by JoAnna Novak
“My mom just raided Sam’s Club. My bros like their food big and boxy.”
“Hah.”
He was spreading peanut butter to the upturned edges of a flour tortilla. He poked the same knife into a jelly jar printed with a cartoon of Roadrunner. The metal clinked glass. He hocked a loogie of grape onto the PB, folded the tortilla in half, and held up the knife like it was another finger.
“You wanna wrap?”
I rested my palms on the counter. He waved a plate, printed with balloons—“Happy Birthday at Discovery Zone!”—under my face.
“Nah, your snack.” I shrugged, trying to act like we were two buds, friends, hanging out. But we were hanging out, there were two of us; maybe friendship was simply a product of repetition.
“Hey, I got a whole pack of tortillas here.” He mispronounced the word intentionally, in the ironic way smart but cool, non-jock boys spoke: Tore. Till. Uhzzzz. “And, like, a couple things of Jif.”
“Is that vegan?”
He nodded, shook his hair out of his eyes, and took a bite.
I liked watching him chew, the busy way his mouth worked, as if it were fetching out the knot in a kinked-up necklace. I liked him in my jaw and my pelvis and my stomach. I liked his eyes, traffic-light green, go, the long lashes fringing them, go, fawn freckles dappling his nose, go, Elliot, collect two hundred dollars, go. I liked his face, sorta lupine, especially around the chin. I liked how, like me, he had a diet.
“You sure you don’t wanna bite? This is one sick PBJ.”
With my tongue, I poked around my mouth, looking for the thread. It was gone. I tried not to ogle the snacks. Ethan’s brothers had to be stoners. I touched my coat pocket. Maybe they’d want to buy my mom’s drugs, if I couldn’t figure out how to replace them in the sewing box.
“You’re hungry, dudette,” said Ethan. “I can tell. I mean, no offense but. You’ve got that ‘gimme some grindage’ look.”
“I—yah know, that does seem like … um. A pretty good wrap. Any chance I could get half … a tore till uh?”
“Yeah, mang.” He opened a drawer and took out a clean knife. “I’ll split ya.”
He halved his tortilla and passed me the unbitten part.
“Thanks,” I said.
I held the plate under my mouth as I ate. It was an oozy roll-up. Grapey peanut butter dribbled out. I’d forgotten the sweet, cozy rush of a sandwich; it tasted so good, I almost cried. I remembered things, from when my diet included more than apples and Listerine tabs and Lean Cuisines: chocolate ice cream sandwiches with vanilla in between (the ice cream melted, the cookie stuck to your fingers). I remembered fork-and-knifing cheese enchiladas, winding up with a greasy, saucy corn tortilla loop. I missed the fullness that followed those meals, a heavy satisfaction like a giant kneeling on your stomach. I chewed methodically, my mandible creaky from disuse.
“Yum to the O,” said Ethan. “Am I right?”
I nodded. He didn’t know how right. I looked at the floor. I wore black anklets. Ethan, Umbro socks. Friends hung out sans shoes. Barefoot, belly down, on snow leopard rugs, eating whatever. Friends said: make yourself at home. Wanna watch a movie? Wanna snoop around? Wanna snack? Wanna go upstairs?
··
Ethan’s bedroom smelled like celery and felt like a cellar, even though we were on the second floor. It was dark. The burlap curtains were mostly closed: I could see a squint of the snow-blustering sky. I lumped my puffy coat on the porridge-colored carpeting to cushion my tailbone. Ethan was finessing Kurt Cobain’s volume. The only part of the song I knew was about will being good.
My eyes were everywhere, exploring the unknown territory of a boy’s bedroom. The wallpaper looked like isometric graph paper I’d seen on my dad’s desk. On the bookshelf, Beckett showed up thrice (No Exit, Waiting for Godot, Molloy) next to other comrades, Nabokov and Burgess and Burroughs. I recognized two shiny hardcovers: Ethan had twice aced About the Author, Park’s annual writing contest that resulted in the winner’s story being bound and displayed in the Beanbag Bookworm Lounge in the library. (Third and fourth grade—I’d been so mad at myself for not winning. I was supposed to be good at everything.) His bed churned with wrinkly sheets.
Was Ethan’s will so good he didn’t jack off? Was he better than Lisa’s dad? Or me?
