Authors: Heidi Ayarbe
And for the first time in a long time, not on a soccer field or in my room, I feel almost normal.
One Hundred Nine Into The Dark
I
close my eyes and feel a faint brushing of lips on mine. “Mer—” I open my eyes. Tanya grabs my hands and yanks me up, pulling me to her. We sway back and forth on the dance floor, her hands in my back pockets, holding on until not even air can fit between our bodies.
She practically decapitates me, yanking my head down, shoving her tongue in my mouth—her tongue ring, one I’d never noticed for whatever reason, clicking against my teeth, rolling around my tongue. “C’mon, Jake, let’s find a place to
be
.” I can taste her fruit-Punch saliva on the corners of my mouth and a tinge of clove cigarettes.
She shoves my hand up her shirt, slipping it under her bra, and cups it around her tit, rubbing my fingers across her hardened nipple. “C’mon, Jake. Let’s go.”
My heartbeat thunders in my head. The room is spinning, swirling like that old merry-go-round, and everything looks like funhouse mirror reflections. Tanya’s body is elongated, deformed. Her chin dripping down to her collarbone. Behind her, Luc and Amy dance in squat, dwarf bodies. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to push back the glowing lights. Red, blue, green.
Christ. I’ve got to go before my head explodes and all the colors ooze out.
“Jake,” Tanya says. “Over there.” She motions to a closed door.
I look around and feel Luc’s breath in my ear before I hear the words. “Thank me later.”
The universal fix-all for any guy: sex. Instead of feeling the surge of blood heading south, my body feels like somebody just threw a bucket of icy water on it.
“C’mon, Jakey,” Tanya says, and walks away.
God, when I was little my
mom
called me Jakey. My mouth feels like it’s exploding with fungal abscesses that spread, swelling my tongue until it suffocates me.
I crane my neck, looking for Mera, and see her slip out the front door. She doesn’t even look back. The girl who might be my only real friend in my life is gone.
Five years ago, I chose Luc, and now that’s got me here: in one of Mario’s famous storage/sex closets with Carson High’s horniest, hottest chick.
This is
normal
. This is what I want.
Somebody shoves me into the closet. The door slams behind us. I hear a click.
The closet is cloaked in blackness except for a tiny streak of light that comes in from the hallway. Tanya grabs my hand and pulls me down to the floor with her, shoving shoes and coats out of the way. “Comfy?” she asks.
“I’ll be right back, Jakey. Take care of Kasey. I have to go. Look at the time. I’ll be back when the hands on your watch match up to the hands I drew.”
The walls close in and squeeze, shutting my airway, constricting my blood vessels. I inhale but can’t get any air. I’m trapped under the weight of darkness and fumble around the closet looking for any source of light. I’ve gotta see something,
anything
. I stand up . . .
. . . pushing myself off the ground, my hand grazing the thick rat tail. I jump back, knocking over a box of Halloween decorations, shiny plastic clown masks, glow-in-the-dark skulls.
I bang my head against the slanted ceiling, a sharp pain searing down my body like electric pulses. The closet smells musky and pungent with a hint of Tanya’s floral perfume. I inhale the . . .
. . . death smell and gag, throwing up macaroni-and-cheese dinner. “Mom!” I holler. But I know she’s not here. The painted hands don’t line up with my watch hands. I push hard on the Indiglo light, the button digging into my finger. Make the numbers work to keep Kasey and me safe. I just need . . .
. . . light. “Turn on a fucking light.” I graze my hand across the slanted ceiling, feeling for a light. My head spins. I inhale again, gasping for air, and slump to the floor, cradling my head in my arms, trying to keep out the smells and sounds, to get back the numbers—just a piece of magic to last long enough to get out of here before I do something totally humiliating like black out in my own vomit. I scrape my tongue along my teeth, pushing off the taste of fruit punch.
Focus. Focus. Focus.
I close my eyes and pretend I’m not locked away.
