by Schow, Ryan
“Saying you were ugly once, now that’s hilarious,” he muses.
“When you go home tonight, alone, you’ll wonder if this is true, if I was in fact an ugly duckling before becoming the proverbial swan.”
“Is that swan with one ‘n’ or two?” he says, grinning.
“Don’t be such a smart ass,” I say a little too harshly.
He runs his hand through his hair, looks all over the place but right at me. I can tell he wants to say something, but at this point, I’m not sure even he knows what that something is. Finally he just sort of sighs and says, “So can I see a picture of you or something? You know, before you became…the way you look now?”
“No.”
“Okay,” he says, dragging the word out. “But don’t bust my nuts if I have a hard time believing you.”
I’m trying to smile, to let him feel like I’m joking, but the stress is getting to me and I think my filters are down. This entire encounter is awkward.
“I’m private about my past,” I say.
“You brought it up,” he says.
He’s right.
“Whatever.”
“So maybe I’ll see you later?” he says. I can tell he’s anxious to leave, like maybe he’s mad, or embarrassed. Yet he isn’t moving. Maybe I’m wrong. I’ve been wrong so much lately.
“I’m just stressed out is all,” I say. “It’s not you. I mean, it is, but it isn’t, you know?”
“That’s fine,” he says, shoving his hands into his pocket and head-flipping his hair from his eyes. He turns his face into the light breeze blowing off the front lawn and says, “Well this didn’t go the way I thought it would.” He looks up at me with a sad smile.
Again, he’s right. Shoving my inhibitions aside, burying the anger, the fear and the frustration of these last few days, I grab him and pull him close, and then I give him a scorching hot kiss, a real boiler-maker right on the mouth with tongue and everything. I do it because I’m pissed off at him, because I’m attracted to him, because deep down I still want to punish him for the way he was to me before I became the me I am today. He’s a bully and a player, but I can play, too. I can make him hurt, too.
And I will…eventually.
When we’re done, he just stands there, weak in the knees and surprised. With an airy, sexually charged laugh, I shut the door, barely letting myself admit how much I liked the kiss and how much the selfish side of me needed it.
2
When I shut the door, I turn around, smiling that elated smile and that’s when I see Brayden standing a few feet from me. Like he saw everything and hated every second of it. Without a word, he turns and leaves and I’m like, what the hell? I catch him heading out back, to the pool house where he’s staying and I’m like, “Dude, what gives?”
Both of us standing poolside, he turns and says, “Is that why you brought me out here? Because I could be getting laid right now by smoking hot girls with no morals and ginormous tits. Do you know that?”
“So I kissed him, so what?”
He waves me off, heads inside the pool house and draws the sliding glass door shut. Then he pulls the privacy drapes and I’m left standing there, baffled.
Back inside, I try knocking on Maggie’s door. She won’t open it; I try it and it’s locked. I knock incessantly. She won’t answer. Movement in the hall catches my eye. I look and see Rebecca standing in the doorway, dressed, watching me.
“What?” I ask, my tone tempered despite my fury.
“Why is Maggie sad?”
“Because some selfish freaking asshole stole her innocence.”
She blanches at my comment. My eyes tell me I’m talking to a twenty year old, but really she’s mentally twelve. Without further explanation, I pull the skeleton key off the bedroom door’s ledge, pick the lock and quietly go inside. Maggie’s room is cold, dark and nearly silent, except for the soft sounds of music coming from near her bed.
The closer I get to the bed, the more I realize the music is coming from underneath the blankets. Is that an iPod? I ease back the quilt like a parent might do to a child and find Maggie drowning in her own tears. Everything irritated in me softens, then breaks.
She wipes her eyes. I sit on the side of the bed. The look on her face is not of immense pain as it should be for the volume of tears. Hers is a face of vast emptiness. Like she has been hollowed out from within. There is in fact an iPod under the covers, and it’s playing Lana Del Rey’s album Born to Die on the tinny external speakers. Her earphones are nowhere in sight.
