Loud Awake and Lost

“Of course. Hang on.”

Rachel and Patrick Case. I barely knew him, except that his untied construction boots always made him look a little bit homeless. It wasn’t important, but information about anything I missed while at Addington probably would always catch me off guard.

In my jewelry box, I’d placed the matchbook next to Kai’s little sketch of me. As I plucked the earrings from their notched holder, I wondered if maybe it would be better to toss out the Kai items. He hadn’t been in touch all day or night—clearly I wasn’t someone he’d fixated on the way I’d fixated on him. Out of sight, out of mind and all that. So maybe I wasn’t being fair to myself to hold on to these objects of defeat, keepsakes that were like my temp teeth—an impression hardened from a moment that had no permanent use in my life.

And thinking of Areacode was a little bit like thinking about Rachel and Patrick Case—a not-quite-reality. The night flowed back to me in a roar of noise, fake heads on spikes, toxic punch, fog and shadows, and me trance-dancing—with Kai and without him—light-headed and spaced-out.

I shut the jewelry box hard, to snap out the memory. “Here.” I handed Rachel the earrings.

“You’re the best.”

There was a soft knock on the door.

“Sweetie? Delivery.” Dad was holding a blue recycling bag, tied in a slip hitch—Dad’s knot of choice when he wanted things to stay sealed. “Here you go, with love from me and Mom.”

As he passed off the bag, his hug was hard, his cheek a quick press to the top of my head. He didn’t want to do this. My heart clutched. “Night, Dad.”

After the door shut, Rachel and I climbed up on my bed, facing each other, the bag plopped between us. “You know what? I’m not sure I want to open it.”

“Just do it,” said Rachel. “It’s your Pandora moment. And you need to know what’s in there.”

“Okay, you’re right. Here goes.” I worked out the knot, then I pulled up the items one by one. A thin, deep purple cardigan and a white T-shirt, patchily bloodstained rusted brown, and neatly sliced—probably by an EMT’s sterile scissors. The softened jeans were also seam-sliced, the right leg cut to ribbons. Just looking at the jeans, I could feel a bone-deep tingling in my legs, and could see those monstrous purple bruises stamped on my skin. God, I’d thought they’d never heal.

Unlike my body, there was no salvaging these clothes.

“I see the boots,” whispered Rachel.

I fished them both up with effort, as if out of a pond. Wide and blocky, the silver grommets were encrusted in dried river sludge. The boots themselves looked huge, too big to fill. But they were intact, and broken in, presumably to the shape of my feet. Rachel reached into the bottom of the bag and pulled out my black leather bomber jacket—whenever you’re selling—ripped and water-stained, like an old carcass.

We were silent. My fingertips followed the wavy traces of water and rusted blood, plainly visible against the sheepskin lining.

“Go ahead,” said Rachel. “Test them.” She nudged a boot closer to me. I set them both on the floor and slipped one foot, then the other, deep inside. They were heavier than anything I’d worn all year—including my hospital Crocs, my tennis sneakers, my loafers, and my rain boots.

As I walked around the room, my steps as careful as a biker Cinderella, Rachel folded the ripped clothing and tucked the items away into my bottom dresser drawer.

She would know that I’d need to hold on to them. They were my grim keepsakes.

Neither of us spoke as I slid into the jacket. Rubbed the sleeve back and forth against my cheek.

“You look cool,” Rachel commented. “Okay, so maybe I wasn’t loving it last year. But I’m revising that opinion. I think you grew into this look. Could be because you seem tougher, with the scars and all,” she joked.

“I think I bought the boots on Canal Street.” My words came as a surprise to me. I’d had to make a choice between these boots and a pair of vintage Doc Martens. I’d paid in cash. It had been freezing that day, the dead of winter. I’d marched straight out of the army-navy shop in them. Ready for anything and rushing toward everything.

The unexpected surge of remembrance was like a hug from a lost friend.

From my corkboard, the band members of Weregirl were observing me as if they’d been waiting for this moment ever since I got home.

“One step closer to the real me,” I said.

“Embie, no.” When I looked up, Rachel’s eyes were as steady as stars. “You’re so wrong about that. All parts of you, right this minute, are the real you, okay? With every new thing that you remember, don’t let that be something you forget.”

16

My Drowned Face

They had all gathered to watch the artist. A silvery afternoon in Carroll Park, chilled in silence. He had set up a picnic table. His concentration was utter, an invisible wall between himself and the crowd that had grown around him. Tubes of paints were spread out on the table. I remembered their names from my freshman art class—cadmium red, Chinese white, phthalo green.

I’d approached from a distance, lost in the audience while wanting to stay close. But he knew I was here. That was what mattered. I watched him squeeze paints, smearing color with a spatula-shaped instrument.

“The darklight on the silk screen will pick up the negative.” His voice. Exactly that voice. It prickled the hair at the nape of my neck.

“Let me look.” Had I spoken out loud?

And then I was aware of someone else. Someone watching us from the periphery.

The artist’s voice reverberated in my head. But that couldn’t happen—it was a distortion in my own brain. “Look. Look at you. You’re my best work.”

And now I saw T-shirts hanging like ghosts, caught in the bare branches. Some folded, others arranged to reveal images of me.

My own face, underwater. My opened eyes were sightless, my lips were a sealed slash of blood, my hair stood out from my face, unfurled like seaweed, snakes, Medusa.

When I opened my mouth to speak, all that I could taste was icy, dirty water—it filled my lungs, heavy as earth, pushing down on me, swallowing me—

I woke in a single hard motion, lunging forward; my eyes popped open like a doll’s. A nightmare. That’s all it was. It felt like more. My body was sweaty, the darkness impenetrable. For a few moments I couldn’t move. I stared at the ceiling, listening to the sound of my heart in my ears. I couldn’t have spoken a word if I tried, or moved a muscle. My limbs were collapsed like bent tent struts beneath the covers, my mind smoked like a just-tamped fire, my thoughts were still somersaulting, unguided, in a netherworld between air and water, dreams and wakefulness, life and death.