Someone I Wanted to Be (3 page)

West High kids on the east side of the parking lot, East High kids on the west side, and Arapahoe on the south. In the nucleus of the parking lot, rich kids, athletes, and the extremely good-looking from all three schools partied. They laughed the loudest. Ray Ramirez, quarterback of our football team, was there without LaTeisha. LaTeisha Morgan would never hang out in a parking lot. LaTeisha got invited to house parties, where she drank Sprite and left early enough so that she could get up for church. Corinne, Kristy, and I were in the middle, but without them, I would have been punted to the dark edges of the parking lot where the stoners partied.

I wasn’t wasted like Kristy, just drunk enough for everything to fall away — the long dead hours in the apartment, homework, the insults and degradations of school. Nothing existed but the night, beautiful shadows, laughter, boys, songs thumping from car windows. Corinne and I sat on the hood of the Civic like beauty queens on a float. Corinne shouted to guys she knew. I kept watch for Damien Rogers. He was out there somewhere in the rippling crowd half lit by the smeary light from the streetlamps.

A Jeep pulled into the parking lot. Kelsey Parker whistled from the passenger window. “Corinne!”

Corinne grabbed my hand and made me walk over with her. The captain of the boys’ swim team was in the driver’s seat. He had a mean face and a bleached-out buzz cut. Both he and Kelsey were wasted. “Can I borrow ten bucks, Corinne? I lost my wallet, and Dean doesn’t have enough money. We’re starving.”

“Sure,” said Corinne. I stood behind her, breathed exhaust, and smiled stupidly. Kelsey and the swim team captain didn’t look at me.

Corinne handed over the money. “Thanks, sweetheart,” said Kelsey, already turning away. “OK, Dean. Let’s get out of here.” The Jeep backed up, then bumped over the curb into the street.

We walked back, weaving around groups of kids. Corinne and I had just sat down on the hood of Kristy’s Civic again when a boy said, “Oh, man!” and jumped back. Kristy had thrown up a big chunky puddle on the ground and plopped down next to it. Corinne and I slid off the car.

A football player with a shaved head squatted down next to Kristy. He put his arm around her and said he’d forgive her if she came with him and his friends. She looked up at him through her hair and nodded. She was drooling.

Corinne pushed through the boys. “No way. She’s coming with us.”

We crouched next to Kristy. “Kristy. Kristy? Come on.”

The football player stood up and stretched. “Dumb bitches,” he said.

Kristy sat with her knees up by her face. She looked confused, like a toddler just woken up from a nap. I found a hamburger wrapper on the ground and wiped puke off her chin. Corinne grabbed up handfuls of her hair and wound it into a bun.

We each took an elbow and hoisted Kristy to her feet. She was wearing flip-flops, and her toes had puke on them. I stepped in the puddle and got vomit on my Vans. We steered her to her car and pushed her into the backseat.

Corinne tossed Kristy’s cushion into the back, got into the driver’s seat, and dug through Kristy’s purse for her keys. Corinne could drive a stick shift, though she didn’t have a license. “Damn it. She always does this.”

As we left the parking lot, Corinne’s head swung around. “Damien Rogers was in that truck.”

“What? Where? Do a U-turn, Corinne. Go back!”

Kristy groaned and hiccuped in the backseat.

“We can’t. She’s going to barf again.”

But Kristy didn’t barf on the drive home. She just lay in the backseat, looking sweaty and sick. Her hair came out of the bun and stuck to her face.

We drove down Torrance Avenue through downtown, up into the foothills, past the spotlights at the entrance to Mountain View Estates, and down the smooth black streets. Corinne pulled to a stop in front of Kristy’s house.

“I’d have her sleep over, but Derrick would go ballistic.” Corinne’s stepfather, Derrick, shouted all the time because he had too many kids. He wouldn’t let Corinne go out for softball. He had a grizzled double chin and wasn’t nice to her mom.

We tugged Kristy out of the car and led her across the sheet of lawn turned white by the streetlight. Kristy shrieked, shook us off, got down on her knees, then flopped on the ground and rolled onto her back. She lay on the grass with her earrings tangled in her vomity hair. She twisted from side to side and screamed, “No! No! Leave me alone, bitches!”