The song is Summertime Sadness. The words are haunting. Chilling. I want her to shut the song off as fast as possible. Seeming to read my mind, she does just that.
“Is privacy not privacy in your house?” she asks in a faraway voice. Like she’s on drugs, major downers.
“I worry about you.”
“You should,” she says. She hands me the phone and says, “He texted me again. He’s suing me for breach of contract. He said if I don’t return my advance and sign separation papers, the first place he will send that video is to my dad. He said no matter the outcome, my father’s heart will be broken. He says it will forever ruin him, and he’s right. As awful as my father can be, I’m still his little girl.”
“That motherf*cker,” I hear myself say. A shot of adrenaline stabs my heart and it drops out of fifth gear and slams into first. The imagery playing fast and loose in my head feels like murder.
“He said no father ever wants to see his daughter get screwed on film.”
“He wouldn’t do that. Don’t you see? That would prove he raped you, and your father would probably kill him. Not to mention jail time.”
“More than anything, my father wants me to sing. And if I don’t, I think I will have failed him and my mother.”
“This producer prick, he can go to hell. You don’t need him. You’re talented without him and you’ll be talented after him. You tell that piece of shit to back off or you’ll take the video to the cops.”
“He’ll send it to my friends, my family, the press. He says I was a waste of his time, money and talent. He told me I was a horrible fuck, that I wasn’t worth the effort.”
She starts crying again. It’s awful. The sobbing takes over and she’s completely losing control. All I can do is hold her, smooth her hair back and say everything is going to be okay when I know for a fact it will be anything but that.
3
My father, as it happens, has become quite the chef. And Netty? I think she’s developed a bit of a crush on him. I might be half-assed alright with it if my father would pretend to ignore her, but he doesn’t. I can’t believe it, but he’s playing into it! Even Brayden’s like, WTF? and I’m like, I know, right?
Netty, I have to admit, looks good. Like really good. I always thought she was pretty, but the way she looks today, her once heavily made-up face now lightly dusted with more subtle hues, and her hair—which has grown more blonde since I saw her last—is cut shoulder-length and looks sexy as hell on her petite frame. I must admit, she’s pretty damn hot. Looking at my father looking at her, so comfy, so handsome and at-ease, it’s impossible to tell if he’s flirting or if he’s officially moved into some kind of new awareness about himself. He was always so awkward. Not now. Now, I’d say he’s got (OMFG, am I really going to admit this?) some swagger.
I remind myself the guy is nearly fifty. Then my eyes focus on him and he looks more like he’s in his mid- to late-thirties. For a second, the contradiction pumps gallons of extra acid into my stomach. He was a Dorkasaurus-Rex before, with the dad body and the techno-tard persona, but now? Now he’s fit and handsome, and I think if he wasn’t my father even I’d have a crush on him.
If I can say one thing, though, it’s that I’m really happy for him. That wound-too-tight air he put off all his life is a thing of the past. He now comes off as the epitome of casual, relaxed, unburdened. It makes me want to hug him.
Then my eyes clear again and I see the way my father an
d Netty are looking at each other and it makes my insides coil. Brayden and Rebecca, it’s like they’re not even here. I hate that I’m ignoring the two of them because of this stupid thing going on between my best friend and my father, but I can’t help it. The sky is totally falling right now! Either that or I’m so paranoid I’m making all this crap up in my mind. Chances are, it’s the latter.
But still…
“So do you have a boyfriend in the city?” I ask Netty, my voice a bit tense and shaky.
“No,” Netty says, looking at me weird since I just interrupted her and my father talking about different kinds of wine.
“How do you know so much about wine?” Brayden asks in a condescending tone. “You’re still underage.”
Netty laughs like that’s the funniest thing ever. Even my father joins in. Me and Rebecca, we look at each other, both our faces like blank slates. If that was a joke, will someone please tell me the punch line?
