I switch off the TV and let all the sound in the room go with it.
Outside, the last of the light is being wrung from the sky. I blink at the sketch in my lap: one small shape in the center of a converging mass, the locus twisting off the page like an irrelevant and lifeless galaxy, spiral-armed. I lower my finger and smear into the solitary figure, scribbling faster and faster until my fingers are black and aching and the page is nothing but a gray haze with a pale shadow in the middle: a ghost that won’t quite be erased.
I tear the page from the sketchbook with a paper whisper and plaster it to the angry oil painting I worked on all afternoon. The paint is still wet and the paper sticks, the charcoal sketch a small square of gray in a furious sea of yellow and red. Then I switch on a lamp and take up the paints once more, painting over and onto the edges of the sketch, molding the two pieces into one. I’m not the villain, I tell myself, and the girls on the news, and Howie’s broken face. My muscles stiffen and ache and then fall away, forgotten. At some point I fall into sleep, colors streaking my dreams.
24
I wake on the couch to a room flooded with too much sun and the rich smell of black coffee. My brushes have been rinsed and are shining in their mason jar. Caro’s curled in the armchair nearby, frowning at a floppy workbook. She’s dressed for her day off: barefoot and braless, all slouching lines and obtuse angles, a green ceramic mug balanced against her thigh.
“Light reading?” I croak.
She looks up and beams. “Hey, sleepyhead. There’s coffee in the kitchen if you want it.” She lets the book fall back against her chest. SAT Test Prep 5,000. There’s another on the coffee table, a Princeton Review stacked neatly on top of the back issues of Teen Vogue and Joy of Cooking. Multicolored bookmarks flag its pages.
“Want to know about pi?” she asks. “I can tell you so much about pi right now.”
I rub my eyes. My fingernails are caked in the crimson of yesterday’s catharsis. “Yeah?”
“Actually, no.” She scoots around in the chair, curling like a shrimp. Slowly she begins to invert her body, wriggling her head toward the floor. “It turns out I need to relearn, like, all of geometry. It’s pretty depressing.”
I lean forward and rescue her coffee cup, putting it on the floor. I feel like pieces of my brain are strewn across the room. “I thought you were planning to major in sociology,” I say, foggily, reaching for the Princeton Review. “Do they care about math?”
“They might,” she says cheerfully. “Anyway, it’s kind of empowering, right? It’s like reclaiming lost intellectual territory.”
“You are literally the only person in the world who thinks things like that,” I say, flipping through the book and trying not to think about how Caro will move on and up and into some brilliant future while I spend the rest of my life in our apartment, arranging the Top Ramen packets in the pantry by color and making voodoo dolls of Dr. Morse.
“I started working on my personal statement yesterday,” she says. “‘Caroline is super goddamned special. Please admit her to your revered institution.’ What do you think?”
“Sounds like a winner,” I say. I lift her mug and tip a bead of cold coffee onto my tongue. I lick my lips and say, über-casually, “So you’re serious about school in New England? It’s cold up there. They say the word ‘car’ funny.”
“It’s whatever.” She twists her arms up above her head, begins to pick out strands of hair to plait a tiny braid. “I’ll get a coat. And so many adorable mitten sets.”
“Oh.” I try to think of something to say. “What does Todd think?”
She shrugs. “I haven’t told him yet. I figured I’d wait until I actually got accepted.” She laughs, a little too casually. “Why dive into a fight you might not end up even needing to have?”
I say, “You and Todd have fights?” She rolls her eyes and pitches a pillow at me. I say, “I’m serious.”
“He doesn’t trust long distance relationships.” When I raise my eyebrows, she says, “The whole reason his parents got divorced was because his mom apparently cheated on his dad a lot when she was working overseas. He doesn’t talk about it much, but he’s sensitive to it.” She sighs, tying off her braid. “I’m pretty sure his dad has Absence makes the heart grow fonder of somebody else embroidered on a pillow somewhere in the house.”
“Wow.”
“Don’t tell him I told you.”
“I won’t.” I sit quietly, chewing on the enormous Jawbreaker of Caro hasn’t told Todd about something. “I’m just shocked that you guys have, like, any problems. You’re basically the perfect couple.”
She laughs. “Shut up. No we aren’t.”
“Yeah, you are,” I say, and fight down the mean feeling of gladness that it might not be true. Quickly, I say, “He could come with you. He could dramatically break up from Yum Yum Situation and start a solo career. He could call himself Yum.”
She laughs. “I’ll suggest it. Speaking of solos and singles, he finished that song he’s been working on.” She gestures to a stack of CD cases on the table. “He left a bunch of demos for me to take to Java Jane. You should give it a listen. It’s inspired by your press coverage; you might like it.”
“Yeah,” I say, disinterested, as with all things I might like about Todd. A silence stretches between us. I study her in her chair and am struck by the impression that her body is a balloon, waiting to float away: the tiny braid in her hair the string. I want to reach out and hold it with equally tiny hands: each finger the perfect word, each nail the one small, shining syllable that would convince her to stay.
“Morgs, why don’t you come with me?” she asks.
“To Java Jane?”
“Doofus. To college.”
