Ash Eater Page 5

  I’ve heard other girls talk like this in class, but I’ve never had someone ask me. And so I tell every detail, relishing the memory.

  *

  There’s something about frequent kisses and forbidden love. It swallows up all the lonely corners. Those corridors of darkness disappear. Daryl and I kiss behind the bushes, in the pantry, whenever anyone isn’t looking. Months of these kinds of kisses stem the tide of the seizures and the engulfing darkness. I only throw up once a day, at the most. Sometimes I go two days without getting sick.

  The kisses grow more passionate, especially after concerts. The better the concert the more kisses we share when we’re done loading the musical instruments back into the basement. The kisses escalate into more and more until I’m ready for what I’ve heard other girls at school call a home run.

  And so I beckon him, the night before I have to head back to that horrible middle school. I’m hoping the memory of tonight carries me through tomorrow’s hell.

  When he’s done he leaves again. I get dressed all alone, and a strange hollowness sits in the middle of my chest. Curled in a ball, I shake. The darkness returns. How do I chase it away now?

  *

  Gina acts kind of funny when I tell her the next morning. “Oh.” She turns away, looking out the bus window.

  This year, like last year, I share no classes with my only friend, and have to wait until lunch to see if she’ll ever talk to me again.

  When she does talk, it’s all about boy bands that all the girls love. I have nothing to say in return.

  “In my distress I groan aloud

  and am reduced to skin and bones.”

  ~ Psalm 102:5

  Chapter 10

  Little Drummer Boy, pt. 3

  Emptiness and rejection have clawed hands that grasp, grasp, always grasp. What a fearful thing to be on the receiving end of that grasping! I tell myself this over and over when Daryl’s not around. As soon as I see him, all this wisdom flies out the window of sensibility, flung by the toxic trinity of pain, obsession and loneliness.

  Especially on nights like tonight.

  Another show at Celestial Grove and the band mingles with groupies.

  Groupies, those creatures that are one step up from lawyers on the respectable scale.

  How can I blame the little drummer boy when he receives affection from these girls? They are almost eight years older than me, four years older than him. How embarrassing it must be to have a fourteen-year-old girlfriend.

  Still makes me want to stab a hole in his snare drum head.

  It’s not quite as bad as watching the video of him kissing Cybil on our one year anniversary. Yeah. Five minutes, all of it caught on tape. Filmed by his mom, who doesn’t exactly like me. And when he came home, he kissed me as if those five passionate minutes with Cybil were nothing.

  I should know better by now.

  Blonde groupie has both arms around his neck. Her giggling is vomitus. So is the giggle of the brunette groupie dangling off Ryan’s arm. Crystal probably wouldn’t like that much.

  Serves us girls right for dating boys in bands.

  I continue to load the instruments into the car as gently as my anger will allow.

  Setting the cover back over the bubbling volcano of my anger, I bide my time.

  I feel like I’m swallowing lava. I’d throw up again, but I already threw up my dinner an hour ago, just before the encore. And Abbie will weigh me again if she finds out I got sick.

  At least Ryan bought me my own pack of cigarettes. I find a lonely curb behind a car that sufficiently hides me from Daryl, and light up.

  The cool night air chills all my dance floor sweat. My tee-shirt clings to my back. My muscles shake uncontrollably. Dark daydreams claw at my scrambling consciousness. I inhale my drag deeper.

  What happened to my beautiful daydreams? The faeries, the sweet lights that I would drink like honey. Back in the days when water didn’t terrify me.

  That may be why Daryl wants to leave me for blonde groupie. Or Cybil. Or any of the others. I haven’t showered in three days. Too scared. If I keep my clothes on I’m safer.

  “Your hair looks good behind your ears,” blonde groupie says.

  I lean over to glance between the parked cars as her fingers comb through his blond hair.

  I use my cigarette to light another. The first drops from my fumbling, shaky fingers.

  “I’ll wear it like this more often.” The sparkle in his eyes—it’s for her tonight.

