“The only way he comes out the other end of this alive is if we confront him,” she says.
“When did you become such an expert?”
“Have you never watched Intervention? That show literally maps out everything.”
“I’m sorry I haven’t binged your fave addiction porn.”
“If we really want to do this intervention right, we should bring in a specialist. Someone who’ll make sure Silas doesn’t hijack it.”
“Silas would kill us if we hired someone.”
Already this is feeling a wee bit too conspiratorial for my tastes: meeting up to discuss how to sneak-attack one of our best friends—et tu, Erin?—between happy hour drinks.
“What about his family?” Amara asks. “His sister could help.”
“I don’t think we should involve her.”
“Why not?”
“Callie found out that I sprung him out of rehab. She hates me right now.”
“Ugh. Fine. Scratch that. The three of us need to make a plan. Like a straight-up outline of everything—who’s speaking first, what we’re gonna say. We can’t let Silas walk all over us.”
It’s very likely Silas will sabotage this. He can easily turn this entire intervention into an indictment of our friendship if we let him. We can’t let him.
“We need to write our own impact statements.”
“What are—”
“Just personal statements about how his addiction has harmed us.”
“He’ll love that.”
“Are we just dicking around or what? Because if we’re serious about this, then we need to be prepared. We need to treat this like life or death, Erin, ‘cause that’s exactly what it is.”
We decide to do it at my apartment. “The sooner, the better,” Amara insists.
“How about this weekend?”
“Sooner. Silas could ghost on us again. How about tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow? I’ve got my interview with McMartin on Thursday.”
“We need to do this now,” Amara says. “For real, Erin—no messing around. You’ve got to make sure he shows. Give him an exact time, don’t let him bail.”
“He’ll know something’s up.”
“Then tell him it’s—I don’t know—your friendiversary or something. Just get him there.”
“What about Tobias?” I ask.
“I’ll rope him in.”
“Good luck with that.” Getting Tobias to agree to anything without Silas’s approval would be like enlisting your own shadow to stab you in the back.
It’s eleven by the time Amara and I have hammered out all the details. It’s starting to almost feel like fun, brainstorming together. I half convince myself we’re planning a surprise party, decorations and all: HAPPY INTERVENTION, SILAS!!!
“I should call it a night,” I say. “I’m gonna close out our tab.”
“Nooooo! One more drink.”
“It’s getting late…”
“Just one more.” Amara pouts. “Pleeeeease?”
You know who your true pals are when you Alamo the bar. Whoever’s standing by your side at last call is a friend for life. Amara and I have been kicked out of every watering hole in Richmond over the years—how could I say no to her?
“One more,” I eventually relent. “Sometimes I think you love me just for my credit card.”
“As God is my witness,” Amara says, doing her best Scarlett O’Hara, “I’ll never be sober again.” Suddenly her jaw drops. She’s clearly had an epiphany, which always spells trouble. “Come to New York with me!”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, why not? You don’t owe Richmond anything. What’s keeping you here?”
Silas, I almost say. “Let’s see if I land this gig on Thursday.”
“There are a million jobs just like it in New York,” Amara says. “Run away with me.”
I give the daydream a test drive, just to see how the engine purrs. Let’s play house in New York. What kind of life would I have up north? New friends. Out every night. Cramped apartment in Bed-Stuy. Too many roommates. Searching for an entry-level job, any job, settling for being an after-school tutor for some overprivileged kid on the Upper West Side. Is that the kind of life I’m after?
“New York’s your dream, not mine,” I say. Amara can have the rats, the smell of sweltering garbage, the heat radiating off the asphalt.
“You know what?” She takes a sinister sip. “Deep down, I think what you really want is to get domesticated.”
“Ouch. Don’t hold back, bitch, tell me what you really think!”
“Come on. Admit it. You just wanna get hitched, don’t you?”
“Fuck you!”
“Settle down. Pop out some babies. Have a nice house on the hill…”
“Just because I don’t want to move to NewYork with you doesn’t mean I’m some kind of closeted homemaker.”
I know Amara’s just fucking with me—she has a special knack for getting everyone’s goat—but it still stings. This is not who I am. Or, at least, who I want to be. I could tell her most days I feel like a piece of driftwood that sprouted twiggy limbs and I’m frantically paddling upstream. I am not driftwood, I say to myself. I am a schooner. I’m setting sail. Anchors aweigh.
“I’m sure your mama’s pleased as fucking punch you’re sticking so close to home.”
“Okay, now that’s crossing a line…” Mom talk is fraught territory between us. Amara knows better.
“Okay, okay—look me in the eye, in front of these witnesses”—Amara’s witnesses being Municipal Waste, apparently—“and repeat after me: I, Erin Hill, do solemnly swear…”
I hold up my hand. “I, Erin Hill, do solemnly swear…”
“That I will never settle down…”
“That I…uh…”
“I will never settle.”
“I’ll never settle…”
“That I believe domestic bliss is as good as death…”
“That domestic…” I can’t do it with a straight face. I burst out laughing.
“I knew it!” Amara shouts over the band. “You are such a housewife!”
“Screw you!”
“You’re totally gonna send me some pink pastel invite to your baby shower!”
“That hurts!”
Three rounds later, Amara and I stumble through the streets of Richmond, sandals in hand, serenading the city and its slumbering spirits with our best rendition of blotto Bon Jovi.
“Whooooooooa, we’re halfway there—”
We wrap our arms around each other, shoulder to shoulder, laughing and weaving in the middle of the road as we belt out the lyrics as loud as our lungs will allow.
“WHOOOOA-OHH! LIVING ON A PRAYER!”
“Shut the hell up!” a disembodied voice shouts from the surrounding shadows.
“Take my hand!” I call out to Amara as melodramatically as I can. “We’ll make it!”
Amara strikes her best damsel-in-distress pose, draping one arm drunkenly over her face, the other swinging at her side, still holding her sandals. “Do you swear?”
“Some of us are trying to sleep here!” the immaterial voice yells again, and we lose our shit, cackling our asses off. We pick up our pace, pulling each other through the street.
Amara makes sure I get into my building safely, then calls herself a cab. The hallway wall holds me up as I tumble into my apartment. I’m ready to fall into bed when I discover what appears to be a pillar of marble composition books stacked in the center of my living room.
Silas always carries around a notebook, creased and softened from rolling and binding it with a rubber band that he slips around his wrist whenever he writes. Sometimes he ties his long, dark auburn hair back with it. It’s his signature accessory.
“What the fuck,” I declare to the empty room, expecting someone, anyone, to answer. The apartment smells like a locker room.
I spot a few cardboard boxes shoved against the wall. I flip the lid on the top box and find it full of musty-smelling books. The book on top is so old its leather binding has blistered and bubbled. Is Silas moving all of his shit in? Since when did my living room become his self-storage unit? He’s not anywhere to be seen, so I step into the center of the room, standing before the tower of composition books. There have to be three dozen notebooks piled on top of one another, threatening to topple at the slightest exhale. I place my hand on the top notebook and immediately feel the entire column wobble. I gingerly lift the— “No peeking,” Silas says over my shoulder.