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Something large and heavy lodged in my stomach. My throat tightened. "What?"
"Forget the question, already?" She turned to look at me over her shoulder.
I shook my head, shocked that I was feeling so suddenly defensive. "It's fine."
I don't care how well you know your friends there are always parts of them that you don't question. Pools inside them that are too deep to dive into. It might be because they tell you not to ask or maybe because you don't care. In this instance, it was more that Avery knew me well enough to know never to ask.
She had never, and I mean never asked about my memory problems. She knew about them, sure, but it was one of those things that were not up for discussion because there was no point. She couldn't help me solve them. I never delved into why she was always pretending to be happy when I could see she wasn't, or why she sometimes acted more like a mom than a friend, or about the obvious distrust she had for my meek foster brother. I never asked Avery why she felt the need to cut herself, either because she'd never tell me.
So for her to up and ask about my memory problems was weird.
"Do you remember your first foster home?"
It was like the air around me went cold. "I don't know."
She wrapped her arms around herself and seemed to squeeze, murmuring indecipherably.
Everyone knows one person with real shit for luck. For me, Avery was that person. My life was no bed of roses, but it really seemed that all the bad stuff happened to her. It also seemed that she put herself into those situations, but that was another one of those off-limit things. I cared. I wanted to ask all the time, but Avery wouldn't tolerate it. She'd let me stand beside her, hold her, even let me see her wounds, but she wouldn't let me heal them. She wouldn't let anyone in-not into that part. Only she was allowed into that black part she carried around. Her quiet storm.
As I sat on the dry ground, watching Avery's lonely form in the moonlight, I wondered if this was a precedent, if we were going to start talking about the things that really mattered.
But that wonderment was halted when Avery turned to look at me, clapping her hands together. "Time to get the fuck out of here."
+ + +
17
-Avery
People are fake. And who needs that bullshit?
Not me.
For a long time, though, I thought I did.
I was just one of the many lonesome people that walked among the Normals, pretending to be one of them, even though all I really was was transparent.
But there was more to it than that. When that empty part inside me opened up, it was like the second a door shut, the moment I was by myself, that black feeling would stretch over me and I became emptiness personified. A black hole. My skin, the casing that was stretching. I felt the hollow growing, pressing into me, threatening to turn me inside out or obliterate me completely. I couldn't stand it. It hurts to be stretched that way.
All I wanted was relief, and the easiest way to make it go away was to fill it. Fillers were always temporary, though. There was nothing that could ever truly make it stop. Drinking helped, sometimes. But I couldn't always get alcohol. Then, I'd have to grab onto the next best something. Or someone. To anchor me in place, to feel them beside me so I'd know I was still alive, because I couldn't really be evaporating if I felt something besides the emptiness.
+++
The first time I made the mistake of letting Troy-Shithead-Bleecher get near me was at a party. It was one of those nights that I snuck out, alone, seeking something more from life. I didn't know it was Troy's house. To me the party house was just another brown stucco-a suburban-type place-filled with people I didn't care to know. I just needed to get out of my head and feel something.
That night, Angel had come down with a migraine and withdrew the way she always did. There was nothing I could do for her, so I decided that I needed to party.
Strolling in the front door, the house was jam-packed.
I wasn't there even a full minute before some drunk dude-he was at least ten years older than me-staggered over and gave a creepy eye-rape that turned my stomach. I acted like he wasn't there, like I didn't hear him ask my name. I refused to notice him. As he reached for my shoulder I broke right and walked towards a large fish tank.
There were people everywhere. Mostly kids from Eager High. The large living area was otherwise empty-no furniture except for one lamp and the giant fish tank that bordered the living and dining rooms. In the dining area, on the opposing side the fish tank, were four jocks standing over a keg. One was holding a stack of red cups, another was holding a bag. Music played from unseen speakers as I recognized Jimmy Maroney and Curt Brody. People were walking up to them, placing dollar bills into the bag Jimmy was holding, then Curt would pass a cup to each person. A third guy I didn't recognize would pump the keg while a fourth would do the pouring. Jocks turned everything into a team effort.
The older drunk that greeted me at the door followed me over to the fish tank. Someone passing by addressed him as "Uncle Smiley." He stood a few feet away with a hand on the tanks' glass, seeming to watch the water bubbles gurgling from the filter.
I focused on the music. It was a new song, one I'd never heard before, but I liked the sound. It wasn't grunge, but it was definitely good.
Uncle Smiley made a dumb comment about my jeans: how tight they were and how he wondered why I bothered to put them on when he'd heard it was so easy to get them off.
