Every cell in my body could feel the cool smoothness of the ceramic bath tub. The pure white had long ago been scathed by forgotten rubber ducks and mermaid Barbie tails. The little nics of color stand alone on the clean backdrop, unaware of each other’s existence. In the same faucet that saw me giggle as bubbles filled the tub, I could now see the reflection of my body cast in the amber light. Chapped lips and unbrushed hair remind me of how much youth the makeup works to hide. My shoulders are slight and unassuming. There are still indents from the lace push up bra straps. The matching imprints of the wires remain under my breasts to complete the set. Each rib is gold and each space between them black. I exhale, trying to force every molecule of air out of my lungs. The light hairs on my forearm stick straight up atop goosebumps and a few freckles. I try to brush them down with an index finger but they pop up again. I shiver as I lean forward to turn the handle, pushing it further than the end of the red line. I lie back trying not to think about the darkness under my mother’s eyes, all the moments when I could have just thrown the pack of cigarettes out, the way my father’s brow will crease first with anger then with surprise, and how the second type of crease will make me suddenly aware of the walls of my throat.
I pull my hands through the water. It’s warm and heavy at the bottom but by the time my hands break the surface it slides thinly between my fingers. The candles, tall and each marked with a picture of the melancholy Virgin Mary, cast a cone of light on the ripples. The light exposes my knees, my stomach, and my face while excluding all else, leaving a contrasting dark abyss. I could see the outline of my thigh meeting the water, but I couldn’t feel the outline. The heat disconnects the nerves from the eyes. In the beam of candle light steam curls off the water in forms reminiscent of flames. The water and light dance together on the stone tiled wall, creating shapes in the variations in the stone and animating them. A sleeping dog, a floating Monet lily, a dessert fork with a bent prong. When I was four or five I convinced my sister that a tiny picture of Abraham Lincoln had been etched into the wall. I still see him but now I know that humans have a tendency to make sense of the unknown with patterns that aren’t really there. Every effect has a cause, every rhyme has a reason, and even if it's not the truth, pretending is safer than admitting uncertainty.
My mom has lost sleep over me since June. She would set herself up on the couch in the living room, looking out the big portrait window. I had to retrain myself to walk normal as I carefully took the stairs up to the house. I knew I couldn’t hug her before I went to bed without her smelling vodka on my breath and perfume covering up the last bowl of the night. I came home on Wednesday nights that had turned into Thursday mornings, never telling her what I had actually done with my friends. She stayed up every night to hear my bullshit. I couldn't respond when she said I love you, fearing an additional chance to slur the words. And then came the pills. One pill to be exact. It’s not even worth telling anyone about how she shared the cigarettes with me. How she put the pill in the pack for later as she took her first dose. And how it made her forget about the extra pill and everything else that had happened that day of the music festival. The pill was cautionary yellow orange and left to roll around in the bottom of a crushed empty pack of American Spirits. I tie my hair up to expose the nape of my neck to the cold side of the tub.
I could see my mom’s electric blue eyes staring back at me as she told me, “Your father has always said that you came out of the womb more mature than he is now. I hope that’s still you. And for Christ’s sake don't be the kind of doctor who smokes cigarettes.”
Now she has washed and dried every bedsheet, sock, and shirt in the house. I think the only dirty clothes left are the ones I had shed and left on the bathroom floor. Everything besides my blue cotton boyshorts and white tank top is being folded as if it were to be added to a department store sale display rather than being hung up or being stuffed in a full drawer. She puts my clothes in my room and reminds me that she would have appreciated some help. Help that she never asked for.

When my grandparents had hardwood floors put into their apartment, the threshold between the kitchen and the living room marked the divide between two different types of wood. instead of having the mistake corrected, Grandma insisted on keeping it. It’s 10:00 A.M., a time I’m not used to seeing in July. Now my mom is doing the insisting. After reminding Grandma of the name and function of toast, she couldn’t get her to take more than a few bites. Grandma wouldn’t sit down at the table with us. She is telling us about how beautiful we are and how much she loves us but trails off and laughs. We laugh with her even though there is a blank where the joke is suppose to be. My mom tries again with the toast.
