“Look, Royce, I love you, but don’t ask me any more relationship questions. It’s too weird.” He seems to get it and hugs me before he leaves the room.
It’s not a big hug. It tells me that I haven’t said enough. But how can I answer Royce’s question when I can’t answer my own? He’s got me thinking what Zach means to me, and that’s enough to make me nervous, because, like him, I don’t know.
t h i r t y - o n e
“The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone
too much, and forgetting that you are special too.”
—Ernest Hemingway
Zach and I are walking on the sprawling grass between tombstones at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. It’s movie night and already there are hundreds of people camped on blankets waiting for the sun to slip from dusk to darkness. A large screen has been erected in the middle of the cemetery. Music is playing and people are enjoying picnics.
We spread our blanket and cuddle up in the cool breeze, staring at all the palm trees lining the horizon and tombstone silhouettes guarding us with their ghosts.
There’s an introduction fifteen minutes later, followed by commercials, then the feature movie: Casablanca. I was hoping we would catch an old Brat Pack film like Sixteen Candles, but I’m just happy to be out and not thinking about everything for once.
“Have you seen this one?” I ask.
“A long time ago,” Zach says. “I don’t really remember it.”
“It has beautiful shadows,” I say. “I’ve never seen more perfect lighting.”
His eyes scan the audience. “Is that right?” he says, half listening as he shifts away from me to the other side of the blanket.
“What are you looking at?” I sit up. “Is that Cristina?” I ask, pretty sure I’ve spotted her sitting twenty feet away. I doubt that this is a coincidence. Is she following us? Did Zach tell her we were going to be here? Are they closer than I thought?
“Are you guys still talking?” I ask.
“Don’t be jealous.” Zach starts to get up. “We need to leave.”
“Are you serious?” I say, trying to pull him back down. “What’s going on?”
“We need to go.” He’s already up.
I let out a confused sigh and stand. He doesn’t even fold the blanket, just bunches the fabric together and hurries off without waiting for me. I apologize to other people on blankets as I step between them to catch up to Zach.
“Hey, is that...?” a woman starts to say to me.
“Yes,” I assure her. “That’s him.”
“Stardom,” the woman says. “Always hard to find privacy.”
I hurry after Zach. By the time I catch up, he’s halfway to the car.
“Zach. Zach,” I say. “Can’t you wait? It’s not like she’s going to follow us all the way out here.”
He slows down. “Yeah. Sorry,” he says.
I take the blanket from him and fold the fabric.
“Maybe she really just came to see the movie,” I say tentatively, hoping Zach might offer up some information. He seems testy and I don’t want to push him too hard.
Zach runs his hands through his hair. “Are you done?” he says.
“Okay,” I say. We’re off again.
I start to worry. There’s obviously something I don’t know.
We’re sitting in his Audi a few minutes later. He leaves the movie viewing area and drives deeper into the cemetery. “Where you going?” I ask. “What’s going on?”
“Just getting away from everything,” he says.
“We can go somewhere else. Want to go to Mount Hollywood and park somewhere?”
Being surrounded by all these ghosts makes my skin crawl. I’ve never liked cemeteries. Whenever I walk on the grass, I feel like old bones are crunching beneath my feet.
“That’s all right. I like it here,” he says, pulling over. “It’s so hard to just get away from people. I’m sick of being recognized all the time. Let’s just sit here.”
I look at the white mausoleum next to the car shining under the moonlight. “Here? In the car?”
“Yeah. I don’t want to walk around. Is that all right?” He brushes some hair out of my eyes.
“I guess. It’s just... I was having a good time.”
“Come on, Liv.” He smiles. He still has a hand on my shoulder. “There are other good times to be had. Am I right?”
Am I right? I don’t even feel like looking him in the eye.
Now he puts a gentle hand on my face. “Am I right?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“That’s my girl,” he says and kisses me. “Are you my girl?”
“Yes,” I say between kisses. I’m still wondering what’s going on. Is he trying to distract me from what just happened back there? Or am I acting like a jealous girlfriend?
As we kiss, I don’t lose myself in him like I usually do. I keep seeing Cristina in my mind. Why was he freaking out? He didn’t at the gallery. Though he did look at her weird, now that I remember. Is he seeing her again? Is she following him around, trying to mark her territory? Am I falling for the oldest trick in the book? A man’s charm?
I pull away. “I need to go home.”
His touch on my skin makes me feel sick. Something must be going on with him and Cristina. Maybe they never really broke up all the way. Why would she follow him otherwise? He must have given her some hope to hold on to. Was Zach lying at the boat party when he said the breakup was hard on Cristina? Is he the one who can’t let go?
“Wait. What?” he says. “We just got here.”
“No, I’m serious. I need to go home.”
It serves me right, thinking a guy like Zach might actually like me. He probably asked me—the weird artsy girl—out to make Cristina jealous. I can’t believe I didn’t see this coming. She’s always been a better match for him, even though I’m as skinny as I’ve ever been.
