Ballads of Suburbia (30 page)

I returned to school the next day, where everyone gawked at me worse than they had the previous spring when Lori made me out to be the town whore. I hoped desperately that since something so awful had happened, Lori would finally let go of her grudge and be the friend I needed. But when I saw her in the hall, she turned to her new best friend and said, “Is Maya a freak or what? Her mom kills herself and she dyes her hair red? Instead of grieving, she's looking for attention.”

I wasn't, but now I'm tired of the attention the red hair gets me. Those gossipy freshman girls call me “that redhead.” My hair allows Christian to pick me out in a crowd. And I've lost so much in the past two years: Lori, Mom, Grandma, Kara, Liam. So today I dyed my hair black in an attempt to grieve properly for all of it. But it didn't work. Without my fake blood in the shower, I need the real thing.

I thought that maybe writing all of this down would make me feel better. Grandma always told me, “Secrets lead to sickness.” She said they call it coming clean because secrets and lies make you dirty inside. I hoarded secrets like my mother hoarded pills and I ended up with just as deadly of a collection as she. I imagine that before she swallowed all those pills, she spread them
out on the countertop and admired them. Maybe she meant to sweep them into the toilet and flush them away, but she didn't.

And neither can I.

Please don't feel guilty, Daddy, Grandma, Cass, Wes, Liam…especially not Kara. Don't blame yourself. Blame him. We've both been lost at sea since Christian happened to us. Please, Kara, swim to shore.

 

When I looked up from the page, I realized I'd smeared the ink with my tears. I sobbed as I read, overcome with guilt, thinking if only I had opened the notebook as soon as she'd given it to me, I could have stopped her. But the last part made it clear that she'd decided to die when she'd written her ballad and her last sentence made me furious. How dare she ask me to keep swimming after she let herself drown?

I thrust the notebook into my backpack and started rifling through all of its compartments because I desperately needed a line. I hoped I'd forgotten a little baggie of heroin in there at some point.

I was so busy rummaging that I didn't hear the click of skateboard wheels coming down the sidewalk. I jumped when a familiar voice taunted, “Kara…”

Christian sneered at me in that smug way that Maya had written about, his hazel eyes blistering with scorn. He stepped on the end of his skateboard, snapping it into his open palm, and sauntered across the grass in his self-assured, snotty punk gait. He'd chopped off his hair-or probably had one of his little groupies do it for him-and all the red was gone. It was bleached to an obnoxious yellow and poorly spiked.

“You think you're so fuckin' tough, don't you?” I spat through my tears, whipping my backpack to the ground and getting to my feet, glaring at him. “So you've found me alone and you're gonna intimidate me, huh? Like you did to Maya?”

I flung myself at Christian, fists raised, railing, “You don't scare me. You're the weakest person I've ever met!”

Laughing, he deflected me with one arm like I was a beach ball. I probably would have swung at him again anyway, but I really lost it when I noticed he was wearing Maya's Ramones T-shirt. He'd always coveted it, so she'd lent it to him for a month as his Christmas present. Apparently he'd never returned it.

“You asshole!” I screamed. “You drove her to her death. You don't deserve anything of hers!”

I charged again, punching the air, swiping for his neck with my fingernails, and bringing one knee up, aiming for the prize. I was prepared to bite, claw, and crush his balls to get Maya's shirt.

But he lifted his skateboard like a shield and shoved me with it before I connected with skin, bone, or testicles. I landed on the grass so hard it knocked the wind out of me. As I gasped for breath, he fell on me with his full weight. I kicked. I uselessly pounded on his back. I rocked side to side, trying to dislodge him.

Then, suddenly, I was free. Christian was rolling down the hill with another boy, a blur of brown hair and tattooed forearms that I recognized as Adrian's. They stopped at the bottom with Adrian landing on top. Adrian's butterfly knife glinted in the light and slashed across Christian's cheek. Christian howled in pain, shoving Adrian with the same force he'd used on me, but Adrian only shifted to the side slightly. Christian struggled out from under him, holding his bloody cheek with both hands, and took off running.

I dropped my head and buried it in the grass. Within seconds, Adrian was at my side, pulling me into his lap, asking, “Did he hurt you? What can I do? Do you need to go to the hospital? Should I call someone?”

When I finally found my voice, I said, “Just get me high.”

Never one to object to that proposal, Adrian helped me to my feet and down the hill toward the stage at the front of the park,
which we'd smoked pot beneath the previous summer. I crawled under first. He pushed my backpack in after me and followed, his own backpack strapped to his back like a turtle shell.

