They tell me I’m addicted. I am not. I am not addicted to smoking; I am addicted to smoking while driving. They are two completely different things.
It just isn’t fair. See, I don’t have the option of not eating like some of the other girls I’ve met. I just don’t always want to eat. Sometimes it’s too hard. Anyway, these anti-depressants the doctors have me on have sort of taken the edge off of my “well I’m just too upset to eat” attitude. It’s not like it’s a really big deal, but I’m still kind of used to that empty gray feeling. I had gotten used to it, I guess.
I was watching a movie in the waiting room the other day, some Liftetime bit about fairies. I started thinking about how I’d love to be a fairy. I don’t know, they seem so free. I guess it’s sort of how when I wouldn’t eat for hours and hours and I’d feel really light-headed, like I was walking on air, that’s how that sort of felt. In those delusional moments my body felt like it was full of pixies. I didn’t think anyone knew about them but me. When I talked to the therapist about it, she told me that people like me- well, we have a tendency to think about fairies. She wasn’t surprised I’d brought it up at all, and that pissed me off.
Cigarettes are my new pixies.
“Zoey,” someone says. I look up from my math homework, not sure if I’m glad to be given a break or annoyed at being disturbed. The pale light from outside the cafeteria windows taps the sides of my eyes nauseatingly. The sound of a ping-pong ball being hit back and forth by off-white boys speaking in fake Australian accents makes me dizzy. I hate study hall sometimes.
“Zoey, hey! Zoey…”
Andrew is standing above me. His name doesn’t suit him at all, I think. He’s quite tall and thin. It’s almost scary, really. He’s so pale, but there’s something dark about him. His face is all angles and shadows. When I think of the name “Andrew”, I usually think about healthy, athletic types with glossy brown hair and Irish eyes or something.
His eyes are green, but a dirty sort of green, the color of a dried-out, trampled-on plant. I’ll bet he smokes a lot. But wait, who am I to judge? Sometimes I forget about the cigarettes in my car. But then again, I am not addicted, so it’s not the same sort of thing. Andrew looks like an addict, possibly of things “worse” than my pixie sticks.
For a second I just smile back politely. I’m sitting cross-legged in my chair, and part of me wonders if he expects me to stand up. That would take a lot of extra effort though. My limbs have been feeling so heavy the last couple of weeks. It’s driving me crazy.
“Hi,” I finally say. Then I look back down. Suddenly I find it incredibly difficult to hold my head up. Before I know what I’m doing I’ve started writing numbers again.
“Oh, so you’re not gonna talk to me?” he says.
I put down my pencil and look up. “Oh god, I, I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m really out of it today.” What I probably should have said was something like “I’m so out of it. These meds make me suspiciously relaxed.” He seems like he’d understand that. I wonder if he knows I’ve been sort of watching him the last week or so.
There’s something about him that makes me want to know him. He seems like he might…goddamn, this therapist is putting ideas in my head. She says I might want to open up to someone, and, like, well…he seems like he might be the right person. I’m not even sure why. There’s just something about him…
“I know what that’s like,” he says as he sits across from me.
Our quiet shared laughter borders on conspiracy, just for a moment, but then we realize we’re probably thinking about different things. There’s a brief silence.
Why am I so uptight, I wonder as I try to keep my hands away from the pencil. It’s incredibly hard to focus on anything other than my homework this minute. I’m not really sure why. I’m just filled with this sudden urge to finish it right now, even though there’s still plenty of time left. I’m torn between telling Andrew I have to work and just closing the book hard, listening to the shocking thump of the 816 pages.
“What kind of music do you listen to?” he asks.
Three weeks later I find myself hiding a half-full pack of cigarettes in the glove compartment, beneath a bunch of papers. I don’t want Andrew to find them. I feel strange about it. He still thinks I’m uncontaminated.
I’ve been driving a lot more than usual. Nowhere in particular, I just drive and listen to music, smoke. I need to fill the time before bed with something. If I stay home, my mom offers me food, which I’m not very much interested in. My father offers food and then usually ends up eating some himself. As a joke, he blames me. They just want to help, I guess, but it makes me really angry to be fussed over.
My sister says things like, “Why are you guys worried about how much fat Zoey needs to eat? She’s already fat.” And then she looks at my face with its slanted bones and my hard wrists and the place on my calves where it’s so obvious how much wider my boots are than my legs. She looks sad when she says that in her ten-year-old teasing voice, and after she just sighs and walks into another room like it’s my fault, like I made her say that.
I just don’t want to be around for it. I’d rather be in my car during those hours where afternoon turns to night, when the light goes from gray to black.
I’m picking him up soon. We’re supposed to go to a Halloween party at this girl Nicole’s house tonight. Andrew would have driven me, but his mother needs the car to take his little sister and her friends out. I’m secretly relieved he can’t drive. I hate being a passenger.