“Oh, come on, Brayden,” my father says, “you’re telling me you haven’t touched the stuff? Underage drinking is practically a staple of youth.”
“Maybe to you,” I say, feeling myself coming to Brayden’s defense simply because I don’t like my father coming to Netty’s defense.
I know it’s stupid, and totally irrational, but my screwy freaking brain can’t stop wondering if me and Netty would still be best friends if she were my step-mother.
Brayden’s like, “Look, I drink, socially, but you’re not going to catch me with my nose so high in the air discussing the various notes and tears of a 1983 Cabernet Sauvignon, or whatever. I drink to loosen me up, to have fun, to not think about all the reasons people won’t like me. For me drinking is not a hobby, it’s a survival mechanism.”
“I suppose you can’t fault the boy for that,” my father says. The way he says boy, it’s totally innocent, I’m sure, but it still leaves a bitter taste in the air.
At this point, I’m not even sure if Brayden’s forgiven me for kissing Jacob. Or for dragging him out here from lovely Las Vegas and all the hookers it has to offer someone like him. At least right now we’re on the same side.
“All I’m saying is wine tasting is a new culture for me, one I find interesting,” Netty replies. I don’t want to say she’s sounding like a snob, but holy balls, she is right now.
“It just doesn’t seem like you, that’s all.” I say. “Having or not having a boyfriend, looking hot the way you do, how your mother and father are doing, that’s what I thought you would talk about. Not wine.”
In my mind, I’m thinking, yep, I just pulled that out of my ass, but whatever. The gravitational pull my father and Netty have on each other, for the moment, me and Brayden manage to disrupt it.
Rebecca says, “Dinner smells good,” and I’m still surprised she’s not a clone. Every time she speaks, I practically jump. Looking at her, there are so many questions I want to ask, so many things I’m peeing my mother-effing pants to know.
Unfortunately she still has that vacant look in her eyes. Like half of the time she’s completely bombed out of her mind. Did her abductors treat her as if she’d never again re-enter society? If they treated her like a casualty of science, there’s no telling what damage they might have done.
“It does smell good,” Brayden says. Turning to me, talking to me again like the whole Jacob smooch-fest never happened, he says, “What’s with Magpie?”
“She’s tired,” I blurt out quickly.
“She’s really, really sad,” Rebecca says, her voice like the softest breeze ever. Everyone looks at her and you can tell the statement comes from someplace deep inside her.
The mouth-watering aromas of garlic chicken and mashed potatoes and parmesan-crusted baked bread sit in the air like warm, fluffy pillows. I’m thinking back to the fatness of my old tummy and how it became its own pillow from me loving food the way I did. Or perhaps gluttony was my only escape.
Oh, how I once adored food!
For the better part of my life I dealt with my depression by eating. Now I want to eat so badly, and this, too, is most likely some recurring form of depression. I recognize it right away. I shouldn’t be depressed, but I am. So much for Gerhard’s promises. He said the broken emotions in my brain would be fixed and I wouldn’t have to be sad or anxious or depressed again.
It was such a lovely fantasy.
So here I am, thinking of Maggie’s pain, of Rebecca and how she was kidnapped and held for the benefit of science and wealth, of how Brayden just admitted to drinking to cope with his insecurities, of how my father is finding it acceptable to lead my best friend on. And I thought being pretty and having friends would fill the world with fresh roses. I’m surprised how many of those roses turned black.
“I’ll get Maggie,” I announce.
My father starts talking to Netty again, and as much as I want to stay there and put the brakes on all that “romantic tension” bullcrap, I can’t.
Maggie needs me, and I need her.
4
Three times I knock on Maggie’s door and three times my knock goes unanswered. I open the door, go back inside. It’s like a tomb: cold, dark, silent except for the whisper sounds of Maggie’s snoring. I sit gently on the bed beside her.
She doesn’t stir.
