Love is the Drug

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

  “My grandfather gave this to me before he died. It’s seen all the accomplishments of the last three generation of Birds. I think it should be yours now, Emily.”

  “Like I’m going to do anything worthwhile.” Her voice, rough and bitter, surprises her. She meant to keep silent.

  Greg just smiles and presses the green-and-gold heirloom into her palm. “You will, sweetie. I know it. And one day your mother will know it too.”

  “Dad, do you think I’m just like Uncle Nicky?”

  Her father looks away. “Your Uncle Nicky is just someone else your mother doesn’t really understand. Good night, Emmie.”

  She sits back on her bed, beneath the wall-collage of ripped-out magazine ads and features and photographs that normally comforts her. Houses and storefronts and neighborhoods from all over the world. There’s one in particular, an old black-and-white shot of U Street from the fifties, full of smiling Black couples in their Sunday best strolling past gleaming storefronts, freshly painted. She wants a shop like that, she knows that even now. She takes her father’s pen and writes very carefully beneath the Mary Janes of a woman who could be her grandmother:

  She doesn’t know who you are.

  And then she takes this precious pen, this heirloom, this chunk of history and family and connection, down to her father’s office and puts it back in his drawer.

  The next day, she sees the pen in its case, carefully exposed on the left side of his desk. It stays there for the next five years.

  The Birds pretend that night never happened.

  I pick up the pieces.

  The note in her school mailbox is printed on thick paper, more like a wedding invitation than an administrative summons. Which it must be, despite the odd request: Please report to the lower school medical facility during sixth period. You have been excused from class.

  That last is quaint, given the impunity with which the remaining students at Devonshire have been skipping. The ones like Bird, who at least show up, seem to do it more out of habit than conviction. With no guarantee of colleges in the fall to compete over, the hamster wheel of prep school has lost its motivational carrot. She waves the card at Marella, who picks up a folded-over essay from her box and stuffs it into her backpack without checking the grade.

  “Did you get this?” she asks.

  Marella glances at the card. “Oh, I got one yesterday. Some kind of flu shot.”

  “Flu shot? I thought this thing was the incurable beast.”

  “It’s not a cure. We’d have heard about that. They said something about immune-boosting vitamins.”

  Bird looks back at the card. “Vitamins?” The word stings her memory; she winces before she remembers why. Poor Dr. Granger, that first day back at school, explaining the quiet lower schoolers lining up in the hallway.

  “Weird,” Bird says. “Do you think it’ll do any good?”

  Marella grins. “I’m not dead yet.”

  “I’d wait until after chapel service to make sure.”

  Marella punches her arm lightly. “You know the weird thing? Before this end-of-days stuff started, I’d totally given up.”

  “On what?”

  Marella turns so that her long, glossy curls arc over her shoulder like a cartoon bombshell. “Having a real friend in high school. I kept telling myself to wait until college, but there you were all along.”

  Bird feels warm the whole walk to the lower school, happy and full of compressed bubbles, like she’s back in seventh grade and Brady Wright has just sent her a carnation for Valentine’s Day. Even before she came out in ninth grade, Marella always stood just outside Carol Bird’s approved Devonshire social world. Scholarship students didn’t have the valuable connections in the elite African American community of the District. Marella’s parents certainly didn’t belong to Jack and Jill, and as far as Bird could tell, Marella herself had no interest in joining, even though most of the Black students at Devonshire and Bradley participate at some point. And while that used to make her a somewhat dangerous prospect for friendship, now Bird feels unspeakably grateful. She wishes she’d been brave enough to choose Marella over Charlotte and Felice earlier. But then, she never believed that aloof, cosmopolitan, watchful Marella would choose her. Is she a bad person to feel a little grateful to the v-flu that’s ravaging the world? It gave her Marella and Coffee, it took away Paul and her parents. It killed Emily and raised up Bird, and that’s nothing she can regret anymore.