  “Hey, Miya, you okay?” Jenny sits next to me.

  I angle my head toward that cheating, unfaithful boyfriend.

  “That’s why I ask.” She puts a cigarette to her lips. “You got a light?”

  “Yeah.” The anger’s stiffened me. It feels strange to move as I pull the lighter from my jeans pocket.

  “You want me to drive you home?”

  “I don’t know.” I stare over the trunk of the car at his newly tousled hair.

  “Why not? Come on, you should.”

  “But what will he do once I leave?”

  “Who cares? He—” she points and I fear he sees her—”doesn’t deserve you.”

  “But do I deserve anyone?”

  “Why don’t you come back home. I have a bottle of wine. We can talk until these guys get back.”

  I’m not even going to ask how sixteen-year-old Jenny got herself a bottle of wine. “Sure.”

  Lightweight that I am, with nothing on my belly but cheap wine, I’m sufficiently drunk by the time Daryl returns to unload his drum set into my basement.

  “Miya, be gentle with my drums, please,” Daryl says as I deposit the high hat beside his snare.

  “Oh, I am being gentle, Daryl. Much more gentle than you are with my heart.”

  “I came back here, didn’t I?”

  “Where else would you bring your drums?” My fists ball tightly at my sides. Bile creeps up my throat. No, don’t let me throw up wine—not here!

  “I could take them to my house.”

  “I wish you would.”

  “Why? I only kissed her. I came back to you, didn’t I?”

  “What, so you can go back and kiss her again once you’re done with me?”

  “Why shouldn’t I kiss her? It’s not like you own me.”

  “I am your girlfriend! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  “It did before you started acting like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you want me to stop the world for you.” He starts singing some radio song with similar lyrics to the words he’s just spoken.

  The pain of rejection caves my chest. “So you’re wanting to break up?” The words usher forth in the barest whisper.

  “It might be a good idea with the way things are right now.”

  My knees start to buckle. Stale wine scrapes its way up my throat. But I swallow it down as Ryan walks into the basement to set his guitar against the wall. He takes one look at me and walks out again.

  “So why don’t you just let me be?” Daryl climbs away from his drum set and walks so close I can smell him. I smell him so completely. All the kisses. All the times he came into my room when I wanted him to, when I didn’t want him to, when he wouldn’t stop even when I’d say no. It fills my nostrils, all of it.

  Forget this cover over my anger! Over a year of being his, for him to do with me what he wanted, and he’s ready to discard me!

  I’ve had this pain before. All of that is beyond the veil of darkness.

  But it won’t happen again.

  A year of being his and he refuses to be mine.

  “You could leave.” His lips form something near a smile.

  I grab his shirt and hurl him against the wall. He bounces off, stunned, staring at me.

  “How dare you!” I scream, forgetting the late hour. “I can’t go anywhere—you know that! This is my house!” I grab his shirt again.

  He slaps my hand away. “Get your hands off me! No one deserves to
be treated like this. You are crazy. You know that? Crazy!”

  I reach forth a gentle hand. I can hardly breathe. How will I get up the basement steps? The room spins.

  “Get away from me!” He turns his shoulder, whipping his hand away so that no part of his skin touches mine.

  “You get out!” My fist pounds his arm, not caring that I punch the old bullet scar.

  “Come on, sis.” Ryan wraps his arms around my arms to stop me. He pulls me away. “You’ll wake Mom and Abbie shouting like that.”

  I point my finger at Daryl, extending my arm as much as Ryan will allow. “Get him out of here.”

  “He can’t leave,” Ryan says. “He doesn’t have a car.”

  “What about the band van?” I ask.

  “Mom’s asleep. We can’t ask her to drive.”

  “Jenny?”

  “With Nate.”

  “I’ll pay the bus fare, just get him out of here.”

  “You’re drunk, sis. Why don’t you come out and get some air. I’ll give you a cigarette.”

  I follow him, stumbling up the stairs through my tears. When did I start crying? But I should anticipate tears by now. They’re regular fare.

