I’m standing outside the fancy mini-mall where Kirkland has erected a big gaudy Christmas tree, where everyone has come to ooh and aah even though it’s just a big dead tree strangled by Christmas lights. Here I am, the day before Christmas, watching all the people weighed down by last-minute shopping bags, the families on their way to see a cheesy holiday movie, the emaciated Santa with his crooked beard ringing a bell next to a donation bucket. I am standing still and everyone else is scurrying around me with flushed cheeks and Christmas sweaters, chasing sugar-drunk children and the sale signs in the shop windows.
It’s bad enough in my house with Mom playing the same Frank Sinatra Christmas album over and over, Dad hiding in the bedroom to avoid all her cheap decorations, all her pretending that her collection of phony holiday crap makes things festive. Just being there, just seeing that fat plastic Santa glowing on the mantel, just smelling her cookies burning in the oven, makes me want to jump out the window.
I thought being outside would somehow be better, that walking around would force my heartbeats and breaths to follow some sort of order, that open air would make me feel lighter. But there’s a place in my chest that still feels like lead, the thump, thump, thump threatening to tear through me.
I am waiting for Sarah. I am looking around, but all I see are white, smiling faces and multicolored scarves, all these people with something to look forward to, all of them with faith that tomorrow morning will bring something new. They will wake up and find their glittering boxes under their trees, full of all the things they had to have. They will open the boxes and their lives will be complete for that moment. Then there will be food and eggnog and a heavy night of sleep. Then New Year’s Eve and empty promises, hangovers, and football. Then it will be back to work, back to school, back to everything exactly the same as it was before. The only difference will be the new date. The only difference will be the new sweaters, new jewelry, new scarves that they will stop wanting as soon as they get them.
But for now, time is paused. It is winter break and I don’t have to go to school for a week. I should be able to breathe now. I should be excited like everybody else, thinking about all the fun things I’m going to do. But all I am is tired. I’m tired of Alex and Ethan and Justin. I’m tired of parents and teachers and drugs and sex, and I’m even tired of Sarah. But there is nothing I can do, nothing to make them go away. They are still here even though it is winter break. They will still be here when it’s over. They will be here and so will I.
“Cassie.” It is Sarah’s voice. It is coming from somewhere behind me, but I pretend I don’t hear it. She asked me to meet her here before I have to leave for my aunt’s annual Christmas party, before she has to go back to an empty house, before she has to spend Christmas alone because Alex and her mother are with grandparents who don’t consider Sarah a part of their family. I said yes because it would give me something to do, give me something to think about besides my dad’s white-trash family and their tradition of sitting around in a circle of folding chairs pretending to want to talk to each other. I am here because the more I think about them, the more detail I see in their miserable faces, the more they become one face, the more I can’t breathe, the heavier the lead in my chest becomes.
“Cassie,” Sarah says. She touches my shoulder and I turn around. “Merry Christmas,” she says, her face lit up like she actually thinks the words mean something.
“I hate Christmas,” I say.
“Me too,” she says. I am imagining her home alone tonight, in that empty house full of garbage and suicide. “What should we do?” she says.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Let’s get out of here.” I start walking without waiting for a response. Sarah follows like she always does.
I head for the parking lot across the street. It is the only place I can see where there are no families or strollers or Santas or Christmas carols booming out of invisible speakers hidden in streetlamps. The parking lot is the only place where everything is still normal, the place everyone has left and forgotten, the only place not pretending to be something it’s not. I am walking through rows of cars, zigzagging between red and blue and white and black metal. Sarah is following. She does not question the lack of direction.
I caress a red Porsche. It feels sticky under my hand. I tap the headlight with my finger and move on to the next car.
“Are you okay?” Sarah says.
“Yeah,” I say. I touch the blue Subaru. It is cold.
“You’re acting kind of weird,” she says.
I should look back at her. I should tell her I haven’t slept or eaten in two days. Instead, I reach into my purse and pull out a cigarette. I light it and blow the smoke at the car window, thinking maybe I am strong enough to make it pass through. Maybe my lungs have the power to blow through glass, to get inside something impermeable.
“Can I ask you something?” I say. The trees that surround the parking lot are skeletons. The sky is gray and will soon be black. There is no color anywhere.
“Yeah,” she says. She is behind me. I am looking at the sky.
“Have you ever had an orgasm?” I say. I am thinking about clouds, about how they look soft but are really cold slivers of water. “I mean, do you, like, like sex?”
I turn around. Sarah is thinking. She is looking at the ground. She looks up and opens her mouth but waits before she speaks, and I can’t tell if it’s like she’s embarrassed or like she’s apologizing.
“I’ve never had sex,” she says. “Not really. Not, like, with a boyfriend.” She looks at the blue Subaru. She rubs her hand along the side. She says to the door, “I’ve never had a boyfriend.”
I can see her reflection in the shiny paint, all distorted and blue and tragic. She is always tragic. She is always pale and weak and wounded and fragile and she is always following me around like a fucking puppy. I have a sudden urge to smash the door in where her face is reflected, to kick it as hard as I can, to find something hard and heavy and hit it until it is nothing.
“Do you want a boyfriend?” I ask her. I am seeing her in the backseat, on her back, her legs up and her eyes closed. I try the handle of the door. It is locked and I keep walking.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t think so.”
We pass by a gray Honda Civic, a little nicer than Ethan’s. It is locked.
“Do you think it’s bad to not like sex?” I ask her.
She pauses, like she’s thinking hard, like she’s contemplating the car’s paint job and tires and the meaning of life. Finally, she looks up at me. She cocks her head to the side and says, “I don’t see how anyone could.”