  Aaron waits with ten other boys in the hall outside the medical facility. He waves and keeps talking to a boy his age. A moment later, Paul slips into the back of the line. He nods at her and raises his eyebrows in a way that makes her wonder if her skirt is stuck in her underwear.

  The line slowly files into the converted classrooms, where a blue-masked nurse instructs her to sit on the examining bench closest to a desk covered in scattered papers and an open packing box marked “Granger” in black Sharpie. Bird scans the window reflexively as she waits, but only the scraggled backs of rosebushes watch her. No black Beemer, no men in suits with white earpieces, not even a soldier. She relaxes. She’s had a remarkably, jubilantly uneventful week. Maybe Roosevelt only meant to scare her. Maybe her father overreacted. Maybe it would be okay not to pack a lunch tomorrow.

  When it’s her turn, the nurse takes her temperature and blood pressure before swabbing her upper arm.

  “You might feel a sting,” he says in a disinterested monotone. “If your arm swells or if you develop a fever in the next forty-eight hours, please contact us immediately.”

  “I thought it was just a vitamin shot.”

  The nurse actually looks at her then, pausing mid-swab. “Well. It’s got some B12 and other vitamins that have shown promise in prophylactic studies, yes. But it’s also a seasonal flu shot. At least this way we can protect you against secondary infections. Would you like to opt out?”

  Bird hadn’t even been aware that this was an option, and stares down at her hands in embarrassment. Her mother would want her to get the shot, of course, but she’d be disappointed that Bird didn’t so much as question it. Maybe Emily hasn’t left her entirely.

  “No,” she says after a moment. “You can give it to me.”

  The nurse picks up a needle from the table and taps it. She tries to focus on something else, and turns back to the desk. “Did you know the doctor?” she asks. “Sasha Granger?”

  She winces as he punctures her arm with what feels like more force than necessary. He doesn’t so much as move an eyebrow as he plunges down the peach-colored liquid and removes the needle.

  “Yes,” he says, “I knew Dr. Granger. But not well. It’s a tragedy what happened to her. If you would like to speak with someone about it, however, I’d suggest the guidance counselor.”

  He doesn’t look at her once while he speaks. His voice is flat — but guarded, not bored. Maybe it’s that whiff of office drama — it never ends, does it? Not when you grow up, not even when you die — that makes her stroll to the desk when he turns his back. The box marked Granger has her things inside: pictures with her husband, a framed diploma from University of Chicago, plushies of infectious diseases, and thank-you notes from lower schoolers. No folders or notebooks that she would expect a head medical officer to have, but maybe they kept those for her replacement.

  “Everyone who has received their shot needs to clear out immediately!”

  The nurse’s voice, not even a foot behind her. She jerks, hits the box, and grabs it just before it falls to the floor.

  “Sorry!” she says. Her hands tremble as she replaces it on the desk; for just a moment, she’d thought he was Roosevelt. She glances reflexively inside the box just before she leaves, mostly to avoid the nurse’s basilisk stare. She sees something she hadn’t before, which must have been churned up by its near fall, but she’s almost to the door before half recognition bursts into realization. A pin in patriotic colors with two lines of text in Spanish. Even if she weren’t in AP Spanish she’d know what
they said, because she ground its English-language cousin pin under her boot as Roosevelt told her about how he or his bosses could kill her without anyone knowing.

  She remembers, now, Dr. Granger’s strange advice the day Bird came back to school: Stay here. This school will keep you safe. Whatever else it does.

  Those Homeland Security pins are everywhere these days, but not when Dr. Granger died. Had Roosevelt given it to her? Had he threatened her too? And now she was dead. Bird feels tipsy with fear, but forces it back when she sees Aaron waiting with his friends in the hallway.

  “Want to get some pizza after school? We can bring Vace’s back for Uncle Nicky.”

  Aaron frowns and steps away from the line. “I don’t know, Em. The guy in the suit told Mr. Levenson that I have to stay at school from now on.”

  Bird’s stomach drops even as she asks the next question. “Guy in a suit? Who?”

