Ophelia, Alive Read online

  No. Don’t say that. That’s horrible.

  But maybe it was. I didn’t know those people, and I don’t even know for sure that I killed them. The whole thing could have just been some weird coincidence, and even if it wasn’t it’s just a couple people, shallow people (probably) that no one will ever miss (probably). And I’m going to go off the stuff now anyway, and it will all be over, and don’t worry about what happened because now I have the body I always wanted and everything else will work out. I mean, maybe now I can finally get started on writing and people will pay attention to me and care about what I have to say. Didn’t Dad just give me an hour of his time, and he’s never done that before, ever, and if my dad who’s ignored me all my life listens to me now, then I must be worth other people’s attention too. Right? I mean, I’d like to lose a little more weight, but now I can do that with diet and exercise, I’m done with the pills.

  Yeah. I’m done with them.

  And now I’m outside and the stars are bright with a white that’s so white it’s yellow, and they’re spiky and accusing, jagging into my eyes, saying Liar, liar, liar. But I ignore them and they’re wrong, and I throw the door open to Vintage Clothing, Inc., and the girl at the door, the one dressed like a flapper, says, “We close in half an hour,” but I just walk right by her because she’s stupid and she doesn’t know what she’s talking about and she’s stupid. And I go to the racks and I pick through the clothes, and there’s yellows and blues and there’s sequins and lace. Bellbottoms and skinny jeans, hot pants and miniskirts. I grab what looks good and I cram it all into a fitting room cubicle made out of plywood that’s tiny; its curtains are thin and a sticker that clings to its wall says This cubicle’s so fucking small and I laugh. I fumble my way out of jeans that just slide off my hips and the sweatshirt that’s drowning my boobs in its scratchy and over-washed fabric. They sit in a pile, down there in the corner, and catch dots of light that reflect off a small, holographic peace-symbol sticker, and I try on some shorts that are sparkly and leave nothing at all to the imagination (but wow, does my ass look great). I peel them back off and they fall (wadded) on tile and shag carpet (half-on, half-off), and I’m thinking these orange bellbottoms (full ‘60s proportions) might turn out to be less ridiculous. I slide into them and they fit on my thighs like they’re molded for me (just for me), and I mean, yeah, those short, sparkly shorts were pure fun, but these tight pants are better. I only have ten minutes for picking a shirt, but a glittering one that I grabbed seems okay. It’s got one of those big-foldy-plungy-type necklines (what are those called, anyway?), and it shows off my boobs. I leave my old clothes on the floor, and I charge to the checkout without even taking the new ones I’m wearing off. Flapper girl rolls her eyes back in her head like she’s thinking The weirdoes we get in here sometimes. But she takes my credit card, scans it, and somehow it clears, and I thank God for credit cards, burst through the doors wearing clothes like I’ve never put on before, shaking my fist at the sky, shouting loud (in my head), Hey! Fuck you, stupid stars!

  And I burst back into the bar.

  Are all eyes on me? Are all the guys, in the booths, at the bar, looking at me? Are they looking at me like I thought they all would, or do I think they are because that’s what I was expecting? Is it strange that this mood is exactly the way that I thought I would feel once I turned myself into the center of attention? Like my feet carry red carpet everywhere with them, and outside, in black, every star in the sky has been shining for me, filling all the room’s windows with light that reflects off the sway of my hips. Like I’m wearing a ten-thousand-dollar makeover, not just the foundation dusting I put on this morning? Like each move I make sends deep shockwaves throughout the whole room?

  I’m exaggerating, I must be, probably. I can’t look that good, I can’t be that pretty. It’s just the beer, just the novelty, but I’m not that drunk and I’m not that shallow. Am I? I mean, every girl wants to feel pretty, everybody wants to think they’re attractive, that people enjoy looking at them. Right? It might not be deep. It might not be important. But everyone wants it. Everyone.

  I stand in the room’s center, absorbing the looks and enjoying the glow from the stars and the lights and the faces and me. For the moment, I own this bar.

