by Joe Meno
Billy did not like that at all, no, he did not. He adjusted his mirrored sunglasses and smoothed his tropical flower shirt. “Okay, look, this young woman needs help. She needs to return to her homeland where people, her doctor or whatever, know why she is crazy. Now, why isn’t it possible for us to be on the flight that is sitting at the gate right now?”
The small woman shook her head and said, “No, no, tomorrow, thank you.” She offered them two seats in economy class for the morning flight, checked their passports again, and advised them to please be on time, thank you very much, goodbye.
The couple stared in horror as the great blue metal door to the boarding area closed suddenly. In the next moment, the enormous white airplane was taxiing away. Billy held the girl’s hand, not out of any affection, but out of a sense of camaraderie in having missed what would have been the quickest, easiest way to end a miserable five-day trip. Watching the plane depart, the girl let go of his grip, both of them becoming immediately hopeless.
“We’ll have to get a hotel room for the night,” Billy said. “We’ll go get a taxi and find a place nearby. Don’t worry. It’ll be fine.”
“It doesn’t matter either way,” the girl whispered. “I’m already on that plane. I’m flying away from here. I’m gone and never looking back at this terrible place or you ever again.”
“We should go get a room,” he repeated.
“As far I’m concerned, you and everybody else are dead to me now.”
“Excellent,” Billy said.
“I am doing everything I can not to start screaming at you,” she whispered.
“Bonus,” he said. He took their bags and began stumbling uneasily toward the exit. In a moment, a smiling Belizean man in a dark suit stopped them both, showing them a bright silver identification badge.
“Good afternoon. We have been alerted that your companion here may be suffering a mental illness of some kind. We must be sure you will not injure yourself or other passengers on the flight.” The man said all of this very quickly while smiling at the girl. “If you are to fly tomorrow morning, we must give you a short psychological test before you can board the plane.”
“Man, is this for real?” Billy asked. “Because it doesn’t seem like you can just do that.”
“Yes, we can, and we should not wait, if you want to make arrangements to leave here as you plan.”
Nicole looked at Billy and rolled her eyes. He nodded and said, “I shouldn’t have said anything, huh?”
“No, you shouldn’t have, you dick.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“No, I do not.”
“How long will this take?” he asked the man with the badge.
“One hour.”
“Okay, I’ll meet you here in about an hour.” He pointed to the airline counter. “Good luck. You know, just say whatever you think a sane person would say.”
“Very funny.” The girl smirked and followed the man in the dark suit down a corridor, then disappeared into a small office. Seeing her scared, stepping down the shadowy hallway, Billy remembered why he liked the girl so much: She wasn’t strong. She was truly the weakest human being he had ever met. She was young and rich and spoiled and had been in a video which documented topless girls on spring break. She had been in two different volumes of this particular series. She was about ten years younger than him but much, much smarter. She read. Books. All types of books. She once gave him a book for his birthday. He looked at it as if it was a glowing rock fallen from outer space. He had met her the first time at a party and immediately noticed she was not wearing a bra. She had on this very thin white T-shirt and there was something about the shape of her astonishing breasts, small, like teacups, that made Billy follow her around all night in a daze. In the taxi, which they agreed to split even though Billy was heading in the absolutely wrong direction, they began to make out. Nicole was an amazing kisser, she kissed with total abandon, like it was the most fun ever, making out, and she even took his hand and placed it under her pink skirt, his fingers moving down to the soft lines of her panties. She reached into the front of his pants and just as her fingers were unbuckling his belt, she stopped. She looked at him quizzically and frowned, then said, “I’ve got to stop acting like this,” but kept making out with him anyways. When they finally did it, a couple of days later, she was shy at first but then laughed the whole time. She seemed to be the only girl Billy had ever met who actually enjoyed sex. Which was great. Which was why he had asked her to come with him to Belize in the first place. She was more fun than anyone he knew, but sometimes, more often than not, he discovered, a certifiable cuckoo.
It happened when they were unpacking in their small hotel room after arriving the first afternoon. Nicole discovered she had forgotten all her antianxiety medications. Mistakenly, Billy told her that it was probably the best thing that could ever happen to her. He told her not to worry. He told her she probably didn’t even need all those pills anyway. Billy, of course, had been wrong about everything in his life, and this poor medical advice was absolutely no exception.
The girl’s breakdown, when it happened, looked exactly like this: After three days of sitting under an umbrella crying, arguing with him about why she wasn’t eating, Nicole locked herself in the bathroom of the hotel room and refused to open the door for about four or five hours. Billy paced the room and knocked on the door every ten minutes or so. All he could think to say was, “Nicole, this is not very cool. If you’re mad at me, open the damn door so we can talk. Don’t leave me out here like some kind of asshole.” The girl, hearing all of this, sitting in the small, claw-footed bathtub, grabbed her hair dryer, plugged it in, and dropped it into the tub with her. Nothing happened. The hair dryer was a new model that prevented anything serious from happening. Out of frustration, she decided to cut her hair, which was long and soft and blond. After she finished, half of it was still shoulder-length while the rest was molted and jagged. When the girl finally opened the bathroom door, Billy found her naked, submerged in the water, her skin pruning, the hair dryer floating beside her like an expensive bath toy. Suicide, he decided, was more than he could handle, and immediately booked the flight home.
