by Jeff Garvin
“Son of a bitch,” he said, and held the card up so Grace could see it:
It was the nine of hearts—and on its face, written in his own unmistakable hand, were three words:
FAIL BIG.—Flynn
He looked at me, started to speak, shook his head again. Then he turned to Grace.
“I guess you’re going to have to reprint those production schedules.”
CHAPTER 31
THE RUSH OF FOOLING FLYNN evaporated like water off a hot pan. I knew I hadn’t really persuaded him with my parlor trick. He must’ve already wanted to let me do the show; all I’d done was give him an excuse. Plus he probably figured that if I reprised my father’s failure, it would make for spectacular television.
I decided to walk back to the hotel, hoping two blocks of trudging up a steep hill would revive me; instead, every step was heavier than the last. Autumn was nowhere in evidence; today, Hollywood was hot and smoggy. The sky might have been a clear, deep blue, but all I saw were constellations of old gum stains and cigarette butts on the concrete. I was gearing up for the biggest moment of my life, but there was a giant hole in the middle of my chest. A Ripley-shaped hole. Liam had found the courage to be straight with me; maybe I needed to do the same with Ripley.
I stopped at a McDonald’s, got a Diet Coke, and logged into the free Wi-Fi. I thought about sending him another text—but since he’d ignored my first one, I decided an email would be better. That way he could read it when he was ready. I opened a new message and began to type.
Dear Ripley,
I’ve been thinking about you a lot, and about what I said to you back in Las Vegas. I won’t apologize for being an emotional wreck. That part isn’t my fault. But I can take responsibility for how I treated you. I hurt you, and then I played the sick card to excuse it. For that, I’m sorry.
Being my friend must feel lonely and exhausting. I’m always having some kind of crisis, and you have to come to the rescue. I can’t remember the last time we had a conversation that was all about you. I read this BuzzFeed article once about cutting toxic people out of your life, and I know I’ve been one of those toxic people to you. I don’t blame you for cutting me out, and I don’t expect you to reply.
The problem is, I’m about to do the biggest thing I’ve ever done in my life, and I can’t feel complete without telling you. For reasons I won’t go into, my dad can’t do the Truck Drop tomorrow. So I’m doing it instead.
I’m so scared, Ripley. I’m scared of failing, but I’m also scared of what happens if I succeed. I’m scared of getting so high that the fall will kill me.
I wish you were here to talk me through it, to dismiss all my nonsense and tell me how things really are. But I know I haven’t earned it.
Anyway. I hope you and Jude and Heather and your dad are okay.
I miss you.
Love,
Ellie
I reread it twice; it seemed sappy and not enough, but it was all I could think to write. I clicked Send, and suddenly my whole body felt like a giant sandbag. Despite the near-fatal dose of caffeine pumping through my bloodstream, I was exhausted.
I went back to the hotel, set two alarms, and crashed.
Five hours later, I was backstage at the Dolby Theatre, glaring at myself in the dressing-room mirror, lit by a frame of old-school tungsten light bulbs. I had awoken in the hotel feeling more exhausted than before, and it had taken every bit of resolve I possessed to get out of bed and splash cold water on my face.
Now I raked my fingers through my hair, which hung down on all sides like a cowl, frizzled and wavy from lack of conditioner. My eyes were dull and ringed with red. I looked strung out. Fried. Spent. The costume designer hadn’t finished my outfit yet, so for rehearsal I’d borrowed a black bodysuit. It was a size too small and suffocating. I felt faint and confined, like a Jane Austen character, bound by corsets and the legacies of old men.
A thousand dark thoughts flipped through my mind like frames of film through a broken projector, but the one that stuck the longest was that this was all Dad’s fault. He hadn’t taken care of himself, and now I had to clean up his mess, just like I always did. He had convinced me to take time off school, coerced me into performing, sabotaged my chance at a normal life. Some part of me knew these thoughts were twisted, that they were just my sickness talking—but I couldn’t stop myself from believing them. Despite all my plans, all my protests, I was doing exactly what Dad had wanted me to do all along.
