Smashed (25 page)

Stan looks me in the face when I come out. You’re blotchy as hell.

I’m sick. I need to get home. Please take me home.

Stan warms up the truck. Drives me, slowly, on the slippery white road. Puts his big arm around me and guides me into my house.

Jesus, you’re shaking, he says. That’s some flu.

My teeth are chattering so bad we both hear them.

The fire’s almost out. Stan stokes the stove, opens the damper, lets her rip until the room is hot, then fills the stove again and closes the damper halfway so it will burn all night long.

Where are the blankets?

I can’t remember. I huddle on one side of the couch under a crocheted afghan, shivering, my teeth bouncing like Chiclets.

Stan finds some upstairs and brings them down, tucks them around me. I fall asleep and when I wake, suddenly, he’s still there, dozing in the recliner. When the sun comes up, he’s gone. His note says
Hope you feel better. Love, Stan.

It’s cloudy still and spitting snow. I turn on the lights one by one, moving through the house from room to room. There is a deep pain running from one side of my head to the other and a lump on the back where it slammed against the wall. Or was it the floor? It doesn’t matter.

It’s still early when Will appears.

I’m filthy, dying for a shower. Don’t let anyone in the house, I tell Will first, and he looks at me strangely.

Promise?

Sure, he says, confused.

Why are all the lights on? he asks.

Why aren’t you snowboarding with Ben today?

He’s sick. What’s wrong with you?

Flu.

You look terrible. Want some ginger ale?

I nod.

Don’t leave, I say as I head up the stairs.

Why? he says.

Just
don’t
. I’m practically yelling at him.

Okay, okay.
He doesn’t know whether to be mad or scared.

*     *     *

Days pass. Everything runs together in my head. Is it Thursday or Saturday? There are two images lodged in my brain. One is of the bright light on the ceiling of Stan’s parents’ bathroom. The other is Alec’s face, looking like he wants to kill me. No one knows it, but he has succeeded.

The images are just underneath my eyelids, blocking my view of everything else. First one, then the other: light, face, light, face. They flash on and off as they please. It is as if time stopped when I was there on the cold tiled floor, and I can’t get up off of it. I’m stuck. Lodged there.

No one knows. No one even knows I was there, on the floor.

Except Alec.

When I think about him I run to the kitchen and vomit into a piece of Tupperware.

*     *     *

My throat hurts. It’s still hard to breathe. It’s like he squeezed something shut with his fingers and it can’t open back up. I’m
running out of clean turtlenecks. The purple finger-shaped bruises on the flesh of my neck and arms are like footprints. They are Alec saying
I Was Here
. I stare into the mirror in my room, willing them to go away. They look separate from me, detached—over
there.
They’re on the neck of some other girl I don’t know. I’m floating away, looking on from a distance. This is getting familiar.

*     *     *

Nights are long. Shadows move across the room. I’ve never been so tired, or so wide-awake. During the day I sleepwalk, my brain shuts down; at night I’m on high alert. My brother rolls over in his squeaky bed across the hall and I think I’m having a heart attack. A field mouse runs through the wall and my breath stops. My lamp is on the floor where I’ve knocked it over trying to turn it on fast. Old sounds, familiar. Now, since Stan’s party, I can’t sleep here anymore.
Happy new year, Martini.

I start to fantasize about guns and tall buildings. I picture myself doing the perfect jackknife off a fifteen-story building somewhere in Portland and Matt yelling, “Ten!”

Underneath the kitchen counter, in a cabinet next to the sink, I check the bottles of wine. My stash has diminished. But there is a new jug of white my mother must have brought home. The gallon jug has no cork like the tall, slender bottles in the movies, which had been a relief the first time I stole into the kitchen late one night in August, filled a glass, and went back up to bed. It was the color of ginger ale without the bubbles. All fall when I drank it, the pictures in my head—Alec bleeding, the car
smashed into the trees—blurred, then shook free and drifted away. Finally, I slept.

This can work again. It has to.

*     *     *

For the rest of winter break, Will stays home and takes care of me. He makes me cans of soup that I can’t eat, brings me packages of saltines, plates of toast. I nibble at them while he watches me, then throw them away when he’s in the bathroom or upstairs. I don’t want him to think I don’t need him. Then he might leave.

