Burnout

by Adrienne Maria Vrettos

  Anyway, even I had to admit that Toad was the pick-me-up our friendship needed.

  CHAPTER 17

  TODAY

  I hate that I need to find that screw-toothed prick.

  He’ll know where Seemy is, even if he wasn’t with us last night. He can tell me that she’s okay. I head toward Saint Marks, and I don’t even notice that I black out until I come to and realize I’m walking in the wrong direction, the sudden sounds and lights and smells of the city making my bones vibrate like I’m a bell that has just been struck. I stop short and get cursed out by the person behind me, who had to sidestep into a puddle. His umbrella pokes me on the top of my head as he stomps by, and I jerk away and dash across the street and almost get creamed by some shitbox car that sounds like it has a death rattle.

  I’m scared.

  My hands are fists in my pockets, and I concentrate on the feeling of my nails digging into my palms, picturing the eight crescent-moon indentations they’ll leave on my skin.

  I think that I might scream, so I duck into the next store I come to. It’s a Ricky’s, the beauty supply store that clears its shelves for Halloween costumes every year. In the days before Halloween the place is totally mobbed, with a line snaking out the door and down the block. Today, though, it’s almost empty. Just a few bargain hunters rifling through the mess that’s left after last night.

  “I told you!” the woman behind the counter is yelling to someone when I walk in. The store looks like a herd of wildebeests have torn through it. A few rubber masks hang skewered through the eyes on metal wall pegs, wigs lie in open bins tangled with oversize clown glasses and gigantic plastic bras—boobs included. “I told you it wouldn’t fit!”

  Oh, wait. She’s yelling at me. I walk up to the counter. “Excuse me?”

  “You’re size XL.”

  “Dude!” I object loudly, before lowering my voice so other bargain hunters can’t hear me. “You don’t have to, like, announce my dress size to the world.”

  “No size extra large in the Slutty Prom Queen costume!”

  “Wha . . . ?” I look down at my dress and then at the rack where she is pointing. There are just a few things left on the rack. Slutty Devil. Slutty Nurse. And, with a tag featuring a girl much skinnier than me, Slutty Prom Queen.

  “And you can’t return the dress now anyway. You’re wearing it.”

  I pull one of the dresses from the rack and hold it up. “I bought this here?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Last night! No returns!”

  I hold up my hands. “I get it, I’m not going to return the dress that I’m wearing. Can I ask you a question, though?”

  She narrows her eyes at me.

  “Did I leave my stuff here?”

  “No,” she says quickly.

  “Are you sure? Don’t you have a lost-and-found or something?”

  She bends over a little, opens up a drawer, and then slams it shut. “Nothing in the lost-and-found.”

  “Thanks. Was anybody with me? When I came in here on Halloween?”

  “Little girl. Bought the same dress.” The woman smirks. “Size small.”

  “Did we try them on? The dresses?”

  The woman shrugs.

  “Can I check the dressing room? For my stuff?”

  I don’t wait for an answer; I just duck into the curtained dressing room. The woman calls to me, “Those men you were with weren’t good men!”

  The dressing room is empty.

  My heart thunk-thunk-thunks in my chest as I duck down to look under the bench. “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “You didn’t want to be with them.”

  I don’t respond. I’ve found something on the wall. I lay my cheek against it, so my eyes are looking straight across its surface. There’s something written there. Something written and wiped away.

  HELP US. Then there’s a couple letters I can’t make out, and then there’s a number. My cell phone number. I trace the letters with my fingers. HELP US.

  I rest my head against the wall, tears dripping out of my closed eyes.

  “Remember,” I whisper. I wait for the memories to come. “Remember,” I say again. I tap my head against the wall, hoping to jog something loose. Nothing. “Remember,” I say louder, and this time my head makes a thunking noise when it hits the wall. “You have to remember!” Thunk. “Remember!” Thunk. “Remember!” Thunk.

  “You okay in there?” the woman calls.

