Heartbeat

Because it’s about fifty degrees below zero outside, I have to use a fleece blanket, alongside my regular comforter as I crawl into bed and attempt to gather in enough warmth as possible. I stare at my alarm clock, with the green neon numbers glowing light back onto me. After that, I turn back onto my other side and look up at the stars through my window; try to distinguish stars between satellites and planets. They all look the same. They stare back, glaring down at me. Up in the sky, a cloud muddled in night sky darkness rolls over the moon and shrouds it in darkness.

The night looked a lot more clearer that August.

I can remember my parents telling me it was something about a family friend and how the family friend had a kid who just graduated from a ‘gifted children’s type of school, to go on into regular high school. The Way’s. Mikey, who was too smart for regular middle school, they stuck him in a different school that got him college credits before he was even in high school. When he graduated, it must have been an honor, because a lot of the kids didn’t graduate. They told me it was a party for Mikey because he was one of the few kids that actually graduated, and at the top of his class, because he got all As. They told me to dress up nice for it, but all I could find was jeans that weren’t dirty and a blue polo shirt that was too big for me. It was August, so it was still warm outside. One of those nights that are warm and chilly at the same time.

The party was taking place at their house, obviously. We got inside and the place was filled with a bunch of other people, like Mikey’s relatives and other family friends and distant cousins who nobody cared about. There were kids there my age, but I didn’t know any of them. They all came from big-deal schools in New York, Stuyvesant probably, and I knew for a fact before even looking at them that if I tried to fit in with them, I would get pummeled. I was shorter than all of them. Not nearly as polite-mannered or smart.

I checked to see if my parents were looking before I snuck out onto the porch to get the hell out of there. I sat on the porch swinging bench and looking out at all the dark nothing in front of me that was covered up in nighttime darkness. A lot of silhouettes and nothing could be seen clearly.

And then his car pulled up. Some rickety piece of crap that is typical for a teenager to drive because their parents are not going to spend thousands of dollars on them to get them a brand new, cooler car. The headlights of his car were the only lights out there, other than the lights from the inside of the house. He turned off his car and lights disappeared, but he opened up the door and stepped out, grabbing some messenger bag and another smaller brownbag that was wrinkled up, but still had things in it.

I didn’t see what he looked like until he got up onto the porch and looked like he was walking in my direction. It was astounding, almost; he was beautiful. Pretty in that dirty kind of way where they only get their good looks from a street scene.

He stopped halfway over to me, to lean over and look into the window of their living room. He narrowed his eyes for a bit, to see clearer, right before standing back up and looking over towards me.

And then he looked at me--right at me. And smiled. Not a sexy smile or a seductive one, but it little kid-ish in a way where it was shy and small. He walked over to me and the closer he got I could see his features better. His hair looked scraggly, but long; jet black and his skin looked kind of pale.

“So,” he started, looking down at me. “Why aren’t you in the party?”

And now he was talking to me. Not just smiling at me, but talking to me, too. This wasn’t happening, it couldn’t be. It had to be my imagination working up, trying to make a creative and nice scenario for me that I know inside will never happen.

“I…um…” I couldn’t get words out, and even in my head, I couldn’t think of anything good to say.

“Yeah…I don’t like it either,” he shrugged. And then he sat down next to me and looked right at me again. “Too many rich assholes.”

I smiled. I couldn’t help it. I just smiled.

He turned back to me and raised his eyebrows a bit.

“You got a name?” he asked me.

“Frank,” I heard myself blurt out. He grinned, and I worried inside my head what he was smiling about; the way I said my name or my name in general. Either way, I was pretty sure I was embarrassing myself.

“I like that name.”

He sat up more on the bench and it almost looked like he was getting closer to me, like he was sliding over on the bench, but it was hard to tell in the dark.

“You look kind of alone out here,” he told me, tilting his head to the side a little.

“My parents are here,” I heard myself say uncontrollably again.

“They inside?” he asked, motioning his head towards the inside of the house, where everyone else was. I nodded my head. He looked inside and raised his eyebrows again, as he searched around the crowds. He turned back to me after a little while and tilted his head to the side again.

“So…do you party?” he asked me.

I opened my mouth to say something and figured out quick that I couldn’t really say anything at all.

“Uh…what?” I couldn’t think of anything good to say at all. I bet myself inside my head that the second he would walk away, I’d know of a billion things I could say, but not when he was sitting right there next to me. Smiling at me.

“Do you get high?” he rephrased it.

