by Andrea Bartz
* * *
Blackness.
* * *
Pain like lightning. I squeezed my eyes closed again for a moment, taking stock, then opened them into the light streaming through my windows. Normally I close the curtains before bed; normally I pull the blackout shade down behind them. I rolled over, something grinding along the inside of my skull.
I was in my own bed, fully clothed, my jeans torn at the knee. Josh was not beside me. I stared at the sheets while pieces of the night resurfaced like developing Polaroids: shots at Jimmy Rhoda’s. An impassioned discussion with a girl at that kid’s shitty apartment. My stomach churned: a house key hovering in front of my face, a tiny hill of white powder on the end. Music so loud it joggled my skull. How had I gotten home? Had I embarrassed myself? Fuck.
Everything hurt. Every inch of my entrails ached and roiled; my head buzzed with pain like it was a bell being struck, and my neck, back, and shoulders were one hard mass. Being awake hurt. Being alive hurt. And I felt a torrent of self-hatred, shame, and disgust singeing every nerve ending at the same time, over and over and over again.
Moving slowly, I sat up and crawled off the end of the bed, pausing there, the world flashing blue and white, to see if I’d pass out. When I didn’t, I lumbered toward the bathroom, hanging on to furniture as I passed. I sat on the toilet for a while, then swallowed four Advils, the bare minimum to have any effect. I drank two cupped handfuls of water, unsure I could make it to the kitchen for a glass. Then, almost crawling, I crossed to the dresser, took the antidepressant I’d missed the night before, and climbed back into bed.
I woke up to someone touching my shoulder. Tessa.
“How are you feeling?” she asked when I squinted at her.
I groaned.
“I brought you this.” She handed me a huge Gatorade in my favorite flavor: orange. I struggled to uncap it for a moment before she snatched it back and opened it for me. It tasted like cold, flavored sweat.
“Here. For your head.” She spread a damp washcloth over my eyes as I let out another groan.
“What are you doing here?” I said finally. So grateful she had her own set of keys, my hangover fairy godmother.
“You scared me last night,” she said. “Once I got you into bed, I went home to shower and stuff, but I thought I’d come by before I went to work. Want me to email your boss and say you’re taking a sick day?”
“That would be good. Thanks, Tessa. What happened last night?”
She sighed. “It’s pretty serious, Linds. Maybe we should wait and talk about it when you feel better.”
“No, no, no, I want to hear it now,” I said, because who hears that and thinks, Sure, let’s delay?
She chewed on her lip and stood up, crossing into the kitchen and returning with her phone. She sat on the bed next to me.
“So obviously you went out with…that guy,” she said, “who I didn’t know anything about. You ended up super drunk at a club and started sending me these really weird text messages that didn’t make any sense, like you were talking about go-go dancers and…and trying coke and that you were angry with this Josh guy and didn’t know how you’d get home.” She swallowed. “So I made you send me a screenshot of where you were—thank god you could still do that—and I took a cab there, even though it was like four in the morning.”
That uncomfortable hum all through my torso. “Thanks for that,” I murmured.
“Well, so I pulled up and got out and realized you were in this little crowd on the side of the street and…and you were yelling at this guy, I guess the one you were there with? And you were incoherent but just yelling and kind of pushing and everyone was trying to calm you down, and there was a truck coming and suddenly you…” She paused. “Well, I can show you.”
She held out her phone and it took a moment for me to make sense of what I was seeing. It was a shaky video of the dark scene, a group of us lit up by the sallow streetlights overhead; I made out the black woman and the tall Asian guy, plus Josh, his eyes wild. The one I barely recognized was me, definitely me, swaying and screaming and cracking both palms against Josh’s chest, over and over.
Then suddenly I’d stepped forward and pushed with both arms, and Josh tipped off the back of the curb, toppling down to the blare of a big rig’s horn as everyone in the circle screamed. The camera lens jerked around, then refocused on Josh lying flat on the ground, a pair of arms trying to help him up—Tessa’s arms, her face popped into view, so she hadn’t been the camerawoman, she hadn’t recorded this—and the bang of a heavy truck door and the sound of a gruff man cursing, but the camera swung back to me, my eyes unfocused, staring, expressionless, at Josh’s body at my feet.
The video ended and Tessa set the phone on her lap. “Is he okay?” I asked, tears streaming down my cheeks.
She nodded. “The truck stopped in time, thank god. He had the wind knocked out of him and he gashed his elbows, but he was otherwise okay. A woman—she was tall with tattoos? She was the one recording, and once she figured out I was your friend, she made me airdrop it onto my phone. She said…” She took a deep breath. “She said if you go anywhere near this guy Josh again, she’s going to post it and tag it with your name.”
I laid my head back and pulled the washcloth over my eyes. This isn’t happening.
“What was I so mad about?”
“I don’t know. No one told me.”
I flipped the rag over to its cooler side.
“Lindsay, this is really bad.”
Hot tears soaked into the washcloth.
“This is assault,” she went on. “I’m deleting this, but…but I wish I hadn’t seen it. That woman still has a copy. What is going on with you?”
“I don’t know,” I murmured.
“This is not you. You don’t assault people.”