I saw my therapist this afternoon. I told her about Andrew and the party. She’s the one who told me to get rid of the cigarettes. “They’re bad for you, anyway,” she said. So I compromised. I hid them. She doesn’t need to know.
“What are you dressing up as?” she asked me.
I uncrossed my legs and then crossed them again. I leaned forward and wrapped my arms back around my knees. “I don’t know yet.” I didn’t tell her about the fairy wings in my closet.
“Maybe you’d like dressing up as a fairy.”
“Umm- I don’t think so.”
I feel vaguely attractive tonight, for the first time in a long, long while. I’m wearing my cousin’s old prom dress. Since it’s made of a sort of stretchy material, where it was clingy on her, it fits me perfectly. It’s more comfortable that way, anyway. It’s a soft pale pink color, with little gold beads all over it. Much different from the dark colors I usually wear. I’m even wearing these flimsy gold high heels. I’ve got my hair down, too, wavy, and I put a wreath of gold foil stars around my head.
I made sure I ate some soup before I left because I don’t know if there will be anything at the party that I’ll be able to eat. I’m still not big on candy or things like pizza. And that’s usually all there is. The therapist keeps urging me to “try new things,” but I always mutter, “go to Hell” under my breath. I wonder if she hears me. I wish she’d just stop trying to change me.
The wings poke into my back a little bit as I drive. I’m trying not to speed, but it’s difficult. My feet feel all twitchy and nervous. I consider reaching into the glove compartment to sneak out just one cigarette. I really, really want to, but I know he’ll be able to tell.
Andrew comes out of the house dressed all in black, and wearing black-and-blue butterfly wings. He locks the door behind him, but leaves the light outside on, near a little basket of fun-sized candy bars.
“Those will be gone after the first couple kids,” he says, in reference to the candy, as he gets in the car. As we drive I hope there is no cigarette scent left over, hope that I’m not immune to the smell and just don’t notice it. I wait for him to reach into the glove compartment and find what I’ve hidden.
I like talking to him. I can feel it sort of behind my eyes. When I’m really enjoying myself, my eyes feel all warm and soft and almost teary and my throat and shoulders feel like I’ve just let out a long sigh. Still, after we’ve said it, I just can’t seem to process anything we speak about. I can tell that my mind is working on two levels. It’s strange. Part of me is sitting and talking with him, and another part is just trapped in my own head, spinning around like mad.
At the party about thirty kids are just hanging out, talking, the usual. Some are drinking and smoking, and I’m a little jealous of the smokers. I really want a cigarette, which is odd because I’m not driving. There’s probably a couple off in a bedroom somewhere. I hear some people wondering about where Nicole is and giving each other knowing looks. Andrew’s being really nice to me, trying to get me to talk to people, mostly the girls, and they’re pretty friendly, so it’s okay. I’m nervous, but it’s fun to be included in something for a change instead of just being alone all the time.
Some dude named Jack, who is dressed as a field hockey player with pigtails, rips open some pixie sticks and spills the powder onto a mirror. Then he separates it carefully into little lines and asks Andrew for a dollar, and Andrew asks me. I hand one over and watch as Jack rolls it up and hands it to Andrew.
“You do the honors, man,” he says.
I watch as Andrew lifts the rolled up dollar bill to his nostril and snorts a line of the sour pink powder. He falls back, laughing.
“Holy sh-” he cries.
I can’t help but think that he’s just too good at it. I disregard it though. I wonder if it’s my place to ask for the dollar back, and I decide that it’s not.
I find myself sitting on the back patio with Andrew and a few of his friends. They’re mostly talking about people they know. I know some of them too, but not enough to have any good stories about them. This girl Susan who’s wearing a Heidi costume offers me a cigarette.
For a second, I swear that everyone is watching me to see what I’ll say.
Luckily, I don’t have to say anything. The sky cracks open and needles of rain descend upon us all, leaving us gasping for breath. We dart inside, dripping. Andrew grabs my hand and we run to the door, towards the yellow light of the kitchen.
Inside, Andrew puts his arm around me and says, “Look at you. You’re freezing.” When the rain dies down, we leave.
We are there in the mist with orange streetlamps reflecting light everywhere, in a kiss to fill some of the last few minutes of the month.
“Zoey,” he whispers.
Both of our wings are soaking wet, ruined. I don’t want to say his name. The syllables are glued onto my tongue.
“Zoey.”
“Yes?”
“”Now where to?”
“But it’s almost midnight.”
“I know.”
He pulls me up and twirls me around, and for an instant, I feel like I’m part of a beautiful black-gray-orange-gold post card. For once I stop thinking. I don’t think about when my next car trip will be or if I’ll be able to eat where I’m going next and what things to tell the therapist about. I don’t feel like I have to worry about any of that right now. My legs feel like they’re made of air, water, canola oil, anything but the lead they’ve been feeling like.
For a split-second there, for that one kiss, I was actually anything but gray inside. Something is changing. And it scares me a bit.
“So where to?”
I swallow hard. “Anywhere,” I say.
