I Must Have You

by JoAnna Novak

  “All right, Big Pun. I’m driving us to the Hyatt in Oakbrook. My dad has the penthouse on forever-reserve.”

  “No! I mean, not yet.”

  “What no? What’s the plan? Please tell me you haven’t cooked up some kind of me-heisting-you scheme. Because lines are drawn—”

  “We have to go to the Flagg Creek Motel.” I sit up straight and tuck my pelvis. Now I feel respectable. “Elliot’s there.”

  “Who’s Elliot?”

  I pause. I get how EDP girls who tell stories about hitting rock bottom or asking for help must feel, admitting the grossest things in the world. “… she used to be my best friend?”

  “Oh. Tell me if I remember … Skinny? Weird?”

  “Very skinny. Very weird.”

  “What’s she doing out at the boom-boom room?”

  “The what?”

  “Don’t Park kids still call it that? They did when I was there.”

  I unbuckle and kneel on my seat. I lean over and wrap my arms around Junior Carlos’s neck. Right now, I think. I want to say I love you. Instead, I give him a peck on the cheek, a gulf of stubble. I rub my kiss into his skin with my thumb. I say: “You’re old.”

  12 ·· ELLIOT

  LIFE IS BORING, A STORY that ends the same for everyone. Girls who call anorexia dullsville have chucked in the towel or been hoodwinked. What’s more important than your body? In the last issue of Real Talk, I decided I’d poll my clients: Are you trying to keep your diet exciting or expecting foods to do the work? Are you happy with your weight or are you just lying to yourself?

  My thoughts were optimistic, clear as I decked out the room. Lisa had talked to me like her usual self over the phone; now I wanted her to want to spend the night. We could have a sleepover, a hotel party, like Marissa Turner told me her parents and other popular kids’ parents were planning for after the eighth grade dance. She could tell Junior Carlos to scram or at least have him bring us a two-liter of Diet Coke and then scram so we could rekindle our friendship in peace. If she made me read stupid Cosmo, maybe I’d even share my own confession (Suva dropped trou—and it was just, like, watching me!), and, for the first time, we’d talk about boys’ bodies instead of girls’ before falling asleep in the narrow bed, our shoulder blades jabbing one another.

  I smoothed the whisper of wrinkles in the lumpy comforter where I’d been sitting. I took the baggie out of the drawer and set the heroin on the pillow like a Peppermint Patty or some disgusting chocolate mint. (Who wanted food where her face would go?) I replaced the phonebook, stacked it on the Bible, and shut the drawer. My heart was gunning. I was ready, ready to get ready, the way Uncle Marky had taught me mise en place a few weeks ago, when we made gingerbread men: bringing the butter and eggs to room temperature on the counter, weighing flour and cinnamon and ginger, coloring royal icing in ramekins, piping bags and pastry tips and paintbrushes all set.

  There was a clock radio on the nightstand on the far side of the bed. I turned it on: AM announced the hourly traffic reports, black ice incidents, and a rash of accidents in the southwest suburbs. Boring. I switched to the real stations, where pop and techno jams pumped people up for Friday. I skipped too-peppy—Shania Twain and *NSYNC, too plodding (“Sex and Candy”), too sad (“Jumper”), but at “Bitter Sweet Symphony,” I stopped. I turned up the volume and sank onto the floor.

  Here I was: leaning against a bed that had surely seen fat, disgusting, flesh-slapping boinking, in a stale-smelling fleabag motel, a block from school, no clue where my mom was, the girl who used to be my best friend coming over, my head muddled from drugs, my stomach a blimp from two bites of PBJ. Every time you feel the acuteness of Now, there’s so much Then behind it. I was forlorn and pitying myself, and I felt bad for feeling bad for myself, which was as obvious as emotions get. Why did I have to be the worst? Other girls had friends. Dependable parents. Other girls could eat and not spaz. I bit my lip and blinked until I couldn’t help it, I was crying again; even when I let my eyelids rest I couldn’t calm down.

  “‘No change,’” I sang, my voice ragged and desperate. “‘I can change.’” I turned up the volume until I couldn’t hear myself. I stomped my feet. I banged my fists against my forehead.

  When the song ended, I took a deep breath. I found B96. K-Ci & JoJo, I could deal with: Lisa was nuts about them.

  I rolled up my sleeves and looked at my cuts. They needed work.