“I don’t know, Tessa. I don’t know.”
She stayed silent long enough that I slid the cloth up to peek at her.
“So this isn’t the first time drinking made you violent,” she said quietly.
I nodded.
“I think you should tell me,” she said.
I pulled the fabric back over my eyes. Maybe like this, with the world blocked out and my forehead like an iron against the damp cloth, I could tell her about the Warsaw Incident.
“When I was twenty-three,” I began, my voice small, “Edie and I went to this bar called Warsaw. It was in Greenpoint—this old Polish space with pierogies and Jell-O shots and weird beers and a dinky stage in the corner.”
I swallowed.
“It was spring—the spring before everything went down, before Edie and Alex broke up, before Kevin left his trunk unlocked with the gun inside, before everything. There was an event at Warsaw, something Edie and I had RSVP’d to for the one-hour open bar, and I remember ordering two vodka Red Bulls, which came in plastic cups the size of Slurpees.” I held my hands out, miming the double-fisting. “They were both for me, so I could keep drinking for free after the open bar ended. I have a flash of myself shortly after, holding a bag and freaking out; apparently I was so drunk, I’d taken my free swag bag, like a promotional tote bag, you know? And then I convinced myself I’d stolen it from someone else. Almost like dream-logic.”
Tessa didn’t say anything, so I went on.
“I started making eyes with this guy as soon as I walked in. Eventually we started chatting, and he kept circling back to me while still hanging out with his friends. I blacked out around that point in the night, but Edie saw the rest. Apparently he and I flirted for a while, then were apart for a bit, and then I saw him making out with another girl. And apparently I…I just lost my shit.” Hot tears pressed into the washcloth; I wiped my nose.
“I was outside smoking when the girl came out by herself, and I…I attacked her, Tessa. I scratched her with my nails and just kept lunging at her,
clawing and screaming.” I let out a few rickety sobs. “I went for her face. I drew blood. I woke up the next day with what looked like rust under my fingernails and—and dried blood on my forearms.” All I could remember from that night was a sense of rage, a deep conviction that someone was wrong, mingling with this weird elation, like bright barbs on top of a ball of fury.
I took a deep, wobbly breath. “Anyway, Edie succeeded in pulling me off her and shoving me into a cab, and the girl’s friends came and grabbed her and Edie took me home. I’m so fucking lucky I didn’t get charged with assault.”
“You are,” Tessa said, after a very long time.
“I know. The next morning I made Edie promise not to tell anyone, and she never mentioned it again.” Of course, for years I’d believed that Edie could be trusted, that she’d never told anyone what had happened with my mom ten years earlier. But she had—she’d run to Sarah and shared that secret. Maybe she’d spread this one, as well. Maybe everyone knew about the Warsaw Incident, too embarrassed to bring it up but quietly disgusted by me.
“But now you know,” I said. “So you can just stay away from me instead of finding out the hard way. Like Josh. Or Lloyd. Or Edie.”
I lay stock-still for another long beat, until I began to wonder if Tessa was still there. Then I felt a kiss on my forehead, just above the towel.
“You get some rest, okay?” she said. “I have to go to work.”
“Nooo, stay with me.”
“I can’t. But you’ll feel better after you get some more sleep. Text me and let me know how you’re doing, okay?” She gathered her things and left.
Three glasses of water and two pukes later, I managed to drag my laptop into bed with me and watch hours of a sitcom. Every blast of commercials, blaring and spastic, reignited my headache; every time, I rushed to mute it and then had nothing to do for ninety seconds but sit with my toxic, worthless, out-of-control self.
Eventually the trapezoid of sunlight sliding across my room disappeared into the ceiling. No one had called or texted me; outside there were birds singing, kids playing, people imbuing the world with bubbles of laughter and small, kindly acts. Not actively causing harm, not ripping others open at the seams so their blood would drip onto the ground. What was running through my head when I planted my palms on Josh’s chest and shoved with all my might? Had dopamine spurted over my brain as his eyes bugged in fear, his arms flailing uselessly?
I made it to the bathroom in time to throw up again, words flooding my brain, the internal dialogue growing louder, louder, louder. I lay back down, paused the TV show, and opened up a new document. Email notifications flooded the side of the screen. I was about to X them all out when I froze: Tessa hadn’t remembered to pose as me and email about being sick, had she?
“Shit,” I barked aloud. It was almost five on a summer Friday, so my boss was already gone. I had pages I was supposed to ship today. Why hadn’t anybody called me? I snatched up my purse, still crumpled in the hallway. Maybe her assistant was still in the office. Maybe I could make up something dramatic, something dramatic but not fact-checkable, so I couldn’t have been in the ER, but maybe I’d witnessed someone getting in a crazy accident, and somehow my phone had died and my watch wasn’t working and I’d spent all day off the grid in Urgent Care and then a police precinct—
My fingers, feeling for the smooth familiarity of my phone, stopped fumbling around in my purse and instead I dumped the contents onto the wood floor. Wallet, lipstick, gum, eye drops, pack of tissues. No phone in sight. I checked the zipper pockets, just to be sure. Let out another loud, low groan.
