Burnout

by Adrienne Maria Vrettos

  Painted face. Chopped-up hair. Words scrawled on my chest. Cuts on my arm. They all add up to an answer that I don’t want to hear.

  I brush my teeth while the shower heats up. Then I get in.

  For a long time I just stand with my eyes closed, my head tipped forward so the water hits the top of my head, the soft spot I was terrified of touching on the Tick until he was well past two, wondering at the evil and cunning of a God that would put a baby’s kill switch on top of their heavenly-smelling head.

  I start to get dizzy, my body sways so far forward I have to touch the slick tiles to steady myself. I flash back to the morning after the Nanapocalypse, of the feeling of the bathtub slipping out from under me, of the tile wall rushing forward and smacking me in the head. I lower myself so I’m sitting; the water is hitting me in the face. I hold my hands out in front of me, palms up, fingers spread. I run my soapy hands over my breasts, my stomach, my back, my butt, down my legs. I lift my feet to scrub them and discover a few shallow slashes on their soles, a bruise in the middle of one heel. From running up the subway stairs, I guess.

  I use the facecloth everywhere, even on my head, scrubbing hard until it feels like a layer of gritty skin has been rubbed off and the water is making closer contact with my brain. I scrub my face, checking the washcloth again and again when I see more of the white paint being wiped off.

  When I turn off the shower, I feel clean, like my outside is washed, and my insides, too. I reach out of the shower, grab a towel, and wrap it around myself. Next step will be to fix my hair. And then call Mom.

  I use my palm to wipe the steam off the bathroom mirror so I can study my hair, figure out how to make it look not so much like an attack but a purposeful makeover. A lot of the face makeup has come off, but not quite all of it. I blink at myself in the mirror, unsure how to make myself look like someone my mother would want to claim as her own. I give up after a few minutes.

  I leave the bathroom and go into my bedroom to charge my phone. I’m going to call Mom. She’ll come home and she’ll help me. I plug my phone into the charger on top of my record player by my bed and wait for it to reset.

  When it does, I hear the familiar chime indicating that I have messages.

  I have to bend down to listen, since the cord is so short. Two messages, one new, one old.

  The new one is from Mom: “Hi Nan, it’s Mom. Just calling to see how it’s going, and to remind you to make sure the door is double locked before you go to bed. Love you!”

  The next shows I listened to it yesterday at 4 p.m. “Nan. It’s Seemy. Hey, can you meet me? I’m at the park by my house.” I hear people talking in the background. Seemy talks louder. “We’re going to have SO much fun, you HAVE to come! Come right now, okay? I’ll see you soon!” Before the message ends, I hear Seemy talking to someone. “She’ll come, I’m sure of it.”

  It’s past five now.

  I stay sitting on my floor, stare out the window into the city-light darkness.

  Now is when I should call Mom. The phone is almost charged. And even if it weren’t, I could call her from the lobby downstairs. That’s what I should do. That is the path to take at the crossroads.

  If I call Mom, she’ll call the police and race home in a borrowed car. The police will be here when she gets here, or maybe they’ll have taken me to the hospital already. They’ll question me while I’m in the hospital bed, ask me questions I can’t answer. They’ll glance at each other, use their police telepathy to tell each other I’m useless. That I’m lying or that I’ve fried my brain so badly I truly can’t remember. Mom will burst into the room and say, Oh, Nan! And then she’ll start crying. And then she and the police officers will go out into the hall and she’ll say, I just don’t know what else to do. And they’ll say, You’ve done your best, ma’am, some kids just can’t be saved. And they’ll keep asking me what happened to Seemy and I won’t be able to tell them and I’ll never ever see her again.

  But if instead . . .

