by JoAnna Novak
“New friends!” Junior Carlos was taller than me, so he stooped for a gulp.
Lisa shook her head.
I took a drink—and another one, to prove Lisa wrong. I gave Junior Carlos the cup and leaned across the bed to turn up the music. When the guy sang, “Don’t stop, get it get,” I purposefully avoided Lisa’s eyes. I could feel them, burning and furious and itching to rap along. She loved this one.
“I don’t wanna be a playa no more,” Junior Carlos sang, dancing over to Lisa. “Your turn. ‘Punish-ah, punish-ahhhhhh.’”
“Did you know Big Pun weighs, like, six hundred pounds?” I sat on the bed with my legs out straight and bobbed to the music. “He’s morbidly obese.”
“Fuck me!” said Lisa. “Should I start telling you my dad saw Chris Farley do stand-up?”
“Are you kidding?” I said. “How big was he in real life?”
“Seriously!”
“Hey, heyuhh.” All of a sudden, Junior Carlos sounded slurry, like the tape of a drunk person we’d listened to in D.A.R.E. “You need to un-wiiiiiind. Get it … wiiiine? Oops … vodkaaaaah?”
Lisa brushed past Junior Carlos, the way girls accidentally touched boys they liked when they were excused to use the hall pass, the way Ethan Suva had brushed my calf on the bus. This brush, though, was a shove.
“I’m leaving. This is literally the stupidest thing I’ve ever even considered doing. And I did lots of stupid things with you over the years, Elliot.”
“Baby.” Junior Carlos looked at me doggedly. “Uh-oh,” he whispered.
“No, you’re fine. Whatever,” said Lisa. She hiked up the waistband of her pants. Her eyes glistered like nail heads. “My boyfriend can do what he wants. I can do what I want. You, Elliot Egleston, can do what you want. Baby—gimme the car keys.”
“Lisa, stop acting like a—”
“Don’t go there, Junior Carlos. Charles Rottingham Junior. Don’t even.”
I tweaked the volume louder and tried to disappear into the mattress. Metal coils, dirty feathers, random foam would smother me to death. Not bad.
“Let’s kissy, make up. Baby. Lee-Lee, please? My trooper,” Junior Carlos said. Their romance made me uncomfortable, like I was wearing a wool turtleneck two sizes too small. I’d never even heard my dad talk to my mom with such besotted passion.
He handed Lisa the plastic cup. She tipped her head back. The mechanisms in her neck still showed, remnants of the body she’d starved herself to have. She threw the cup on the floor. Junior Carlos took off his coat and let it fall on the bed.
I giggled and they started. I’d forgotten I was in the room, too.
“What?” Lisa said.
“Junior … you’re wearing like … four shirts?”
“Now this is the good feeling I’m talkin’ about,” he said. He lifted Lisa up and started walking around the room with her over his shoulder. He must have been really strong. When he threw her on the bed, she landed—boing—in the center.
“Now you girls kiss and make up.”
I stared at the comforter: maybe it was more the color of raw hamburger or filet mignon. I hadn’t eaten red meat since fourth grade, way before I was flaca. With my legs out, I could see the beefy fabric in the gap between my thighs. If I died in this bed, I hoped an artist would plant roses there, let my body mulch. The opening of “The Boy Is Mine” began.
“Ugh, I hate this one—” I said.
I turned my head and bumped into Lisa’s mouth.
Her lips on my lips were rougher, more rushed than Ethan’s. It was a peck, the equivalent of the obligatory high five opposing teams exchanged after softball games in gym. I didn’t kiss back. I was frozen, tasting her: cocoa and cherries and cola. I knew what she did: she put Dr. Pepper Lip Smackers on top of her lipstick.
“Ow!” I yelled. I backed away. “You bit me!”
“Good!” Her eyes were darting all over the place. “I hope I did. Now maybe you’ll stop calling and passing me notes and looking for me in the hallway and chatting me like a stalker creepazoid on AOL. Is that clear?” Now her words were shaky, too. “J.C., I said, gimme the keys.”
She found them from the heap of his coat. “I’ll be in the car.”
··
I rubbed my lip. There was blood on my finger, bright-Lisa’s-Converse red. I put my head in my hands, tented my knees, jammed my face into my thighs, and cried. Sometimes people left the room and sometimes people really were gone.
Junior Carlos came over to the bed. He put his arm around my shoulder, and it felt like a hug from a punching bag.
