The Bodies We Wear (6 page)

“What the hell?”

I open my eyes and discover I’m back at my desk and everyone is turned around and watching me. My mouth is open and although I’m quiet at the moment, I’m pretty sure I was screaming a few seconds ago. The look on everyone’s faces confirms it.

“Faye?” Mr. Erikson is looking at me. The book is still in his hands but he’s forgotten it’s there.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I was up all night. Not sleeping well.”

There are several snickers and whispers.

“Please see me after class, Faye,” Mr. Erikson says. He turns his attention back to the rest of the class. It takes a few minutes but eventually the students turn around in their seats and I’m temporarily forgotten.

The bell rings and of course there are stragglers, kids taking their dear sweet time at their desks because they’re dying to overhear my talk with Mr. Erikson. But he shoos them away, telling them to get the hell out of his class. For a teacher, sometimes he’s kinda cool.

I stay at my desk with my books piled neatly in front of me. I don’t want to be here but he’s standing between me and the door and I can’t get past him without confrontation. So I wait, hoping he might forget about me, but of course he doesn’t.

“Is everything okay, Faye?” Mr. Erikson closes the door and comes over to sit down at the desk beside me.

“Yes,” I say. “Just having some bad dreams.”

“Anything you want to talk about?”

I shake my head.

“Only natural considering the hell you’ve been through.”

No pun intended. There’s no way he could possibly know that I didn’t visit heaven when I died.

“You know, I don’t care much for the way things have gone for you,” he continues. “I’m not really in a position to criticize, but I know your records and I know what you’ve been through. The way they treat people like you is abysmal. They never really give you a chance to recover. I wish I could say we’ve grown into a more cultured society but we haven’t. We’ll forgive a mother who drowns her children but we won’t forgive a young girl who had no choice in becoming an addict.”

I look at him in surprise. What he’s saying is very unpopular. He could get fired for even suggesting that the school is treating me poorly. He knows it too. He’s giving me power over him. I could turn around and report him. Of course, he’s probably counting on the fact that they probably wouldn’t believe me.

“I had a younger brother who died of a Heam overdose,” he says. “He was an addict and he died. It’s amazing how simple I can make that sound. Not a day goes by when I don’t miss him. But I never looked down at him or treated him like a second-class citizen.”

I stand up and brush some lint off my skirt. “Thank you, Mr. Erikson, but I’m okay, really, I am.” I gather up my books. “It was a long time ago and I’m better now. I’m sorry about your brother.”

Mr. Erikson nods and stands up himself. Walking over to the front of his room, he sits at his desk as the door opens and new students come in, laughing with each other over some joke. They stare at me for a second before heading to the back of the room.

“If you need help with anything,” Mr. Erikson says, “you know where my office is.”

“Thank you,” I say.

“Be sure to get more rest,” he adds as I head off toward the door. “No more sleeping in class.”

“Okay.”

There is always going to be the odd person who wants to stand up for me but I don’t want their help.

I’m a pretty little piece of sunshine. I know those words. I hate them.

I was eleven when I saw hell. Torn apart. Blood dripping from my body. Monsters in the shape of shadows terrorizing my mind. Not something anyone ever wants to experience.

I have no idea how long I was dead. But when I came to, Gazer was kneeling over me, his hands resting on my chest, trying to jump-start my heart. I was lying in a puddle of water, my skin frozen beyond feeling, and Gazer’s hair dripping on me. The streetlights reflected off his face, and all the water droplets in his hair shone like a million diamonds. He looked like what I thought an angel might look like.

“You’re going to be okay,” he said in a very calm voice.

And I believed him.

He helped me up carefully, his arms around my shoulders, and he took off his jacket and wrapped it around me. It was heavy and it smelled faintly like cigarettes. It didn’t really do much to warm me but the largeness made me feel covered and safe. I curled up inside that jacket and looked around.

The bad men were gone.

Christian’s body lay sprawled out a few feet away.

He wasn’t moving. No chest rising up and down. His eyes were half-closed and he stared up at the sky, the rain falling onto his face. There were tiny pools of water in the corners of his eyes. Hands clenched, arms spread out, he looked like a small downfallen Jesus without his cross.

“Is he dead?”

Gazer nods. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t save you both. But understand me, there’s nothing in the world I wanted more to do.”

“Is he in hell?”

“No,” Gazer said. “Why would you think that?” He paused when he saw the tears instantly spring into my eyes. He leaned forward, his fingers touching my cheek, studying my expression, which fell apart at his touch. He waited, pulling my body close as I shook and sobbed. We sat together in the smelly alley and the rain continued to fall.

“You didn’t see heaven, did you.” Not a question.

I shook my head.

“What did you see?”

“Monsters.” My body trembled and I couldn’t control it. I wanted to tell him about the shadows and the way the metal pierced my body but the words wouldn’t come out. My teeth were chattering too hard. I swallowed several times, wondering if the shadow demon was still inside me.

“You know none of that stuff is real. What you saw. It’s not heaven or hell. It means nothing. It’s more like a realistic dream that your brain invents to try and fight off the drugs.”