  I opened my Trapper to the Real Talk section and positioned it on the shaky desk. I took a ballpoint that said FLAGG CREEK in gold script and set it at an angle that suggested I’d be answering Lisa’s knock at the door media res. The blocky, mishmash chair, with padded arms and carved legs, I pulled out, not enough for someone to sit in, but enough for someone to think I’d been at work.

  Good.

  I tried the TV again. Having background would create a cool vibe, like I’d been hanging out. But the best I could find was Sabrina the Teenage Witch. I shut it off. No way I wanted to see Melissa Joan Hart’s Mrs. Potato Head face.

  I went to the bathroom. For once, I wished I used makeup, even Carmex or Vaseline, which probably seeped transdermal calories, but whatev. I looked bad. Under my eyes were gulches of bruisy shadow. My lips were seamed with blood; above the top one, I saw tiny, fine brown hairs. The light didn’t help any: my skin was dirty-water gray. I turned on the shower. Maybe humidity would dewify my pallor.

  At the desk table, I picked up the ballpoint. I put the nib end in my mouth and tugged until the body came out. Somewhere I’d seen this, but it was still amazing how much eureka you could have alone. I shook the ink cartridge and the spring into my hand and I pulled the spring until the coil straightened. Now I knew the drill: I traced over yesterday’s marks, pressing until I felt less than nothing, ruthless. At the end of each scratch, a bead of blood bloomed.

  ··

  Even though I’d seen her in Science on Wednesday, standing outside my door at the Flagg Creek, Lisa reminded me of someone else—an older someone with ratty blonde hair, Courtney Love. Lisa but puffier. Off-balance. Her red lipstick was smeared over her Cupid’s bow.

  We didn’t usually hug, but I opened up my arms. Today was different.

  “Hi, Elliot.” She sounded like her mom, who used the same smarting tone when she had to address me.

  She waved down my arm and walked in like this was her personal motel. She stood with her back to the TV. I positioned myself in her line of vision, leaning against the nightstand. The phone bumped my tailbone.

  “Well, yuck.” Lisa’s glance lapped the room. “Tell me again why you’re sleeping here?”

  “I’m not, not necessarily.”

  She picked up the Velcroed remote and put on a pouty face. “Damn. ’Cuz I was, like, gonna gank that.”

  I tried to get out of my head. The Christmas sleepover had been awkward at first, too. PJs, talking, VH1, music—that had helped us be ourselves.

  “What happened to you? I mean, your dad—”

  Lisa sat on the bed. She tucked her feet; she was facing me. I could see the bright red of her low-tops underneath her calves. Even if her mouth was bee-stung and messy, even if fat rounded her formerly-angular chin, she was still beautiful, more beautiful than my girls, more beautiful than I’d ever be.

  “There are long stories. Then there’s the last twenty-four—no, thirty-ish hours.”

  “Well, I’ve got time. I’m here for the night … or until my mom decides to give me a call.” Like I was trying to surprise a rabbit in a field, I inched closer to the bed. I seared my spine to the headboard and hugged the pillow’s blood-tilde to my stomach.

  “Where’s your mom?” Lisa asked.

  “Who knows? Who cares?”

  “Woah. Harsh-sauce.”

  I clenched my teeth and raised my eyebrows. “If you’d been stranded at Rocyo’s house, you’d be pissed, too.”

  “Ew. I heard she gave Mr. Rhodes a hand job.”

  “That is so sick, I wish I were bulimic so I co
uld barf in, like, solidarity.”

  “C’mon, Elliot. Just—didn’t you get what I was saying yesterday?”

  “Saying when?” Maybe I could convince her I’d never called during C Lunch, that everything between us was all good, that there was a mysterious misunderstanding risen out of nowhere. The more I thought about it, the more this rift did seem like a freak occurrence—one Lisa had witnessed without being thoughtful enough to send warning signs or light caution flares.

  Lisa shook her head. She stood up, hiking the waistband of her pants through her coat. “I knew this was a mistake. I knew I should’ve—fuck.”

  “What?” I folded my arms across my chest. I tried ESP, to bore a message through her skull: Go back to who you were. “What should you have done? Who’s telling you what to do?”

  “Jesus Christ, Elliot. No one’s telling me what to do. I do what I want. I don’t listen to—Oh my god. I’m done.”