My heart slams back down to earth. “But I don’t know sociology,” I say, like it’s a language I can learn. Like it is French.
“You can do an art program. Or whatever. Don’t be obtuse.” Upside-down, she winks. “See that? SAT word, right there.”
I fall back on the couch, dissipated. “Yeah,” I say. “Art programs.”
“I saw the new collage thing,” she says, gesturing to the easel. “How’s the gallery show coming together?”
“You saw the collage thing,” I say. “Not great.”
“Everyone has off days.”
I run my hands through my hair, tossing it like salad. “I don’t know. That one was just something I had to get out of my system.”
“Because of the news?” she asks, delicately.
“They made it look worse than it was,” I say at last.
“It looked pretty bad.”
“It was pretty bad.” I stare at the ceiling. “You think I was a raging bitch, don’t you.”
The silence in the room stretches far, far too long.
“You could have been a little nicer,” Caro tries, diplomatically.
“Never mind,” I say. “Just forget it. Let’s talk about not-me for a while.”
“Sure,” Caro says. “Sorry.” She opens her mouth, and then closes it, and then says, “But you’re going to have to spend a lot of time together, and you have so much in common—”
I slap the study book closed. It’s louder than I meant. Caro jumps.
“Just what, exactly, do we have in common?” I snap. “I have a hole in my middle. He has a fatty tumor. All right?”
“All right,” Caro says. “Sorry.”
“It’s like we’re two weird endangered sea creatures or something. And if we don’t mate, then half the housewives of America are going to call me an asshole on national television.”
Everything is coming out wrong. I want to tell her about Dr. Morse’s breath in my stomach, her finger in my Hole. The smug purse of her lips when she said, The more attention we get, the better our funding, as though the equation is so simple: more money for science while I’m h
ounded from car to building and back again, while strangers weep over Howie’s and my doomed love, and leave doughnuts on my car and have debates on the Internet about how many men could rape me at once, and how.
“I understand,” Caro says with care. “But I just worry that maybe you’re lonely. In a way that I can’t fix,” she adds. “Or other people can’t fix.”
We’ve been through a lot in the last ten years, but I have never, ever felt further away from Caro than in this moment.
“Like what?” I ask, flatly. “Other normal people?”
She scrambles upright. “What? No. Of course not.” Her words are the right words now, oriented the right way, but deep in their root, I can still hear the tiniest seed of pity.
“No, it’s fine.” I bite off each word like it burns. “Don’t worry about it. Go off to college and make some normal friends. You don’t have to take care of me forever. The world is full of other freaks for me to be friends with.”
“Stop,” she says. “That’s not what I meant.”
I place the Princeton Review carefully back on the table and stand. “Look, I appreciate your concern. But you don’t need to worry about me being lonely. If spending two years dating a guy who can’t trust you to move to another state isn’t lonely, then I don’t know what it is.”
It sucks.
I suck.
It is the worst, worst possible thing I could have said, and I instantly regret saying it.
Caro collects her books, not looking at me. Her blond hair stands out against the angry red of her face, a thick halo.
“I have to study,” she says.
“Great,” I call after her. “Good luck getting into school for normal people. I’m sure you’ll be a great success.”
She quietly closes her bedroom door. Which is so, so much kinder than I deserve.
I stalk out of the apartment and hop on my bike, dodging a lone cameraman as I dive out of the cracked parking lot and onto Hillsborough Street. I am filled with guilt and rage and hurt and an all-consuming hunger. I fly past restaurants and shops, past buildings in which strangers are loving and hating and sitting down to meals together. Soon I find myself in Pullen Park, where I had birthday parties as a child. I feel enormous and old and sad about how different everything is now, how paved and manicured. I want to stop the little kids queueing up for the mini train and tell them: This isn’t how it used to be. Tell them how the carousel house used to be gray, about the sand on the playground and that weird concrete Swiss cheese sculpture. How even though we all scraped our elbows on it, and it maybe wasn’t safe, it was my childhood, and I’m scared now that it’s been replaced by something nicer and safer. The city growing up, getting bigger, cleaner, more gentrified, and everyone I know growing up with it. Stop, I want to tell the park. You’re not supposed to change. Because until I figure out how to fill this hole in the middle of my life, I don’t know how I’m supposed to grow. And I’m so scared of being left behind.
I stay a moment longer, watching the hand-carved wooden horses and lions and ostriches and cats of the carousel chase each other in the same circles they’ve run since 1900. Then I turn and pedal-push out of the park.
Someone shouts “Hole Girl” at me from a car window, and I bare my teeth to the empty air, swallowing it all down. I swallow the oaks and the sky and the sun and the clouds. But no matter how fast I go, I will never be full.
That night I dream that the Hole heals around a knife. The skin is just tight enough that the blade dimples my skin. I cannot move without cutting myself.
I lie on the floor.
“Help, help!” I say.
Caroline stands over me, watching.
“Caroline, help,” I say.
“Call a doctor,” she says.
“I can’t,” I say. “I can’t move. I’ll cut myself.”
“You’re smart,” she says. “Figure it out.”
She goes away and leaves me there, frozen, afraid even to breathe.