Adrian withdrew his cigar box from his bag and asked, “You have anything to cut lines on?” I got out our old notebook and he tapped brown powder onto the cover without even looking at it. He cut two lines and handed me a straw. “They're both yours.”

I snorted one right after the other and sat up slowly, eyes closed, savoring the numbness as it spread through my sinus cavities into my brain. When my eyelids fluttered open, I expected to see Adrian bent over the notebook, chopping more lines, but instead he had his belt off, wrapped around his left arm.

He concocted a mixture of powder with bottled water and cooked it in a bent, black spoon over the flame of his lighter. I told myself it smelled like it looked, molasses, or like poppy flowers on fire, but actually it stunk. Still, I watched him suck it up into the needle and said, “I want some.”

“You've had some,” Adrian replied through the belt clenched in his teeth.

“I want that.”

“You can't have it.” He flicked the vein that bulged above the first
A
in the “Away” tattoo.

“Christian wasn't the worst thing that happened to me today. I buried my best friend this morning.” The words fell from my mouth tonelessly. I kept my eyes on that needle.

Adrian sighed, set the needle on the notebook next to the spoon, and got out another needle that was still in its plastic wrapper. He slid the belt off and handed it to me. “Find the arm with the bigger vein. Put this around it.”

Suddenly, I was scared like when I got to the front of the line for a roller coaster. But I was determined to ride the ride. I needed a rush that would obliterate my memory of everything that had happened that day. “Are you going to inject me?”

Adrian shot some of the liquid from the first needle back into the spoon and filled the new needle. One needle was a quarter full, the other three-fourths. He held on to the needle with the smaller amount. “Yes.”

I slid the belt around my right arm and tugged it tight. He tapped at the vein. I looked away until I felt the prick. I started to look back, but the shot hit me like a school bus, like snorting five lines at once. “Shit,” I said, and immediately nodded off.

Adrian shook me awake, indicating I should follow him out from under the stage. We crawled halfway up the hill and settled in the grass with our heads resting on our backpacks. We had brief conversations, drifting in and out.

“Where have you been?” I asked him at one point.

“All over. Last night I slept on Quentin's grave.” Adrian played with his own curls. “I loved him. He was my best friend.”

I nodded off, woke up again, and squeezed Adrian's hand. When he didn't respond, I leaned over and kissed his dry lips. He blinked and I told him, “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.” He seemed to drift off, but then he said, “Kara, I love you. I have for a year now.”

I'd been waiting so long for those words I should have sprung up and done cartwheels across the park. My heart should have done cartwheels, at least, but I was so numb, I couldn't even feel my own joy. All I could do was snuggle into the crook of Adrian's arm and say, “I love you, too.”

When I came to again, the park was drenched in sickly gray light. I blinked and took in my surroundings. Was it dawn? Shouldn't dawn make things look new and bright? Why was everything monochromatic? The grass, Adrian's hair, his skin-it all looked old and withered. Dying.

Shit.

Adrian's face seemed as white as Quentin's had been the night he died. I softly slapped Adrian's pasty cheeks, chanting, “Wake up, wake up, wake up!”

He didn't respond. My own shouts sounded far away, like hearing Cass scream at Quentin to wake up through the wall while I made the 911 call. No, I couldn't handle this. I couldn't lose Adrian and Maya in the same day.

Bile rose in my throat. I crawled a couple feet from Adrian to avoid puking on him.
We met when he was puking. This is sort of poetic,
I thought as I gagged.
Wait. Heroin doesn't make me throw up. I've taken too much. I'm overdosing.

Panic. My skin flashed hot, then went clammy.

“Adrian, help!” I cried out. “Help, I think I'm dying.”

He didn't hear me. Probably already dead.

And my vision was blurring, like looking out the window of the “L” as it hurtled at light speed into a subway tunnel. I buried my face in the brittle grass, narrowly missing my own vomit.

Please, Kara, swim to shore.

I thought I heard Maya actually speak those words and when I glanced up, I thought I saw her, sitting cross-legged on top of the metal stage. If I could get there. If I could reach her.

Swim, crawl, whatever it takes,
I told myself.
Or you won't meet Stacey's baby. And Liam won't have anyone to hold on to at your funeral.

But I only managed to drag myself about six feet before my limbs stopped working. I rolled onto my back, murmuring, “Liam, I'm sorry.”

I felt myself sinking, sinking, sinking.

My heart slowed.

The world went black.

