Help! I'm Alive, page 6
“I told you, I’m just trying to figure things out.” He’s annoyed now and tosses the controller. “This game is fucking stupid.” He tries to remember his breathing but can’t seem to count it out and exhales in small spasms.
“Are you okay?”
Anik nods, feeling foolish. He tries to channel his inner Buddha, conjures up the sound of chanting monks, bells, rain, anything that will bring him down. “I’m fine.” He picks up the controller and passes it to Ash who expertly maneuvers his way through the levels, commenting only on the play until the music picks up to signal that time is running out. He narrows his focus but jumps a second too soon and Luigi falls, the synthesizer calypso tune slows and descends. Game over.
Day 17
Winona’s sitting on the couch, under a giant furry blanket watching CNN. She convinced Trish to let her take a sick day and now that the house is empty and her absence from school excused, Winona settles in with a bowl of popcorn and Anderson Cooper on the PVR. She loves his silver hair, his alabaster skin, how it practically sparkles as if he’s an elf from Middle Earth somehow made real. He’s talking Trump in his perfectly dreamy way and she’s fixated on today’s morality pitch. She watches CNN mostly for the moral outrage, and when she’s up for something a bit more Jerry Springer–like, she tunes into Fox and folds into the drama. Her mother used to watch soap operas. She recorded them and watched them after work while she made dinner. Winona would sit in front of the TV and do her homework, and every so often Lara ducked her head through the kitchen pass-through to catch the best bits. Political news to Winona was a lot like a soap opera and was one of the things she and Jay watched together. Since Jay didn’t have cable at home, she recorded it and they’d watch, fast-forwarding to the good parts. He loved the extreme weather reporting. Hurricane season was his favorite with their boy/girl-next-door names, the Mother Nature doesn’t care, in-your-face, fuck-you of it all. “Losing everything makes people better,” he said, after Hurricane Harvey. She told him that was easy for him to say since he was sitting on her comfy couch.
“Maybe, but wouldn’t you rather have less? Wouldn’t you like the reminder that life isn’t supposed to be work, buy, sleep, repeat?”
“Sure, but I wouldn’t want my whole life washed away.” Winona glanced at the on-screen footage of an elderly woman being airlifted from her rooftop. “Look at that poor woman. She doesn’t deserve that.”
“Maybe she does,” Jay said, stone-faced. “Maybe she was an awful mother who beat her kids or maybe she kept them locked in a cage or some shit like that.” She waited for him to crack. He had a way of saying bullshit stuff just to get a reaction. She was such an easy mark.
“You’re horrible,” she said, throwing popcorn at him.
“Do it again.” He opened his mouth to catch the incoming kernels.
Winona sits back and tosses the popcorn in the air, trying to catch it in her mouth but gives up after several failed attempts. She mutes the TV, watches the soundless bobbleheads and makes up new lines for them to say in their newsy voices. “Jacob McAlister is dead. Sources say that he fell from a bridge while filming a stunt, while others close to him say that he’d been depressed in recent weeks and fear he took his own life.” She repeats the phrase “took his own life” and sits with the strangeness of it, the abstraction of what it means to take something that is you, to take something that is you to some unknown.
“Where do the dead go?” she says in her newsy voice, imagining the variations of hell and heaven, purgatory and nothingness that she and Jay had talked about in a baked haze. He once told her that when he was seven he passed out from a fever and left his body and had what he was sure was a near-death experience. He floated over himself for a minute before being sucked into a swirling vortex of souls that tried to grab him. Some force propelled him out of that tornado and through a tunnel toward a pinprick of light, which opened up into a magnificence of colors, a swirl of turquoise, gold and violet, with starry arms like a Van Gogh painting come to life. And as beautiful as it was, what he remembered most was the smoky figures, the souls that stretched out from the sides of the vortex attempting to pull him in. For a while, he was obsessed with it and filled an entire art pad with drawings of it. His mom grew worried when his teacher called to show her the drawings. His shadowy black crayon tunnel, intricately shaded in stark contrast to his classmates’ stick figures and sunshine rays. Lisa took him to the doctor, who explained it away as a hallucination. He stopped drawing the pictures but he never forgot the visions and once, while in a drug-induced haze, had suggested to Winona that they recreate the experience by playing the choking game. He’d wanted to try it on his own but was scared that he’d accidentally die, so he’d never got further than watching instructional videos about it. People said that the asphyxiation was like a high, but he wasn’t interested in that. He didn’t want to feel the euphoria, the fuzzy feeling of brain cells dying, the supernova-like explosion; he wanted to know what happened when things go dark, when the conscious mind is quiet and control shifts to the unseen all-knowing.
