Fade In:
SLIP INTO NOELLE’S SKIN
It’s a short drive to Cami and Rand’s, and you are grateful for that because it keeps conversation to a minimum. Your mom is okay, but she’s the nervous sort, and having a damaged daughter exacerbates the anxiety she and you have in common, along with largely absent communication skills. You try to talk, you do, but every conversation seems to devolve into a bout of anxious twitter.
What’s the point of living like this, Noelle?
There’s a simple way out.
All you have to do is find
the courage to take it.
Your mom turns down a short avenue that dead-ends in a wide circle surrounded by aging tract homes. Not the best neighborhood, but not the worst, either. A couple blocks over, the houses are almost identical. However, the people living inside them are much more representative of Tucson’s diversity.
This street is noticeably white, and one yard actually sports a sign with sloppy lettering that reads: ILLEGAL MEANS ILLEGAL. TOSS ’EM BACK. “Undocumented!” you shout into the quiet space between you and your mom. “People can’t be illegal.” What should be illegal is hate. For them. For you. For anyone different.
“Calm down, honey. It’s not important.”
It’s a lame attempt to lower your stress level, and while you love her for it, you hate being dismissed. “No, Mom.” You force your voice steady. “It definitely is important.”
“Since when did you become political?”
“This isn’t about politics. It’s about human beings. How can it be illegal to be one?”
“I think you’re missing—”
“No! I’m not. Maybe you’re missing my point.”
“Okay. Okay. Let’s drop it.” The conversation has devolved. Cue the anxious twitter. “So . . . How are you feeling?”
“Never better.” That’s a total fabrication, of course, but whatever if it makes your mom more comfortable about your state of mind. After all, you are babysitting her only grandson tonight. Her worry isn’t inappropriate, but you can’t allow that to keep you from living.
“Because I won’t be that far away if you need me,” she puffs. “First hint of an aura, you call me and I’ll dial 911. Then I’ll be right here, lickety-split.” She uses her nana’s favorite saying. Lickety-split. You have no idea what that even means, but it sounds kind of dirty.
“I haven’t seized in weeks, Mom. But anyway, your phone number is in my favorites and I’ll keep mine on me at all times.” Just like you’ve promised a thousand times before, and that is not even an exaggeration.
It would be great if you could drive yourself places, but your parents are terrified that you’ll have a seizure behind the wheel, and truthfully, you’re more than a little terrified of that, too. Just riding in a car results in an apprehensive outbreak of nerves. Currently, your palms are sweating, and you’re chuffing shallow breaths. Your meds are struggling to keep things in check.
Once upon a time, people joked about how independent you were, always telling your parents to stop hovering and let you try things for yourself. Now a life without a caretaker seems entirely out of reach.
You can’t even trust yourself to live alone.
What’s the point of continuing?
Your mother pulls up in front of a gray duplex that sits much too close to the beige fourplex next door. “Thanks, Mom. I’m not sure how late they’ll be, but Cami will bring me home.” Unless she finds a way to get buzzed, in which case you will call Lyft and make your sister pay for the ride. “Have fun tonight.” Bowling. Rank. But you’re happy your mom’s getting out. She spends way too much time worrying about you.
Music blares on the far side of the front door, so it’s not surprising that your knock goes unanswered. You circle around to the kitchen door and, since it’s unlocked, push straight through, hard enough so it swings loudly into the wall. Cami, who’s standing at the sink, jumps. “Holy crap! Did you ever hear of knocking? Scared the shit out of me.”
“I did knock, but your music’s too loud.” It’s also obnoxious, not that you say so. Must be Rand’s. You’ve never quite forgiven him for taking your sister away.
“Yeah, I told Rand he’s gonna make Waylon go deaf, but he just thinks I’m crazy. Hey, maybe I am, actually.”
You want to say no, Cami’s rock solid, and always has been. But sisters don’t talk to sisters like that, and if you did you’d have to admit that you’re the crazy one.
Upsetting thought. Shove it away. Do your best to ignore the noise emanating from the other room and try to invent a bit of conversation. “So you’re going out with Grace tonight? Tell her happy birthday for me. I wish I could go, too.”
There’s no way could you take a chance on strobe lights and a dance floor in motion. But even if you could, Grace never even bothered to invite you, and you feel mortally wounded. Before the accident, you and she were best friends. More than that, at least on your end. But that was in middle school, and confessing it to her was unthinkable. You could barely admit it to yourself.
After the accident Cami and Grace spent lots of time together at the hospital, waiting for you to emerge from your coma. During that time, sure she’d lose you too, Grace began to construct a door between the two of you. Later, she slammed it shut, and Cami became a conduit. You get it, but understanding and embracing it around the hurt are very different things. “Tell her to call me sometime, okay?”
Cami will tell her, and Grace will promise to get in touch. She might even drop by, but she won’t stay long. You’re a forever reminder of what life was before Grace’s father was murdered.
