Fans of the Impossible Life (9 page)

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When the music at the dance took a turn toward the “unacceptable” (according to Sebby), he decided that we should reconvene at our regular home base of the art studio.

“Do you think it's open?” he asked.

“I have a key, actually,” I said.

“Okay, that's hot.”

I unlocked the door and we walked into the empty room. It felt a little ghostly, with all of the noise drifting down the hall from the gym, as if the building's spirits had shut themselves in there in order to get some quiet.

“Are you going to show me your etchings?” Sebby said.

“I have sketches,” I said.

“Good enough.”

I got my portfolio down from my shelf in the closet. It was stuffed full of all the classwork I had done in the past year, plus all of the things that I had done instead of doing my classwork.
I lay them out on one of the drafting tables.

“Who's this?” Sebby asked, picking up a paper with multiple views of a man in a tiny bathing suit.

“He's this guy who likes to sunbathe on the beach near our summer house. He comes out every day at noon for exactly half an hour. That Speedo is pink, I didn't have any colored pencils. But it's always pink.”

“Where's your summer house?”

“Provincetown. It's in Massachusetts. Cape Cod.”

Sebby looked up from the drawings.

“I've been there,” he said. “Mira and I went once.”

“I've been going to Ptown every summer since I was a kid. We have a fisherman's shack that my dad converted into a little house.”

“Nice,” Sebby said. He put down the drawing.

“Can you see?” I asked. “I can turn on the light.”

“No,” he said. “I like the dark.” He flashed me a grin. I tried to distract myself by going through another stack of papers, looking to see if there was anything else worth showing.

“You draw a lot, huh?” he said.

“Yeah. I kind of do it without thinking,” I said.

“Who's this?” Sebby asked, holding up another drawing.

I looked up to see. It was a portrait of a woman with a shy smile and straight hair pulled up into a high ponytail. I had forgotten it was in there.

“That's my mom,” I said, looking away.

Sebby examined the portrait. “She looks like you,” he said.

“I did that from a photo. She's not around. Anymore.”

“Dead?” Sebby said. “Mine's dead.”

“Oh. No,” I said. “I'm sorry.”

“It's okay,” he said. “Long time ago.”

“Mine's just gone,” I said.

Sebby nodded.

The door opened and Rose stuck her head in the room.

“You texted?” she said to Sebby.

“Yeah, let's get out of here,” he said.

“Diner?” she said. “I'll drive.”

Sebby looked at me.

“Shall we?” he said.

“Sure, let me just put this stuff away.”

He helped me gather the drawings together and put them back in my portfolio.

“You're really good,” he said. “At drawing.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I just do it a lot, so I get better. Anybody could do it.”

“No. You have a style. Like, I can feel how you feel when I look at them.”

I tied the ribbon on the portfolio and put it back on the shelf.

“I don't think you want to feel how I feel,” I said.

“Why not?” Sebby said.

Rose stuck her head in the door again.

“Let's get a move on, ladies,” she called.

“Have you seen Mira?” Sebby asked her.

“She was out in the parking lot with Molly the incredible barfing woman,” Rose said.

“Ew.”

“It was very ew. Text her to meet us. I need to get out of this place.”

Sebby walked toward the door, looked back at me.

“You coming?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”

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Alone in her room was the safest place for Mira in moments like this, comforted by the womb of things crafted to protect her against the outside world. Protect against the inside one too, the places in her head that did not have her best interests in mind. She collected things like hoarded rations, her overflowing closet, her scarves and hats and jewelry, stocking her own emotional fallout shelter.

But her room only really provided a safe space to fall apart. The falling apart was inevitable. With the door closed against the outside world she could stop pretending that she was any good at basic functioning. She and life didn't always seem to like each other much. It was nice to be able to admit it.

This was how easy it was to fade away, then, with something pulling hard on a string attached to her heart. It was a familiar sensation, her mind turning in on itself, turning away from the world because it didn't want to be seen. This feeling was an old
friend. It had been a while, though, since its last visit. She hadn't been expecting it.

What did it feel like now? It was good to name it. A pressure in her head. A desire to crawl out of her skin. Like some part of her needed to be removed. Some part was poisoned. Like her body and brain had always been enemies. Like only one would survive this night.

When it got this bad she would do anything to make it stop, and that's where the danger was. The feeling itself had no patience. It did not want to sit and wait. And so it made her believe that she couldn't survive as long as it was there with her. She would destroy herself in order to destroy it.

She wanted to climb underneath her bed, crawl in with old shoes that had lost their partners, socks pushed off feet in the middle of the night. A box of things that used to mean something to her. Back when she was a person and not an empty shell filled with violent static. She couldn't fit under the bed anymore. Maybe a long time ago.