  I take a seat.

  I climb up on a stool next to a guy with big shoulders and a tight t-shirt, and he’s there with a girl, but I don’t even care, and he’s looking at me. I say hi.

  “Uh, hi.” He’s cute and he’s shy and I know he wants to talk, but she grabs his arm, and she’s skinnier than me, but I’ve got his attention and she knows that I’ve got it.

  I lean forward, and I say “Buy me a drink,” because that’s what chicks say in bars, right? It’s just an experiment, really. He’s a little rat in my Skinner box, and I’m pushing the buttons and taking notes. I’ve had too much beer, really had too much beer. Need to stop, need to quit, this could go anywhere. I could regret this.

  He says, “I, uh—”

  It’s so cute when they stutter. I didn’t even know. I push the button again. “Please.” I lean forward just a bit more, squeeze my arms together around my tits. Do I look hot or ridiculous? I guess I’ll find out soon—

  “Um, excuse me, who said you could talk to my boyfriend?”

  It’s happened. That bomb that I dropped? Just exploded. Just ripped wide open and showered the room in acid-estrogen that melts skin off bones. This is what I was missing. All those nights I spent wrapped in sweats and pajamas, highlighting Piaget, Dickens, and Austen, this is what I was missing. This is the jungle, the meat market (life?), where the beer and the sweat and the hormones combine into a cocktail of violence and sex. It’s stirring new things in me. Time to show claws. She’s a skinny, blond bitch, I could take her. I’m a killer, and she doesn’t even know that about me. I’m awesome. She’s not. And she knows, if I wanted to, I could leave now with her cute little boytoy. You can deal with it, bitch.

  I say, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you owned him.” There’s no good answer to that one. Smart.

  Her mouth is wide open. It’s pretty much got flies buzzing into it.

  He says to her, “Hey, come on, she was just—”

  “Tell her to go away.”

  “What?”

  “Tell her to go away,” she says.

  He stutters some more. So cute. “W—why?” Guys are so dumb.

  “‘Why’? ‘Why’!? Are you serious?”

  “What did I do wrong?”

  Oh, dude. It’s adorable watching you throw your girlfriend away like this. And you don’t even know what’s happening. She’s sitting there, seething, leaking boiling-hot fumes that smell like her gross watermelon-flavored drink into the air, and you don’t even have a clue.

  (Why are watermelon-flavored things always green? Wouldn’t that mean that they taste like the rind?)

  (Anyway.)

  She’s grabbing her purse. It’s not even a purse, it’s a clutch, and it’s sequined and way too tiny to hold anything. Useless. Impractical. “Either she goes or I go,” she says. Her eyes are unblinking and stabbing at me with their green-watermelon-estrogen-venom, through the beer and the smoke and the dark. And I laugh.

  She stands, in a sort of awkward way that only an angry, skinny, blond chick in five-inch heels can, sort of rocking from a full-on-slouch to a hunchback-on-stilts, and trying to look dignified, but you know how those things go. And she storms out the door in a way that’s the opposite of intimidating.

  Now I’m sitting here with this guy I don’t know, and he’s got a beer mustache and he’s staring down my top, and I’m suddenly thinking, What did I just do? There’s something in my hips saying, Go, girl, keep going, but my headache says it doesn’t feel fun anymore. She’s waiting out front, I can see her through the window, fumbling with a bra strap that keeps falling off her shoulder and clutching her clutch (as one does).

  I sit up. (He’s disappointed.)

  “You know she wants you to c
hase after her,” I tell him.

  “What?” His face is buried in his beer while he buries his eyes in my cleavage again. Are guys really this clueless, or is this something they do to mess with us?

  “She’s leaving because she wants you to chase her.”

  “Oh.” He swallows more beer.

  “Well?”

  “What?”

  I sigh. “Are you gonna go after her, or not?” I can see her still, standing there just past the window, green and boozy against the stars. Still out there, still waiting.

  “I dunno.” I’m sobering up now, and he’s looking less cute, like he could just really use a shower and a shave. College boys, y’know? I can’t do this anymore.

