Burnout

by Adrienne Maria Vrettos

  CHAPTER 11

  TODAY

  After I leave Sheila in the office, I don’t go to class.

  I need to start covering my tracks with my mom.

  I squeeze myself into the ancient wooden phone booth in the basement by the woodshop and call her with two quarters I find in the bottom of my shopping bag.

  She doesn’t pick up, so I leave her a message. “Hi, Mom, it’s me. I’ve been having weird cell phone reception issues, and it’s not letting me pick up my voice mail, so I don’t know if you called. I’m on a pay phone at school, just calling to say hi and everything’s fine. Hope you’re having fun. Love you!”

  I don’t realize the darkness came until it goes away, and I find myself holding the phone in my hand, listening to the rapid beep of a disconnected line.

  I hang up the phone. I refuse to think about what’s happening to my body. If I don’t think about it, it’s not real. It will go away. I will find my backpack and everything will go back to the way it was.

  I sneak out the back door.

  By the time I get to our apartment building in SoHo, I’m totally soaked. The good thing is that when it rains, our neighborhood gets a break from the tourists. They duck inside the supersize flagship stores on Broadway that are really just elephantine versions of the same stores they have in the mall back home. And then as soon as it stops raining they pour back out onto the streets in disposable transparent rain parkas printed with I LOVE NEW YORK on the back, unfolding their laminated street maps in the middle of the sidewalk in giddy clumps, totally oblivious to the actual New Yorkers who are trying to walk by.

  Mom says in the old days she never used to have worry about that “element.” She says it like she’s talking about murderers and thieves instead of tourists. I’m not sure which she thinks is worse.

  There’s a film crew blocking the sidewalk in front of our apartment. I actually don’t mind having to walk into the narrow street to get around them, since it drives me crazy when people make movies about New York in a place other than New York. Only assholes shoot in Vancouver and then call it New York. Only New York is New York. Our street is always in movies, since it’s tree lined and the buildings are old and picturesque and it’s dotted with precious little restaurants and boutiques with striped fabric awnings and faux-weathered signs hanging from curlicue iron rods that make it look charming without looking like an outdoor mall.

  Our building, however, has become the eyesore of the block. It’s metal and glass and looks stupid sandwiched between adorable brownstones. It wasn’t always like this. It used to be old and rickety and perfect, but then the building owners renovated and threw all that charm down a yellow trash chute that emptied into a Dumpster on the sidewalk. All except for the top floor, our apartment. If you look at our building, it kind of looks like a robot wearing a brick hat.

  “What’s up, Chuck?” I stomp my feet on the mat just inside the front doors by the doorman’s desk, pulling off my hat and shaking off the water droplets that have gathered on it.

  Chuck snorts, not looking up from the tiny television he hides in the narrow space under the counter that tops his desk. He’s leaning back in his chair, rotating a little from side to side, his hands resting on his belly. “Don’t get water on my floor, I just mopped up.”

  It took me a while to get used to having a doorman, even though technically, and made repeatedly clear by the building’s owners, he’s not our doorman. He’s supposed to ignore my mom and me and Tick, but Chuck’s a good dude, and he always says hello and secretly signs for our packages.

  “Seta turn the heat on for you yet?” I ask, blowing into my palms. “It’s freezing in here.”

  “It’s not that cold, wimp,” he answers, still looking at the television.

  I go to Seta’s office door, to the left of the elevators, and find it locked.

  “He’s out,” Chuck calls over.

  “Shit. Lunch?”

  “No, his mom’s in the hospital. He won’t be back until tonight. Why’s your voice all crinkly?”

  “Don’t know. That’s too bad about Seta’s mom. Hope she’s okay.” I lean over the counter and grab a handful of the M&M’s Chuck keeps next to the TV. “I need to get into our place. God, these are good! I’m starving.” My stomach rumbles in agreement. “I left my backpack upstairs and I need to get back to school.”

  He finally looks up at me. “Child, what the hell happened to you?”

  “What? My face? Or my hair?”

