Circle Nine

by Anne Heltzel

  The room is black magic around us. I feel his fingers prod my back gently, and when I turn, his neck is ready and welcome. I have craved this for weeks as if it could heal my soul of the horrible jealousy that nests inside me. I burrow into him. All of Sam’s angles fit into my curves; we are clay figures bent and posturing. I purr as he rubs his body on mine. Then we’re grabbing at each other all over and frantic as if we want to use our inadequate hands to touch whole bodies, every part at once. I grab a handful of his back. His skin is smooth and soft in my fingers. His flat, hard stomach muscles strain against my curvier ones. I try to push my body through his skin to meet his insides. I want to live inside of his skin, wrap him around me like a blanket.

  We hunt and grab and hold and dig. I feel his tongue on my collarbone, my shoulder, then my breasts, my stomach, moving lower still. We are needy, desperate. Our sweat mixes, our shallow breathing combines. I rise toward him, keeping rhythm, pressing my hips into his. And when we are closer than ever before, as close as I think we can be and still be alive and separate, I look up into his eyes.

  His eyes are filled with something that isn’t me. He stares past me. I don’t know where he is. When I see his face, I am stricken. It breaks our body magic. He notices and looks down.

  What’s wrong?

  You aren’t looking at me. You’re looking at someone else.

  No, baby. There’s no one else.

  He comes back down from over me and holds me, but it is too late. The magic is gone. He says all the right things in my ear, but I don’t believe any of them. Lies, all lies. I don’t believe a word he says, but I play a wicked game with myself anyway and pretend to trust him. Sometimes I wish I had someone here to tell me what to do. Someone other than Sam or Amanda, I mean.

  He is sad.

  I don’t want us to be separated.

  Never, we will never be separated, I reassure him, even though I don’t know anything for sure. I curl into myself. If we move an inch, everything that has happened just now will disappear. We are hanging on to each other by a slim, weak tendril, not the spiderweb kind that can hold anything but the spun-glass kind that snaps. Sammy calls this love, but it’s uglier than that.

  My eyes dart around for Sam. She’s holding the picture close to my face, so close it fills my field of vision. I can’t do this today. I can’t handle her alone. I feel so anxious.

  He’s not here, she says. He’s gone again. How does that feel, Abby?

  I blink back tears. He left me here with her. Is that what she is to me? A babysitter, so he can get me off his hands?

  Focus! She shouts it at me violently. Her eyes are wild, and her hair is a tangled mess, black and furious. She looks paler and sicker than before, and bruises race up her arms. Yet she is still a vision of beauty. Next to her, I am ordinary. It is no wonder he rarely wants me.

  Now, she says again, more quietly, what do you see? It’s a Rorschach, Abby. We want to understand you.

  Amanda might very well be crazy. She’s a dancing skeleton. Maybe the we means her and her bones. She made a test for me to take, using my paper and a bunch of ink. She broke a pen in half and spilled the ink all over the paper. Now she’s holding it in front of my head like a trophy.

  Tell me!

  I focus hard. If I say the wrong thing, she may well attack me. She has never done it, but I expect it. I am feeling skittish. This is all wrong. I woke up this morning, and everything was a different color. Amanda looked ghoulish, and when that happens, which has been only once before, I know that something is very wrong inside my head. Everything feels just one degree off, as though I am still walking in my dream. And what happened in the dream? I can’t place it, but I woke up with a sinking in my heart that has left me jittery all day, and Amanda is only making it worse. It is as if she stepped right out of the strange, skewed dream right onto the fabric of real life. Like she can hop from one place to another. I wonder if she can. It would be remarkable. I wonder if she can control it the way one would control a time machine or if it is something that happens at random, which would account for her crazy mood swings. I stop wondering and start focusing because it’s obvious she’s impatient.

  It’s a porcupine, I say. It looks mostly like a big round blotch of nothing, to me, but there are enough long, sharp lines to make porcupine a passable answer. And I think it will probably please her to some extent.

  Aha! she shouts. Porcupine! I knew you were one fucked-up kid, Abby, but I didn’t know it was this bad.