“So what do you think? You want to try?” He had asked it so casually, as if he was suggesting they go to a new restaurant. He made everything sound like a no-brainer.
She straddled him on the couch, wrapping her hands around his throat.
Jay told her to squeeze harder. She tightened her grip but couldn’t bear down with enough force. They tried a few times but the minute his face turned deep red, the minute she felt his ropey ligaments, she let go.
“It was a dumb idea,” he said, gasping.
“Damn right it was.” She pushed her hands into his chest and slid off his lap. “Besides, even if it worked, I doubt you’d see that same thing again. It was just a hallucination.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right . . . but what if it wasn’t? What if it was a near-death experience and that’s what happens on the other side?”
“Well then, be glad you’re not dead,” she said and lit a bong.
Jay took it from her, inhaled and then collapsed back into the seat cushions, both of them surrendering to a fuzzy chill afternoon of listening to her mom’s records, jumping on the couch and singing along to Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime.”
She pulls out that record and listens with her eyes closed but it’s not the same and she drags the needle back, scratching it so badly that it skips, stuttering about the days gone by, over and over.
Day 28
Ash drops his backpack and kneels down in the dirt by Jay’s memorial.
It’s been pouring for a week and the whole thing looks like trash. The flowers are dead and damp-crushed. The lonely helium balloon tied to the chain-link has deflated, and the little one-eyed teddy bear holding a heart is dirt-streaked. He picks up the framed yearbook photo and wipes the raindrops off the glass with the cuff of his jacket. Jay’s hair is long and wavy, grazing his shoulders and he’s half smiling, not a smirk, just his regular I got you smile. Ash saw him the day this picture was taken. He’d been skating to school and stopped to walk with him.
“Hey man, sup?” he said, trick-flipping his board into his hands.
“Not much, you know.”
Neither of them said anything else for about a half block and that was okay. They were cool like that. Quiet didn’t bug them the way it did with Ash’s other friend groups; the need to talk over each other, high-five, or clown around didn’t apply to them. It’s like when you know people for a long time you don’t need to add all the pretend.
“You got your schedule?” Jay asked.
“Yeah.” Ash listed off teachers and blocks.
“Ah man, that sucks. You have Grant for English.”
“Yeah, I heard she’s strict.”
“Moody bitch too. Looks like we have Socials together.” Jay glanced at Ash and half-smiled, nodded for no reason. Winona called from the top of the street where she was waiting, arms crossed, smoking. “Later,” he said and skated away.
Ash watched the way they walked together — not quite boyfriend-girlfriend but still close like a secret. Now he wonders what secrets they did have. People are talking, saying they had a suicide pact, but looking at his face in that photo he doesn’t buy it. Jay wouldn’t have done that; he wasn’t selfish that way. The photo’s edges are blurred now, watercolored from the rain, bleeding blue and green, dreamy like. Ash tucks the frame into his backpack, cleans up the dead flowers and throws them in the trash along with the one-eyed teddy bear. It’s been a month since Jay jumped. The fakers and trauma wannabes are back to normal life, obsessing over the spring fling dance and who’s hooking up with who, and Ash hopes today’s assembly doesn’t change that. In a way it’s easier to float along with the pretenders than to dive in too deep.
* * *
The gym is half-full by the time he gets there. It’s a mix of different grades, some people he recognizes and a lot that he doesn’t but that’s the point of it, to get people out of their bubble, to get people talking, to “build community,” at least that’s what the announcement said. Ash tried to get out of going, told Pavan he didn’t want to but she thought it would be good for him, help him process everything with Jay, as if it was that simple. So here he is ready to “Break Down the Walls!” in a half-day assembly. The student group that’s leading the charge are wearing matching T-shirts, lanyards and khakis, like they work at an Apple store.