“Don’t let her be out there alone,” I sniffled. “That parking lot is so sketchy.”
He handed me a handkerchief. It was monogrammed, with the same burgundy thread as my dad’s.
I wiped my eyes. “My dad has this. The color, I mean.”
“Gotta respect a Brooks Brotha.”
I laughed, weakly—like an empty cough.
He put his hands on my shoulders and sat me up.
“Look at me,” he said.
I blinked.
His face was right there. “Can I big brother you for a minute?”
I wanted to reach over and grab the heroin off the nightstand, but I just shrugged. “I don’t care.”
“Open your mouth.”
I parted my lips.
He slid in his tongue. It was thicker than Ethan’s and his face was rougher and he sucked Lisa’s bite, which was in my bottom gum.
“Big brother?” I said. “I think that’s illegal in Illinois.”
“Stupider shit is legal,” he said. He reclined on the dirty pillow. “Deleterious shit is deemed OK in this country. So, … So big Carlos slipped you some tongue.”
“I guess.” I swallowed. Big Carlos? I cringed. His mouth tasted gross.
“Advice? Let Lisa come around. Or not. It’s middle school, yah know? She’s paranoid about her mom and she’s tryin’ to beat this food thing and I know that’s tough, okay? For you—and for her. But she’s fighting. Maybe because of her mom. Maybe because of something else.”
“Yeah, she saw a girl die in the hospital,” I said. “Shit. What’s her name.”
“So I know people who’ve been through … what she’s been through. Who haven’t been as strong as her. You gotta respect her that. You do you.”
I nodded. He didn’t need to tell me she was amazing.
“You want a ride somewhere?” he said. “Pretty gross place to spend the night.”
“My mom’s coming.” I looked at the clock radio. Nine forty-five p.m. “Sometime.”
He put on his coat and walked toward the door. It’s like we were in a movie: he paused and turned. His forehead gleamed with sweat.
“Can I ask you something borderline inappropriate?”
“Borders are imaginary,” I said. I wanted to sleep. “So. Sure.”
“Lisa was rambling all kinds of stuff when she came out. She said you had …?”
“Heroin? You want it?” I pointed to the nightstand.
Junior Carlos picked up the baggie. He held it under his nose, sniffed, touched his index finger to his mouth, dipped, rubbed his gums and his teeth.
“That ain’t heroin,” he said. He knotted the top and put it in his pocket.
“Whatever.” I shrugged and pulled the covers over me. “It’s yours.”
SATURDAY
1 ·· LISA
PEACOCKS. I SEE THE WHITE birds, like snowy ghosts. They’re Italian, I know, one of those facts that’s caught in the syrup of sleep. This is how you have to learn lines for speech: like they’re invisible fish swimming under water. This is what I see: swan necks, trim bodies, too-much tails like Princess Diana’s wedding train. Patrician birds. Their faces, almonds. Their eyes, critiquing. On the crown of their heads, poofs and puffball-tipped crests. Pipe cleaners and Q-tip tops. Pretzel sticks dipped in white chocolate capped with cotton candy. A headband Baby and Scary Spice would have fought over.
I blink awake.
If hospital beds have opposites, that’s where I am, a room that reminds me of The Little Princess. That movie sucked compared to the book: everything you could think of, every ermine silk mink pearl lace lamé turban, your mind imagined better than what you saw on screen. It’s not that this room is diamond dusted, but niceness is its own jolt. I’m in some fancy basement bedroom with gold and marble nightstands and a lampshade like a pale blue tutu.
Next to the bed, there’s a high window. I can see out, to the ground line, a ribbon of white, frosting bordering a cake. This is the first year I haven’t been excited about snow. Is that what blizzards do to people? It’s like recovery, the worst buzz kill for diets. I watch and watch. The wind is pretending we’re not outside Chicago. Very funny—not.
No peacocks.
The sheets are warm where I’ve been curled up, warmer where Junior Carlos lies, still. He sleeps on his back. His mouth is parted. Overnight, his sorta beard has sprouted more stubble. Overnight, I have lost all clothing except my black thong.
Hm.
I pull the comforter around me and cover every part of my body except my eyes. Even my head—I wrap the comforter over my forehead and up past my chin. It’s like looking through the viewfinder on one of those old toys, where you load in a card of pictures and click through to see just what fits in your field of vision. I see my new friend Phoebe. I see my dad imitating Bill Murray in Caddyshack. I see my grandma gesticulating with a grapefruit spoon. I see my boyfriend through a rectangle.