25
Caro and I step around each other the next few days, a tacit dance of almost avoidance. She’s in the shower while I’m in the kitchen; I’m in my room while she gathers her work things, ties her shoes. I definitely take my meals to my bedroom because I want the quiet time to think about my art. She’s definitely spending more nights at Todd’s because it’s closer to Java Jane, or because the feng shui is better, or because they’re staying up long past midnight, plotting their new life without me. I poke colors at my canvases, watch movies on Caro’s Netflix account. The recently viewed window acts like a conversation between us:
Me: Breaking Bad
She: As Good as It Gets
Me: Friends
She: Once Upon a Time
This week I’ve clicked my way through every episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, hoping to provoke a remonstration—Caro’s voice scolding, then breaking into a laugh, and then the two of us making the fight into a joke, something stupid we roll our eyes about, Remember that time I yelled at you about Boring Todd because I was secretly afraid you’d leave me forever? Pass the popcorn—but I get nothing except color-burned retinas and the theme song stuck in my head for days. Afterward, she and Todd embark on a Bill Murray marathon.
I wish, helplessly, that I had put Chad’s number in my phone. But the ink was a smeared cloud by the time I got home that night, and even my most optimistic fantasies involve conversations that begin, Want to hang out? I’m a hopelessly broken monster, and end with him running for the hills.
I read through the WebMD article on depression.
On the fifth day, I listen to Todd’s demo to kill the silence. From the opening note it’s clear that this is better than typical YYS fare. It has an instant catchiness and an urgency that are usually lacking in their light power pop numbers.
Arquette is usually on vocals, but instead Todd’s voice pours through the speaker. It’s light, with a rasp I wouldn’t have expected. He sings: She says you want the whole girl, but I’m just a Hole girl—
I grab the demo sleeve. hole girl it reads, in plain black Sharpie. yum yum situation. I listen in disbelief as the band swings into the chorus.
Reach on down and fall right through,
She’ll reach for you and she’ll fall too,
Hole Girl, Hole Girl,
I’m falling for you.
My heart does the same choking skip of the ailing ice machine downstairs. I flip over the sleeve, looking for liner notes, but nothing.
I hope Todd makes a lot of money on this. Maybe I can make up my rent by suing his ass.
Public Scrutiny has churned back to life, with new flashy banner ads showcasing Local Singles and Hit the target to win a free car! The Hole Girl gallery has been revamped and given its own Reddit-style message board, with individual discussion boards for photos, discussion and FAQs. There’s a thread with a ReverbNation link to the “Hole Girl” single, and even a forum dedicated to fan art: pictures strangers drew of me with my Hole, or, anyway, of someone vaguely young and white and female with a Hole. Most of the pictures feature my silhouette only, or make me way prettier than I am in real life. Bustier, too. Occasionally with cat ears. The Hole is usually in the wrong place, in the middle of my stomach rather than to the lower right, and perfectly round. I look down at the real Hole, sitting innocent and imperfect just above my waistline. I shift to the side, feeling the squish of organs, and the skin around it dimples softly. It seems to me as mundane as flossing.
I skip, grimacing, past the few pieces labeled NSFW. Then I open one last image and freeze.
It’s a pencil drawing of two girls, hands entwined. One is clearly me—the short, dark hair, the trademark crop top and an artistic dusting of freckles. The other is a taller girl with long, straight hair. Both figures stare out at the viewer with the same soft, blank sadness. Both have Holes punched out of their guts.
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The piece is titled We All Have Holes.
I suck in my breath, studying the drawing more closely. The artist has depicted the Hole fairly accurately—the size, shape and location echo my Hole pretty closely. The other figure’s Hole is a perfect mirror image to mine.
I tug at my fingernails. The artist’s screen name is mindthegap.
It couldn’t be. There couldn’t be another one of me.
Could there?
I open a private message to mindthegap. I write, What kind of hole are we talking? Click send. And wait, with a trembling that begins somewhere deep in me and won’t stop.
Hit refresh.
Refresh.
Refresh.
A heart-leaping message blinks to life:
mindthegap: I don’t have a literal hole! ha ha. I’m not Hole Girl. But I feel like her sometimes.
I should have known. Of course I’m the only one. If I wasn’t, I would have met someone else like me by now. Deflated, I feel irritated by the artistic appropriation, by being made metaphor. We all have pain. We all have a sad story. But we don’t all have a flesh tunnel carved out of our middles, narrowly missing the spine and scrambling our menstrual cycles.
I navigate back to the original We All Have Holes drawing. Beneath it, I realize that mindthegap posted a message:
Since a few of you asked: I don’t have a hole like Hole Girl. But that doesn’t mean I’m not full of holes. I can’t seem to connect with anyone. I’m like a human sieve. I walk through the halls at school, and everyone else seems to pass right through me. There’s so much noise. People laugh all the time. What are they even laughing at? Nothing, it’s just so that other people will notice them. My mom says I’m depressed, but I think I’m right. I wish I had a real Hole that I could crawl into and disappear.
The thread stretches on:
piranhanna: I know just how you feel. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only real person on the planet.
Hole in the Middle Page 14
