by A. R. Rivera
I keep my eyes on my left hand, forcing my fingers to relax, though I feel like punching something. “Yes.”
“I’d like to talk about how you’re feeling.”
I shake my head, letting my overlong hair fall forward and block my peripheral vision.
“I’m fine, Mister Brandon—” I hate his name. I knew a kid in fourth grade named Brandon. I think he might have been nice, but having a lawyer with that name ruins the vague taste of the memory—turns it bitter. “I’m splendid, actually. Just trying to talk about the most painful night of my life.”
“Miss Patel, I think you’ve misunderstood the purpose of these interviews. It is not, and I repeat, not to relive the events of the night that led you here. The purpose is to allow you space to reflect on your actions, which help us determine the proper course and security level for further treatment. While doing so, you may recall the finer details of that time, but this session is not for that purpose.”
There are parts of that night I don’t remember and if I have any say, I never will. But I’m not telling him that. “I can remember simple instructions. I’m not incompetent.”
His shoulders seem to relax. “Whether you believe me or not, whether you like me or not, I’d like you to remember that I am here to help you, Miss Patel. If you need anything, all you have to do is ask and I will do my best to satisfy your request.”
I’m not falling into that trap. The last six years has taught me this: nothing is free. And the only one that can help me is me.
“I’ve been thinking about what I saw when I woke up.”
His face softens. “Have you recalled anything new?”
I shake my head.
“Well, don’t strain yourself. We’re all aware of your diagnoses and want to make this process as simple, as relaxing as possible.”
I drop my eyes back to my useless hands. I don’t even know what that fucking word means. Relaxing. It’s a farce.
While I stare at the slightly frayed material on the cuff of my short sleeve jumpsuit, the door opens and the slapping sound of feet hit the worn floor in time. I keep quiet while the two agents of the court reenter to talk with my lawyer. Funny thing is I didn’t even notice they were gone. When each side of the table seems satisfied with whatever the hell details they’re trying work out, I am prompted to delve back into that night.
My guts begin their crawl back into frigid knots.
I’m a dumb fish, gasping on the bank beside violent river waters; cast out when I tried to swim upstream. I can’t take in the air, coated in dry dirt. My hands clutch the arms of the chair. Hot tears prick at the backs of my eyes as I dive back into that terrible torrent: the place I’m dying to get away from and the only place I can breathe.
“It’s all fragments—snapshots of the larger picture. A dark shape on the floor.” I take a deep, slow breath, forcing my eyes to stay open. If I blink, I’ll see . . . “I thought it was a pile of laundry . . .”
+++
In the cool, dark of the bathroom floor, I found myself wide awake and sweating, wondering how I had managed to sleep. Cautious fingers groped my head and the knotted muscles of my neck. My migraine had receded for the most part. My head still hurt, but I could think.
There was a stretch of light creeping in from under the door and a . . . a staggered sound—almost like a whimper—coming from beyond on the wall. It was low, but still a shrill sound. A howl. Like a dying animal. I banged on the nearest wall—no, the front of a cabinet—and called out for Avery.
What’s going on? I wondered, making my way onto my hands and knees, cautiously probing the cool tile as I approached the door, because even though I was crawling without irritation, I was sure my headache would come back if I got up too quickly. Carefully, slowly, I stood and reached for the knob.
The room was darker than I expected. From inside my hole, the light that streamed in seemed so bright, but the room was actually very dark. The strange howl had stopped, but I made out the echo of breath, a grunting or hoarse gasping like a runner makes when they’ve just finished a sprint. My eyes went to the carpet, where I caught sight of a pile of laundry that had been tossed in the corner, between my bed and the wall.
+++
Shaking my head, I look across the table at the blocky framed, emotionless eyes of Tight Bun Tara. “There’s a blank spot right here.” This memory photo is blank.
“That’s alright. Just move along to the next thing you recall.” Tight Bun nods her head, waving a hand towards me.