 

I opened my eyes again because I thought I heard Cass's voice. All the sounds were muffled, like listening to a TV three rooms away. The distant noise of passing cars was the first thing to become clear. People murmured but their words were indiscernible. I almost drifted off again, lulled by the traffic. Then Cass shouted at full volume.

“Fuck you, Kara, not you, too!”

I saw her tears. I saw the ambulance lights flashing. I saw my mother over Cass's shoulder. I wanted to tell them that I was okay, but Adrian's name slipped out.

Cass got pissed, started cursing him, and told me, “He left you here to die and saved his own ass. Just like with Quentin!”

“But I'm not dead. I'm not dead,” I repeated, chuckling to myself.

I couldn't help laughing. My life was so fucked, I couldn't even just OD and die. I was going to survive and have to deal with all the losses and all the messes I'd made.

Laughing was the only thing I could do. I closed my eyes again and laughed. I laughed and laughed despite my aching, dry throat. I laughed as my mother and Cass cried over me. I laughed as the paramedics took me away.

AUGUST 1995
[SUMMER BEFORE SENIOR YEAR]

“
L
IAM, PLEASE LET ME IN,”
I begged, my damp cheek pressed to his bedroom door.

I'd been standing there for fifteen minutes. Dad emerged from my room, a crate of CDs in hand. He set it down and banged his fist against Liam's door.

“Let your sister in,” Dad demanded in a booming voice. “We're leaving in five minutes and I don't want to waste time taking your door off the hinges.”

“Thanks, Daddy,” I whispered as he picked up the crate again and I heard Liam's lock unlatch.

“Sure, Kara,” Dad replied. “I think this is the last of it, but double-check, okay?”

I nodded dutifully before opening Liam's door. My brother smoked on the windowsill, staring out at Dad's Corolla and the small U-Haul trailer attached to it containing my things.

“Thanks, Daddy,” Liam mimicked as I approached.

“Liam, please-”

He cut me off with a cold glare. “Whatever. Here's your notebook. I assume that's why you're here.”

The “Stories of Suburbia” notebook thudded against my chest and I hugged it to me before it could drop to the messy floor. When Liam had arrived at the hospital after my overdose,
I I grabbed his hand and yanked him close, quietly instructing, “The notebook in my backpack. Get it and make sure no one reads it.” Ensuring that no one violated my friends' ballads mattered more to me than anything in the world.

“Thanks for holding on to this for me.” I stood a couple feet away from Liam, hesitant to get any closer.

“I shouldn't have,” he snapped, “seeing as you're betraying me and Mom by moving to Wisconsin with that asshole.”

“Mom wants me to go. She knows if I stay here I'll screw up again. And Dad's not an asshole. He's been coming in for therapy sessions with me twice a week and he's only going to be working part-time, so he can spend more time with me. If you come up Labor Day weekend, the three of us can go camping—”

“Shut up! You're betraying me!” Liam jabbed his cigarette at his bedroom wall where, beside his Johnny Cash poster and some other graffiti about not having heroes, he'd written “BETRAYER” in big, black capital letters, an arrow pointing toward my room. “You said you were just going to play the game in rehab, remember?”

That was what I'd vowed to do when my parents first checked me in to a private psych hospital to be treated for heroin addiction and self-injury. But on day nineteen of my sixty days, I'd realized that I actually had to stay sober. Even though my therapist, Dr. Larson, had urged me to tell my brother what I'd learned that day, I'd kept it to myself, convinced Liam would scoff at my epiphany. Now I had a choice: spill or leave with Liam hating me.

Nervously fingering the hem of my black baby-doll dress, I took two tentative steps toward the window. “Liam, there was this girl named Annie that I had group therapy with-”

“Dude, I don't want to hear it!” Liam clapped his hands over his ears. “I don't want to hear a single thing you have to say unless it's ‘I'm not moving away.'”

Dropping my notebook, I wrenched Liam's hands off his ears and held them firmly between mine. “Annie. I thought she was the craziest one in the bunch because the rest of us were in there for drugs or drinking, but we were normal. Annie had some kind of breakdown. She didn't talk. She'd shaved her head and she had big bandages on her arms, ‘cause she tried to slit her wrists or whatever.”

Liam squirmed in my grip, freeing one hand, but he just used it to take his cigarette from his mouth. “Like Maya,” he said softly.

“Like Maya,” I repeated, kneeling in front of him, continuing to cling to his other hand. “But I didn't even think about that at first. I was minding my own business, just counting down the days till I got out. Then there was this group therapy session where Dr. Larson made me share. Remember how Mom brought me that newspaper clipping about Adrian?”