The front door swung open. Kristy’s dad came out in his boxer shorts. His legs were like Popsicle sticks covered with dark hair, but he had a monstrous pale stomach with a huge belly button like a Cyclops’s eye. His face was creased and red, and his hair was crazy like he’d just pulled his head out of a washing machine.

He marched across the lawn, got down on one knee, and shoveled Kristy up in his arms. She cried and hammered on his chest with her fists. He held her still with one of his big hands. He kissed her forehead. “Shhh, shhh. It’s OK, baby doll.”

Mr. Baker turned to us. “Leah, you’re spending the night, aren’t you? Corinne, do you want to stay over? No? Are you sure? Can you make it home safely?” He was calm and unembarrassed as a king as he stood there in his underwear with Kristy moaning and twisting in his arms.

I followed them up the steps into the bright light. In the kitchen, Mrs. Baker stood with her hands folded under her chin like she was praying. Mr. Baker set Kristy on a chair in the circle of light from a purple glass lamp. Kristy curled up in a ball with her arms wrapped around her knees. She rubbed her eyes against her kneecaps and made mewling sounds like a sick cat. Her makeup was smeared all over her face.

Her mom wet a towel, toddled over, and dabbed at Kristy’s eyes and cheeks. Her dad pulled a leaf out of her hair. He tucked a strand behind her ear.

“Now, Kristy,” said Kristy’s mom. Her upper lip quivered like she was about to sneeze. “We’re not angry — we’re just concerned.”

“I’ll just go back to Kristy’s room,” I said softly behind them.

“Brian, do you think . . .?” said Mrs. Baker. She clutched the edge of the table and wobbled. They had forgotten that I was standing in the kitchen behind them.

I walked down the hallway to Kristy’s dark room. I pulled off my shoes and jacket and slipped between the clean sheets. My head sunk into the cool, squishy pillow. The pillows at my apartment were lumpy from washing and stained a dark yellow.

Kristy’s dad carried her in and laid her on the other bed. Her mom unbuttoned her jeans, and her dad pulled them off by the bottoms. Her vomity feet with fuchsia toenails lay on the rose-covered comforter. They pulled the sheet and comforter over her, smoothed the blankets, then took turns laying their hands on her forehead. She groaned and whimpered and batted their hands away.

They tiptoed out and left the door open. A wedge of yellow light shone on the pink carpet. Her dad crept back in and left a silver bowl next to her bed. I’d read in a first-aid booklet what to do if she puked — turn her on her side so she wouldn’t choke to death.

The hall light shone all night long. Hours later, the phone began to ring. In my dream, I was in a submarine and the phone was ringing on top of the water. I smelled Aquafresh, opened my eyes, and found a bulky body leaning over me.

I jerked up. Kristy’s dad said, “Shhh. Leah, it’s Mr. Baker. Connie and I are making a quick run to the emergency room. I just wanted you to know what was going on. We didn’t want to wake Kristy. You stay here. I’ll lock the door. You’ll be fine. We should be back in a couple of hours.”

When I woke up, the late sun was shining on the carpet. Kristy was asleep, a pile of blond curls buried in roses. I opened her laptop and looked at pictures people had posted. The night before. Damien had been with a girl whose hair was the same color as mine. They didn’t look serious. I shut down the computer, pulled on my shoes, found my jacket and purse under the bed, and tiptoed down the hallway.

There was no sign of an emergency, no blood, no bandages strewn on the orange carpet. Kristy’s dad was crashed on the recliner, his chin rising and falling with his chest.

I crept up. His face was creased and pouchy and sad. I had a weird impulse to comb the thin brown hair strung across his spotted head. His forehead was lined like an accordion from worrying. He wore a big silver watch on his hairy wrist. His breathing and the watch’s faint tick were the only sounds in the room.

“I’m going home, Mr. Baker. Thanks for having me,” I whispered. He snored and turned his face away.

I’d swiped a couple of cigarettes from Kristy’s purse and lit up as I walked home in the bright April light. I had to walk in the street because there were no sidewalks in Mountain View Estates. The road was so black and clean, the curbs white, the grass thick and green. Every house had a two-car garage and a six-foot cedar fence.