* * *
Outside the airport was a taxi stand, a military outpost, and an old green-tinted factory. It was July and the heat made everything look silver. He had planned on getting a cab back to Belize City, securing a modest room for the night, and then returning to the airport to pick Nicole up. When he stepped out into the sun, though, he realized it would be better to wait for Nicole than drive there and have to come back again.
A dark-skinned boy was sitting on an old red bicycle, resting his feet on the curb near the taxi stand. The boy watched Billy carefully and then, pointing to a wire basket attached to the front of his bike, asked if he was interested in buying any fireworks. As it turned out, Billy was damn interested in buying some fireworks. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he had wanted to buy fireworks so badly. He gave the kid a buck, American, and the kid offered him his choice of a variety of rockets, noisemakers, missiles, and Roman candles, all with strange names like Widow’s Laundry and Sparkly Flying Fish and Blooming Fire Mansion. At the bottom of the basket was another kind, small paper animals on crude paper tricycles, and Billy selected one of those as well, a monkey with a red fez riding an antique-looking bike, and then two nameless blue rockets. He patted the kid on the head, then felt bad for doing that and gave him an extra buck.
Nicole, unbelievably, was given a clean bill of health. But, of course, she was not waiting where she was supposed to be. Instead, she was outside smoking right under a No Smoking sign and itching her armpit feverishly.
“What in the hell is wrong with you, Nicole?” Billy asked.
“I’ve got a mosquito bite in my armpit. It’s pissing me off big-time.”
“No, I mean, why are you smoking right there? These people are very serious down here. There’s a goddamn sign right there.”
“Fuck off, Billy. If I can’t smoke, I’m gonna fucking murder somebody.”
“Okay, fine. We’re gonna go back into the city and get a room. Finish your cigarette and let’s go.”
“Billy, you are not allowed to talk to me for the rest of the trip.”
“Fine.”
“Fine, and fuck you,” she said.
Billy got her into a taxi and they drove back through the wide, dense grasslands toward Belize City. The landscape was brittle and empty, dotted every so often with aged, aqua-colored Coca-Cola signs and billboard warnings against drunk driving. The girl was quiet, thinking maybe, then at some point looked at him and squinted with her small, hateful eyes.
“That airport guy asked me if you were my dad.” She said this with a sneer that showed some of her small white teeth.
Billy nodded but didn’t say anything.
“I realized that’s why I came here. Because I really hate my dad. I hate my dad and I’m living like this to punish myself.”
“Awesome,” is what Billy said, staring out of the window of the taxicab. “That is fucking great news.”
Nicole complained that the room they got, the room they would only spend like six or seven hours in, was both trashy and cheap. It was, though, really. The water in the bathroom stopped working while Nicole was in the shower and so she came out, her hair wrapped in a small white towel, the rest of her tall and thin and naked. She laid in the small bed beside him and sighed, then said, “I’m sorry for ruining your trip, Billy. I am not very happy right now, in my life. I’m realizing people really don’t like me. I feel very shitty about myself inside.” She sniffled a little bit, then turned over, covering her face with her hands. “I’m not expecting you to understand, but I am sick of being treated like shit by people. I can’t stand being treated like shit anymore.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t act like shit,” he said.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. You act like a dumbshit so that’s how people treat you.”
Nicole glared at him, her bottom lip trembling. “I fucking hate you, Billy,” she said, and started crying again. “I really do. I came down here because I thought you were nice. I thought you were the one person who really liked me for who I was and everything.”
“Oh Jesus, Nicole.”
Billy sat up and put his feet on the floor. He buttoned his pants and decided this would be a good time to take a last look at the tropical sunset. He grabbed his backpack and stepped outside. Most of Belize City was lit up with colored lights by then, the small bodegas and corner stores peopled with skinny kids laughing and drinking soda pop from glass bottles. He sat down on a narrow curb, searched for his smokes, found his lighter, then remembered the fireworks. Oh yes, the fireworks in his bag. He placed one of the blue rockets on the ground, lit the fuse, and backed away carefully. It simply burned up, never leaving the earth, totally soundless, exploding into a small white fire which he stamped out angrily with his sandal. He tried the other rocket, which again simply caught fire and fell on its side, another bust, another dud, ugh. He took the paper monkey with its fez, its small legs attached to the pedals of the bike, and set it on the street. He glanced up at the motel room window and frowned. He suddenly felt bad for what he had said to her. He felt awful for forcing her to come with him, knowing exactly how she was, crazy, and expecting her to be anything else. He had not been very nice to her the whole time. He had definitely screwed up by telling her it was okay not to take her medication. He felt maybe now might be a good time to apologize. He put his hands to his mouth like a megaphone and started shouting for the girl. There was no response. He called and called and called her name, the Belizean kids on the corner staring at him, their small dogs joining in, until Nicole opened the door and came out onto the balcony. Her hair was still in the white towel and she had a white sheet wrapped around her middle. She was really lovely, like a princess; even in the dirty motel sheets, you could tell there was something very intelligent and refined about her, from the length of her neck and the way she carried herself. She was somebody smart, but she was used to acting very, very dumb. She was pretending to be bored now and smoking, her body lithe and narrow as it leaned against the railing.
