The night of the Nanapocalypse, I wasn’t even supposed to go out, which was fine with me.
I was all set to stay home with the Tick and watch movies, but the gallery opening Mom was going to got canceled, so she ended up coming home early and she plopped down on the couch to watch movies with us, and even though I was all snuggled up under a blanket on the big chair with the Tick, I couldn’t stand to be in the same room with her.
In the past week she’d accused me of stealing a ten-dollar bill from her wallet (which I did), yanked the lock out of my bedroom door because I went into my bedroom without letting her smell my breath after being out with Seemy, and told me if I put one more hole in my face she was putting me under house arrest.
There was no way I could breathe the same air as her for a whole Saturday night.
So I bailed, and even though she told me I couldn’t, I just walked right out. It was either let me walk out or get in my way, and I knew she didn’t want to have that kind of fight in front of the Tick.
I got into the elevator and I was shaking, and I started crying because things were so bad with my mom and I didn’t know how they had gotten that way but I knew it was my fault.
The thing was, I didn’t really want to meet up with Seemy. I just didn’t have anywhere else to go. She and Toad were coming out of the alley that led to the carriage house when I turned the corner, and Seemy squealed so loud my heart leaped and she came running and jumped into my arms and I knew that was right where I was supposed to be.
She jumped off of me and clapped her hands like a little kid. “I’m so glad you came, Nanja! I thought you had to babysit!”
I glanced uneasily at Toad. He sighed, cracked his knuckles. “Let’s walk,” he said. He was always worried one of the neighbors would notice us coming and going from the carriage house. He walked ahead of us and after a dozen yards called over his shoulder, “So, what are we doing? I’m bored.”
Seemy ran to catch up with him, reaching back to pull me along. “Me too! Let’s do something! What are we going to do?”
Her energy was usually infectious, it was usually enough to make me excited for a night of aimless wandering and pointed drinking, but that night the thought made me weary. I pushed the feeling down until it was just a black seed in my stomach.
“Let’s party,” Toad said, looking right at me.
“Well, duh!” Seemy laughed. “Of course we’re going to party! Right, Nan?”
A couple of hours later it was dark out and it’d gotten cold, but it was all right because I couldn’t feel my skin. We’d smoked some, drunk some, and we were running down the street, I’m not sure to where. My feet felt springy, like rubber, like I was bouncing as I ran. Felt wonderful.
I would have been good stopping, going someplace to ride it out, but Seemy and Toad wanted to keep going, so we did.
After that it’s a little fuzzy. We drank at the carriage house for a while. And then I think we were at McDonald’s. And then maybe the movies. And Toad kept cheering me on, being really cool to me, wrapping his arm around me, helping me drink more when I couldn’t lift the bottle.
And then I was looking at our apartment building, except it was on its side, and it was melting away in the rain. Someone was yelling at me. They were being really, really mean. I was throwing up, and it was getting all over me. Chuck was there. He was upside down, looking at me, and then he was picking me up, and then he was right side up and so was our apartment building.
When they redid the building, the owners put one of those flat, backless modern couches in the lobby. Chuck laid me down on it, and I watched the room spin as he called up to our apartment. Then my mom was there. And Chuck wanted to carry me upstairs, but she did it herself. And I felt so small in her arms, like a little baby, and then I threw up again.
Mom sat with me all night, helping me throw up, keeping me on my stomach, waking me up every five minutes to make sure I didn’t pass out and die. She said she kept the phone next to her because she thought she’d have to dial 911.
By morning I was in Mom’s bed, because at some point in the night I threw up and peed myself at the same time. She’d helped me into the shower, got herself soaked reaching in to wash my hair. I had to sit down, was still too dizzy to stand. The Tick was supposed to be asleep, but I don’t see how he could have slept through the commotion. He appeared in the bathroom doorway, rubbing his eyes, blinking at the light, asking Mom if I was okay. Her voice was high pitched, overly reassuring. “Just go back to bed, I’ll come tuck you in in a minute. Nan has a tummy ache.”
She wrapped me in a towel, brought me to her room, and laid a sheet down on top of her covers, thin protection in case I got sick again. Over me she pulled the blanket we use when we’re watching movies on the couch. She sat next to me, watching while I slept.
I woke up when I heard the front door click shut. It was sunny. Morning time. There was a note by the bed: JUST DOWNSTAIRS GIVING THE TICK TO HIS DAD, BACK IN A MINUTE. I had to pee, so I swung my legs over the side of the bed and then sat there for a minute, feeling like I was going to puke again. Then I slid off the bed, not bothering with the towel because I could tell I was definitely going to puke again. But I didn’t just puke. I had really superbad diarrhea. So I sat on the toilet and hugged the trash can between my knees and wished not that I were dead, but that it were days and weeks and months and years away from this moment.
I decided to shower again, reached over in our tiny bathroom and turned on the water, waited till it was hot and then got in. But I was still shaky, and the floor in the shower was slick, and I slipped almost immediately and fell forward and cracked my head against a broken piece of tile. When Mom came and found me and saw the blood all over me and swirling down the drain, she thought I had slit my own throat or something.
A couple of days after that, when I was home from the hospital for just long enough to pack a bag, I sneaked into the closet and called Seemy for the first time.
“They’re sending you to rehab?” She screeched into the phone.
“It’s not really rehab,” I told her, “it’s like some sort of—”
“Oh my God, you’re, like, practically the sober one out of all of us!” I heard her lower the phone and say, “Toad! Nanja’s going to rehab!” Then she said to me, “That’s too funny, girl, I can’t believe it. How long are you going for? When do you come back? Can we come visit? Oh my God, it’d be really funny to visit you in rehab. We’ll make ourselves T-shirts, ‘Nan went to rehab and all I got was this—’”
I hung up on her.