Wake (21 page)

Willa checks her watch and mutters something about starting dinner. I keep flipping channels. She’s gone for a few minutes before I realize I left my meds—and Egbert—on the counter. Oh shit.

I very quietly make my way to the kitchen door. Maybe she didn’t notice. I left the container over by the toaster, after all.

No such luck. Willa’s back is to me. She rests her hands against the counter next to the toaster, looking down. Al the compartments on my sorter are open. I didn’t leave it that way. Willa notices my presence and jumps. She looks away hurriedly, wipes a hand across her cheeks, and awkwardly remarks, “Oxycontin is a bitch, eh?” She knows what the drug looks like by the sight of the pills alone—that’s a little messed up.

I quietly pack up the sorter and pocket it. Willa is still facing away from me. She’s unusually quiet and every few minutes she runs a hand over her face, like she’s wiping away tears.

It’s bizarrely entrancing, watching her cry. For one, I didn’t know she even had tear ducts, being made of granite and all. For another…I feel slightly compel ed to do something about it.

“Do you want me to go?”

“Uh…no.”

“Do you need a minute?”

Willa turns and leans back against the counter with her arms folded. Her eyelashes are stuck together with tears and her lids are red-rimmed. She bites her lower lip and looks me up and down, studying me.

“Are you in a lot of pain?”

“Sometimes.” My answer stirs up some disturbing memory for her; I can see it in her face. “It’s just a maintenance dose. You can’t just go off opiates all at once. When I’m actually in pain I take two tablets.”

Why am I telling her this?

“My sister took Percocet. But it made her sick, so they put her on Oxy.”

I smirk. Oxycontin is responsible for most of my stomach upsets, but it’s the gentlest of several options.

Percocet messes me up too. I was so high I couldn’t move except to throw up—and I did a lot of that.

Willa sucks in a deep breath, holds it, and says, “I need to start dinner” on the exhalation. She steps away from the counter and opens the fridge.

“I should go.”

“You’re not staying for dinner?”

“I should be getting back, and you’d need to make a separate meal for me anyway.” She doesn’t need that trouble. I turn to go.

“Harper,” Willa tiredly calls me back. “Come here. I have another recipe I want to show you.”

Damn it, she knows my weakness.

Willa puts a pre-frozen lasagna in the oven to bake and then begins to pulling ingredients for my meal.

She makes me help this time and promises I won’t get burnt. “This is a cold dish.”

The end result is a tart that has the consistency of cheesecake, but without the flaky crust. It’s low in acid, sugar-free, and creamy as pudding: the brilliant combination of cream cheese, vanilla and berry yogurt, and honey.

“I might have to steal your recipe binder.”

“It doesn’t contain all my recipes.” She smirks and taps her temple smugly.

“I might have to blackmail you, then.” Willa laughs and leaves me to eat this amazing tart. “Hey,” I interrupt her as she checks the readiness of the lasagna. “I meant to ask you yesterday—what do you think about before you go to sleep?”

“Shouldn’t you first give me a hard time about the note I left in your mailbox?”

“Just tell me.”

“Or the one I left in the umbrella stand?”

“You left one in the umbrella stand?”

“And in your jacket pocket.”

I get up and go to the foyer where my jacket hangs on a peg. I rifle through the side pockets and front pockets, finding only mint wrappers.

“The
inner
pocket, genius,” she calls from the kitchen. The note is folded up so small it’s the size of a pencil eraser. I unfold it and take it back to the kitchen to read her scrawl under proper light.

I think about music.

And all I can think is,
Well that was anticlimactic.

What were you hoping for?

Nothing.

You were hoping she thought about you, like you think about her.

No I don’t.

“I’ve been listening to Bach.”

That perks me up. “Yeah?” She plays his music horribly, but it’s one of the few weak points of connection we share.

“I think I like Wagner better.”

I hate Wagner.

*

When I get home I check the umbrella stand in the foyer. Willa’s note has fallen right to the bottom with the dust bunnies and a few of Elise’s stray mittens that she’s continually losing.

It says:
That’s twice now. Sucker.

Thursday

Elise’s birthday dinner is fairly low-key. It’s just family tonight. Mom and Dad are letting her throw a party with friends later this spring, when the weather is more favorable.

