on his face that it’s serious. That maybe he is really about to break up with me. And I just can’t believe it. I feel like I need to walk away, before he actually comes out and says it.
I stand, pick up my jacket, and head down the narrow hallway toward the door. The departure is dramatic. I stomp my PUMA runners as hard as I can. My jacket zipper scratches against the wall.
“Melissa …” Michael’s voice trails behind me. “Melissa …” His voice gets louder and more distressed, so I slow my grip on the apartment doorknob to give him a few seconds, that’s all, the way I’ve seen my mom do it when she’s fighting with a boyfriend and she’s trying to turn things around. She makes them come after her, and somehow, miraculously, has them apologize for nothing they’ve done wrong.
I give Michael just a few seconds to reconsider, but there is a long silence and I know he’s forcing himself to try to say the right thing, do the right thing, be the right thing.
“And fuck you!” I shout, open the door, and slam it behind me. I wait outside the door, listening for his footsteps coming down the hallway. I wait for a few minutes, my heart starting to race. I thought he would call me back in.
He was supposed to call me back in.
As soon as I get to the bus stop, I call Michael on my cell, but he doesn’t answer. Then I call him again when I get home, but he still doesn’t answer. I go to his apartment building early the next morning, but he doesn’t come to the door even after I pound for like twenty minutes. I go outside the building and throw rocks up to his windows. Still nothing. Then I call and call and call all day from school, at least one hundred times. Nothing. I hate myself for getting so mad at him. For swearing and being so mean. I apologize over and over again in every email and text. Nothing.
Then, the next morning when I call his cell, it’s not in service. I leave school and go straight to his apartment, but when I knock, it sounds empty and hollow inside. I pound on all the neighbours’ doors until one old man opens his door just a crack, chain still on, and tells me that the man who lived in 7C moved today.
“Today? You sure?” I stare in his direction, but the opening is so small I can barely even see his face.
“Saw the boxes myself.”
“Where did he go?”
“Now, that I don’t know, little lady.” He starts to close his door. “I mind my own business.”
I walk away, down the corridor toward the stairwell. My head spins. My mouth gets dry. I stop and lean a hand up against the wall, ’cause I feel like I’ll drop.
It’s like my soul has left my body and I am a walking corpse. I just can’t believe he’s gone. Move? Just like that?
I go home, change my clothes, drink four shots of vodka from the bottle stashed under my bed, and then go to Ally’s house, who’s there chilling with her friend Jasmyn, a skanky girl from Ally’s friend’s group home. I didn’t really like Jasmyn, but I trust Ally’s judgment and give her a chance.
As soon as I walk into the basement, Ally knows there’s something wrong with me. “Watz up?” she asks.
Even almost sober, I can barely hold back the tears, so I just say, “I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just get fucked up.”
She’s cool with that answer. Which is why she’s such a good friend. Good friends are there when you need them and there when you tell them to fuck off too.
The night goes on forever. Actually, it goes on for three days. We go to Jasmyn’s friend’s apartment where these four guys in their twenties live, though I can’t figure out which ones because it’s a full-on party house and random people come and go the whole time. There are tons of drugs. Ally, Jasmyn, and I start out sitting close together on the ratty couch, feeling like we don’t really belong, but then one guy hooks us up and things get going. I’m so upset about Michael that I just want to have fun and forget what happened for a while, so I put everything I’m offered into my mouth or up my nose: two lines of coke, six