  He wrinkles his nose, reeling back a little. “Your eyes. You’ve got crazy eyes.”

  “Contacts.” I lie to him matter-of-factly. “Halloween costume. Supposed to make me look like one of those devil kids in the movies. So how do I get into my apartment?” I ask, my mouth still full of M&M’s.

  “Can’t help you. Seta’s gone, he has the spare keys.”

  “Yeah, but what if there was an emergency?”

  “In the event of a true medical or safety emergency, we would have the authorities come and kick down your door. But doing that to retrieve a textbook might lessen your appeal with the building owners.”

  I sigh and rest my head on the counter. “I don’t feel well in the stomach.”

  My stomach rumbles loud enough for us both to hear.

  “Child, you need to eat something before you digest your own kidneys,” he says. The thought of food makes my stomach go all funny. Half nauseous, half famished. I realize with a chill that I don’t know the last time I ate.

  “Fine, I’ll go get a slice.” My voice sounds hollow. “You want something?”

  “Where’re you going?” he asks, starting our most frequent conversation.

  “Ray’s.”

  “Forget it,” he says, looking back to the TV. “I’m keeping my money.”

  “Who says I wasn’t going to treat you?” I ask, offended.

  “Because you never treat me,” he counters, which is the truth.

  “That’s true. And I would have done it this time, except I can’t because I won’t have enough to go to Pizza Heaven and get you the ridiculous tourist pizza slices I know you are going to make me get.”

  “It’s not tourist pizza,” he says.

  “It is because only tourists put that much crap on their pizza. Just let me go to Ray’s.”

  “Forget it,” he says, still staring at the TV. “I got my M&M’s for lunch.”

  “You are so not from New York.”

  Now he actually looks at me, so sharply that I take a step back. “There are all sorts of New York, little girl,” he says firmly. “You and your opinion about how to spend your doorman’s money is just one of them.”

  “Now I feel like an asshole.” I pout, looking at my sneakers. I sneak a peek and see him raising his eyebrows.

  “You’re not an asshole,” he finally says. “You just get wrapped up in your first-world problems.”

  “Like how to spend my doorman’s money?”

  “Exactly. Now, go get me two slices, a Shoeless Joe and a Luke I Am Your Father.”

  I groan.

  “Problem?”

  I debate telling him that the only name a slice of pizza should have is regular or maybe pepperoni, if you’re feeling frisky. But I’m starving, so I don’t argue the point. “No problem. Just write down what you want, because I already forget what you said.” He scribbles down his order and hands it to me, along with some cash.

  I eat my pizza on one of the rainbow-painted stools at the high counter that wraps around half of Pizza Heaven. The guy at the counter glowered at me while I ordered, and for a second I wondered if Chuck was just messing with me when he wrote down the names of the slices he wanted. But he wasn’t, they were right there, hanging above the pizza oven on a hand-painted menu. For myself I got a Bird, which involves buffalo wings and a ton of blue cheese, and a Dude, which is basically a pie made out of cheeseburger. They were good, I’ll admit that much, but it definitely wasn’t pizza.

  And it definitely wasn’t ho
t. I debated asking the glowering guy behind the counter to stick my slices back in the oven, but he kept glaring at me, so I decided against it. It’s just so freaking cold today, and I don’t think they even have the heat on in here. Cheap bastards. I want to tell them that just because it doesn’t usually get cold in New York until late November, it doesn’t mean that this isn’t a freak year or something. It doesn’t mean that it’s, like, outside of the realm of freaking possibility that we might get a cold snap before Thanksgiving.

  I’m so cold that to drink my Coke I have to pull the MTA guy’s coat sleeve over my hand. Otherwise my fingers go numb. Before I leave, I bite the bullet and ask the grump behind the counter to stick Chuck’s slices back in the oven for a few minutes.

  I go into the women’s bathroom while I wait, turn the water on hot, and run my hands under it until they warm up. It’s hot in here, and I stuff my hat in a jacket pocket. This is what I hate about winter in New York. You’re either freezing or sweating. I turn the water to cold, splash some on my face, and look at myself in the mirror. My pupils are pinpricks. I run my fingers over my shorn hair, flinch at a sore spot on my scalp.