  If I go to Twee park by Seemy’s house, maybe I will remember. Maybe I will know where to find her, and when I find her, I’ll see she’s really okay. Then we can talk about everything that’s happened. We’ll hug. She’ll smell like she always smells. She’ll link her arm through mine and we’ll walk around the city all night. We’ll cry and say our sorries. And tomorrow I will go to school and will buzz all day with the glory of no sleep and friends found again. I will bring my ID to school. Sheila will give me a candy from the stash in her drawer. Maybe I will smile at someone, make a new friend, bringing my total to two. Mom will come home. Dad will call and offer to drive Tick home. Mom will say no, that’s okay, we’ll come get him. Mom and I will take the train into Greenpoint and then all of us will go out for pierogies. Mom and Dad will watch each other while we eat. They’ll walk ahead of us on the way back to Dad’s apartment. Tick and I will trail behind. Maybe I’ll sling him up on my back and carry him. Maybe we’ll stop at the Thing, his favorite junk store, and look at records. Maybe while we’re in there, Mom and Dad will keep walking ahead of us and they’ll hold hands, and we’ll have to run to catch up, and when we do, they’ll turn and look at us with delighted surprise, like they forgot we were there.

  Sitting down in the comfort of my bedroom, still warm from the shower, I start to feel sleepy. My eyelids start to flutter closed. I feel my hands go limp and fall to the floor. I’ll close my eyes just for a few minutes, just until my cell phone is charged and I can bring it with me to the park to find Seemy.

  Just for a few minutes.

  CHAPTER 24

  REMEMBERING

  A week after my welcome-home-from-rehab dinner, a week of me feeling completely and utterly lost and alone and realizing that if I didn’t have Seemy, I didn’t have anyone, she called and asked if she could come over. Mom still had my cell phone at that point, and if I hadn’t happened to wander into her studio the moment Seemy called, I’m not sure she would have told me.

  I could tell who it was right away by the way Mom’s shoulder blades cinched together. I watched Mom stand at her canvas, paintbrush in one hand, phone in the other, a bright rectangle of light coming through the window.

  “I don’t know, Samantha,” Mom was saying. She listened for a moment. “I’m sorry you feel that way, but Nan needs to do what’s best for her right now. She told me about your showing up drunk at Duke’s.”

  I groaned, and Mom looked at me, startled.

  “It’s really up to Nan.” She held the phone away from her mouth and asked, “Nan, do you want Seemy to come over? She wants to talk.”

  Right at that moment there was nothing, nothing, that made me angrier than having my mother act like she knew anything about my life. Like she had any right to be on the phone with my best friend, playing gatekeeper, delighting in the fact that after months of me shutting her out, she had forced her way into control. I didn’t care that I’d messed up, that I’d done wrong. She had no right.

  I wanted to scream at her, I wanted to scream loud enough to break all the windows in her studio. But I remembered the way she’d looked at me when I woke up in the hospital. How scared she looked. How heartbroken. I did that to her. I broke her heart.

  So I just nodded and said, “Sure, I’ll see her.”

  Mom watched me for a moment, like she hoped if she stared at me long enough, I’d change my mind. Finally she said to Seemy, “You can come for a few minutes. That’s it.”

  When she got off the phone, Mom put her hands on her hips and said, as if we were friends, as if we were commiserating, “I can’t believe she had the nerve to call. After what she did to you at Duke’s.”

  “I shouldn’t have told you about that,” I said quietly.

  “Why? I’m glad you did. I’m glad you felt you could be honest with me.”

  “Yeah, but that shouldn’t mean . . .” I cleared my throat, choosing my words carefully as Mom watched me squirm. “It shouldn’t mean you can hold it over my head forever. If I want to be friends wi
th her, I’ll be friends with her. Doesn’t mean I’m going to drink again.”

  “Well.” Mom picked up her paintbrush. “I don’t know how you’ll be friends with her, then, because you told me yourself that drinking is all she wants to do.”

  I groaned and turned to walk out of the room. “I shouldn’t have told you that.”

  “Well, you did!” Mom called after me.

  Seemy was wearing a sundress when she got to our door, and I realized it was May, almost summer, almost a year anniversary of our friendship.

  “Mom,” I finally said, when it became abundantly clear she wanted to stand and listen to Seemy and me as we talked at the kitchen table. “Can you . . .”

  “Five minutes, Samantha,” Mom said to Seemy, and then she went into her bedroom, leaving the door open.