What about what I wanted?
I imagined stepping out onto the Dolby Theatre stage. The click of my heels on the planks. The hush of the vast auditorium. But the exhilaration I’d felt before was gone as if it had never been there in the first place. Instead, there was only a gaping gray void. What did I want? I wanted out. I wanted to lie down on the cool concrete floor, close my eyes, and never wake up.
“Ms. Dante?” It was Grace calling from the hallway outside. I opened the door.
Her expression changed instantly from impatience to concern. “Are you all right?”
I vowed to slap the next person who asked me that.
She led me down a long concrete hallway, and I paused for a moment in the wings. The tank loomed center stage, ten feet tall and three-quarters full of crystal-clear water. If I stood on the bottom, I could stretch my arms straight up and not touch the surface. My chest tightened in anticipation.
Clemente called out, “Ellie, we’re ready for you.”
A stagehand bound my wrists, but I paid no attention. A buzz had started up in the back of my head. This was going to go wrong. I was going to fail. Just like my father.
Ella, ella, eh, eh, eh.
I hardly noticed the loop starting up again as I climbed into the driver’s seat. The door closed, Clemente spoke into his radio, and the truck lurched into the air.
“Goddamn it,” Clemente yelled up at the catwalk. “When are you going to get this right?”
“We had it weighted for the father,” the tech called down. “Won’t happen again.”
Clemente approached, leaned in the window. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I said, hearing my own voice as if from a distance.
Clemente gave the signal, and this time, the truck rose smoothly off the stage.
I had craved the sensation of suspension—that empty-stomach roller-coaster feeling. I’d made a tacit wish that the thrill of it would lance the gray like a blister and drain the darkness from my sick mind. But it didn’t happen.
The rehearsal went as last-minute rehearsals always do: lots of starts and stops, shouting and adjustments, leaving me with a lingering sense that everything could still go wrong. Afterward, Grace had a car take me to Hollywood Presbyterian, but Dad was asleep when I arrived. The nurse told me his vitals were good and his recovery was on track. I sat next to his bed for an hour, hoping he would wake. I wanted to tell him what I was going to do. I wanted his praise, his encouragement—but more than that, I wanted his advice.
When he didn’t wake up, I wrote him a note and left.
I ordered a room-service cheeseburger mostly out of duty, then picked at it until the fries went cold. When I realized I’d been watching the same looping video-on-demand previews for forty minutes, I flipped off the TV, put my tray in the hall, and took a long, hot shower. Then I crossed to Dad’s bag and searched through it.
I wanted to look at his journal one more time, to study every detail of the Truck Drop diagram. I wanted to burn it into my mind so that during the performance I could see it objectively, as if I were watching from the front row. The journal must have been buried deep in the bag; when I pulled out his old corduroy sport coat to look underneath, I heard a rattle. I reached into the pocket—he’d left his pills behind. But it was no problem; they would give him everything he needed at the hospital. I set the bottle aside, started to go back to the bag, then paused.
I looked at the bottle more closely. The pills inside were white, but they were the wrong shape. I seized i
t, twisted off the lid, and poured a pill into my palm. It wasn’t round and flat like his heart medicine; it was oblong and rounded. I stared at it for a moment—and then I touched it to my tongue.
The clear, cold taste of spearmint flooded my mouth. He hadn’t bought his medication after all; he’d filled his bottle with breath mints to trick me, and then he’d spent all his money on mine instead.
I sank onto the bed, staring stupidly at the amber plastic bottle filled with worthless mints. I was angry at him for lying, and I felt guilty for his sacrifice. I didn’t deserve it; I was a burden, a dead weight dragging us both down.
Time condensed and stretched in the darkness—and then, at some point, blackness overtook me.
I’m sitting in the truck, wrists and ankles bound. A red stage light glares in the rearview mirror. I hear the click of the prop lever echoing in the auditorium. I hold my breath.
The truck drops, and the seat falls out from under me.