  I am on the edge of my seat. Something about her voice screams malice. This isn’t a silly game to her. She looks deranged. I am especially uneasy because I don’t know where this is going. Amanda dances around the room, still holding the picture.

  Porcupines are warriors, Abby. They’d never stay inside this hole like you do, hiding away all day, shriveling up into nothingness like you!

  I am quiet.

  They’re sharp on the outside, warm on the inside. Is that what you see when you look at yourself, Abby? Is that who you think you are?

  I don’t know what to say, so I nod. She’s gesturing violently and erratically. She looks like a puppet whose strings are being pulled by several different hands all at once. Wrong! she shouts, pointing one finger at me. You’re just a weak, spineless kid! You’ve got no thorny parts. You’re no warrior. You’re a victim. She hisses the last word, then she steps closer, leaning her head so close to mine that our lips almost touch. You let people use you, Abby. You let Sam use you.

  No, I whisper.

  Yes, she sneers. You think Sam’s yours, but I’ve known him my whole life. Sam and I are the same, Abby. I know him better than anyone, and I know he’s using you just because he can.

  I stand up. I don’t know where I’m going to go, but I’ve got to get out of here. The world is tilting sideways, and I can’t keep upright. Nothing is clear. But I feel her hand on my wrist. That’s enough.

  Let me show you, she says. You can be like me. You can make things happen. Sam doesn’t love you, but it doesn’t need to matter.

  At these words, something inside me shuts off. She can’t think he loves her instead of me. She can’t. I look over at her and it’s worse than bad; it’s like a horror film I can’t turn away from. She has the thin blade of a razor against her arm and she’s cutting herself, and blood is streaming out. Then she looks up at me, and her face is twisted and awful, but it’s not her face anymore; it’s the face of the girl from my dreams. And I look back down at her wrist, and blood isn’t pouring out at all; it’s sparkling red rubies that cascade from her arm to the floor. I scream and scream, and my head cries out for mercy, and witch-dream-girl smiles wider. I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know what I’m seeing anymore. Then Sam’s arms are around me.

  What are you doing to her! he shouts at witch-dream-girl, who has turned back into Amanda.

  Nada, she says back, stepping around me to place one palm on Sam’s cheek. She’s beautiful again for him. Vile for me, lovely for him. Sam grabs her palm and turns it so her wrist is facing him.

  Fuck, Amanda, he says.

  It’s nothing, Sam-Sam, Amanda tells him. Just a scratch. See? She licks her wrist once, twirling her tongue around until it’s covered with her own blood, and only a tiny bit remains, seeping slowly through the cut.

  That’s not enough, Amanda, says Sam. What the hell happened here?

  She shrugs as if she’s exhausted. Oh, lighten up, Sam. We both know you’re no longer the golden boy; you gave that life up a long time ago, so do me a favor and don’t act like someone’s dad, ’K? Anyway, I was just having a little fun. You know I’m not a cutter anymore. Who knows what she thinks happened? We both know she’s loony tunes. She presses her wrist against her shirt and when she pulls it away, it’s a new inkblot: a constellation of tiny red droplets. It had looked like so much more before, a tsunami of blood. Then she turns to me, where I am shaking against Sam’s shoulder. I’m really sorry, Abby, she says, then kisses me on the cheek.
She might even be sincere. But I’m not sure it matters. I am more afraid of what I saw than of her. If I could only understand what I saw, I would have nothing to be afraid of.

  All right, then, says Sam, patting me one last time on the shoulder. Amanda, I need you for a few minutes. I am reeling. Is it as simple as that? We’ll be right back, mija, he says to me. Then they walk out together, and I watch her hand slide from his shoulder and trail down to his lower back, where it rests because he does not move it away. She looks back at me and winks, and then they’re gone and I’m alone, needing him, feeling adrift without him in this universe he created.