My eyes lose focus, letting go of what’s in front of me. “The feeling . . . I think I literally left my body the moment I saw . . .”
+++
I was floating in a vat of black. There was a burning—it felt like a light going on. First there was nothing and then it was everywhere, strong and solid, but it was more than that—it was like light was breaking. There was pain everywhere; I didn’t feel it as much as sensed it. What I felt was dread; as if a giant fissure had opened up, wanting to drag me in. I was yanked out and away from the center of my universe, into something strange and unknown, where the sun had exploded or died or blew a hole in the fabric of space and it was sucking every particle of good from the cosmos.
That’s what the black felt like.
I couldn’t see anything. I could feel the floor under my feet, the air in my lungs, but that was all there was, besides the dread that held on like a poisonous whirlpool. A cry came ripping from my throat like a rush of red pouring from a gaping wound. I didn’t know why I needed to weep aside from that sense of what I couldn’t see. All I knew was something was very wrong. I blinked several times and kept at it; counting to ten, telling my eyes to start working. I took lots of deep breaths until the motel room came back into focus.
Then all I saw was Avery. She was standing beside me, saying, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. So sorry,” repeating it, like a mantra.
+++
“She kept saying it over and over and over. Slow at first, and then faster and faster, until it stopped making sense.” The soft blue walls take in my words as my mind skips to the next thing I remember. As I try—and fail—to simply deliver the words and not to picture it, the interview room shrinks.
“I don’t know how, but I was . . . on the floor . . .”
+++
Everything was a puzzle. I was lost, just like that time in the corridor at school. I was in my motel room, but there was no more room, or carpet, or bed, or light. There were only my fingers, curled around someone else’s. I followed the length of them up to a wrist and an arm. I studied the pale skin, utterly confused by each detail. I was just trying to breathe, waiting for what I was seeing to make sense. The palms of the exposed hands were marked with thin slashes.
Red marker lines.
I knew whose hands they were, I knew it, but there was something blotting out my understanding, so I kept staring. Familiar fingers and those forearms were crumpled awkwardly across the chest. I remember thinking, he. It’s a he. And even in that vulnerable state he looked like he was trying to protect himself. When I straightened his fingers, the cuts on his palms relaxed apart. A long, deep gash that stretched the length of his forearm made my stomach wretch.
The synapses of my brain were not firing. I couldn’t find words to identify what I was seeing or think of what I was supposed to do about it. I knew there was something, some type of instruction for moments of holy terror, times when you find limp hands. But I couldn’t find the answer; like it was trapped behind a brick wall. Everything I saw was a question picking at the blocks in the wall, but my mind stayed blank. There were only my feet stuck to the floor and my stunted brain, my hands grasping relaxed palms, and my eyes stuck on a sleeping face my mind couldn’t comprehend. I couldn’t find the language to process my situation or what needed to happen next.
The only thing I could put together was this: the motel room was a dank, dark place where terrible things happened. Whatever those things were, Avery was responsible. Why else w
ould she apologize? Thinking her name triggered another and then the pieces of what I was seeing started falling together. Not all of them, but enough to start hating her.
His name came into my mouth. “Jake?” I fell on him, pulling at his hands—the hands that had spent hundreds of hours holding me—and pressed them to my lips, feeling how cold they were.
All the strength was drained from my body. I let go of the room, willingly this time. I had to disappear and made myself shrink, keeping my grip firmly on him. If he was no more, I wouldn’t be, either. I would take him with me into my tight, tiny ball, where neither of us would exist. Together.
+++
I’m shrugging, trying to disconnect myself from the picture in my head. “I had no practical experience. I mean, I’d left dozens of people, but I had never said goodbye to any of them. I never said hello, either.”
My voice quavers. “I said hello to Jake every time I saw him and there was so much after those hellos. So many moments that changed me.”
Can they understand? Do they realize that I would never hurt him?
