U UP?

by Catie Disabato

  “I bet,” I said. “The whole place is buzzing with positive energy.”

  Miggy glowed and hummed and I climbed inside my filling tub. The water was so hot it prickled me, and I could feel the magic of it soaking into the skin. I’d be glowing too if I soaked long enough. Nozlee climbed in next to me and this time I gave into the threat and slid my hand into hers. Miggy raised an eyebrow as he licked his joint closed.

  “I know,” Nozlee said, “I know. Ezra is going to be…I don’t know.”

  “He’s going to spiral,” I said. “He’s going to be very hurt.”

  “You can’t worry about it,” Miggy said.

  “Shouldn’t we though?” I asked. Noz fiddled with the faucet handles, making sure our tub didn’t overflow. “My whole new thing is to try to be better to people, and what am I doing? Stealing his fucking girlfriend.”

  Nozlee made a gasped warble noise. “I think I’ve had a little more agency than, like, ‘being stolen.’ ”

  “Yes! Okay! Fuck! This is exactly what I mean,” I said. “I’m bad.”

  Miggy toked his ghost joint, its end a haunting red spark.

  Nozlee turned off the water and tipped onto her back; she floated, her arms splayed, her fingers brushing my thigh, a simultaneously accidental and deliberate touch. Like keeping a point of contact, like keeping a tether.

  “The point, I think,” Miggy said, exhaling smoke, “is to be thoughtfully good and thoughtfully bad. Random, accidental shittiness, based on anger or petty shit or ignorance of what is making your friends upset—that you have to cut out. But making a deliberate choice to be good to yourself even if it’s hurting your friend, well that’s a more complicated question. It could have a more complicated answer.”

  “But I’m at a deficit, now, I’m realizing,” I said. I knelt on the bottom of the tub so I could get as much of my body under the water as possible. It lapped at my shoulders as comforting as a sweet puppy. “Maybe I need to make up for years of accidental shittiness by avoiding any deliberate shittiness for a while.” I was doing this all backwards. I had just found Nozlee liked me, and already I wanted to hold onto her. And what was I supposed to do if being good to Ezra meant being bad to Noz? Who was I supposed to prioritize now?

  “I don’t think, like, repayment of a debt is a good way to think about it. You need to do the thing that’s right, right now,” Miggy said. “Sometimes that means wrecking things. Sometimes it’s worth it.”

  I pondered this briefly. I tried to take the joint from Miggy, but my hands passed through the joint and Miggy’s hand. Miggy laughed, he smoked.

  “We’re in a bad pattern too,” I said to him, realizing it as I was saying it. “I’ve, like, been texting you as if you were alive, but you’re not. I have to, like, process your death.”

  “Sounds like the healthy path,” Miggy agreed.

  “But what am I supposed to do?” I said. “Forget I can text you or come visit you here? Take Cascarilla all the time to shut you the fuck out? You hate that!”

  Noz giggled.

  “What!?” I said.

  “It’s as if the concept of balance has never occurred to you!” she said, still laughing. She grabbed my wrist and used it to tug on my whole body.

  “What?” I said, again.

  “Come float.”

  Miggy gestured: You better do what she says.

  I shifted until my head was near Nozlee’s; I let the water buoy me. The tub was wide enough for two, but narrow enough that we had to be close together as we floated side by side. Like those otters in that YouTube video, Nozlee again took my hand.

  The water blocked my ears and I shut my eyes; I felt her near me and the rest of everything drop away. The water was gentle to me and I was calm and the world was happy to wait for me until I was done floating.

  “It feels good,” I said.

  Nozlee murmured in agreement.

  I was supposed to be there next to her, smelling my dead best friend’s weed, feeling sun on my cheeks, realizing I should’ve put on sunscreen, realizing worrying about sunscreen was fine, that it would all be fine, that I didn’t need to search all over the fucking state to find the solutions to my problems, just focus on floating.

  Sunday, 2:00 p.m.