It surprised me, at first. And then I thought about it. He was older, not freshmen like me. Maybe even senior, probably a junior. Older kids always got into the things that scared the crap out of middle-school kids and freshmen.

“Um…” I still couldn’t think of anything cool to say. I wanted to say something really good, something that would impress him or make him laugh and make him think I had a good sense of humor. But I got nothing.

“Follow me,” he smiled again. And then I felt his hand on mine and he was gently pulling me up to my feet.

“Where are we going?” I heard myself say.

“Just follow me,” he said softly again. And then he took my hand all the way and started walking me off the porch. For a minute, I thought that he was going to lead me into his car and abduct me away somewhere, but he was leading me around the side of the house instead. I blindly walked along the wet grass and tried to keep up with him, but it was hard to navigate in such darkness. He finally stopped after a while, and I looked up and we were just on the backside of the house. I could still hear the music blaring inside and the sounds of people talking, alongside the crickets chirping outside and the occasional car passing.

“Hold out your hand,” I heard him say. I did as I was told and held my hand out close to him. I saw a blue silhouette of his hand in the darkness, taking my hand and his other hand coming up and then feeling something being placed into the palm of my hand. I felt whatever it was with my thumb. They felt like pain killers; some type of pill.

I heard him step in, then I felt him. He was close to me, his face especially. He leaned in and whispered something in my ear.

“Take it. It’s good.”

I felt it with my thumb again, then got reminded of every class they ever made us take in middle school that taught how bad drugs were, and how stupid we would be to do them. They showed us every video about the older people who had to tell their stories of how they did drugs when they were younger and it just messed up their lives. It was boring, but now that I was actually in a scenario that made up on the videos, it seemed weird, like I should have listened to the videos better.

“What is it?” I asked, trying to see it clearer in the shadow of the house, but couldn’t.

“It’s ecstasy,” I heard him say back. And then felt him smiling up against my ear.

“What do I do?” I asked suddenly. And then the second it left my mouth, I already felt like an idiot. What do I do? What kind of dumbass question is that?

“Well…” he started. I felt his hand on my again. His fingers were cold, but soft. He stepped up in front of me and I felt his fingers pick up on of the pills. “You take it…put it in you mouth…stick your tongue out…and then you swallow it…and it’s all good from there.

And then I felt his fingers on my lips. His skin tasted salty. I felt the pill on my tongue and fingers brush up against my lips again as they left my mouth. I tasted the stale taste of a pill dry on my tongue and it tasted awful.

“Here,” he said in the darkness. And I heard the sound of some liquid sloshing around inside of something glass. He took the other pill and replaced it with what felt like a flask, but glass with a label on the front. “Just swallow it with that.”

I felt the bottle in my hand and his fingers come up to my lips again, his hand in my mouth and the second pill on my tongue. I unscrewed the top to the bottle and quickly put it up to my lips, pouring some of whatever it was into my mouth. I smelled it and it smelled nice, like vanilla, I think. It smelled like the vanilla extract my mom used when she baked.

And the liquid hit my tongue and it tasted worse than anything. I almost spit it out, but I felt his hands on my lips again and his fingers were keep my mouth closed. I combined the vanilla with the pills in my mouth and for a minute, nothing tasted worse. But I forced it down my throat and felt the pills skitter down inside of me and at that very moment, I liked it.

I blinked and looked over at him.

“What now?” I asked him blankly. He just smiled again. I heard him breathe out through his nose a little when he did this.

“Come dance with me,” he said suddenly, out of nowhere. I felt his hand in mine again and he was yanking me off in some different direction. I walked along and wondered how long it would take for the pills to kick in.

And then, right then, it occurred to me how stupid I was being. I took pills and swallowed something I knew probably did have alcohol in it. But he glanced back at me and smiled, and all of a sudden, I didn’t feel so stupid.

He stopped after a while, and turned around to take one of my hands and hold it up, while the other hand snaked around to my back and sat just a couple of inches above my butt. I didn’t know how to tell if it was rude or not that his hand was that low (I figure it was supposed to be a bit higher up than that), but I didn’t care. He was beautiful and you don’t argue with beautiful people.

“You’re really cute,” I heard him say in the dark. I could only see a silhouette of his features; I could still see how his face was moving when he talked, but it was still difficult to distinguish some things in the dark.

“I’m Gerard, by the way, I don’t think I told you before,” he told me. I saw his mouth in the dark and it was smiling again. “Sorry if I’m being weird or anything. It’s just…you’re too pretty to pass up.”

Pretty. Cute and pretty. This couldn’t really be happening. Nobody’s ever called me that before.