Zach looks at me like I’m crazy. “I’m not going home.”
“I’m not joking. I’m getting sick.”
It’s not an excuse. I am starting to feel intense nausea.
“You’re really going to give me the cold shoulder?”
“Will you just quit being a selfish jerk?” It suddenly feels too warm inside the car. I feel like I’m suffocating. “Please. I want to go home.”
“Me? You’re such a tease. Why’d you even let me kiss you? I don’t like this hot and cold act. Here, let me help you.” He reaches over and opens my door.
This isn’t the Zach I know. It’s like some other guy has taken over.
He’s acting just like Ollie. And Jackson.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“You want to go. So go.”
“I’m not getting out in the middle of a dark cemetery.”
“Get out or I will throw you out.”
“Who are you?” I start to tear up, but I don’t want to cry.
I get out.
“Stupid tease.”
I slam the car door, basically crying, not saying anything else as he speeds farther into the cemetery. I watch his taillights—they’re like ghoulish red eyes hovering in the night.
He’s gone.
He’s really gone.
I let out a breath, feeling the excruciating pit in my stomach churn. I didn’t want him to touch me, but now what I want more than anything in the world is to reverse time back to before we started fighting. When I try to imagine a guy wanting me ever again, I can’t—and I don’t mean that dramatically. I never used to be like this. Hope was such an easy thing to have. Now I honestly can’t bear the idea of having to go through letting someone touch me only to have him realize he never really wanted me at all.
I start walking toward the distant movie screen, trying to dry up my tears. All I see is the glow against the ni
ght and trees. I call Sam. He doesn’t answer. He must be at his debate tournament. I let out another breath, sobbing into my palms.
“This is not happening,” I say, crying all over again.
I scroll through my parents’ numbers. Not calling them.
Mason. Not calling.
Royce. Not calling.
Jasmine. Not calling.
Antonia. Calling...
She doesn’t answer right away. When she does, she stays silent.
“Antonia?” I say.
She’s still silent. I hear her breath.
“Antonia,” I say. “Antonia? I’m sorry.”
Finally...
“Yeah?” she says.
This time I’m trying to be quiet, though the painful sobs are racking my chest. I feel like cutting right here in the cemetery, blood running black into night.
“Are you all right?” she asks. “Are you crying?”
“No... Yes... I need a ride. Please help me? I think something bad was about to happen with Zach. Or did happen. I don’t know what happened.”
“What did he do to you?” Antonia sounds like she wants to kill him.
“I’m alone now. I’m scared.”
“I’m coming. Where are you?”
I tell her how to find me. We decide on a place to meet, and I hang up. I didn’t tell her I feel shadows all around, invisible hands all over my body, touching me.
I start running. I won’t tell her I’m about to scream. I won’t tell her I fall on the ground, that I feel completely violated, or that I drag myself behind a tombstone and shove fingers down my throat and cry and grunt and try to puke, but there’s nothing there. I’m empty. I’m so completely and utterly empty.
I’m an abyss. I’m a void. I’m a cage of bones filled with dark matter threatening to crush me from the inside.
I slip a razor blade out of my purse. I haven’t cut myself in a while, but I’ve started carrying a package of them everywhere now. I can’t let myself go anywhere without them. Even running my finger over them makes me feel better for a moment, until I realize what I’m doing and hate myself all over again for not being normal no matter how hard I try. I’m a total mess.
In the pitch black of night, listening to the faint whispers of Casablanca playing across the cemetery, I pull the razor across my left thigh three times.
Slice. Slice. Slice.
Blood drips then slides down my legs, dampening the grass. The cuts are deep, but they’re not deep enough. I wish I could flay myself open. Let the darkness out.
I don’t think I want to die, but I can’t live with all this pain.
t h i r t y - t w o
“And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter—they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long.”
—Sylvia Plath
I hear Antonia’s voice faintly at first. My mind is frozen. I don’t know why I wasn’t strong. I don’t know why I snapped. I sit up. Over here, I try to say. Over here.
Then I see her flashlight. She’s found me next to the tombstone a few feet away from the access road running next to the cemetery where I said I’d be. The light bounces through the dark like a will-o’-the-wisp. I feel arms around me. They help me up.
There’s a buzzing in my head trying to take over.
“You have to go to the hospital,” Antonia says.
“No...” I groan. “I’m okay. I’ve done this before.”
“Here,” she says, taking off her sweatshirt and pushing the fabric up against my legs. “Use this to stop the bleeding. If it doesn’t stop, I’m making you go...”
“Fine,” I whisper.
She holds me for a while, then after a minute or five or ten, I’m sitting in her car.
“I’m bulimic,” I say. I can’t hold back the secrets anymore. “It’s taking over my life. I can’t control my anxiety. I can’t control the feeling that everything about me is rotten...”
Antonia doesn’t say anything. She just listens and drives.
“I cut myself too. I cut and bleed, and when I do I feel pain drift onto a cloud. But now I have scars. I cut those too...when throwing up doesn’t work.”
