Bad Glass Part 21

"Yesterday," I said. "You and Trent met me at Mama C's and we went to that place, that store, right? In the dressing room?"

He shook his head. "No f.u.c.king way. Wasn't us. We were here. We had Bailey go out and get us food. Trent couldn't f.u.c.king move!" Trent was sitting on an overturned milk crate on the other side of the room and he started to laugh. Johnny shook his head and shot me a look, a private look, mocking Trent.

"But you pulled blood from his veins," I said. I was getting agitated and confused. This happened, right? I didn't hallucinate all of that s.h.i.+t, did I? "We shot it. It was, it was ..."

Johnny gave me a really strange look, like I'd just unzipped my pants and started peeing on the floor. He actually inched away from me.

"Take this, man," Johnny said, holding out a baggie of H. "You need it."

I looked at the bag and suddenly I found myself vomiting, splattering acid bile across the floor, across my shoes. Just looking at that stuff and I felt queasy and off-balance, like the whole room had just tipped over the edge of a cliff.

"f.u.c.k man," Johnny said. "You're cleaning that up. If you can't hold your s.h.i.+t together, I'm certainly not holding your hand ..."

I tried to see Taylor again last night. I made it through the front door this time, but there was no one inside. Then I heard music coming from the backyard. They were all back there, gathered around Floyd and his guitar.

I stood in the kitchen for a while, watching them through the sliding gla.s.s door. They looked so happy. They looked so far away.

I could only see the back of Taylor's head, but she looked comfortable out there. And that new guy was sitting across from her, wearing an idiot grin. Just like Trent. I'd be surprised if there were even an ounce of brain behind that smile.

But I would have apologized to him in a second. I would have begged his forgiveness, begged Taylor's forgiveness, if it got me out there, into that semicircle. But it wouldn't. There was simply no way out there, no path I could take. They were just too far away.

My veins have collapsed. They're flat as a pancake now. Just a minute ago, I was flexing and trying to work blood into my arm, but there was nothing there. I'm empty. The pinhole from my shot in the dressing room is turning dark, and I started working it with my finger and ... f.u.c.k! I don't know. It opened up. That tiny hole opened up and my finger slipped inside. There was no blood in the wound and it all felt very, very strange.

My stomach flipped as I watched my finger moving beneath my skin. All the way up to the second knuckle. I could feel suction in there, like my heart was trying to suck my finger into my circulatory system. And as I sat there, with my finger inside my arm, my vision started to dim, and my heart grew loud inside my ears, beating, beating, beating. It was a heavy, distant sound, and the beats started to fall farther and farther apart. Gray spots gathered in the corners of my closet.

I pulled my finger out and immediately I started feeling better.

There was no blood on my finger. None. Instead, it was sticky with some type of mucous or bile. Slimy. Chunky and gelatinous. Is that what's in my veins now? Is that what my heart is pumping?

f.u.c.k. None of this could have happened, right? It's not possible. There's just no way. I'm just hallucinating, right? f.u.c.k, next the walls will start to pulse and my b.a.l.l.s will disappear. The sun will rise in my closet and I'll go blind.

But. But the wound is bigger and darker now, and the vein leading away from that spot is turning black. It's like someone drew on me with a f.u.c.king Sharpie. No, it's like someone drew inside of me with a f.u.c.king Sharpie.

I want some more of that s.h.i.+t. I need it! The boy with the million dollar veins. Is he still out there? Is he looking for me?

I need to feel that again. I need to push back against this stupid f.u.c.king body.

This is it, isn't it? Game over. This is how it happens. This is how it gets you.

f.u.c.k. I. Just

(The next page is missing. The rest of the book is blank.)

Taylor didn't say a word. She kept her hand pressed against her face as she picked herself up off the broom closet floor and retreated back into the hallway. I packed up my camera and followed.

I still had Taylor's flashlight, and I watched with growing concern as she staggered back and forth in its light, swaying from side to side in the dark hallway. Maybe it was just her obscured vision that was throwing her off balance-she refused to move her hand, keeping it steepled across her face-but probably not. It's all emotion, I thought. The sight of Weasel's fingers had hit her hard; it had knocked her punch-drunk.

