Not Otherwise Specified (20 page)

I bring Bianca to the armchairs where I found the Dykes the last time I was here and put her in one. “Stay.”

“I want to dance!”

“I'll dance with you soon, I promise. But I have to take care of some stuff first.”

“Are those the Dykes?” she says, like they're celebrities. Drunk girl.

“Don't worry about it, sweetie.” I give her a kiss on the cheek and try to convince myself it isn't because I know Rachel's watching. Bianca hums contentedly and puts her head back. Okay.

I swim through the crowd to Rachel and there's the trifecta, matching maxi dresses tonight, aren't we adorable. Isabel must have made them. She made us all T-shirts one time but mine was too small and I still don't know if it was on purpose or not. God, why were these girls my friends? Everything is
so
clear now. Everything is fantastic! I don't have to be friends with them and I don't have to do this audition and I don't have to
fix Bianca! I can stay here and dance by myself forever and ever, yaaay I love alcohol. I don't think I realized how much shit was weighing me down until
right now
when it's gone. I'm a free bird with a mezzo-soprano voice and a big ass and I am dancing around like it is springtime.

Natasha's staring at me either like I'm disgusting or like she can't believe I'm here or maybe both, but Isabel and Titania are smiling a little like maybe they're over all this bullshit. Okay, Isabel and Titania, you can stay.

We like Etta. Etta can stay.
That was James! I should call him. I love James. Rachel gives me the rest of her drink.

I grab Isabel's hand and say, “Dance with me!” because what the hell, Isabel is so boring and maybe we can loosen her up. I've always kind of liked her, though. She's nice to my sister. I wonder what's going on with my sister. I bet Rachel knows. She hugged her. “What's going on with my sister?”

“What?” Isabel says.

“I wasn't talking to you! Rachel!”

“I can hear you, Etta! Stop yelling.”

“The music is
loud
!”

“You're louder!”

“I'm going to mess up my voice!” Oh shit. I can't be
shouting
. I shouldn't be drinking at a club. Why am I doing this? Maybe that's why Rachel wanted me out. Maybe she's trying to sabotage my audition. Maybe this whole thing has been a trick to get me back in so the Dykes can mess with me some
more. Maybe they put something in my drink. This is so weird. I'm not high, why am I this paranoid? Where's Bianca? I think maybe I'm paranoid because of Bianca.

Oh right, it doesn't matter if I mess up my voice because I don't care about this audition! Yelling and drinks for everyone! I'm so happy. I lean into Rachel's shoulder. “You're beautiful,” I tell her.

“And you are drunk. Mmmm.” She squeezes me tight. “I missed you.”

“I missed
you
!”

“Let's don't fight again.”

“Let's
don't
.”

“Don't go to New York, okay?”

“Okay!”

No. Hey. Wait.

That's not cool.

Why did she just ask me that?

Who does she think she is? She knows how much I want to go to New York. Everyone and their mom knows how much I want to go to New York. What gives her the right to take me out and get me drunk and tell me not to go to New York?

Screw
her. Screw Rachel, screw my childhood, where's Bianca? I want to get on a motorcycle. What song is this and why doesn't it have more than four notes? Even I could sing this, come on.

Then I hear Natasha's voice, so close to my ear she doesn't
have to yell. “I can't believe you came here, how fucking stupid can you be?”

“Where's Bianca?” Rachel says.

“That's what I'd like to know!” I probably said that more aggressively than I needed to but it's not my fault I'm having interior monologues about how much I don't like Rachel and that Natasha's pinching me underneath my bra. Wait, why don't I like Rachel? She's tucking one of my dreads behind my ear. She's lovely.

“You are drunk, little girl,” she says. She used to call me that. I remember now.

I remember now. “She's in the armchairs. She's over . . .” I turn around. I don't see her. Bee?

“She's adorable,” Rachel says. “Even though she's way too skinny.”

“She's smoke,” I say. “She's blond smoke.”

“You can get back into the Dykes!” Rachel says.

“What?”

“Have you guys slept together yet?” she says.

“What?” How have I not told her yet?

“Have you and Bianca slept together yet?”
she yells over the music, and then over my shoulder someone goes
“WHAT?”
and yeah, three guesses who that is (Bianca, Bianca, Bianca).

Shit, shit, shit.

“We're not . . . ,” I start to say, but I'm so dizzy and she slips away and no no no so I run after her and she's trying to leave
but I catch her before she can get to the doors because no no no you are not going out alone, you are just
not
.

“Let
go
of me,” she says. She's crying. Oh.

“Bianca.”

“You left me to hang out with the
Dykes
?”

Oh God. That's why she's upset.

“Yeah.”

“They think we're a
couple
?” Okay, so she's upset about that too.

“They think every two girls is a couple, it doesn't mean anything.”

“Why didn't you tell them we aren't?”

“Because—”

“If you're hanging out with these girls who tortured you, if these people who make you feel like shit are your fucking
friends
, then what
am
I? What are we!”

“Bianca. Come to the bathroom or something, okay, we'll talk about this.”

“Were you just
using
me?” she says, and holy shit if she thinks that this whole time I've been trying to sleep with her I'm just going to rip out my insides or something, how is it that all I do is tell people what's in my head and I
still
can't get them to know what I'm thinking? I try
so hard
. I want to get better I want to get better I want to
be better
Jesus Christ how many calories are in what Bianca had, how many have we had, how drunk is she?

I should get Rachel to check her blood sugar, it tanks when she drinks—

“I am
not
trying to be something with you,” I say. “I don't even think . . . You're not like that in my head. You're like my little sister.”

“But you wanted to them to
think
you were?” she says. “You wanted to make them jealous? Why are you hanging out with them?”

