Gods & Monsters

Putting my hands on my hips, I look up at the ceiling of her apartment — the apartment I checked all nooks and crannies of under Nick’s glower — as I bark out a laugh. It strains the tendons of my throat, making me feel like I can’t breathe. Again.

Blu watches me with kind eyes. “It’s not my place to say anything but she loves you. She loves you a lot. More than you can even imagine, maybe. She left everything for you and she doesn’t even care because you are her everything. And all she’s asking you in return is to give her some time, okay? All she wants from you is a little bit of trust, and maybe a little bit of patience too.”

“What’d she say to you?”

“I just told you.”

I want to break something. I think maybe I’ll break the sliding door leading to that fucking balcony. The balcony where everything went wrong, where she left me like I didn’t matter to her at all. Like all the shit we went through didn’t matter. She ignored my screams, my shouts while I was being held like a rabid animal.

“She loves me, huh?” Blu nods. “Then why isn’t she here talking to me? Why’d she leave me?”

“Maybe you should ask that of yourself.”

I haven’t seen her in forty-eight hours.

Haven’t seen her. Haven’t talked to her. I don’t know where she is. I don’t know if she’s okay. I don’t know if she’s lost, in trouble, if she needs me. I’ve called her about a hundred times but she hasn’t picked up once.

It reminds me of the night when my parents died. I was at Ethan’s and didn’t get back until the early hours of morning. When I stepped through the door, I knew something was wrong. The silence was too thick. My dad was a noisy sleeper. He’d toss and turn and yes, sometimes snore. My mom hated that. She always said that he needed to go see a doctor for his snoring problem or she wouldn’t sleep next to him anymore. He never went and she never slept apart from him.

My phone was dead so I had to hunt down my charger before I could make any calls. No easy feat, that. Pixie calls me a slob for a reason. At last, I found it buried under my dirty laundry, which was in turn, under my bed. As soon as I powered my phone on, it blew up with messages and voicemails. I was afraid to open any of them. Somehow, I knew it was going to be bad news. The worst fucking news.

I’ve looked everywhere for Pixie, all the places I could think of. The restaurant she used to work at. The coffee shop by the apartment that she says has the best chocolate chip cookies. Jury’s still out on that. The nearby subway stations, like she’d be hanging around those smelly places, just waiting for me to find her.

Like a maniac, I show her picture to random people, asking if anyone has seen her. Most of them look at me like I’m crazy and move along. Some take a good look at her smiling face, ponder a bit, say no, and then move along. Others don’t even spare me a glance.

I get into a fight with one such person. I shove him and he shoves me back. We curse at each other. He’s a drunk and I look like I might be the same. A crowd gathers around us, as if my life’s a show to be enjoyed.

Assholes.

I walk away from the fight. Finding Pixie is more important. But after running around for hours, my legs give up and I stumble on the sidewalk, outside a laundromat. I try standing but it’s as if my entire body has given up.

Your body’s like a kingdom or something.

That’s because I make smart choices about what I put inside it.

She laughed. Maybe I need to make smart choices too. You know, about what I put inside my body.

I sit propped against the brick wall, her picture in my hands and the air smelling of detergent, making me realize how dirty and sweaty I smell myself. I lose the last battle with my body and a thick tear snakes down my pulsing cheek.

My fingers curl and I crush her photo. I hate her for doing this to me. I hate her for leaving me like my parents did. I throw the crushed photograph and it hits the trashcan before falling to the ground.

A minute later, I crawl to it, pick it up and smooth the wrinkled paper, pressing it to my chest.

***

“Oh my God, you lost my best friend,” Sky screams in my ear. “You fucking asshole. What did you do?”

When my phone rang a minute ago, I leapt to it, thinking it was Pixie. It wasn’t. It’s her menace of a best friend.