You, Me, & Her
I remember the music—I could feel it. The rhythm was beating into your body so that your heartbeat matched it. The mob of people was moving together. We were all this big group of colors, arms waving in the air, alcohol being slopped down girls’ backs, and lights that flashed every few seconds illuminating the chaos all around.
What I don’t remember is you being there next to me. At some point in the night you left me. We had been dancing, our bodies shaking next to each other; my grin was reflected back at me in yours. And then you were gone.
I knew it was a risk, you going out there with me, but you said you would be okay. You just wanted to dance. You begged Mom and got Dad on your side. I knew it was a bad idea. You had just gotten back, but you were already prancing around in your new black dress, the one with the silver chain clasp in the back and you looked happy. I hadn’t seen you happy—I hadn’t seen you at all—for such a long time, so I argued for your cause to come out with me and my friends. Your smile lit up, and you grabbed my hands, and jumped up and down pulling me with you.
You ran to the bathroom and finished doing your make-up. When you came out the dark circles that usually haunted under your eyes were gone, and your thin lips were painted red. You tried to get me to wear your lipstick, to be more like you, but I didn’t. Your eyes stopped shining for a second, did you know that? I didn’t know it meant that much to you that we do things together, that’s why in the end I stood there in the bathroom, looking at the caked foundation on your face—the one that used to look just like mine—as you carefully traced my lips in candy-apple red lipstick.
Afterwards we stood and looked at ourselves in the mirror. Two girls that once looked so much alike. Mom used to dress us in matching pink outfits, remember? Of course you do. Our hair was long and brown, straight as sticks. Our eyes are hazel, but you have freckles in yours, and I have a small mole beneath my left one. Now you have short black hair that makes you look like a pixie or fairy. You have on red fishnet stockings, and a bunch of black bracelets on your wrist that jangle whenever you move them. I am wearing a short blue dress, though not as short as yours, and I’m wearing traditional panty hose in a neutral color. My still brown hair is in a pony-tail that just brushes the back of my neck—the place where your skulls tattoo is on your neck.
When we were in the car I should have lectured you. I should have told you to give me any cash that you had on you and I shouldn’t have told you that I Mom had given me emergency money and it was stowed in my wallet. Instead I whooped and hollered in the backseat, yelling at my friends in the front to turn the music up. I wonder if what I’m saying is that I shouldn’t have trusted you. Or that I should have listened to all those psychiatrists and doctors who said that you needed to stay away from those types of places. I wonder if I’m saying it was all my fault.
But like I said, once we got there all I remember is feeling the music, and not feeling you next to me. You are still mostly all angles from when you were living on the streets for so long. I used to lay awake in my bed wondering what was so amazing about the high that you chased and why was it so much better than lying in the bed next to mine whispering about your newest crush like you used to? When I stopped feeling you next to me I didn’t panic at first. I thought maybe you had gone to the bathroom or gone to get some water—it was so hot in there I wouldn’t have blamed you for approaching the bar for just water. I didn’t think to go to the coat check and make sure Mom’s emergency cash was safely tucked in my purse. I also didn’t think to walk over to the bar on the floor above us where the cute waiter whose name I now know is Sean was working, busy pouring drinks, and too busy to notice whether or not you were wearing the green bracelet that meant you were old enough to order any alcoholic drinks. You weren’t.
The music started to pound faster and there were so many bodies pushed up against each other, and some guy’s hands were wrapping themselves around my waist, and I looked up to find you—I knew you’d pull me away from him—but you weren’t there, and I couldn’t remember the last time that you had been right there next to me, and that’s when I started to worry. I began turning my body around in different directions looking for you. The guy who was grabbing me thought this was an invitation to grab my backside and hug it close to him, and I let him just long enough to see that you weren’t behind him, and then I turned around and walked away.