I heard the hissy click of a lighter, and two wide pillar candles on a nightstand sizzled. Ethan slid down the side of his bed.
“Woah, this floor’s like prison-cell hard.” His face twitched like he’d gotten a mini electric shock. “You wanna sit on the bed?”
The house suddenly felt endless. I was nervous.
“Um…”
He stood up and yanked on the sheets, sorta straightening them. He leaned a saggy black pillow against the headboard.
“Seriously, mang. More comfy.”
I sat down on the bed, knees tented. I covered them with my coat. For an inhale, I was nervous—Lisa and I didn’t even hang out this up-close—but if I wanted to make a phone call, I needed to get over that. After all, Ethan had chatted me; I was the one brazen enough to show up at his house. And anyhow, he was sitting at the foot of the bed. Everything was fine enough.
I leaned back. The headboard squeaked from the force of my bony back. “Your parents don’t care about you having a girl in your room?”
“I mean, maybe?” He ran over to the CD player, started the song over and lowered the volume. Then he slid down the bed again. Our feet were an inch from touching. “Should they care? Shit, is that like in the manual? Dr. Spock, does he say—”
“Live long and prosper.” It was everything I knew about Star Trek.
Ethan flashed me the Vulcan V. “I’m talkin’ about the guy who died last year. The psychologist or whatnot. Does he say, so, to make your kid normal, care this much?” He held his hands apart. “What, would your parents care?”
For a moment, the song was just guitar, a plodding strumming. The room was murky even with the candles, but I could still see Ethan. His eyes, in the dim, had become hazel. They were glued on me, like we were both under the same covers. It felt good to be watched.
“I don’t know … I honestly have no clue. My mom wouldn’t. My dad? Um …”
“Well, even if caring were on the Unit’s parental agenda, no one’s home.”
“No one?”
“Mang, they’ve got their twenty-four seven on lock. Crib be mine. My moms is at Market Day ’cuz District 107 kiddos gots to get their French toast sticks. Dad plays money at the Merc. My brothers—rolling with Mary Jane and Molly. Dude.”
“Dude?”
“You know … not girls. Drugs.”
“Yeeaah. Gotcha.”
“Right, so, they’re consumed with their own consumption, like what can we sell or sell to ourselves. We allllll gotta be better off. 401K, Roth IRA, payday? Comprende? It’s that slave to desire shee-it. They’re purchasing their own indentured servitude, nailing in the post and locking up the cuffs. Ipso facto, they can’t care about me, at least not that much, because what can I sell them? A nice retirement? I don’t sell. In fact, nard the sales. I’ll check out my Ad Busters from the library, spank you very much. Do you know how much the government makes in tax revenue? You hear about all that mail the post office is hoarding? Dude. Buy Nothing Day times 365. So, whether my family cares … well, it’s not like they’ve got this place under surveillance. So what I do or don’t do, what’s it to them?”
Boys dizzied themselves into these referential games of intellectual Twister on the daily, especially gifted boys, and those were the moments when Other Girls sucked the most. They were intimidated; they were dumb. I remembered my favorite quote from A Clockwork Orange; we’d read it together in the dystopian unit in Headways last quarter.
“‘But what I do I do because I like to do.’” I tried to sound sure, like everything Ethan touted made sense, like it all boiled down to one slick sentence.
“Not quite, Alex, my brother. What is Locke? My body, my propert
y.”
I laughed and rolled my eyes. On the ceiling, neon sticky stars constellated Ursa Major and Ursa Minor and Cassiopeia. Nirvana was thrashing, loud.
“I get that,” I said. “I don’t want other people telling me what to do with my body. How to govern it, I guess. Like, let me maintain it however I want. My parents don’t get on me about that.”
“Muy decent of them.”
I thought about Rocyo, then, about what she’d told Miss Troubaugh. The room seemed gloomier. “Most adults, anyhow.”
“Well, you’re not worried about the Suva grown-ups then, Elliot. AKA, you’re not meetin’ my parents. What’s the visit for? I mean, yeah. It’s a little out of the azure.”
I shrugged. “You chatted me?”
“Mangette. Don’t even.”
I sighed. “I’m really bad at being smooth in situations like this, so I’m not even gonna try. If I show you something, can I use your phone?”