“What do you want now?” she asked, staring down at him.
Billy kneeled and lit the fuse, then hurried away, the small monkey exploding with white fire, shooting across the street, disappearing into a small field, jumping from the ground, and vanishing into the night sky. The girl was surprised, for the first time in a long time maybe, and began clapping, her mouth wide and open. Billy started making monkey sounds, hopping back and forth. Her face went red with mirth, a terrible snort echoing from her nose.
When Billy heard that sound, that snorting laugh, he thought, Oh no, oh God, oh God, I am falling in love. He stood there blinking at her on the balcony, then dashed up the motel stairs, chasing her into the room as, just then, she began laughing and screaming.
illustration by
Kelsey Brookes
What a schoolgirl you are. You read Choose Your Own Adventure books and novels about teen romance with cheerleaders on the cover. You believe in the idea of true love. People in your classes call you withdrawn, shy. When your back is turned, they call you lame. You tell yourself how you don’t care and go on reading Judy Blume, even though you’re a sophomore now and still trying to comprehend why you don’t quite fit in at your high school.
Your hair is the same as it was in fifth grade. You have no idea what to do with an eyebrow pencil or lip liner. Your armpits are hairless and so are your legs. You are fifteen and waiting with much dread for your first period to come. Your body is a green twig, full of knots and unattractive bumps and angles. You have decorated all your folders with the same drawing of the same Pegasus leaping over the same castle.
What a schoolgirl you are.
You do not pay attention in class. You’d rather be reading a horror novel. You find yourself spending most of your summer in summer school.
Ditching your algebra class one day, you go to watch your best friends smoke in the green woods beside the highway. You never smoke. Your father died of cancer two months ago. When you were small, your father would read a book to you, kiss your head, then switch off the light. In that moment, he would become a shadow. That is how you think of him now, a shadow, quiet and lonely in the dark corner of your room. Now you imagine everyone you love dying suddenly. You are sure somehow your father’s death has something to do with you.
That afternoon, you are told a secret that changes your young life. Jessica Bennet, the dark-eyed, rosy-cheeked captain of the high school cheerleading squad has, without reasonable explanation, committed suicide. Your closest friend, Patrick Van Buren, whispers this gossip to you as you sit on a wet log. Patrick is one year younger and has small, delicate features. He stutters frequently. He is in summer school for failing gym. He is what other kids call queer and wears his blond hair in one long series of cascading bangs. There was a moment where you thought he was going to kiss you and you were terrified of what was going to happen if he got an erection. You think he saw the fear in your eyes and made a decision to never try and kiss anyone ever again.
Patrick offers you a cigarette, which you decline. You then ask, “How did she kill herself?”
Corey Phillips, your other friend, picks at her braces and answers: “She stabbed herself thirty-nine times.” Corey is tall and is often called “Horse-face” while walking down the hallway. She has failed chemistry on purpose. She is in love with the teacher, Mr. Brandt, and wanted to take his class over the summer again. “Can you believe it?” Corey asks. “She stabbed herself thirty-nine times?”
You are impressed. You are impressed because you have often imagined stabbing yourself to death. Strangely, the number in your head has always been exactly thirty-nine. You have imagined putting on the soundtrack from The Sound of Music and taking a kitchen knife to your midsection, counting out blow a
fter blow, one, two, three, up to thirty-nine, until you collapse and the record finally ends. You now imagine Jessica Bennet doing this and what you feel for her is an untold amount of respect.
“Why did she do it?” you ask.
“Brad Armstrong broke up with her.”
You think of Brad Armstrong: tall, square-jawed, dark eyes, captain of the football team, the Romeo in every school play. Knowing Jessica Bennet has stabbed herself thirty-nine times because of unrequited love forces you to consider that you may have been wrong about her and everything.
Corey finishes picking at her braces and frowns. “Jessica was, like, totally evil,” she says. “The world is, like, much better without her.”
A cloudy question storms your mind then. You say it before you have had a chance to actually consider what is being said.
“Who’s going to replace Jessica on the cheerleading squad?”
“They’re holding emergency tryouts tomorrow afternoon,” Corey replies, snapping a small rubber band back in place somewhere within the darkness of her mouth.
You stand abruptly, as you have now made a decision, and say, “I’m going to try out for the cheerleading squad,” and begin walking back toward the school in a way you imagine is brave. Your friend, Corey, stands frozen, a statue of a girl with a horse-face staring. Patrick’s small mouth drops open. He tries to catch a glimpse of your nonexistent breasts while you are bravely walking away.
If you really do decide to try out for the cheerleading squad, go to page 2.
If you decide to go home, put on the soundtrack to The Sound of Music, then stab yourself in solidarity with Jessica Bennet, go to Figure.
You choose to try out for the cheerleading squad because you know that, in its own way, this decision is practically the same as stabbing yourself to death. It is a kind of suicide, you think, and this is both terrifying and pleasing.