“Yeah.”

“I had to pass that around. I was like, ‘My boyfriend got arrested for breaking into a vet's office and stealing ketamine to sell at raves. He's doing nine months in County. My mom wanted me to see what path I was on.'” I rolled my eyes, demonstrating the attitude I'd had about sharing. “Some girl across the circle said, ‘That's not the path
you
were on. You checked in here after a bad overdose, right? You keep using and you're gonna
die
.'”

“Whatever,” Liam interrupted, fluttering his long lashes. “You never OD'd before you shot up.”

“And that's exactly what I said. But then Annie spoke up for the first time.”

I remembered the way her vacant eyes suddenly focused. They'd met mine as she whispered hoarsely, “You can't use heroin in moderation.”

That was when I really studied her. The wispy red hair just beginning to grow back, the bandaged arms. My stomach turned
when I realized,
That's how Maya's arms would have looked if she survived.

I felt sicker still when Annie continued, “My older sister was like you. She OD'd and died the day after she left rehab. Two weeks later, I did this.” Annie extended her arms, palms up, forcing me to stare at the white gauze taped around them, wrist to elbow.

While Dr. Larson encouraged Annie to share more, I recalled one of the last thoughts I'd had before passing out at Scoville Park:
Liam won't have anyone to hold on to at your funeral.

“So what the hell did she say?” Liam demanded impatiently, releasing my hand and tapping his fingers against the windowsill.

“That her older sister OD'd on heroin and died.” Feeling the tickle of tears in my nose, I bit my lip. “Annie tried to kill herself after her sister's funeral. I thought of you…I realized I have to stay sober for you, Liam.”

“Wow. Thanks, Kara.” Liam nodded, sounding sincere, but when he lifted his green eyes to meet mine they were filled with rage. “But that doesn't explain why the fuck you're leaving. If it's so important to be there for me, why are you abandoning me?”

“Because I have to stay sober.”

Liam leapt off the windowsill, shoving me out of his way. He bounced up and down like an out-of-control marionette in the center of his room. “So go to fucking meetings! Isn't that what addicts like you do?”

Slowly rising to my feet, I studied him: his matted blue hair that hung to the bottom of his earlobes, the raccoon circles under his eyes, the huge jeans that hung off his wiry frame, and the twig-thin arms that poked out of his T-shirt. Instead of band shirts, he'd taken to wearing plain white tees and writing slogans on them in Sharpie. “Rehab Is for Quitters” was scrawled across his chest. “You're a drug addict, too, Liam,” I said, picking up the “Stories of Suburbia” notebook again.

He rolled his eyes at me and ashed his cigarette on the carpet. “Whatever. I never OD'd. I never shot drugs-”

I clapped the notebook against my thigh, causing the flimsy material of my dress to billow. “You were going to bring me drugs in rehab!”

Liam had been allowed to see me alone for the first time on day forty. He played the sullen-teenager role so well that no one but me noticed he was using. I recognized the way he fidgeted in his seat. Everyone else was distracted by his sighs and eye rolls.

Without parents and a therapist present, Liam didn't work very hard to conceal his strung-out appearance. His shirt that day inexplicably read “Tiger” and his pants drooped farther off his skinny hips than usual, revealing way more of his plaid boxers than I wanted to see. He tugged the dirty jeans up, apologizing, “Sorry, they took my belt and my wallet chain, too. You're, like, on serious lockdown here. They practically body-cavity-searched me, but…” He leaned in and whispered, “Next time I'll bring you something, put it in plastic, and keep it under my tongue. Good plan?”

Closing my eyes to the memory, I sighed. “The day you offered to do that was the day I knew I had to move. Before that, whenever Mom, Dad, or Dr. Larson brought up going to Wisconsin, I told them that my friends I got high with were either in jail or dead, so I'd be fine staying in Oak Park.”

“Oh, so now it's my fault that you're leaving?” Liam kicked a sneaker across the room. “Why didn't you just tell me that you didn't want drugs? I'll keep that shit away from you if that's what you want.”

“Liam, I can't stay sober here and I can't be a good sister to you if I'm not sober.” I shook my head sadly. “Look, I've talked to Cass about this. She was mad when Wes bailed at first, but when she got to California this summer and saw how good he
was doing, she knew he did the right thing. She wishes I didn't have to move to Wisconsin, but she understands. And Stacey understands. Please, can't you try to understand?”