I thought about everything he’d told me and thought about everything else. How he called me pretty and let me try drugs for a first time, even though I’d only met him five minutes ago. Was this how all relationships started? Was this a relationship? Was I gonna have my first boyfriend? This was too cool. Hannah would never believe this. I could rub it in her face and she’d be so jealous of me. I’d finally have a boyfriend before her.

I got caught up in all of that inside of my head and didn’t notice it when he wrapped his hand around me tighter to pull me in close to him. Our stomachs touched and his face was so close to mine. I could smell his breath that smelled like toothpaste and my mother’s cigarettes.

And then his lips were on mine. Wet and more surprising than anything. My eyes went wide. I tasted the bitter flavor of the vanilla extract and something else I couldn’t identify. And then I felt something weird in my mouth and it felt disgusting. It took a couple of seconds to register into my head that it was his tongue. Eely and slimy for the first couple of seconds, and then I felt the surface with the roof of my mouth and it was gravely and rough like sandpaper or unpolished wood. It reminded me of how people always close their eyes when they kiss in movies, and how mine were wide open and so were his. He stared back at me, calm and more relaxed than anything, before I finally thought I was going to asphyxiate on the lack of oxygen and his tongue descending down my throat. And then he stopped. He disconnected from me and I heard that slobbery smacking sound that you hear in movies when the two people pull their lips off of each other after kissing for a long time. It sounded weird, since I was really hearing it in real life, and not on a television screen; weird hearing that for the first time, actually happening to me.

I saw him smile at me again. And this face went dark for a second, and I figure it was because he must have moved us around in the dark for just a second, so his face was hidden just for a little while. I saw a little blue blurry paint blotch splatter up out of the corner of my eyes and for a second my eyes twitched, feeling weird. I felt dizzy for a minute, but didn’t think about it.

I felt his lips on mine again and the wetness of his lips slobbered up onto the sides of my mouth, making my face feel wet and weird. I closed my eyes that time, because it felt awkward looking back into his. The kiss felt weird and wet and vaguely disgusting, but it was hard to describe how at the same time, it was the coolest thing in the world. I felt his hand finally reach down to my butt and stay there. I opened my eyes slightly, surprised at how fast he was moving. I stepped backward a little bit, once he stepped forward, forcing me backward a little. He stepped forward again, nudging me backward, right up until I finally got what he was trying to do. His lips peeled off of mine again and his head swooped in to the side, his mouth on my ear, kissing my earlobe. His breath was warm on my skin, but his hair was getting in my mouth.

He stepped forward again and I stepped back, and then felt a little fear of falling right backwards onto the ground, once I felt my foot connect with the little miniature stone fence of the garden with the large, prickly bleeding hearts bushes. I felt myself stumble backwards a bit, and then his hand on my back pulling me back up. By then I was seeing the blue splotches again and it was graying up my vision. I was dizzy. His face faded in back and forth and my eyes started to feel heavy. It felt like I hadn’t slept in a week. The exact kind of sleepiness I get when I get bored in class. I closed my eyes for a minute, because I was so tempted to. I felt sleepier than ever. Dizzy, and my stomach felt like it was boiling up with oncoming vomit.

And then I saw the moon and the stars and the mulch soil of the garden on my back and then I realized I was on my back and he was on top of me. I tried to remember how he got me on my back and what exactly he gave me before because I didn’t think this was what ecstasy was supposed to feel like. And then his lips were on mine again and then near my ears.

“Do you want to?”

His tongue was in my mouth and then, all of a sudden, it didn’t feel so cool. It felt even more disgusting than before; big and wet and warm and rough, scraping underneath my own tongue with force. His hands were on the sides of my head, clamping my head like a volleyball. His palms were clasped around my ears and I could hear the sounds of the blood rushing around inside of my skull. His breathed out hard and fast through his nose and his hair had an overpowering stench of shampoo and cigarettes. Cigarettes and beer and cologne. Everything on him smelled like cigarettes and beer and cologne. His cat tongue was down my throat and it was starting to scare me. He was practically choking me with it. He laid his whole body down on mine and he was crushing me. All of a sudden, this didn’t feel so good. I could feel my back rubbing against the dirt and the branches and twigs of the bushes scratching at my face as his hands started moving away from my head and down my sides until they reached my pants and his fingers were underneath the waistband. I couldn’t stop zoning out. Dozing off and getting any good vision back was hopeless. By that time it was completely foggy and all I could see was some weird watery figure of what was supposed to be Gerard’s face. I started seeing my family inside of my head, before I realized I was drifting back and forth between the real world and dream when I started falling asleep. My eyes wouldn’t stop drooping and I felt like crawling into bed and just dozing off for the rest of the night, but he was on top of me and his hand was over my mouth when I opened it to scream.

