-1-

I never let myself get this furious, but when I get back to my dorm I’m ready to fight someone.

Why the hell is everyone at this school so frustrating ?

 I mean I’d been prepared to deal to with rich snobs at a school like this, but never rich-snobs-I-kind-of-like-but-don’t-understand-and-don’t-understand-me. The ones who have such easy choices but don’t take them.

Jonah, use your motherfucking trust fund and buy a damn new and less douchey car.

Sev, date the British musician who is just as perplexed by America as you are. Duh.

Abigail…wake the hell up.

I trip over a box in front of the door and yell out Sev and Layla’s names, but neither one of them are here. They are both always getting elaborate boxes from home, but I pause when I see my name on the box.

It’s from Ms. Elise,  my old foster mother.

I’m still angry, but I let it die down long enough to open the box with a childish glee usually reserved for Christmas.

Christmas.

I hadn’t quite figured that one out. I’d probably hit up a Chinese food buffet.

 Inside the box is bags of candy, gloves, a scarf, a giftcard and a note. I read the note first, it’s short and she's inviting me to Montana if I can get the money for the flight-- which I know I won’t have. And even if I did there is no way I’d go there with her family who doesn’t trust me.   

I start in on the candy and notice two boxes of Good and Plentys. I and every other sane person on the planet hate them. Except for Phillip. My foster mother had never met Phillip, but she’d heard all about him from me.

I decide to share.

***

 “It’s alive,” Phillip says when he opens the door to me.

 “Sorry I ran out on you the other day,” I said and hand him the candy. “I bought reparations.”

“I must have really scared you  if I made you miss a class the week before finals.”

“It’s complicated,” I say. “I’m just stressed and need--”

“Free weed ?,” he asks

“I just need to get the edge off,”

He let’s me come inside, he plugs his iPod in downstairs and rolls me the neatest blunt. I make him share it with me, so I’m still aware enough to drive myself home. Jillian is away gambling in Atlantic City for the weekend and Phillip says he thinks she has a boyfriend she is hiding from him

“Jillian could so be a cougar,” I tease him. “I bet your new stepdaddy will be like 21 or something,”

“Good,” Phillip says. “I’d make him buy us beer.”

I tell him that I was at a frat party on Halloween and he laughs and says all the things I knew he’d say. I don’t tell him where I spent Thanksgiving because that feels private. And then we’re joking and then we’re sharing concert stories and I’m comfortable. This is familiar, I can do this forever and pretend everything is just fine.

And then I pass out.

***

-2-

Waking up and not knowing where I am is unfortunately familiar to me. It takes me a moment, but I realize  I’m in Phillip’s bed and I hear him snoring in his Mom’s room.

That's different.

I feel like a one night stand as I try to get the wrinkles out of my clothes. I go into his bathroom  to see if I can find the toothbrush I left when I was here last Christmas. I open a drawer and it’s filled with prescription pill bottles that aren’t prescribed to Jillian or Phillip.

I know this scam. Phillip takes peoples prescriptions out of the trash and then orders them from the internet using their information. He used to sell them, but got scared and stopped when he almost got caught. Which means he’s just keeping them. I open the bottle and pour the Oxcycotin down the toilet.

I’d always ignored the parts of Phillip I couldn’t handle, but I was too scared now.

“Hey--,” Phillip greets me, but when he sees what I’m doing he changes tone. “Corinne, what the fuck--”

“You have to stop this,” I say, chucking the bottle at him. It smacks into his head and he tries to keep his cool.

“I’m not  selling anymore--,”

“No,” I said. “You have to stop just taking whatever the hell you want. Take your own damn medication because I’m not going to let you throw me off a bridge and then  kill yourself. If you don’t stop I’ll--,”

“What ? What ? You’ll leave me ?,” he says pointedly.

“I already left you,” I remind him and he looks hurt. “And if you keep taking  that other stuff you’re going to overdose and die.”

“I’ve been planning my headstone for years.” he shrugs and I want to slap him.

“Phillip--,”

 “Say a bad thing about Kurt Cobain,” he says.

“You fucking moron--,”

 “Go ahead. Do it,” he challenges me. “No one does. Because they died young and beautiful. I’ve got one out of two, which isn’t bad. You ever think maybe dying is better if it drowns it all out ? ”

“Never,” I tell him. “For fuck’s sake, you fucking idiot ! Get help, please. You have student insurance now. I’m begging you to get help or you will never see me again.”