I wanted to comfort her, but I didn't know how. My fingers itched to pull her close, but I held them back, remembering her fear of contact. I ended up making some bland, soothing sounds at the back of my throat, and then I muttered something, just some stupid comforting words-I'm not sure what-hoping I might stumble across some magical combination that would set her mind at ease. But Taylor didn't respond. She let out a deep-throated sob and shouldered her way through the stairwell door.

I felt absolutely useless. I felt like a ghost, following along in her wake, unable to make any real impact on the world. Unable to touch her, unable to do anything but watch as she tore herself apart.

She led me up the dark stairwell, across a new bridge on the other side of the building, and then back down to the street. There were no guards at this entrance. It was all the way up at the north end of the block, and the street here was silent and empty.

Taylor collapsed against the nearest wall, just outside the Homestead's entrance. She pressed her hands flat against its surface and lowered her head, resting her cheek against the dirty brick.

"Taylor-" I said.

"No, Dean," she whispered, shaking her head slightly. "Don't say a f.u.c.king word. I can't hear it."

She put her back against the wall and slid down to the sidewalk. After a couple of moments just sitting there, frozen, she lifted her b.u.t.t off the ground and reached back, struggling to pull something from the waistband of her pants. With a trembling hand, she produced one of Weasel's notebooks. The ratty black-and-white notebook had been folded down the middle. The cover was creased and stained, painted brown with dirt and dried liquid. The upper right-hand corner had been torn back like a sc.r.a.ped tag of skin, still attached to the book by a precarious tongue of cardboard.

Taylor flipped back the cover and started to read.

She kept her head down. Her face was buried in the book for nearly ten minutes. Then her shoulders started to shake, and the notebook fell out of her suddenly limp hands.

There were tears trickling down her cheeks, but I only got to see them for a couple of seconds before she once again buried her face in her palms.

I opened my mouth to say something, then closed it once again, remembering her request: Don't say a f.u.c.king word. I can't hear it. Looking at her, I knew that that instruction still stood.

So I left her alone. I picked up Weasel's notebook, flipped to the first page, and started to read his story.

The last page was gone. It had been torn from the book, the final entry cut short, severed midsentence. All that remained was a ragged strip of lined paper that still clung to the binding.

But I knew how the story ended. With fingers sticking out of smooth concrete.

As soon as I reached the end, Taylor pulled the book from my hands and got to her feet. "I did this," she mumbled, her frantic eyes darting back and forth. "I did this to him." And before I could stop her, she ran away, heading toward Riverfront Park.

Object. A skateboard:

It is an oblong piece of wood, about three feet long and caked in mud. One sloped end has been shattered. The layers of pressed maple have come apart, splintering into jagged, weather-darkened fragments. There's a crack in the middle of its length; it looks like a jagged rictus, reaching from one edge of the skateboard halfway to the other.

The mud is thick, but there's an image visible on the board's bottom side, peeking out through the dried and flaking dirt. Just parts and portions: a beatific face, wings in flight. White lines on a blue and black background, with starbursts of yellow-the Milky Way-glowing in the distance.

The skateboard is turned up on its back. Its wheels are still spinning.

I didn't find Taylor in the park.

The park had changed in the last couple of days. Maybe it was just the snow and the ensuing melt, but it seemed much more desolate now, quiet and still. Like an animal holding its breath, or, maybe, like an animal that's no longer got any breath left to hold. The trees had lost their last leaves. Lush branches had transformed into skeletal limbs, with sharp fingers reaching up to scratch a painfully blue sky, and the ground beneath was carpeted in a thick layer of decaying brown mulch. And where there weren't any trees, there was dead gra.s.s, vast stretches of wild straw pressed flat against the ground. There was no longer even a hint of green, just sickly, jaundiced yellow.

I couldn't tell if this was just the normal transition between fall and winter here, or something different. Something permanent.

In my search, I found an old man sitting cross-legged at the top of a hill near the base of the clock tower. If I hadn't been looking for Taylor, my eyes would have skipped right over him, just a lonely old man growing like a lump out of the crest of a hill. A G.o.dd.a.m.ned Methuselah, I thought as I drew near. He was stick-thin and had a scraggly white beard. His eyes looked haunted, sunk deep into the bony angles of his face.