I wasn’t okay. I was the reason she’d scraped for meds. The reason high school had been hell. She’d gasped for air, and I’d turned my back.
My knees hit the concrete, hard, and my body convulsed. Acid burned my throat as bile surged up, hot and acrid. I gagged once, twice, then everything in me emptied onto Vinny’s shoes. The stench of sour vomit mixed with asphalt and car exhaust was thick in my nose. My stomach cramped, my ribs aching with each heave, until nothing came but strings of spit and the hollow ache in my gut. I clawed at the ground, desperate, as though I could tear the rot out of myself with my bare hands.
Only rage remained—raw, corrosive. Vomiting had scraped the poison out of my body but left behind the wreckage of what I’d done. I had no one to blame but myself.
I understood then. What she’d tried to tell me all along. I’d destroyed us before we even began. No clean slate or way forward.
16
Lincoln
Iwiped the string of spit with the back of my hand, the stench curling around my nose. Sourness coated my tongue, and shame ate away at me from the inside out, starting with my lungs and swallowing me whole. Vinny’s eyes were laced with concern. As if I deserved his empathy.
When you’re watching a movie about someone who's lost their memories, almost always there’s a long flashback of everything they couldn’t remember—watching their entire life out on fast replay. There's heart wrenching music as they slowly realize just exactly who they are, reuniting with the people desperate to be remembered. Within seconds, everything makes sense again. Sometimes, there’s even a kiss or a wedding. Me, though? It wasn’t that at all. It was worse than everything I’d worried might be true, and there’d be no hug, or kiss, or shit for me.
“Hold on, Linc. Let me call Nina, she’ll know what to do.”
The need to purge the past mixed with anger, its heat burning hotter by the hypocrisy in his steely slimy eyes. This motherfucker dared to pretend to care about me when he’dnever had the guts to defend his cousin. I pulled myself up, vomit seeping through my slacks.
“You! You won’t fucking bother Nina.” I grabbed him by the collar and jerked him into me. “You think that’s the right way to treat her? Your ownfamily?”
“Linc …”
“I remember.” I hissed.
“You do?” His eyes went wide and red, something lingering just behind them.
I nodded.
“Look, I?—”
“You let me hurt her,” I gritted out.
“Dude, I had no power over you. Then or now. You want to be a dick to whoever you’re into? I’ve never been your keeper.”
This must be the bravest Vinny has ever been. Wrong time for it. I gripped his collar and tie with my other hand, then pushed him on his ass right on top of where I just threw up.
“You’ve never bothered to do a single thing for her.”
He jumped to his feet and pressed his chest against mine.
“You’ve got no fucking idea what you’re talking about. I’ve been your friend through thick and thin.”
“A friend doesn’t just see you become the scum of the earth and say nothing,” I snapped. “You mademeNina’s problem. You knew she had enough on her plate as it was.”
I walked away. His screams of protests and claims of favors owed echoed in the purple hues of dusk. Vinny could soak in debris and bile for all I cared.
I meandered the streets, cutting down on Halsted and Wellington. The jazz started to bleed into the evening right out of Kingston Mines, its brick façade worn but proud, its orange awning sagging just enough to show the history behind it. There was a buzz of smoke, laughter, and the shuffle of feet waiting to get lost in the blues. Nina listened to Fleetwood Mac and enjoyeddancing. I shook my head. There’d be no Nina and me. The delusion was over.
I passed under the glow of a 7-Eleven. “Songbird” had triggered my memories, and yes, I’d had flashes of really fucking bad stuff, but I now had to dig through every single one of my newfound memories andlivethem.
A dark liquid was puddled on the sidewalk, old beer leaking from trash bags by the curb. I’d knocked over a beaker in the science lab. The liquid splashed across the counter and onto the floor, spreading fast, a sickly yellow puddle that hissed against the burners. The teacher had rushed over, barking orders while everyone stared at Nina as if she’d been the one too clumsy to control her own experiment. It’d burned through the table. I could have hurt her. Everyone laughed while she flinched back, humiliated. All I did was grin, downplaying my recklessness.
A couple of tourists laughed too loud outside Giordano’s, clutching paper bags. I plunged again and drowned in the memory of some junior who’d asked her out for homecoming. He was bragging about how he’d be the guy with the prettiest girl. I’d snapped and told him he was having Mr. Harmons’s sloppy seconds. Shortly after, everyone ran their mouths that she was messing around with a teacher. I’d bristled every time I heard it, no matter that I’d been the one to start it. Nina’s whole schedule got changed, and she had to do counseling. The whispers behind her back never stopped. No one asked her out again.
Across from me, a man jogged, whiffs of his breaths visible in the night. Nina’s warm breath had puffed white in the morning air, ragged, rattling sounds coming from her chest as she struggled to meet her time to pass the mile test. I’d laughed, then told her to suck it up and it was a good thing she had no parents to be disappointed in her.Oblivious to how her lungs were on fire, making a fucking joke out of her fight for breath.
The neighborhood was alive, but I moved through it hollow. Three-flats lined up in the streets, bricked and stone cut with tinted windows and cozy nooks. I passed the painted murals along Clark, bright splashes of color that should have lifted me but only reminded me of Nina. How she’d lit up when she suggested painting a mural on the open wall above the stairs, and how I’d told her, in front of everyone in student council, that her understanding of color theory was as nuanced as a two-year-old’s and she should spare the next graduating classes from any monstrosity she might slap together. I saw her in every reflection in every storefront window, her hurt written across panes streaked with spray paint.
