air from the fan chilled beads of sweat on my forehead. The feeling that went through me was mellow and giddy. For a second, I forgot everything else. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt happy and I even giggled as I sat on the floor and let it flow out through all my veins, all the way down to my fingers and toes. For the first time in a long time, I felt right. It was like waking up after a long sleep.
I lifted the glass again, and that time I didn’t stop until my stomach turned over and threatened to puke it all back up. I sat down in the middle of the floor and broke out in a cold sweat as the numbness made its way through my body. I was crying, but some part of me felt such relief I didn’t care about anything else.
Her being gone did come, just like I knew it would. Before the night was over, Karen being gone hit me for real, but by then I was numb and beyond feeling anything.
6
Huma
Zoe Ott—Pleasantview Apartments, Apartment #713
I woke to the smell of smoke. Wind was flapping at my clothes, and I could feel grit peppering my face. I was lying on the pavement, but the rain had stopped. It was hot and dry. I didn’t hear any cars or any people. All I could hear was the wind.
I opened my eyes and saw the burned-out shell of a car lying on its side a little ways away, and scattered near that were big chunks of concrete with rebar sticking out. The road I was lying on was broken into big pieces, the cracks filled in with dust.
I got up on my hands and knees, my hair trailing down in the grime. There was rubble scattered all around me, crumbled concrete and sand along with something shiny, like powdered glass. Here and there I could pick out little pieces of metal peeking out of the dust. They looked like electronic components. Some were connected with little wires, and some had what looked like hairs or legs sticking out.
A few feet to my left, a long blade with no handle was stuck right through the blacktop. A tiny pink T-shirt, scorched and smudged with soot, had snagged on the top of it and waved there like a little flag.
I sat back on my heels and let the wind blow my hair out of my face. When I looked down at my hands, I saw there was a piece of broken glass stuck in one of them. I picked it out and dropped it on the ground in front of me. The sharp corner had blood on it. I closed my eyes, listening to the little girl’s shirt snap in the wind.
A shadow fell over me as I heard footsteps crunch on the pavement. I opened my eyes again, and a woman was standing in front of me. She was burned, and smoke trailed from her hair and clothes. Behind her, there was nothing but open space. The buildings were gone. Nothing was left but jagged pieces sticking up. I held one hand up to shade my face so I could see. The woman’s face was covered in soot, and cracked so that raw red showed through.
“Who are you?” I asked.
The wind blew again, fanning the embers that were buried in the ashes of her clothes. Black bits crumbled from her and were blown away.
“Why …?” she asked.
“Why what? Who are you?”
She held out her hands, and I saw that her fingertips were burned down to the bones. The wind ruffled her coat, spraying cinders. Tears ran down her black face.
“You did this.”
“What?”
“You did this …”
I gasped and opened my eyes. The wind stopped, and the woman was gone. I was staring at the ceiling of my apartment. Off to the side, I saw a cartoon playing on the TV.
My head hurt and my mouth was dry. My stomach was burning, and I felt like I was going to puke. I knew that feeling. It was how I was used to waking up, at least until …
A lot of times when I’d wake up from a binge, there would be this time where I blissfully forgot everything I did the night before. A lot of times it never came back, but sometimes it did, like a slap in the face. That morning, lying on my couch, I got two, one right after the other.
The first slap was that I fell off the wagon. After not having a single drink for so long, I’d blown it. It wasn’t a small slip, either. I went all the way.
“Shit …”
If I’d had the strength, I think I would have cried. I’d been working so hard. I’d really tried. I’d woken up from dreams where I drank and felt guilty about it, then felt relieved when I realized it hadn’t really happened. But that time it wasn’t a dream. I’d really done it. My whole body ached.
I wondered if I should even tell him. He didn’t need to know. It was just one time. I could just get back on the program and forget the whole thing ever happened, right? It was just one slipup. What the hell was I think—
The second slap came then. My stomach rolled and I scrambled to my feet. I stumbled into the bathroom, just managing to get through the door before I fell down on my knees in front of the bowl. Everything came up; then I dry heaved on top of it to the sounds of cartoon music from the next room. I flushed and spit, leaning over the toilet while sweat rolled down over my stomach.
“Karen …”
I cried. I couldn’t do anything else, so I just sat there, staring into the toilet, and cried until I couldn’t anymore.
When I managed to get up, I walked on pins and needles, trying not to fall. Stumbling back to the living room, I accidentally kicked an empty bottle across the floor. It whacked against the coffee table. That’s when I saw Penny.
She was sitting on the arm of the couch, watching the TV. She had a bowl in one hand and a big spoon in the other, and was laughing with a mouthful of cereal when I came back in. How long had she been there?
She turned and looked over at me and she stopped laughing. For a second, she looked sad. She put the bowl down on the end table and dropped the spoon into it.
“Sorry, I ate some of your cereal,” she said. “Feel any better?”
“No.”
She nodded.
“I heard what happened.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. My head was spinning and I couldn’t think of where I would start. I didn’t want her there. I wanted to be alone.
“Lie down,” she said, pointing at the couch. “Come on, before you fall.”
The last thing I wanted to do was talk about it, but I really did need to lie down. I limped over to the couch and flopped on my back while she looked down on me from her perch on the armrest.
“Drink this,” she said, tossing me a bottle of vitamin water. She pulled a pair of pill tabs out of her pocket and tossed them to me too.
“Those will stop the nausea.”
I pushed the pills through the foil and swallowed them, washing them down with a gulp of water from the bottle. My stomach turned, but they stayed down.
“Look, I know you don’t want to talk right now, so I’ll keep it short,” she said. “Ai doesn’t want to see you like this anymore, and, honestly, neither do I. This, what happened here with your friend, it wasn’t your fault and it wasn’t fair. This kind of thing shouldn’t be happening to you, so it’s time.”
