In my overstuffed duffel bag I had more MAC and wardrobe changes than an average showgirl, but the thought of taking anything out caused a mild panic attack. My makeup and clothes were like battle armor. They comforted me; they made my life feel like less of a mess. I needed them. I tried to cancel the absurd sleepover multiple times when I found out Sadie’s mom was out of town at a conference too. Lydia was like a friend, therapist, and life coach all rolled into one and always managed to make me feel better about everything. If Lydia had been there, the weekend might have helped me, but not if it was just Sadie and me on our own.
With each attempt at calling it off, Sadie would assure me the sleepover was more for her than me, claiming she was a “huge baby” when it came to sleeping alone. I knew I’d go no matter what; I just had to put up a fight.
With my Accord backed into the driveway, I sat and stared at the house across the street. I was hoping it would offer me some information, tell me something about the man who lived inside, but it was just a nice, orderly suburban home without one single outstanding characteristic besides the two wooden chairs on the front porch.
Sadie opened the front door to her house, so I opened my car door. “Are you coming in, weirdo?” she called over.
“Yeah.” I nodded. Her eyes glanced in the direction mine had been looking, and her mouth turned up slightly.
Once inside the almost eerily neat and overly beige home, I found all the horrors you might expect to find as an almost twenty-one-year-old at a sleepover. She arranged, as if for a picture, chick-flicks on the coffee table, nail polish and magazines on the floor, and snacks on the kitchen counter.
“Isn’t it adorbs?” She beamed.
“So adorbs,” I said mockingly back. Luckily she thought I was being serious because she nodded along.
“What d’you wanna do first?”
Eyeing my options, I wondered if nothing was a valid choice. “Let’s watch a movie.” Zoning out for a couple hours would be the perfect way to ease into the night.
“Okay! You pick, I’ll open us some Seagram’s.”
“Are they your mom’s or did Aaron buy them for you?” There were already clanking noises coming from the kitchen as she selected bottles.
“Like my mom would drink wine coolers. Aaron bought them for us, but they’re like pop anyway—kid stuff.”
Not that I’m opposed to drinking, but Sadie seemed to like Aaron’s over-twenty-one status more than she should. If asked to list his best qualities, Sadie would put being old enough to get into a bar at number one.
It wasn’t my business, or at least that’s what I told myself, so I studied the movies on the table. For someone who was supposedly trying to keep my mind on happier things, Sadie had the complete recipe for an emotional breakdown right in front of me. The Notebook, The Way We Were, Untamed Heart, and Cruel Intentions plus alcohol were going to be the death of me.
“Here, here.” She handed me an opened bottle of Black Cherry Fizz, then arranged herself on the big comfy couch next to me. “Put on a movie.”
Choosing Cruel Intentions for several obvious reasons, I chugged my drink, got a new one because, hey, it’s like pop, and snuggled next to Sadie on the couch. A few drinks and shirtless Ryan Phillippe scenes later I finally started to relax.
“How are you, Ollie?” Sadie asked, settling into her own peach-flavored haze.
“I’m okay. Kind of hungry.”
“I really wanna know.”
My head was resting in her bony lap as I sprawled out, taking up the majority of the couch. She began pulling strands of my tangled dark hair through her fingers.
I sighed. “Sometimes I’m fine.”
“And other times?” She massaged my scalp the way I liked. It was something she hadn’t done in a year, and I wondered if she was doing it now to get me to talk.
“I try not to think about it.”
“How’s that going for you?”
“Not well. Sometimes I feel like I’m not me anymore. I’m so lost from who I used to be that there’s no getting back. And the thought of that is so sad and so scary that I don’t even want to get out of bed in the morning. What’s the point? And then I’ll have a few good days, but then crash all over again, and it’s like each time it gets a little worse. Sometimes I think I just don’t want to be happy.”
Sadie grabbed my hand, too tightly to just be holding it, and pushed up my sleeve. I instinctively yanked my arm away.
“Let me see your arm,” she demanded and I did as she asked. “Okay, good. Don’t scare me like that.” Her heart was beating wildly as she held my hand to her chest.
“I didn’t mean to scare you. I was just unloading and you plied me with liquor,” I mumbled, feeling embarrassed.
“Why can’t you just talk to me when you get like that?”
I wanted to tell her that would be practically all the time, and I did just talk to her and she told me I scared her, but instead I said, “Next time. I promise.”
“Do you want to talk about your dad or…anything else?” She loosened her hold on my hand but didn’t let go.
“No.” Yes. I pressed my fake eyelash securely back into place. It wasn’t really my dad I wanted to talk about, it was the “anything else.” Anything else included a topic that was entirely off-limits in our friendship. Not talking about that topic was what kept our friendship intact at all.
“Hey,” she said, changing the subject. I sat up. “Do you feel like doing some sketching? I’ve had a lot of thoughts about my next tattoo.”