“No.” Liam crossed his arms over his chest. “You've ditched me too many times.”

“Okay,” I stammered. “But can I at least have a hug?”

“You can have a hug when you're moving back home.”

Tears dripped out of my eyes. “Fine,” I murmured, and started to walk away. But then I remembered that he was a drug addict. Quentin had OD'd and died. I'd OD'd and almost died. And then there was Maya, whose death hadn't been drug related, but the last time we'd spoken, we'd fought and I couldn't worry about that happening again.

I spun around and enveloped Liam in an embrace before he knew what was happening. “Call me when you want help,” I cried into his dirty hair.

He shoved me away. “Fuck you.”

I dried my tears on the back of my hand before exiting Liam's room, then headed for the bathroom. I sat on the closed toilet and straightened the top of the spiral binding on the “Stories of Suburbia” notebook. Grazing my fingertip with it, I thought,
Not very sharp, but it'll have to do.

Since I was wearing short sleeves and would probably be forced to do so from now on even in deepest winter, I flipped up my skirt, scratching my inner thigh with the metal wire until finally a teeny drop of blood. A wave of relief.

But shame followed immediately on its heels. “Fuck,” I murmured. I'd been out of treatment for all of an hour and I'd already messed up.

Mom rapped on the door. “Kara, you okay in there?”

“Yes, I'll be out in a sec!” I hurriedly pressed a piece of toilet paper to my minuscule cut, tossed it in the toilet, and flushed.

One tiny setback,
I assured myself. Dr. Larson had said cutting
would be harder to kick than heroin because I could use almost anything to hurt myself. Obviously that was true, but I hoped that when I got out of Oak Park things would be less stressful. I also hoped my next good-bye would go more smoothly. At least Maya couldn't yell at me.

 

Dad had agreed to stop at Maya's grave before we left town and Mom offered to pick up anything I wanted to bring to Maya. I'm sure she was thinking flowers, but she'd gotten Winston cigarettes and red Manic Panic dye like I requested.

I placed those items on either side of the flat stone marker and sat down in front of it. Dad remained in the car, pretending to read a book and give me privacy, though he kept glancing over to make sure I didn't burn myself with my own cigarette.

“Sorry I haven't been to visit you lately, but I've been in rehab. I'm sober. And I learned to draw while I was in there.” I laughed at myself, crying at the same time because I wanted to hear Maya's chuckle.

When I opened my sketchbook, I wanted her to come up behind me and point at my horrible sketch of a hissing cat and say, “You call that drawing?”

“Okay, I'm not very good. I don't have your talent,” I said as if we were having a real conversation. “But I did spend all summer working on a picture for you.”

I flipped to the back of the book and carefully tore out a sketch of Maya and me sitting on the bottom of a slide at the kiddie playground at Scoville. I'd drawn it all in dark pencil except for Maya's bright red hair and my blue bangs. My arms were flung outward, mouth open as I grinned and said, “Tada!” Maya's arms were wrapped around my waist, her lips smooshed against my cheek in a melodramatic kiss. I'd drawn it from a photo Liam had snapped. There was a brief period of time after Christian
had taken me to the playground with his sister that I wanted to seesaw and slide while Christian and Liam skated. Maya had eagerly indulged me.

“Why'd you stop playing there?” Dr. Larson had asked when I showed him my sketch.

“Winter came. By the time it was warm enough again, I was a junkie.”

Dr. Larson recited the words I'd inscribed on the bottom of the drawing: “‘I wanna be a kid again. I wanna play in the park.' What does that mean?”

“They're lyrics from a Slapstick song, a local ska band that Maya loved to see live.”

“Dr. Larson was obsessed with getting me to write instead of draw,” I told Maya. “So whenever I did write something, he really read into it. I guess those lyrics did mean something, though. This is the way I wish our friendship could have been, just playing in the park. Forever.”

Part of me wanted to collapse on her grave sobbing, but I knew that meant my dad would come and carry me to the car. I needed to leave with dignity, so I kept talking through my tears.

“I'm going away, so I can stay sober. Liam didn't understand, but I know you would've. And Cass will be back soon to visit you. While she was in California, she sent me all this information on USC's film program. I still really want to go to school for screenwriting. Learning to write screenplays is the one good thing that came out of this past year.”

Dr. Larson had furrowed his bushy white eyebrows when I told him that I wanted to make film school my long-term goal. “But you refuse to write. You always insist on drawing.” Sketching how we felt or writing unsent letters were the options we were given in treatment when we wanted to cut or use. I always did crappy drawings.