Page 114 of Fade into You
Fine. I fucking hate that word. It holds a million meanings that aren’t even close to the actual. It’s a waste of a word, and here it is saying something Mack definitely isn’t.
“Mack, let me in and show me you’re fine,” I say, the fear in me bringing out a rough tone in my voice and a cold sweat through my body.
“Just go, Jessa.”
“No, Mack, let me in.”
I start pushing on the door. She’s still sobbing, not talking anymore. Not fine.
I’ve seen it on cop shows. I’ve seen it in so many movies Dade showed me. But the act of kicking in a door is nothing like they make it look. It doesn’t splinter as I slam hard with my boot. It stays right there, a big boot print on the pristine door. My dirt, ineffective. I kick again and it shudders. I take an extra step into the hall and project my body forward, like I’m rushing into the mosh pit, like I’m body-slamming some Juggalo who’s 250-plus, with muscle, like I’m trying to do some damage. And I do.
Finally the lock gives way and the door swings open, and there is Mack and the knife.
I think 90 percent of my nightmares have been right here. Me and Mack and the knife.
But the red. It’s not there. She hasn’t made the first cut. She’s screaming, crying, unintelligible phrases except for “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.” I’m moving toward her faster than I thought possible. My brain all animal, all fear.
I reach for the knife, a mean kitchen blade meant to slice through a turkey or roast. I grab it away from her tissue-paper wrist, from the scars left from another night like this one. I feel it bite into my palm. It’s still sharp from Thanksgiving. Dad standing in the kitchen with the honing steel, theshink, shinknoise of the sharp becoming sharper. I feel the cut more than I’ve felt anything this month. It’s real and white-hot and the red finally blooms. Except it’s mine this time. For a second I’m relieved, until my brain understands the damage. I wanted to hurt tonight, but not in this way.
Mack is in my other arm, the words repeating in a mantra that doesn’t summon anything for me. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t…”
I hold her close. I put the knife out of her reach. I dial 911 with bloody fingers on the cell my parents gave me for exactly this purpose. I don’t know what I ask for, but I hope they’re coming fast.
I hum to her. The only thing I can think of is Dar Williams’s cover of one of Mack’s favorite songs by the Kinks, “Better Things.” It’s a sweet song of hope—hope that I don’t think either of us has. I hold her, my blood seeping into the back of her shirt.
I know you’ve got a lot of good things happening up ahead.
Are there? I don’t know. But we need fake hope. Mack and I need something.
“Mack, you’re gonna find better things,” I murmur into her hair, her head pressed into my shoulder, and I hope she will, I hope I will. I hope we grow up one day and look back at all this and think it’s incredibly fucked but that we survived. I hold her so tight and she keeps crying and I feel hot tears on my face and I just hope for once that we can make this better the right way.
We’re still on the floor together when I hear the emergency crew coming in the front door, calling out. I respond, and they’re here. Me explaining she’s suicidal. Me telling themshe’sthe one who needs help. She fights, but the cops are here too and restrain her. She’s going to the hospital. No, I don’t want to ride along. No, I don’t need first aid; it’s just a scratch. Yes, I’ll let our parents know. The ambulance is here and gone in a flash that was actually an hour. The paramedics looking at me like I’m an idiot, me lying that I’m eighteen and not seventeen and a half, and fully able to refuse medical assistance.
I call Dad and don’t know what to say to his voicemail. I write a note and leave it on the counter, my blood dripping across it, sticky smears. I wrap my hand in the same towel Bird used to cover the frozen corn for my face. No one is left to care for me tonight.
Mack tried to reboot. She’s at the hospital. I’m done. You need to fucking help her.
There’s only one place to go. There’s only one person right now I can be around. I can’t worry about the shit of the last month. I can’t worry about anything. This is me choosing to graba safety rope, and I hope to fucking god she’ll understand.
I get into Betty the Buick, blood oozing from underneath the towel, coating the tan leather of the steering wheel. I shove that hand in my pocket and head to her house.
Almost there, I see a flash of white on the sidewalk, like a ghost, a memory of her. But I stop and realize itisher. Bird. All her beauty there and tears streaming from her eyes. Inside me, a mix of so much emotion blasts through the black hole and overwhelms, tears flowing down my face too, no sound… just all the things I’ve been swallowing coming back up.
I put the car in park and get out.
“Bird!”
She looks scared, then relieved, wide eyes on me.
“I’m so sorry,” I sob.
She says something as I rush to her, the hug in my arms aching for her body.
BIRD
It’s four forty-five and thesun is setting on the last day of the year—the last day of the century. I’m standing outside in the backyard because I don’t know where else to be. Everyone else is inside, getting nervous about what will happen at midnight. Because somehow, after all these months of Y2K madness and technology people working around the clock to try to fix all the problems with all the computers, no one knows if it will really work.
Either society collapses at the stroke of twelve, like the past hundred years have just been some kind of Cinderella-esque dream and we’re about to be plunged back into the Dark Ages, or the spell will hold and things will move ahead like they have been, no one the wiser.
