Housebreaking (31 page)

“The word is the same. It's using it that's problematic. Why are you so warm?”

Audrey turned toward her. “Honey, are you planning to shower before school?”

“Why?”

“You smell a little.”

“Mother!” Emily sniffed her underarm. “You're right. I reek.” All that running around last night; then later in the shack, fucking on top of a bag of wood chips. She still had on the same clothes. She hoped she didn't smell like sex.

Audrey yawned. “Your father couldn't sleep. He woke me up early today. Still, I don't know why I'm so tired.”

“You're always tired when it rains. You and Sheba both.”

“Thirty more minutes, sweetie. Then we get going.”

“You said an hour.”

“No,
you
said an hour.”

“Fine, thirty minutes.”

Her mother was asleep again almost immediately, her mouth falling open. Emily watched the comforter rise and fall above her. Every so often a sound came from Audrey's mouth, like a distant seagull squawking. The rain on the roof was a drumming of hooves, a hundred horses running. All that rain, where did it go? Water in the gutters, funneling into sewer pipes, seeping underground. A soggy earth, sliding away underneath her.

* * *

WHEN HER
mother dropped her off in front of school, Emily dashed toward the door, carrying her backpack, getting soaked in only a few seconds. It was mid-period, the hallway empty but still stinky with the student smell. The overhead fluorescent lights hissed like summer insects. She wiped the rain from her face.

“You're late.”

She jumped. She hadn't seen him, standing beside the lockers:
B-Ray
. He towered over her, eight inches taller, maybe more, his long, thick dreads pulled straight back.

“Who elected you hall monitor?”

He brought his mouth close to her ear, so close she could feel his breath, his hands buried in his pockets. “I heard you were looking for something for your nose.”

“Who told you that?”

“B. Stack.”

“What else did he tell you?”

He smirked. “You really want to know?”

“Sure.”

“He says you give good head.”

“What is this, junior high? I'd have told you the same thing if you asked.”

She walked away, knowing he would follow, and he did, falling in step beside her. He played on the basketball team, she knew, although she never
went to any of the games, not football, not basketball, none of that rah-rah crap. She'd heard other stuff about him too: that he was a rapper in a group that had played at the school dance last spring; that he'd been suspended for a week for having a knife in his locker; that he'd gotten into a fistfight in the gym and knocked some kid's tooth out. In English, he sat in the back row and spent most of the time looking out the window. But she often caught him staring at her. She'd decided she would sleep with him a couple of weeks earlier when he'd stood up in class to read a poem, as they were all required to do that semester; he'd recited the lyrics to one of his own songs, which had a refrain she'd found herself repeating later in her head, remembering the musical way he'd said it.
Because it is what it is what it is.
He had expressive hands, forming the shape of the words as he spoke them.

He said, “Every girl says that.
I give good head.
That's just talk.”

“You be the judge, then.”

She stopped outside the girls' bathroom. He scratched his neck, sizing her up. “All right. Show me what you got.”

“Whenever you want.”

“What about today, after school?”

“What about that something for my nose? Or is that
just talk
?”

“That depends how much you want to spend.”

She shook her head. “I don't pay for drugs. People give them to me.” She batted her eyelashes, her mall girl routine. “Don't you want to give me something?”

He scoffed. “All right then. Parking lot after last period,” he said, without looking back. His jeans were bunched below his hips, black briefs visible, boots untied, the laces dragging.

She waited until he turned the corner, then slipped into the bathroom, her heart pounding. Looking in the mirror, she raised her eyebrows, the same expression she'd used on B-Ray. Leo's dad's boyfriend—the YSL designer—once told her that she had “perfect eyebrows.” They were okay, she guessed. Her eyes were good overall, maybe a bit large; she often looked startled. She dabbed some makeup on her nose, trying to tone it down. She had giant features—the long nose, the dark eyebrows, the wide mouth. Boys told her she was
hot.
But few kissed her during sex, and never afterward; they stared past her with that distant expression. She wondered what B-Ray would be like, what sounds he would make, how rough he would be, and she felt a surge of blood or adrenaline,
something between fear and desire. She couldn't believe she was meeting him after school. She'd thought about him so much, ever since that first day. Now she would be with him.

A girl came into the bathroom, glanced at Emily, then went into a stall. A moment later came the sound of the toilet flushing—two, three times—to cover the sound of retching, Emily figured. She would do the same thing if someone were standing at the sinks. When the girl came out, Emily said, “Hey.” She took the pill bottle out of her bag and swallowed a Xanax. “Want one?”

The girl shook her head and hurried to the door.

“Puke girl,” said Emily under her breath.

At the end of the day, when the last bell rang and everyone swarmed toward the exits, she ducked into the bathroom. She took off her bra, stuffed it into her bag, and popped a Vicodin. She didn't want to feel anything quite so vividly right now. She left her mom a voice mail, telling her she was getting a ride with some friends, she'd be home before ten. When she approached B-Ray in the parking lot, he turned without saying a word and got into his car. He drove an old station wagon, the back end raised high. The black vinyl seats squeaked beneath her jeans. There were fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror—a parody of a car her parents might have driven in the seventies. When he gunned the engine, the car gurgled like an outboard motor.

“My cousin's got everything you want,” he said. “He got his own place in the city. Man make you dizzy with his crossover.”

He continued talking, but she zoned out. She couldn't make him the person she wanted him to be if he kept saying stupid things. Finally he cranked the music to a deafening volume. He turned to her once during the drive, lowering the volume to ask, “You like it?”

She nodded—easier than trying to speak. The bass seemed to be reverberating through her, beating like another heart inside her. “Who is it?”

“Me. My group.”

She recognized the refrain:
Because it is what it is what it is.