  My head hurts. This is stupid.

  “Okay,” I mumble, “okay.”

  The woman behind the counter calls out to me as I leave, “How is your friend?” but I don’t stop. I just push open the doors and walk away as fast as I can.

  I have to find Toad.

  CHAPTER 18

  REMEMBERING

  Seemy stretched her bare arms out and held her palms up to the sky, spinning in a circle. “It’s crazy warm out! That was the longest winter ever in world history, period, forever, the end.”

  I smiled sleepily, watched her spin from where I sat on the top step of the fountain in Washington Square Park. She was right, it had been a long winter. Wet and cold and disgusting and never ending. It barely snowed at all, just weeks and weeks of overcast, freezing, windy days and the occasional mix of sleet and freezing rain that made rivers and lakes of slush in the streets.

  It was like the weather had tried its best to scrub out all memory of me and Seemy’s summer together, until all I felt when I looked at her was cold. Our friendship had been shoved into the margins since Christmas. On week-nights we both had to be home by seven, and to Seemy that meant we had to spend the few hours of freedom we had freezing our asses off on Saint Marks Place with Toad, maybe drinking if she had anything, but mostly just wandering from store to store, coffee shop to coffee shop, never inside long enough to really warm up. And even though she complained about the cold outside, she couldn’t stand to be indoors. “If we were upstate,” she’d say, “we’d be out hiking in the woods right now.” She’d go off on how the city was unnatural, on how it felt like we were all going to snap our tethers to Mother Nature and go flying off into the universe. Toad would say, “Yeah, man, you’re right.” But he’d say that for anything Seemy said.

  I barely ever saw her on weekdays anymore. Weekends I’d still go along with it, mostly because I didn’t have anyone else to hang out with. My old friends from school didn’t want anything to do with me. And I acted like I didn’t want anything to do with them.

  But then there was a Tuesday in March, the first really warm day of spring, when Seemy called me after school and said we should meet up, and the air was so warm and it felt like the tiniest whisper of summer and I couldn’t say no. There was hope in the air. The sun was so warm I dozed off for a second, woke up when Seemy screeched, “TOAD!” and I watched her leap up and try to climb him like a bean stalk. He was smiling this goofy, big-toothed smile, and his nasty black cargo pants were paired with a clean olive green T-shirt, no jacket. His long, pale arms glowed in the sunlight like the skin under a picked scab.

  “Let’s go,” Toad said, balancing Seemy on his back. “I have someplace special to take you guys. Even you, grumpy face.” He nodded to me with a snaggletoothed grin.

  “Where, where, where?” Seemy squealed, wiggling down and then hopping in a circle around him.

  “It’s a surprise,” he said, “a good surprise.” He looked genuinely excited, but he jutted his chin out a little when he looked to see if I’d follow, like he expected me to rain on his parade.

  “Let’s go,” I said, stepping off the fountain.

  We walked for a while, all the way up University to Union Square, where we pooled our money to buy apple cider doughnuts at the farmer’s market. We kept heading north and then turned left on Nineteenth Street. By this time we were thirsty, so we used Seemy’s credit card to buy the first iced coffees of summer, even though the sun was getting low and the air was starting to chill so much I kept havi
ng to switch hands to keep my fingers from going numb. I felt this sort of hope for the future. It was nice to be walking along with two friends in the almost-warm air, eating doughnuts and drinking iced coffee and joking and teasing and yelling and scaring the other pedestrians.

  We walked past Seventh Avenue, then Eighth, and then the buildings started to get nicer. There were a lot of brownstones with huge windows, giving us glimpses of their fancy interiors.

  “Toad,” Seemy asked, “are you about to tell us that you’re secretly rich or something?”

  “Nope, even better,” Toad said, then he laughed. “Well, maybe not better, but almost as good.”