My Cheshire Cat smile made its first appearance in weeks at the mention of sketching a new tattoo. I’d abandoned my duffel by the door of the split level but hustled back down the steps to retrieve my ever-present sketchpad and Clutch pencil.
Sadie cleared the movies from the coffee table to make space for the notebook, rolled up her sleeves as if she would be doing the work, and patted the couch space next to her for me to sit.
“Okay,” I said, sliding the pencil behind my ear and flipping the pages of my most prized possession, “this is where we left off. Are you still into the roses? Because I keep going back to the feathers too.”
“Let me see.” She pulled my precious artwork closer for inspection. If my clothes and makeup were my armor, my artwork was my escape, my one and only happy place. “Can you combine the two? I’m imagining a windswept cluster of beautiful daintiness.”
“I love the sound of that. That’ll be the title.” If people themselves had titles, the artwork that was Sadie Connor would hold the same name. She was beautiful, by anyone’s standards, and so dainty I didn’t know how she made it through the day without breaking, but she had a windswept quality. Like everything around her was always either being sucked in closer or entirely pushed away.
I took the pad from her hands and began a new sketch using my trusty pencil.
It was so easy to lose myself in the quick movements and hypnotic sounds of pencil hitting paper, but nothing, and I do mean nothing, beats the feeling of putting needle to skin. Tattooing someone is an art form that engages the whole body, from the feeling of the vibration to the sound of the electric needle to the vivid color left behind. I was addicted to the process from conception to completion.
It was impossible to say how long I was swept away in the cluster of beautiful daintiness before Sadie placed her hand on my knee. I nearly fell from the couch, my heart hammering in my chest.
“Earth to Ollie,” she teased.
“Sorry,” I mumbled as I flipped the pages. I’d been so zoned out I hadn’t even realized I’d drawn on page after page in my sketch pad while Sadie sat and watched.
I waited for a “freak” comment that never came. Instead, Sadie said, “That was intense.” She flipped back a few pages. “This”—she tapped the page twice—“you have to get this exactly on my ribs.”
“Yeah?” She did pick the best sketch, if I do say so myself.
“Yeah, duh. Promise I get the first real official appointment.”
“I promise,” I told her, meaning it very much and feeling a swell in my chest. We could spend hours, days, or even weeks sketching tattoos, but she already had her go-to guy who transferred my art.
Sadie got her first, a fairy on her foot, on her eighteenth birthday. Next came a star on her wrist on her nineteenth, then the words be brave on the back of her neck for her twentieth. Things were shaping up so that she could get her fourth from me.
And just when I thought things between Sadie Connor and I could really be good, the front door flew open and in walked Aaron Kim. I shot Sadie the dirtiest look I could muster.
“I brought a chicken and pepper pizza for Sadie, as requested, and some of my dad’s cabbage kimchi for you, O.” The slurred quality of Aaron’s speech was hardly detectable anymore. It only slightly slipped out in certain words.
He stacked the food on the counter, then rushed over to kiss Sadie grossly and loudly on the lips.
I thought you were out of town, I signed in American Sign Language to Aaron once I had his attention.
Why would you think that, O? He made a point to put the O shape of his hand in my face. My brother cancelled on me days ago.
I didn’t like him calling me O, I didn’t like the way his shaggy black hair was always in his eyes, and I didn’t like his presence at my boy-free sleepover. Being around Aaron created all kinds of risk factors for me.
“Sadie?”
“What?” she asked, feigning innocence. “You know I can’t understand you two when you sign. So knock it off.”
“You lied to me,” I told her while I also signed the words for Aaron to see. Whenever he was around I always found my fingers itching to speak the words for me. He was an expert lip reader and proud cochlear implant wearer, but we bonded over communicating in ASL.
“Okay, I told a little fib. It got you here, didn’t it? And I thought we were having a good time.” She stood up and climbed onto Aaron’s back like a monkey. And even worse, he allowed it.
“Look, I didn’t just bring food.” They—well, Aaron—headed to the kitchen, so I followed. “I brought a bottle of tequila.”
While the idea of getting shitfaced was appealing, the idea of doing it with them was not.
I wish I could say I was surprised. This was the exact reason I wore my best outfit, spent an eternity on my hair and makeup, and put up such a fight about the sleepover in the first place. I refused to be caught off guard and needed Aaron to see me at my best.
“I’m leaving,” I said, not sure if I meant it. My heart leapt at the thought of spending time with him, which was exactly why I shouldn’t have been with them.
“Because of the tequila?” Sadie asked.
“Yeah. Because of the tequila.”
“You’ve already had too much to drink to drive, and Aaron is blocking you in now anyway.”
“And I’m not moving,” Aaron added with a hint of a sigh.
“Why do you care?” I was asking them both, but neither of them answered. Did I need to spend my weekend third wheeling it with them? It would take a really messed up person to think this night was going to make me feel better.
Aaron began fixing me tequila and ginger ale, Sadie was dishing out pizza like I hadn’t said a word, and I was trying to keep my heart in my chest.