  Dream Girl is back. Her hair is normally tar-colored, but this time it’s coated in a red halo. I reach out to touch it; it is flickering orange, yellow, red, and it’s so lovely, she looks lit up like an angel. But when my finger touches her halo-crown, my skin bubbles as if it’s on fire. I feel no pain, but I draw it back anyway. My finger is black and blistered.

  Dream Girl laughs and laughs.

  Don’t you know me, Abby?

  Amanda? I say. Are you Amanda?

  Not Amanda, Abby.

  I want to know. Please tell me!

  I can’t believe you’d forget me so easily.

  But I’ve forgotten everything, I tell her. There’s not one thing I know.

  You know more than you think.

  I wake just a little, feel myself pulling out of the nightmare as my head pulses angrily. But there is something important there, something I need. I will myself back to sleep.

  She glares at me, then begins to wail, clutching at her hair as the flames spread. Fire is coming from every orifice: there are flames from her ears and smoke from her nose and she is breathing balls of it. She pulls tufts of hair from her skull and watches them burn up in her palms. But she does not touch me. She never goes after me.

  I am frozen in horror, but mostly unafraid. As I watch her die, I feel the part of my soul that loves her leaving the rest of me behind. I love her so much, and she’s leaving me.

  When she’s reduced to ash, I grab it in handfuls and stuff it into my mouth, swallowing her down in an effort to keep her close. Only her eyebrow ring is not swallowable; I can’t ingest that. It sticks in my throat, and I cough it back up. I use it to puncture my own eyebrow. She is consuming me. But that part of my soul is still gone.

  I wake up from my dream crying and alone. It’s the same dream I’ve had before; the same girl has been haunting me, and I only wish I knew why she’s chosen me. I look around the room for Sammy, but he’s out; Amanda is gone, too. I don’t know what they’re doing and why they always wait until I’m asleep to do it, but it almost doesn’t matter. Usually when Sammy’s gone like this, he brings me back sweets, the caramel-filled kind that he likes better than I do, just in case I’ve noticed his absence. He wants to seal in the hole he left with sticky caramel. But I don’t care about that. I only want him here to comfort me when I wake up like this. Before Amanda came, he never would have left me alone for this long.

  I lie awake for minutes, maybe hours, until the passage of time is indiscernible. Finally I hear their voices. Amanda sounds happy, drunk.

  Carry me in, Sammy, she says. Over the threshold.

  Whatever you say, little one.

  I hear her material on his material as she climbs up his back, and I barely see her legs latch around his waist, but what I don’t see I make up for using my imagination. I picture her face pressed into his neck and her chest against his back and her hair drifting down his shoulder and his heart pulsing faster at the contact. I tremble. My whole body convulses angrily, afraid.

  I watch their shadow become one, and they stumble farther into the room until Sam loses his balance and they tumble to the ground in a wriggling heap. Finally she kisses his cheek good night, and I can barely see her whispering something that I can’t hear into his ear. I can picture his look of regret as she walks to her bed and he walks to mine. I can’t say “ours” anymore because now he’s given himself a choice, and he doesn’t belong just to me. But without him, who am I?

  He crawls into bed with me and wraps his arms around my ribs, but I know he’s doing it because he can sense from my breathing patterns that I am awake and angry. And he’s right. He should not have been out doing whatever he was doing with her. He should have been here when I woke up from my dream. He doesn’t even try to apologize this time. My whole body recoils from his, and his arms have begun to feel more and more like a vise. I don’t trust their sincerity; I think he must imagine they are clasping Amanda tightly, not me. If he’d been here, Dream Girl may not have come to terrify me, so no matter how hard he tries to fool me, I can’t pretend to forgive him.

  Today I remembered something important. Once, long ago, I had a mother. I was sitting outside reading when I remembered it. It may have been the feel of the pages under my fingers or the glossy plastic cover on the book, the kind of cover that looks like it belongs in a library. Then it came to me in a sickening, panicked flash. I only saw it for an instant, and even as my head fought against its surge of dull pain, I fought to hold on to it. The entire memory may have lasted one second, or maybe two. It was more like an experience than anything else. With it came the rush of feelings, good and bad. I half want to forget it; thinking of it makes my stomach clench. But it is mine, one of the few things that are mine alone, and it’s a treasure.

