Summer, Asphyxiated
Amalia is the daughter of your dad’s best friend. She comes to stay at your house while her dad goes through two months of court-mandated rehab. Her mom is somewhere else, out of the picture. You don’t know the details.
“You can tell me what happened,” you say to your parents. “I’m sixteen.”
“Exactly,” they respond.
Amalia’s cat has a face that looks smashed in and a body that sheds everywhere. So your parents quarantine the cat to the guest room, and she goes with it. Stay up at night wondering what the cool sheets of the guest bed feel like against her skin.
Amalia’s five-year-old brother Kyle is also staying with you. At night, he curls up in his fleece Spiderman pajamas on the couch in the living room. Go and get a glass of water in the middle of the night and look at him there, sucking his thumb, illuminated from the nightlight shaped like a moon that burns in the corner. Listen to him make sounds like a baby animal—whimpers, sighs.
One morning, Amalia turns to you with straight, white teeth and asks if you want to go to the park with her and Kyle. Almost burst out laughing. Do you want to come?
You sit with her on top of a picnic table and you both watch Kyle—shouting at the top of his lungs—as he tries to run up the slide without using his hands.
“He’s been kind of crazy since we came here. He’s not usually like this,” Amalia says, and tucks a rogue strand of her walnut hair behind her ear. Search your every synapse to think of something—anything—to say, but come up empty. Lucky for you, she keeps talking. “I think he just misses Mom.”
“That makes sense.” Wonder if you should say something else, ask a question, apologize for what happened to them—whatever it was.
“It’s just hard,” Amalia says, picking paint chips off the table. “It’s like…we all knew Mom was sick, but it’s never been this bad before. And then Meg comes back and Mom just snaps.”
“Oh,” you say. Dumbly. “Who’s Meg?”
“Our older sister. You never met her? Mom and Meg don’t get along.” She stops picking paint and looks out at Kyle, who is now spinning quickly in the tire swing. Her eyes cloud over and she looks like she is somewhere else.
“Where’s your Mom now?”
“Dunno. A clinic somewhere,” Amalia says, her words drifting and her voice hovering. Watch her blink three times and snap out of it. “Anyway,” she says, shrugging her shoulders. “Thanks for letting us stay with you for a while. Mom always said Linda—sorry, your mom—would keep us safe if something ever happened. They really love each other.” Amalia shows you her straight teeth again, runs her tongue across them. “And anyway, it’s been fun.” She leans against your shoulder, wakes up every cell.
* * *
At some point—maybe days, maybe weeks after Amalia moves in—realize that you have filed away the pitch of her laugh, registered the steel blue of her eyes, memorized the sequence of silver rings on her long piano fingers. But cataloguing her elements amounts to nothing. Even though you always calculate the distance between your pinky and hers when you sit together, she never reaches for your hand.
Come home from swim practice one Tuesday to see her sprawled on your bed, wrapped in your favorite blanket, reading a magazine. When she nonchalantly says hi, do something that will make you want to die later: take hold of one of the fleece corners and pull as hard as you can, rolling her off the bed and onto the hardwood. Hear her bones when they hit the floor. Gather the blanket around yourself like a large wool coat and run out of the room.
Later that night, sit at the kitchen table with her after your parents have gone to bed. Listen to her apologize for intruding on your personal space and using your blanket. Pretend that this was why you were angry.
“It’s okay,” tell her. “I just had a moment.” But the moments have started to build up and press against the backs of your eyes. Briefly contemplate combustion. With bodies this fragile, how much pressure can the skin take before it bursts?
Watch her sit at the kitchen table and nod as if she understands.
Climb into bed and stay awake for three hours because you can’t get the flushed cheeks and worries eyes of her apology out of your mind.
* * *
Turn seventeen. Finally get your license. Start taking long drives by yourself in the middle of the night. Enjoy the paint of the lanes flashing by in your peripheral vision. Count the exit signs on the freeway until you lose track. Drive around in dizzy circles in abandoned parking lots. Almost hit a deer crossing the road at three in the morning. Slam on your breaks at the last moment. Doesn’t it look like your front bumper is resting against the deer’s chest? Ask yourself if it is a trick of the light. Stare at the deer and watch him stare back at you. What does he make of this large steaming metal object in his home? Wonder if he has babies. Try to scan the brush along the road for his family as you drive back to yours.
* * *
Amalia and Kyle have been at your house for almost two months now. Your parents finally tell you that their mom is enrolled in a psychiatric treatment program in eastern Oregon, about three hours away. Amalia and Kyle go to see her one weekend in August. The house feels empty and dinner with your parents is awkward without Kyle chattering and Amalia asking your parents to tell stories about when they were in college together. When Amalia and Kyle finally get back to the house on Sunday night, Amalia shuts herself away in the guest room. Your mom nudges you toward the door.
“Check on her.”
Open the door slowly and peek inside the room. She is on her belly in the bed, her head—turned away from you—resting on her arms. A strip of bare skin on her back flashes you.
“Ama,” begin to say. Her brother’s nickname for her sounds strange as it comes out of your mouth. She turns to face you. Her face is red and swollen. “You’re crying,” say accidentally. She sniffs and covers her face with her hands.