Everything seemed to be moving slowly, a pleasant sensation, this Vicodin haze, a little deeper than normal. Had she taken more than usual? She tried to remember. A couple of Xanax in the morning, a Vicodin at lunch, another in the bathroom before leaving school. Keeping her eyes open took a profound effort; her eyelids seemed as heavy as the rain.

Daniel, I feel weird.

Open your eyes, dummy.

I can't.

Sure you can. Don't be a wuss.

I think I might pass out.

Or, you could observe the passing scenery. It's a rainy day in New England, blustery for this time of year. Rain expected until tomorrow morning. Remember to bring your umbrellas, kids!

Why are you so chipper?

Because you're drowsy and the music is way too loud.

And that makes you happy?

I'm trying to cheer you up, silly.

B-Ray parked the car, the music suddenly gone, a jarring silence. He got out, and she followed, nearly falling backward while climbing the tenement stairs. They went up to the third floor. B-Ray knocked and a guy appeared. The cousin. He had a huge smile. An enormous TV flashed sports highlights. In the kitchen they drank vodka out of plastic NY Yankees cups, which tasted like nothing. She embraced the feeling of letting go, of being here but not being here. The luxury of blacking out. Of not being able to remember what she was about to do. Of being close to Daniel in that silent place.

Later, she would remember asking for orange juice. The ding-dong doorbell ring tone from B-Ray's cell. The sound of cheering from the television. She surfaced twice, once with the cousin standing over her, the second time on the bed, on her stomach, someone fucking her from behind.

* * *

WHEN SHE
came out of the haze, the room was dark. She found her bag by the bed and checked the time on her cell phone. It was a few minutes after ten o'clock. Past her curfew. Shit.

She found her clothes and followed the light down the hallway. B-Ray lay on the couch in the den, his face illuminated by flashes from the television.

“Yo,” he said, not to her.

“Just in time, girl,” said a bald guy. He was wearing long gym shorts and white tube socks, without a shirt. His chest was perfectly hairless, like his head, shaved clean. It came back to her. The cousin.

“I got to go,” she said. “Can you give me a ride?”

B-Ray switched channels with the remote. “What's the rush?”

“Curfew,” she said. She got a head rush, making it difficult to stand. “Whoa.” She wavered, then sat on the rug, landing heavily on her ass. The room seemed to shake, and the boys laughed.

The cousin crouched next to her. “Check this out.” He held out a hand mirror and razored a couple of lines. “This'll wake you up.”

She took the rolled-up dollar bill and snorted both lines. That same charge as the first time she'd done it.

“More,” she said.

* * *

SHE TOOK
a cab home—late, really late, the sun coming up. Her parents were waiting for her in the den. They looked miserable and dead tired. They didn't bother to yell. “Why are you doing this to me?” her mother asked, a rhetorical question, apparently, because she didn't wait for a response. Everyone went to sleep.

The confrontation came the next afternoon, after her father went to play a “match.” He'd even asked her to come along, as if she could sit there and watch, as if she could even look at a tennis ball without crying. Daniel used to juggle them for her, always bouncing the last one off his nose like a trained seal.

Around noon she took a book out to the backyard and sat on a lounge chair in the sun, with Sheba on the ground beside her. She couldn't read for long without dozing, her head foggy. She didn't remember much about the night before, and what she did remember she pushed away. When she went inside to get an Adderall for her head, her mother called her into the bathroom.

“Look,” she said, standing over the bowl, and there were her pills, a hodgepodge of colors, like Froot Loops, floating in the toilet water. Before Emily could react, Audrey flushed, and Emily watched them swirl and disappear—a hundred pills, maybe more, at least five hundred dollars' worth. There would be some happy fish and frogs and baby alligators in the sewers tonight.

She tried to keep her pulse steady, tried not to think about her whole stash, gone. “I can't believe you went through my closet,” said Emily, as evenly as she could.

“Where did you get those?”

“Why don't you read my journal while you're at it?”

“If it would help me understand why a perfectly healthy girl would take prescription drugs, maybe I should.”

Her entire stash. This was a catastrophe. She had no backup supply. She had a few Adderall in her bag, but nothing for sleep or to slow the motions of her mind.

“I asked you a question.”

“I'm not talking to you,” said Emily.

She went into her room and locked the door. Her mother ranted outside, but Emily didn't respond. She vowed not to speak to her mother for a very long time. She called Douglas in New York and left a voice mail. It took him two hours to get back to her. No, he said, he had nothing. Things were dry.

Try back later, he told her.

* * *

WHEN THE
sun went down she headed over to Billy's place with her homework, lugging her book bag, just to get out of the house. He and his mom were finishing dinner, hamburgers and French fries. The place smelled like burnt meat. She spotted the pan on the stove, greasy and black. Disgusting. His mom offered her some, but she told Mrs. Stacks she'd already eaten.

In his bedroom, she told Billy what had happened to her stash.

He nodded. “Okay. Lemme see what I got.”

He disappeared for a few minutes and came back with an aspirin bottle, which he tossed to her. She opened it to make sure:
BAYER ASPIRIN
.

“Seriously?”

“My mom's. Don't make it look like you took any.”

“It's aspirin, you idiot.”

“You take it with a Coke. That's supposed to get you high, right?”

She tossed the bottle back to him. “Very funny.”

He raised his leg and farted. “Cheeseburger, cheeseburger,” he said.

“You are so gross.”

“I just ate, it's not my fault.”

“Why do you always do the wrong thing?”

Billy fussed with his phone; it was like a pacifier for him, that thing. It never left his hands. After ten minutes, just as she was getting into her schoolwork, he looked up and said, “What did you do last night?”

“Nothing. You?”

He shook his head.

Didn't he know? She'd assumed B-Ray would have filled him in already, the way those two gossiped. Wasn't he texting him right now, as they spoke?

“I called a few times,” he said.