the head, dizzy and blind. Everyone is going to forgive the grieving boyfriend for getting wild after his girlfriend kicks the bucket.
It was like getting my heart broken, somehow. That what happened to me could be framed that way, casually, to my face, in a house with Oriental carpets and marble.
* * *
—
Later, in her room, Bunny and I did face masks.
“It feels like fire ants are crawling all over my skin,” I said.
“It feels like my skin is literally burning completely off.”
“Oh, I love it,” I said.
“The pain is how you know it’s working.”
We were quiet. Skin care was a bond between us because both of us longed to be beautiful, even as we feared we were not and could never be, even as we were suspicious of the urge to be beautiful in the first place. What was that power? You were supposed not to want it, not to crave it, not to pursue it. Beauty was just supposed to land on you like a butterfly, showing the world that you were special, worthy of love, attended by magical birds who folded your laundry. But here we were, trying to burn our skin off for that.
I could tell she was upset. How could she not be? The possibility of a trial, homicide charges. “Why…” I began, not certain what I was going to ask until I said it, “do you think that Ann Marie’s boyfriend jumped me? I always assumed it was because I was gay, but maybe it was because I was your friend, and it was more because of Ann Marie.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe because he was afraid of being seen as beating up a girl? So he couldn’t beat me up directly?”
“Or he was afraid you’d overpower him.”
“Or it was Jason who made it all happen and it was because you’re gay.”
“Or it’s all of those things.”
“Do you ever get freaked out because you do things without planning them?”
“No, I don’t think so,” I said.
“I mean, like, sometimes I’ll reach to get an apple off the counter, and then I’ll get freaked out because I didn’t plan to reach out and grab the apple. I just did it. And maybe as I’m doing it, I have a thought like, mmm, apple. But I didn’t plan it. And yet other stuff we do plan and then do on purpose, but it’s like a small, small percentage. At least for me. And I get freaked out about that, and I get afraid that basically I’m sleeping even while I’m awake.”
“I know exactly what you are talking about,” I said. “And I feel exactly the same way.”
And then we washed our faces and went to bed.
* * *
—
I texted Anthony: So did you really break up with me at the hospital while I was totally out of it?
He didn’t text me back for three days.
Then he texted: No, I don’t remember breaking up with you per se, but I feel very guilty because I do think we should stop seeing each other.
I didn’t write back. I didn’t want to seem weak by showing him my anger or my hurt. Yet I mentally composed texts that I refused to send every hour of every day. I just feel ashamed, I imagined writing. Why? Don’t feel ashamed, he would say. For having such a coward and Cyprian man, such a stretched-out, gaping old asshole, as my first love. My rage was incoherent. I didn’t even know what I wanted from him exactly. Probably for him to be someone else, and for me to be someone else, and for the situation to be an entirely different situation than it was. Probably something along those lines.
Meanwhile, I was afraid to leave the house. I didn’t want to run into Jason or Aunt Deedee. Tyler and his friends had not been arrested or charged as far as I knew. I had gotten an unclear phone call from Principal Cardenas telling me to take as long as I needed before coming back to school, with no mention of any formal procedure for resuming my attendance, but I knew I was never going back. It wasn’t exactly that I was afraid they would jump me a second time. In a rational sense, I didn’t expect we would be playing Tom and Jerry, banging each other with hammers all over the town or something. But I did feel like if I caught sight of one of their faces without being braced for