youthjuice, page 21
Skin tore, blood beading the crevices, the delicate wrinkles gathered at the knuckles and the whorls of my fingerprints. The essential elements of Sophia.
I chewed until I collapsed, exhausted, among the pillows on my bed. I had started to cry without noticing, and tears and snot mingled, flooding my chin and mouth. It tasted salty and fatty, like raw scallops fresh from the sea.
Pale pink curtains swayed in the window. I watched the moon, full and weighted, a lake pinned to the starless sky. The moon rose and rose. It took my consciousness along, and I felt peace. Craters stood out on the silvery white surface. The shapes had never been a man to me. I’d always believed I could see a girl in the moon, dark haired and wild, trying to tell me something I was sorry I could not hear.
14
I did think, for a little while, that the crisis had passed. I call in sick to work and spend Monday cleaning the guest bathroom. I light a cluster of candles to fight the scent of decay. In the following days I stop applying youthjuice, and soon my hands are crossed with the old scars like I’d suffered an attack.
And in a way, hadn’t I? The harm we do to others is nothing compared to the harm we do to ourselves.
The strangest thing: I don’t feel like biting or picking. It’s like I was baptized in the salty waters of the Atlantic Ocean, the snake-ribboned man and the sunbathers and the next-morning party girls as my witnesses before God, and now I’m cured. Cured for good, and not dependent on anything to heal me. I put the half-empty jars of youthjuice in the bag with my blood-soaked clothes from the launch party, stock up on luxury cuticle oils at Sephora, and buy a new wardrobe of gloves in sumptuous textures. All of it paid for with a fistful of cash from a hole in Dom’s mattress. Every few days the same woman comes by the apartment and pounds on the door for fifteen or thirty minutes until she gets tired or a neighbor screams at her to stop. This must be Dom’s mother, whom I never met in ten years of friendship. Each time I shut myself in the far reaches of the apartment and sit in complete silence until she quiets.
Back at work, the office displays a level of degradation I did not think possible. For a company beloved by It-girls on track to become a startup unicorn, HEBE has faded remarkably fast. Communal desks are mostly empty, which could be chalked up to the fact that July is a popular month to take PTO, and the fact that we have no interns left to speak of, but it strikes me as suspicious nonetheless. Phalaenopsis orchids and pink clouds of baby’s breath in the designer floral arrangements lose their blooms and start to reek. Fresh ones used to be delivered on Fridays for the following week.
Marigold is rarely seated outside Tree’s office. Instead I catch her slinking around odd corners, whispering into her phone. I haven’t seen Tree or Gemma for three days. When they return to the office they are draped in mesh veils like widows with good taste, prairie-style dresses with full skirts and long sleeves, tights.
I derive wicked pleasure from the knowledge that their greed has destroyed them completely. At least the rest of me is unscathed—for now. Each morning when I head to the mirror I expect to find new damage, but so far I’m the same—just the normal wear and tear of twenty-nine years, eleven months of living.
HEBE’s daily operations are suspended and there’s nothing much for me to do, but I return to my desk from ten to six without exception, breaking periodically to prepare a mediocre coffee with oat milk or use the bathroom. Mostly I stare at the giant monitor I requested at the end of June in order to cultivate an air of professionalism and refresh the various social media sites on which I have profiles. People on these websites start to look the same shockingly quickly, and then I cycle through a folder of high-brow websites I bookmarked in an effort to improve my attention span with longform journalism. Skimming headlines from The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vulture, Vox, Harper’s, The Baffler, etc., I end up on The Cut, from whose homepage Tree’s headshot beams at me through the glow of the screen. What’s Happening at HEBE? I don’t recognize the writer’s name.
The post details the missing interns, Emily’s disappearance, and what avid commenters on our social media and Reddit pages consider to be a precipitous drop in product quality and customer service in recent weeks. A HEBE representative (Marigold? A lawyer?) contributed a comment: the company appreciates employees of all levels and treats them like family, most of these girls have not been employed by the company for months, we are working closely with law enforcement to help ensure they are safely found, etc.
