Becoming Sarah

chapter SIXTEEN


I met Liza and Aurelie for lunch on Sunday. We’d arranged to get together at a cafe in North Beach, near Washington Square. It was the sort of place I was getting used to: cloth napkins, muted background music, the sound of clinking silverware and quiet conversation. They were both late, so I had time to sit and brood.

Liza arrived first. She plopped herself down across from me and grinned. “So, how was it? Details! I must have details!”

How had she heard about Nick so fast? It had just happened yesterday. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.

Aurelie breezed in and joined us. “Don’t want to talk about what? That babe you had Friday night?”

Oh, of course. Friday night.

“Nothing happened. I sent him home.”

“And wasted a good high? What a shame.” Aurelie shook her head.

“Nothing happened. Not with him.” Despite their teasing, I needed to confide in someone. “But Nick came over the next morning. . .”

“You didn’t!” Liza shrieked.

Aurelie laughed. “You little slut, you.”

I wasn’t laughing. “This is serious, you guys. I – I don’t know what to do.”

Liza patted my arm, but she couldn’t stop giggling. “Sorry.”

I jerked my arm away. “Really, I mean it. Why can’t you ever be serious?”

Aurelie made a pouting mouth as she picked up the menu. “Poor baby.”

Right now, more than anything, I wanted Maria’s sympathetic ear. She knew how to listen, really listen. When my mom was on one of her binges, Maria was always there for me, no matter what. And she didn’t just listen. She came over and helped me clean the apartment. She brought me pans of her mother’s chile rellanos. She was a real friend. These two. . . .

“And another thing,” I said, not bothering to hide my anger. “I don’t appreciate you giving me drugs and letting me go off with some stranger. He could have been a total psycho!”

“Nah.” Liza shrugged. “He was too hot to be a serial killer.”

“Besides,” Aurelie added, “you’re a big girl. I didn’t force you to take that pill.”

She was right, which only upset me more. “Still, it was a lousy thing to do. I don’t know why I hang out with you guys.”

Liza shrugged. “So don’t.”

“Maybe I won’t.” I stood up and pushed back my chair. “You know what? You aren’t really my friends. Friends don’t treat people like this.” My voice rose until half the restaurant was staring at us. “In fact, you can just both go to hell.”

Liza gave me an icy stare. “You’re no fun these days anyway. You’ve changed, Sarah, and not for the better.”

“It’s true,” Aurelie chimed in. “You’re different.”

Emotion choked me up. I cleared my throat. “You’re right. I have changed. If you ask me, it’s about time. I’m tired of being a doormat. I’ve had enough of being used, and encouraged to make stupid choices.”

Liza rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

“Don’t call me,” I said, as I stalked away.

“We won’t,” Aurelie yelled after me.

“God, what a bitch,” Liza said, loud enough for me to hear.

As I pushed open the front door and plunged out to the sidewalk, I heard them laughing.

So I’d burned all my bridges. Now I was really alone.

I’d lost my mother and Maria. I’d lost Sarah’s friends, her lover, and my neighbor Matt – the one person in my new life I’d actually liked. In my dreams I died again and again, while my murderer walked free. Plus, I might be pregnant by a man who wanted nothing to do with me.

As night fell, I wandered into the bathroom. I’d spent another afternoon sobbing into my pillow and eating ice cream. I peered into the mirror on the medicine cabinet. My face was puffy, my eyes red and irritated. I didn’t think I looked so beautiful anymore.

What was the point, anyway? Why go on, with nothing to look forward to?

I opened the medicine cabinet and stared at Sarah’s bottles of medication. One caught my eye. Sleeping pills. Maybe they would make me feel better.

I snapped off the cap and poured a few of the pills into my hand. I filled a glass with water and took one of them. If one helped me sleep, wouldn’t more help me sleep longer? I took another. No dreams for me tonight. Why not another? And another? I could make this all go away. I could put an end to it. I swallowed a third pill, and a fourth. I wasn’t really thinking, just trying to kill the pain in my heart. A fifth pill, but as it went down I retched and began to cry.

God, what was I doing? I stared at my face – Sarah’s gorgeous face – in the mirror. Tears coursed down my cheeks. How had I come to this? I really wanted to die. No, I just wanted to sleep and not wake up.

“No,” I whispered. “No, this is her. This isn’t me.”

A few weeks ago, with Ricky’s fingers on my neck, I’d wanted more than anything to go on living. Somehow, magically, I’d gotten my wish. So what was I doing now? I didn’t want this. Maybe Sarah’s body did, but not me, not Jamie.

I knelt over the toilet. I shoved a finger down my throat until I gagged. The pills came back up, and the water with it.

With shaking hands, I washed my face and brushed my teeth. Something was wrong with me. As Jamie, I’d had rough times, but I’d never seriously thought about suicide. Yet, after two weeks as Sarah, I’d nearly done myself in.

Back in the ninth grade, I’d had a science teacher who liked to ask us hard questions. He’d stalk around the classroom, his hands behind his back. “Is biology destiny?” he’d ask. “Do murderers have a murder gene? Are some people just naturally stupid, others smart?”

I remember raising my hand. “Lumley!” he thundered. “Tell us what you think.”

“No,” I said.

“No, what?”

“No, biology isn’t destiny. A murderer chooses to kill. Maybe it’s true that some people are smarter than others, but you can always study harder.”

Now I thought of that class discussion and wondered if I’d been wrong. As I changed into sweatpants and climbed up in bed, I wondered if suicide was Sarah’s biological destiny.

I curled up into a fetal position, my knees pulled against my chest. What if there was something wrong with Sarah’s body, something chemically wrong?

What if – and these words were a whisper in the back of my skull, spoken by a small voice I didn’t want to hear – what if it wasn’t Sarah’s body at all, but the terrible, wrenching thing that had happened to me, to Jamie, in an alley on the way home from work?

I pictured myself a few minutes earlier, popping pill after pill into my mouth. How had I come to that? I hadn’t been so scared since I woke up on Sarah’s bathroom floor.

It was a wake up call.

I needed to get my life together, and fast.

No sooner had I made that decision than I felt a wetness between my thighs. I sat up, turned on the light, and found my underpants stained with blood.

Not pregnant. Thank God for small favors, anyway.