“I’m fine,”

“You’re not fine,” I say and my voice hitches. I decide to lay it all bare. “You have depression  and you  can’t keep running from that diagnosis. Look I may not love love you Phillip, but you are my best god damn friend and I don’t want to go to your funeral! Don’t you dare make me do that. You know I can’t do that!”

I’m really screaming, my entire body is vibrating, the thought of it is sending me into an anxiety attack like I haven’t had in years.

He walks slowly out of the room.

After I calm down I put on my coat and shoes and  follow him to the backyard. He just sits on the stoop staring at the frozen over grass and dead trees.

“I want to get better for you,” he says quietly.

“Don’t get better for me,” I said. “Get better for you. I mean, shit you are literally the smartest person I know. You’re going to do something great if you let yourself. That’d be the biggest fuck you to your Dad.”

He stands up and leans against the door frame, I always liked how he was so tall he towered over me.

“So, what’s gotten in to you ?,” he asks with a smile.

“I guess I’m done hiding and pretending.”

He hugs me and I sink into it.

“I lied,” I tell him.

“About what ?,”

“Coming to your funeral.” I tell him. “If you overdosed and killed yourself I wouldn’t come. I’d  just write an obituary that says your favorite song was Honkytonk Badonkadonk--,”

He laughs.

“That’s fine. Just don’t say that shit about God needing another angel,” he retorts

“Why would I ? You’re clearly going to hell.”

“I’m in Honors Physics, I’m already in hell,”

He reaches down and hugs me and he  half carries me back inside.

“What do you want for breakfast ?,” he ask me, opening the cereal cabinet.

“I’m really sorry, but I have to go do something.” I whisper. “I’ll call you.”

***

-3-

“Abigail, wake up !  You’re late !” I say urgently, nudging her shoulder.

She remains dead still.

Okay, I have no idea why I thought that might work. On to Plan B.

Her room was empty when I came in and the nurses seemed enthusiastic to let me in. I shut the door a little bit, in case it was weird I was talking to her. Like, maybe that’s just a movie thing and the nurses probably laugh about people doing it in real life.

 “Abigail, I don’t feel bad for you anymore,” I tell her. “I’m pissed as hell at you and I know it made you mad that I said this, but I still think you are a selfish spoiled brat. If I didn’t think I’d go to jail, I’d slap you.”

I warily notice a vanilla latte sitting on the bedside table and it’s warm. Strange. Maybe her mother bought it in case she decided to wake up. How optimistic.

“I’m going to tell you something only one other person in this entire state knows and that’s Phillip,” I start and take a deep breath. “You want to know how I got put in the foster system ?”

I look for any kind of gesture but I don’t get one. Her eyelids are moving around, but Mrs. Winters had said that’s normal.

“So, I’m from Kentucky and when I was five, my family went on a camping trip. Except I got Chicken Pox the night before and had to stay with a sitter. They’d been up with me all night because I was so upset, and when they finally left, my Dad stupidly took something so he could drive, probably drugs. Anyway,  he flipped the car. It killed him, my mom, sister and grandparents instantly. His car hit my aunts car and they all got ejected too.

 I moved in with my other grandparents in New York, but they were so grief stricken they couldn’t handle me and when the opportunity came along they gave me away and moved to Florida.

I remember feeling like my family abandoned me, like they didn’t try hard enough to live for me. Not one of them. I felt the kind of grief no child should ever have to feel.

Now that I’m older I know  they didn’t choose to leave me, but it still feels like it. It feels like they are all together in heaven and I’m here  trying to make it in this world all on my own. But you, you are on the other side of this… you’re the one choosing to leave them when you can stay and that makes me so fucking mad. ”

I stop and stare, but she doesn’t move.  I stand up, because short of ripping my heart out and showing it to her   there is nothing else I can do. I start for the door and turn around.

“By the way, amidst my studying for the trivia contest I found an Anne Sexton poem ,” I tell her. “You’re right. She was kind of a badass. So, unless anything changes…consider this our good-bye because I don't think I can come back here.”

I take out the piece of copied paper out of my pocket and read.

“I am tired of all your pious talk.
Also, I am tired of all the dead.
They refuse to listen,
so leave them alone.
Take your foot out of the graveyard,
they are busy being dead.”

She still doesn’t move and I continue.

“ I refuse to remember the dead.
And the dead are bored with the whole thing.
But you - you go ahead,
go on, go on back down
into the graveyard,
lie down where you think their faces are;
talk back to your old bad dreams.”

I know she is in there and I know she can hear me. I leave the paper and walk out. I’m not sure how much more tragedy I can take today.

When I step outside the hospital I get a text from Sev:

And I’m single again.