Watching her sleeping so peacefully, I can’t help thinking how cruel it would be for me to pull her from this state and shove her back into the waking world. For her, life has become its own prison, her memories the steel cage holding her captive: the music mogul who decimated her youth, her failing music career, the impending breach of contract, her asshole step-sister, the image of her mother floating dead in the bathtub, me promising her friendship and an escape only to overwhelm her with boys and best friends and a kidnapped girl.
Brushing her hair gently away from her closed eyes, I look at her. She’s so beautiful. I want to cry. Everyone in her life has forsaken her. Myself included. There’s no way I can rouse her from this peaceful slumber.
Even I’m not that selfish.
On the bedside table, her cell phone chirps. Just once, lightly. I wait in utter stillness for her to wake. She doesn’t even move. Thankfully, her breathing holds steady.
I check her phone and it’s the rapist prick sending her a message. My heart leaps. I shouldn’t read it, but I can’t help myself. A few clicks later and I’m reading more of his threatening bullshit. I have to say, right now, it’s hard for me to breathe. He’s saying if she doesn’t get her ass in the studio and get back to recording the album first thing tomorrow morning, he’s filing the lawsuit.
The tiniest black balloon in my chest fills with hot, angry air. It expands leaving me breathless and infuriated. And not the least bit rational.
My fingers and brain get to work texting a reply, and there’s nothing I can do to stop myself. No way, not now.
I tell the rapist I’m Maggie’s friend and I know what he did to her and if he does anything other than leave her the f*ck (no asterisk) alone, I’m personally going to track him down and shoot him in his rotten f*cking face. With a real gun. No joke.
Again, no asterisk.
My finger hovers over the SEND button for the longest time. The dark balloon inside me, it isn’t shrinking; it’s still expanding. I have no choice but to push SEND.
Then I wait.
For the next few minutes, there is nothing. No reply. I wait, hardly able to breathe, my skin so hot it feels scorched. Invariably, my thoughts return to Gerhard’s seven foot scab eating beast and how, in the end, I shot him dead. I want the music producer dead, too.
Make no mistake, I have it in me.
My brain thinks about past texts, the rape video, how that son of a bitch forced her to do such horrible things. All so that she could do the one thing she needed most: sing.
I think about her voice, how it reminds her of her mother, and how Maggie must have felt seeing her floating in the blood-red water, the life drained from her, her body so pale. Fresh tears stand in my eyes. That’
s when I lay down and pull my friend into my arms and hold her so close to me.
The smell of poultry and baked bread makes its way into Maggie’s room, reminding me people are waiting for me, but I can’t let go of my friend, and I can’t stop crying. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. The tears drain down my face, dripping onto Maggie’s warm skin. She opens her eyes, slow, like it takes all the effort in the world.
She says, “What are you doing?” but not like she’s mad. She says it like she’s drugged.
“Sorry, I wanted to be close to you.”
“Why?”
“Because I love you, and because I’m sad for you.”
“I’m sad for me, too,” she says at the end of the longest sigh.
“Are you hungry?”
“I just want to be alone.”
“I know. But you’re not alone. There’s a house full of people who want to see you, who want you in their lives.”
“I’m not feeling social,” she says.
“I know.”
She works her way out of my arms and rolls on her side, away from me. That’s when I hear the music. I look down and her shirt is pulled halfway up her back from sleeping. There’s an imprint on her skin the shape and size of her iPod. She must have rolled on it earlier, the speakers and the music pressed into silence against the softness of her skin. Now it’s playing louder. It’s the same artist I heard before: Lana Del Rey.
The words are as disturbing as ever, and deep. The sadness in the singer’s voice touches me so profoundly, the depth of my emotion seems impossible, bottomless. She’s singing about how she was born to die. For a moment, inside me, an emptiness unfurls, spreading through me with such force I want to run from the song, from the words, from the artist’s gorgeous, haunting voice. Yet I cling to these words because I, too, have fallen victim to the lure of death before. So many times I ached to end it all, and when I finally found the courage to try, I failed, and all my pretty roses caught fire.