Tight Bun Tara’s eyebrows are drawn together as she studies my every word.
“Before Jake, I didn’t know what love was beyond the songs and lyrics I had heard. It was this phantasmal thing: intangible and unreachable, a poetic dream of something higher that died with Romeo and Juliet.”
I didn’t know.
“Then, I met him and heard his music. I was afraid I would forget what it felt like, that I would never find it again.
“How was I supposed to know the ‘hello’s’ were over? That it was time for goodbye?”
The blue interview room seems to flicker red while I ponder the limp word. Goodbye. It’s insufficient. One word formed from two meant to imply that leaving someone is a good thing.
“Before I knew losing him was possible, he was gone. And I was . . . crushed.”
+++
When I found myself again, I was holding his head in my lap. Tears were falling down my face, landing on his and he wasn’t flinching or complaining, or trying to wipe them away and comfort me, the way he always did. He was just laying there with his eyes closed and the sight was so painful, I couldn’t get past it to even think his name. Recognition was enough.
I caressed the stubble on his cheeks. My memory flooded with images of us; giggling at something stupid I did—the way he would cover his mouth when he tried not to laugh at me. The way he’d sometimes dance with me in the crowd while the other bands played. His pouty lips; the way they always twisted when he was really concentrating. The way they molded around my name.
He was just laying there in my lap. So still. Too still.
He was supposed to be waking up in a few hours and packing his bags, heading for his future; a record deal, a recording studio. We were supposed to move to California and work and make our dreams come true. Jake had often told me that I had an eye for talent, so I planned to use that instinct to help him. I was gonna go to business school and learn how to be the bands’ manager.
But none of that would happen now.
He was stuck. Still and cold in my lap. His eyelids weren’t twitching as he dreamed.
His dreams were dead.
“I’ll die. I’ll die, too.” I rocked him in my arms, feeling warmth run through me at the thought. I had to be wherever he was.
“If we start a fire, there’ll be sprinklers and alarms.” The voice broke through my concentration.
The image of those words threw horrible pictures into my head. “What?”
Avery walked over and knelt down. She was in shorts and a t-shirt. No shoes. She set a hand over mine, both of us touching his chest. “I was only thinking out loud. We need to leave, though. We can’t stay here.”
“What?”
Acid burbled in my stomach. The idea of moving, talking, breathing, or having to do anything was absurd. It was over. Nothing came next. There was nothing left. There was no reason, just plain nothing.
Utterly lost, watching Avery’s long hair as she wrapped it into a neat bun, I noted that her moves were kind of jerky, halting in a strange rhythm that matched the beat pumping from the radio on the nightstand. Was she dancing?
“Angel, you’re just along for the ride. I’m taking care of this.” She offered what I think was supposed to be an encouraging smile that ignited me.
My arms wrapped tighter over him. I looked down at his sallow face and offered the only thing I could: my word. “I’ll fix this, I swear.” I didn’t have anything left, but there was something I had to do. For him. It was a stupid promise and impossible to keep and I had no idea how I would even try, but then . . . something happened.
There was noise. A loud banging. Thump, thump, thump. Then, Avery was talking. I couldn’t understand anything she was saying. Once my ears caught the beat coming from the radio, I couldn’t hear anything else. I wanted to stop her from saying whatever the hell it was, stop the irritating music, stop the world—but couldn’t think of what to do to make that happen.
Another impatient thump, coupled with a familiar bellow. “I know you’re in there!” It was coming from the door. The voice of Deanna. All I could think was her name and the security it brought: Deanna! She would know what to do. She would help. I wanted to jump and scream, and shout at her to look around, to explain to me what was happening, but none of that made it to the surface. I could only hold him.
Avery must have opened the door, because suddenly Deanna was inside the room and they were talking—rambling actually—but it all sounded like mumbling over the blood pumping in my ears and the music on the radio.
