Paperweight (15 page)

Wednesday, July 16, 1:25
A.M.

I don't know how long I walk before I see lights. I look up at the sky once, to see the position of the moon. But I can't find it and anyway, I don't know what I'd do if I could. My heels are bleeding—I can feel the sticky warm wet pooling in my sneakers—and I'm dizzy, so when the lights appear I have to blink a few times to make sure. There are a few streetlamps within sight, arranged along the perimeter of a roundabout, the closest thing this area has to a downtown.

I need someplace to think. I need water or a cup of coffee, black. A place to come up with a plan. I hobble the wrong way around the roundabout onto the main street. There are almost no cars in the angled parking spaces, and the storefronts are dark. At the far end of the street, there's a shell of a gas station. The
pumps are rusty and still in the ground. The sign out front says simply: Beer.

I relax a little when I see a diner across the street. It's small, but the lights are on and I can see the outline of a man in the third window. There's a counter with stools. There's a woman in an apron behind the counter. I bet there's pie. It seems like there should be pie.

I half expect the waitress to say,
Have a seat wherever you'd like, hon
, because that seems like something that would happen here. But when the bell over the door announces me, she doesn't even turn around. Better that way.

I choose the counter stool closest to the door. I need something to calm me down, but I don't think this place serves booze. “What can I get—” The woman stops when she sees me, then picks up again but slower this time. “For you?”

“Water, please. With lemon.” I smooth out my voice, and I think it sounds like a normal person's. I'm out of breath, of course. But that happens to normal people.

“Anything else?”

“Coffee. Black,” I say quickly.

She nods and turns around.

While she gets the coffee, I take out my cell phone and count my money again. Eden still hasn't called back. My hands are shaking, and when the waitress deposits a cup and saucer in front of me, she looks at me funny.

“You alright, sweetie?” She's pretty, in a tired way.

“It's cold out there!” I say. I wrap my hands around the mug and take a shuddery breath. What the hell am I supposed to do now?

“Would you like a menu?”

My head bobs before I can stop it.
It's okay, it's okay, because I'll start again tomorrow and I have to come up with a plan right now and so I should eat something, but only something small.
I take the sticky laminated menu and scan the options. It's a nightmare. So many words and I'm too tired to do the math.

“Just . . . a house salad, please. No cheese, no dressing. And where's your restroom?”

She points somewhere.

“Okay. Thanks. I'll be right back.” I shovel the money and my cell into my backpack and try to focus on the neon sign in the back corner. My heels sting as I walk.

The restroom is weirdly clean for a place like this. There's a paper towel dispenser, but somebody also hung a mauve-colored hand towel from the rack next to the sink. The edges are embroidered with crooked white lace. There's a lavender candle on the back of the toilet that's almost burned down, and a can of room spray next to it, which is probably a fire hazard.

I bend over the sink and blink into the mirror. No wonder the waitress stared when she saw me. I look like shit. My hair is sweat-soaked and plastered to my pale skull. My eyes too big for my head. My cheeks are puffy. I look like a strung-out runaway in a made-for-TV movie. I tear a few paper towels from the dispenser, wet them, and pump the pearly bubblegum soap. Scrub my face and the back of my neck, and pat the sweat from my hair with a wad of fresh dry towels.

“Your salad's up.” There's a knock at the door. “You alright in there?”

“Yeah! Yes. Yeah. Thank you.” I stare down at my hands. The knuckles are cracking like it's winter.

At the counter, I push down the panic that keeps welling up in the back of my throat. I need a drink. I need something to calm me down.
IneedIneedIneed.
I know what I need. Fuck it. I consult the menu.

“Can I also get a—
think, Stevie, be smart—
cup of the vegetable soup and the cheeseburger with fries? Medium rare. And then, like, do you have pie or something? Any kind of pie?”

“Peach or cherry?”

“Peach!” I almost squeal. It's like,
symbolism
or something, and I want to tell somebody, but of course she can't know I'm from Georgia! That would ruin everything! “With vanilla ice cream and a Diet Coke, please. Do you have free refills?”

“Sure, honey. Sure.”

“Okay, great.” I should've sat in one of the booths, but if I move now it will look strange. I check my phone about a million times before the food arrives. Nothing. When she sets the meal in front of me, I have to force myself to go slow. Because she's watching me, I can tell, her gaze lighting on every part of me.

I almost want to look up at her, but instead I stare at my plate. Take a bite of the burger, slow and easy. My hands are shaking. The meat juice runs down my chin and I'm in the backyard of the house behind Broad when we were a family. There is so much hurt snaking through me that I can't stand it. I take another bite, and another, and another. Inhale the Diet Coke. The soup I swallow in three large gulps. The pie is buttery and the filling too hot. It burns as it slides down my throat.

I don't want to do this anymore—I don't have the energy—but it's too late to stop. I wish Josh were here to stop me. To hold
me and count my bones and get pissed. I'd curl up against his chest like a baby and listen to his heartbeat.

