Between Black and Sunshine (16 page)

Cold water hits my skin like tiny needles. I suck in a lung-full of air and choke on the water that gets trapped in my mouth.
What the hell?
I open my eyes and see the white ceramic tiles that line our shower
. Why the hell am I in the shower?
 

“You lost it, bro,” I hear Rake say. He’s hovering above me somewhere. I’m lying in the shower, fully clothed. I close my eyes, willing my mind to close back down.
You lost it bro.

And then I remember.

Anton’s house. Jude, on his couch; her feet on his lap, his hands rubbing her feet.

The angry energy shakes my body and I wait. I wait for the red to seep into my eyes, to cover my irises. But it doesn’t come.
Luca no.
That’s the last thing I remember- Miles telling me no. I didn’t listen.
What did I do
?

“If I turn this water off are you gonna be cool?” Rake asks me. I can hear the disgust in his voice – like he can’t stand the fact that he has to speak to me, that he has to be near me.
What did I do?

I open my eyes but I don’t look at Rake. I push myself off the floor and step out of the shower.

“You gotta get those clothes off, man. You can’t be dumping water all over the wood floors,” Rake tells me as I walk past him and towards the hall. I stop and strip myself naked before leaving the bathroom. I walk down the hall and into my bedroom. My curtains are open. The sky is black.
How long have I been gone?

I make my way to my bed and fall onto it, forcing my eyes shut. Trying to force everything away.
What the fuck did I do?
My body feels spent; weak and shaky, like I just ran twenty miles. The back of my head aches. My knuckles aren’t bending.
Oh, god
.

I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know what I did. To Anton. I don’t want to know what Jude saw me do to Anton. I wouldn’t have… I wouldn’t have hurt her. Even in my blind rage… I wouldn’t have hurt her.

“Rake,” I yell out.

I hear his footsteps as he walks into my room, but I still can’t look at him.

“What’s up?” he asks, throwing a blanket over my naked ass.

“Did I hurt her?”

He takes in a deep breath and then I feel my mattress shift as he sits down on my bed. That’s not good. “I don’t know,” he finally says. “I don’t know what you did. Anthony and I were out in the street and we heard Jude screaming. It was all we could do to get you off that poor bastard and get you out of there. I didn’t really have time to assess the damage.” He stops there. The breath he’s dragging in through his nose is the only sound in the room. “It’s possible. When I dragged you off of him he was laid out on the floor and she was protecting his face with her body.”

“No,” I say into the bed. “No. I would never hurt her.”

“Yes, Luca. Jesus. When you get like that you’re capable of anything. You gotta get some help, man. You can’t keep doing this shit. Anton’s at the hospital. You would have fucking killed him if I wouldn’t have been able to get you off. And, yes, you could have very possibly pounded your fist into that small girl that you claim you love.”

“I didn’t hurt her,” I rasp.

“You know what, let’s find out.”

Rake’s fingers move furiously across his phone, then I hear the sound of a text message being sent off.

It’s quiet then, all I hear is a loud buzz coursing through my brain.
I didn’t hurt her, I wouldn’t do that.

The phone sounds again, letting Rake know he has a message. He reads it out loud to me. “Yes, he hit her in the back. Twice. Hard. Anton has a concussion, broken jaw, broken eye socket and possible brain damage. Pack my shit up and throw it in my car. I’m moving out. I never want to see that psychotic asshole again.” I hear Rake’s hand drop into his lap. “Happy?” He asks me. “Fuck. I guess I’ve got some packing to do.”

He leaves then, before I even have a chance to process what he just told me. Before it can worm its way into my mind.
In the back
. I hit her in the back; where her bruises and lacerations were still healing. Where she had been beaten and broken just days ago. I wanted to kill Arnie for what he did to her. I would have killed him. I want to kill myself more. I want to leave this fucked up body and this fucked up mind and just die.

“It’s not your fault,” Piper pleads as she watches me throw the small amount of possessions I own into a garbage bag. “He’s the one that did this to Anton. He’s the reason you were there in the first place. Anton’s not mad at you.”

“Piper, please,” I beg her. “There’s nothing left to say. I’m out of options. I have to go.”

It’s Anton’s sixth day in the hospital. He was in and out of consciousness for the first two. Yesterday, he was stable enough for the doctors to give him a brain scan. His brain is bruised, it’s fucking bruised. But there was no permanent damage. I needed to know that before I exited their lives. His jaw is wired shut; he can’t eat or drink by himself. He’s had surgery to repair his orbital fracture. I can’t face him.

But I stayed in that hospital by Piper’s side and I forced myself to see him. Miles walked me in there and we stood staring at him in shock. His face was so swollen and bruised that he was unrecognizable. Tubes going into his nose and into his mouth. I can’t get that image out of my head. I will never forgive myself for putting him in that position.

Yesterday I withdrew from all of my classes and got a release from the dorm. I can’t do this. I can’t pretend like I’m living a life anymore. It’s too hard. It’s too hard to pretend like life is something other than a big pile of shit that we will all lay down and die in eventually. I’ve given up. I can’t do it anymore.

