I dig my nails into my palms again and look ahead. Staring contest, glaring contest. Let’s go, universe. You and me, right here, right now.
Micah pulls to a stop farther away than normal, and the Metaphor looks even smaller. I get out of the car. Slam. He closes his door as quietly as he can, as if that’ll make my slam less offensive. I shove my hands into my pockets and start toward the quarry, and he follows, and we stop right at the edge of the rocks. I don’t even need to tilt my head back to squint at the top anymore.
“You know,” I finally say, “it’s actually really fucking ugly.”
“Yeah, I guess,” says Micah.
“It’s really just a pile of shit.”
But Micah isn’t looking at the Metaphor anymore, he’s looking at me. His eyes are all wide and worried, and he says my name, and I look at the sky and wonder, How many times can a person explode?
Here’s some metaphorical resonance for you: I don’t want to look up at the Metaphor anymore. You should not look up to shit. You should not want to fucking climb to the top of something that shouldn’t even exist, and this isn’t how I wanted to reach the top anyway. I wanted to reach the top of a mountain. This is barely a pile anymore. It’s a disappearing heap of rejected rocks that should have drowned with the rest of the quarry.
“Janie, what are you—Janie, what the hell? Janie, stop, Janie—”
I dig my hands in and I pull. I grab, I throw, I kick, I plunge again and again and I swear, I swear, I fucking swear, I will tear this thing to the ground.
I don’t know when I started crying, but I don’t care anymore, I don’t care that I can’t stop, I don’t care that I can’t see. I don’t need to see. I just need to get rid of it. I need to break it apart. I need—I need—
And then Micah is pulling me away and I might be screaming, a whirlwind, limbs and fists and bursting, but this time he knows exactly what to do with his arms, and they’re around me. My face is in his coat and his coat smells like Dewey’s cigarettes and rain and maybe a little bit like pot, but mostly it smells like him, like wood polish and honeycomb and mine.
“God,” I blubber into him. “God damn it all, Micah.”
He puts his chin on top of my chin. “What’s wrong?” he asks quietly. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“No,” I sob. Because what’s the point?
And that’s the thing about Micah. He leaves it at that.
after
DECEMBER 15
Court-mandated alcohol therapy is not the worst sentence for underage drinking. As far as hearings go, mine is easy. They just send me back to Dr. Taser for a few more sessions.
Dr. Taser says that now that I have started to remember, I can start to heal too. This is bullshit, because this is not the first time I’ve pushed crap completely out of my mind.
“My father picked my first name for his father and my mom picked my middle name for her favorite month,” I told her last time I was here. “She died when I was three years old, and I don’t remember her at all. I should, but I don’t. You’re supposed to start remembering shit when you’re, what, two?”
“Language, Micah,” Dr. Taser said gently.
“Yeah, sorry. So my mom died in this car accident. There had been, like, an ice storm the day before or something, and she wanted to check on my grandparents, and she was going to spend the day there, right? And my dad was having this affair with some lady who lived in the neighborhood. She used to make us lemon bars. These, like, really fantastic lemon bars, right? So while my mom was dying, he was having sex with some lady down the street and I was with my babysitter, who also lived down the street. And when they called him from the hospital, he didn’t answer because his phone was downstairs and he was upstairs having sex—yeah, okay, you get it. So he finishes what I hope was damn good sex, it better have been fucking worth it—”
“Micah—”
“—and hears that his wife is dead, and he never gets over it. He picks us up and moves us to Waldo. And he tells me all of this in, like, third grade. A confession or whatever, like that’ll fix his shit, and I just . . . I don’t know. The next day, I forgot about it. And he kept telling me and telling me and I kept forgetting. I don’t remember when I finally started remembering what really happened to him and Mom. I stopped talking to him when I did, though. It’s not like I had that much to say to him before, anyway. But fuck, I know I should care, but I don’t. So, yeah, that’s me. Oh, and I feel fine now. This therapy is really helping.”
Today is the last time I have to be here. I have paid the money I owe the government for harming my body with more than fourteen drinks per week, I have gone to the therapy sessions, I have nodded and agreed to be responsible from now on. I go to Dr. Taser’s office, where she is already waiting with her iPad.
“Can I get you anything?” she asks me. “Water? Coffee?”
“The hell out of here,” I say, and smile as if I were joking. I’m unconvincing and she’s not convinced, but what the hell. We both keep smiling.