Go to her. Rub her back in circles, like your mom used to do for you. Comb her hair through your fingers. Massage her scalp. Try to focus.
“It was bad,” she tries to say, but coughs as tears get caught in her throat.
“I know,” respond. Realize that you don’t, actually.
* * *
At the end of the summer, some kids in your grade throw a bonfire party at a lake in the forest. At breakfast the day before, Amalia asks if you’re planning to go.
Tell her you don’t know, you’ll see how you feel. She nods. Worry that she knows you weren’t invited. Wonder—again—how she has made more friends in the last couple months than you have in your entire life.
Saturday night, drive Amalia to Pekoe Point, where the road meets the path that leads into the woods. Sing along to the radio together—her voice is better—on the way up the winding road. Look at the scooping neck of her tank top and notice how the fabric—red, thin—curves around her body. Look down at your own arms, drooping in flannel. Feel overdressed.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” she asks, as you pull off to the side of the road. She lowers the passenger visor and peers into the small mirror, checking her hair and lipstick.
You’re sure.
When she opens the door to leave, catch her arm. Fish around in your console for a pen. Hold her forearm steady as you write: If lost, please return to 1347 S. Mulberry Ave. Write your phone number at the last second. She laughs and says she feels like your new pet. Then she gets out of the car and climbs through the tangled brush.
After she disappears, watch a single plume of smoke drift up into the black sky. Think about all of the things she will do at this bonfire, the people she will meet who will notice her straight, white teeth and the piercings in her ears—seven. Pound your fists on the steering wheel—softly at first, then so hard you scare yourself. Drive back home. Turn on your windshield wipers when it starts to rain. Hope that the bonfire gets rained out.
That night, dream about the first time you and Amalia met: you are both four or five, playing in the living room at a dinner party hosted by a family friend. These details you remember. These details actually happened.
But then, everything changes. In this dream, Amalia’s little face looks up at you—confused, worried. Then the walls start closing in, pressing the breath out of your lungs. And Amalia is gone and it’s just you, sitting on the carpet. Claw at the floor, at the air, at yourself, but the walls keep getting closer and closer. Cry out and wake yourself up. Wipe the sweat off your face and try to calm your pounding heart.
Try to fall back asleep. Hear your phone ring and answer it. A strange voice is on the other end.
“Hello? Hello?” he demands.
“Yes.” Clear your throat. “I’m here. Who is this?”
“We found your number. On your friend.” Feel like throwing up as you pull on pants and listen to where he is and jump in the car and start driving.
When you get to the hospital, argue with the receptionist about your right to information about Amalia.
“Are you a blood relative?” she keeps asking, her eyes on the computer screen. Say something to convince her to tell you the room number—or maybe it’s your bloodshot eyes and hands slapping on the desk over and over. Fly down the hall to her room.
Open the door so quickly it slams into the rubber doorstopper on the wall and hits you in the shoulder. Amalia lays on the bed with her eyes closed and an IV flowing into her forearm. Look at the needle. It impales her skin in the center of your handwritten p in please.
Watch her eyelids flutter. Notice the way that the crinkly hospital gown moves as she breathes.
When the doctor comes in and asks if you are a relative, lie to him and say that you’re her sister. Give him Amalia’s first and last name and date of birth. Listen to him tell you that the boy on the phone and his friends found her at the edge of the lake, unconscious.
“She had a BAC—that means blood alcohol content—of 0.35 when she came in tonight.” He flips the pages in her chart. “She’s lucky to not be in a coma.”
“So she’s just…” trail off when the words get caught in your throat.
“Sleeping,” the doctor finishes for you. “Her urine also tested positive for cocaine. So we’re definitely watching her overnight. Maybe longer.” Watch him leave.
Stay in her hospital room overnight. When she wakes up early in the morning, try to take her hand back when she jerks it out of yours.
“Oh, my god,” she says. Explain what happened. When she looks at the needle in her arm and starts crying, get into bed with her. Kiss her hair and feel your heart break when a new doctor comes in again and Amalia smiles weakly up at him.
* * *
Years later, long after Amalia’s dad has gotten another DUI and she has moved to Oklahoma to live with her cousins, you will allow people into your bed. One of them sells life insurance and will stick around longer than the rest. On the hottest day that summer, you will float on a pool raft next to this person, who is drinking a bottle of beer and belching in intervals. The body next to you won’t repulse you, but it won’t excite you either. As everything you see becomes tinged red by the sun, you will have the urge to roll off the raft and into the icy pool and not come back up.
You will briefly contemplate suffocation. With bodies mostly made of water, why do we have one part that can’t handle liquid? You’ll stay on your fluorescent yellow raft, of course.
“Hey, come to me,” this person will say one day, patting the vacant window seat after you have drifted across the room. You will walk back, dragging your feet across the polished wood. You will sit back down and look into your mug of tea that just lays there, a tepid puddle.
Realize that you only knew Amalia for a moment. But those are the worst kind, aren’t they? The ones who might have been something else, but never got the chance.
REBECCA LILL was born and raised in Denver. Her poetry has appeared in Spokes, the 2015 edition of Lewis & Clark Literary Review. Her book Lol :/ and Other Modern Devised Plays was published in 2013.