  Seemy rolled her eyes and took a sip of iced coffee. She’d brought me over one too. A peace offering, I guess. “Wow, she still really doesn’t like me.”

  I shrugged, pressing my fingertips into the condensation on the side of the coffee cup.

  “I mean, it’s not like I’m the one that got you sent to rehab, right?” Seemy sipped and watched me for my reaction. “I mean, you did that all on your own.”

  I looked up at her and said sharply, “She knows that. I know that.”

  Seemy shook the ice in her drink. “Ah, taking responsibility, right? That’s a big thing for you now.”

  I leaned back in my chair, crossed my arms over my chest. “I guess. Yeah, it is.”

  Seemy looked at me for a long moment and then said, “You know, you presented yourself under false pretenses.” She looked really satisfied with herself.

  “What do you mean?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “You know what I mean. That day in the park, the day we met. You acted like you were this badass New Yorker, and you’re not.”

  “I never pretended anything.”

  Seemy laughed. “Oh really? You never pretended like you liked to party? You never pretended that you were so goth and so alternative and so punk rock? You’re a faker, Nan. You’re like a little prude in the shape of the Big Bad Wolf.”

  I sipped my iced coffee, hoping to swallow down the lump in my throat.

  Seemy grinned and leaned forward. “So what, are we not allowed to hang out anymore? I thought we could, as long as you didn’t drink.”

  I tried not to roll my eyes. “Yeah, but Seemy . . . that doesn’t mean you drink and I don’t. Doesn’t mean I want to show up somewhere and have you be loaded.”

  “So drink,” she whispered to me, still leaning forward. “It’ll make this whole thing much easier.”

  I snorted. “I don’t do that anymore.”

  Seemy threw up her hands, picked up her sunglasses, and pushed them back in her hair like a headband. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, Nan. Because you don’t drink now, I’m supposed to stop too?”

  I hesitated before answering. “Wouldn’t kill you to cut down a little.”

  “Get over yourself, Nan. I’m not like you. I’m not going to rehab. Jesus, what a joke! You barely drank, you know that, right? You’re a goddamn woolly mammoth, but you’re a total lightweight. It’s like you thought you were going to rehab for me and Toad, too. It doesn’t work that way, Nan. We like our life the way it is. We don’t want it to change.”

  “But I’ve changed.”

  “No you haven’t!” she said, trying to keep her voice down. “You look the same to me! If you’re so different, why don’t you ditch your stupid costumes? Why don’t you wash all that rainbow crap out of your hair? You’re not fooling anyone anymore, especially now that you’re Miss Sobriety. Get yourself a pair of sensible slacks and be done with it!”

  “I changed on the inside, Seemy.”

  She laughed. “Right. Whatever. Look, I still want to be friends with you, but I’m not going to change who I am. I, unlike you, like who I am. I don’t spend all my time hating myself.”

  “I don’t know if I can be friends with you anymore, then.”

  Her tears surprised me. “You’re serious? You’re going to dump me because I’m not a total stuck up prude?”

  “I can’t go back to that life, Seemy.”

  “What life?” she snapped. “We weren’t doing anything that bad, Nan! Jesus, you act as if we were doing smack under the Brooklyn Bridge! We drank a little. Got caught. It’s called being an American teenager, Nan, it’s not this big drama you’re making it out to be. Jesus, what the hell did you tell those people at rehab? They must have fallen asleep in group therapy whenever you spoke because your problems are so fricking vanilla compared to . . .” She stopped.

  “Compared to what?”

  She fiddled with her sunglasses again and stood up. “Nothing. Forget it. I’ll see you around. Maybe I can schedule a sober day into my schedule and we can hang out.” Then, loudly, she said, “Your mom can piss-test me if she wants to.”

  “Seemy . . .” I was too drained to stand up, but I reached out for her.

  “I’ll see you around, Nan.”

  Except she didn’t. That was in May. Almost six months ago. And I hadn’t seen her since.