A few tears squeezed out of me, a single little sob over everything, my entire disgusting oeuvre.
I trudged back over to my computer. I wouldn’t fiddle with the margins this time; I wouldn’t open an old notebook and find space to glue in the entry. But the act of recording had always soothed me, the steady clack of my fingers against the keys.
I’ve spent the entire day wishing I had some powerful depressants on hand so I could knock myself out for a while, but it wouldn’t even matter because then I’d wake up tomorrow or in the wee hours of tonight and still be me. I’d still be this rabid, unpredictable stranger pushing against the inside of my skin. Sometimes I wonder who I’d be if things had gone differently. Maybe I’d be calmer and more competent, less prone to blanks in my memory and erratic behavior when handed a drink, if my brain hadn’t been stewing since childhood in a constant bath of Prozac and Lexapro and Tofranil and Wellbutrin and Ritalin and Adderall and god only knows what else. If my parents hadn’t been such fucking cowards. If they’d actually considered the long-term consequences of a fucking tsunami of chemicals crashing into a developing brain. I can almost see the alternate timeline on Earth 2, the one where little Lindsay just knew acceptance and love.
For now, though, I’m fucked. Fucked and fucked up, and who knows how much is my own doing and how much is my parents’. By now, it hardly matters. All I know is my brain’s so warped that a single bump of cocaine has permanently screwed everything up. I’m scared—scared of my brain, scared of myself. Today I told another person about the Warsaw Incident. Now another human knows, another living person with the knowledge that she should stay far away from me.
I noticed that my arms and legs were freezing, my teeth chattering as if I were out in the cold. I was sprinting toward a cliff and couldn’t stop until I’d leapt, until the ground below me gave way to air. I let out a loud whimper and felt my fingers moving furiously.
My parents were right to be afraid of me, to place a pill next to my water glass every night at dinner and to not let me eat until they’d seen it slip down my throat. I don’t know what’s in me, why I’m like this. I didn’t think that side of me would ever show itself again. But it did, last night. Now I know for sure.
A dizzying swoop, like I’d done something irreversible. I went back to the top and added a salutation:
Dear Edie,
I read the whole thing over once as a bird screeched outside my window. I moved the cursor to the trash icon. Then I just closed my laptop, the draft left buzzing like a wasp trapped inside the window screen.
Chapter 14
I managed to leave the house late the next morning, blinking into the sun in slight surprise that it all still existed. I picked up groceries and a bag of expensive coffee beans and whirred them in my coffee grinder, enjoying the growl and the slight thrill of a spinning blade, one that could take off my fingertips if it tried. Last night’s freak-out already felt filmy and faraway; I remembered the jagged panic but couldn’t actually pull it up again.
The text came an hour later, right as I wasn’t thinking about him.
“Hey,” it began, and I read it in Michael’s voice: “How’s your week?”
I leaned a few inches back, as if to distance myself from it. Michael. I thought of all the energy I’d spent on Lloyd when I was too young to know better—when I was indomitable and upbeat, convinced things would work out okay just because I’d seen a glimmer of a beginning. I thought of Josh, smiling at me over a pizza slice as the East River rushed by behind him. Again and again, I’d been so quick to disregard the million other ways things could turn out, the possibilities funneling out of Point A like latticework.
I texted back: “Can I call you?”
I saw him beginning to answer, but it didn’t come through for thirty maddening seconds: “Sure.”
It was an awkward conversation, as these kinds of chats always are—the first time we’d talked voice to voice in almost four weeks. Four weeks when I hadn’t, for the first time, asked him to see me, testing the theory that if I stopped, he might evaporate like dew. He listened as I rattled off something about needing to feel respected even when I’m just casually dating, something about feeling like I was at the end of his priority list. I said, “This isn’t working,” like an actor with a script. He was so quiet. I
pictured him fading away as he listened, becoming more and more transparent until he whiffed away like smoke.
“I’m sorry,” he said, when I reached the end of my soliloquy. His voice was as diaphanous as I’d expected, molecules and air. “Guess I fucked up.”
It hung there, and for a single second something split open in front of me, an alternate ending where he promised to do better and made a grand gesture and everything changed, so solid and real. It flashed in front of me and then blinked out just as quickly. The silence buzzed.
“Well, good luck with everything,” I said, to pierce it.
“You, too,” he said, and that was that. After we’d hung up, I found Alex’s number in my contacts list and I stared at it for a moment before blocking it.
* * *
On Sunday, I woke up to an email from Mrs. Iredale. The subject line read “YOUR VIDEO,” and my blood frosted over when I saw it. She knows about the Flip cam video.
Dear Lindsay,
I thought I had your email and I’m glad to see I have it here. You said you were putting together a video in memory of Edie and if you do, I would like to see a copy very much. I looked around to see if I have more videos to share with you but I don’t since we never did have a video camera. I am of course thinking of her with the anniversary coming up this week and the video could be nice, and if you are free on Wednesday morning I always visit Summit Rock in Central Park on the anniversary, which was Edie’s favorite place to play in the park when she was little. It is near West 83rd St. You are probably working but I thought I would ask. Should you wish to come along please call me before then. My number is in my email signature below.