I tried to remember how I got onto the ground and when I got onto the ground and what exactly he gave me and what exactly he made me drink and his hair is in my face and his skin is pale and cold and his tongue is in my mouth and I can hear my mom’s voice in my head talking to me and her face in my head when I dream about her and she’s making dinner and smiling and asking me how school was and Hannah is in the room, too and she’s just eating dinner and Dad’s not home yet and I have to remember to tell Mom about how I want to go over to Brian’s house this weekend and he’s on top of me and my pants aren’t around my hips anymore and I can feel something inside of me and my skin ripping open inside of me and bleeding out and it stings so bad it makes my eyes water and I can see the stars above me staring back down, watching it happen, and inside of my head, I’m in school and the teacher is yelling at me for falling asleep in her class and Dad is reading my progress reports and it’s summer and the end of eighth grade and we’re so excited and feel so cool to be going into high school and my fingers are numb and I clamp my eyes shut when I try to push him off of me, but my arms are like jell-o and I’m so tired and sleepy I can’t barely move and when I close my eyes again it’s totally blank inside of my head but I sleep sounder than anything and for a while, it stops stinging.

I don’t remember falling asleep. I woke up to Gerard’s face and he was sitting there on the grass next to me and my back was aching. The entire lower half of my body was hopeless; aching, but practically numb.

“Hey,” he said. “You okay?”

I couldn’t keep my eyes open for very long, so the only thing I could do was stare at him, hoping he’d tell me what just happened.

“You passed out, I just found you here,” he told me. And then his arm was around my arms and he was pulling me to my feet and I almost heard him laugh a little.

“Guess you’ve never really done E before. You were out like a light, just like that. Here, I’ll bring you inside.”

His house was still full of people. Older people talking about the stock marker and tailored pants and going bald. Gerard kept holding me up by my armpits while he carried me up the stairs and into a bathroom. He ran cold water into a plugged sink and then held my hair back while he told me to dunk my head under. I listened to the water sloshing up into my ears with my head underneath the surface, the sound of blood pumping inside of my head and the muted reality inside of the water. He yanked my head out after a while and put a towel up to my face.

“Sorry you got shitty X,” he told me. “I thought it was pretty good stuff I was buying. I guess not.”

I looked at him and he smiled at me. It almost creeped me out, in a way, because there was a voice in my head screaming at me that it wasn’t ecstasy.

He led me back downstairs and I found my parents. My mom gave me a worried look and asked me if I was alright. I didn’t answer. I closed my eyes for longer than a blink once I started to feel sleepy again. I didn’t tell her where I was going before I went back out to the car. I got into the back and stared into the darkness.

And then he came out of the house again.

I watched him go back to his car and he flashed a glance at me in my parents’ car. And smiled. I saw him put his finger up to his lips, shushing me silently. He wanted me to be quiet about something. Quiet about what?

Everything.

I sunk down in the backseat and closed my eyes and tried to remember exactly what had happened in the last hour. I couldn’t. It was blurry and trying to remember it just made me even more tired. I fell asleep in the car and woke up in my own bed and did as Gerard told me to when he shushed me and stayed real quiet. I didn’t find his phone number on a piece of paper that he’d slipped into my pocket at some point until the very next morning. I called. I can’t remember why. Something in my head telling me to ask him what exactly happened that night. He picked up and didn’t let me talk about it before he went straight to the subject of dating once the school year started. He hung up before I could mention anything about before.

I saw him at school on the first day of high school in my freshmen year and he came up to me and kissed me. Hard and rough and exactly like how he kissed when I was on my back in the garden. He told me to start coming over to his house so we could hang out more often. I came over. He got me on his bed every time and he was like a bobcat on top of me, me as the tiny twitchy rabbit fighting to get free, but coming up hopeless in the end.

When I open my eyes back up, the black clouds in the sky have completely masked the stars. My tongue hurts. I taste something gooey and crimson in my mouth. I’ve grinded so deep into my tongue with my teeth that I’ve made myself bleed. It tastes like gravel.

The snow has stopped falling for tonight, but it’s still as cold as ever. I’ll have to go back to school on Monday and see him again and repeat and repeat and repeat.

I regret not joining the lacrosse team when Mikey offered it to me. They could teach me a lot about fighting back, especially fighting back with sticks. They could teach me how to defend and build strength and I could run for miles.