As often happens whenever you think about that, a sudden impulse strikes. You wander over to the refrigerator, stick your head inside, then withdraw it again, disappointed. Or maybe you’re blind, because your nose tells you there’s something delectable nearby. “I’m hungry. What did you have for dinner? Anything left over . . . What?”
Cami levels a disapproving glare at you. “Didn’t Mom feed you tonight?”
“Sure, but she only made a salad. Grazing isn’t exactly filling.” You know your sister is worried about the weight you’ve gained, but you couldn’t care less.
“Are you trying to tell me all you had was lettuce? Because Mom and Dad—”
“It wasn’t just lettuce,” you snap. “There were carrots and broccoli and peas and a microscopic chicken breast. Hardly enough for a growing girl like me.” You shoot that evil-eyed gaze that tells her she’d really better just drop it.
“Okay, okay. It’s all good, little sister.” The adjective is purposeful.
Her middle name should be
Condescension. She’s always been
like that—pretending older sibling
concern when it’s control she’s after.
Sometimes you hate her.
At the moment, you’re literally seething with anger. It seeps from your pores not quite visibly, and yet noticeably, at least to you. “Look. I get you care about me, yada yada. But walk in my shoes—”
“No thank you, Ms. Obnoxious Cliché. Too much baggage there.”
She means poundage, but you pretend ignorance of the fact. “Talk about clichéd. Don’t worry about me, okay? I’m good with me just the way I am.” But in fact, you aren’t.
Cami winces, but offers, “Try the freezer. There should be Lean Pockets in there.”
Her implication is crystal clear, but implications be damned! You head on over to the counter, help yourself to the small bowl of sloppy joes that remains, and carry it to the table. “Mmmm. Delicious,” you say through slurps of lukewarm leftovers. Cami’s refusal to reply reflects her disapproval, but you don’t care. You gave up trying to impress your sister forever ago.
A volley of laughter blasts through the door to the living room, immediately preceding Rand, who comes sprinting into the kitchen. Behind him is Waylon, who’s sporting a Nerf gun. “Hands up, bad guy!”
Rand turns toward the boy slowly, raising his arms as he does. “Who’s gonna make me, little man?”
He lunges toward Waylon, who responds by shooting him in the gut with a Nerf dart. “Me! I stop the bad guy! I good guy. Bang, bang! You dead, Daddy!”
Rand falls to the floor, clutching his stomach, and Cami laughs, but you blanch. Even if the game is all in fun, why would Rand choose to play it with you watching? You don’t want to be a wimp. Say something, say something.
Instead, you retreat to the other room.
You’re silent as Cami finishes the dishes, goes into the bedroom to collect her things. Silent as Rand tells Waylon to be a good boy and they’ll play Cops in the morning. Silent as Cami turns on the TV, tunes it to Cartoon Network, where a blue cat named Gumball is getting into some kind of trouble.
“Waylon’s got the sniffles,” Cami informs you. “I gave him a big shot of cold medicine right before you got here, so he’ll probably crash out early.”
The word “shot” makes you cringe. Bad Freudian slip. “Good to know,” you tell Cami, before turning to Waylon. “Let’s put on your jammies before we watch TV. That okay, buddy?”
Waylon agrees it is, and when you go into his bedroom, Cami and Rand sneak out, avoiding teary goodbyes. The boy chooses his favorite pajamas, with trains and planes and cars.
Back on the sofa, Waylon wiggles into your lap, lays his head back against your chest, rasping despite whatever elixir Cami gave him earlier. Its fake cherry scent lingers whenever he exhales. The child zooms in on the silly program, but you zone out. Watching too much TV pinches a place inside your head. It’s not just the color, sound, and motion, but also electromagnetic waves, which sometimes trigger seizures. One second you’re right there, the next you emerge from whatever rabbit hole you have dropped into, Alice exiting Wonderland without realizing she ever left home.
Neither can you spend an excessive amount of time in front of a computer or on your cell phone. For you, technology is a double-edged sword. Luckily, Cami’s TV screen is relatively small and far enough across the room to keep headaches at bay. Nothing like your dad’s sixty-five-inch monstrosity.
Lost in thought, not to mention a well-worn copy of the National Enquirer, forty minutes pass before you notice the soft chuffing of Waylon’s snores. Careful to disturb his sleep as little as possible, you scoot off the couch and carry him to bed, tucking him into the covers’ deep pleats. He stirs, but settles back into slumber.
Watching him, inhaling the scent of shampoo and soap, disquieting questions skitter across your mind. Will I ever have kids? Will anyone ever love me? Enough to take a chance on marrying me and starting a family? It’s a long shot at best. Your own sister barely trusts you to babysit. Your once best friend leaves you off her invitation list. Even your parents maintain distance, worried, perhaps, they’ll lose you. They are right to worry; sometimes the desire to leave this world is overpowering.
