Lakewood(61)

What else did ordinary people care about? A house. Paying off student loans. Finding someone I liked enough that I was willing to see him every single day, that I was willing to build a life separate from my mother’s. From there, kids. But I’m not ready to think about those things yet; it felt too fake and was starting to break the spell.

So, I searched online for adoptable cats and dogs. A pit bull mix named Snake Plissken. I distrust all people who say bad stuff about pit bulls. All dogs can be bad dogs. I seriously considered adopting a one-eyed cat named Star War. The people at the closest humane society are so bad at naming animals. Blackie 2, Blackie 4, Colon, Vodka Cat. After reminding myself there was no way I could be responsible for a cat in the middle of all this, I brainstormed vacations.

Deziree and I in Paris. Going to a restaurant and eating a plate of brightly colored vegetables in butter sauce. Walking through the Louvre. Being a basic and crying when I saw the Mona Lisa for the first time. Going to the Pompidou. Drinking wine. Seeing so many wonderful things, being somewhere so different that my brain aches from how exciting life can be. Eyes liquid with emotion, having to attempt to communicate with gestures about how big you’re feeling in that moment. The only place outside of the country either my mom or I have been is Windsor. I promised myself that when I was done here, we would go, we would see everything.

We took the pills. Each tasted like nothing. Dr. Lisa gave us words to memorize. I waited to drift off again, for my arms and legs to quit. They didn’t dismiss us. The observers kept writing notes. Someone made a noise like they were choking. I looked up. Mariah’s eyes were rolling back in her head, blood was coming out of her nose, she was having a seizure. I ran around to the other side of the table. I helped stabilize her, got her on her side, with Smith’s help. Charlie was still coughing. I was tired and weak, but I kept whispering to Mariah that she was okay, she was okay.

Everyone was watching. She kept bleeding. It was coming out of her nose, out of her mouth. She went limp in my arms. I stopped whispering.

Mariah died.

Smith kept trying to help her, but I knew she was dead. I let go of her hands, ran out of the conference room. I wasn’t a person any longer, I was shock and anger and fear. There was a moment when I was sobbing by the vending machine, the chip bags shiny navy and matte red. I went into the bathroom, tried to barf, but it didn’t work. Then the old man was there. He took my hands, guided me up the stairs.

We went up to Dr. Lisa’s office. The old man said he had something for me to take, it would calm me down. He pulled out a box. It contained golden pills, like something a witch offers a dumb peasant in a fairy tale. If you take one, your life will be filled with riches. If you take one, your life will be filled with riches because everyone you touch will turn to gold. The old man’s eyes were shining with excitement.

Where would you be, he asked me, if you could be anywhere right now?

I would be 7, I said, and riding my bike.

He laughed as if I were joking, but I wasn’t.

NPR played out of the laptop speakers. A woman with a serious voice was speaking about how several nations had collaborated to make a kind of super-steroid in advance of the next Olympic Games. There were severe repercussions: sanctions against all the participating nations, health issues for the subjects. Liver damage, high blood pressure, weakened bones. One had died while lifting weights, skeletal collapse.

Can you believe people care so much about the Olympics, the old man asked.

Not really. The Olympics are boring, I said.

He told me that it’s all a cover story. People want to believe these research studies are about something simple that they can relate to like winning a contest. They don’t want to think about why a government would want to experiment on its citizens.

They do it because they can, I said. Because you don’t see us as people.

He didn’t like that and handed me a pill, a big glass of water. It looked cloudy, as if there was some soap in it.

Take it.

I did. After I swallowed the pill and water, I started coughing. I coughed harder and harder. My eyes squeezed shut. When they opened I was outside. The sky and clouds were moving quickly, blurring as if they were in a race. Cumulus shape-shifted into diamonds, the blue folded around them, so it looked like art deco wallpaper. It all kaleidoscoped: diamonds, crosses, squares. I understood I was crying, but I couldn’t feel it on my cheeks. The world felt fluid, holy. I turned, and Smith was there, watching and writing. The clouds continued behind him. I watched him turn and follow my gaze, but he didn’t react. I understood that to him everything was ordinary. He wasn’t beyond reacting to a spectacle. If it had been a dream, he would have seen it too.

Smith said my pupils were a little too big for how bright it was. I might be risking damaging my eyes. He pulled out sunglasses, handed them to me. I couldn’t feel the plastic in my hands. My fingertips were dulled, maybe. Or it was like whatever I had taken had somehow made it so my brain could no longer process tactile sensations. I put the glasses on.

I asked him for water. He nodded, got up, and walked about 30 paces away to a small cabin. It was like the one they had locked me in.

My heart was beating quickly, as if I had just run up and down steps for 20 minutes. There was a figure in the distance. At first, I thought he was dark because he was standing among the trees and I was wearing dark glasses. But it looked cut from ink. And the sun was shining. I could see it coming closer, between the branches, a sludge among the green and lush. Darkness spilled and pooled over roots, looped between trees, closer. I held my breath. It continued slithering. I could feel a sort of ache coming from it: a longing to be near me. I touched the grass, tried to focus on it to calm myself. Don’t look. But I couldn’t feel the soft blades. There was no heat from the sun on the ground. There should have been smells too: grass, soil, woods in the distance, my deodorant fighting against the heat. Nothing.