Page 2 of Reckless Liar

I wiped my hands on the Christmas towel I’d forgot to pack away a few weeks before. I made my way to the stairs that lead to our bedroom, pausing in front of Xander’s room. The door was open, his comforter strewn in a heap on the floor. A dirty water cup sat on his bedside table. His favorite beanie was sitting on his dresser. He must’ve been in a rush that morning if he forgot it. In the Pacific Northwest, it can be chilly at four in the morning, especially in January.

I shut the door; I didn’t want to look at his mess every time I walked by on my way to the stairs. Climbing the stairs, to our second story, I listened for the sounds of Max snoring. The door to our room was slightly ajar, cold winter sunlight trickling through the small window above the bed.

Walking into our room, it looked empty at first glance. The duvet still had my tight corners and the feather throw pillows that molted if you hit them too hard. I almost missed his feet sticking out from the end of the bed. I rounded the corner and saw him sitting on the floor between the bed and the wall. He was slumped against the wall, his head resting back.

“Max. Wake up,” I said, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice. I’d seen an empty bottle of Jack in the recycling bin. He drank too much last night. It wouldn’t be the first time he didn’t make it to bed. Most nights, he crashed on our living room couch downstairs.

When he didn’t stir, I bent down, patting his leg a few times. With no response, my chest became tighter, a low whistle forming in my ears. “Max, this isn’t funny,” I said again, harsher.

I grabbed his foot, pulling him down flat on his back. His head hit the floor with a loud whack and then rolled to the side. Falling to my knees at his side, I tipped his head back to check for breathing. When I couldn’t feel anything, my hand began shaking as I grabbed at his wrist, searching for a pulse. His skin was cold against my fevered fingers. I tipped his head back and gave a rescue breath. Acrid vomit clung to the corner of his mouth.

Pumping against his chest, I felt his ribs crack beneath my hands. His color was all wrong, his tan skin pale. I watched my hands pushing down against Max, my breaths bursting out of me into his mouth. I looked for the rise and fall of his chest from my breaths. For oxygen that wouldn’t reach his brain. His skin chilled more and more. The stiffness in his neck got worse.

I think I knew the truth the moment I sank down beside him; he was gone long before I walked up those stairs.

I had no concept of time. At one point I collapsed on top of him. It must’ve been early afternoon when I heard the door open downstairs and, after a few minutes, Xander calling out for me and Max. I listened as he climbed the stairs. Xander’s heavy footsteps came closer until I could feel him standing over us, seeing me slumped over Max’s body. I registered the cursing and the yelling. But I didn’t move my head off Max.

Xander’s lanky arm wrapped around my waist, pulling me up. I wanted to fight him—to bite, to scratch, and claw to stay with Max. I wanted to wound Xander with my resistance. But all I could do was lie slack against him, bisected over his arm in my fatigue. All my energy had been spent trying to bring back a man who was already gone.

With Xander’s arm around my waist, he half carried me downstairs, settling me on our couch. The tan micro suede thing the three of us had saved for months to buy—a hopeful domestic purchase. Pressing my palms into the overstuffed material, my hands were numb against the slick fabric. It was there we waited for the officials to arrive. I stared at their shoes, black industrial no-nonsense things that could only be the police. Xander must’ve called at some point. Was it when I was still lying over Max’s body? How long did I stay there, covering his prone form, my head against his rib cage? My ear pressed against the flames tattooed along his sides. My hair had matted to Max’s arm crease where he was ticklish.

Did Xander call after he pulled me off, my body pendulous against him? My knees were too weak to hold me up on my own. Fervently, I rubbed my hands on the couch. The red and blue flashing lights splashed our white walls like a Kandinsky painting. I watched the paramedics walk up the stairs into the bedroom.

Our bedroom,

Mybedroom.

They came down minutes later. I knew what that meant. It didn’t take long to pronounce someone beyond rescue measures.

At some point, Xander sat next to me, pulling me into his side. I fit into the nook of his armpit; I felt so small and alone. The woman officer crouched down in front of me to ask questions. I couldn’t tell you what they were. I kept staring at the stairwell. After a minute of questioning, Xander said we’d come to the station later. The officer nodded her head, looking from my dirty scrubs to Xander’s hand on my shoulder to the floor.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said.

Behind the officer, the coroner brought a stretcher down the stairs, a black bulk in the middle. I watched them wheel it out the door before realizing that was Max. Jumping up, I tried to follow them out, with Xander pulling on my arm. We got down to the ambulance, and I watched as they loaded his body into the back. I stepped forward to climb in with him, but Xander placed a hand on my shoulder, holding me in place.

“You can’t go, Ana.” He pulled me tighter against him. “You just can’t.”

I watched as the door swung shut in front of me. Sinking down onto the front yard, I plunged my fingertips into the grass, digging out clumps of dirt. Slowly, the ambulance drove away on our little dirt road, maneuvering through the potholes. I watched until the lights turned away onto the main road. I watched until there was nothing to see, and then I watched the clouds in the sky dissipate into another perfect winter day. A day not unlike our trip to Fort Townsend. All those sun-soaked days were gone. At some point, I let Xander pull me to my feet; I grabbed a hold of his arm, steadying myself. With the back of my other hand, I wiped my mouth, Max’s dried vomit and blood mixing bitterly with the dirt against my tongue.

Licking my lips, I could almost feel Max on our last good day. The way his lips had been so firm against mine, his tongue tasting of weed and cinnamon gum. How stupidly happy I was at that moment.

How stupidly happy I thought I could be.

Chapter one

“This will only sting for a second.” -Dr. Harvsten to a seven-year-old Ana.

Thefuneralwasashoddy affair in the smallest room of the funeral home. Xander and I could only afford was the cheapest plan they had; cremation and a small urn to hold his ashes. Max’s mother’s only contribution to the funeral was to shout at the director. Xander and I pooled our savings to pay for a small plot in Apple Tree Grove Memorial Park, the run-down cemetery behind the hardware store.

A handful of family members came. Girls from high school who I’d never really talked to kept approaching, their mascara-streaked faces stark, offering hugs and future coffee dates when I was ready. Guys Max worked construction with over the years came, hugging me too close, whispering in my ear that if I needed, “anything, anything at all, to call me,“ slipping me their phone numbers scrawled on greasy gas station receipts. Every touch felt like a betrayal to Max, that I should have these sensations against my skin. That I had the right to experience disgust for his old boss’s chewing tobacco breath against my ear. The way I could endure the pressure of Mrs. Bishop, our old algebra teacher’s shoes, as she stepped on my toe. When Max would never again feel a thing.

I wasn’t asked to speak. What Max and I had was mine alone. How could I explain that I’d give anything to have one more day with Max, even if it was our worst day? That when I saw him, I knew he was gone? That my chest was a deep lacuna. Every breath I took was a whistle against the edge.

Weeks after Max died, we got the official ruling on his cause of death. Accidental death brought on by a lethal mix of alcohol and opioids.

Case closed. No more follow-up questions about what the troubled boy did to himself.

I tried to work, but when a patient threw up, my mind took me back to the bedroom. I could feel his cold mouth against mine, his stiff skin under my hands. Blood throbbed in my ears and my clipboard clattered against the linoleum floor. A pounding sensation took over my head, my ribs constricting in my chest. My breath came out in short bursts and tiny dots swam in my vision. My shoulder struck the wall, and I slid down until I was crumpled on the ground with my head between my knees. Behind my eyelids I could see Max’s body on the ground, hear the crunch of his ribs under my hands, feel the slip of my knees next to him. I rocked back and forth, dulling the buzz of chatter above me.

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