“I’m begging you, Jude. Don’t leave Portland. You can stay at An…”

“Stop, Piper,” I say, too loudly. She thinks it would be okay if I roomed with Anton for a while.
Jesus Christ
. I can’t face him. I never want to go back to that place again. The place where I watched Luca destroy another human being.

“Okay,” she whispers. “It’s just… I need you right now.”

I close my eyes, fighting back the tears. I wish I were strong enough to help someone; to help Anton, to help Piper. But I’m just holding onto the smallest string until I can find somewhere to go… to lay down and die.

I set my bag down and turn to her, looking her dead in the eyes. “I’m sorry, Piper. I’m selfish and I’m awful and I can’t help you.”

“You’re not,” she tells me, taking a step towards me and covering me with her arms. How can she do that? How can she be so good to me, care about me right now? “You can’t go home to that man who did that to your back. You can’t go back there.”

“I have to, Piper. I can’t stay here.”

We hold each other for a long while and then I just can’t do it anymore.

Piper helps me carry my bags out of the dorm. I hobble slowly as she holds onto my elbow. My leg is healing fine but it still hurts to walk on. It’s the least of my problems.

She helps me into a waiting taxi, gives me one more hug, makes me promise to call her. I tell her I will. I tell her I’ll see her again. But I know that’s not true.

I close the taxi door. Piper thinks I’m going back home; to my mom and Arnie. But I can’t go there. I give the taxi driver the address to Luca’s studio.

I stop in front of the door. I’m hardening myself for the hatred I will feel for Luca. I open the door and walk inside, closing it softly behind me like I will wake the ghosts.

I look at the room. It’s exactly as it was when we left it. Like it’s just waiting for us to return. Nothing has changed. A grocery bag sits in the middle of the floor with our accumulated trash. Three empty wine bottles are lined up on the counter. Chips, nuts, cereal and granola bars next to them. A pair of sweatshirts hastily thrown on the floor, not returning to the bodies they came from.
Waiting.
Blankets and pillows a mess on the futon.
Patient for life to return
.

“Fuck off,” I tell the room, as if it’s mad at me. “It’s his fault.”

I’m so exhausted. My legs can no longer hold the weight of my body. My hands release my bags onto the floor in a weak thump. I wish the futon wasn’t the only furniture in the room. I walk to it. I look down at the pillows and blankets. I never want to touch them again.

Laying on the floor, I curl myself into a ball and let my eyes close. I pray for a long sleep. I pray that I never have to wake again.

“You have to get up, Luca. You have to eat something,” Clara says to my back.

Breathing, the sound of breathing.

“It’s been seven days. I don’t think you realize that.” 

I push my eyeballs back into my sockets, begging them to fall over the brink and into sleep so I don’t have to hear this voice reminding me that I’m still alive.

“You can’t live off of whiskey and water.”

Sadistic internal laughter rattles my brain. She thinks I’m trying to live.

“If you don’t eat something today I’m calling an ambulance. I’m not going to let you starve to death. Do you want to go to the hospital? Have a feeding tube shoved down your throat?” A hand touches my back and I flinch away from her touch. Her breaths sound exasperated. “I’m going to make you something to eat. If you don’t eat it I will have to do something, Luca. I’m warning you, it’s your last chance.”

I feel better when she leaves my bed. My stomach doesn’t feel hungry at all. It’s in agreement with me. It just wants to be left alone. It just wants a peaceful, quiet death. It doesn’t complain, it doesn’t feel hurt.

I push my eyeballs back into my head. I do this until I hear footsteps return to my room. It sounds like more than two feet. Hands are on my shoulders pulling me up against my headboard. I don’t bother fighting.

“Luca, you gotta drink this,” Anthony tells me.

I feel myself smiling at him. I don’t know why. He thinks he can save me… I guess that’s funny.

Clara sits on the other side of me. She holds a glass up to my face and forces a straw into my mouth. “Luca, please. Just drink this.”

I close my lips around it and try to suck but noting comes out of it.

“You have to suck on the straw, Luca,” she tells me.

I open my mouth and the straw lies on my lips. I breathe in and out. In and out. I close my lips again and suck. A drop of something sweet hits my tongue. I let the straw go.

“Damn it, Luca. If you can’t do this we have to bring you to the hospital,” Anthony says. His voice sounds desperate.

I close my mouth and my eyes. I feel the straw between my lips. I feel it on my tongue. I try to hold onto it and I suck. More comes this time. I swallow it down. I can feel the cold of it sliding down my throat. I can feel when it hits my stomach. The organ tightens around it making a strange noise. I drink again, this time barely thinking about it. The liquid, entering my body, is the first thing I’ve felt in days. I drink and I drink like a habit, like a pattern. Mouth, throat, stomach. Over and over until I suck in air.

“Get him more,” Anthony tells Clara.

“I don’t think he should have more right now. His stomach is probably the size of a marble. Let it settle. I’ll give him more in a couple of hours if he’s doing okay.”

“He wants to eat. Let’s feed him.”

I close my eyes and feel the weight in my stomach; mesmerized by the way my stomach is moving. Devouring, like a predator. Like a hungry zombie. I thought I had a comrade in my stomach. I laugh a crackly laugh.

