At some point my ritual stopped making me better and started making me worse, but it was way too late to stop, so I just kept marching, going through the motions at rehearsals and nodding at any criticisms like I knew just how to fix it, even though the words had lost all meaning. I was treating the lines like they were just a very long password spelled out phonetically, and if I said them in the right order and at the right volume I’d be set free for the night. If Showcase still scared me during those lost weeks I don’t remember it, but I don’t think I had the capacity to be scared anymore. I barely felt anything, which was the whole point.
I went uptown on the weekends, saying I was going to Joy’s but ending up at one of Dante’s friends’ instead, repeats of Smoke Dog’s party only without me crying or throwing up, because I’d developed a tolerance and because Dante told me he’d ban me if I ever “acted like a basic high school bitch” again. I’m pretty sure I texted you from some of those parties, but in the mornings I’d just delete everything, as if erasing the messages could take them back. For all I knew you’d blocked me. You never responded, and I burned with shame every single time.
One night on the way home, I took something palmed to me by Dante’s friend “T”—that he whispered was some homemade brew of heroin and speed. My heart started skipping beats when I was by myself in an empty subway car, and I got dizzy and slid off the bench onto the grimy floor next to an empty Cup Noodles. I don’t know how long I was lying there, but I woke up to an old Chinese woman standing over me yelling something I couldn’t understand, so I got up and staggered off the train and realized I was in Brooklyn. I walked home, I guess—somehow I was in my bed the next morning, feeling like someone drilled a hole in my skull and put a brick on my chest. I stayed home “sick” for a few days and slept, but the sleeping wasn’t enough, my brain wouldn’t start without jumper cables, and so I gave in and got out my straw and when I took the first sniff my brain caught on fire and I actually screamed. But then after a minute it started to feel better, even good, almost, so I told my mom I’d seen a roach and kept the door shut.
Ethan came by after school to check on me. He brought me flowers and soup and ran his fingers through my hair, and for the first time ever I didn’t want him to stop touching me, so I pulled him down and kissed him with my eyes closed so I could pretend he was you. After a minute, though, he pulled back and looked at me with that hungry, glassy-eyed look that boys get and said, “Why can’t we do this all the time?” And when I said I didn’t know, he asked me if he was my boyfriend, and I shook my head, not sure if my chin was moving up and down or side to side.
I did manage to hang with Joy once, on a weekend when she wasn’t rehearsing. I invited her over to make cookies from a roll of premade dough and watch DVR’d episodes of I Survived, a creepy budget reality show about people who should pretty much be dead, but weren’t. (Back then I think I thought it made me feel better about my own situation—like, at least I hadn’t been stabbed a million times in a home invasion and wrapped in a carpet—but now I think I watched it because I wanted to see life from the other side.) Right before she came over, though, I was running around the house checking everything to make sure it looked normal, layering sweaters to hide my skinny arms, and blinking back tears of Visine to get the pink tint out of my eyes. I was setting up for my supposed best friend the way I usually set up for a party, scrambling to hide everything that mattered.
We said all the things that girls always say when there’s tension that nobody wants to address—I miss you! (a veiled accusation); How ARE you? (cheerful, but with a sad smile that lets her know she doesn’t text enough); Life’s just been craaaaazy lately! (with a shrug that translates to “You would know what I’m talking about if you’d been there.”). If someone else had been eavesdropping it would have sounded semi-normal, but it wasn’t. I wish I had just told her what was going on, but I couldn’t risk making her even more upset with me. So instead I freaked out after she left and went to Dante’s. He had friends over and acted like I was crazy for showing up, which reminded me of you, and made me sad all over again. (You talked to me only if it was scripted. One night, after rehearsal, I’d caught up with you at the corner of Broadway but when I touched your arm, you shook you head and said, “Sorry, I just can’t do this.”)
You can’t tell Diego I see you, I begged Dante. You can’t tell him I come up here.
“What’s in it for me?” Dante asked with a slow smile, and before I knew what was happening I walked out with a deal and three bottles of pills that I paid for by taking out a cash advance on my dad’s AmEx at a bodega ATM. One bottle was for me, and the others were for me to “distribute.”
I guess you could say I’d found my motivation.
I guess you could say I was making a choice.
Chapter Seventeen
Mid-April
Less than a month left