  In the back yard, I lose my wine all over Mom’s bleeding hearts and cosmos. How fitting.

  Ryan waits at a distance as I wipe the corners of my mouth.

  “You’re not contagious-sick, right?” he asks.

  He’ll leave faster than a bullet if I say yes. “No, I’m fine.” I look down at my shoes. Good. Nothing got on them this time.

  “Are you going to be okay, sis?”

  I shrug as he lights my cigarette. “I’m so angry, Ryan. I’m so angry I don’t know how to not be angry anymore.”

  “I guess that’s why I sing.”

  I roll my eyes. “Yeah, but you’ve got a great voice. I can’t sing.”

  “You can write. Why don’t you write?”

  “Because it hurts so much, and it’s all dark.”

  “Everything I write is dark too.”

  “No…I mean that any time I pick up a pen, any time I stare at a blank page, the darkness in me is too overwhelming. Sometimes I can’t write anything beyond swearing. There are so many holes in my memory.”

  “How much pot have you been smoking, Miya?”

  “Not that much.”

  “I understand, sis. I have black holes in my memory too. Sometimes it hurts so bad I can’t breathe.”

  “I know exactly what you mean.”

  “But you can’t take that out on others.”

  I stare daggers toward the basement as Daryl emerges. “I can’t stand how he treats me with such contempt. He confessed about the girl tonight, yes, but he has no idea that I know about the others.”

  Daryl turns and walks back down the basement steps. Ryan has a look on his faces as if he hopes I won’t ask him about those others.

  “Don’t worry, Ryan, I don’t want to know details. I’ve cried enough tonight.”

  “I’ll do my best to keep him away from you.”

  “Can you kick him out of the band?”

  “Don’t ask me to do that. Where else are we going to find a drummer as good as him?”

  “Is that all that matters?” I stomp on my cigarette and storm toward the door.

  As I leave, I hear Ryan mutter. “Whatever.”

  Hollowness consumes me all the way up the stairs to my room. My bed. My pillow. I long for it. This night threatens to destroy me. Maybe if I sleep it’ll be better in the morning.

  I collapse, my cheek hitting the pillow, softness startling me. I’m in snow, in the wood, but it’s neither beautiful nor friendly. Just cold, so cold. I stand and wrap my arms around my middle. The trees stare down at me. I don’t see eyes, but I feel them oppress me.

  Voices echo around me. Whispers. Sometimes I can convince myself it’s only the wind through the leaves. Other times I can understand what’s said.

  “You coward.”

  “You did it again.”

  “Hold your anger in next time.”

  “That’s why you’ll be alone forever.”

  “Nobody wants you.”

  I want to go home. I’m afraid and so cold.

  My eyes snap open. I’m in my bedroom again, shivering. I’ll sleep sitting up tonight. I can’t lie down again.

  Every day my dreams are getting more vivid, more real than my waking life.

  The next day, when I am especially tired after two or less hours of sleep, I’m sure my dreams will swallow me whole.

  As Gina and I discuss boys on the school bus, a fox drapes its bushy tail over the seat back in front of me. I stand to look but the seat is empty.

  When I sit again, I glimpse its face peering around the seat at me. Instead of a long snout, it has a face like a dull gray mask. It grins. I gasp, fighting back a scream. Then I blink and it’s gone as if it’d never been there. As I walk off the bus, I glance in every seat ahead of me, expecting the creature to be sitting there ready to pounce.

  I must be losing my mind. First seizures, now hallucinations. Where will it end?

  …deliver me from those who hate me,

  from the deep waters.

  ~ Psalm 69:14

  Chapter 11

  Farewell, Drummer Boy

  Three days. That’s all it took before he’s kissing my ear again in the backyard.

  And I gladly took him back. I missed him so much these last few days that my chest hurt. His arms feel perfect around my waist. I don’t even acknowledge the basketball dribbling down the street.

  “You’ve lost weight again,” he whispers.

  “I know. I didn’t have much of an appetite these last few days.”