  “Done with what? Done with caring?”

  “I’m done trying to, like, help you.”

  “Why do I need your help?”

  Lisa stomped around the bed. Her sneakers slapped on the carpet. I hoped someone would knock on the ceiling or punch the wall so we could laugh at over-sensitive adults. She grabbed me by the arm and yanked me off the bed.

  “Look. At. You.”

  I eyed my body. My thighs were huge, like hunks of black-denim meat.

  “I’ve looked.”

  “You’re sick. Joking about bulimia doesn’t make you … like, cured. And it doesn’t make you better than me.”

  I pulled out of her grasp. She stunk, like girl sweat and buttery popcorn and cheap cologne. Vegans were supposed to smell, and Ethan Suva—all parts of him—had smelled way better than Lisa.

  I climbed onto the bed and tucked my knees to my chest. I plucked the heroin off the pillow and tossed it from one hand to the next.

  “I don’t think I’m better than anyone,” I said in an innocent way. My head hurt. Everything was happening too fast and my throat burned and I couldn’t tell if I was serious or not. I felt all tripped up. “‘I’m just a girl … blah, blah. Little old me.’”

  Lisa exhaled like a steam engine. Her hands fisted and her fingers stretched long, and she closed her eyes and bared her teeth, and, without any noise, screamed.

  “I’m going to tell you what I know, Elliot,” she said, her eyes still shut. “Then I’m going. And I’m not playing when I say that I don’t want you to talk to me. Not for a long, long time. I’m not a jerk—so I’m not gonna say never. Because I don’t know if I believe in never. Death is never—that’s about it. Would you look at me? Stop throwing around that—”

  “What?” I jutted out my chin. Mine was pointy. “Heroin? You want some?”

  “I’m not even going there. Unbelievable. You’re, like, really serious about killing yourself, aren’t you?”

  I waved my wrists at her.

  “I don’t know if you hear me,” she said. “I realize you could be like one of those brain-dead, zombie girls I just spent the night with—because, yes, my mother checked me into the effing hospital because of those stupid, idiotic diet pills you gave me.”

  “I thought you liked those!”

  “I don’t care if I once liked those. I don’t care if I once liked … Barney the Dinosaur! That doesn’t mean I have to like … diet pills or Barney forever.”

  “So I’m like Barney and diet pills?”

  She paused. “All rolled into one. One anorexic, self-important, childish, scared little girl.”

  I squeezed the baggie. “I’m not afraid of anything.”

  “You could barely watch that … that … the porno. You’re afraid to see naked people having sex. That’s how emotionally stunted you are. Or, just, like chronically perverse.”

  “What? You were the one who was all like, ‘Elliot, tell me evvvvvverything—’”

  “Yeah, because I didn’t want you to feel, like, self-conscious or whatever. Oh my god! You think screwing with my head’s going to make me forget that you’re actually, like, … You talk like you’re so tough and, what, you’re a chicken? Actually, worse. You’re a geek.”

  “C’mon. Seriously. Lisa, you have to—look, I’d do anything. Okay? Really. Anything. Please. Please.” Suddenly, I knew she wasn’t joking. She could leave. An almost-adult was waiting, downstairs, to give her a ride. She didn’t care about her eating disorder. In fact, she was the worst kind of girl: her anorexia had been a phase, like slap bracelets or glow-in-the-dark pacifiers.

  “Give me a chance. Anything—truth or dare me.”

  “What is this, fourth grade?”

  “Don’t be a poser. We played last year.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Whatever … Truth or dare.”

  Truths sucked. The epitome of lame. No one cared what you said. People only wanted to see what you’d do.

  “Dare,” I said.

  “Fine. Have a three-way with me and Junior Carlos.”

  “You’re gonna rope your boyfriend into that without, like, consulting him?”

  “How do you know who I’ve consulted? This is exactly the issue, you thinking you know everything—”

  “Okay, geez. I’m so sorry. Forgive my mistake.”

  “Even that—you’re so patronizing. Unbelievable.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not patronizing. I’m trying to keep up with you. Lisa who changes her mind about who she’s gonna be every year, apparently. I haven’t changed. This is me, like it or not. Me is anorexic. So … if you need anorexic me to like … whatever with you and your boyfriend, if that’s gonna show you I’m not the psycho, robot Skeletor you think I am, fine. Whatever. Get Junior Carlos. Sounds like a blast.”

