I am China, a girl sitting upside down on a bench in Central Park. Every ten minutes I sit right side up so all my blood doesn’t pour out of my nose or my eyes. That’s what it feels like upside down. It feels peaceful and I can’t hear the ticking, but it also feels like my head will explode with blood.
It’s getting late.
It’s getting so late that I realize I don’t have a plan.
My plan was: Leave home, find Shane, make new plan, execute new plan.
My plan now seems to be: Sit upside down on a park bench until I can figure out what my next plan is. The sky is cloudy, but it doesn’t feel like it will rain the way the man on the bus said it would.
Shane hasn’t called back. My mom hasn’t even called back. I tried to call Stanzi at around three but there was no ringing, just the sound of distant helicopters with rotors made out of cotton balls. Her voice mail is gone.
I’m hungry because there’s a praline vendor nearby who is candying nuts and it smells good. Maybe pralines will make me vomit again. Maybe this is a side effect of turning right side out. Maybe I’m doomed to vomit everything now that my digestive system is on the inside.
I try Shane again. No answer. No voice mail to talk to. Just ringing to infinity.
I decide to buy pralines. I buy three bags of them and they are too sweet but I eat them anyway as I walk down Broadway toward the subway station.
But I pass the subway station and keep walking down Broadway because maybe I’ll run into Shane. Maybe he’s taking a walk to clear his head. Maybe he got a job at the pizza place near 54th Street where he took me on our first date. Maybe he’s a bicycle courier. Maybe he’s a businessman. Maybe he’s a skyscraper. Maybe he’s the W on top of the Westin hotel.
As I walk, I get closer to Times Square and the tourists are out. Country people from another state and another time. People who speak French. Schoolchildren in matching purple T-shirts with chaperones who don’t hear the ticking coming from every trash can on every street corner.
If I’m close to Times Square, then I’m close to Port Authority.
I am thinking now
of buying a ticket
and sleeping in my
own bed by myself
and being right side out
and being happy.
I am thinking now of
the stuffed monkey ashes
in the back porch fire pit
and thinking
maybe I was too rash
maybe I was too quick
maybe I was too trusting
maybe I was stupid
to think
that anyone wanted
me any more than I
wanted
the monkey.
I walk to the doors of Port Authority and a homeless man asks me for money, so I give him a five-dollar bill. I call my mother, but the ringing blends right into our voice mail message, which is my sisters singing some dumb song from the Disney Channel show they watch all the time.
I’m a failure.
I buy a ticket home.
I walk down the steps to the gates.
I’m underground. I feel the weight of all of New York City on my chest.
And then I see Shane.
He’s not here to find me.
He’s here to leave… with some guy who is old enough to be his father.
He doesn’t see me. But he will.