I bounce my cursor on the X to close the tab. I feel sick and exposed, though the article didn’t mention me or any of my coworkers by name, and focused on Tree and the interns. In the bathroom I remove my gloves, splash water on my face, dab a few drops on the pulse points of my neck where you’re supposed to apply perfume.
Still, I don’t feel the need to bite my nails. It almost bothers me. All these years and it’s gone, just like that. I’m cured. Money and time wasted, and what did it take—a murder and a dip in the sea. Like a day at the spa.
Commotion spreads among the few of us remaining. I examine the women of HEBE who I paid little attention to while in thrall to Tree. Could they not have known? I think about Mona. You can know without knowing, I reason. That doesn’t absolve you.
I HAVE NO friends. Eventually I’ll have to do something about that, but for now I keep to myself. The empty apartment still feels like a novelty. Dom adopted a “what’s mine is yours” mentality in our friendship, but now the apartment really does feel like mine. If HEBE goes under, I’ll need a backup plan. I’ll have to move. But for now I luxuriate in playing the kind of sad-girl indie rock that Dom hated. I cook elaborate meals with obscure ingredients from the specialty market in the neighborhood and leave the dishes for too long. I lie in Dom’s bed, foul her linen sheets with my herbaceous sweat, and play around with an app that promises to tell you if your face is symmetrical, a filter that analyzes how old you look, an app that produces a series of AI-developed portraits in the style of famous artists. I set the Pop Art–inspired image as my profile photo on Twitter and use the surrealist one (mouth and eyes in a straight line) in the carousel on the dating app I’ve signed up for, now that I might be ready for a relationship, or at least a date, again soon.
Symmetry of the face, I’ve been told, is the degree between attractive and breathtaking. According to the app, mine is several millimeters shy. The left eye is higher than the right one, and my nose is crooked. I click through an online gallery of supposedly symmetrical faces and find them unnerving and lacking in substance, which makes me feel better. It’s the difference between a technically perfect art student who produces photorealistic work and a true artiste. The real artist, while likely proficient in the essentials—illustration, figure-drawing, painted landscapes—displays their mastery vis-à-vis a point of view. That was what made Dom’s writing special, her ability to put the reader in her shoes, even if said reader was broke without a bachelor’s degree and living in a railroad apartment with three other girls and a closet full of Shein tissue-paper “going-out tops” that disintegrate at the whisper of sweat and business-casual pieces several degrees too slutty to pass muster anywhere more professional than a trendy media startup.
I plug in Dom’s dead MacBook, navigate to MAKEUPSEX, and click through the archive. The comments section going back two or three years includes a trail of missives from the most loyal followers wondering where Dom has been. I’ll admit, I hadn’t thought about what would become of the blog after Dom’s curtain call. I guess I assumed it would be forgotten like thousands of dormant websites before it.
Under the influence of chaga mushroom coffee, I craft a “Where Have I Been” in my best approximation of Dom’s voice. Inhabiting Dom’s mind leads to longing, and I cry matter-of-factly as I type. Tears blur the content platform so that it becomes akin to automatic writing practiced by the spiritualists. I’ve summoned Dom by accessing the backend of her blog using her computer, a latter-day séance. Typing faster, I enter a flow state and begin to sense Dom’s spirit guiding me through this exercise. She tells me what to say and lets me become her, thus giving me her blessing. I dry my eyes with an old Kleenex on Dom’s windowsill and read over the post, changing words and phrases here and there until I’m confident no one will be the wiser. I hit publish and shut the laptop.
Then, out loud, I ask Dom’s spirit if I’m doing the right thing. A picture of the two of us at Coachella—arms tossed around each other’s shoulders, flower crowns gently grazing—wobbles and then topples off the dresser, landing face-first on the floor. I take the sound of smashing glass to mean: yes.
THINKING BACK TO early May when I started at HEBE, I recall an article published on The Dew that was a departure. Instead of interviewing a collagen-fluffed DJ or Young Hollywood ingénue, Emily brought in a professor-type in literal bow tie and tweed, a scientist whose research in skin-renewal technology had shown remarkable promise in the cell turnover of burn victims. Google tells me that he has published a study. Normally the websites of old men in STEM fields aren’t noted for their comprehensiveness, but Dr. Dorian’s is easy to navigate and provides a convenient contact form.