My head hits the roof and then the truck strikes the water with a great slap, driving me down into the springs of the old bench seat. I hear water sloshing over the sides of the tank. I feel the rush of cold as it begins to pour in through the open windows.
I rotate my wrists, trying to create enough slack to free my hands—but the bindings only cinch tighter. Fighting off panic, I struggle against the ropes—but the more I pull, the tighter my bonds become. The water rises to my knees. I bend forward to free my ankles, but my head hits the steering wheel, honking the horn. It comes out burbled, like a crying baby half submerged in a bathtub.
Laughter sweeps through the audience; people are looking at me now, and they are enjoying watching me drown.
The water is up to my chest.
I throw my body against the door but manage only to bruise my ribs. My cage. My bodysuit is too tight, like a corset. I’m going to pass out. The water is at my neck. My chin. My bottom lip.
My head goes under.
I look out into the audience. Through the thick wall of the tank, my vision distorts, darkens. The seats are empty again, all but one in the front row, which is occupied by a very old man. I look closer and see that it’s my father.
It’s my father, and he’s dead.
I choked and sputtered and sat up in bed.
Desperate to get free from the twisted sheet, I thrashed and slipped off the bed, landing hard on the floor. There was something in my mouth; I clawed at it, pulling away a lock of hair that had found its way in like a hungry spider.
Dad’s dead face stared up at me from the front row.
My shoulders shook as I began to cry in big, heavy gasps. I stuffed a fist into my mouth, but the sobs only seemed to gain momentum.
I would fail, and he would die homeless and alone.
My knees burned against the cold tile as I crawled to the bathroom, still wailing. All my life I had suffered the weakness of my parents. His inability to provide. Her unwillingness to survive.
I would fail like him.
I would die like her.
Finding the cold porcelain edge of the tub, I mashed the rubber plug into the drain and opened the tap. Steam filled the room, obscuring the mirror like a cataract. I stripped off my clothes and stepped into the scalding water. The heat took me, obliterating my thoughts, overwhelming my nerves until it felt like needles, then like ice.
I shut off the tap and lay down in the water, crying out as fresh nerve endings succumbed to the heat. I put my ears under the surface and listened as the world turned amniotic. My heart beating, slower, slower. My breath like a diver’s.
I could step out and steal a blade from the razor on the sink.
I could retrieve the hair dryer from the wardrobe. The cord would be long enough.
Or I could just submerge my head, gulp water into my lungs, and surrender.
All at once, I sat up and scrambled out of the tub. My feet slipped on the wet tile and I fell in a heap on my clothes. The cold air shocked me back to myself, and the thoughts that had bitten into my mind fell out like so many rotten teeth.
I got to my feet, pulled the plug, and watched the water drain away. Then I turned on the shower, closed my eyes, and let the cold water wash over me. I felt hollow. Exhausted.
But I was alive.
I didn’t understand why I’d suddenly had the impulse to survive. Maybe it was the medication finally kicking in. Maybe it was Dad’s recovery, or the promise of a show. Maybe it was down to the random firing of one particular neuron. I would never know.
When my skin finally stopped steaming, I shut off the tap and pulled on the hotel robe. I stood in the bathroom for a moment, covered in goose bumps and shivering, trying to decide what to do next. Finally, with a terrible effort, I reached into the tub and yanked the rubber stopper off its chain. I crossed to the sink and picked up the disposable razor. I opened the wardrobe and retrieved the hair dryer. Then I crossed to the sliding glass door, opened it, and hurled everything over the railing and out onto Franklin Avenue.
I went back inside and found my phone. The first call went to voice mail, so I dialed again. This time, he picked up on the second ring.
“Ellie?”
The sound of Ripley’s voice jolted me back to life like a defibrillator, and before I could speak, I began to cry again, heavy, chest-heaving sobs.
“Hey,” Ripley said. “What’s going on?”
It took me a while to calm down enough to talk, but once I did, the words spilled out of me like water from a shattered tank. I told Ripley about my dad’s heart attack. About my dream.
