Heroine(80)

Mom walks away from Mattix, carrying my gear, impossibly small under the load. Dad opens the liftgate and she dumps it there before she climbs into the passenger seat. Apparently they all came together to my last game of the season in a big show of solidarity and all I did was hide in a porta-potty.

“Everybody buckled?” Dad asks when Mom shuts her door, like everything is fine and I don’t smell like vomit and his ex-wife sitting shotgun while his baby sits alone and his new wife holds my hand in the back is perfectly normal.

I thought everything was out but I was wrong because I’m crying again and Devra is quietly reaching over and cleaning my face every now and then with a wet wipe from the diaper bag. Nobody talks, but Mom and Dad are having a conversation with their eyes, a trick that doesn’t leave with a divorce.

Dad drives to our house and everyone comes in, like it was decided beforehand. Devra hands Chad off to Dad and he gives me a sad smile over that chubby, perfect shoulder. “Go upstairs, Mickey,” he says. “Go with your mom and Devra.”

I don’t have the energy to disobey.

They strip me in the bathroom, Mom shaking her head and crying while Devra peels my clothes off, the broken holes and burst veins nothing she hasn’t seen already. I don’t say anything. My teeth have melded together as I watch Mom, only able to look at her reflection in the mirror, unable to meet her eyes.

They make a pile of my stinking uniform, Mom actually folding it as if to restore some dignity, vomit-splattered spikes resting on top. Devra hands me a towel and I wrap myself in it, covering my body but no longer hiding my skin, every hole I ever put in myself on display as I sink to the floor, back resting against the tub.

“Mickey,” Mom says, her voice small. “The Dandridge coach suggested to Mattix that you be drug tested.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I thought I was empty but again I was wrong. I have screams in me. They come out, angry and belligerent, righteously offended even though my very skin brands me. I’m screaming and I can’t stop, even though I taste blood in my throat. I’ve never been good with words but it turns out I don’t need them. A primal sound is erupting from inside, tearing me apart at the seams, and I won’t ever be put back together again. Not the way I was before.

Dad’s pounding on the bathroom door and Chad is crying and I see the baby in his arms for one second, the fear on Dad’s face as Mom goes to the hallway to try to explain, as if there are sentences that make this okay.

I’m still screaming, unintelligible, my forehead resting on my knees and the towel the only thing between me and the cold floor and I just want to sink through it, just want to be gone. I want to go somewhere there’s a rope swing and I get more than three pushes and all I want is my hair blowing behind me and the weight removed from my heart and the darkness out of my soul. That can’t happen here, not in this bathroom where I’m practically naked and my dad’s second wife is staring at me.

“What?” I shriek at her, my swollen throat distorting the word.

“Mickey,” she says calmly, a stark counterpoint to my rage. “I’m not your mom and I’m not your dad, okay? All I am right now is a recovered addict, and you can talk to me.”

But that one exclamation is all she’s going to get out of me. I grind my teeth together, barely leaving enough room for breath. I can’t deny what they’ve seen, but I won’t confirm it either. So I just sit. Sullen. Silent.

“Your coach said she can’t just ignore the suggestion from the Dandridge guy. So what will that mean, for you?”

My face crumples again, but there are no tears left, so I just sob, big, hitching breaths that send me into a dry heave. I go for the toilet, towel puddling around me, but nothing comes out. Devra cracks the door, asks Mom to bring me some comfortable clothes, then shuts it again. Devra leans against the wall and waits for Mom’s quiet knock, then tosses me a pair of sweats and a hoodie. I put them on, wash my face, and rinse out my mouth.

“Want to get out of the bathroom?” Devra asks, but I shake my head. I can’t look at my parents just yet.

“Okay,” she says agreeably, sinking to the floor beside me. “So can they make you get tested?”

“No, they can’t legally make me get tested,” I say. “But now that it’s been brought to her attention she’ll have to report it to the school, and they have to tell the cops.”

My voice breaks on the last word, one that never used to apply to me and now has terrifying connotations.

“Right,” Devra says. “And what does it mean for you athletically, if they find something?”

She has the grace to say if they find something, even though she just saw my skin.

“First offense, you’re barred from competition for half the season,” I say.

“So . . . no tournament games?”

No. No tournament games. No ticking off the wins through sectionals, districts, and regionals as we rise through the ranks. No state tournament run.

Not for me, anyway.

I shake my head and wipe my nose. The sweatshirt Mom grabbed for me is bright orange, bought so that I could run in the evenings and still be visible. Right now it looks like a prison jumpsuit.

“I don’t want to go to jail,” I say.

Devra laughs. It’s light and soft, weirdly out of place in this room where I was just screaming so loud my ears popped. “Honey, you’re not going to jail.”