Mom bought a
Harry Potter
themed ice cream cake from the store, but it looks like the clerk thought the cake was for a seven-year-old, not a seventeen-year-old, because Mom has added the 1 with raspberry jam. Elise barely notices.

“Open mine first.” Eric lobs Elise’s present at her across the table. Elise shakes the box before opening it and there’s a clanking sound. She broke it. “Oh no!” Elise tears off the wrapping and opens up a shoebox.

It’s full of broken bottle glass.

“Just kidding,” Eric says. “Here’s your real one.” He throws a much smaller box at her. He’s given her a pair of earrings.

“You threw a box of broken glass at her?” I say quietly as Elise crumples up the used paper.

“It was wrapped. Perfectly safe.”

I suppose he’s right, but I can’t help but think of the Christmas he gave me a pet rock. The thing fell through the bottom of the box and broke my toe.

Elise receives a new skirt and blouse from Mom and Dad, and a card with cash from our grandparents. I got her a stuffed plush owl. I really shouldn’t enable her childish obsession with
Harry

Potter
, but the way her face lights up when she sees it can’t compete with any logical reasoning.

“It’s Hedwig!” She bounces around the table to give me a hug, chanting ‘thank you’ over and over.

Then I inform her that it’s actually a puppet and she practically blows a happy fuse. She shoves her hand up its butt and finds the second part of her gift.

It’s a much smaller brown owl.

“Pig!”

“No,
owl
, silly,” Eric says.

“No, his name is Pigwidgeon.” And it’s a finger puppet. Elise puts an owl on each hand and starts a conversation between them.

Dad chuckles and stands up to clear away the dirty ice cream plates. “We’re never going to get that off her hand,” he says of the puppets.

Crap. He’s right. What have I done?

Friday

Mornings after dialysis are like hangovers in reverse. I go to bed feeling groggy and sluggish and wake up feeling alive, at least until the rest of my medication catches me up and I crash again. From the first round of dialysis I noticed its tendency to screw with my energy cycles and sex drive. I’d get these weird bursts of energy that would promptly be shot down by fatigue. I’d be horny as hell but have little inclination or privacy to masturbate. It got better when I started to receive dialysis as an outpatient, because I could go home and sleep it off and I had the option to jerk off fruitlessly in the morning.

Today is one such morning. I wake up starfished across my bed with my pillow at my feet—I’m a restless sleeper after dialysis, but I never feel more rested than the morning after. I could flail all night and never feel a thing, and the pillows are my hapless victims. I contemplate reaching down to retrieve my pillow, but decide it’s hardly worth it. Sandwiched comfortably between my body and the mattress is a promising start to the day. I get out of bed and turn on the shower. I’m really recovering now; my body is going to cooperate this time.

I strip in the dark and step into the warm shower. I angle the showerhead toward the inner walland lean against the tiles so that the water runs down my back. The steam feels like hot breath on my skin, and for a split second I’m reminded of the way Emily used to breathe across my neck when she kissed it. I can’t think about her right now, and push that thought away as quickly as I can. Images from various porn sites take her place, but no matter what I think about—her parts, her revealing clothes, her positions—the girl in my head always turns into a petite blonde.

Don’t over-think that—not now.

I bend and twist the girl in my mind—the one with fair skin and curly hair and a tempting look in her eye.

The idea of her gets me harder than I’ve been in awhile, and as I move my hand and the water runs down my back, I feel the familiar weightlessness of a building climax.

My hip begins to cramp from leaning against the shower wall. I ignore it at first, too afraid that the slightest pause will make this wonderful feeling disappear. But then my knees start to shake, and I kneel down on the floor of the tub, taking the weight off my back and legs.

Relax. You’re making yourself too tense.

I’m so afraid of not coming that I’m psyching myself out, and then I can’t. It’s a vicious cycle. I focus on the blonde, on the fantasy of bending her over in this very tub. She’d brace her hands against the slippery sides, with water running down her back and my hands around her hips. She’d be tight as hell and have a goddamned dirty mouth…

Suddenly I feel like I’ve been kicked in the balls and the stomach at once. I curl reflexively around my abdomen with a grunt of pain as my cock twitches in my hand. Thin strings of semen dribble pathetically out of my penis. I’m ejaculating, but where the hell is the orgasm? Why did that hurt so much?

