Twelve Feet Deep

I didn’t tell anyone what had happened at Andy’s house while he was gone. I’m not entirely sure why. Part of me believed that it had all been some fucked up dream, the kind that enters your mind when you fall asleep with too much Vicodin in your system; but then another part knew that was just a feeble attempt at trying to convince myself that she hadn’t totally invaded every absent thought that ran through my mind during the quiet, uninterrupted moments.

(She had, but I’d never admit that to myself.)

Every time my gaze wandered to an empty space, leading me out of reality and into my daydreams, I saw her pallid face in the bathwater. Different scenarios played through my head: ones where she’d been dead long before I got to her, or where I’d been one split second too late, resuscitating her in vain. I could distinctly hear the imaginary ambulance sirens echo in my ears when Andy spoke up and brought me back into the present.

“Dude, you’re spacing out again.”

I blinked. “Sorry.”

Band practice. Patrick and Joe were going over some guitar progression, nitpicking the use of a D chord in one of our songs. I was still trying to gain a sense of reality, faded in a mind fog that was almost definitely due to the meds. (I may or may not have taken one or three too many. Shh, don’t tell my mom.)

I could feel Andy’s eyes lingering on me, more suspicious than inquisitive. Being scrutinized by him was the worst because he was so quiet, but not out of shyness like Patrick; it was more that he was constantly analyzing everything in his line of vision, like it all had some ulterior motive that only he could sense.

“Here’s your pedal,” he said, offering me something that only triggered the memory of her even more, “I thought you said you were gonna grab it while I was at work.”

I took it from him, gulping. “Yeah, I…never got around to it.”

He just peered at me with even more wariness, making me turn away sheepishly as if I had some embarrassing secret to keep. Did I? I wasn’t the one trying to drown myself in other people’s bathtubs, after all.

It was only after we were done practicing and packing up all our equipment that it became too much for me to hold in. Curiosity got the better of me as I swallowed and started, “Hey...do you…you know that girl?”

Andy raised an eyebrow, momentarily pausing his preoccupation with an amp cable. “What girl?”

“She’s, uh…she’s kinda short, and she’s got…long, sorta brownish, er, blondish hair…” I scratched the back of my neck, feeling increasingly foolish as I described her, “She…she wears red lipstick a lot.”

I could tell a light bulb had gone off in his head, but he showed no outward sign of it. I was always jealous of how well he held his poker face.

“Sloane?”

It’s a long way down from here.

“Sloane,” I repeated, threatening to daze off again. Yeah, she looked like a Sloane.

“Pete…don’t…” Andy sighed, “Look, I know you…and I just don’t want…” he faltered, abandoning his train of thought, “Just don’t…don’t mess with her, okay? She’s been through enough already.”

Enough. Not “a lot”, but enough. She’d already surpassed her capacity for bullshit. For trauma. For life-ruiners like me. Lord knows I’d devastated enough relationships for one lifetime. His warning should’ve swayed me, but it only made me more curious.

I thought about what he said as I drove home, and the way he almost expected me to bring her up in conversation, how he seemed weary as he answered, like he knew this scenario all too well. And maybe he did; I mean, we all knew what happened with Alex and me. We saw it launch like the Challenger, exploding in midair before it could even reach space. Dead and gone.

It was mere coincidence that the aforementioned disaster happened to call and leave a message on my cell phone when I wasn’t looking: “Hey, Pete…it’s me, but you probably knew that. I just…I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m calling. I guess I just miss you, and I’m sorry. For everything. I don’t want you to leave before I can say goodbye. It was…” cue the heavy, mournful sigh on the line, “it was just selfish of me not to support you. I’m sorry. I just want to talk to you.” Click.

I must’ve listened to it a dozen times, inertly staring at the sidewalk before I got out of the car and went inside. I hadn’t thought about Alex in months, and here she was, trying to worm her way into my brain again. I felt ready to collapse just thinking about it.

And then came the perfect distraction: a mass of golden waves on a tiny, breathless girl standing in my bedroom. Sloane.

She stood in front of an open window I assumed she’d just climbed through. I should’ve been frightened that this intruder was standing there, uninvited, but nothing seemed to scare me anymore. Not when I’d already seen her at her worst.

And as our eyes met, she gestured behind her with a thumb and asked me, “You wanna get out of here?”

She didn’t wait for an answer because she’d already made up my mind.

“You have got to stop sneaking into other people’s houses,” was all I said in response.