  Around 2:00 p.m., our big group chat with all of our friends—three years ago someone had named it “Who Wants To Go Out?”—started blowing up. Everybody was piling into cars, stopping at gas stations to get salt & vinegar chips, stopping at In-N-Out to get a double double or animal fries extra crispy, posting Instagrams of the iconic red-with-palm-trees In-N-Out soda cup, Googling when the sun would go down and sending it to the rest of the group so we knew when to look out for the sunset, asking if the Saguaro had a hot tub.

  WHO WANTS TO GO OUT?

  Ezra:

  Fuck yeah it does.

  Then Ezra sent a selfie from the Saguaro’s hot tub, his sunglasses low on his nose, the sun glistening off water droplets on his face.

  “Noz,” I said, to get her attention.

  She pulled her nose out of her book and stretched on her lounge chair. I sat up on mine.

  “I think it might be time to head to Palm Springs,” I said.

  She sighed and stretched. “Vacation’s over.”

  We’d already checked out and put our bags in my car and Nozlee had somehow gotten the hotel management to allow her to keep her car parked on the property for another night. Driving all the way back to Desert Hot Springs to get it on Monday would be annoying, but we both felt too uneasy to separate yet.

  Miggy floated next to us while we walked to our cars, his body was present but wispy like a haunted breeze; I would’ve held his hand if I could. It hung unspoken that Nozlee and I were leaving Miggy’s side to go to a gathering that would celebrate his life at the site where he took himself away from us. Should he be there, just out of reach, while we all lit candles for him? As little as three days ago, I probably would’ve begged him to come with. Instead, I held my hands out, palms up, and he held his hands out, palms down, like we were setting up to play the slap hands game: as close as we could get to touching.

  “I miss you,” I said. “I’m mad you’re not here anymore. You left.”

  All ghosts are thirsty, all ghosts are beasts, even him. He told me he loved me, and I saw the blood between his teeth.

  “I know you’re going to take some space from me, and that’s going to be good for you,” the beast said, feeding on our growing emotional distance, because I realized the final way I’d been wrong. I’d thought Miggy’s thirst was for conversation and connection, but his real thirst, his monstrous compulsion, was to leave people behind.

  His face turned blue and his tongue got long and I saw so vividly the bruises around his neck from where he’d hanged himself last year.

  “I’ll love you for the rest of my life,” I said, which was a more concrete promise than I’ll love you forever, and also one I was prepared to keep. I’d take some time from him, I’d mourn his death and let him go, then text him back when I could determine the space between my friend and his ghost, and when I could create balance in my own life.

  I lowered my hands, and Nozlee stepped in to say her goodbyes.

  As we got settled in the front seats of my Fit, and Miggy hovered behind the car like a dad watching his kids drive off to college, Shaman Colleen walked by. She didn’t see us in the car, but she saw Miggy, who was puffing on a new joint. I watched in the rearview mirror as Colleen approached Migs, and nudged Nozlee, so she was watching too when Miggy held out the joint to Colleen, who grabbed it and toked it. In all my twenty-nine years on this earth, I’d never seen anybody reach out and touch the spirit realm. I didn’t think it was possible. I twisted my neck around so hard, trying to see it with my eyes instead of via a mirror; then Colleen exhaled ghost smoke, said something to Miggy as she handed him back the j
oint, and walked on.

  “Holy fuck,” Nozlee said.

  “I want to learn how to do that,” I said.

  Miggy disappeared, I felt his energy lingering unbodied, and Colleen was walking away. The world was new, suddenly, the world was sparking, but there wasn’t anything to do about it now. We had to get on the road.

  The sky over the highway was so bright and big, I felt swallowed by it. As I drove, Noz played the music. She played me all her favorite guitar stuff, Colleen Green and Snail Mail and An Horse, and once or twice she slipped in a song about pining for someone, songs I already knew she loved, like that Shura song from a few years ago, “What’s It Gonna Be?,” and I realized that maybe all along she’d been thinking about me when she listened to them and that made me feel prickly with body heat, especially when she hummed along, “I don’t wanna give you up / I don’t wanna let you love somebody else but me.”

  When we passed a road sign that said “Palm Springs, twenty miles,” I had an uneasy thought.

  “Oh fuck,” I said, “Where are we all going to sleep?”