I send the study to the printer. The pages are warm to the touch.
I march into Tree’s office holding the wedge of pages. She’s at her desk, veils running down her face to her knees, elbows on the table, hands interlocked. Old food molds in piles on the desk, the coffee table, the couch. Takeout cartons transparent with grease, wax paper dotted by ketchup and clotted clumps of cheese, an open clamshell box with a layer of nachos at the bottom covered with a scrim of blue mold. The smell of cold French fries hangs in the air.
Tree doesn’t react when I sit and place the printed-out study between us. The veils glisten with the subtle glitter of snow-dusted branches. Underneath she is a frozen eyeless mannequin. I push the papers closer and ask her to read them. Tree doesn’t move from her beseeching position. She’s Mary, virginal in pearl Chantilly lace and a wide-shouldered prairie dress. Desperately I come around to kneel in front of her, jamming the papers onto her lap. She’s too smart to watch the empire she’s created spin out of her control. “Tree, if you would look at what I found, I really think it could help—”
She emits a moan like that of a mournful boat’s siren. Her head throbs, carrying the veils in a wave. The veil is attached to a satin headband. She’s a doomed bride in an old photograph, like Sharon Tate on her wedding day. Only Tree is no casualty.
“Tree.” I take a gentler approach. “What’s wrong? Why is this happening?” A croak comes from deep inside the frothy veils. “I can’t hear you,” I say.
Tree coughs. Her throat-clearing is the dusty rattle of death. “youthjuice.” That’s what she’s saying. “youthjuice did this.”
“But I don’t get it, it was working . . .” I’m shaking the pages of study, really getting in her face. She starts to rock in her chair, whining, and pushes my arm to the side. I let go and the pages flutter to the floor.
Then Tree screams and tears the headband and the fabric petals away, revealing her face. And then I am screaming too, our screams mingling in a hideous chorus. Virulent pink worms of flesh writhe in her lap. Chunks are missing from her cheeks. The skin she does have is crisp and cracked like oven-fried chicken. When she tries to cover her face with both hands, more pieces fall off. They come to life on the fabric of her skirt, staining the twee fabric with brilliant bloody spots. Dried blood and pus erupt in the craters on her forehead, in the cavern where her buccal fat should be. She is ruined satin on a ballerina’s shoe.
Tree starts to cry, and the salt from her tears stings her wounded face, so she cries harder. I ask her what’s wrong, what’s wrong, what is happening. I want any answer but the right one.
The dead skin on her lap is alive. It’s coming together in the dip between her thighs, forming a wriggling mass like a beating heart. That’s exactly what it is, a new heart forming independent of a body. I hear the slap of pumping life.
More clumps of skin drip from Tree’s face, feeding the swelling organ. From far enough away they might resemble tears. I take a heavy book from a stack on the floor, use the spine to sweep the heart onto the floor. It clings to the fabric of her dress through the initial swats, a toddler holding its mother on the first day of school. But each impact dislodges the orb of tissue a bit more until it falls to the floor. Three solid wallops with the side of the book and the monster is pulp, a smashed grapefruit.
I glance at Tree. She’s rocking back and forth, back and forth. Her mouth is a black hole, the skin of her lips sucked of Restylane, it’s telling me to get out get out get out get out get out get out ge—
MARIGOLD IS RESPLENDENT, not a pore out of place. We’re in one of the Ovaries, squared off on either side of the conference table. A dead bouquet behind her severe bob, an outer ring of fruit flies lending a primordial goddess effect.
“You never used it?”
Marigold flips through the study, avoiding the spatter from Tree’s face. “Interesting stuff here,” she says. “We could use this.”
“What’s happening to Tree?”
“These results are astounding.”
I slam my hand on the tabletop. “Answer me!”
Marigold doesn’t flinch. She gingerly lowers the page she’s holding to one side of the stack. “No, I’ve never used youthjuice. I think Tree’s obsession with aging is juvenile. People get older, it happens all the time. It’s not a tragedy.”