No Elliot in sight.
His chest rises and falls; at whatever time this is, the fact of this movement—unconscious, automatic—blows my mind.
“I love you,” I whisper. Of course it’s cheap to say to a sleeper. But I believe in osmosis or whatever, the thing we learned in science that says borders are porous, states of consciousness permeable. The corners of Junior Carlos’s mouth turn up. I scoot my body against his torso and, without opening his eyes, he pins me to the bed with his arm.
Probably I fall back asleep. Maybe I die for a sec.
True or False:
Only skinny girls think about life and death.
··
Snow gets in my low-tops, at the tongue and on the sides, where the red canvas gapes. I need laces. It’s like running through sand. Solid ground gives way beneath your feet. I’m out the guest door, on a side pathway that, bummer, staff never shovels. (Staff? I said. Yeah, said Junior Carlos. I’m warming up the car. Gardeners and … stuff.)
In a circular drive, the Bimmer is waiting, emitting snarls of exhaust smoke. The sky is cerulean, one of those mornings that looks fake.
“Your house is pimp,” I say.
“Pimp or nouveau riche, your dice. Ready to face the dragon?”
Junior Carlos stands on the passenger side, an ice scraper in hand. He’s dressed like an off-duty Olympian in his swim conference track suit, Hampshire High colors, the same palette all my school duds will be next year: brown and yellow. Like even my dad, he looks new and sexy wearing sunglasses. Wayfarers.
(Very mature: Park wannabes wear Oakleys.)
“No use postponing the inviable,” I say getting in the car.
“Inevitable?”
“That’s what I said.”
He backs out of the driveway and we leave his house.
“Warming up?” Junior Carlos says. He punches the heat. “This car sucks.”
“Are you kidding? I love this car.”
“Yo, my mom hit me in this car. No joke.”
“She hit you? How are you still alive?”
“Oh, Lisa.” He smiles and pats my knee.
“What? Are you sure you’re not like Casper? Am I secretly Christina Ricci?”
“Yikes. I hope not. I’m not into brunettes. Especially not creepy brunettes.”
“Really?” I ask. “You don’t wanna date Elliot now?”
“Do you know any guys who aren’t down for … that … when their girl suggests it? I mean, you’ve got to be off your nob to think anyone in his right mind is gonna pass that up.”
“I don’t know any other guys.”
“C’mon Lisa. Those Park shorties have totally defiled your yearbook picture.”
“Ew. Okay?”
Junior Carlos turns on the radio, where skankalicious Britney Spears reigns. I cover my ears. Her voice reminds me of the stringiest hospital girls, feral and electronic—the exact opposite of the sultry, silky, feline Brandy, Toni Braxton, Mary J. Blige, Aaliyah, Aaliyah, Aaliyah I adore.
The car rolls by Park. Monday, JANUARY 18 *** MLK *** flashes the school’s upgraded, digital sign. No more janitors using wrenches or pliers or whatever the tool’s called that lifts plastic letters off an actual marquis.
“Is this a hangover?” I say. “Like, my head hurting? Desperately wanting scrambled eggs?”
“Are you gonna spew?”
“No, Garth. I’m not. But thanks for reviving me. Just what the doctor ordered. Are you gonna pick me up, Tuesday, after school?”
“ ’cha.” He smirks and his eyebrows lift over his sunglasses.
··
“Your father is covering the CTA delays,” says my mom, once she’s finished haranguing me (who dropped you off—no one—where did you go—Elliot’s house—why are you consorting with miscreants—good question, major mistake—God is keeping your grandma with us until you can find time in your schedule to visit her—I’ll get ready—you better—am I going back to the—no, Dr. Ogbaa left instructions that you are to continue an aggressive course of out-patient therapy but the hospital setting is, and color me skeptical here, is too intensive at this time—good—so get ready—okay, I’ll get ready—are you okay—yeah, Mom, I am). “We can’t listen to him. He sounds … take pity on the man. He didn’t sleep.”
Now we’re in the minivan, heading downtown, toward Rush Hospital. I grip the ashtray on the door as we go over the Forty-Seventh Street train tracks. My mom, for all her propriety, drives like a cowgirl. She’s a swerver, a stop-and-goer, a screamer, yelling invented swears that will keep her in the Big Guy’s graces.