  CHAPTER 25

  TODAY

  I wake up laughing and calling out, Hellooooo! Seemy is standing on a bench in the park by her house on Halloween, jumping up and down and waving at me as I come through the gate, and she looks so much like herself, so much like I remember, I get a lump in my throat and I laugh it away. I know it’s been months, but I run to her and she leaps into my arms and just the familiar feel of her body makes me laugh again and I spin her around and the trees and the bench and the trash can blur as we go around and around. Tree bench trash tree bench trash tree bench trash men. I gasp in alarm and stop spinning. Two men, stepping out from behind a cluster of trees. Who are they? I ask her, and she wiggles free. My friends, she says. They’re my new friends.

  I wake up running and crying and I’ve got Seemy by the wrist and we’re both in pink prom dresses and I’m yanking her along with me and I’m shoving clowns and monsters and zombies and French maids out of our way and then we break through the crowd into the street and are almost trampled by a giant papier-mâché puppet because now we’re running through the Halloween parade. I look behind us and see the men from the park.

  I wake up standing naked in the dark of my room, the towel from my shower on the floor, my fists clenched, my body tense. I am screaming her name.

  I remember.

  Seemy, I am coming for you.

  CHAPTER 26

  REMEMBERING YESTERDAY

  “This is Nanja!” Seemy said, taking hold of my hand and tugging me toward the two men sitting on the back of our favorite little blue bench. She pointed at the men, her breath coming out in excited huffs. “That’s Turner, and the other one we call Hooch.” She giggled nervously, swung my hand like we were little kids. “So . . . that’s who they are.”

  “Hey,” they said in unison. I looked at them, and the bottom dropped out from my stomach. They were a couple of randoms, sketchy-looking men with dead eyes and sunken cheeks and unshaven faces. Suddenly the tiny little park felt too small, and I looked through the gate and saw that the sidewalks were filling with parents and kids in costumes, out trick-or-treating before dark, and I wished I had said yes when my dad asked if I wanted to come out to Greenpoint and go trick-or-treating with him and the Tick.

  I looked at Seemy, seeing if she was joking about their very fake-sounding names, and I saw maybe she didn’t look exactly the same. She looked thin, washed out. She made me think of the word “sinew.” Her eyes had grown, or her face had shrunk, I wasn’t sure which one. Her pupils looked too big for her eyes. I wondered what she had taken. I wondered how long it would last. I could feel the tiny bones in her freezing cold hand as she squeezed.

  I wanted to get out of there. And I wanted to take Seemy with me.

  I could have just started walking, pulled her with me. Turner and Hooch were watching me, like th
ey knew what I was thinking, like they knew what I was going to do. The sound of my heart thump-thump-thumped in my ears and I made myself look right back at them. I’m not afraid of you, I thought, and it’s like I said it out loud, because both of them wrinkled their mouths into ugly smirks.

  I was about to say something to Seemy, about to walk and pull her with me, about to tell those assholes that if they touched us, I would scream bloody murder. Seemy nudged me. She was holding a half-empty soda bottle. “Sip?”

  “I don’t drink anymore,” I said quietly, my eyes still on Turner and Hooch. “You know that.”

  “It’s just soda. Vanilla Coke. Your favorite.” She nudged me again, and when I looked at her, she looked so hurt I took it from her and took a drink.

  “Thought you was calling a friend,” the one called Turner said.

  “I did! This is Nanja!” Seemy wrapped her skinny arms around my waist. “My best, best friend. We always hang out on Halloween together.”

  “She’s your friend?” Hooch asked. Then he and Turner looked at each other and started laughing, low grumbly wet laughs. “Looks more like your bodyguard.”

  “We thought you was calling a hot friend,” Turner said. “We thought it was going to be a party.”

  “But I told you, silly, I already have plans!” Seemy laughed. She wagged a finger at him like he was a naughty child, giving me a desperate sideways glance. “I always spend Halloween with my Nan!”

  She was afraid. My pulse quickened and I did my best to grin, slinging an arm around her. Her shoulder bones poked into my forearm. “Are you ready?” I asked her. I started to turn her around, barely glancing at Turner and Hooch. “We have friends waiting,” I told them.

  With our backs turned, I whispered, “Let’s go, Seemy. Just walk.”