  “Look, idiot, she’s asking you to make a choice here. Don’t you get that?”

  “Uh—”

  “You can’t just sit here and watch things happen. It doesn’t work that way. The world doesn’t work that way. You’re not allowed to just sit on your ass and say ‘Yeah, I’m just gonna see how this all plays out’ when you’re one of the players on the damn field. Sports metaphors. Boys understand those, right?” By now his girl has already stormed off, but whatever.

  “So, she’s, like, testing me? This is a test?”

  “A test?” I take the beer right out of his hand, I don’t know why, I just do it, and I down half of what’s left, and I slam it on the bar. “A test, like she’s some sort of mob boss trying to see where your loyalties lie? No. It’s not a test, genius, it’s life. She wants to know if you’re willing to fight for her. It’s basically the only thing that matters at all, and you don’t even get it. What do you think she is, just a drinking buddy plus some free sex? There’s a human being attached to that vagina.”

  “Ugh,” he says, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “I liked you better when you were just trying to get free drinks out of me.”

  “If it makes you feel better, I did,” I say. And I finish his beer and slam the glass so hard on the bar that it cracks, and everyone looks, and I push off the stool, and I stomp toward the door, throw it open triumphantly, and immediately bend over, puking my guts into the bushes. And the thin, foamy strands catch hard on the jagged thorns, while the stars beat down hot, laughing, Fuck you too, Ophie.

  mon. jan. 17.

  1:49 am.

  not sure

  The stumble back to my dorm is taking longer than I thought it would. The beers probably account for some of that, but seriously, it was only three beers. Or four. Some number of beers.

  It’s true that I drank them on a very empty stomach, but nobody ever acts the way I just did because of four (five?) beers, regardless of stomach contents. And it’s possible, maybe, that the night sky is swirling the way it is at the moment because the alcohol interacted with the pills somehow. I’m not sure. But this feels different.

  And now I realize that I’ve actually been off the pills for more than a day. Twenty-eight, thirty hours? Something like that. It wasn’t planned, not entirely, but staying away from my room all day did the trick. Does that make me officially off of it? Was the habit really that easy to kick?

  I mean, if it’s strong enough to turn me into a sleepwalking murder-zombie, it just seems like maybe I should be expecting some withdrawal symptoms. It’s possible I’m already having some. The swimming in my head, the cackling stars, the weird, impulsive behavior (what was I thinking in there?). Sara obviously put zero effort into safety-testing this stuff, and I know she was barred from testing it on humans (go fig?), so who knows what’ll happen to me. And it’s that thought, right there, that sends chills down my back, from my shoulders to knees, while a cold breeze blows by, and I wish that I still had my sweatshirt. The breeze is blowing harder and the stars are shining brighter and everything stretches to ribbons of color. My dorm’s up ahead, but each step that I’m taking is pushing it farther away, pushing hard on the bricks that sink into each other and swallow their mortar for thousands of miles. They twist and they turn till they’re long as my arm, and she’s there on my arm, it’s the girl with the pea coat and Uggs saying Why are you leaving me? Why? and I tell her I’m not, hey, I’m not going anywhere, everything’s fine, but he’s there too, the one with the beard and the flannel, the hipster; he says Won’t you miss us? I thought we were friends, and I tell them, We are friends. We are. They’re both grabbing my elbows and pulling, and saying Your made us yours, now we’re yours, now we won’t leave you. I say Let me go, but they won’t say a word in response, they just squeeze. They squeeze and their sharp nails are claws, and their teeth shine like steel and their arms are on strings made of starlight that reach all the way to her eyes, Sara’s eyes, and she stares down at me from above while she pulls on them, hard. I run and reach out, but I’m tangled in starlight. It’s thin and it’s sharp and it digs in my throat while I run for the building. I reach for the door, but it’s moving away, and I’m reaching through sweat on my face and through blood on my arms, and they won’t let me go. Their claws sink through flesh and they pick at my bones, but I throw the door open and charge up the stairs. And their mouths are black holes now, deep, sucking black holes filled with razors of teeth that are hungry for me and each step tumbles into them, growing the jaws into shining-bright-silver barbs, closing around me and laughing while fires keep blazing below. And my burning, bruised legs push the stairs one last time, and my hand finds the knob and the door throws wide-open. I reach for a leg and grab hard and hold on, and it’s Kate.