The chair next to me is piled high with photo albums. The bindings are frayed and creased. The mass of pages on the outside create a yellow tint when closed together. I have the urge to put my hand on top of the stack to keep it from falling over. Grandma must have noticed me eying her albums. She picks one up with both hands, brings it to the other side of the table, and sits down next to my mom. She opens it to a middle page. The page looks white on its own. She points at a picture of a full dinner table. My mom is barely a teenager, the second youngest of her 6 siblings. My grandpa sits at the head of the table, smiling at his son, my uncle Pat, to the right of him. Grandma points the picture more aggressively and then points to the leather reclining chair in the living room. My mom knows she’s asking where my grandpa is. He fell and broke his hip a few weeks ago. He’s in a nursing home for rehab, but my mom just smiles and places her hand on grandma’s shoulder.
“He is okay. He’s been gone for a little while but he’ll be back soon. Your whole family is well. Don’t worry.”
The smiling people in the photo hadn’t yet considered their mother decaying from the inside out. They couldn’t imagine themselves responding to her as she asks “What is happening to me?” How could they know that they wouldn’t be able to go to her own sisters for help when they couldn’t get a caregiver to stay for more than a week? That it would be too much for them to see their own fates even if it was on the frightened face of their oldest sister. I stare out the window as my mom pulls out crayons and a coloring pad as big as half the table from the chest behind her, a go-to distraction.
Grandma started her adult life as a nun. Then she discovered that the nun brand of spirituality wasn’t conducive to her witty sarcasm and ability to get a smile out of anyone. Even the stone cold mail lady who delivered to her apartment building. So she left the convent and married the star of the Highland Park High School basketball team turned marine. She raised seven children while going back to school to get a teaching degree. She always believed in a higher power and in doing the best you can with what you have. Her new brand of spirituality involved hours of reading novels and self help books. I don’t know what kind of higher power could let someone who has done everything right in life slowly forget about it all. 

We sit circled up on lawn chairs so old that it seems impossible for them to hold the weight of an average size human. The synthetic plasticiness is poking out in little threads on the seats. I shift my position to put more weight on the frame than on the fabric. We were all wearing the same t-shirt. Four women, stuck in the 80s and printed onto grey cotton, stared at me from various spots in the two-car garage. They all have identical excessively voluminous hair, disproportionately large chests covered by cropped t-shirts that read DELIVERY, and a pizza box with squiggly lines indicating heat. The irony is that none of the delivery drivers that we work with are women. They aren't even hygienic men let alone attractive. The booty short clad cartoon is a bit of a stretch. I suppose false advertising wasn’t a concern in the design process.
Mel has all of the guys’ attention while brandishing a cigarette and a plastic cup in the same hand. She starts with, “You won’t believe what Kayla told me at work about what she and Rich do in the walk-in refrigerator.” Liam dodged the lit cigarette tip as she continues to speak animatedly about our co-workers sexcapades. She pauses as Justin pours more vodka into her cup. He stops the pour and is about to add some to his own cup. She looks at him with a raised eyebrow and he continues to further dilute her cranberry juice until she gives a nod.
I stand up, grab a can from the cooler without looking at it, and open the side door to the garage. Ventilation is a must. The air is chilly but fresh. April makes me believe in summer again. I lean against the doorframe, starting and finishing the PBR while looking out at the streetlamp on the corner. I wish I could see the exact moment when it flickers on everyday. I text my mom that I was sleeping over at Mel’s. I reread the text three times before sending it, weary of tell-tale typos.
Justin has an old stereo system in his garage. It sits on the industrial tool shelves, dusty despite its frequent use, and surrounded by a clutter of a lone gardening glove, paint roller trays still splashed with cracked color, and a balding, defeated looking set of tennis balls. I stand on my toes to turn it on and plug the aux cord hanging over the edge of the shelf into my phone. I scroll through my music, searching for a moment rather than a song. Justin turns around in his chair.
“Put on Dammit by blink-182. It has been in my head all day.”
It isn’t what I’m looking for but I put it on anyway. I take the handle from the floor next to Mel’s lawn chair, picking up the dust-dirt combo that is exclusive to the ambiance of garages with it. I sit down in my unsettlingly yellow plaid lawn chair and take a swig from the bottle after barely trying to find my cup. I nearly scrunch my pursed lips to my creased brow, meeting at my wrinkled nose. Eric sits to my left. He laughs a little, leaning back in his chair.
“Jeez, Neen. Take it easy.” His expression changes. “Are you okay?”