I rest a hand between my hips. It feels like I pulled a muscle, and the pain radiates all the way along my groin.

You pulled a muscle just by coming, it’s been so long.

This is how ninety-year-old men must feel.

I rest my head against the shower wall and sigh. It felt so good, and then…

“Fuck!” I slam my fist against the side of the bathtub in frustration.

“Jem?”

I freeze as Mom knocks on the bathroom door. She must have come in to wake me up. How much did she hear?

“Are you all right?” Before I can answer she opens the bathroom door.

“Mom!”

“Why is it dark in here?”

“Because the lights are off. Get out!” I stand up and hold the edges of the shower curtain shut. She turns on the bathroom light. I’m screwed.

“I heard a thump. Did you fall ?”

“No! I dropped a bottle.
Get out
, please.”

“It sounded heavier than that.” Her fingers slip around the edge of the curtain, ready to push it back. I slap her hand away.

“Mom! Get out!”

“Are you bleeding?”

“No!”

Elise’s slippers make a slapping sound on the floor as she crosses my bedroom to stand in the bathroom door. “What’s going on in here?” she asks.

“Everyone is going to
get out, now!”

“Did you bump yourself against the shower? Why on earth would you shower in the dark, anyway? Are you bruising?” Mom persists. Maybe I’ll put the plug in the drain and drown myself.

“Yeah, Jem,” Elise interjects. “Is it swollen?” She walks away with a giggle, and the plug becomes irrelevant. I am going to die of embarrassment long before the tub could fill enough to drown in.

Mom mutters something about breakfast and bagels, sounding nearly as embarrassed as I feel, and the bathroom door shuts sharply behind her. Breakfast is going to be awkward.

As I towel off, I hear Eric’s booming laugh and know that it’s going to be a very long drive to school.

Willa: March 29 to April 8

Friday

On humid days like this, the cafeteria is too stuffy for comfort, and Paige keeps trying to talk to me about Chris’s proficiency as a kisser. Hel no. I drift away from the group more or less silently. It’s not until I’m past the main office that I notice I’m not alone. Jem follows just slightly behind me, hands in his pockets.

“Totally airless in there,” he says.

“You read my mind.”

Jem and I go out to the parking lot to sit on one of the picnic tables, resting our feet on the bench. The air is cool and damp and the lot is quiet apart from the infrequent cries of gul s. There’s harsh weather coming in if the gulls are hanging out inland.

The silence between Jem and I is comfortable. He usually feels the need to fill these, but today he doesn’t. He just rests his elbows on his knees, twines his fingers together, and watches the seagulls scavenge for food around the trashcans.

“Who do you think would win in a fight over garbage—a seagul or a raccoon?” he says suddenly.

“Raccoons. They’re smarter, can hunt in packs, and have claws.”

“But the seagull can shit on a whim.”

I laugh without meaning to. “How is that relevant?”

“Even if it doesn’t get the garbage, it can get revenge. So who wins?”

“well what would you rather have—food or vengeance?”

He thinks about that for a moment. “Food.” As if on cue, one of the gulls takes a dump on Elwood’s windshield. Jem laughs, but I contain myself. I merely smile.

“Screw it,” he says. “Vengeance is better, but only if you have an army of seagull minions to carry it out.”

I shake my head. “Why do I know you?”

Jem turns to me with that sideways smile. “You could be my second in command. We could take over Greenland.”

“Greenland?”

“No one would expect it.”

I smile and suppress the urge to ask him if he’s high. “Fine. Greenland it is.”

Jem’s mood is unusually good today. It lends him a buoyancy, an ease of movement, that isn’t typical of him. He smiles easily instead of wryly or reluctantly. When he jokes, he isn’t insulting anybody or self-

deprecating. He’s…happy.

Some of Jem’s paleness is starting to fade. Healthy color is coming back into his face and hands, even though the latter are scarred. His lips don’t blend in with the rest of his face anymore. Looking at his skin in the sunlight, it looks like he might have shaved this morning, and I wonder if his hair is starting to grow back enough for that. Maybe it’s just the color coming back into his skin that’s giving it a new texture.