I refill my own “ginger ale.”

I shake all the time. Will goes up to our rooms and collects blankets and heaps them on the couch, where I sit all day long. He watches TV. He thinks I do, too.

The fire Will keeps tended makes me sweat, but still my teeth chatter. I wonder if they’ll shake loose and tumble out of my decomposing body like they would on any other corpse. My mother calls a couple times a day to check in. I tell her I still have a temperature—a flat-out lie. But these are extreme times and flat-out lies will be called for. There is no guilt now. The old rules are for other people. No one protected me from Alec and no one will protect me now except me. I am my own human shield. I’ll do what I have to.

My mother advises fluids and sleep. I follow her instructions in the rhythm of the images that still move like flash cards through my head: fluids, sleep, fluids, sleep. I can’t do one without the other. When the white wine is gone, I switch to the dark
red, which I pour into my white plastic water bottle from field hockey so Will can’t see.

Stan calls to check in; Will tells him I’m too sick to come to the phone. Matt tries to come over. If I’m not asleep, I pretend to be. Will sends him away. He is the guard at the gate. Cassie is still in England with her family for the Christmas holidays, having fun with her summer boyfriend.

I care about one thing: getting through the day. Will tells me it is January fifth. So far I have survived five.

*     *     *

Here, this will make you feel better. Will puts a bowl of Chicken and Stars on the coffee table in front of me. He has taken to looking at me like a concerned stranger helping a homeless lady on the street. Like he wants to help but he’s afraid I might go mental on him.

Thanks, kiddo.

I wipe at my eyes with the back of my hand. I don’t want to start crying and scare him, but it’s a new stage I’m in. First I shook, now I cry. The chattering has stopped. My teeth are saved. Will’s been doing this for nearly a week, taking care of me; he hasn’t been snowboarding once. He knows that something is terribly wrong. The fear in his eyes makes me cry harder.

I’m fine, I say, forcing my lips into a smile. But my face is purple, my eyes red—I’m a walking bruise. My cheeks are soaked. It’s too big a lie.

What do you think you have? he ventures.

Oh, just some flu. I hate being sick. It makes me depressed. I’m such a baby. I try to laugh. He stares at me.

He’s talking to our mother: Something’s wrong, Mom, she’s acting really weird. Crying all the time.

He doesn’t see me behind him.

Let me talk to her. I grab the phone.

Is something else going on? she asks.

The guy I was seeing broke up with me, I say. It’s a language she can understand.

I didn’t know you were dating.

How would you?

Do you want me to come home?

No
, I say too quickly, then adjust my tone. You need to work, Mom, I say. I’m okay.

*     *     *

I’ve taken care of Will so many times over the years when it was just the two of us at home. I can see he wants to do the same for me. He brings me all the stuff I’ve always given him.

Don’t forget your own dinner, I say.

He sits in the recliner across the room and watches me eat. He’s grown quite a few inches this year and is just over five feet now. He’s starting to look more and more like our father: fair skin and a straight nose, a few light freckles. His blond hair is getting darker. But it’s his smile that matches our dad’s to a T, right down to the sliver of a gap between his two front teeth.

Are you going to school tomorrow? he asks.

School is tomorrow? I have not been able to think this far
ahead. But now, as he asks it, I realize I cannot imagine leaving this house.

No, I say.

*     *     *

Monday is hell. I know as soon as the bus pulls away with Will on it that this is a mistake. I am alone and terror is ripping through me, stealing my breath away. The walls are coming down on me, I’m sure of it. Then, in a moment of clarity, I have a new vision. Not the light on the bathroom ceiling, not Alec’s face. It’s a new picture, like a cue card in front of me: the bottle of tequila sitting in the back of my closet underneath a pile of dirty clothes. I’ve been saving it. It’s made me feel better for months knowing it was there—just in case.

That case is now.

It does not take a whole bottle of tequila to pass out, which is a good thing because I know I’ll need some more again soon. I will place an order with Stan today. By the time Will’s bus rolls back by at three thirty, I am awake and throwing up. One of the things I love about alcohol: You always know what to expect. If you drink enough, you’ll pass out. Every time. Puking is now a small price to pay.

