Unreliable.
Unwanted.
Unloveable.
She continued to make small talk about my last paycheck and saying goodbye to Ash and Juan and something about keeping the uniform if I wanted but it was all in one ear and out the other. None of it meant anything to me.
I just turned and walked out the back of the store, into the cloud-laden day that felt as heavy as my heart, leaving another attempt at a normal life behind me.
“Perry, what’s wrong?” my mother cal ed out as I streamed past her on the staircase and went straight for the bathroom. It was the only room with a lock.
“Nothing,” I cried out through the door, even though I knew she saw my tear-smeared face and could hear the hoarseness of my throat.
I heard her turn and come up the stairs, pausing outside the bathroom. She was silent but you always felt the presence of your mother. She was listening, trying to piece together just how damaged I was.
I sighed and sniffled as she rapped softly on the door.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I said nothing!” I shot back, glaring at the door and imagining her face on the other side. My patience was gone. “I just want to be alone.”
“Wel , all right, pumpkin.”
Pause.
“Don’t do anything stupid.”
Don’t do anything stupid? What the hel did she think I was going to do?
“I’m going to take a bath, mother!” I sneered. I wasn’t planning on it but one glance at the tub, and I imagined floating away in a bed of hot bubbles - and it seemed like the only thing worth doing. While I was in here, with the door locked, no one could hurt me. I could be alone. And I alone could agonize over what I was going to do with myself.
She didn’t say anything to that and while I walked over and ran the taps, I felt her leave the door and go somewhere else in the house.
I exhaled loudly and then stripped off all my clothes, piling them on the floor. I was glad Ada was at school and I could hog our bathroom without her pounding on the door and demanding I get out. Though lately, Ada was trying her best not to annoy me. After everything we’d gone through together, me being the messed up teenager, her being the fussed-over perfect child, she was stil on my side. She cared. She real y did.
That’s something, right? I thought to myself. It was something but my ability to care about nice things and make myself feel better was put on hold indefinitely.
I grabbed a bottle of lavender-scented body wash and poured it into the hot running water in little spurts, until the tub was fil ed with a calming, glinting, froth. When it was just hot and ful enough, I shut it off and stuck my foot in. It was a little too hot but I was in a masochistic mood.
Lowering myself in, I took in a few deep breaths, happily distracted by the scorching water that was turning my skin a bright pink. I took it slow and soon I was submerged in floating numbness. I rested my head against the cool tiles behind me and closed my eyes.
I was trying to focus on nothing at all ; I just wanted empty spaces and empty thoughts. I wanted to not exist for a little while. But I couldn’t turn off my brain, which was running around at breakneck speed and tripping over itself. I was bombarded with images, the scenes of what had happened with Shay. Then what had happened when I was fired from my last job at all ingham and Associates. And then it was finding out my col ege boyfriend, Mason, had cheated on me, fol owed by just about everything to do with high school.
The girls who cal ed me fat, the boys that laughed at me, the teachers who were afraid of me. The nicknames I had.
The number of times I ate alone in the library, sneaking in chips past the librarians when they were busy. I saw Jacob’s face before he died. I saw Jacob’s face after he died. I saw the way he haunted me, the way he warned me about the other side. I saw Dr. Freedman’s calmly disbelieving face as I told him the truth of what happened.
Then, abruptly, I saw faces I didn’t recognize. Random people, old and young, white and black; the only thing they had in common was a look of terror. Their mouths flew open, saying – screaming – something I couldn’t hear and they whirled past me in a vision of haunting realism, ten, then hundreds, then thousands until there was nothing behind my closed eyes except blackness.
And one singular face in the darkness that started out as a blurry speck and came closer and closer, the edges of cheekbones bleeding out like black oil against deep space. A grin as welcoming as a rusted rake. Eyes that swarmed with red hurricane clouds.
This face of a monster was laughing, silently.
At me.
And I couldn’t breathe.
Warm liquid pierced my nostrils. My nose had dipped below the waterline.
I raised my head and opened my eyes to the harsh bathroom light, sputtering. I had almost fal en asleep in the tub. Or had I already been asleep? My heart was pounding wildly in my ribcage. I could have died. After all this, what a way to go.
I composed myself and pressed my hands on the bottom of the tub until my shoulders were safely above the water, the remains of bubbles clinging stubbornly to them like cartoon dandruff.
How long had I been out ? My skin was pruney and a greying pink and only a few tufts of bubbles remained floating in the oily water, which was cooling fast.
I wasn’t ready to face the world yet. I didn’t know if I’d ever be ready. I leaned forward and turned on the hot water faucet, prepared to stay in the bath forever.
The tap shuddered and gave off a strange, metal ic grinding noise that shook the blue and white tiles around me.
But no water flowed. It was dry.
I twisted the knob further.
Stil nothing.
I started to wonder if perhaps my parents were having plumbing work done to the house, when a terrible sound - that could only be described as a scream - emerged from behind the faucet fixture, fol owed by a weird scurrying noise.