by Lindsay Griffiths
I have grown accustomed to the flavor of sea air and to the deafening sound of my own thoughts. I wonder about what happened to his body. I’ve been looking at the sky and a sliver of the horizon for days; I can’t see much without movement in my neck. I know I’m floating precariously on something, but I’ve stopped panicking about the possibility of slipping off and being swallowed by the vast water. If I were, then maybe I would feel something besides the dryness in my eyes.
He found me in the middle of the night, probably spotted me through the glass storefront, browsing the aisles of the 7-Eleven. Buzzing fluorescent lights lit the store; my grey combat boots echoed on the linoleum. The bald man at the counter had disappeared, but I assumed he would return once I was ready to buy my potato chips. I wanted to make the most of the only two grimy dollar bills I had in my jeans pocket. Had I not wanted those damn potato chips, I wouldn’t be lost in the middle of nowhere, numbly waiting to die.
Leaning into the fridge, one hand holding the glass door ajar, I scanned the array of cold drinks for sale. The hum inside the fridge was too loud. I couldn’t think. Where were the 99-cent juices? What were they called again? Here, I found them. I reached for one while holding open the door with my shoulder. Before I had the chance to grab it, I heard a familiar voice behind me, too close: “Same old Jamie. Cheap as shit.” I rolled my eyes and opened my mouth to reprimand him for randomly showing up where I was again. “Glenn,” I began to say, but this time instead of gushing about how he still loved me, he stuffed a sour-smelling cloth between my parted lips, and forced it into the depths of my mouth.
The second time I woke up, I woke up here, in the middle of the open water in an unknown place. Remembering what had transpired, all I can do is cry unsatisfying tears. They blur my vision and quietly roll down my cheek. Is my anxiety, my raw terror real if I can’t shiver and sob, if I can’t engage my entire body in my despair? I’m paralyzed, I’m sure. It’s a miracle that I’ve ended up on this piece of something that keeps me afloat. It’s not a miracle that I’m grateful for.
The first time I woke up, I was in the backseat of his grey sedan. The air was cold and smelled of moist earth. Though my vision was hazy, I could see white powder strewn all about the floor. My immediate instinct was to cough, as the sour stench from the cloth still lingered, coated my throat. “So now you’re awake?” The night was still dark. We passed streetlight after streetlight, too fast, too fast. “Glenn, what the hell? Slow down!” But he didn’t want to hear me. He banged on the steering wheel with his left fist, and with his right hand he turned up the radio. The music poured out the open windows, the sound competing with the loud whoosh of the wind as we sped down an open road. Between coughs and anxious gasps, I urged him to slow down and tell me what was going on. “Fine,” he responded, and he slammed the break pedal with his tattered Converse sneaker. Without a seatbelt, I catapulted into the front of the car between the two front seats, and slammed into the dashboard.
Moaning, I rolled over into the passenger side and cussed. He growled, “I asked you to give me more time. I just needed some time and you, you, you couldn’t wait for me. You dropped me, Jamie.” I was pretty sure I had broken something. Maybe the window, maybe my arm. I cried, “What’s going on? Where are we, Glenn?” He turned to me with those wide eyes that I had once loved, his long eyelashes casting a shadow on his cheeks from the dim streetlight. “It doesn’t matter where we are. This is where it all ends.” I searched my rattled mind trying to make sense of the scene. I had told him that we couldn’t be together if he didn’t take care of himself first. I had told him that we had to separate. He had been getting worse, thinking bad thoughts, making terrifying threats on his own life, on mine. I had done what I thought was best.
“Jamie, I thought you were my forever. You knew that I was trying, and you dropped me anyways.” I screamed, “Glenn, what the hell? Take me to a hospital! You’re scaring me!” He cut in, “And imagine how scared, how terrified I was, waiting around the corner, ready to apologize and make things better. And then you telling your friends that I’m soo crazy.” He threw his hands up in the air and then viciously slammed them on the steering wheel. The car horn wailed into the chilly night. “You didn’t know I was there listening, did you? You know how hurtful that was Jamie? When everyone else in the world dropped away, I thought of all people you would understand.”
Crumpled up in the front seat like a plastic bag, I remembered how we had met in the hospital earlier that year. The months we had spent at the rehab facility afterward, being healed together, sharing our common suffering, falling in love. I had told him about how I was glad my father was in prison, because he had abused the very life out of my mother. Glenn had told me he was glad he was in rehab, because he had almost drugged the very life out of himself. “But you got all hoity toity, and as soon as we made it out you got cold,” he hissed at me. He pushed on, “And now you’re so much better and I’m the nut job? No. You’re the one in denial about the fact that you’re still using. At least I’m not deluded. At least I admit it.”
He threw open his door and climbed out, walking briskly over to my side. The headlights flooded the area in front of us. Gravel, dirt, evergreen trees, the distant smell of water, the chirping of crickets. He yanked me out of the passenger seat and stood me up. “I need to go to the-” he interrupted me, “We’re not going back to that fucking hospital.” Terrified of all the possibilities of what could come next, I dropped to my knees, became dead weight. But he dragged me still, clutching at my plaid sweater, clutching at my hair. I was barely 112 pounds and he was over 200 pounds of retired high school quarterback.
Wrapping his arms around me now, he hoisted me up under the armpits and carried me. I kicked and screamed. “You dropped me,” he murmured over and over, “you dropped me.” As he kept walking, I turned to look out at my destination. We were approaching a deep cliff, and beyond it was only interminable sea below. I stopped scratching and clawing at him, and instead, grabbed onto him anxiously. He mocked, “So, now you want to hold onto me? Now you don’t want to let go?”
He placed me down on my feet, but still held my shoulders tightly. I was facing him, facing away from the sea below, but my heels were out in the open, dead, empty air. Only my toes remained on the ground, and his grasp kept me from falling. I bawled, pleaded unintelligibly. Where was the tough girl in me that my mother had tried to raise? That girl in me probably died with my mother all those years ago. I looked into his pretty eyes, and whispered to him, throat hoarse, tears running, “Glenn, please don’t.” His fingers dug into my clavicle. He suddenly pulled me into his chest and wrapped his arms around me, clutching me tight. He was too strong for me to do more than squirm. “You can’t keep us apart. You wanted to drop me? Now, we’ll both drop,” and he jumped off the edge, still gripping me to him. Gravity’s greedy hands dragged us down.
The sun is warm today and I think my skin is getting burned. There’s no one to come look for me; I’ll be gone before anyone even notices my absence. I play a game in my head now, making bets with myself on what will take me first: starvation, dehydration, or drowning. I’m leaning towards the last one, since I can’t adjust my weight on this floating thing. Every small wave threatens to topple me over or slide me off completely. Both of my legs are in the water now, I think, and the way my angled view of the sky keeps changing, I can tell I’m slipping, slowly but surely.