I wake up Tuesday to the sound of wind whipping round the eaves of the house and a snowplow droning down the road in the distance. I pull up the edge of the shade, peek out the window, and through a swirling white mass see that everything is covered with piles of fresh snow. It is an act of nature. A gift from God. After one day of school, I have a reprieve
and
company.

School’s canceled! my brother calls from his room.

*     *     *

Matt comes tromping over in his yeti snowsuit—a string bean in a feed bag. Will looks at me looking out the window, his eyebrows raised hopefully. He doesn’t say what he is thinking:
She smiled.

Can he come in? Will asks. He’s on pins and needles with me.

I shrug, stare at the TV. I’m back on the couch, wrapped up.

Matt has brought DVDs. You
are
sick, he says when he sees me.

No shit.

It’s nine a.m. and I have a killer headache. If he’d leave, I could start the day’s festivities and be asleep by noon. But he appears to have moved in for the long haul. Which movie do you want to watch first? he says, and dumps them out on the couch beside me.

I stare at him.

Have you lost weight? he asks.

I point to a DVD. He settles in on the other side of the couch. Our toes touch in the middle.

*     *     *

My mother is badgering me. Running through one of her speed monologues. You seem fine. You don’t have a fever. What’s the matter? Did you have a fight with—who is it you’re dating? (No one.) It’s not a problem with Cassie, is it? You two never fight. Are you and Matt on the outs again? If something’s going on, tell me, but you can’t stay home any longer. This isn’t like you. You’re never sick. I hope to God it’s not mono.

My eyes follow her movements across the kitchen. She is
like chain lightning striking multiple targets: grocery bag, refrigerator, cupboard. Then she ricochets back again.

Alec raped me, I mumble from across the room.

She pauses, opens the cupboard. What’s that? Alec what? I thought you two weren’t seeing each other anymore.

Telling my mother is a stupid idea.

If I can’t stay home, I have to get myself together. I won’t crumble at school, in front of Him. It will mean becoming a very good actor. School will be the theater, and I will play my former self. The marquis will read:
KATIE MARTIN AS THE GIRL FORMERLY KNOWN AS KATIE MARTIN
. The old me does not exist anymore, but I can remember her. I am angry that she is gone.

It will be the performance of my life.

“Hey, sweetheart. How you feeling?”

“Hey, Stan.”

“You look beat.”

We are outside the main door to the school building. His breath is like puffs of smoke in the chilly morning air. When we were kids we’d pretend we were smoking while we waited for the bus on the coldest days. Invisible cigarette between two fingers, fake inhale, blow out hard. The “smoke” would shoot straight out of our mouths. We’d blow it at each other’s faces.

I look at my boots and count: three breaths, nice and easy. I will not puke on them. I’m learning to will away puke. It’s one of my new skills. There is a drum inside my head, pounding. I look up at Stan. His eyes are soft and brown.

“I might have mono.”

“That would suck,” he says sympathetically.

He’s right, but what would suck worse is if anyone noticed anything wrong with me. Not the mono thing. That is a cover—a
useful fairy tale. I mean, notice that something is
really
wrong with me. That I have changed. That I’m not myself anymore. That Katie Martin has disappeared.

I put a stick of gum into my mouth, offer one to Stan. “Thanks for staying after the party—at my house that night.”

“No problem,” he says. “I was worried about you.”

“Hey, Stan, I’ve been meaning to ask you if you . . .”

“Just name it.”

By the time the first bell rings he’s promised to get me two more bottles of tequila and four of vodka for “friends” in another town.

I love Stan.

*     *     *

Inside the school, fear grips me. Alec could be lurking around any corner. Lurking is his specialty. What will I do when I see his face? Melt into the floor like the witch in
The Wizard of Oz
? Will myself to disappear? No. I will not disintegrate in front of Alec.

I fortify myself before English and history, just to be sure, in a stall in the girls’ bathroom. More gum. A shot of breath spray. Vodka only for school; tequila for home. Vodka doesn’t reek. Vodka can be disguised. When I walk into class just as the bell rings, I stare straight out the back windows and take my seat in the front row.