The Good Life

Submitted by C. Fids

I lay my head on the windowsill and watch the world flash by. The metal of the train presses into my skin no matter which way I turn, as if trains were designed to hate me. The passengers glare at me and I glare back, hardly lifting my long legs to let them by. They think taking up four seats is a big deal? The train is taking up my life. Where the pretty young woman who boarded is, who knew how to smile, I wish I could tell them. But suddenly all the noise goes out of everything, and I am left with a dull buzzing, the throb in my ears that only comes from sheer panic. And then I lose sound altogether, and the only sensation on this fast train is my heart gulping back down my throat, as we pass the first sign that says home.

It wasn’t easy coming back to the lush greenery. Leaves pulsed with a peridot fire as sparkly as all the gems in a street vendor’s cart. I pushed through the doors, wondering how my slick converses would do on a real road. More hills in this country than virgins. No one helped me as I lugged my duffel off the commuter rail. I was all alone.

Finally I made it across the tracks and, panting, to the station. My mother had sworn to meet me, but she was always late, and the sun beat down on my neck like an executioner. A hot, beautiful summer. 

Just like last time.

 I punished one of my shoulders with the cutting weight of the duffel, shrugged the other one, and started up the hill. As long as I’d been gone, I still didn’t think to check the station; it had been empty for years, and, according to the old lady who used to live next to us, was owned by a lesbian.

 There were no townspeople to see my thin straggle up the hillside. Cross the border and you run into people hanging Christmas lights all year round, but none of that here, no one outside of these rolling lawns hiding rolling mansions. No one to hear you scream.

My head started to go numb again, brain brushed with cotton, but I opened my eyes wide and remembered the exercises.

 This is where you are. Count the colors. Green green more green Christ this damn town

Ok you are here. You are not in the past. You are right here. Avoid triggers. Avoid

The outdoors

Night time

Being alone

Being with anyone

Touching

Love

Your past

 

Sometimes listing the triggers is a trigger itself. I forget for a moment if I’m on the train, still avoiding strangers, and am surprised to find myself tensed in a body fighting up a hill. My nails, dug into my palm, have drawn blood.

It’s a beautiful summer day.

 I rip the door open, slam the bag down, but still have enough breath somehow to scream, “I’m home!”

 As usual, no one hears me. My mother is partly deaf but denies it. If she can’t hear you, it’s your fault.

 From behind I’m seized by two strong arms. I whirl to face my attacker, but stop my hand an inch from his throat.

“Frank!”

He hugs me instead, and I tolerate the touching, because he’s Frank.

“I didn’t know I’d see you, where’s my mom?”

He steps backwards, the open doorway falling between us, his face crinkling in confusion.

 “Don’t you know?” Frank’s voice is always gentle, even when I’ve done something like ask where my mother is in my own house. He lives down the way. Always did.

 I shrug my shoulders, which feel whipped from carrying the duffel. When I reach to lift it, he helps.

“Why are you here, I mean I’m glad to see you,”

God city people are not like suburbs people at all. I try to remember politeness.

 “Would you like a glass of water?”

“No thanks, Rainy.”

And with this, my world comes crashing down. A hot day such as today, and my friend Frankie, born two days before I was, always squinting at the world as if it were slightly blurry except for me, and taking everything as it comes and drinking all the water I brought us when I snuck the whole gang into a club one time so that I thought gee, he will never be boyfriend material, but he was sweet nonetheless, our Frank, everyone’s Frank even though he kept to himself up in the woods with his mama, he would never, ever refuse a glass of water. Because Frank was always hungry, and always thirsty. The kindest giant of a kid anyone ever knew, but when there were refreshments, Frank didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘No.’

I sank a little into the house’s shade and said, “What is it Frank? What did I come home to?”

He answered, “Rain, it’s happened again.”

Happened again.

I fled home from this, and then found it wherever I went, in that night that stretched out around me no matter which apartment I lived in or job I worked or play I saw, my brain is on fire with darkness, so I lose my job and my apartment and I come home, thinking maybe, maybe it was all in your head. Maybe you can hide from it in the very place it started, cuz you have no other place to go.

“He’s here?”

 Frank drew a deep breath, put a hand almost on my shoulder before my stiffness helped him remember not to. “He’s here. I’m so sorry.” 

“I thought he was in, South Beach or, Philly or fucking Europe,”

“No Rain, he’s back. Like you are.”

Like I am, I chattered bitterly in my brain. Frank sighed.

 “I think I’ll take that glass of water now.”

And I knew it wasn’t over.

“Tell me what happened.”

He made me get him a glass of water first, in the kitchen I didn’t remember and felt meek in among all the modern metal.

Frank tips his glass slowly, as afraid to break it as I would be. The beads on the body remind me of something, suddenly everything is reminding me of something, lightheaded and nauseous.

“Are you sure you want to know?"

I paused. “I have to know.”

He told me then, about a girl, not one like me, popular as I had been, but shy, and younger—always younger, as young as the me in my head I reach towards in my dreams sometimes, trying to protect. A girl who had told no one but Frank’s sister. Telling people didn’t work, I thought. Not for me. But for her, maybe, it would, because she was telling me.

“So what do you think? I mean he,”

“He did it again.” I groan with the pain that it is not all in my head, and I don’t know if it’s worse or better or worse again.

I’ve been waiting for this four years. Half a year of college, a year of transiency, a year of six juggled jobs, another half year of…well, things it’s best to forget right now. Always a fear of the phone call, or even a newspaper article, to say, he did it again. Because you didn’t stand up. Some other girl is a piece of what she ever was, because of him. Because of you, not warning her. Not protecting another girl, not able to protect that younger girl in your head, with hair the color before you dyed it, the real color, screaming in that one night even though all these other nights have passed. Every dream I try to protect her, and in the mornings she leaks into my life, slipping away my chances and work and attempts at loving.

  I don’t know where Frank was or how long I drifted, but when the attack stopped, he was still there, waiting for me. I looked at the only friend, of all of them, who had walked through fire for me, and knew what we had to do before I did what I had to do.

 “Frank,” I said, “Let’s get baked.”

Brownie mix is easy to find in our supermarket. Liquor, sadly, is not. So we are forced to break the law with pot brownies, because there is no alcohol for miles in this dry town of dry towns. He let me wait in the car while he ran in, even as I cursed myself for cowardice, muttered the whole time I sat in the dark, “It’s not like you’ll get raped in the middle of the supermarket.” Of course muttering these hearty words to myself never make things brighter.

When Frank returns we hightail it back to my house, hoping my mother isn’t home and we have to share. His stash is pitifully tiny. Frank is fiercely against drugs, but he loves getting high with me.

I was straight edge myself, until I left this place.

The only good thing in the world is fudge on your tongue when you’re high as a kite.