  She is reading to me; it’s my favorite book, selected from the same spot in the same library shelf each week. I have heard it a dozen times, but I love it. She pulls me onto her lap, and I lean back into the crook of her arm and the curve of her stomach and chest. Her big wool sweater tickles my cheek. I am small, three or four.

  It’s a fairy tale about a boy and a girl who love each other but are separated by an evil witch who wants the boy to marry her ugly daughter. The evil witch puts a spell on the girl, so the girl dies. The girl comes back as a ghost and watches as the ugly daughter impersonates her in an attempt to woo the prince. In the end, the evil witch and her daughter die in a horrible fire, and the girl comes back to life to be with her prince. I love the ending; it is my favorite part. As the woman reads, she conveys a message of love. I am hers and she is mine.

  The memory is brief but important because it’s a gift from my past. It left me shaking and nauseated, though intact. I never knew for sure whether I’d ever had a mother, and now I know that I had a good one who loved me. All of me is cold and hot and calm and provoked by this knowledge. It makes the pain easier to bear. I tuck it away because I can’t think of it, really think of what it means, just yet.

  I’m watching them through the skylight. I’m standing on the chair, and I’ve pulled myself up to see and hear better. I have never seen them fight like this. I am thrilled; if they fight badly enough, he’ll be all mine again. I’ve hated sharing him. She’s clutching something in her hand. It looks like an old newspaper. It’s tattered with wear. She’s waving it at him, and now he’s approaching her and trying to touch her arm, but she brushes his off. He tries to grab the piece of paper she’s holding, but she grips it tight and it rips in half. Now they each have half of it. I wish I could know what it is, but I can’t hear much of anything at all. Just some muted shouting and the sounds of anger. And maybe, possibly . . . my name?

  I move closer to the skylight, poking my head partially outside and straining to hear. They don’t notice me; they’re too involved in their own furious words. Now I am able to catch some of them here and there.

  . . . is why, says Amanda.

  No, Sam says back. No, give it to me. He snatches at the scrap she still holds in her hand. I see printed words, a picture, what looks like half a headline in big bold letters, but I can’t make out any of it.

  It’s her, isn’t it? Her voice is louder than before, accusing. She jabs at the newspaper with one finger. Then Sam whispers something, and they turn their backs to me and their words fade, become muffled. They move away a few steps, still facing the other direction. I hear
nothing now, but I can still see their figures set in battle stance.

  Good. I hope they are fighting over me. I hope she’s making him choose. Because I know deep down that if he has to, he will choose me over her. It is interesting watching Amanda become angrier. Even when she’s been moody in the past, it seems a little too dramatic, as though she’s putting on a show that doesn’t quite reflect what she’s really feeling. But this time, I see bits of her personality that I never quite noticed. Her face is set in a firm line, and her cheeks are flushed. She looks healthy in her anger. She looks as if she cares deeply about what she’s saying. For an instant I wonder if she truly loves Sam as I do. I had not thought it was possible before. I thought for her it was something different. The desire to win, to have. Now she is stomping away from him, and he is shaking his head, looking furious. I wonder about his reaction, because don’t these kinds of quarrels look different? Shouldn’t one person look penitent, or desperate to ease the other? But what do I know of it? I hear Amanda stomping closer, so I jump off the chair and hastily push it back to its spot by Sam’s desk.

  I leap onto the bed and grab my sketch pad and pretend as though I’ve been sketching this whole time. They both storm in a few seconds later. Sam looks as though he’s swallowed something nasty, and Amanda looks a mixture of angry and frightened and confused. I wish I knew what happened. Amanda lies on her bed and turns her back to us. Sam comes over to me, and I am immediately glad. He is finally choosing me over her. Finally coming back to me, where he belongs. I sense that this is the end of Sam and Amanda, and my heart is leaping around inside in the utmost ecstasy. He sits at the foot of the bed, starting at my toes and kissing his way up the rest of me until his body is aligned with mine.