  “Oh, this is … wow,” Lisa said. Her voice brightened, the way in movies crazy people sounded before they cracked. “Sure! Outie!”

  ··

  As soon as the door slammed, I opened the heroin and dipped. I’d developed tolerance; I wasn’t woozy like I’d been in Ethan’s bedroom. Instead, I felt wound-up, on edge, strung out: expressions I’d heard before. Now I understood. I sucked my finger, getting each bitter taste of the powder, until I calmed down.

  The room was stuffy, hot. My stores of resolve had been replenished. Now the last leg of the walk home didn’t seem so impossible. I could make it. I zipped up my Trapper. Pushed in the chair. Another twenty minutes and I’d be inside, asleep in my own clean, non-roast-beef bed with Michael Jordan watching over me.

  The knock surprised me. I hadn’t really expected Lisa to come back.

  “Elliot?” He didn’t look like anyone a fourteen-year-old could date. He was a man, in a bright-green puffy coat. His hair was black and tousled, sparingly gelled. Tasteful, I thought. Cute.

  I held out my hand. “Elliot.”

  His hands were big, warm, and, in patches, scaly. “Weird name for a girl.”

  “Go in, baby,” Lisa said. I couldn’t see her. “It’s freezing out here.”

  The three of us stood in the room, actors dumped in a minimal set. On B96, Jay-Z rapped and a girl whoop-whooped; it was awkward being with a couple that was half-Lisa. The room was smaller than the studio Anna rented us in Soho—and it felt tighter with more people. Dingier, too. I sat with my back against the headboard, where I’d been earlier, and Lisa turned the desk chair so it faced me. Junior Carlos took off his backpack and set it at the foot of the bed. If I’d been in his spot, I would have seemed awkward, but he was tall enough that just standing he looked like he was doing something. I liked him.

  “Who’s Elliot?” he asked.

  “My mom’s a poet. Ever heard of T.S.? The Wasteland?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, there yah go.”

  My knee bounced yesyesyesyes in time with Jay-Z.

  “Elliot’s mom teaches at COCC. J.C.’s doing gen-eds there. That’s general—”

  “I think she knows what gen-eds are, babe.”

  I wondered if they’d ever had a mén
age à trois, if they were always this terse with each other.

  I half laughed. “The perks of having a professor for a mom. Is it J.C. or … ?”

  “It’s actually Charles, but I go by whatever.”

  “All right, Whatever.”

  Lisa glared at me. Junior Carlos smirked.

  “Girls, want something to drink?” He unzipped his backpack and bottles clinked. “I’ve got vodka and … vodka.”

  “Elliot doesn’t drink calories,” Lisa said.

  “Sure, I do. I drank calories today, even … with your dad.”

  There was no need to ruin that joke.

  “I have … ” I hopped off the bed and disappeared into the bathroom and returned. “One cup!”

  Tomorrow, I told myself, would be an epic calorie burn. Tomorrow, I’d start a three-day fast. I’d take the Ex-Lax my mom kept in the medicine cabinet and the handful of Fen-Phen I’d snagged for myself and do two thousand sit-ups and two thousand burpees and two thousand lunges, one thousand on each side; I’d study in my bra to shiver off any remaining fat grams. Then, I felt awful: all these tomorrows made me sound like my clients, as badly normally lazy as Other girls.

  Junior Carlos laughed. He held up a bottle of Absolut and lofted it over his head like a trophy.

  “Fill ’er up?” he said.

  I held out the cup. He poured vodka to the rim and it spilled over and down my hand. It was ice cold, like he’d just taken it from the freezer. I brought my hand to my mouth and licked.

  Heroin was nothing. Scotch was whatever. Vodka stang. Stung?

  Junior Carlos stoppered the bottle. “Come here, Lee-Lee, stop being weird.”

  “Elliot wants to have a threesome,” Lisa said. She pushed her chair further back. It rapped the table.

  “You mentioned. Due bellezze. Excellent.”

  “Being sexy in Italian isn’t gonna erase how you talk like Wayne Campbell.”

  “ ’cha! Get it through your melon! Babe-raham Lincoln. Over here.”

  “Yeah, not gonna get me in the mood.”

  “Cheers!” I said. The cup was flimsy, squeezable in my grip, spilling. “To friends!”