She had pills for this now, to be taken “only as needed,” but her mother had them stashed away safely in her room. Because she might have taken too many. So she would have to tell her mom. And that was not an option. She had managed to keep it together in the car ride home, managed to make it up to the safety of her room without arousing suspicion. And now admitting what was happening would be too much of a defeat. She couldn't have the shame of failure on top of all of this. To see her mother's look of disappointment. Because this was who she
really was. She was just kidding herself when she was walking around, going through her day like a normal person. What a funny joke that all was. A practical joke played on her by her. How funny.

There were no scissors in her room. Still. Still there were only table knives in the drawer downstairs. Her father kept the real knives in a locked cabinet. Only safety razors in the bathroom. After all this time. Because she needed to feel anything else in that moment. Even a different kind of pain. And she had learned the terrible lesson that if she gave the demon a tiny taste of destruction she could call its bluff. Let it know that she was still in control.

It was no one else's job to save her.

Please don't let this happen again. Don't let this be happening.

What is wrong with me something is wrong with me.

There was cold medicine in the bathroom cabinet from when her mother was sick last month. There was one dose left.

Take it. Take it so you can survive this night. So you can sleep.

Take it and tell yourself these words over and over: It will end it will end I promise I promise it will end.

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I had never experienced the after-dance diner phenomenon since I had never stayed at a school function for more than an hour before, but it seemed that migration to the twenty-four-hour diner down the street from St. F was a mandatory part of the evening. The place was filled with most of our classmates, yelling and laughing between tables, carrying on dramas that still had the entire night ahead of them to unfold completely.

Rose, who had a learner's permit and exclusive use of one of her family's cars, drove me and Sebby there, and we found a booth open in the back and staked our claim. Sebby had been texting Mira, and as soon as we got there he left to go call her.

“Drama with the wife,” Rose said when he left.

Before I could respond, the waitress, a girl with bleached-white cropped hair and piercings running down her left ear, came over to our table.

“I am in no mood tonight, so if you want more than coffee
and fries you better move to someone else's section,” she said, looking at Rose.

“Jeremy, this is Ali, my ex,” Rose said.

“You wish,” the girl said. Her hair and piercings looked strange next to her crisp white waitress shirt and black apron. “So, what'll it be?”

“Coffee and fries, please,” Rose said. “Jeremy?”

“Coffee, sure,” I said.

Ali wrote down our order and moved on to the next table.

“She is my ex,” Rose said. “She just doesn't like to admit it.”

Rose pulled something out of her bag and set it on the table. It was a small metal flask. Sebby slid into the booth next to me.

“Everything okay?” Rose asked.

He shook his head. “She'll be okay,” he said. “She does this sometimes.”

He reached for Rose's flask.

“May I?”

“Help yourself, my friend,” she said.

Ali delivered our coffees, and a tall boy in oversized aviators with messy black hair followed her over to our table and slid into the booth next to Rose.

“Nick's here,” Ali said to Rose.

The boy put his arm around Rose's shoulder.

“Rosewood,” he said. “How goes it?”

“Worse now that you're here, Nick,” Rose said, shrugging off his arm.

“More coffee?” Ali turned to Sebby. “Coffee for you?”

“Yes, please, gorgeous,” Sebby said.

Ali smiled.

“Nothing for me,” Nick said. “I'm here on business.”

Ali left to get another coffee.

“Nick, this is Jeremy and Sebby,” Rose said. “Nick is Ali's friend.”

Nick propped his aviators on the top of his head and grinned at us.

“Pleasure,” he said.

“I've seen you before,” Sebby said.

“Possible,” Nick said. “I get around.”

“You go to West Pleasant High.”

“Sometimes,” Nick said. “You go there?”

“Yeah,” Sebby said. “Sometimes.”

“Maybe I'll see you around then,” Nick said. He put his aviators back down. “Anything I can get for you kids tonight?”

“Get away, Nick,” Rose said. “This table has a strict alcohol-based culture.”

She poured some of the contents of her flask into her coffee, poured some into mine.

“All right then,” Nick said. “Nice to meet you, Sebby. See you in class.”

Nick got up and approached a table of football players at the front of the room.

“Creep,” Rose muttered.

Ali came back with another coffee and fries covered in melted cheese. Rose tugged on her sleeve.

“Come sit with us,” she said, making a sad puppy-dog face.

“I get off at four, stalker,” Ali said, walking away.

“I'll get
you
off at four,” Rose countered, deadpan.

Sebby cackled and poured the remains of the flask into his coffee.

The rest of the night was a blur of noise, kids jockeying between tables, Rose flirting with Ali, Nick maneuvering among social groups, then periodically coming back to bother Rose. At a certain point I took out my sketchbook just to have something to do. I opened it to a blank page and started doodling.

“Here,” Sebby said, taking the pencil out of my hand. “I can draw a turkey.”

He placed my hand flat on the page and traced it with the pencil, slowly.