  It’s just Kate.

  My breath’s coming out hot and sticky onto the cuffs of her Supergirl pajama pants, and she sits up and jerks her legs away and says, “Ophelia, what’s wrong with you?”

  I look down at my arms, and my arms are okay, and the pain is fading, and the spinning has stopped and the flames and the dark and the teeth die away. It’s just Kate, and she’s on her bed reading a book, and I’m squeezing her ankle, and it’s starting to bruise, and I say, “Uh—”

  “Are you all right?”

  The things I just saw, and the things I just felt, are fading to black, and all I can see is the light from her lamp, a small lamp with a glowing-red shade, casting light on the sky full of Supergirls.

  I loosen my grip.

  “I—” (I choke. I whisper.) “I think I owe you an apology.”

  “What do you mean?” she says.

  “We had a fight, right? This morning?”

  “Yeah, it was sort of a fight—”

  “I mean, I yelled.”

  She says, “Yeah, I might’ve as well.”

  “I don’t know—I don’t know why I was so defensive.” I’m still breathing hard, still choking on sweat.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  I say, “Yeah, I think you’re right, though. I haven’t been myself lately. I’m not sure why.” (Well, I’ve got an idea, but—)

  “I’ve only known you for a week, so I can’t really confirm that.”

  “Well, still. I’m sorry.”

  She leans forward, and her arms are around me, in a sideways hug, across my chest and behind my back. At first I jump back, but the warmth draws me in, and my head’s on her shoulder, and she smells like smoke, and tears start to flow. I choke them back (embarrassing), but I don’t push her away.

  We sit in the glow of the lamp and we breathe.

  Till she finally lets go and she says, “I’m sorry if that was weird.”

  “No—”

  “You just looked like you needed a hug. It’s—y’know. It’s sort of my go-to when I don’t know what else to do. I just—”

  I roll my eyes and I say, “Thank you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  She hands me a pillow and grabs one herself, and we lean up against the wall and slouch in the reddish dark till she finally says, “You wanna tell me what’s going on?”

  I sigh. “What isn’t going on.” My orange bellbottoms and sparkling shirt catch the light as I sink deeper into her mattress.

/>   She notices my outfit and says, “Did you have a date, or something?”

  I say, “I’m pretty sure I just did something awful.”

  “Oh no, what?”

  “Um—” (she sounds really worried)—“probably not what you’re thinking.”

  “Why, what am I thinking?”

  “Listen, I don’t mean awful like robbed-a-bank awful. It’s more like insulted-somebody’s-mom awful, or something.”

  “You insulted somebody’s mom?”

  “No—no, I mean it was like that. In, y’know, magnitude. Magnitude of awfulness.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Um—why don’t you just tell me what you did? And then if you want, I can tell you how awful it was.”

  “Um—okay. Well—the short version is, I think I just broke up a couple.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “Yeah—I mean, it could have been worse, right? But I did it so deliberately, y’know? It was weird.” I push myself onto my feet, and I go to the mini-fridge and grab a Coke. Then I sink back into her bed and say, “I’m honestly not sure whether I’m more embarrassed that I did it, or that I feel so guilty about it. Y’know?”

  “Well—I mean—what’d you do to break them up?”

  “It was so stupid. I just started flirting with him, and—y’know, I don’t even know why I did it. I was just having fun. Blowing off a little steam.”

  “Is that why you’re all dressed up?”

  “I guess. I just—I don’t know. I’ve just lost some weight lately, and I thought that maybe I should finally have some of the fun that skinny girls get to have, and—the whole thing was just idiotic. God, I’m embarrassed.”