You in Five Acts(45)

One night on the way home, I took something palmed to me by Dante’s friend “T”—that he whispered was some homemade brew of heroin and speed. My heart started skipping beats when I was by myself in an empty subway car, and I got dizzy and slid off the bench onto the grimy floor next to an empty Cup Noodles. I don’t know how long I was lying there, but I woke up to an old Chinese woman standing over me yelling something I couldn’t understand, so I got up and staggered off the train and realized I was in Brooklyn. I walked home, I guess—somehow I was in my bed the next morning, feeling like someone drilled a hole in my skull and put a brick on my chest. I stayed home “sick” for a few days and slept, but the sleeping wasn’t enough, my brain wouldn’t start without jumper cables, and so I gave in and got out my straw and when I took the first sniff my brain caught on fire and I actually screamed. But then after a minute it started to feel better, even good, almost, so I told my mom I’d seen a roach and kept the door shut.

Ethan came by after school to check on me. He brought me flowers and soup and ran his fingers through my hair, and for the first time ever I didn’t want him to stop touching me, so I pulled him down and kissed him with my eyes closed so I could pretend he was you. After a minute, though, he pulled back and looked at me with that hungry, glassy-eyed look that boys get and said, “Why can’t we do this all the time?” And when I said I didn’t know, he asked me if he was my boyfriend, and I shook my head, not sure if my chin was moving up and down or side to side.

I did manage to hang with Joy once, on a weekend when she wasn’t rehearsing. I invited her over to make cookies from a roll of premade dough and watch DVR’d episodes of I Survived, a creepy budget reality show about people who should pretty much be dead, but weren’t. (Back then I think I thought it made me feel better about my own situation—like, at least I hadn’t been stabbed a million times in a home invasion and wrapped in a carpet—but now I think I watched it because I wanted to see life from the other side.) Right before she came over, though, I was running around the house checking everything to make sure it looked normal, layering sweaters to hide my skinny arms, and blinking back tears of Visine to get the pink tint out of my eyes. I was setting up for my supposed best friend the way I usually set up for a party, scrambling to hide everything that mattered.

We said all the things that girls always say when there’s tension that nobody wants to address—I miss you! (a veiled accusation); How ARE you? (cheerful, but with a sad smile that lets her know she doesn’t text enough); Life’s just been craaaaazy lately! (with a shrug that translates to “You would know what I’m talking about if you’d been there.”). If someone else had been eavesdropping it would have sounded semi-normal, but it wasn’t. I wish I had just told her what was going on, but I couldn’t risk making her even more upset with me. So instead I freaked out after she left and went to Dante’s. He had friends over and acted like I was crazy for showing up, which reminded me of you, and made me sad all over again. (You talked to me only if it was scripted. One night, after rehearsal, I’d caught up with you at the corner of Broadway but when I touched your arm, you shook you head and said, “Sorry, I just can’t do this.”)

You can’t tell Diego I see you, I begged Dante. You can’t tell him I come up here.

“What’s in it for me?” Dante asked with a slow smile, and before I knew what was happening I walked out with a deal and three bottles of pills that I paid for by taking out a cash advance on my dad’s AmEx at a bodega ATM. One bottle was for me, and the others were for me to “distribute.”

I guess you could say I’d found my motivation.

I guess you could say I was making a choice.





Chapter Seventeen


    Mid-April

Less than a month left


THE FRIDAY BEFORE SPRING BREAK Ethan left school early to catch his flight to Key West, leaving you and me with strict instructions to rehearse every day while he was gone. That seemed at least like a legitimate reason to talk to you without having you avoid me, but when I found you at the fountain during lunch and asked you when you were free you made a face and said, “I don’t think we need to. It’s going to suck anyway.”

It was warm and bright and perfect that day, like a Woody Allen movie. My head was refreshingly clear since I’d added an online Klonopin prescription into my regimen, and I was suddenly the most popular girl in school again, thanks to my al fresco lunchtime sales calls. I didn’t know if it was the promise of spring or the promise of being alone with you, but for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t cold.

“What, the play?” I asked.

“Everything,” you said. You looked at me for a few seconds, longer than we’d held eye contact in months, and I felt my breath hitch.

I miss you, I wanted to say. Instead I said, “We should at least try.”

You looked pained. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“It’s not my idea, it’s Ethan’s command,” I said, raising my arm in a salute. The corners of your lips twitched and when I raised an eyebrow you finally gave me a begrudging half-smile.

“I guess I can do tonight,” you said. “But after that, no promises.”

“Promises are overrated,” I said.