“No! Don't you fucking understand? I didn't want to be friends with another damn girl, okay?”

“W-with me?”

“Yes, with you! I never fucking wanted this! I wanted to just put my head down until I got out of here and got to New York and I wanted to hate everyone here and I wanted to hate all girls forever because of what they did to me and I didn't really give a shit if that was unfair because they hurt me
so much
, and then you came along, you just
showed up
, and all I want to do is take care of you and I just want them to love me again okay and you won't do a
thing
to take care of yourself and now how am I supposed to go to New York if you're going to drink and cry and fucking starve yourself to death if I leave you here?”

“So what, you're just gonna be friends with them because they're not going to
die
?”

Oh my God, what is wrong with me. “I don't know, okay? I don't
know
!”

“Fuck you, Etta,” she says, and then she pushes through the crowd and weaves her way to the bathroom. Probably to throw up.

I'm a terrible friend.

I am Etta Should Have Stayed Not Otherwise Specified.

I give the bar my fake ID and they ignore the
X
s on my hands and give me a beer and then I'm trying to find the Dykes again but it's just Isabel and Titania and Natasha and they don't even look at me and I think maybe they forgot about me and damn it I need to find Rachel I need to find Bianca I need to chug this damn beer.

So I'm pretending to dance with some girls I don't know and they're pretending to dance with me and I'm shaking around in this skirt and I don't even remember whose skirt this is and then someone grabs my arm and I spill my beer all over the floor. “Bianca?” No. It's Rachel.

“Something's wrong,” she says. “You need to come with me.”

“What? Are you okay?”

“Something's wrong with Bianca.”

And it feels like I've been waiting for this sentence my entire life. That I've been dangling on the precipice of that sentence and now I'm falling.

I knew this was going to happen.

I
knew
this was going to happen.

Bianca's on the floor in the bathroom, conscious but limp,
breathing shallow and fast with her head pillowed on her arms. Her eyes are squeezed shut and Rachel says, “Did she drink too much?”

“She didn't . . . She hasn't had anything in hours.” I feel her pulse, expecting fast and light, hummingbird, but no, it's so slow.

Her body is breaking.

“I need you to take us to the hospital,” I tell Rachel.

For some reason I'm expecting her to say no.

“Absolutely,” she says. “I'm gonna run and get the car. I'll text you when I'm pulling up outside, okay?”

How did I think we could be friends again when I thought she would say no to that? How can I keep putting this all on her when I'm the one who doesn't trust her, and I'm not saying she hasn't given me any reasons not to but God, I'm going to need to meet her somewhere in the middle and I don't know if I can do that. I just don't.

This isn't the time to be thinking about this because Bianca is floppy against my chest, and I'm just holding her and holding her.

“Can you carry her?” Rachel says.

“Uh-huh. Go go go.”

Rachel's gone, and people are coming and going in the bathroom and tripping over us and not stopping to see if we need help. I hate everybody but this girl. I tuck her in under my chin. She's shivering now.

“E-Etta.”

“Shh shh shh. I know.”

“Leave me alone.”

Yeah, whatever. She's fourteen.

But it still hurts.

“I'm not going anywhere.” I kiss the top of her head. “I love you, baby girl. You're going to be just fine, we're gonna get you some help, okay?”

“I don't want help—mychesthurts.”

“I know. Hang in there.”

“I want
Jamie
.”

“I know. I know I'm gonna get him, I'll get him, please just hold on, okay, Rachel's coming, we're gonna go, I'm gonna fix this.”

She's crying, and she has stopped pulling away. She's gripping me around the waist, shaking so hard I feel like she's going to fall into pieces.

“Gonna fix you,” I tell her. “Hang in there, you hear me? Hang in there.”

I GUESS THIS IS ENOUGH
of a crisis to make James's parents forget that they hate him, because all three of them show up at the hospital bedraggled and together, in pajamas because I guess Christians go to bed before eleven, like my mom. I wish my mom were here. It's just me and Rachel, who's lingering by the coffee machine, making tea for me, all of that. I don't know what to say to her. I don't know what to say to anybody. I made sure Bianca was settled in her bed and that they were getting her fluids and she was going to be okay and then I came out here and I sat in this chair where I can see into her room (she's sedated but still trying to pull out her IV, I think she knows there's sugar in it) and I'm just planted here, I can't move. I wish this somehow magically sobered me up, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Everything's spinning and I've
thrown up twice and I still don't feel any better. But I don't think all of that is the alcohol. I'm not stupid.

That's my best friend (she's my
best friend
) in there, and I'm out here.

I watch her parents rush in and touch her and hug her and her mom is crying and they look like normal perfect parents, all blond hair and blue eyes and not at all who you'd expect would try to rehabilitate their gay son. The pajamas help the picture. If they were dressed, wrapped up in pashminas or some shit, they'd be too pretty to be real and you'd
know
there was something underneath, but no, they're wearing flannel pants with holes in them because they're
poor
and they look so plainspoken but they're not, they let Bianca get here when she should so goddamn be in inpatient and they focused on freaking
fine
James instead.

I'm looking down, and I watch his shoes come toward me, then hear his voice. “You all right?” He sounds like he's acting, like it's not really him.

I nod without raising my head.

“What the hell happened?”

“I picked her up and she was drunk. I took her over to Rachel's. We made her up. She wanted to go out. We went out. We had a fight, she went to the bathroom, Rachel found her collapsed in there, we brought her here, her blood pressure was too low, they gave her electrolytes and now she's okay. Her blood alcohol isn't even that high. They're bringing in a
counselor to talk to her. Maybe a social worker. They weren't sure.” I say it flat, like this is public-speaking class and I'm going to fail this speech.

“Why did you take her out?”

“She wanted to.”