  He stopped walking suddenly at the mouth of a narrow alley between two brownstones. He looked quickly around, then hurried down the alley, turning around and grinning, whispering, “Come on!” Seemy grabbed my hand, pulled me in after her. At the end of the alley was a black iron gate, and beyond that there was a falling-apart tiny brick house surrounded by overgrown grass and mud. The house had huge black double doors that took up almost the whole front of it, and a couple little windows with white sills above.

  We stood side by side, our fingers hooked in the iron gate, staring at it.

  Seemy said, “It’s like a real house. A house that can take a deep breath.”

  You don’t see a lot of freestanding houses in New York City. Even the fancy buildings share walls with their neighbors. But this place, this place actually had space, and Seemy was right, seeing it sitting there alone in the swampy yard made you want to take a deep breath.

  “It’s a carriage house, used to be a horse hotel for rich people,” Toad said proudly. “They were going to renovate it and turn it into a house for some rich dude, but he ran out of money. My uncle was on the construction crew and told me about it. It’s totally empty. It’s like . . . ours.”

  Seemy looked at him with such wonder that I got a tinge of jealousy. “Ours, Toad, really?” she asked. I bit my tongue, wanting to say, No, actually, it’s not ours at all. Not even a little bit. But they both looked so happy I didn’t say a thing.

  Toad scaled the iron gate, long monkey limbs making it easy work. Seemy looked at me expectantly and I tried to smile while bending over so she could climb up on my back and get high enough for Toad to pull her over. Then they both started walking toward the carriage house, and Seemy called over her shoulder, “Nan, come on!”

  And I was standing alone on the other side of the gate, so I did what she said.

  The front lawn was soaked and spongy from the spring rains, and our feet got stuck and made loud slurping noises as we pulled them free. Seemy sank almost to her knees right before we got to the rotting front steps, and Toad and I had to pull her out. We laughed so hard I thought we might die, and we feverishly shushed each other and started laughing all over again.

  It took all three of us to pull open one side of the double doors.

  “Oh my gosh, horse stalls!” Seemy squealed when we got inside. Toad took out a flashlight and shone it around. He had come prepared. There were three stalls on either side of the stone walkway that ran down the middle of the house.

  “I love it.” Seemy sighed. “Even if it does smell like horse poop. Is there a hayloft?” she asked, clapping her hands as she ran to the back of the carriage house, where a wooden ladder reached into a dark hole in the ceiling.

  “Yeah, but it’s treacherous.” Toad shone his flashlight at the holes in the ceiling. “There’s rats up there, too.”

  “We can stay down here then,” Seemy said, pirouetting her way back to us and then grabbing us both in a hug. “This place is awesome.”

  CHAPTER 19

  TODAY

  I find Toad hunched under an awning on Saint Mark’s, hands cupped around a take-out cup of coffee. He looks the same. Same stupid pants. Maybe a little skinnier.

  “Hey, Toad.”

  He looks at me, startled, then turns away. “What do you want?” He asks, his back toward me.

  I hate that he makes me nervous. I step under the awning. “Been a long time.”

  He snorts, making a big show of turning to face me. “Has it?”

  “How are you?”

  He ignores my question. “Go to hell, Nanja.”

  He throws his half-drunk coffee into the gutter and starts walking, pulling his head down, like a turtle, into his collar. I walk after him. “Will you wait up, please? Toad, just hold on!”

  He spins around so quickly that I run into him, and he pops his chest forward, knocking me back a little. I catch my balance. “What?” he snaps, rain falling down his face.

  “Nothing . . . ,” I falter. “So . . . have you seen Seemy?”

  He sneers at me, laughs a wide-mouthed laugh that sends rain in a stream off his top lip. “Seemy? Why do you care? I thought you rehabbed us right out of your life.”

  “Come on . . .”

  “Come on what?” His voice cracks. “Step thirteen, cut the loser dead weight from your life even if it’s your best friend, you can’t give a shit about them anymore no matter what happens to them.” He sniffs loudly, wipes angrily at his eyes, and I realize it’s not just rain, he’s actually crying. “Damn it!” He starts walking quickly away.