Just pretend I’m in bed. Just stare at the watch.
I need the numbers. So I squeeze my head between my knees, hoping to stop the spinning webs—hoping to curb the pain.
Tanya rubs my cheek with ragged nails. “What’s up, Jake?”
Her voice is different. It’s doesn’t have that hoarse, sex-you-up sound to it anymore. I massage my temples, trying to hold the auras back, just for a few more minutes.
Look at the time. Focus on the numbers. Just pretend . . .
. . . everything’s okay. Tanya’s sitting next to me. “What’s up? It’s not like they rent these by the hour, you know. Mario’s closets are in high demand.” She laughs. But it’s a nervous laugh, like she doesn’t want to be here either. “I’ve got a condom if that’s what you’re worried about.” I hear a rustle. “They’re called Sex Bull condoms. How lame is that? I guess it’s all pretty lame when you get right down to it.”
The second hand ticks, ticks, ticks. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
The numbers blur, then come clear again. I listen to Tanya. And for once it’s like she’s being real. The suffocating weight of the closet lifts for a second.
In elementary school, Tanya was a Girl Scout. She won prizes for selling cookies and wore knee-high socks and brown skirts. She was real.
What are we all so afraid of?
I almost kiss her hand, then jerk my head back because I can still taste the fruit punch and acid, and I’m afraid my tongue might’ve turned black by now, and my mind searches for numbers and patterns.
The glow of red and yellow has gotten stronger. It won’t be long before everything goes black. I’ve just got to get out of here and find a place to be. I’ve got to do the routine to get things right.
I need the magic.
Counting lights. House lights, streetlights, headlights. I can count. I can walk. That’ll buy me time. It always does.
Tanya pulls my face to hers and tries to pry my clenched teeth open with her tongue. “C’mon, Jakey,” she says in a singsong, nails-on-the-chalkboard voice. Not only am I limp but I also feel like I’ve got fishing line with weights hanging from my balls.
Premature ejaculation? Try premature impotence.
I peel her off me, squeezing my eyes shut to try to keep the lights away just for a second longer. “No,” I say.
I hear the garage door clatter open and a slamming door. A key rattles in the door. “Mama! Open the door!” The hands don’t line up with the painted ones.
7:19
Seven nineteen. Seven plus one is eight plus nine is seventeen. OK.
The closet door swings open. I stumble into the hallway.
“Why not?”
“At a party? Where they auctioned you off like cattle? Christ, Tanya, you used to sell Thin Mints
.
What happened?” I say.
Somebody bangs on the door. “Hey, Martin! You guys done yet?”
I bang back. “Open the fucking door! Open the fucking door.”
The door swings open. I stumble into the hallway.
Dad stands there. “What the—? Where’s Kasey?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
A circle of faces peeks in at us, and I crawl out, gulping in the stale party air, the floor sticky-slick with jungle juice.
“What the fuck happened to you, Martin?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“I don’t know.”
Dad rushes to the staircase, finding Kasey crumpled like a rag doll at the bottom. He lifts her up, her arm dangling, twisted in an abnormal angle, swollen and blue. “Clean yourself up,” he says. “We’ll wait in the car.”
I change my pants, wash my hands, and put towels over the vomit, piss, and dead rat, my footsteps echoing in the hallway and down the front walk.
I push through the crowd and work my way out front, retching everything in Mario’s mom’s rosebushes, the thorns scratching at my cheeks.
“Dude, too much to drink, huh?” Some guy’s lying on the grass next to a chunky mound of vomit. “Where’d Mario get the spinning grass, man? Home Depot Deluxe? It’s a fucking merry-go-round out here.
Wheee-eeee.
” I hear a gurgle and he lies on his side, bilious vomit dripping from his mouth.
Spinning.
Spinning, spinning.
Burning tears spill down my cheeks. I crawl away and hide behind some landscaping boulders, pulling my knees tight to my chest, counting my ragged breaths, making the numbers work so I can clear my head.