I nod and look at the metal drain built into the concrete in the middle of the circle, knowing that if I look at him I would have to face the underestimated intensity of his grey-blue stare. I hear him get up from next to me. I’m thinking about the time I was in my neighbor’s garage hula hooping. Their drain wasn't covered and I stepped back into it. I still have a triangular scar on the back of my heel.
The next songs starts and I look up quickly.
“Eric, is this ‘Your Heart is a Muscle’?” I don’t know why I asked. I knew it was. I had been listening to the song to get me through studying for four impending AP tests all week.
“Yeah, do you like it?” He walks back to his seat next to me as the group discovers their shared reverence for Ramshackle Glory. Everyone loves the honesty in the lyrics and raw vocals.
I told him I like the song as he pulls his chair closer to mine. The metal frame scrapes the concrete.
“It’s funny.”
“What is?”  By now the song had ended.  Someone cued up ‘All Of The Lights’ By Kanye West.
“That song.  Always made me think of you. Is that weird?”  By now our knees are touching. His skin is warm against mine. I move my knee slightly closer to his, hoping to a get a reaction. He doesn’t move.
I raise an eyebrow at him.
“Yeah, you’re a total weirdo. I don’t know why you think it’s okay to tSMORES POPTARt.”
He rolls his eyes at me.
Our legs continue touching.

I sit up, mindful not to bump my head on the ceiling of the Subaru Outback. I crawl over the level expanse of the trunk and folded down middle seats to find my t-shirt in a heap of clothes in the passenger seat. It is still too hot in the car to put shorts back on. I roll down the window to let in the night at the hill, glancing sideways to double check if we’re still alone. Eric and I call it the hill but actually it is a retention basin with a church on one side and the middle school that we went to on the other. And at 11:00 on a Tuesday night in August, it is desolate. Eric, in just boxers, is lying on a beach towel spread out in the back of the car.
“Neen, come lay next to me.” I lay next to him and despite the t-shirt, I feel more naked than I had felt all night. The side of my calf brushes up against his. Move it away quickly, wondering if he noticed, if I should have just left it there, or if I'm just overthinking it all. He rolls on his side to face me. I mirror him.
“You've been quiet. What are you thinking about?” He spoke softly, a voice almost unrecognizable in comparison to the usual jokes and loud laughter.
I’m thinking about how the grey t-shirt with a little blue graphic captioned Hell Yeah! in tiny print on the breast pocket was the most Eric-esque purchase I had ever seen. I bet he was so excited when he came across it online. And even though it’s exciting to get something new in the mail, you have to wait to wear it. Spreading out the little things that make days better like wearing a new t-shirt gives you more good days. And I’m thinking about the way he smells. Maybe it was the way his deodorant mixes with the laundry detergent his mom likes, but if I were to name a candle after him it would be called Ocean Breeze on an Early Summer Morning. And I’m thinking about being eight and going off of the high dive at the pool for the first time. I curled my toes over the rough edge of the diving board, trying to stabilize my restless stomach as I looked straight down into the water. The chlorine-lightened concrete made the water a pale blue in the sun. I'm thinking about what normal eye contact feels like. I'm thinking about the other night when we did the same thing as we had done tonight and he dropped me off at home and I was smiling so much my cheeks hurt. I'm thinking about how I wasn't thinking about taking a walk to smoke or where I could get a drink. I'm thinking about my grandma and what she would think about the story of how the boy I met in sixth grade home room became my best friend and, after a summer spent together, is now ready to be whatever I need him to be for me. And I’m wondering what she would think if she knew I am keeping him at arm's length. I’m thinking about a life without him. And one with him. I’m thinking about how Eric and I wouldn’t be the type to have a wedding. We’d get the license, drink champagne and eat cake with family and a few friends, and go on vacation. I’m thinking about waking up to him whispering to my pregnant belly in the middle of the night. I would pretend I was still asleep so I could hear him telling his unborn daughter about painting her room, how her mom looks in the pale light of the refrigerator at night, and the highlights of his fantasy football season. He would act like a father months before it sunk in that I would be a mother. I’m thinking about Sunday mornings. He starts making pancakes. I pour myself a cup of coffee, and if the kids aren't up by now, they will be once I put music on. But mostly I’m thinking about how nice it is that he asks about what is going on in my head. It's not “how are you?”. It's more genuine. It’s exposing. And how I really want to tell him about every thought, simple or complex, but it wouldn't come out right if it tried. What is important is that he gives me many opportunities to try to get it right. And, he believes that someday I would.
So I say, “Nothing. What are you thinking about?”