Seven Days in June(54)

Under the gauze of night, they snuck in through a janitor’s entrance. While Eva waited in a hallway that smelled of bleach and piss, Shane slipped into the crowded bedrooms, leaving a Twinkie under each kid’s pillow. Then they slipped out.

Afterward, they sat on a bus-stop bench a couple of blocks away. One cracked streetlamp lit the block. A siren went off endlessly.

“I wish I could protect them. They’re innocent, you know? Actually, Mike and Junior are fucking menaces. But in a pure way.”

“You’re pure.”

Chewing the inside of his cheek, he looked at her. “If you knew about me, you wouldn’t like me anymore.”

Resting her chin on his shoulder, she slipped her arms around him. “How do you know I like you?”

His smile flickered, then faded. “I had parents once,” he continued quietly. “Foster parents, from when I was a baby to about seven. I really loved them. They loved me back, too. One day, I was doing dumb shit, wearing my Superman cape and jumping off the counter. I broke my arm. My foster mom drove me to the ER. She was scared, ’cause you could see the bone and I was losing a lot of blood. She ran a red light and crashed into an intersection. She died. I didn’t.

“After that, my foster dad acted like I didn’t exist. Then he sent me away. Who wants to live with the kid who killed their wife?”

Genevieve, too struck to answer, gently curled her arm through his and held his hand. She squeezed, offering absolution the only way she could.

“Anyway. The kids in there? I don’t want them to get locked up, like me. The more times you go, the harder it is to tell yourself you don’t belong there. Prison is the school of the unlearned lesson.” He paused. “I’ll probably go back a third time.”

“I won’t let it happen,” she promised. “What do you like to do? Besides fight?”

“Write.”

“Don’t fight. Write.” She cuddled closer. “There. A mantra, to keep you out of trouble.”

“Don’t fight. Write.”

“Right.” She kissed him to bless it.



She remembered that they were never sober. Shane drank to seek oblivion; she stayed high to outrun pain. They did it together—but she cut herself in private. In the bathroom, daily, she’d sterilize her blade with alcohol pads and then carve a few lines on her upper thigh or upper arm, mostly, just deep enough for beads of bright crimson to bubble up in a perfect row. She went into a dissociative trance when she did it, the world slowing, the burn slicing through her pain. A blessed relief each time.

Shane saw her cuts. I don’t judge, he’d said. But soon, his eyes started to linger over her tortured skin, clouding with concern. They both had their twisted compulsions, different corners of the same hell.

Once, though, she woke up in face-melting migraine pain and begged him to press her slashes. He didn’t want to, but he did. She doubled over, gritting her teeth—and when Shane crushed her into his arms, she felt his chest quicken. And his tears dampened her cheeks.



She remembered lying under a shady tree in Rock Creek Park, toward the end. Their cycle of highs and comedowns was beginning to fray her nerves. And her pain was getting worse. She’d just vomited behind a tree. Now her head was in Shane’s lap, and he was rubbing her temples with her lavender oil.

“Do you miss your mom?” he asked.

Yes.

“No,” she said. “It’s a relief being away from her. She tries to be good, but she…doesn’t take care of me. And she has shit taste in men.”

“Does she know how sick you are, G? If my kid was—”

“Don’t talk bad about her!” She slapped her hands over her face and burst into tears so violently it shocked them both.

“Hey. I won’t. I’m sorry—she sounds dope. Don’t cry.” Gently, he pulled her into his lap and cradled her against his chest. “Fuck it, cry.”

Eventually, the steady thrumming of his heartbeat lulled her quiet.

A few hours and Percocets later, she felt good enough to walk back to the house.

“Why do you hate your mom’s dudes?”

“They hurt her,” she said plainly.

The world was buzzing and popping. A flock of pigeons passed above them, squawking, but they sounded miles away.

“Do they hurt you?”

She shrugged. “Some of them do. The current one, her boss at the bar? He tried. I pushed him off me and he fell out, drunk. I can handle myself.”

“What’s his name?”

She told him.

“What’s the name of the bar?”

She stopped on the sidewalk. Shane did, too, peering down at her with an expression that could melt a rock. She told him.



She remembered waking up that night and seeing that Shane was gone. He didn’t come back that night or the next day. She waited for him—dusting shelves, scrubbing bathrooms, taking showers, torturing her arms, sleeping. Was he gone forever? Had he hurt himself? Jesus Christ, was he in jail again? If he was, she’d sent him there.

That night, she woke up to a thunderstorm raging outside. She’d left the terrace door open, and that side of the room was soaked. So was Shane, who was leaning against the bedroom door. He was all bone and lean muscle and sopping-wet T-shirt and soggy, broken cast, with a fresh cut across the side of his neck. She sat up in bed, and he didn’t move, just looked at her with hooded, dilated eyes, his chest rising and falling in a violent staccato.