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She returns and sets the glass on the table, filled now with soda poured over ice. I watch it fizzing for a few seconds until it settles, then pop the pill in my mouth and chew it a little as she instructed last time before lifting the glass to my mouth. The distinct taste of cheap whiskey burns the back of my throat as I swallow. Not anticipating it, I gag just a little.
“I need to get going,” she says. “I’ll make sure everything is locked.”
She reaches into the waistband of her skirt and pulls out a revolver—the one that’s normally in the top drawer of her dresser—and wordlessly sets it on the table beside my whiskey and coke and turns to leave.
Sorry you got raped; here’s a gun and some drugs. Try not to upset your sister!
It’s all so fucking surreal, so uniquely horrifying. All I can do is stare at the back of her.
What’s wrong with her?
About a year ago, my mom was a passenger in a car accident with a drunk driver. The guy walked away without a scratch, of course, but for my mom, it was pretty bad. When we got to the hospital, she had been through surgery and was in a medically induced coma. We were told she suffered from severe head trauma and that we wouldn’t know how much damage was done until she woke up, but they did expect her to wake up.
In that moment, I was terrified. Because what the hell were we going to do if she didn’t wake up? What was I supposed to do without my mother?
She did wake up, but those weeks when she wasn’t around…they were no different. If anything, they were easier, more peaceful—less heavy. The day she was discharged, I remember thinking, just for a second, that maybe she should have died.
I punished myself for that thought for months after she came home. But now…
“I hate you,” I spit through clenched teeth. She freezes with her hand on the doorknob. “I wish you were dead.”
“I know,” she says without looking back, then pulls the door closed behind her.
I don’t know how long I sit there, unmoving, my legs curled into my body, waiting for that yellow pill to pull me under again. I turn on the small box TV on top of my dresser with the aluminum foil on the antennas, hoping it will help the time pass—that it will distract me from replaying the last twenty-four hours over and over again in my mind, looking for my mistakes, like my mom said, and wondering if maybe it was my fault.
It doesn’t seem to work.
If only I hadn’t gotten kicked out of the bar, if I’d stayed out an hour longer.
If I’d told Lisa I did want company, and she came home with me.
What if I’d gone back to the parking lot, crawled into Ty’s truck, and fallen asleep safe in his arms, listening to his heartbeat instead?
I don’t know how long I do this, but I know it’s long enough that the phone rings and rings several times, and I’ve finished the whiskey with a splash of coke my mother left for me on the nightstand. And I realize my bladder has been full for a long time.
I pull myself to my feet and head to the bathroom where I sit on the toilet, staring at that goddamn sign again. I try not to make eye contact with the battered blonde stranger in the mirror as I wash my hands. And when I finish and return to my bedroom, I freeze, my eyes locked on that spot at the top of the staircase.
The hall smells like bleach. Bile rises in my throat again as the panic sets in. The fact that the space even has the audacity to exist overwhelms me, but the scent…
The scent reminds me that what happened to me was vile, unsanitary. Filthy in the way that you need bleach to get it clean. That’s what I am; that’s how I feel.
It occurs to me that I’ll have to walk past that spot every day for however long I live here, that I’ll have to stare at that mother fucking sign every time I take a shit.
That my body will heal, and there will be no evidence of what happened to me, and the world will keep turning as if nothing’s wrong. Maybe he’s even sitting in that café right now. My mom is pouring his coffee, and we’re just going to pretend like this is all fine—just something that happens when we make mistakes.
How am I supposed to do that?
The thud of a car door slamming shut in the driveway snaps me out of my trance, and I jump, slapping a hand over my mouth to stifle the scream it threatens to pull from me.
The doors are all locked, though—that’s what she said. I look over the railing and down into the kitchen, notice the bolt turned sideways, and slowly exhale my relief. It was probably just a neighbor coming home anyway.
Still, when I crawl back into bed, I take the gun from the nightstand, bring the hammer back, and hold it in my lap. Just in case.
I stare straight ahead at the old television, trying to focus on the lines of static running across the screen instead of the couple kissing passionately in the background with their hands all over each other. I don’t like it—the kissing, the touching; it makes me grind my teeth. My pulse quickens, and suddenly I can’t hear anything over the ringing in my ears.
Shouldn’t I be asleep by now? Why isn’t this working?
I feel my palms start to sweat; I look down at the gun in my hands, turning it over, examining it.
