you have any Biggie? We’re, like, in my dad’s CD tower.”

  “Hey! Don’t knock—”

  “Gleep!” I spread my fingers and start to try on the left glove. I do what I want—except when the leather won’t go over my first knuckles.

  8 ·· ELLIOT

  THE CUL-DE-SAC WAS AN OMEGA. The house I headed for was the apex of the extrados, the keystone, a crumb from Ridgedale’s table—but the only crumb I knew. Being friends with girls would have been über-convenient. The only person I could randomly ask for a ride was Anna, and the only person I randomly could ask to use the phone was my crush. I braced myself against the cold and speed-walked up MalSuvialMolloy’s driveway.

  So this was boyhood. Super Soaker pistols, colorful as honked party horns, littered the white-blanketed yard. Droplets of dog pee pocked a vector at the base of a snowman with a carrot pecker. I’d never been to a guy’s house; I’d never surveyed my crush’s lawn. In another circumstance, I’d marvel at my bravura, but this Friday was so weird I expected pigs to flap across the sky, to rut around in the clouds.

  More than anything, I wanted to talk to Lisa. I wanted to tell her about the drugs and Rocyo, even flirting with her dad. A whole day had piled on to everything I’d wanted to say yesterday, but I couldn’t talk to Lisa until I got home, to a phone, and only then if she was desperate enough to accept a call from me in the hospital.

  The steps to the Suva’s front porch were shoveled down to concrete. I climbed up. There was a stoop, but no walls or awnings or railings to block the wind. I shivered. The cold honed in on the shreds of black denim that revealed my knees. Rodillas, said my volition, cake to remember: your knees were the rods of your legs, held you ramrod straight—but also aided your bends. I worked holes in Señora Lurke’s pneumonic devices to feel smart, worked holes in my clothes to show off my body’s largest organ. Skin: mine was velum or muslin, mottled or moiré.

  Jalousie windows framed the front door, but I couldn’t see anything except the broad strokes of my reflection. I was nervous. The sun was already setting, a cracked orange glow stick. I couldn’t go back to Rocyo’s. If Ethan or one of his brothers or his mom didn’t answer, how would I get a hold of Anna? And when I did reach her, how would I not accuse her of being a junkie? I felt like an ingrate, a brat, a bad daughter: I hadn’t even been thinking about her addiction. I pressed the doorbell; it shined yellow when it chimed.

  I bent down, picked at a st
ring in my jeans. I ripped it off, rubbed it between my thumb and index finger until it balled, and set it on the back of my tongue. The string tasted like a dull thought. I couldn’t decide if this habit was good or bad, but when I was beyond hungry, I chewed or twisted thread into a knot, like Miss Hiday had done with a cherry stem on Late Night with David Letterman’s Stupid Human Tricks.

  With a butter knife clamped between his lips, a flamenco dancer con rosa, Ethan opened the door. His flannel was unbuttoned; underneath he wore a twilight-blue T-shirt with Nirvana and their dead-eyed yellow smiley. The collar was frayed with tiny, minus-sign-shaped slits. He jerked his head and flipped away a few strands of greasy hair. The knife stayed still.

  “Um, hey,” I said. “What’s up?”

  The blade scraped clean between his teeth as he pulled it from his mouth. He smelled like peanut butter. He looked at me with his green eyes. Every second tripled.

  “Do you like … did you want me to join some … chat group?” I said.

  He squinted and waved the knife in the direction of my chest, like that one old sub, infamous at Park for jousting at a pull-down map of the USSR with a pointer.

  “Yup. Exactamundo. On-line,” he said.

  “Oh. Well, I was in the neigh—”

  “This is better. C’mon in.”

  He held the door. I stepped onto a mat with an image of a grouper wearing a Santa hat. Inside, the tile was printed with muddy-brown fractals. On the wall, three bright-blue parkas hung by their hoods. The house smelled like mac and cheese.

  Ethan motioned to a nimbus of street salt surrounding a plastic tray printed with shoe grooves. I recognized his black-and-white Vans—they looked like they’d waded through pond scum. It was weird seeing them without his feet.

  “Can you take off your boots?”

  I nodded, balancing against one red wall. Door slams, brothers, parents, guitars, cartoons, TV, deejays, punks, ringing phones, sportscasters: I heard nothing. We were alone.

  “I’m just finishing up a snack. Then we chill. Tight?”

  “Tight.” The word sounded like a frog hopping out of my mouth.

  We walked into the kitchen. There was something frightening about being so close to someone I didn’t really know. From the door frame, I watched Ethan. He stood at an island. It was covered with packages of all the stuff I told my clients to avoid: Corn Nuts, Fruit Roll-Ups, Fruit by the Foot, Gushers, Oreos, Chips Ahoy, Dunkaroos, Rold Gold buttery pretzels, Doritos 3D. I could feel my eyes bug.