I needed to be alone. I couldn’t trust myself with the people I loved. In my head, with each step, I heard my words: “I can’t love you like that.” By the time I walked all the way to Mo’s house, I’d worn off the worst of the adrenaline, and it left me shaky and weak. I typed F-U-C-K into the keypad to let myself in. The garage looked empty without Morty. The workbench was cluttered with sketches of a giant squid that looked like a play structure, slides built into the tentacles.
There was a six-pack of PBR in the fridge. I grabbed it and crawled under the workbench into the bomb shelter, pulling the pallet door shut behind me. The air felt dusty and scarce. I opened the first beer, drank it in gulps, pacing the tiny stretch of floor between the two cots. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I couldn’t stand my own skin. I wanted the pulsing thump in my veins to stop. It felt like my life could only run on that rhythm, and it was offbeat from everyone else.
My phone had been in my pocket when I fell in the pool, and the screen was hopelessly black. I sat on a cot and dropped my head in my hands, covering my eyes. Trying to breathe. I’d forgotten how normal people take in air, worried I might never remember. I couldn’t even cry. My shorts were still soggy, and even though it wasn’t cold in Mo’s garage, I kept shivering. I wrapped one of the army blankets around my shoulders, but it smelled like mildew, and the wool scratched my skin. I threw the blanket on the other cot and drank another beer. And then another. I drank until my fingers felt numb and my breathing became less of an effort. The details of what had happened at the pool were starting to feel far away, like they were at the end of a long, dark tunnel. I couldn’t remember what I’d said, if everything I’d thought had come out of my mouth, if words came out without any thought. What was still clear was the memory of the weight of my wet dog on my shoulder and handing his leash to Althea. I’d failed Bark most of all.
Lying on the cot, staring at the ceiling, I noticed a box on the top shelf. Plain cardboard, because we thought that would draw less attention. Held shut with a collection of rubber bands running in both directions. We’d believed the effort of removing them would deter any adult from trying to open our treasure chest. As if anyone besides me and Mo even went in the bomb shelter anyway.
I got up. The cot had a damp imprint of my butt, back, and hair, like I was made from disconnected parts. I climbed on one of the water drums, my brain struggling to find equilibrium. The drum wobbled under my feet. I stood on my tiptoes. As an adult, I was the same height as Mo at twelve; I could finally reach the box on my own.
I wanted the box to be full of the kind of mementos that would push me toward being a whole new person. I’d open it and something in there would suddenly twist my mind into the right shape and the world would make sense. I climbed down with the box and rested it on the cot. The rubber bands were disintegrating and broke when I stretched them.
It was just a box of junk. Some seashells, smooth stones, little green army men with plastic bag parachutes, the Barbie who’d suffered a buzz cut at our hands, a bunch of Atomic Fireballs, a pack of playing cards, some SpongeBob stickers, and a stack of Mo’s uncle’s old Spider-Man comics. No magic answer to be found.
I sat on the cot, opened another beer, and tore the wrapper off an Atomic Fireball with my teeth. I couldn’t trust myself with the people I loved. All I did was fail them, and it was probably better if I stayed away. So instead of going back to the pool to apologize, I read Spider-Man comics and tried to dissolve the fireball in a mouthful of beer.
* * *
Two fireballs and three Spider-Mans later, I finished my last beer just as I heard Mo’s car in the driveway. Maybe she wouldn’t even find me. She probably came home for a snack or goggles or aspirin or sunscreen. I lay very still on the cot and wished I could turn the light off with my mind. I closed my eyes like maybe that would help me stay undiscovered. But she opened the garage door and went directly to the bomb shelter. I heard her moving the pallet door away. And then I felt her standing over me. I kept my eyes closed.
“I thought I’d find you here,” Mo said. “The show’s about to start. We can still get there in time.”
“I can’t.” I rolled on my side toward the wall. My bladder was full and my stomach felt empty.
“Kay. I’m so sorry. I was wound-up like a puppy dog. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Yeah.” I opened my eyes and stared at the cinder block. I knew she hadn’t pushed me on purpose. She would have done the same thing to any of her lifeguard friends with no consequence. But I couldn’t find the warmth in my heart that belonged to her. I couldn’t feel much of anything, like I’d overspent my emotions.
“Nan, Bitsie, they’re about to do something amazing, and you’re going to miss it?”
“I can’t,” I said, my throat constricting. I picked at a glob of grout between the cinder blocks with my fingernail, trying to break it and leave a smooth edge. It wouldn’t budge. “Are their costumes okay?”
“They’re perfect, Kay. They look incredible. I checked the hoses. All of them. Four times.”
I nodded. All of me hurt. There was still water sloshing under the glass of my father’s watch.
“Let me take you home at least. Before I go back.”
“I don’t want to go home,” I said a little too loudly. “And I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Okay,” Mo said, sighing. “At least go in my room and put on some dry clothes, okay?”
After she left, I crawled out of the bomb shelter, ran inside to the bathroom, and peed for what seemed like an hour. In Mo’s bedroom, I found a wad of clothes that smelled pretty clean in a laundry basket at the foot of her bed. Her room hadn’t changed since we were kids either, but she’d been living in it this whole time. She still had a Bart Simpson poster hanging on the ceiling over her bed, and a giant stuffed snake wrapped around her headboard. I changed into a pair of powder blue Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt covered in a print of hibiscus flowers and vinyl records. It smelled like Tide and had been washed so many times it was soft as silk.
Pops wasn’t a drinker, but I found a dusty old bottle of Drambuie in the living room hutch. I poured it in a coffee mug. It was sickly sweet and smelled like licorice, but it burned my throat enough to make me think it would do a good job of keeping me from sobering up. That was all I wanted, to not feel anything.
I ate an entire box of Cheez-Its and watched a million episodes of Law & Order. I thought maybe Mo would come back after the mermaid show. That she’d check on me before going to the cocktail party at Nan’s house. But she didn’t.
When the eleven o’clock news played on the TV, there was a clip from the show. The four mermaids, underwater, smiles on their faces, arms around each other, the sequins on their tails shimmering in the water. Nan and Bitsie’s students in their matching bathing caps, kicking their legs in unison behind them. A brilliant spectacle. When the segment was over, I turned off the TV and sat in the dark in Mo’s living room, wearing her enormous old man clothes. Finally, finally, the tears came, and all I wanted to do was find Bark.