I’m supposed to be normal.
My sobs are drowned by the sound of normal that comes from inside the house.
One Hundred Thirteen Compulsion
Sunday, 2:43 a.m.
Two forty-three. Two times four is eight plus three is eleven. OK.
I flick on the bathroom heater and clutch the toothbrush with stiff fingers.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven
.
Change sides.
Eight, nine, ten, eleven.
Same side.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
Change sides.
Eight, nine, ten, eleven.
I scrape the brush across my tongue until I see blood spatters in the sink.
Stop.
Stop.
Stop.
Open the cabinet, one, two, three, click closed.
Again.
Again.
My hand trembles. I toss the empty toothpaste in the garbage along with the toothbrush, its bristles splayed out, dotted with brown-red blood. My gums and cheeks sting. My tongue feels like sandpaper, but I gargle the burning mouthwash, holding the liquid in my mouth as long as I can, counting to thirty-seven, then spitting it out, doing it again.
Five times.
I just need to do it five times.
Dad raps on the bathroom door. “Jake, is that you?”
“Uh-huh,” I say, almost choking on the mouthwash, the bottle nearly empty now.
One, two, three, four, five
. . .
“Thought you were going to stay at Luc’s,” Dad says.
Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen . . .
“Uh-uh,” I say. Swish, swish, swishing the mouthwash across my teeth, gums, and tongue, getting rid of Tanya’s taste. As soon as I’m done here, I’ll go to bed. I’ll do the numbers, watch a little Bourdain, and wait for sunrise.
Twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one . . .
That’s all I need.
To end right.
Thirty-seven
.
Begin right.
New mouthful of wash. Second round.
One, two, three.
Genesis.
And on the seventh day . . .
“It’s pretty late.”
“Uh-huh.”
Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen . . .
“Good night, then.”
“Uh-huh.”
Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven . . .
I can hear his breathing outside the door. He pauses.
He should be raging.
I don’t look down at my watch because it would fuck up my counting. It’s not like I have a curfew. I never go out. But late is late.
It’s like he wants to say something.
Maybe I can talk to him.
Swish, swish, swish.
Thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four . . .
Maybe I can tell him what’s going on; tell him about the numbers and shit. Maybe he’d get it. Maybe he
knows
and is just waiting for me to come clean—like some kind of pop-psychology parent I don’t know.
Round three.
One, two, three, four, five . . .
Just a few more swishes and gargles. Two more rounds. Thirty-seven two more times. And I can come out in the hall. We’ll sit there. We’ll talk.
Before I can finish, he walks away. I hear the soft pad of footsteps walk down the hall. His bedroom door creaks open and clicks shut.
Round four.
Round five.
I spit out the mouthwash, rinsing the sink clean of blood. I stare in the mirror. Everything in my mouth is raw—on fire. The bathroom is clean. Everything’s level. The towels are hanging how they need to be, and I open the door with two hands and look down the hallway, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the black night.
No moon tonight.
I finally make out Dad and Mom’s door. Closed. No sound comes from their room. I walk to it and lean my ear against it, listening for anything to show me they’re awake. A sign to let me know I can go in. We can talk. He can tell me I’m not crazy.
I count to twenty-nine, then to thirty-seven.
Nothing. The silence hurts my ears. I swallow back the knot that has formed in my throat, pinching my nose, trying to keep the burning out.
The salt from my tears burns my lips.
With a trembling hand, I raise my knuckles to knock and remember the look on his face at the game.
Pride.
He was proud.
I relax my fist and wipe the tears off my cheeks. I’m okay. I’m just tired.
Lots going on.
The aura is still here. I need to organize my room before the pain seizes me and I’m out for a few hours. It’s not like it always does, but I can’t take my chances.
Then everything will be back to normal.
One Hundred Twenty-Seven My Normal
Sunday, 3:21 a.m.
Three twenty-one. Three times two is six plus one is seven. OK.