After Deanna’s arm dropped from my shoulder, I realized she had been touching me. Avery was saying something again. It sounded like a cough. I threw up on Deanna’s feet.
Through whatever was going on: the noise and voices, the indifferent rap music, the cruel light that showed how green he’d become, how still and lifeless . . . something else happened.
It was only my mind playing tricks on me, but it felt so real—it anchored me in the moment. My magician, my Houdini—the man who could take any broken thing I gave him and make it right—opened his eyes. It wasn’t real. I knew that. It was just my mind trying to comfort me by making me see the thing I wanted most, but the relief of that lie helped me focus. So when his lips seemed to move, I knew to lean in and pressed my ear to his mouth.
He magically whispered a single word—the word that had been evading me in my search for what to do. The one I couldn’t find before or after I realized it was him on the floor of my room and not just a pile of dirty laundry. My chest burst open. I think I screamed, because suddenly my voice was the only sound to be heard.
I don’t know how I got to my feet. I don’t remember seeing Avery or Deanna as I opened the door. I wasn’t consciously moving. I just flew. I might have been screaming the whole time, I don’t know, but I remember the hot, predawn air grazing my skin as I hammered on every door I saw on my way out to the road. It was early—only a hint of pink was on the horizon. I scrambled to the roadside, thorns and pebbles digging into my feet, but it didn’t matter.
Waving my arms, frantic, I kept screaming—begging for someone to come. Demanding help. It was like the second I heard the word, I couldn’t stop repeating it. Help, help, help, help, help, HELP!!!
A brown station wagon was on the road. I thought I saw it slow down, but it didn’t stop. Then, a motorcycle, too. And another car—a tan one—I flew over the yellow line into the far lane, still screaming Jakes’ plea.
“HELP!” It was my mantra. The one thing I needed, the only thing I could try to give Jake, even though it was too late.
The car screeched and swerved. And then my hands were on the hood, and then I was flying. Floating. The sky became the ground. Cacti sprouted from brown plumes.
And I was burning.
Still screaming.
+++
My default state in this interview room: my face, coated in snot and tears.
>
“Miss Patel, did you say you saw your former guardian, Deanna Midler that night?” Tight Bun Tara’s face holds a strange expression beyond her squared spectacles.
My throat is too clogged with emotion to clarify, so I nod.
“And you clearly recall leaving the motel room?” Tara continues.
“That’s enough for now.” Mister Brandon murmurs. “Take a deep breath. Breathe in the blue calm . . . exhale. In with the good, out with the bad.”
While I work to calm this most recent emotional upheaval, my unhelpful lawyer announces the obvious to the room: “She’s too worked up.” I believe he uses the word hysterical in his next sentence. Says I should be sent back to my bunk where I can take the remainder of the day to rest and recover from the terrible stress of this conversation. Hearing the lame excuses has me rolling my eyes. Yes, it’s difficult—but I don’t want to stop.
I don’t point out that there’s no amount of distance that can take me away from what’s buried inside. I have to keep my mouth shut. Defiance has only ever left me sedated to a stupor. Obedience means a measured walk back to my unit—slow because the guards at each elbow are watching me snivel and shake.
Tonight it’s easy to flush my dinner down the toilet, sitting on my bunk afterward though— not so effortless. My mind is still stuck in that dark part. When I’m there, in the moments after, I can’t function.
Jake crumpled and lifeless on a bloody carpet. The nearby wall smeared. A single pristine handprint—a wide palm and five long fingers—etched into the eggshell paint. I was down on the floor when I saw it; my gaze passing over as I looked to the ceiling, praying for the world to end. I somehow know the height of the print matched the level of Jakes’ shoulder and knowing that makes me shudder each time I blink because I can see him standing there in the small space between the bed and the wall. He’s leaning against it, trying to stay on his feet. The images are burned into my eyelids. So I don’t close them.
Instead, I tell myself lies: it never happened, I am not in jail. There is no such thing as a new millennium. I am not a murderer.
