fiction

by mrinal pattanaik

Neuqua Valley High School

cleansing

The last time I see you that summer my grandmother asks if you’re my boyfriend. You’re sitting on a motorcycle with a big denim jacket and freshly dark hair and she hates everything you could be, so when I answer she asks twice more just to make sure.

“No, Mama.” I play with the hem of my top, pulling a string in and out and in and out. “We’re friends. Barely even.” I don’t say you might be if you didn’t disappear all the time. Maybe I should. Maybe you’d stay then.

When I walk over you smile, and then you tap your fingers against your seat and say, “I’m thinking of selling my bike.”

“Why?”

You shrug. “College and stuff.”

“College and stuff,” I echo. Mama walks up the stairs and sits on the porch and it creaks like it’s about to break. Yesterday she said we had termites, but the wood hasn’t given in yet so she’s not calling an exterminator.

You clear your throat. “I’m probably gonna be gone for awhile. I have, um, a summer thing upstate.”

“Oh.” I don’t say I know when you’re lying because you know I do. “Make sure to call.”

“Yeah.” You run your fingers along the handle of the bike. “There’s not a really good internet connection up there, though, so I -- um, I might not be the best at keeping in touch or anything. But I’ll try.”

“See you in September, then?” I ask. You smile again but it’s not the kind I’m used to.

“Sure. Yeah.”

When you drive away Mama grumbles boys like him are no good and I agree so that we can go inside. The porch makes a noise every time we take a step. I wonder how long we can ignore things before they fall apart.

—

When I last visited your home, you were lying on your bed belly up and for a moment I was reminded of a goldfish I’d accidentally killed as a child. Jagged scissors lay on your dresser, mold creeping over the edges of your drawer. You opened your eyes and winked at me and said, “You can come in, you know.”

I almost made a joke about being a vampire and needing an invitation, but I wasn’t sure how to make it land so I stayed quiet, perched on your bed like a bird clipped of its wings. “I used to have a parrot,” I said. You blinked at me. “I named her Shelly.”

“What happened to her?”

“She died.”

You whistled through your teeth: you did that a lot, said you were turning the gap into something pretty. I never said I thought it was pretty anyway. “Sucks,” you said, and then, “I had a rabbit. Named her Carrie.”

“What happened to her?”

“She died.”

“Sucks,” I said. You laughed with your mouth open, wide enough to bite into the crust of the earth — a wheezing laugh, hee he hee. Kids at school made fun of it so you stopped laughing in public: whenever I made a joke that elicited one, even in private, I felt a warm bright joy like a star spinning in my chest.

Mama called me home early that night and for a moment I thought you might kiss me goodbye under the summer sun, like the romance novels my aunt used to read. Instead you just took me to the door and waved.

__

Once a week, Mama smacks her tongue against her gums and makes me sit with her to play cards. She deals them carefully, one at a time because she’s afraid they’ll get worn out if she’s too rough with them. We have twelve more packs in storage but Mama doesn’t like to waste things — says it’s American of me to bathe in our excess. One time I told her that she was American now too, and she shook her head and put down the cards and said we were done playing for today.

She asks about you three times that summer. The first is when we’re sitting in our living room, watching a rerun of Friends. She says, “What happened to that boy with the motorcycle? Is he your boyfriend now?”

“He’s not.” On the television, the laugh track plays. “He’s just a friend. He has a summer course.”

“Does he call?” She slides her glasses all the way up her nose. “You should call your friends.”

“I know. He doesn’t have a good connection.”

“You should call your friends,” she repeats. She sniffs. “I can call my friends, he can call his.”

“We have wifi.”

Mama stares at me for a long moment. The wrinkles around her eyes remind me of an old plastic bag, unwilling to crumble. “Don’t make excuses for boys,” she says finally. “Too much work.”

“Let’s play cards, Mama. You can choose the game.” I grab the deck off the table and nod along when she starts talking about treating them carefully and wasting money and how will we afford an exterminator now. You haven’t called once and I’m running out of excuses.

—

The first time I realized you had a problem was when you skipped class for three weeks in a row and everyone said you went crazy and got sent to the hospital. I asked what kind of crazy and my friend said does it matter?, so I left it alone and did my math homework.

When you came back you sat next to me in English (like always) and didn’t tell me anything (like always). I never asked what happened. Part of me wanted to believe people were lying and you were on vacation or something, and another part of me was ashamed I was judging you at all.

“Maybe he just ditched,” my friend said when I asked one more time, rolling a pencil back and forth along her desk. “Like, he’s not really the school type in the first place.”

“Yeah.” I thought of long nights spent on call working out chemistry problems. “Maybe.” She shrugged.

“Or maybe he did go crazy. Who cares?”

I spent a long time wondering if you were depressed before I figured you probably were and that’s why you hung out with me. We understood each other, that way: as long as I was with you I wouldn’t have to think about getting better, and as long as you were with me I wouldn’t ask you about your worst.

