Chapter 8 Jessa
JESSA
When I get in, Mom and Dad are already in bed, and I’m the lucky individual who gets to deal with Mack’s return.
Much like the truck, she is destructive and very smashed.
Currently she’s face down on the kitchen counter, ass nearly off the stool, and when I try to sneak by, she wakes up and grabs my arm.
“Do you love me?” She’s got a molasses slur to her words, and her mascara is raccooned around her eyes.
She’s low. It’s easier to cope with than when she’s up, but I do have to watch my words.
It sucks never knowing if you said the phrase that triggered an attempt or god forbid if she ever manages to succeed.
My next couple of hours might just be spent trying to get her to bed safely.
I sigh, grab a couple of glasses, and fill them with water—hopefully helping her future hangover and assisting my lingering dry mouth.
“Of course I love you, Mack,” I say, and plunk the glass in front of her. Falstaff wanders in sleepily at the sound of the fridge. I pour half my water in his bowl, and he enthusiastically slurps at it before realizing it’s just water and not a treat. “Falstaff loves you too.”
“I don’t know why anyone would love me,” she says, and for a moment it’s hard not to agree.
I love the old Mack, the one who used to laugh and play pranks and took me to ride on all the coasters at Miles of Fun.
I loved the way she used to take me around with her friends like I wasn’t a little sister, let me join them at the pool and movies, sent me off to grab sodas or popcorn and jokingly “tipped” me with Monopoly money scavenged from abandoned board games.
I loved when she would sit me down, spend what seemed like hours pulling a brush through my long, dirty-blond hair, and then lay in braids that were intricate and beautiful.
That time is gone, though. Most of my hair is in the trash, and my bob is bright blue if I remember to Manic Panic it before it fades, greenish blue if not. Today I’m very blue.
“Mack, I think you need to get some sleep.”
“I need a reboot,” she murmurs, head back on the counter.
“What?” Whatever she’s talking about can’t be good.
I know the drinking is helping her cope, but it’s hard to love her when the psych ward sends her back to us on decent meds, she stabilizes, and I see that glimpse of Old Mack just before she goes off her meds and grabs a bottle and hops on that roller coaster once again.
“You know, like Dad does, just turn off and on again and suddenly it’s fixed.”
“I’m not sure that’s exactly how it works,” I say, noticing her shoes are gone, the soles of her feet filthy.
She tends to take them off when she’s up, says she can feel the world through her feet.
Says potential just eats through her soles…
I see what I think is gum and what I hope isn’t a gash caked with dirt on the bottom of her left foot.
“I just need to be rebooted and everything will fix itself,” she murmurs.
I don’t want to, but we’ve been instructed to ask it: “Mack, are you planning on hurting yourself?”
In a flash of horror, I see once again the bathroom, all the peach tile and sink and bathtub and toilet, everything spattered with blood.
It’s me and Mack and no one else, and I’m thinking if I can find what she used, I won’t have to worry about her hurting herself further than she has while I call 911.
I can feel my hands slipping on her wrists as I try to hold pressure on them.
I remember thinking, She can’t still be awake with all this blood on the floor, but she was, awake and looking at me and trying to pull away, a whisper of “Let me go…” It’s like a movie in my head, and I thought I’d finally stopped seeing it, but I guess she brings it out in me.
Swimming against the current of the blackness I’m in, I pull hard to return to the present.
I’m scared that one day I won’t swim back.
At first I think she’s asleep, but she raises her head and stares me down, icy blue eyes angry and red.
For a second, I think she might actually come after me like she does Dad.
“Why the fuck does everyone think I’m gonna fucking hurt myself all the time?
Can’t I be fucking sad without hurting myself? ”
Because you’ve tried, I think. Because when you’re sad, you hurt either yourself or Dad.
I don’t say anything, just put a hand on her back.
I know it always calms her a little. She leans into tears again, and once she’s cried for a few minutes, I hand her a paper towel to blow her nose and take the interruption as a chance to shepherd her to bed.
We pass Mom on the way to Mack’s room; she looks haunted and pale.
By the time I’m back in the hall, Mom’s collected herself into Stepford perfection, complete with fake smile and happiness.
“Thank you, Jessa. I appreciate you helping your sister.”
“She’s talking about rebooting herself,” I say, wondering if I should stay in her room tonight, just in case.
“Oh, she probably just had too much fun with her friends.” She waves me off. “I’m sure she’ll be fine in the morning.”
“Fun,” I repeat. “Sure.”
She locks eyes with me for a second, and I know she knows Mack isn’t going to be fine anytime soon.
But I’ve passed the warning over. It’s on Mom now.
The guilt will haunt me anyway, but I can publicly say the warning was given—not that it counts for crap.
Mom refuses to crack, acting like Mack is just tuckered out and not in one of her terrifying spirals.
I finally look away, there’s no getting to her tonight.
“Yeah, fine. I’ve got school tomorrow, so I’m gonna pass the fuck out,” I say, and wander toward my room as she calls out, “Language, Jessa!” behind me, a last attempt at order.
Instead of passing the fuck out, I sneak down and check Mack’s door throughout the night. She doesn’t leave, and the sound of her snoring is a comfort of sorts.
I’m running late the next day and only have time to throw on mildly clean clothes, and then race to pick up Dade, who is smoking what’s likely his third cigarette of the morning in his front yard.