“There. A turkey!” he said.

I laughed. He had finished his laced coffee by this point, and mine too, since I had no idea why anyone would want to drink coffee at midnight.

Sebby turned my hand over so my palm lay facing up on the paper. He took his finger and traced along the middle line.

“Long life,” he said. “Tentative. Gains strength around the middle.”

I smiled at him, not sure what else to do.

“The turkey needs a wattle,” he said.

I took the pencil from him and attempted to make the turkey more realistic looking as Rose said something and Sebby
laughed and the room filled with noise and I heard none of it because the world had gone quiet when he touched me, and nothing else mattered.

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Morning came aggressively, glaring at Mira through the space between the curtains. She had slept, at least. And now she was awake. That was the way that it was supposed to happen.

Surviving herself was a bittersweet victory. It meant that some part of her had lost. The ugliness had settled down into a small smoldering lump deep in her stomach. It wasn't gone completely. It would never be gone.

She got out of bed, pulled a sweater over her pajamas, and went downstairs, following the smell of coffee.

Her mother was sitting at the kitchen table, doing the crossword puzzle.

“Lost puppy waiting for you on the front stoop,” she said.

Mira poured two cups of coffee and went out.

“Hey,” Sebby said as she came out the front door.

“Hey,” she said, handing him a mug.

“Thanks.”

“What are you doing out here?”

“Waiting for you.”

She sat down on the steps next to him.

“You could have woken me up.”

“I wanted to just sit for a little while. It's been a noisy morning.”

“Already?”

“Well, the babies started screaming around five. Then Stephanie woke up and threw a fit about how no one's paying attention to the fact that she needs her beauty sleep or something. And that got Daniel and Connor started.”

“Sounds exciting.”

“It's a fucking circus over there.”

“You should come live here. It's all passive-aggressive crosswords and food control all the time.”

“At least it's quiet.”

“Oh, it's quiet, all right.”

She took a sip of coffee. It tasted better than usual. As if she had forgotten that things could taste good. As if the real world was calling out to her from the other side of coffee.

“I wish you had come out with us last night,” he said.

She shook her head.

“I was just freaking out,” she said. “It's okay. You didn't want me around.”

“You don't know what I want,” he said.

“I know you don't want to have crazy there while you're putting the moves on Jeremy.”

“First of all no one was putting any moves on anyone. And second of all you better not try to pretend to the boy who was in the psych ward with you for three weeks of our lives that you're the only crazy person sitting here.”

She smiled.

“I don't know.” She sighed. “It was a stupid moment to get upset. I just wanted to come home.”

“Just tell me what's going on, okay?” he said. “Don't disappear like that.”

“I said I was okay when you called me.”

“Yeah, but I knew that you weren't.”

She looked out over the quiet, green stretch of her block. A few kids on bikes were headed to the park with baseball gear strapped to their backs, holding out against the protest of the cooling weather.

“So what's happening?” Sebby said. “Talk to me.”

Mira watched a breeze rustle the turning leaves of the oak tree in the yard, looked for something that would tell her what to say to make it better. Maybe if she believed in signs she would see more of them.

“Remember in the hospital,” she said, “they talked about how when we left we would have to get used to all of these things again, all of the demands that don't exist in there?”

“Yeah.”

“I feel like that never really ended for me. I just forget about it sometimes. I forget that I don't know how to do this, and then suddenly I remember.”

“Do which part?”

“All of it.”

“Well, you have me convinced.”

“I talked to my sister yesterday,” she said.

“Oh god,” he said. “Why would you do such a thing?”

“She was looking for my dad. She wasn't even calling to talk to me and she just immediately managed to make me feel like the worst person in the world.”

“She's got a talent.”

“And then at the dance I was still mad about it and I accidentally sent her text telling her I was mad and it just made it worse. She thinks I'm this pathetic mess. She's probably right.”

“You're not pathetic.”

“I'm not like her.”

“You're not supposed to be like her. I wouldn't be friends with you if you were.”

She pulled her sweater over her knees. He stretched his legs down the steps next to her, leaned back on his elbows.

“Do you ever feel like it could come back?” she said.

“What?”

“All of it. Wanting to give up.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“And this time maybe you wouldn't survive it.”

“We would. We are.”

“I guess.”

He sat up and put his arm around her shoulder.

“What can we do?” he asked.

“I don't know. There's nothing to do.”

He shook his head. “A ceremony.”

She smiled.

“Maybe,” she said.

“Without a doubt. An offering up to the gods.”

“Okay,” she said. “When?”

“Tonight.”

“Where?”

“Here.”

“We'll need some stuff.”

“I'll take care of it.”

“Don't steal it all, Sebs.”

“No. Just some.”

He stood up.

“Be ready at eight,” he said.

“Okay.”

He kissed her on the cheek. “Wear your wings,” he said.