“Sometimes,” you’d said three weeks after you got back, throwing scraps of paper at your ceiling and blowing at them when they fluttered down, “I wish I died young.” You glanced at me like you wanted a reaction.

“You’re still young.” I realized what I said after a long moment of silence and cleared my throat, rearranging the paper on the bed. “But don’t die now either.”

You cracked a smile and I felt like I’d won. “Yeah, whatever.”

—

Mama plaits my hair into a long, perfect braid every Friday night — shiny and straight like my mother’s hair was, not like the frizz I stole from my father. She combs it out until it’s static and rearranges it slowly while we watch soap operas and I pretend to pay attention. “He’s dying again,” she says.

I check my phone — still no call. “I thought he got replaced by the twin.”

“That was last season.” She clicks her teeth, running her fingers through a knot of my hair at the base of my neck once, twice, three times. “He left for his sister’s husband.”

“Oh.” You haven’t even texted. I wonder if you got sent to the hospital again but you would’ve warned me this time, I think. Maybe you’ve just moved past me and found a different girl to almost tell things. Maybe I wasn’t that special in the first place.

“You never pay attention,” says Mama. “That’s why you didn’t notice the porch, because you never pay attention.”

I put down my phone and stare at the television — a man and a woman are yelling at each other, full-blooded, with more emotion than I think I’ve ever felt in my life. “The porch was barely broken then,” I say. Someone shrieks. “And we have to keep walking on it anyway.”

—

You didn’t visit my house until the day you said goodbye: instead, we met up at yours or at McDonald’s because Mama would freak out if she saw you. I always stole fries from your meal and you always took my drink, so we evened out in a nice, mundane way. “You know,” you said once, taking a sip of my soda before you unzipped your backpack, “I think it’s fate that I don’t like fries that much and you don’t like drinks.”

“I think most people take things from each others’ meals.” I doodled stars on the margins of my math homework.

When you smiled it was all the way open, bright. “Yeah, but we’re special, I think.”

Earlier that day I’d been called down to the guidance counselor’s office during English because they thought my behavior was concerning. I wondered, if they’d picked up on a difference when I barely spoke in class in the first place, how come you didn’t — or did you know and not care? Either way, when I got back you’d just smiled at me and told me what I missed during class, which I wasn’t sure I preferred.

You passed me your basket. “I don’t feel like fries today,” you said, and I shrugged and took it and joked about only getting your leftovers. You rolled your eyes but you were smiling, warm and wide enough to make my heart stutter just a little bit.

—

On the first day of school I see you surrounded by your other, better friends. When I wave you smile, small and awkward again, before turning back to them. We have biology together this year and you’re sitting all the way on the opposite end of the room, so far that I can barely catch you on your way out.

“Hey,” I say, nudging you. “You said you’d call.” You glance down at the floor, then the ceiling, then the floor again, flickering right over me like I’m not there.

“I don’t think we should be friends anymore,” you say finally, staring right above my head.

“Why?”

You stare behind me for a long, ugly moment. My heart feels like it’s being filled with pus. “You can’t be serious.”

“I don’t — I am serious.” When you finally look me in the eye, you’re shaking, just a little, just enough that I notice from barely a foot away. I’ve never seen you angry like this. I’m not even sure if I should call it angry.

“My therapist said we should stay away from each other.” You never told me you had a therapist. “And I kind of agree with her, so... I’m following that advice. See you around.”

—

The last time I called you I told you I was going to kill myself if you didn’t respond. I knew it was immature but I really thought I meant it until Mama found me and dragged me to her room and said, “If you scare me like that again you’re going to the hospital with your mother.” She took my phone away so I couldn’t text you and let you know I was alive after all. When I stole it back the next morning you’d called eight times and texted thirty-two times and when I said that I was okay you seemed more angry than anything else, which I guess is fair.

I still assumed we could be friends, though, if I explained that I didn’t mean it in a manipulative way, and at the time you’d just smiled and said it was okay, so I thought we could move on. I guess that was stupid of me.

You text me when I get home and say I don’t hate you I just think we need a break.

Forever? I almost text. Or are we okay after a month?

You’re in no place to judge me, I almost text. You actually got sent to the hospital.

I’m sorry, I almost text. You know that but I want to say it again. I was stupid. I’ll be better.

I just say I get it and block your number and turn off my phone for the day. Mama’s finally called an exterminator, now that parts of the porch have started falling off in large, ugly chunks. The exterminator said if we’d let it go on for any longer the bugs would’ve buried their way into our house and we’d have to move, so we’re lucky. They’ll be gone in a week. Hopefully, I’ll be over you that soon too, but I don’t think I’ve ever moved past things that quickly.

I don’t dwell on it, though. Instead I do my math homework and google therapy options near me and think maybe someday I’ll get better.