I grasp the chain at its root, a knot of iron deep in my chest. My senses are full of the wet smell of the air, the slip of water down my back, the brutal ache in my ligaments to run, to hunt, to show my teeth and what they were made for. Pressure like someone has pried open my chest, taken my heart in their hands and dragged me veins first from the bathroom, out of the apartment, across sidewalks and streets and highways till the scent of the desert surrounds me. As my nails turn to claws and my wrists twist in their sockets, I remember: Veer’s driving to Reno today.
Not tomorrow, she’d said, her eyes liquid and hopeful.I’m going up to Reno. But maybe next week.
I thrust my will back inside myself, grip the chain and pull. I shouldn’t call her. I rejected her. The beast bucks against me, ready to snap its jaws down on my throat. Don’t think about her.
And don’t call her. I want to, I’m desperate to have this reason to, and that’s proof enough that I shouldn’t.
Right?
When I catch my breath again, I’m on my hands and knees, vomiting up pale foam that swirls down the drain so fast I might have doubted it came from me at all, if not for the taste of stomach acid.
I already have my solution: a rent-a-truck I can’t afford, and a long, lonely drive into the sweeping nothingness up north. Discoloration splotches my hips, crawling up my sides like finger marks in rotten fruit. I press my thumb into the bruise at the top of my thigh. It burns, blanching red to white like a flame turned up hotter the deeper I dig in.
As soon as I wrap myself in a towel, my phone’s in my hand. She picks up on the first ring.
“Hey.” She sounds breathless. She clears her throat, pitches her voice lower, casual. “Uh, how are you?”
“Fine.” It slips out unthinking. Liar. And what would Veer say if I told her about my mom, my hunger, Uncle Bill’s truck in an impound lot? Maybe my mom is onto something, after all. To be vulnerable with anyone but family is to show someone how to leave you. To open the door and push them through.
Veer clears her throat again. I’ve waited too long to respond.
“Is this about earlier?” I imagine her slouched over the arm of a beat-up couch or curled fetal on the floor of a beige-walled bedroom, worrying at her fingernails. “Because really, it’s cool, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. It’s just, I don’t know, it seemed like we were…”
She trails off, and I’m quick to jump in. “It’s fine. Seriously.”
“Okay. Good. So what’s up?”
Hang up now, Ellis. There’s still time to stop this from becoming dangerous.
My fingers don’t obey me. Neither does my tongue. “Are you driving up to Reno today?”
“Yeah. Why?” She barks out half a laugh, and I imagine her stretching her hands above her head, taking up space in triumph. “You looking for a ride?”
My throat is tight. “Maybe.”
She chuckles, this one lower and quieter. Intimate. “Yes or no, Ellis.”
There’s still time. There’s still time. And woven between my ribs is a craving that runs the length of me, and no matter how many cages I try to put myself in, I will always be an animal inside and I want, I want, I want.
“Yes,” I say. “Please.”
She’s actually driving up to a little town northeast of Reno, she says, and Brian’s place isn’t too out of the way. She likes to do the drive up all at once, stay overnight at a highway motel, do her business in the morning, and get back to Vegas before it’s dark. Same general idea as I had. She doesn’t say what her business is, just that she’s got family to see, and I try not to think too much about the motel.
“I need to drop my car off at the mechanic,” I tell her. “Could you pick me up there?”
“Sure. Where is it?”
I give her the address and say I’ll text her when I’m on the way, and she says that’s great and laughs, and I feel hopeful for the first time in weeks.
My mom’s in front of the TV when I head for the door a final time. After all that. She hugs a pillow as Rose regales Dorothy and Blanche about pickled herring. I look at her, and my mouth is filled with the bitter taste of the words I wish I could take back. When her mind finally fragments into so many pieces that she no longer recognizes me, what will be left of me? Who will I be without anyone to keep score of my flaws?
“Is it a good episode, Mom?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer, just huddles deeper into the pillows. For a second, I wonder if she does remember and is just pretending. Then she mumbles, “Mm-hmm, Rose is my favorite,” and I remember that’s not how this works.
I palm our last two vials, nestle one in cold packs and bury it in my duffel bag, and pour the other into a red plastic cup from the back of the cabinet—Shrimp Factoryis stamped on one side in white, along with a grinning cartoon shrimp—along with water and a packet of Emergen-C. Hopefully the fake citrus is enough to hide the smell of blood. Hopefully Joanne won’t even notice it. I snap a photo of the cup and my mom’s pill bottles, and text it to her so she knows what to look for when she comes by tomorrow. Then I kiss my mom on the cheek and tell her I’m going to work. She doesn’t question it, and I tell myself the lie doesn’t matter.
Only once Veer’s dented Camry rolls to a stop in the car-shop driveway do I realize how much I didn’t want to be alone for this.