It was cool but not cold. The mountain, blue-green with trees and craggy with red rocks, stuck into the sky. We moved to Colorado from Florida when I was ten, and I still wasn’t used to it. Everyone else thought the mountain was magnificent, but to me it looked hulking and threatening, like it was going to keel over and crush me at any second. When we drove up to Denver, a blue wall of mountains lined the entire state.

A man in a silver helmet and spandex shorts shot past me on his bike. A woman in a purple jogging outfit eyed me from beneath her visor. Her Siberian husky freaked out and lunged at my leg — she yanked the dog away and glared at my cigarette. Families in SUVs drove to the late service at church.

I passed through the brick entrance gate, jogged across Pueblo Avenue, and headed down the hill to my neighborhood. Vargas Avenue was a mile and a half from Kristy’s, right off Tenth. On my street, the little houses had drawn shades and tiny dirt yards surrounded by chain-link fences. My building had chunks of yellow stucco falling off the walls. Every second-story apartment had a miniature balcony where people stored empty beer cans and bags of cat litter. It was an embarrassing and depressing address to have. Davidson’s Bail Bonds was two blocks down.

Our building was called the Belmont Manor. The front door slammed shut behind me. Except for the sizzle from the lights, it was silent, as if everyone in the building had died. I headed down the stairs to the basement. A gray path led down the middle of the orange hallway carpet. Nauseating odors swarmed through the stale air. The gold had worn off the door handles. Half of the door numbers hung crookedly by one nail.

I unlocked the door to #3. On the TV, a man in a suit shouted, “Praise! Praise! Praise Jesus!” The wedding wineglass and a saucer of pretzels were on the coffee table. The wineglass was the only wedding present left from Cindy’s marriage to my dead father that hadn’t been broken in one of our moves. The disgusting pink-and-blue blanket we never washed dragged off the couch onto the floor. I turned off the preacher and tried Cindy’s doorknob.

My mother’s arms were flung out as if she’d fallen from the top of a building and landed on the bed. Her small white face tipped back toward the maple headboard. She had purple dents under her eyes, and her hair was sweaty and flat. I crept over and held my hand over her mouth until I felt a puff of air. She smelled like Chardonnay, and a little sour like milk that had gone bad.

When Cindy was passed out, she reminded me of an old Barbie. A Barbie you find in the back of a closet or at the bottom of a box, a Barbie you haven’t seen since you were four. Her head’s twisted backward, her hair is a fuzzy mess and half of it’s gone, and she’s marked all over with ballpoint pen and permanent marker. Nothing is sadder than an old Barbie with her tiny hard feet and her faded eyebrows and blue eyes.

Home. I stripped down, changed into sweats, microwaved four pieces of French toast, put slabs of margarine between them, and poured half a bottle of Karo syrup over it all. I pulled down the flyers and coupons we kept stacked on top of the refrigerator, sat at the sticky wooden table jammed between the stove and refrigerator, and began to stuff my mouth and swallow as fast as I could without choking.

I put a fifth piece of French toast in the microwave, poured a big glass of milk, and looked through the coupons again — coupons for bathroom cleanser, tampons, frozen french fries, spaghetti sauce, peanut butter, a new kind of toilet cleanser that foamed.
Lose 30 pounds in one month without being hungry and get the body you DESERVE to have!!!!
I took another bite and started to feel sick. I chewed slowly and studied the expiration dates and the pictures of women with straight shiny hair and apple cheeks who joyfully held up sponges and scrub brushes. The moms.

My phone vibrated. Kurt King’s number lit up the little screen. I set the phone back on the table and looked at it. The phone went silent and dark, then vibrated again. I opened it. “Hello?”

“Is this Ashley?”

Sometimes I had the feeling that I did exist, that I had a life and would have a life in the years to come. I’d lose weight and become a doctor. Everything would unfold for me. But lots of times, there was nothing inside me but huge billowing emptiness, or sadness, or clouds. Like an atom: 99.99 percent emptiness. When you’re nothing, you can be anything you want to be. I closed my eyes.