  There’s just one stall in the bathroom, and I don’t even notice there’s someone in it until the toilet flushes.

  “Hey, what’s up?” An unfamiliar girl comes out of the stall. She looks like she’s about my age, maybe older. She’s wearing a lightweight cotton dress with a thin sweater over it. I shiver just looking at her.

  “Oh, hey,” I mumble, turning off the water. I feel like it looks weird to just walk out again, so I go into the stall.

  “It didn’t all come off, hmm?” the girl asks, raising her voice so I can hear it over the water in the sink as she washes her hands.

  “Excuse me?” I ask, shaking my head because I hate having conversations with strangers while I pee.

  “Your costume. The face paint,” the girl answers. I hear her pull a paper towel from the dispenser.

  “Have we . . . do I know you or something?”

  “Duh,” she snorts, “I was in the bathroom at Duke’s when you were trying to get it off.”

  I finish and flush. The girl is leaning on the sink when I come out.

  “Don’t you remember?” she asks, moving aside so I can wash my hands. “I gave your friend one of those Handi-Wipe things from my purse to see if it would help get the makeup off.”

  I close my eyes against the sudden wave of nausea that floods over me. “My friend?”

  “Yeah, your friend. Skinny little thing. Wore the same dress as you.”

  All I can do is look at her in the mirror. A bead of sweat drips down my forehead and slips into my eye. I blink it away.

  “I was with a friend last night?”

  “Yeah, at Duke’s. You don’t remember?”

  I shake my head, and then shake it harder, trying to clear it.

  She leans in a little behind me, watching my reflection in the mirror. “You all right? You don’t look all right.”

  “Fine,” I answer, before rushing by her to throw up in the toilet.

  She asks once more if I’m okay, but I don’t answer, and a moment later, after listening to me retch again and again, she leaves.

  I black out for a while after I throw up. I don’t know for how long. When I come to, I find that I’ve fallen and I’m slumped against the toilet. I push myself up, groaning at the soreness in my joints.

  CHAPTER 12

  REMEMBERING

  The last time I was at Duke’s . . . the last time I remember being at Duke’s was a few days after I got out of rehab. It was my first time seeing Seemy, and it was not going well.

  “Seemy!” I leaned over and hissed loudly in her ear. “Sit up!”

  She grinned up at me from where she lay on the cushioned vinyl seat of our booth. Then she reached under the table and peeled off a piece of gum and acted like she was about to put it in her mouth. I hit her hand, making her drop it.

  “What the hell, Nan!” she whined. “I’m hungry!”

  “Then sit up and eat your french fries.” I tried to pull her into a sitting position, but she stayed limp, giggling at me as I tried. Tick had done the same thing that morning, refusing to let me get up from where we lay together on the couch, watching cartoons. He’d been sleeping with me since I got home, and I’d been dragging him around the apartment while he hung on to my leg, refusing to let me go anywhere without him. With the Tick, all I had to do was tickle him to get him to let go. With Seemy, all I wanted to do was smack her. “Fine. Just fine. Lie there if you want.” I turned back to my french fries, dipped one in ketchup, and tried to swallow through the lump in my throat.

  I smelled Toad before I saw him. He sat down hard next to me in the booth, taking up too much room with his teeth and his elbows and his stupid pants. “Whatsup.”

  “Hey, Toad.” I ate another fry. He took one from my plate, and I fought the urge to punch him in the face. He jumped all of a sudden, then bent over to look under the table and cracked up. “Stop pinching, Seemy!”

  He sat up and leaned back in the booth, threading his fingers together behind his head and spreading out his elbows like he was reclining on a beach. He stayed in that position for only a second before shifting again, taking another french fry, and winking at me. He was like a damn dog, pissing all over the place to claim his territory. I wanted to tell him I got it. Duke’s was his place now. His and Seemy’s. And Seemy was his too.