I know he was trying to make me feel better but it didn’t work. My grandmother used to tell me that the most evil people went to hell because God punished sinners. That meant I was evil. I had no idea what I’d done to become bad but I did it. Maybe it was because I let Christian die. Maybe it was something I did before and I couldn’t remember. But I was doomed. Evil. I saw hell, and nothing Gazer said could make me think otherwise.

“What happened to the bad men?” I finally asked. I thought of the man with his leather jacket and his big smile and how much I hated him.

“They left,” he said. “I scared them away. They won’t come back.”

“I’m going to kill them,” I said.

Gazer didn’t say anything. He pulled me tighter and we sat for a while longer until the ambulance arrived, the bright red lights flashing against my face. The EMTs came and Gazer convinced me to let go of him so they could take care of me.

“Don’t leave me,” I said.

“I won’t,” he promised. “I’ll be right over there. You’re not alone.”

They pulled me away from Christian’s body and split us up. One of them stayed with my newly dead friend; the other brought me to the ambulance, where he sat me down on a stretcher in the back of the vehicle. Gazer came over and joined us, trying to fill the paramedic in on the details. He told them how he found us alone and managed to use CPR to bring me back. He didn’t mention the bad men

The paramedic checked my vital signs and did a few other things that I didn’t quite understand. I was perfectly fine until he tried to pull my shirt up over my head. Only then did I resist. I was still scared.

“Come on, miss,” the paramedic said. “I need to check you. If you’re uncomfortable, I can make the man go away. This will only take a second.”

“I want him to stay,” I said. I had never met Gazer before; hell, I still didn’t know his full name, but I felt safe with him around. There was something in his eyes, a certain kind of sadness that made me feel secure. Without him by my side, I probably would have completely fallen apart, especially with what came next.

When the paramedic peeled off my wet shirt, I saw the veins. A spiderweb-like pattern that started at my chest and stretched outward, stopping just below my neckline. Many of the veins crisscrossed up over my shoulder. They were dark red, almost purple..

“Jesus.” The paramedic whistled. “What the hell are these kids thinking these days? They keep getting younger and younger.” He wasn’t even speaking to me anymore. “I mean, come on; she can’t be older than twelve. How old are you, kid?”

“Eleven,” I whispered.

“What on earth made you try Heam? Just how stupid are you?”

“I didn’t,” I said. My lower lip quivered. The tears were threatening to push their way forward again. Why was I being blamed for this?

“I believe she and the boy had the drug forced on them,” Gazer said, coming to my rescue.

“What the hell were they doing out this late at night?” the paramedic asked. “Where are their parents? If these were my kids …”

“But they’re not your kids,” Gazer answered. “And I don’t think you should continue this conversation. You’re clearly upsetting the girl.”

“Whatever,” the paramedic said. “Not my problem. We’ll take her to Sacred Heart. You going to come along? You know her parents?”

In the end, I didn’t go to the hospital. When they brought Christian’s body into the ambulance in the large black bag, I began screaming. I thought the shadows had gotten to him. No amount of coaxing by either Gazer or the paramedics could keep me under control. Besides, there wasn’t much more they could do for me. I’d survived the overdose; the only thing left to do was contact my mother. No hospital in the world would waste the bed space to keep a new Heam addict under observation. Gazer finally convinced them that he’d take me home.

I stood there, holding Gazer’s hand, watching the ambulance take my best friend away.

Christian was thirteen, two years older than me. We lived next door to each other and he often took care of me because our parents were never around. He was the most beautiful boy in the world in my eyes. I had such a schoolgirl crush on him. We had gone out that evening because both our mothers were working late shifts and we wanted to meet his father when he got off work. We had done it dozens of times; sometimes his dad would take us out for hot chocolate and donuts. I loved Christian’s dad like my own father. I was always welcome at their dinner table, especially since my mother was often working two or more jobs to try to put food on ours.

We’d taken a shortcut through the alley that night and found more than we bargained for. Four men looking to get revenge against a man who died before paying off his debts. Funny how quickly life could change with a simple wrong turn down a darkened street.

“Will they bury him?” I asked when the ambulance turned the corner. They no longer had the flashing lights on.

“Maybe,” Gazer said.

“Can I go to the funeral?”

“You’ll have to ask your mother.”

I nodded. My chest was itchy and burning at the same time. I kept touching the spot over my heart, tracing my fingers over the veins, thinking how odd it was that the skin didn’t feel different. There was a hollow feeling in my stomach and I was thirsty. I wanted something. It was as if my brain were screaming at me. I remembered the strawberry liquid, remembered how good it tasted on my tongue. I wished I had some more. If I had more, maybe the excruciating hunger in my mind would go away.

I thought it was funny that I didn’t feel any emotions. I should be sad. I loved Christian. Why wasn’t I crying? I had bawled my eyes out a few months ago when the neighbor’s dog had been killed by a car. Christian had hugged me and told me everything was going to be fine.

Now Christian was dead. Why didn’t I feel?

I didn’t know it at the time but Heam numbs the body and brain, especially after a recent ingestion. I couldn’t cry. The drug wouldn’t let me. The tears would come later and they did come. An army of them over the next several years. Sometimes I thought my brain would melt out of my skull from all the grief.

“Come on,” Gazer said. “Let’s get you home.”

Home.

Yeah, that didn’t work out well.

My mother took one look at the veins on my chest and no longer wanted me.