And then I told him what I had almost done.
The silence was long and protracted—or at least that’s how it seemed. Time was distorted in the gray.
“Are you safe now?” Ripley asked. I had been afraid that when he spoke, he would sound distant or disgusted, but he didn’t.
Then I glanced at the sheets on the bed, at the clothing pole in the closet. I hadn’t suicide-proofed the room—not really—but the impulse was gone, even if the thoughts weren’t.
“I think so.” I swallowed. “Ripley, can you come here? Now?”
He cleared his throat. “I can’t, Ellie. I’m sorry.”
“Oh.” His refusal stung, and I withdrew like a flower closing up at dusk. “That’s okay. I mean, I’ll be fine.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Ripley said. “We’re going to video-chat for the next three hundred hours with no pee breaks. I just don’t have a car because my dad is working and Heather moved to Portland to find a boyfriend with a beard.”
Relief forced a sound out of me; it was less like a laugh and more like a screech.
Ripley made me get up and raid the hotel vending machines; I returned to my room with a Pepsi and a package of Hostess Donettes. Once we were on video chat, I took one look at Ripley and almost burst into tears again. It felt like years since we’d broken up in Las Vegas.
“Thank you for rescuing me. Again.”
“Turns out rescuing people is one of my vices,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“My Alateen sponsor has informed me that I am an ‘enabler.’ It’s kind of like being a Hufflepuff, only nobler. I’m embracing it. It’s already in my Insta bio.”
I made a snuffling laugh.
Ripley cracked open a soda. “So I guess you got the props?”
I nodded.
“You will now tell me the whole story. Begin.”
I filled him in on everything that had happened: breaking into the warehouse, running into Rico, performing for Devereaux. Watching Higgins fly around cackling like a kindergartener in a jet pack.
“Wish I hadn’t missed that,” he said. Then he pressed his lips together; he was holding something back.
I looked down at my pruny hands. “Ripley, I’m so, so sorry. I—”
“I’m not going to lie. What you said hurt me. Really badly.” His face seemed to set like drying concrete. “I deleted your text without reading it. When I got your email, though . .
. I called my sponsor. She agreed I should write you off.”
I shut my eyes. “It’s what I deserve.”
“I don’t know about that,” Ripley said. “You were sick and off meds, and none of that is your fault. Like, if you had one of those brain tumors that make you violent, could I blame you for hitting me? It would be like blaming someone with a cold for sneezing. I mean, it’s more complicated than that, but not really, you know?”
My chest seemed to unfreeze. “I think so,” I said.
“Plus,” Ripley continued, and his voice was oddly light, “it doesn’t feel like a good punishment, cutting you off. Then I lose a friend, too. I think, instead, I’d prefer you to feel extremely guilty for a very, very long time. I would find that quite satisfying.”
I smiled, and he smiled, and I wanted to reach through the screen and put my head on his shoulder. I would never take him for granted again.
“Now,” he said, “let’s have a conversation that’s all about me.” He pointed both thumbs at his chest and grinned like an idiot.
“Agreed.” I laughed. “So, then how are you?”
Ripley’s grin dissolved. “Kind of a mess.”
“Why?”
“I just—I shouldn’t have have left Jude.”
I felt a stab of guilt—he had left his brother behind for me, and I had even shamed him for it. God, I could be a monster.
Ripley sensed my distress. “No, Ellie—look, I’m glad I came and helped and everything. But while I was gone, my mother moved back in.”
“Oh, no.”
“Yeah. She brought meth, and she got my dad high that night. He fell off the wagon big-time, and they went on a bender. By the time I got home, Jude was holed up in his room, living off Pringles and peanut butter.”
I put a hand over my mouth. “Ripley, I’m so sorry.”
He gave a half-hearted nod. “Sometimes I wonder if Jude would be better off in foster care. But then I think I’m selfish for even thinking that. Because maybe I’m not worried about his best interests. Maybe I just want to get away. Escape. Go to college.”