  Noz was supposed to be rooming with Ezra, and I was supposed to be rooming with Georgie.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Noz said, watching the sky.

  “Uh, I’m absolutely going to worry about it, there’s no way I can sleep in the same bed as Georgie right now.”

  Noz smirked, “I promise not to be jealous.”

  “It’s not that, she’s fucking sleeping with Bea,” I said.

  “Oh shit! We’ll absolutely talk about that later, but like, it’s all worked out. You and I are going to stay in your and Georgie’s room, Georgie’s gonna go in with Bea and Lydia, and Ezra’s going to stay alone in the one we were supposed to be in.”

  “When did all this switching happen?” I asked, flicking on my turn signal, sliding between lanes.

  “We were texting,” Noz said.

  “I would like to be consulted about my own hotel room situation!” I said.

  “Babe,” Noz said, losing patience. “You’re in the group texts, but you’ve been driving.”

  “Oh.” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  “I’ve gotta work on that. Assuming the worst.” There was a lot I had to work on, piles of nightmare habits to sort through and eradicate.

  “It’s a process,” Noz said, rubbing my thigh.

  * * *

  —

  Fifteen minutes later, I turned the Fit into the parking lot of the Saguaro; I pulled into a spot next to Ezra’s red Volvo. I—we—were surrounded by cars we recognized, blue and silver, familiar dings and bumper stickers. In a minute we’d be surrounded by the people who traveled inside them. Through the lobby, checked in by a tired woman with her hair up, and then, together, Noz and I walking into the heart of the hotel.

  The Saguaro is a big rectangular pool, surrounded on all four sides by two stories of hotel rooms with doors in bright colors like glasses of fruit juice. Everywhere, our friends were chatting. Almost a dozen of us who missed Miggy, in various stages of sunbathing; I waved at Chelsea and Lydia, who sat on lounge chairs, their hair still dripping from the pool, drinking from cans of rosé; in the deep end, Tommy floated alone, sunglasses low on their nose, on a pool float shaped like a cactus; nearby, Georgie and Bea sat partially submerged on the steps into the shallow end, Bea leaning onto Georgie’s legs, her face turned towards the sun or maybe to look at Nozlee and me.

  I saw them and I felt angry, and being angry and not saying anything about it or doing anything about it made the anger feel like there was a fire inside that was burning me up, but I finally felt strong enough not to let it burn anybody else down, and I knew that maybe, if I worked hard enough, it would stop burning me up too.

  “You’ll freckle,” I said.

  “I know how to put on sunscreen, Mom,” Bea said with an eye roll.

  And Ezra, on the second floor of the rooms, leaning over the wrought iron railing, his shoulders arched like birds’ wings. He was wearing these short royal blue trunks and a neon green shirt and he shone, and he waved back at me. By unspoken agreement, everyone was squashing all their conflicts.

  Noz and I quickly dropped our bags in our room and, swaddled by our friends, their familiar bathing suits and voices, we parted. Noz scuttled over to the deep end of the pool, shed her linen bathing suit cover-up, and pounced from the side of the pool onto Tommy’s float. They yelped and flipped and Noz laughed manically and then dove to retrieve Tommy’s dented old Ray Bans from the bottom of the pool before the chlorine could corrode the UV coating. I sprawled out on the empty lounge chair next to Lydia’s and retrieved a can of rosé from the cooler for myself, and listened to her and Chelsea gab a bit before they folded me into their conversation. We talked until the sun dipped below the rim of the buildings, and then I hurried back to my room to get my supplies.

  In the hotel room, Noz rustled through her bag. Over her bikini, she put on a white t-shirt with spray paint–style lettering that said “JAMES DEAN SPEED QUEEN,” something one of the guys wore on the Netflix Queer Eye, which she and Migs had watched together. Then, she pulled out three hunks of raw crystal on chains, homemade necklaces. I recognized the stones: Ruby Zoisite facilitates releasing pain and sorrow—“This one’s for Ezra to wear,” Noz said; Apache Tear, a form of obsidian, which filters negative vibes into positive ones, was for Nozlee to wear. She put around my neck a chunk of Ruby Moonstone; it helps you forgive someone for leaving you. I kissed her, wet, and felt the little bumps on her tongue. When she stepped away from me, I grabbed my fat candles and we went back out to the pool area.