  “He said you know him. He had a funny name, like a last name.”

  “Roosevelt.”

  “Yeah, that’s it. Em, are you —”

  She kneels down and hugs him tight. “Fine,” she whispers. “We’ll be fine. You stay in the library after classes, okay? I’ll find you there.”

  She thought he would be safer here. She should have known better.

  She doesn’t have to go far to find him. She recognizes his car parked across the street from the upper school entrance. He rolls down the tinted window as she approaches and nods curtly.

  “I figured you’d want to talk,” he says. “You’ll be glad to hear my meeting went well.”

  “You’re keeping a little kid trapped in school?”

  Roosevelt shakes his head. “That’s just a courtesy. We’re keeping you in school. But I thought you’d want to be able to keep an eye on him.”

  “Me?” She looks around, wondering if the soldiers would shoot her if she tried to leave. Probably not. Roosevelt would just run her over with his Beemer.

  “We’ve got to keep an eye on you. Paul made an excellent suggestion, so —”

  “This is Paul’s idea?”

  “And your mother preferred it this way.” He shrugs. “I told you. You picked wrong.”

  * * *

  She and Coffee and Aaron sit in the stacks at the back of Bradley library, sharing a Vace’s pizza that Coffee paid some freshman to pick up for them. School arrest doesn’t feel so terrible with her favorite pizza, but she worries about Aaron.

  She thinks again of the strange email that she might have written herself during that lost night, timed to send a month later. But she’s no closer to getting into that account, and Coffee has no more idea of what her message means than she does. Her past self has been singularly useless — the writing might be on the wall, but she has no idea what it says. She wishes she did.

  “The guy is like a nuclear bomb of assholery,” she says. “I think he killed the doctor.”

  “With polonium on the Homeland Security pin? Come on, Bird. A dozen people have to have touched that thing since she died. It was a heart attack. People have them. I doubt Roosevelt even knew her.”

  She sighs. “There’s got to be some way to stop him.”

  Coffee sprawls against a couple of tomes of ancient Roman history and starts his slice crust first. “We could eat his heart and gain his power,” he says around a mouthful.

  Aaron looks at him, wide-eyed. “Does that really work?”

  Coffee shakes his head and Aaron’s shoulders slump. “Oh. Yeah. I knew you were joking.”

  Aaron knew exactly who Coffee was, but he still pretended to introduce himself this afternoon. Her cousin has a knack for espionage, but Bird refuses to involve him any further. She’s afraid that Coffee is rapidly approaching Robert Johnson levels of coolness in his imagination.

  “Aaron, why don’t you start your homework at one of the carrels?”

  “Aw, Em! No one cares about homework. I want to listen to music in the AV room. They’ve got a bunch of records I’ve never heard before.”

  “Okay, do that, then.”

  “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

  She rolls over and tickles him in the stomach. “With love, and for your own good. Listen to music, you’d be bored anyway.”

  He looks between Coffee and Bird and picks up his backpack. “I’m out,” he says. “I don’t need to see a bunch of kissing.”

  He makes a smoochy face while Bird blushes and pretends to swat him away.

  “Perceptive kid,” Coffee says after Aaron’s whistled his way into the AV room.

  She’s painfully aware of his knee resting against her thigh in the close quarters of the library shelves. “I’m not about to kiss you.”

  He puts down his half-eaten slice. “Why not?”

  She closes her eyes. Why not, Bird? “You scare me to death,” she hears herself saying.

  He doesn’t respond for the space of several breaths. She dares a peek, finds him steepling his fingers against his temples, the tips white with pressure. He leans his head back and stares up at the ceiling.

  “I didn’t mean it like you had to, like I expect it. I help you because I want to. You don’t have to like me back. I can leave if you want. I’m not — I’m not Roosevelt. Or Paul. I promise.” His quiet words are dry and choked. Instead of that expressive face, she watches the bowstring tautness of his muscles beneath the uniform collared shirt.