“Gosh. All that Diet Coke,” I say to no one, and slide off the stool. One foot in front of the other in front of the other until I'm back in the bathroom. I turn the lock on the door and lean against it, feeling the familiar desperation welling up. I have to do it, I know I have to do it, but I'm almost too tired to move.

I'm bent over the toilet, breathing in the sharp smell of watered-down bleach, when I hear another knock.

“Just a second!”

“Stevie? Stevie, I need you to open the door for me, please.”

Shrink.
My gut withers at the sound of her voice.

“Hold on!” I practically scream, lunging for the sink.

“Stevie, if you won't open the door, I'll ask management to unlock it. Please open this door right now.”

“Wait!” I turn on the water full blast and fall to my knees in front of the toilet. My body understands me, knows what has to be done. But I don't even get to enjoy the aftercalm. I flush just as the door handle turns and Shrink barges in.

I don't acknowledge her. Just bend over the sink and shovel a handful of metallic water into my sour mouth. Swish and spit. No use trying to hide it. She's too late, anyway.

Wednesday, July 16, 2:27
A.M.

“STEVIE.”

When I finally turn around, Shrink looks strange: jeans and a hoodie and no makeup.
Oh. It's late
, I remember.

“I'm not leaving here,” I tell her.

“Stevie, look at me, please.” She grasps my skull in her hands and peers into my face like it's a crystal ball.

“Quit.” I shrug her off. “I'm not drunk or high or whatever you think.” I don't think I can stand anymore, so I arc around her and lean against the door. Shrink reaches for me and we sink to the floor.

“How'd you know?” I ask after a while.

“The waitress saw your treatment bracelet.”

“Oh.” I think I'm supposed to be upset or something. I dig deep for it, but nothing comes. “What time is it?”

“Two thirty.”

“Sorry you had to get out of bed.” I really am.

She shakes her head. “I wanted to come find you. I am very concerned about you, Stevie.” The last part comes out breathy. “But I'm glad you're safe. I'd like to give you a hug. Would that be okay?”

I shrug.

She pulls me into her in an awkward sort of side hug and it's gentle. The kind of single tap that makes the whole pane shatter. There's a weird choking sound—me, I think—and I feel my face get hot and twisty and it feels so tight and awful to be in my skin that I wish I could just stop breathing.

“Okay,” she says into my hair, in a way that makes me moan in the ugliest way. “Okay.” Her sweatshirt is wet and smells like puke.

My sobs come out in these violent shuddery bursts. It's so stupid, all of it—that I thought I could get away with this, that I'm so weak and useless. That I thought Eden might be able to help me. I pull away, wiping the snot bubbles from my nose with the back of my hand. I stare at my knees.

“I killed my brother,” I tell her after a while.

“Tell me,” she says.

“He caught me kissing her,” I say. “The night he died, he caught me kissing her.”

For a moment, he'd just stood there, stricken. Staring at me like I was a stranger.

“Oh my god.” Eden said it with an almost smile.

That's when he turned and ran, like I was something to be escaped.

“Josh!” I called, but he was already gone, pushing through the thinning crowd of parents and roommates. “Shit.”

I ran after him, through the wake he'd created. I hurried down the steps calling his name, and at the last step, my fingers came close to grazing his T-shirt. Not close enough.

“Josh! Wait. Please.”

He threw the door open and stormed outside, into the parking lot. He kicked up gravel as he walked, tiny bullets launching behind him. “Go back upstairs with your goddamned
girlfriend
, Stevie.” His voice cracked over my name.

“Josh! She kissed me, okay? I'm sorry!”

He stopped when he got to the Buick, digging through his pockets for his keys. “I told you I liked her. I
just
told you. Don't you care about anybody other than yourself?”

Anger reared up, even though I had no right. “Don't
you
? You
stole
her. She was my friend first, Josh! She was my only friend, and you
knew
that!”

“Your
friend
?” His laugh was accusing. “Okay, Stevie. If that's what you do with your
friends
, it's a good thing you never had any.”

“Shut up, Josh. Not everybody's perfect like you, okay? So just . . . quit being so judgmental.” I gasped for air, but I couldn't get a real breath. “You're just like Mom.”

“Judgmental? Is that what you call telling the truth? Here's the truth, Stevie.” He glared at me, hate flashing in his eyes. “You're selfish. You're a selfish bitch and for once in your life,
it's time someone told you: You can't always get what you want.”

His words were a slap, knocking me back. Josh never cursed—never used those words with me or even around me.

“And you look like shit, by the way. Everybody thinks so and Dad's too scared to say it. This whole food thing—it's selfish and crazy and you look like . . . shit.” He spit on the ground next to his shoe and yanked the driver's side door open so hard I thought he might rip it off.

There wasn't time for it, but I thought,
Do people really think I look like shit?
I ran around to the passenger side and jerked my door open before his fingers hit the lock.