  The sky was already dark blue and getting black, our friends were drinking from Solo cups and they spoke in hushed voices. Ezra was waiting for us by the steps into the pool. We were awkward with each other’s bodies, as Nozlee almost put the crystal around his neck for him, but then handed it over for him to do himself instead. I held out the candles like I was passing a clean utensil to a stranger, careful not touch any part that they might touch.

  “Black in the left hand, white in the right,” I explained. Ezra switched his candles, and then I lit his, and Nozlee’s, and mine, and threw the lighter into the grass, and the three of us walked into the pool, waist-deep. All of Miggy’s friends sat down on the edges of the pool and hung their feet into the water.

  “Black is the color of transition, ending a phase in your life, and it absorbs negativity,” Noz told everyone. “White is the color of new beginnings and spiritual growth. It’s also the color of Goddess energy, which I’m pretty sure Migs would’ve appreciated.”

  Everyone laughed a little bit, maybe remembering like me how Miggy could be a little fey whenever he felt a conversation had gotten too straight, slipping a warbling yas queen into a conversation about Dodgers baseball or bachelor parties in Vegas. I cried then, enough burning tears to stream out of my eye and down my cheek, and with the burning candles in my hand I couldn’t move my glasses to wipe them away.

  Ezra said, “So, we Jews have a thing called Yahrzeit, which is the celebration of the first anniversary of a loved one’s death. The actual day of Yahrzeit is based on the Hebrew calendar, actually, and the day changes if their death was before or after sunset. It’s really complicated, and Eve and I couldn’t figure it out. Considering that Miggy isn’t even Jewish, we decided to do a Yahrzeit ritual on the goyim one-year anniversary, which is today. Obviously. For Yahrzeit, we light candles at sunset and leave the candle burning for twenty-four hours.”

  I sniffled in a gross, mucusy way and said, “We all shared our memories of Miggy at the wake, so instead of rehashing out loud and getting each other all riled up with deep sadness, we’re going to just think about our favorite times with Miggy, and remind ourselves how lucky we were to have him in our lives for any amount of time.” And maybe finally forgive him for leaving.

&nbs
p; All weekend I’d been thinking about the housesit in the hills, thinking about being shut up in the room with Nozlee all night, and I’d barely given a single thought to the several hours Miggy and I had spent, just the two of us, in the kitchen, cooking lemony chicken and garlicky kale to feed each other and our friends. While the chicken had baked, we’d sat on the countertop and polished off a bottle of red wine. Our conversation had taken a turn for the serious, discussing something about dissatisfaction with our fathers, and I can’t remember how I’d gotten there but I do remember saying to him, “Promise you’ll never leave me,” and, drunk, he kissed me on my shoulder and said, “I promise.” I’d spent a year thinking about how he broke that promise, when I should’ve been thinking about how selfish it was, after he’d left, to make him stay.

  Lydia held up her phone, taking pictures of us, and I knew that in the picture she would eventually post to Instagram, instead of some amalgamated mess of one personality and one desire spread over three bodies, I’d see separate people, missing their friend, standing next to each other.

  Acknowledgments

  Writing this book wouldn’t have been possible without the support, encouragement, contribution, and attention of a murderer’s row of my brilliant friends and some of the best publishing professionals in the business.

  Thank you to Alyea Canada for understanding what I was trying to do with this story and helping me figure out how to stick my landing. Thank you to Dennis Johnson and Valerie Merians for believing in my work from the very beginning and not giving me grief about taking five years to write a second novel.

  As a PR/marketing person myself, I deeply appreciate the often-thankless and always-exhausting work Amelia Stymacks and Selihah White put in to make sure this book made it into your hands. Marina Drukman designed the striking cover and I especially appreciate the work Betty Lew put into the interior, so that you could have the experience of holding Eve’s phone and reading her texts. Thank you to everyone at Melville House who worked on this book.