You’re a burden to everyone.
There’s an easy way to fix that.
You kiss the little boy’s forehead, mommy-like, tiptoe out of the room, leaving the door cracked in case he awakens. As you back quietly away, your foot crunches a plastic Guernsey cow, and you stifle a curse.
The toys scattered across the living room floor are not only dangerous to bare feet, but they irritate your anxiety, which goes hand in hand with your OCD, both of which you had in abundance even before your epilepsy. You’re a mental mess. You take the time to pick up the Little People farm, tucking the animals inside the barn before moving it against the wall. Then you retrieve a half-dozen Nerf bullets, placing them in the small toy box, and when you pick up the pretend weapon, you can’t believe how real it looks. You study it for several long seconds.
The gold-colored barrel is stamped with these words: DESERT EAGLE PISTOL. ISRAEL MILITARY INDUSTRIES LTD. It disgusts you that a toy company would go to such trouble over something designed to shoot foam darts. Maybe they partnered with the NRA. Probably not beyond the scope, so to speak, of the National Rifle Association to invest in toys designed to get little kids hooked on “bang-banging bad guys.” Only, in real life, it’s usually bad guys doing the bang-banging.
You can’t understand why Rand’s so devoted to law enforcement as a career. Cami, you know, would be happy enough if he kept working construction, thus avoiding gun-wielding creeps. Seems like playing it safe would be preferable to taking a chance on leaving his kid fatherless.
Fatherless, like Grace. Her stepdad is okay, but you know she misses her real dad, who was, like, the coolest parent ever. Sucks so bad some doped-up loser ended his life prematurely. Sucks so bad the same doped-up loser stole your vision for the future. So many things you wanted to do, so much you wanted to accomplish! Now, when you open your sketchbook, blank pages stare back at you. Now, when you sit at your piano, your fingers become confused. Now, considering your limited options, you just want to eat.
The kitchen beckons. You answer the call. There’s cereal in the cupboard, so you pour a big bowl of Frosted Flakes, douse it with whole milk. Sugar, carbs, and plenty of fat. Your kind of diet. And to think, once you worried about your weight. Not anymore. Let your parents and sister stress over your excess flab.
Food craving quieted, you check on Waylon, who’s snuffling in his sleep, then return to the couch and tabloid hysteria until your bullshit meter can’t take one more word. Rest is essential to seizure-free existence, so you cozy into the comfort of sofa cushions, close your eyes.
The free fall into sleep is always troubling because that dizzying rush also defines the onslaught of an aura—the hard-to-define foreboding that convulsion is imminent. But tonight it is simply a soft descent into the Cradle of Morpheus. Rocking. Rocking.
And here you are again. You’ve found yourself in this dream, or some variation of it, many times.
You’re moving.
You know that,
but can’t determine how.
Auto, probably.
Bus, perhaps.
the Tucson streetcar.
The mode
doesn’t matter.
What does
is the pinkie-sized
black circle that materializes
at the window.
It’s not so big, just large
enough for a small projectile
to exit through.
You stare.
Why is it familiar?
Words float
into view:
Desert Eagle Pistol.
Fake.
Of course.
But why . . .
Glass
shatters
loud
so loud!
Nerf bullets don’t break glass.
But something does.
Something whizzes past
your face.
Too close.
Hits the far window.
Motion.
Shouting.
Wailing.
A single scream
No!
The metal
squeal
of brakes.
Impact.
You’re loose.
Thrown effortlessly.
In the air.
On the floor. Or roof.
Upside down? Not?
Hot.
Stink of rubber
hovering above the abiding
gunpowder scent.
In front of you,
explosion,
Burst
Rip
of skin.
Crack
of bone.
Time stops,
suspends you
in that moment.
Someone calls your name.
Noelle?
Noelle?
You look into the horror
filled eyes of the person
beside you.
See yourself reflected
there and what
you see
is a face
in pieces.
You’ve had this dream before, know how it’s supposed to end—with a somersault. A cartwheel, bumper over bumper.
With the girl you love holding your hand, coaxing, “Please don’t die.” And now she screams, “Daddy! Oh, my God. Daddy!”
With her heart-wrenching sobs fading into the low buzz of traffic, of voices outside, a hum of distant sirens, swelling into chorus.
With a carousel of lights, red-blue, red-blue, and splashes of pain radiating from the top of your head, all the way down your spine.
But this is where you’re supposed to check out for a while, wake later, swaddled in white.
Tonight’s ending, though, is new. Now the gun appears again, ISRAEL MILITARY INDUSTRIES, LTD engraved, but not in plastic. As the short barrel turns, points toward the pulse in your temple, determined to silence it, you understand flight is impossible.
The hand directing the weapon
is uniquely your own.
Fade Out