  “You don’t think you’re fat, do you?”

  “No. I think I might be too skinny. But I can’t seem to put on weight. Abbie worries that I’ll need to go to a doctor soon if I can’t put on weight.”

  “You usually eat plenty.”

  “I know.” He doesn’t know that I throw up most of my meals, but he gets so worried that I’ll get pregnant that I dare not discuss anything akin to morning sickness. And he called me crazy the other night, so any detail of my life that sounds like bulimia will certainly convince him. “I’ll be okay.”

  “You look beautiful.”

  I melt into him and look up into his eyes, searching for that sparkle.

  It’s there, but he’s staring off in the distance, not at me.

  Across the road and down the street, a girl with long dark brown hair dribbles a basketball in her driveway.

  I look at his hands, pretending he’s not looking at her. He wants me back. He can’t be looking away already.

  “I wish you didn’t smell like cigarettes all the time. And you drink a lot these days.”

  I edge out of his arms. “I’ll try to quit. I’m sorry. I just…I’ve got so many secrets I have to keep. I don’t know how to keep it all quiet inside without them.”

  “We all have secrets we have to keep, Miya.”

  “I know, but mine hurt, and I don’t even know all of them.”

  “You think I don’t have secrets?”

  “I know you have secrets.” I kiss his arm. “I could help you keep them.”

  Ryan’s walking across the street. Where’s he going? He walks toward the girl playing basketball. Did he break up with Crystal? He doesn’t even play basketball. But he’s playing right now.

  Daryl wrenches his arms away from me. “I’m going to play my drums.”

  I shrug away all the feelings of rejection that surge. “I gotta wash dishes anyway. No one else does around here.”

  He walks toward the basement without so much as a glance in return.

  I won’t do it. I won’t let him in my room tonight. I’ll lock the door. I’ll keep my distance.

  But the night is so long, so excruciatingly long without him.

  By eleven-thirty, I’m restless. I can’t live in this skin while staying still.

  The
moon, bright and full, assaults my window. I wander into its silver light, searching for some solace in beauty.

  I can see basketball girl’s front yard so clearly from this window. And Daryl sitting with her on the curb.

  So much for quitting cigarettes.

  I think I need some brandy to go with the cigarettes tonight.

  *

  Nate sets a gentle hand to my shoulder, rousing me from slumber. “Did you sleep out here all night?”

  I sit up, my cramped muscles groaning from sleeping curled up on the lawn chair. “Yeah. It was pretty warm last night. I didn’t get cold.” Not the outside of me, at least. Memories of the image from my window cast a chill on my heart.

  I crane my neck to look for cars parked on the street. “Who all is here?”

  “The band. Jenny’s here, but she’s going to work.”

  “Oh.” I probably should eat, but with Daryl here my appetite isn’t. “What time is practice?”

  “Not until later.”

  “Is Daryl awake?”

  “Yeah, he went for a walk.”

  Which means he saw me lying here and walked on past. And I know where to.

  Late morning fades into afternoon. The dribbling basketball and giggling basketball girl soundtrack my day.

  I drag a CD player into the kitchen and put on U2’s Rattle and Hum. Song number four, Hawkmoon 269, goes on repeat. When this kind of day assaults me, I need to blast Bono’s voice to drown out all others. He sings about needing love with as much desperation as I need love.

  But whose?

  Daryl’s love is so empty.

  The cavity in my chest is so huge I need oceans of that good stuff.

  Oceans.

  I crouch down between the island and the sink, hidden from the view of most anyone who comes into the kitchen. Closing my eyes, my heart screams the lyrics. For an hour.

  Someone unplugs the CD player. “We’ve heard enough of this damn song already.” Ryan.

  “I was listening to that.”

  “You only need to listen to it once. We’ve got people here.”

  I push my stiff body off the floor. “Who’s here?”

  “Like, everybody.”

  I follow him out the front door. He’s right. Everyone’s here. Including Daryl. And Blonde Groupie from Celestial Grove. She’s playing with his hair again.