Principal Carter takes the mic, taps it a few times. “Testing, testing, can you hear me?” The audio feedback that follows makes everyone cringe. “Please take your seats.” Ash and all of the others file onto the bleachers and after a few minutes he resumes. “It gives me great pleasure to turn the day over to Bill Mitchell from BDB, Break Down Barriers.”
A white-haired, thin man jogs onto the stage to “We Are the Champions.” Ash’s insides collapse with the cliché of it. As the man talks about the format of the day, Ash notices that he paces across the stage the same way Peter does when he presents but unlike Peter, who speaks slowly and pauses for effect like Barak Obama, this guy is budget, talking fast and loud like he’s selling knives on the shopping channel or evangelizing to the faithless. “Save yourself,” Ash mutters to himself beneath the pump-up music and introductions.
“Each of you received a name tag when you came in and that name tag has a picture of an animal on it. Your first assignment is to go to the group leader who is holding up a picture of your animal. That will be your work group for the morning,” says Budget Peter.
As everyone gets up to find their group, Ash sees some of his friends and goes over. “What did you get?” he asks, looking at their name tags. None of them have the elephant. They all start laughing. “What?”
Riley, the ringleader, the blond QB that all the girls fall over, points to the back of the gym where Britt is holding an elephant sign. “Shit luck,” he says, slapping Ash on the back.
“Fuck,” Ash says. “Switch with me.”
“No way, man.” He shoves him playfully. “Good luck.”
Ash wanders over to the edge of the group where Winona’s standing. She looks normal today, no getup. Her long hair is pulled up in a messy top knot and she’s wearing an oversized hoodie and jeans. “Hey.”
“Hey,” he says, offering up a weak smile, a head nod.
“This is such a waste of time.”
“Totally,” he says, looking around the gym. “My parents made me come.”
“Mine too. It’ll be okay, I’ll get you through. I’m a master at this type of thing. Years of group, you get good at sharing but not sharing.”
Britt lifts her chin and freeze-smiles when she sees Ash.
Ash does an awkward wave, as if to say it’s not my fault. She smiles, no teeth showing, just a big fake oh my God grin. She looks down at her clipboard and then back up again. She’s trying for maturity; she dumped him, after all. Sure, he didn’t return any of her messages after Jay died, but she was the one who hooked up with some douchebag after the funeral. Ash should’ve been mad about it, he could have peacocked like any other guy would have, but he just let it go and then she was mad about that, shit-talking him for not caring enough. Looking at her now, the way she’s chewing on the inside of her cheek, the way her neck’s gone all strawberry-splotchy, he can tell that he was wrong for not caring because clearly she still did.
“Is this going to be weird?” he asks, pulling her aside.
She shrugs. “You’re with her now?” she asks, glancing at Winona.
“No, she’s just” — he pauses, unsure of what she is to him — “someone I know. Look, if this is going to be awkward, I can get reassigned.” He watches her face, the way she can’t quite make eye contact. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Whatever,” she says, blowing him off. “Do what you want.”
“Okay then.” He rejoins Winona who asks if he’s okay, in a way that makes him realize she’s actually asking. “Yeah, totally. I’m good.”
* * *
Budget Peter calls the group leaders together and Britt is swapped out to another group. Their new group leader, Hardip, an international student who’s become instantly popular because he has a cool British accent, takes them through the first activity. “Okay, people! Two truths and a lie, yeah? It goes like this: you have to write out two true things and one lie and guess which is the lie, right?” he says, handing out worksheets and pairing students off.
Winona and Ash sit cross-legged across from each other.
“Okay, here goes,” she says, speaking loudly above the din of voices around them. “Number one: Winona Ryder is my mom’s cousin.
Ash watches her face for the usual tells — excessive blinking, lip biting, stumbling over words — but she’s not signaling.
“Number two: I’m a vegan.”
Still, she’s completely calm, and he finds himself studying her face for too long. Her large blue eyes, fair skin and dark hair remind him of Snow White, and somehow that puts him at ease.