“You okay, man?” Anthony asks me. I nod my head, feeling the tight muscles in my neck moving. “You think you can get out of this bed?” I shake my head feeling it roll across my headboard.

“Let him sleep,” Clara whispers.

The extra weight disappears from my bed. I concentrate on my stomach. It’s slowing down now, becoming less greedy. I want it to move with force again, but it’s getting lazy. Slower, slower…

I’m startled awake, being drug from my bed. My stomach is awake again like an angry fist; it’s closing tightly and pushing itself into me. My throat is trying to pull something from it but it holds on hard. My throat contracts my stomach clamps down and the empty air is forced out of my body, sending pressure into my head.

My head is laid down on the toilette seat. I feel the cold porcelain on my cheek as my body fights itself. I wretch, my cheek loses contact and then it’s there again; on the sleek cold surface.

I can hear Anthony and Clara but I don’t know what they’re saying. I can feel Clara’s small hand running circles over my naked back and I wish she would take it off of me but there is nothing inside of me to tell her to do so.

The wrenching is becoming painful. My organs join in the violent spasms one by one until my entire core aches. What does it want from me?

I accept the ache, the violence, and submit to it. Eventually it slows and then stops.

When my body moves again it’s being carried. I’m set in the shower, on the bench in the back of it.

“I’m going to turn the water on, Luca. Clara’s going to get you cleaned up, okay.”

I can’t answer, I just close my eyes. When the water hits my chest, my skin prickles; my cells unfamiliar with the sensation. The water is warm, it almost feels good. When the washcloth makes contact with my arm I pull away.

“Luca, I have to wash you,” Clara tells me, setting the washcloth on my arm again. I let her this time. I focus on the texture of it; how it feels scraping against my skin.

She washes my body. She scrubs my hair. My senses wake up one at a time. I feel, I smell, I hear. I open my mouth and let the warm drops hit my tongue. I open my eyes and watch the arch of water coming for me.

I realize that I am in a shower being washed. I accept that dying is not going to be as easy as I thought. I see Jude’s face, resting on her pillow, and I want to die so much it hurts. But a small part of me wants to stand up and live, too.

The sun shining into the living room is blinding, even sitting on the end of the couch, staring into the rays but not at it. Small dust particles float in and out of it. Anthony and Clara sit with me. We look like three people who are having a conversation, but no one is saying anything.

Anthony clears his throat and stares at me from the other side of the couch. “Are you doing okay, man?”

“Not really,” I answer. My vocal cords aren’t used to moving. I don’t recognize my raspy, strained voice.

“I get it, Luca. Things got crazy… out of hand. But it’s nothing you can’t recover from. You gotta stay with us. You can’t go back to that place. It’s scary, bro; seeing you like that. You can’t do that to us.”

“We’re here for you, Luca,” Clara says. “We know you weren’t yourself, we know you didn’t realize what you were doing. We know you’re good, Luca. We love you.”

Laughter rises through my throat and out of my mouth. Loud, insane laughter. “Good?” I ask her, angry that she could be stupid enough to say that. “Good… really? That guy… the one who put Anton in the hospital, the one that beat Jude… that was me, Clara. That was me. Don’t get it fucking twisted.”

“Well what do you want me to do, Luca?” she bellows. “What do you want me to say? That I fucking hate you? That what you did is unforgiveable? I’m not going to tell you that. That person that did those things is not you. It’s an evil bastard that’s living deep inside of you and you need to get rid of him, Luca. You need to get him the hell out.”

“I’m sorry to tell you, Clara, but that’s not possible. He’s as much a part of me as anything else. He has just as much right to my body as I do.”

“Listen, Luca,” Anthony says, calm and deliberate. “You can fix yourself if you want to. You can get help and you can get better.” He stares at me. I want to laugh again, but I don’t. I just stare back with blank eyes. “Do you want to get better?”

I shake my head at him. This whole situation is suddenly blatantly ridiculous. “There is no help for me. Don’t waste your time worrying about it. Let it go.”

“You don’t get it. There is help. You think you’re the only person with this problem? You think you’re the only guy in the world who blacks out when he’s manic? You’re not, man. You’re one amongst millions. You think you’re so special, so especially fucked up that you have the right to lay down and die? Huh? Do you? Is that what you think? Because you’re not, man, you don’t get to just give up. It’s not that easy,” Anthony says, his voice elevating with each word.

It is that easy. I can just give up. There aren’t others like me, if there were the human race would have destroyed itself by now. “What do you want from me? I’m never going to believe that bullshit.”

“Then pretend. Pretend like it’s possible. Pretend like you can get better. That you can get your ass up and start living again. That this isn’t over, that you can get better and go make things up to your girl.”

“Ah…. Fuck off. Don’t you fucking talk so stupid. You almost had me going, you almost had me doubting myself. But you’re just full of bullshit. Make things up to my girl? Are you fucking kidding me? There is no girl. She was long gone even before the shit I did to her. You bring that up again and I will…”
Fucking put your ass in the hospital too
.