She sounds so wise that it’s tempting to believe her. But all of life is one great tragedy for a woman. You’re born, you have a brief, shining moment when you’re in control, you matter, you age, you die. Each passing day is a small death that prepares you for the end.
Marigold traces the edge of the papers, flinches when they nick her, and sucks on her finger. Then she says, “Why do you look normal?”
I peel off one glove and lay my bare hand flat in front of Marigold. The scars are worse than before, puffy tunnels like creatures under the surface. Marigold’s nostrils flare. She grinds her teeth, the tendons in her neck tight and distended.
“I only used it on my hands. When I noticed them deteriorating, I stopped before it got worse. And I only did the full bath twice, maybe that has something to do with it.”
Marigold considers. “I think it’s the level of exposure. The moisturizer is a highly concentrated formula. Tree’s taken baths for close to a decade, but she dilutes them.” She gives a wry chuckle. “I suspected it would catch up with her somehow. I thought it would be the police, but her own body beat them to it.”
“You went to school with them. Tree and Gemma. I saw you in the background of the snapshot in her apartment.”
Marigold adjusts her jacket’s ironed-flat lapels. “I lived on their floor our sophomore year. Had a couple of classes with Tree.”
“They weren’t your friends, though, were they?”
Marigold frowns. “It took them a while to realize they needed me. Tree is brilliant, but she’s erratic. I’d hear her in the common room talking about the untapped potential of plasma’s healing properties, how one drop of someone’s blood could tell you everything about them. She sounded crazy to me, but her talks always drew a crowd. I thought, this must be what it’s like to watch a great leader at work.
“She found this girl in one of our lectures with a bloodletting fetish or something. The girl had insane skin, no pores. She used to give Tree these tupperwares with her blood and Tree would make a soak—a few drops mixed with lavender oil. I think she just wanted to see if there was anything to it. Back then it was about eczema, not aging. Tree used to suffer from the worst eczema on her chest and back. Every time she had a breakout, she’d use this girl’s blood in her tub, and it cleared things up like that.” Marigold snapped her fingers. “Seeing those results made me a believer. I thought she could do amazing things, if I were to guide her toward realistic goals. The idea we came up with was, we start with a beauty brand, earn enough money to fund the experimental research on the side. But she got distracted from the original mission.”
“Which was what, exactly?”
“We were going to cure extreme skin conditions, like Tree’s eczema.”
“By killing people.”
“We’d only take a syringe or two at first, from volunteers. It wasn’t until Tree and Gemma fixated on the anti-aging effects, what it did for fine lines and wrinkles, that they realized we’d never have enough that way. We had to start taking it by force.”
“And the younger the better.”
“Of course. But I don’t think that’s it: I think she loves killing those girls. I think that’s why she can’t stop. If her face wasn’t falling off, I think she’d still be doing it right now.”
Marigold seems almost human in the washed light of the Ovary. In the corner, the dead bouquet, the largest flower, a single tear-shaped petal with a plastic sheen is covered with black dots. The dots are moving. Fruit flies feeding off the petal’s dead flesh.
LATER I’M WATCHING TV. Sheet masks on my hands, a coat of Vaseline sealing in the serums on my face. The limitation on movement gives me the opportunity to lie stock-still and let the mind wander. When the timer goes off, I drop the masks in the trash, rub the serum in, and then apply a lip-shaped gel over my mouth, sealing it shut for the night. With my mouth closed and the television’s nonstop light and sound, I rest on the couch and think through the day. The blue light from the screen subdues me and I enter a dream-wake state. Something white on the floor catches the corner of my eye. It’s the card with a contact number the officers investigating Emily’s disappearance gave me.
I read the number over and over until it’s a song in my head, then I dial.
THEY COME IN the morning. Boxes carried from the depths of the office. Employment records, research materials, cartons of youthjuice. My heart does ache to see it go, but it’s for the best. Our computers are confiscated. Tree, Gemma, Starla, and the director of R&D are cuffed and read their rights. Marigold is gone—the kidney-shaped desk is wiped bare, and her work accounts have been terminated.