Ethan laughed. His whole head hinged, like the lid of a can. “Yah coulda asked to use the phone first. I’m not gonna, like, hold you hostage on behalf of Illinois Bell.”
I took my coat off my knees and felt around for the right pocket. I tossed the baggie into the center of the bed like it was as innocuous as a hackie sack. It landed between Ethan and me.
His nostrils flared. “You swear you’re not some narc?”
“How does that even make sense?”
Ethan picked up the heroin. He tossed it from one palm to the other, like an apricot he was waiting to nosh. I watched the bones in his hand; they were as flat as the laces of his sneakers, but not markered GO VEGA.
“Where did you get this?”
“My house. More specifically, my mom’s closet.”
“That’s screwed up.”
I was surprised to feel, like the premonition of a sneeze, defensive. “Didn’t you say your brothers were out doing drugs?”
“Well, yeah.” Ethan sat the baggie next to him. He glanced at it. “But my brothers are in high school. Your mom is … a mom.”
“She’s a writer. Like me. Those clichés about artists are sometimes true.”
“Like they’re starving?”
I bristled. “She’s temperamental.”
“Are you sure not just mental?”
“Do you think your brothers would wanna buy this?”
“Exsqueeze me? Dude, I’m not, like, a middle man for them. They can rot their own brains. Do you know what straight-edge means?” He pushed up the cuff of his flannel. Three Xs and his creamy wrist stared at me. This time, I couldn’t help seeing those same Xs in the Nirvana logo, those eyes that were all blotto.
“I know what hypocrite means, Kurt Cobain.”
“Woah, don’t get psycho, okay?”
I felt my face scrunch into a scowl. I forced myself to breathe. Eating that wrap had put me on edge. I was disgusting, the opposite of the song: I had no will. “I’m sorry … fuck. I’m acting like an idiot and I have, like, no clue. I should just, like, bounce.”
“It’s all good. Dude. Relax. Slow down, okay?”
I nodded.
“So, this is H?”
“What else?”
“I mean, I guess lots of stuff. Coke?”
“My mother isn’t that boring, thanks. If she’s into drugs, she’s hardcore.”
“Aight. So, these drugs in exchange for a phone call? Is that the gist of this transaction?”
It didn’t make much sense to me either. “I don’t know. Actually—” Suddenly I felt overwhelmed. What was I doing? Why was I here? “No, I definitely should go. This was a mistake and you don’t need to be dragged into … whatever this is. I’m sorry.”
I stood up, leaving Ethan sitting in a skewed lotus pose on the bed. I didn’t need distractions like this, the generic, hetero-boringness of my clients. I needed to get home, work on Real Talk or call Lisa. But nothing was propelling me back into the January cold. Kurt Cobain was singing about wings. Then like “touch yourself” or “fuck yourself.” I looked at the ceiling. Right above Ethan’s one, thin black pillow was the North Star. I wasn’t leaving. I was just standing there.
Ethan kicked out a foot and jabbed my torso. His socks’ soles were brand-new clean. “Hey. We’re hanging out. Relax, mang. You wanna try?”
“Try what?”
Ethan picked up the baggie. He unknotted the top.
“You know what this stuff is supposed to smell like? You taste it?”
“I don’t typically go around tasting unmarked substances.” I sat down again, but this time I didn’t lean back. I sensed the CD-case distance between my spine and the pillow. Our bodies were that much closer. I wondered if Ethan could feel it, too. “Anyhow, don’t you need a needle or something? Those, like, broken looped rubber bands?”
“I think this is the perfect occasion for a sample,” said Ethan. He unknotted the baggie and held it under his nose. He closed his eyes and inhaled.
“What does it smell like?”
“Kinda nothing? I don’t know. You tell me, Heroin Chic.”
He held out his palm. I scooted into the center of the bed and leaned over. My hair grazed his hand. I extended my nose above the bag. “Like medicine? Hold on—”
I sniffed deeper. This time I tried to find Ethan’s skin beside the drug smell. Peanut butter, some whatever hand cream: putting my face on his hand was ten thousand times more intimate than having anyone’s dick down my throat. Stupid Lisa. Stupid porn. “Yeah, like. Have you ever accidentally sucked the coating off an aspirin?”