  “Toad, what are you talking about?” I splash after him and he swings around.

  “I’m talking about the fact that I haven’t seen Seemy in weeks! And I don’t know where she is, and her parents won’t talk to me! Do you know the things that could have happened to her? Do you know the kind of people she started hanging out with when you left?”

  “You mean like you?” I yell back at him.

  He looks like he wants to laugh, but instead he yells, “Me? You think I’m a problem? You have no idea! NO IDEA!”

  And then he says, “Where did you go? Just now? You just, like, went blank, right in front of me.” He steps closer to me, grabs my chin, and looks into my eyes. When he lets go, he yells, “I don’t freaking believe you! You’re using! You ditch us because we’re stupid losers, and then you go and . . .” He makes a sound that I think is supposed to be laughter. “You’re unbelievable.”

  “I’m worried about her, Toad. I feel like . . .” My stomach heaves and I have to stop, take a deep breath before I continue. “I feel like something bad happened to her.”

  Toad huffs, shakes his head. He looks suddenly exhausted. “Well, welcome to my world. I’ve been worried about her for weeks. I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “Do you know where to find her?”

  “Have you heard anything I’ve said?” he snaps. “I can’t find her!”

  “But . . . maybe there’s someplace you guys used to hang out—”

  “Oh, what? Like the carriage house? You don’t think I’ve checked there?” He looks like he wants to rip my head off. “Why’d you have to stop hanging out with her, Nan? Why would you do that? Was your stupid Nanapocalypse really that bad that you would ditch your best friend?”

  “I had to.”

  “You left her alone!” he yells.

  “I didn’t leave her alone!” I scream at him. “I left her with you!”

  “Well,” he says, raising his hands and dropping them again, “I wasn’t enough to keep her.” He sneers at me. “Go screw yourself, Nan. She never loved either of us. You were just smart enough to stop trying to change her mind.”

  CHAPTER 20

  REMEMBERING

  The night of the Nanapocalypse, I wasn’t even supposed to go out, which was fine with me.

  I was all set to stay home with the Tick and watch movies, but the gallery opening Mom was going to got canceled, so she ended up coming home early and she plopped down on the couch to watch movies with us, and even though I was all snuggled up under a blanket on the big chair with the Tick, I couldn’t stand to be in the same room with her.

  In the past week she’d accused me of stealing a ten-dollar bill from her wallet (which I did), yanked the lock out of my bedroom door because I went into my bedroom without let
ting her smell my breath after being out with Seemy, and told me if I put one more hole in my face she was putting me under house arrest.

  There was no way I could breathe the same air as her for a whole Saturday night.

  So I bailed, and even though she told me I couldn’t, I just walked right out. It was either let me walk out or get in my way, and I knew she didn’t want to have that kind of fight in front of the Tick.

  I got into the elevator and I was shaking, and I started crying because things were so bad with my mom and I didn’t know how they had gotten that way but I knew it was my fault.

  The thing was, I didn’t really want to meet up with Seemy. I just didn’t have anywhere else to go. She and Toad were coming out of the alley that led to the carriage house when I turned the corner, and Seemy squealed so loud my heart leaped and she came running and jumped into my arms and I knew that was right where I was supposed to be.

  She jumped off of me and clapped her hands like a little kid. “I’m so glad you came, Nanja! I thought you had to babysit!”

  I glanced uneasily at Toad. He sighed, cracked his knuckles. “Let’s walk,” he said. He was always worried one of the neighbors would notice us coming and going from the carriage house. He walked ahead of us and after a dozen yards called over his shoulder, “So, what are we doing? I’m bored.”

  Seemy ran to catch up with him, reaching back to pull me along. “Me too! Let’s do something! What are we going to do?”

  Her energy was usually infectious, it was usually enough to make me excited for a night of aimless wandering and pointed drinking, but that night the thought made me weary. I pushed the feeling down until it was just a black seed in my stomach.