He looks like a large, chunky black crow, perched on the stoop in his trench coat and black suit.
When I honk, he takes his time finishing his smoke (Betty the Buick doesn’t allow any cigarettes) and saunters over. Dammit, I’m gonna get a tardy.
“Thought the principal said no more trench coats ’cause, you know, Columbine,” I say, knowing he’s been warned at least five times about it.
“Fuck Columbine. It’s over,” he says, and the crack lands silently.
Neither of us are over it. It was hundreds of miles away, but the last time I saw a gun in school, some idiot was showing it off right before he got tackled by the school resource officer.
I think he got three days’ suspension. But what happened there, it was terrifying.
I mean, we’d done drills for atom bombs and fires and hurricanes, goofing our way through those…
but someone blasting through homeroom like a commando…
it made me nervous, and I know it scared Dade, too.
I know he wears the coat because he’s been wearing it forever and to take it off means something more gets taken from him…
but I think it sends the wrong message. His bravado seems shitty today.
“Whatever,” he says, when I stop at a light, reaching for the CD player to replace the Soundgarden CD with Garbage. “I’ll take it off before we go in.” He leans back and closes his eyes for the ride while “the queerest of the queer” blares out the windows.
Once we arrive, I pull off before the parking lot, letting him hop out for his final smoke and preventing others from seeing him ride with me.
He apparently doesn’t need to deal with those kinds of questions.
As I pull away, I see a familiar JNCO-clad figure attempt to meld into his body, and they wander off into the woods.
Gross. I head into the lot and bust ass toward chem class, most definitely late.
I don’t see Dade again until lunch, and notice he’s grabbed the coat from my car—gotta keep up that no-fucks-given image—and has taken the Dade and Kayla show outside.
It’s verging on soft porn, all set on the picnic table in the back quad.
Stifling a gag, I go back to my Discman, turning up Tori Amos and trying to ignore the hunger in my belly.
Today is not a day for braving the caf. Not when my protector is… well, hopefully using protection.
I wander over to a covered sidewalk that has become my lunch hideaway, a spot that is somehow empty during lunch periods…
probably because the wind hits just right on cold days and the sun gets you all sweaty on hot ones.
Also, there’s cameras out here, so no one can sneak a smoke.
It offers the singular benefit of being entirely alone.
I’m into the music, listening to the nonsense words and hefty piano Tori’s so good at, her voice hitting highs and lows with a deep confidence I almost never hear in mainstream female artists.
A pair of sandals appear in my vision, and I look up to see a less-than-pleased-looking Bird.
She’s wearing this hippie-style shirt and a skirt that hugs her hips in a breathtaking way, curly hair begging for my hands…
. Shit. I focus back in and she’s visibly unhappy.
Her lips move and Tori wails out “Caught a Lite Sneeze.” She puts her hands on her hips, lips moving again and face turning noticeably red with frustration, so I pull off my headphones.
“… least you could do is listen to me,” she finishes.
“Listening now, what on earth do you want from me? Thought it was all said the other night.” So, I might be bitter. Not a fan of getting called out, especially in my lunch hole. Especially by a hottie with a really nasty attitude but a pretty cute mad face.
“Why are you sitting over here, anyway?” She glances over to the picnic table. “I see they’re connected at the mouth already. Wanna go over there with me? I don’t want to try to separate them on my own.”
I give a half laugh, even though I don’t find any of it very funny.
“Dade and I don’t do lunch; we don’t really associate at school.
” She squints at me like she’s confused.
“Stuck in your head much? Everyone knows I exist right here for lunch, and they usually leave me be unless the casserole is bad and someone wants to try their aim, or whatever you’re doing here right now. ”
“That seems kinda shitty,” she responds, and I can tell it’s outta her mouth before she’s had a chance to realize how pathetic that sounds.
“Gee, thanks. I’d never noticed high school was a dumpster fire,” I snap back, and I can see her fluster again at my harsh tone.
How can she be so angry and so sensitive at the same time?
Not to mention, she seems delicate, but in a good way.
The kind that makes me wish I could get a smile from her rather than this exasperated expression.
She takes a deep breath and collects herself in a very attractive manner that has me fighting not to reach out and touch just one curl or fingertip, a bit of beauty against my skin.
She slides down beside me on the sidewalk, brick wall at her back.
“Sorry, that wasn’t, well, tactful.” I snort at the statement and she continues, “This won’t work,” she says.
“Okayyyy, so maybe head over to another lunch area rather than the sidewalk between E building and the back quad.” This was, until today, my chill lunch space.
A corner of the school that any time other than class change is eerily quiet, empty, and almost unnerving when it isn’t acting out the utilitarian role of passageway for dozens of kids rushing between classes. I feel safe here when it’s empty.
“No, this…” She waves toward the corner of my vision that I’ve been avoiding, and I’m not sure if full missionary dry humping is specifically banned in the school handbook, but if not, we definitely need an addendum for Dade and Kayla.
“Yeah, that’s… unfortunate,” I say, and start to put my headphones back on.
“But what are ya gonna do? Hormones, right?” I figure that’s the end, but she actually grabs my headphones, puts hands on my Discman, and turns it off, setting it beside her like she’s some kind of mom.
I’m about to blast her for touching my music when something brilliant pours forth from her incredibly-kissable-wow-she’s-close lips.
“We need to break them up.”
And that very second, Bird becomes my new favorite person.