“Number three: I love steak.”
On this one she laughs a little and so does Ash.
“Okay, well, it’s gotta be number two or three. You can’t be a vegan and love steak. So, I’ll go with door number three.”
“Wrong,” she says. “It’s number one. My mom was a superfan, not a relative.”
“Wait a second, explain how you can love steak and be a vegan?”
“I said I love steak; I didn’t say I eat it. I’m a carnivore who abstains.” She makes a weird growly face. “Okay, now you go.”
Ash nods and holds up his paper. “Number one: I love Harry Potter. Number two: I’m an elite Super Smash player, and number three: I have a genius-level IQ.”
Winona makes a show of thinking. “No offence, but I have to go with door number three.”
“Wrong.” He crumples his paper. “I do have a genius-level IQ. I’m just not willing to peak in high school, so I keep it on the down-low,” he says, lowering his voice.
“Right,” she says. “So which one is the fake?”
“I don’t love Harry Potter.”
“What? How can you not? He’s awesome.”
“Nah! He’s just a dumbass with a scar. Everyone knows Hermione is the real deal, a kick-ass muggle-born.”
Winona makes a surprised face. “So you’re a feminist.”
“What? No, that’s not what I said. I’m just not that into wizards and shit.”
“So number two, Smash? We should play some time.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Hardip calls the group to attention. “So what’s the takeaway from this?”
One of the geeky kids pipes up. “We’re more than meets the eye.”
“Robots in disguise,” Ash sings the Transformers cartoon jingle under his breath and nudges Winona, but she’s actually listening to the kid and to Hardip, so he goes quiet for the rest of the talk, watching how serious everyone is, watching how hopeful they are that somehow things really will get better like all of the PSA videos promise. After a trust-building activity where they each have to let themselves fall back into the group’s waiting arms, Budget Peter comes back on stage, motioning for them to sit down.
“Growing up isn’t easy, in fact it’s never been harder. Let’s talk about what might be going on with each of you.” He signals to someone at the back to dim the lights and a movie plays on the screen behind him. Close-ups of teen faces, sad piano music like the stuff Anik composes. “I didn’t know what to do . . . I felt like ending it . . . I worried what my parents would think . . . I hated myself . . . I couldn’t find a way out . . . I just wanted it to end . . . I just wanted it to end . . .” Ten minutes of artsy shots of empty rooms, empty chairs, heads down, eyes closed, hands out, reaching. “If only it could be different.”
The lights come back up. Some kids are tearing up, red-faced, and seeing them makes Ash choke. He has a lump in his throat and swallows hard, grinds his teeth, clamps down. Winona is sitting cross-legged next to him, completely still, as if she’s transcended.
“What you may not realize is that everyone feels this way at some point. You’re not alone. Statistics tell us that twenty to thirty percent of you are probably depressed. Suicide is the second leading cause of death in young people.” He pauses and, with his clicker, projects the sobering statistics on the screen. “I tell you this not to frighten you, but to arm you with the knowledge that you are not alone. I’d like you all to stand up and form one straight line.”
“This is so dumb,” Ash says to Winona. She doesn’t answer and simply follows along. “Now step forward if you feel sad at least once a day.” Ash watches as three-quarters of the line moves up. “Now step forward if you feel anxious.” Ash doesn’t step forward even though he does feel anxious most days. “Step forward if you hate something about yourself.” Dozens of kids step forward. Ash doesn’t; he picks and chooses what he wants to be honest about. Budget Peter goes on and on, listing ways in which people are the same and different, showing their challenges to each other one step at a time. “Step forward if you’ve ever thought of or known someone who harmed themselves.” Ash thinks of Jay and steps forward. By the end of it he and Winona are far apart — she’s stepped forward while he held back. Budget Peter tells them to look around and see each other. “You are not alone.” Some people are crying and hugging, consoling each other while others, like Ash, are standing with their arms crossed, their faces in awkward twists. He starts to crack up the way he does when he’s nervous. He quickly covers his mouth and orchestrates an elaborate coughing fit and is excused to the hall. He stays there for a few minutes, trying to catch his breath and talk himself down.