“This is scary,” Antonia says. “I don’t know how to help.”
“You can’t take me to the hospital,” I say. “I’m not ready.”
“You have to take care of yourself,” Antonia says. “You’re precious. You’re loved. This is your life. Do you understand how serious those cuts are?”
Her voice is softer than when she was on the phone. She sounds like she cares. I start to feel secure. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to cut that deep...”
A sleepiness consumes me as she continues talking. “We can’t pretend to be people we’re not,” she says. “I’m sorry I hurt you. All of that was dumb. It was too much pressure for everyone. I was being selfish.”
“I’m being more selfish than anyone,” I say. “It’s horrible. I can’t do anything. Even when something starts going right, this urge to sabotage myself takes over. I can’t even feel joy for long. It keeps turning into this thing. This horrible selfish knot that has to come out.”
“We need to make up,” Antonia says. “We need to just be cool with each other again.”
“I want that,” I say.
I really do. No one gets me like Antonia does. Except for Sam. I start to panic. I can’t let him see me like this—I can’t let him see this side of me, all the pain and darkness.
“You’re going to get through this. As for that little dirtbag Zach? You’re better off never talking to him again. You need to delete his number.”
It feels good to tell her about my problems.
“I don’t know why he got so weird,” I say, not telling her about Cristina. It’s just too much right now anyway. “Please don’t tell my family,” I add.
“I won’t,” she says, keeping her eyes on the road. “Not right now. Just feel safe.”
“Please don’t tell Sam either.”
Of all the people I know, I don’t want him to find out.
I want to keep some shred of innocence.
“Is the bleeding stopping?” Antonia asks. “I can’t make these promises unless you’re going to be okay. I don’t want to lose my best friend.”
I pull the fabric up and lift up my skirt a little. “Yeah. It’s not as deep as I thought. It was just a lot of blood. Sorry I ruined your sweatshirt.”
Antonia squeezes my knee. “Promise me you’re never going to do that again. I know what’s inside of you, Liv Blakely. You’re not empty. You have a lot left to give the world. You can’t leave us yet. It’s not your time.”
t h i r t y - t h r e e
“There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes
where life is not painful.”
—Fernando Pessoa
I haven’t heard from Zach since he left me at the cemetery. I dreaded being at school today, but he’s probably filming and won’t be here.
I’m walking to my chemistry class to get help from my teacher during lunch—which has the double benefit of boosting my grades and distracting me from eating—when I get a stream of texts from Antonia. She’s been checking in on me a couple times a day since the cemetery.
ANTONIA: If I see him can I punch him in the mouth?
ANTONIA: How about I tell him off the way my Mama does?
ANTONIA: TOTAL tirade. Hope you’re feeling better xoxo
That was my worst breakdown yet. It was embarrassing, but I’ve felt better since sharing my problems with Antonia. I haven’t purged or cut. I’m still sticking to my rules to keep the pain and anxiety under control.
It makes me hate myself, but I thi
nk about Zach all the time. It’s a problem. I need to be strong. Antonia wants me to ignore him. And I will for now. But I want to see what he has to say. I’m angry at him yet I don’t want that conversation to be our last.
The weather’s finally starting to heat up and I want to wear shorts, but I can’t because of the cuts. I really screwed up. Forget wearing miniskirts or bikinis this summer. Forget swimsuits altogether.
Who knows whether I’ll be able to get rid of the scars?
I’m almost to class when Felicity rounds the corner and makes a beeline toward me. She’s pale and holding back tears. I still don’t feel close enough to her to ask what’s going on, but she waves me over. Immediately, I think of Zach.
Is he hurt or something?
I may be pissed, but I still have feelings for him.
“What’s wrong?” I say. I can barely talk again.
“He’s gone,” Felicity cries.
Something feels ripped from me. Breath, lungs, throat, stomach.
Everything seems to spin around me.
“It’s so sad,” Felicity whispers through tears. “I’ve been looking for you. I thought, ‘How could she know? She wouldn’t know yet. I have to tell her.’ And I didn’t have your number or know where you live, or I’d have gone directly to your house.”
I gulp air. I can’t cry. I can’t think. I have to think. I have to.
“Who?” I groan.
It sounds like I’m not even human anymore.
“LeFeber,” Felicity says, her voice cracking. “I’m so sorry.”
I’m waiting to feel relieved that Zach’s not hurt, but I feel like a vise is grabbing on to and twisting my stomach. LeFeber can’t be dead. All I can think of is having spoken with him, how he was inspired by both the brokenness and divinity of man. Was he hinting at something? Was he hurting too?
“How did he die?” I ask.
Felicity says, “His agent said he’d been sick a long time but refused to tell anyone.”
“That’s so horrible,” I say, wondering why he didn’t want to tell anyone about his pain. Maybe LeFeber couldn’t tell anyone he was dying for the same reason I can’t tell anyone about my sickness. You don’t want people to look at you like you’re broken.