  She slides forward, so her knee goes under his thigh and their hips touch; it’s like a dance, this thing they do together. She never realized that it hurt him too. Only that gives her the courage to speak.

  “I think about you. All the time. It’s never been like this for me. My mom would have a fit. You’re probably going to jail. I’m not sure you actually like me. You’re a deal —”

  “Okay,” he says, the smile in his voice luring her gaze to his face. He holds up his hands. “You’ve convinced me. Bad-news Coffee keeps his lips off, promise. I’ll write you from prison. Every week. In code so your mother won’t know, and I’ll find you when I get out, unless I’ve died of prison v-flu, in which case I hope you’ll attend the memorial.”

  Halfway through this improbable declaration she starts to laugh. “I’ll put red roses on your grave.”

  He flicks her hair. “What I said that night —”

  And just like that, the laughter melts away. “Don’t say you didn’t mean it.” She puts one finger on his chest. “Because I know you did.”

  His stuttering breath vibrates up her arm. “I think of you. Every hour. Either I hate you or I …”

  His words stumble still and she pulls away. She remembers a song that her grandmother loved, Smokey Robinson, I don’t like you, but I —

  “If I kiss you,” she says, forcing herself to hold her hand over the candle of his wide eyes, “it means that I’ve given up everything.”

  “Maybe you’ll find something you like better.”

  “Like you’re some expert in self-abnegation.”

  He gives her a thin smile, and she remembers how much he gave up just to be here, arguing with her in the history stacks.

  “Do you know why I started experimenting?” he asks.

  She shakes her head. It never occurred to her that there must have been a start, an origin story to the legend of Coffee the Dealer.

  “You didn’t emerge from your mother’s forehead with a joint in one hand and an Erlenmeyer flask in the other?”

  He rolls his eyes. “I was fourteen. I’d been living in London for the last four years. I liked chemistry plenty, but it’d never really occurred to me to relate it to pharmacologically active substances. This is your brain, this is your brain on drugs, I totally believed that shit. I doubt it would have changed much — well, I’d probably have managed to smoke a joint or two in college, but the rest?” He shrugs. “But then my dad drove us home from an event at the embassy. We were having an argument about Brazil — I wanted to go to some football camp for the summer and they thought I should go back to São Paulo to sp
end time with my grandmother. There was black ice on the road. We skidded, hit the guardrail, flipped. Next thing I know, I’m waking up from surgery with my leg on fire and they tell me my dad died three days ago.”

  His voice isn’t particularly emotional, though he doesn’t look at her. She wants to cover his mouth, as though that could stop this awful thing that happened long ago. She settles for taking his hand.

  He shivers at the touch, leans closer. “My mom got away with a few stitches in her arm. I missed the funeral. Missed the summer and a semester of school. Long, boring hospital story, but the gist is I learned to walk again only with copious reliance on prescription opiates. So I’m never going to be a football star, it’s not much of a disappointment in the end, but damn am I addicted to those little white pills. And you have a lot of spare time in traction, let me tell you. So I start to research them, what exactly they do, their chemical structure, the pathways in the brain. I sort of … thought my way out of it, I guess. Quit cold turkey once I learned how to synthesize my first drug in the school chem lab. And at that point, I’d learned there was this whole world of people who did it for fun. Wrote step-by-step instructions for brewing dozens of things I’d never heard of. Not just the simple stuff, like opiates, but ways to unlock pathways in your brain you’d otherwise have to be near death to even approach. My dad … he’d been dead a year before I even managed to visit his grave. I took shrooms, mescaline, LSD. Whatever. Trying to get closure. Turns out no drug can give you that, but I guess it helped to see the inside of my brain. It was like my guilt was this physical thing, and I had to push it out before it killed me.”

  His shivering gets worse. Bird squeezes his hand, afraid they both might crash if she lets go. This isn’t a story smoothed and sanded with telling; this is rough and splintered, hacked from the tree and still oozing sap. He breathes, that’s all he does, harsh breaths that hurt her because she asked for this, and warm her because he gave it to her.