She is serious but I start laughing. She tries to smile and I can tell she doesn’t want to, but I don’t care because it’s the funniest thing I ever heard. She is standing there with a weird grimace on her face like she’s trying not to cry, and all I can see are movies projected onto the cars in the parking lot, all of them close-ups of a woman’s face in the throes of movie passion, eyes closed, lips quivering, head back and moaning that movie-sex moan that’s low and high at the same time, guttural and animal like some ferocious beast but also whiny and whimpering like a pathetic, starving kitten. This sound does not exist in nature. It is a special effect, made in some lab in Hollywood where they combine the sounds of predators and the sounds of prey, as if the two could coexist in the same body without destroying each other.
“It’s open,” she says.
“What?”
“The car,” she says. She is pulling the handle of a white Audi. The door is ajar. The distant sound of a police siren cuts through the cold, empty air.
“We should probably get in,” I say. It is the logical thing to do. It is winter. It is Christmas Eve and we have nowhere to go.
“Yes,” she says.
“I’ll drive,” I say, and she walks around to the passenger side.
We get in the car and close the door and I suddenly realize how cold I am. I rub my hands together. I blow on them. I wait for our body heat to warm up the car. Sarah looks in the glove compartment, but there is nothing interesting—some napkins, a map of Seattle and the Eastside, an owner’s manual. I put the seat belt on and it makes me feel better.
“Are you okay?” she says again.
“Why do you keep asking me that?” My hands are on the wheel. I am thinking of driving through snow. I am thinking of mountains. I am getting higher and higher and the snow is getting deeper and deeper. I turn left and I turn right. There are no cars on the road.
“You seem weird,” she says. “Are you on something?”
I keep turning the wheel. It is a video game. If I crash, I have three more lives until my quarter runs out. If I run off the cliff, I will materialize good as new.
“Just the Ritalin,” I say.
“But we did all that,” she says.
“No we didn’t,” I say. I park the car. I turn to Sarah.
“What do you mean?” she says.
“Don’t be mad at me.” The cars are still reflecting the faces of women, but they are sleeping now, calm and satisfied after great movie sex.
“I won’t.”
“There’s more,” I say.
“More what?”
“More Ritalin. A lot more. Justin gives it to me and I don’t give it to you.” I turn the steering wheel as far to the right as it will go. It locks and I pull on it, but it won’t move anymore.
“Oops,” I say.
“Do you give it to Alex?” she says.
“No,” I say. “And don’t tell her.”
“I won’t.”
The credits roll and it is the end of the movie. I lock the doors and it makes me feel warmer.
“Are you mad at me?” I say.
“No,” she says, and I look at her. She has folded a napkin in half, then in half again, and now it is a thick little square that won’t fold anymore. She holds it in her hand like she’s thinking of keeping it, like she’s proud of what she has created.
Then she opens up her palm and lets it slide onto the floor.
“You should be careful,” she says, looking out the window at all the motionless cars, the blank screens.
“About what?” I say.
“I mean, just because it’s a prescription doesn’t mean it’s safe. It’s the same as speed, you know.”
“You sound like a guidance counselor.”
“Sorry,” she says, and looks at me, still pathetic as always.
I smile. “Don’t worry,” I tell her. “I’m smart.”
“I know.”
We sit for a while looking out the window at all the cars stopped and waiting to be moved. A young family with a baby is fighting next to a truck. The wife is red-faced and crying as she holds the baby dressed like a little elf. For some reason, I suddenly feel like crying. That baby has no idea it’s wearing a stupid pointy green hat. He has no idea his mother and father hate each other. He doesn’t know there’s nothing he can do about any of it.
“I have something for you,” Sarah says.
“What?”
“A Christmas present,” she says. I feel a dull thud in my chest. I have nothing for her.
“I didn’t get anyone presents,” I tell her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t even get my mom something.”
“It’s okay,” she says, smiling. “I didn’t get anyone else presents, either,” and that just makes me feel worse.
She looks through her purse, takes out a small red envelope and hands it to me. To Cassie, it says. Love, Sarah. I open it carefully and pull out a little cellophane packet with four hits of acid. I look at her.
“For us to do together,” she says. “Just you and me.” She is smiling, hopeful, like she just asked me to marry her.
“Let’s do it now,” I say.
“But you’re leaving,” she says. She looks at the clock on the dashboard. “You’re leaving in thirty minutes.”
“That’s okay,” I say. “Then I won’t be bored at my stupid family dinner and you won’t be bored when you’re home alone tonight.”
She opens her mouth like she’s going to say something, then closes it. She looks down at my hand holding the cellophane, then up at me with her same old pathetic face. “Okay,” she says, but I can tell she doesn’t want to, and I don’t care.
I pick up the two hits with my fingernails and stick them on my tongue. I hand the rest to her. She licks them out of the wrapper like someone’s holding a gun to her head, and I think if she doesn’t want to do it, she should just give the rest to me.
“Now you won’t be so bored tonight,” I tell her.
“Yeah,” she says.
We sit there for a while not talking. I know it should be an hour before the acid kicks in, but I keep hoping that it will be sooner because my stomach’s empty. But everything keeps feeling the same. The cars are still not moving and Sarah is still sitting there looking like someone died, like she wants me to feel sorry for her, but I won’t. It is Christmas Eve and it is time to be festive and fuck her if she wants to ruin it.
“I’m going to go,” I finally say.
“But it’s not time yet,” she says.
“I have to stop by the store for cigarettes,” I tell her, even though I know she knows it won’t take more than a minute.
“Okay,” she says. I open the door, but she keeps sitting there looking at the dashboard.
“You should get out of the car,” I say. “The people might come back.”
“Yeah,” she says, and we both get out.