  “So, Nan,” he asked, drinking my Coke, “are you having a good welcome-home-from-rehab dinner?”

  Seemy cracked up and started singing that song: “They tried to make me go to rehab, I said no, no, no!”

  I put down the fry I was about to eat and moved to get out of the booth, shoving Toad out of my way.

  “Come on, Nan, chill out.” Toad laughed, his mouth full.

  Seemy suddenly regained her ability to sit up. “Don’t go, Nanja!” She tried to grab my arm, spilled my Coke. I yanked my arm away, kept walking toward the door.

  I passed by Edie, one of the waitresses we knew. She was leaning against the counter, watching me. “You taking them with you?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  She smirked. “Please?”

  As I pushed open the door, I heard her call out, “I’ll give you a dollar if you do! Two if they never come back!”

  CHAPTER 13

  TODAY

  I rinse my mouth in the sink and splash water on my face, even if the makeup keeps me from feeling it. I stare at myself in the mirror and then unzip the jacket. The words across my chest read, HELP ME. And now I have this feeling, this terrible feeling that it wasn’t me who was asking for help at all.

  Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to, Nan. Don’t ask why it feels like your body is ripping apart at the seams.

  Seemy.

  Leave it alone, Nan. “I can’t,” I say aloud.

  I rush out of Pizza Heaven, Chuck’s pizza box tucked under my arm.

  I walk fast, my right hand pushing down so hard in the jacket pocket I can see the outline of my knuckles, like I’m trying to punch through the fabric. Why the hell are there no pay phones in New York anymore? It takes me three blocks to find one outside a bodega, next to one of those musical animal rides the Tick always begs Mom for rides on. The phone’s not in a booth, it’s just bolted to the side of the building.

  I plug in two quarters—Chuck’s change from the pizza—and dial.

  A familiar, raspy voice answers. “H’lo?”

  “Oh Jesus, Seemy!” I gasp with relief, tears stinging my eyes. But then she keeps talking, “Ha-ha, got you! I’m not picking up. Leave a message. Peace out.”

  “Sss . . .” It’s like all my energy has been drained. “Seemy, it’s Nan. I know . . . I know it’s been a while. I think. But, can you call me? Can you call me right now?”

  I don’t even say good-bye, I just hang up, and then realize that she’ll call my cell phone, and I don’t even have my cell ph
one.

  Cold sweat is making the plastic dress stick to my back, and I yank at the hem, trying to get it unstuck. I walk fast back toward my apartment building. There are so many cars on Broadway, and as I walk, the noises of their engines combine into a roar that threatens to crack my head open. I duck down a side street, thankful to be away from the noise, though there is the annoying rattle of an ancient blue hatchback chugging past me down the street, its muffler vibrating with a chug-chug-chug sound.

  I must have called her. Or she called me. However it started, we met up, and we used, and now all the promises I’ve made have been broken, and something is really, really wrong. I’m not sure I can bear the weight of hating myself this much again. How could I do that? How could I be so weak? She must have begged me to meet up with her. Or maybe she didn’t. Maybe I begged her. Called her alone from my empty apartment, crying and pleading with her to see me. I’m so sorry, Seemy. I’m so sorry! Dr. Friedman lied to me. She said I was strong enough to do this. But I’m not. I’m not strong enough at all.

  I walk faster.

  By the time I get back to our building, I’m freezing again.

  Chuck’s on the phone, and I practically drop the pizza box in his lap. He takes it from me, shouldering the phone and glaring at me. I shake my hands and rub them together, trying to get the feeling back. “It’s cold!” I whisper to him in apology.

  He mouths the words Give me my change! I hold up my hands, showing him that they’re empty, and whisper loudly, “If you wanted change, you shouldn’t have sent me for tourist pizza!”

  Duke’s isn’t far, only on Eighth Street, but I’m so cold I can’t bear the thought of walking the ten blocks. And I’ve started to shake so much I’m not sure that I’d make it without falling over on the sidewalk, a quivering, shivering mess.