“Frank-furter!” she shouts at a red Jeep; she’s extra harsh on those because of my dad. “That’s a stop sign.”
I smother a smile. I hate my mom, how she’s a sloppy driver, how she wasn’t happy to see me but pissed, how she’s bossy, righteous, into bad haircuts—but also I love her. I can love her, now, at this sec. I love how she wears a fur hat like a spy from James Bond land; even though I gave her hell about this hat, like, four years ago when she bought it, now it’s her. She rocks it. It’s the only piece of her that I want.
I want her to know: That I like her hat. That I love her.
“Mom.” I stretch out the vowel to sound earnest and hopeful, like an innocent girl in a play. Just talking with a smile in my voice starts to make me happier. When I do get married, I’ll be the best wife in the world—always sexy, always fun. “Mom, guess what?”
“Not now, Lisa. My brain can only handle so much.”
She turns on the radio, and for a second, she lets B96 play. Was she listening without me? The music tolls in the pit of my stomach. There’s Dr. Dre, rapping “Keep Their Heads Ringing,” that creepy minor-key chorus that makes me feel like I’m dead: “Ding, ding, dong.”
2 ·· ELLIOT
THIS WAS MY FIRST CUP of coffee:
In the cabinet under the TV, there was a machine with a preportioned filter, a paper cup, a wooden stick, a white napkin, Sweet ’n Low, powdered creamer. Who would’ve expected this hospitality from the Flagg Creek? Like a bombshell, I walked around in just-my-sweater. I’d kicked off my jeans in the night. After Junior Carlos left, I’d eaten five Listerine strips and turned off the lights and slept in my clothes, with Michael Jordan tiptoeing on my back, a tonnage infusing me with power and serenity. No one had called or I hadn’t woken up.
Anna used a French press, so I’d never worked a machine like this. The brewing began, and when actual coffee started sluicing the sides of
the tiny carafe, I was wowed, like I’d landed a round-off dismount off the balance beam. I could hear Troubaugh lauding me: Egleston, you’re a natural.
The most trivial accomplishments can make you feel the best. My volition concurred: those first lost voy-a-la-flaca pounds.
I opened the waffled curtains. The morning sun flooded the room with washed light. Outside, in the parking lot, all three cars wore slabs of snow. None of those were my rides. I imagined the minivans and trucks and the one cream Rolls Royce that everyone claimed belonged to Bo Jackson, who lived a town over, adults with licenses hitting it, a quick pound-pound in the night, the parking lot ebbing with horniness. I hadn’t heard moaning or bouncing. I had also never slept so deadweight in my life.
It was eight thirty a.m. There was a newspaper and something on motel stationery under the door. The plastic cup that had teemed with Absolut last night was on its side, in a corner. I had another two hours until I really had to check out. And even though my head hurt behind my eyes, like someone was playing my bones with mallets, a xylophone, I wasn’t going to call my mom to pick me up. I didn’t need her, I didn’t need Lisa: I had boys and men. And writing.
I poured myself a cup of coffee and turned to a blank page. Standing at the desk, I started taking notes for a supplement to Real Talk.
“Is It Worth the Work?”
1. “No pain, no gain” is a cliché.
2. Clichés can be true.
3. What’s wrong with suffering?
4. Does objective suffering exist or can my suffering be your pinnacle of joy?
5. If my pinnacle of joy is starving, does that make me wrong?
6. Should I want everything to taste good?
7. Why do adults care if kids are [insert air quotes] hurting themselves?
8. What about “hurt so good”?
9. I.E. Doesn’t sex hurt?
10. Why do I have to be happy?
11. Why do I have to have high self-esteem?
12. What if I have high self-esteem but don’t want to be healthy?
13. Can those two things coexist?
I paused for a sip. The coffee tasted burnt and weak; then again, a cup has two calories. Sometimes, you need to lower your expectations. Maybe one day I’d think back on Ethan’s penis as the cutest thing ever. I grabbed my binder and hopped into bed. I covered myself with the sheets and the comforter. In LA, Ms. McMahon would put on Yanni and twist the Venetian blinds until the room got dark and tell us, write without picking up your pens; write anything that pops into your heads. Usually, I didn’t do this. What was the point in scribbling when you didn’t know what you wanted to say? But today I wanted to figure everything out. Otherwise, I’d just go around feeling basic stuff, like, this room is cold.