I headed to the stairway that led to the next dance room, and there you were, except it wasn’t you, it was other-you. I could tell right away because normally you look like me, but different, but other-you doesn’t look like me at all. Other-you moves much more quickly than you do and she gets irritated with people much more easily. Her movements are really jerky and she usually waves her arms funnily in front of her face, listening to music that her black bracelets make, and when the bracelets separate from each other you can see red lines that have slashed into her arms and if other-you has been out a lot then her arms are covered in scabs as well and her veins sink into her skin, and her skin is wrinkly and old looking. Other-you is so skinny, and a lot of times she smells like smoke, dirt, and something else that kind of makes me want to gag, but it also kind of makes me want to hug her really close to me and tell her it’s all going to be okay and that I’m going to do whatever it takes to make her better.
That’s what I’m thinking about doing when I see other-you clawing yourself up on the rail of the stairway that I was headed towards. When other-you saw me, other-you started waving frantically as if other-you were excited to see me. I asked other-you where you got it but other-you couldn’t hear me and other-you didn’t want to listen to me anyway. I started pointing up the stairs and other-you agreed to go with me. I pulled other-you behind me because other-you were having trouble walking. Other-you kept giggling into my ear and I just tugged other-you harder, pulling other-you towards the exit sign that I could see, bright red, in the distance.
The lights were so bright. They were all I could see. There was a whirring sound and men’s voices. There was glass, and blood, and pain. I couldn’t move, I was too tired to move, and I hurt too much. I don’t know if I was able to scream. I know now that you weren’t. I could see tiny shards of glass poking out of my arms. My face was burning. One of my legs was stuck under something—it felt like when you wrap a rubber band around your finger for a really long time, and it’s a prickly type of pain, but you know once the rubber band comes off the real pain will start. I didn’t want the real pain to start, and I had a feeling that it had nothing to do with my leg so I just lay there and tried not to turn my head in any direction. I could feel tears falling out of my eyes and they just made my face burn more and I really just wanted to hold your hand and have you tell me that everything was going to be okay like when we were kids and I’d fall of my bicycle, but I didn’t know where you were.
When I woke up I had a tube sticking out of my nose, and another stuck in my hand. Machines were bleeping next to me, and everything was white and smelled like Lysol. Whenever I moved a little in my bed I could hear plastic rustling underneath me. The walls were white with pink trim, and when I looked out the window that was in the room it was bright outside. One of my legs was in a large blue cast, and I had red scabs up and down my arms, but I couldn’t feel the pain. Everything was sort of fuzzy and I just wanted to go back to sleep, but I couldn’t.
You weren’t in the bed next to me. Mom was crying and Dad couldn’t say anything. He just kept shaking his head, and rubbing my hand in his. The doctor came in dressed in more white. He checked a clip board that must have been hanging from the end of my bed, and patted Dad’s shoulder awkwardly. I tried to ask him where you were. I tried to tell him that you weren’t you, but other-you, but all I could manage to say was your name, and it hurt to say that much, and then Mom started crying more and she shuddered, and Dad had to hold her for a few minutes. The doctor gave me this look, it was pity, and sadness, and guilt, and the same look that most people look at me with now. You would laugh at the look if it were you or flick them off so that they knew better than to feel sorry for you. Other-you would be somewhere where the looks couldn’t find her, hidden in some alley, pushing needles into her arms, but I’m not really sure how she did it because you never talked about it to me when you were home safe again. You always said you didn’t want that part of you to be something that we shared, so you never did, and it’s now just one more thing that we never will say to each other.
When I got you into the car I wasn’t sure where to go—who to trust with you. The doctors at the hospital, your therapists at the treatment center, Mom and Dad. It wasn’t hard to steer the car though because all of them were down the same two-lane highway. I think other-you knew that. I think that’s why other-you started screaming at me. Were you scared of which one I would take you to? Other-you started whining for me to pull over, but I wouldn’t. That’s when other-you started reaching for the steering wheel. I kept smacking other-you’s hands off, but other-you would just smack me back and pushed the wheel—you pushed us—to the wrong lane of the road.
I saw the lights coming forward. I heard a honking horn. I tried to reach for other-you’s hands and push them away, but other-you was screaming so loud, and then other-you wasn’t screaming at all and neither were you.