“Josh. Wait. Please.”
Josh. Wait. Please. Wait. Please. Josh.
I was a baby, reduced to a few simple, meaningless phrases. I dove inside and slammed the door as he forced the key into the ignition and gunned out of the parking lot onto the street. The wheels squealed against the pavement. I jammed the seat belt into the buckle four times before it took.

“I was telling her, Josh. I was telling her and she wouldn't listen. I swear. I was ending it.” My words didn't make sense, even to me, and I was desperate to find a way to make him understand that I was not the girl he thought I was.
I'm not I'm not I'm not
.

“
You're
the one who's just like Mom, you know?” He was crying and he didn't care. He leaned over the steering wheel, slammed his fist into the dashboard over and over until I heard a sickening crack.

“What are you
talking
about? Fuck you.” My blood thundered through me, searching for a way out.

“Please. Like you don't know.” He made a wide right turn, swerving onto a deserted one-way street.

“I don't! Josh, stop! Stop it!”

“You think she just left, moved to Paris for no reason? Are you seriously that naïve?” Another turn, barreling onto the two-lane road that stretched through the dark like a thread, stringing nameless towns together. The Buick's headlights like two white pearls, rolling fast.

“I don't know why she left!” I screamed at the windshield, clawing at the ugly cloth seats like an animal. “Nobody tells me anything!”

“She moved 'cause she was screwing some piece-of-shit partner at the Paris branch! She's a whore who doesn't care about this family.” The Buick weaved in a seamless dance with the yellow line. “You're the same, Stevie. You're just like Mom. A heartless slut.”

“Shut up!” I screamed. “You shut up!”

I saw the truck first, because I wasn't crying. It was a semi. The headlights were getting too close, too fast.

“Josh!” I lunged over the console and jerked the steering wheel toward me, the truck's blaring horn bleeding past.

Time seemed to stand still
, people say. Or
It all happened so fast.
Lies. It took exactly the amount of time it took, and I felt all of it. Every millisecond. The whoosh of the car, airborne, a cheap aluminum toy.

Weird,
I thought.

We hit the road three times: roof, wheels, roof. Slammed into a solid, unmoving wall. The impact was instant, aftershocks pulsed through me. There were too many sounds at once:
shattering glass and crumpling tin and a high-pitched noise that was shrill and constant. And then everything stopped—everything but the noise. And I was upside down, still strapped in, and blood rushed to my head. I was dizzy and I thought,
What is that? What the hell is that sound?
and then,
Josh. Where's Josh?
and then,
The noise is me,
and I stopped screaming, at least out loud.

I felt nothing, only the adrenaline drowning my senses. I fumbled for the seat belt and released it, then crawled through the window that wasn't there anymore. I slunk through the grass like a dying dog, around the tree and across the lawn toward Josh, who lay fifty feet away.

“Josh!” I screamed. I willed my body to move faster. Something was stinging hot and wet on my thigh, but nothing hurt. I didn't understand the smells; there were too many at once. Gas and rubber and burning smoke and too-hot skin and blood. I puked in the grass.

I wasn't sure that it was him at first. Of course it was, because that was his T-shirt, and who else would it be? But there was so much blood, and glass embedded in him like millions of diamonds in red velvet. It was hard to tell.

One minute he was, and the next he wasn't.

And I knew, not because his breathing was labored or he said his last words or reached for my hand or something dramatic like that. I knew because he was my brother. I loomed over him and stroked his face and his neck, blood-soaked and ribboned in places. His blood and my blood ran together, sticky down my skin. I watched him end.

I lay down next to him. Curled against his body until I couldn't feel the difference between us. We stayed like that until they pulled me away.

“I deserve to die,” I tell Shrink now. Hearing it out loud, I know it's true. It sounds right. I expect her to leap up and freak out, to pin me to the ground while she calls for help.

Instead she says, “I know you believe that.”

“It's the truth,” I say.

“You've been carrying an incredibly heavy burden for a very long time now. I imagine that you're exhausted. That you just don't want to do it anymore.”

She's right. I let myself lean into her. Just a little.

“The thing is, Stevie, you don't have to. If you would let me hold some of it for you while you get stronger—”

“You can't fix it.” I stiffen.

“You're right. I can't fix it. I can't bring your brother back or magically transform your mother into the mother you deserve. I can't force you to feel like you deserve to get better. But I can sit here with you. And I can help you do the things you're not able to do for yourself right now. That's really the first step.”

“I thought the first step was admitting you have a problem.”

“Do you? Have a problem?”

I nod. My problem is being alive.

“I can't help you unless you let me take you back, Stevie. I can't help you unless you're willing to get some rest. Let me help you.”

I nod again, because I know there's no other choice. I'm so exhausted I can barely keep my eyes open, and going back willingly is better than putting up a fight. I have no more fight in me. Whatever was left has leaked out, through the cracks in the floor tiles, leaving nothing but the faintest ghost of a stain.