“Not really a hospital, but nasal spray?”
“Or vitamins, their aftertaste. Think it’s vegan?”
“Dude. Very funny.” His cheeks dimpled when he smiled. He mimed a chortle. “Why you gotta hate?”
“I don’t hate,” I said. “Just seeing if you’re seriously game.”
“Are you?”
I opened my mouth and made a show of biting my pinky. I tasted grape jelly.
“Don’t you think there’s like trace calories? Isn’t that your can of Pringles?”
“Huh?”
“Elliot. Mangette. You know what I mean.” He sucked in his cheeks and fluttered his eyes. “Ghouliet. Kate Moss. Lead Sister.”
“Lead—?”
“Karen Carpenter?”
“What?”
“Dude. Never mind.”
I sighed. “Consider the towel thrown in. I’ve already eaten a sandwich—”
“You mean that piddly wrap attack?”
“Yes. The gimongo wrap attack. Heroin calories aren’t gonna kill me.”
I put my pinky in my mouth, pushed it back to a corner. The skin inside me was wet and warm and smoother than inside my vagina. I stuck my pinky in the baggie. When I pulled it out, it was white capped, like Lik-M-Aid Fun Dip. Ethan’s eyes were big, green again, spattering, on me. I gave him a look that said, nudge, nudge. Then he was sucking his index finger, dipping it, too, and we were right there in his bedroom, getting high or stoned or strung out together, for facts or science or whatever.
“‘E.T., phone home,’” I said, wiggling my pinky.
“Nerd,” said Ethan.
“One, two—”
“Uno, dos, tres, cuatro … ”
“Cinco, cinco, seis!” I shouted.
“Really? Offspring?”
“The Offspring,” I said. It felt good to be right. “And … yeah. I know, I know. Somewhere, Kurt’s cringing.”
I put my pinky in my mouth and closed my eyes. I tasted bitter black coffee like Lisa’s dad’s sludge, something vinegary, anti-sweet. I swallowed. The taste stayed, like a phlegmy cough. I opened my eyes. The room rocked and swayed, and Ethan’s head was cocked.
“Grody on a stick.”
I nodded. I felt queasy. “Can we get messed up from this?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. D.A.R.E. skipped this part.” I watched his tongue prodding behind his upper lip. “I don’t feel anything. Do you?”
My mout
h opened, but I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t tell if my heartbeat was speeding up or slowing down. My eyes closed. When I tried to open them, blackness tarred them shut. For a moment I panicked and then I let myself go. Time was inflating, the opposite of what adults ascribed to growing up: nothing was faster, each second was inflating, quadrupling. I saw a field of minutes, a thousand balloons, a wish inside each one. And what I wanted, even with Ethan Suva offering up his Friday evening to me, Flacisima, Heroin Chic, what I wanted was Friday sleepovers under the snow leopard blanket and mornings resisting Larry Breit’s bagels and playing Ace of Base, “The Sign,” three years after it was all that and a bag of chips and talking about what life would be like after Park, after high school, after college, how our friendship, like our skinniness, would span a lifetime. I wanted nothing but everything with Lisa.
··
I blinked. I was lying on my side in the bed like I had decided to take a nap. The bedroom was brighter now, almost glowing, and something smelled vanilla and cakey. A third candle burned next to the others. The music had changed to something I didn’t recognize: there was a xylophone, a plaintive voice singing about arms and surprises. I looked around: Suva the youngest had left.
The door opened. Ethan walked in, carrying two tumblers, the kind that had held the grape jelly. The Breit’s reused their jars, too.
“Water?” he said, handing me a glass with a beaming blue stegosaurus.
I sipped. The water woke up my whole body. “Did I pass out?”
“Yeah, dude, you just nodded. Drink up. No calories, I swear. Just good ol’ Lake Michigan H-2-O. You probably coulda eaten all that tore till uh. Not just half of a half. Mangettes need more than nibbly nibs. You wanna make that phone call?”
“Whatever,” I said. I was bummed. I’d always expected my first blackout to mark the end of a marathon fast, some stack of five or seven days when I’d keel over after ingesting nothing Darjeeling and lemon water. Fainting from heroin sorta discredited the faint. “Are you high?”
