Mayte #2
I can’t tell if I’m angry or embarrassed or why I’m suddenly yelling.
“What are you talking about?” Claire says.
“Wouldn’t want to make poor Mayte sad. Wouldn’t want to let everyone talk freely about their actual lives because Mayte doesn’t get to have one!” I shoot a look at my prima. “I know you all tiptoe around college talk so I’m not left out.”
“I’m just trying to be inclusive,” Leo mutters.
“Well, I’m not a baby. I don’t get to go to college. Oh boy! So sad! Who cares? Doesn’t mean you can’t talk to me.”
Leo sighs. “We talk to you all the time.”
“Not about college and futures and what’s going to happen next.” I point at Auggie. “He talks to me about college. And futures and stupid Georgio and—”
“You don’t ever want to talk about college because you’re already sure you’re not going,” Leo shoots back.
“Baby—” Janko starts, putting his hand on Leo’s leg.
“Don’t get to go. Why would I think about something I don’t get to ever have?”
“Doesn’t that feel a little dramatic to you?” Leo asks.
“No, it feels realistic. I’m thinking realistically. I’m thinking about things I know are in my future and college isn’t, so—”
“So we don’t talk about it around you,” Leo says.
Silence again.
“Sorry to fuck up the hopeful excitement of your senior year of high school talk.” I push myself off Auggie’s shoulder, shoving him back onto the couch as I struggle to my feet. “I need water,” I say. “I’m drunk.”
I don’t look back as I run into the kitchen. I grab a cup and eye the vodka. After a cup of water. My parents said I need to be home in the morning for Aida, so I’m probably going to have to get up early, and I hate taking the bus hungover.
I pull my phone from my pocket and when it unlocks, I am greeted by seven missed calls.
Two from my mom. Five from my dad. I know my mom had said they’d let me know tonight what time they were going in to work tomorrow so I could get there on time, but I assumed it’d just be a quick text. Not seven calls.
My phone begins to vibrate in my hand. My dad again.
“My dad’s called me, like, five times,” I say, walking back into the living room, where everyone sits silently. “Or six now, I guess. Do I sound drunk?”
“No,” everyone says.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll be right back.” I open the front door and walk out onto the steps. “Hello?”
There’s just breathing on the other line, then a couple of gasps. Then, “Mayte?”
My dad is crying.
There are voices in the background, but I do not recognize them.
“Daddy?” I say.
“Mayte,” he says again. He’s sobbing. “Aida’s hurt.”
The warmth from the alcohol sitting in my belly turns to a prickling ice.
“What?” I say. “What do you mean?”
“Aida’s hurt. She’s really hurt. She’s—”
“No,” I say again. “No, what do you mean?”
“Aida’s—”
“I heard you!” I yell into the phone. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “She stopped breathing. She’s not breathing. They’re doing CPR, but she’s not breathing anymore.”
“Stop!” I scream. “Daddy, stop.” I cannot control my voice. I do not know when it happened, but I am on my knees. “Stop lying to me! Stop lying to me!”
“Mayte, she’s… she’s—”
“Mayte?”
I look up and Auggie is standing over me.
“Stop!” I scream again, but I realize I’ve dropped my phone. It’s fallen down the stairs, screen shattered at the bottom. I am only screaming into the air. I am only screaming into Auggie’s shoulder once he’s kneeled beside me and wrapped me in his arms. “Stop lying!” I scream. “No!”
“Mayte,” Auggie says again. “What’s going on?”
I cannot tell him. I am only screaming “No!” over and over and over.
I am not sure if I’m drunk enough for the sky to be under my feet, but the concrete driveway is over my head and it is crushing me and I cannot tell if the fog is in my blood or in my head or in the sky.
Auggie is grabbing my unresponsive, fractured phone and sticking it in his pants pocket as he pulls me to my feet, and I am not helping him at all.
I am limp as I am imagining… as I am imagining my sister…
“Something’s wrong with Aida,” I say to him, and I cannot make out the volume because I am sure I am screaming and whispering at the same time. “Aida’s not breathing. She just stopped breathing.”
“Oh,” Auggie says. “Oh shit. Is she at home? Are they at home? Where are they?”
I try to respond but I only say, “She’s not breathing” again and again and again and—
“Here,” he says. He’s holding the passenger door of a car open and helping me into it. “Let me drive you home. I’ll text Janko what’s going on.”
I cannot feel the car moving, but I know it is because the world is passing by outside.
I curl my knees into my chest and suddenly I am screaming at the top of my lungs.
Auggie jumps when it begins, but soon he settles into the sound as if it is part of the air in his car, and I settle into it as if it is the only way I can breathe, which I think it might be, and when Auggie finally pulls up to my house, I jump out of the car before he’s even fully stopped.
“Mayte,” he shouts, and I go sprawling onto the concrete. The car engine shuts off, but before he can run to me, I scramble up and run to my front door. It’s unlocked and I throw it open, running into the living room. There are pillows strewn on the floor and blankets crumpled up beside them.
“What’s your dad’s phone number?” Auggie asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know. I don’t—”
“Mayte.” Auggie grabs my shoulders. “I need you to think. We need to call them.”
It takes me a moment and my hands are shaking as I input the number into his phone. Then I hand the phone back and he puts it to his ear, leading me to the couch and sitting beside me.
“Hello?” he says, finally, and I grab onto his arm. “Hi, um, this is Auggie, Mayte’s friend or tutor or friend or—” He’s quiet for a moment. “Yes, she’s right here.”
He passes me the phone and I don’t want to know but I cannot not know and—
“Hello, Mayte?” my dad says. He’s not crying.
“Is she… What’s going on?” I ask.
“She’s breathing again. They got her to breathe again. But it still doesn’t look—”
“Thank God,” I say. I grab onto Auggie and he holds me too. “Thank God. Oh, thank God.”
“The doctor just came in, I have to go,” he says.
“Okay. I’m at home. My friend Auggie brought me home. I’ll be—”
The phone hangs up.
The house is so silent.
“So, uh, what’s going on?” Auggie asks.
I exhale, not surprised I was holding my breath. I do not feel drunk in the slightest.
“She’s breathing again.”
“Good. That’s great,” he says.
“Yeah,” I say.
Silence.
“You can go if you want,” I say.
“I can stay if you want,” he says.
“You don’t have to. You can go.”
“I mean, are you sure you’ll be good on your own?” he asks. “Plus you don’t have a car, just in case—”
“In case of what?” I ask. The question comes out poisonous, but it was meant to come out as begging.
I don’t know what I am expecting. I don’t know what happens next.
I don’t want more hospital visits. I don’t want more sickness in my house, in my life, in my blood.
What comes next? Auggie, what comes next?
I want to ask him, but he is sitting beside me so kindly and so softly that I do not want him to show me the knives he could use to answer.
“I don’t know,” he says, and I know it’s a lie.
“Auggie, I need to be alone,” I say. “I’ll text you when they’re home.”
“Your phone is busted,” he says.
“I’ll text Leo from my mom’s phone and ask her to tell you. Or Janko or whatever. I’ll let you know.”
“Mayte, I wouldn’t want to be alone if—”
“Auggie, I said I want to be alone. It’s my sister. It’s my fear. I want to be alone,” I say. It sounds firmer than I mean it to.
He nods. “Okay. But swear you’ll get Leo to text Janko.”
“I swear.”
He walks to the door and opens it, but before he can exit, he looks down at his phone. He doesn’t have to say a word. I know it’s my dad. He picks up.
“Hello?” he says.
He’s silent. He looks at me. And again, he doesn’t have to say a word.
I know my sister is dead.