Suss: another literary journal

I sent my boyfriend Jeff’s best friend Michael this poem:

I don’t know if I told you that I love you.
I do.
I am shame­ful and wish it were not so.
I’m not sup­posed to love you.
You don’t have to worry about your­self
because you are immune to such things;
they take up too much ratio­nal energy,
and although you are quite intense you are also
bless­edly ratio­nal.
I don’t know how I’m sup­posed to for­get
that I will never kiss you, and never did.
Drown the kit­tens.
Hold them down in the bucket until they stop squirming.

This was two days ago and I have fallen asleep every night since won­der­ing if he received it, and if he knows it’s from me. I hope he doesn’t. The very thought makes my stom­ach sink and I have to sit down.

For sweet­est things turn sourest by their deeds;
lilies that fes­ter smell far worse than weeds.
You’re a fuck­ing bitch.

I sent that one to my ex-best friend Shari. The first two lines is a cou­plet from my favorite Shakespearian son­net. I added the last line myself. Last year she started work­ing at Tracks, the local record shop where I’ve been for two years now. She won over all my friends from there, and then she turned them against me. And before that, she man­aged to hook up with every guy I told her I had a crush on. She has long blond hair and some­times I have fan­tasies about wrap­ping that thick mane around her neck and stran­gling her until her face turns blue.

There’s a party tonight and Jeff and Michael and Shari will be there. It’s at our friend Jamie’s house. Nobody knows about the let­ters. I have to pre­tend many things, and I’ve prac­ticed the look of shock that should reg­is­ter on my face if Shari or Michael or both of them fig­ure out that the let­ters are from me and decide to call me out on it.

“So Nicole,” Michael would say,” I got this inter­est­ing poem in the mail. I don’t sup­pose you’d know who sent it, would you?”

I would kind of tilt my chin to one side and say, “What sort of poem? Like a funny one?”

Shari would be stand­ing right there with her over-glossed cherry lips and say, “That’s so funny because I also got a poem in the mail.”

Then I would ignore her because it’s what I’ve been doing for months now. I go into work and even if it’s just her at the reg­is­ter, I walk right past to the back where we have cub­bies for our stuff.

I don’t know where the con­ver­sa­tion would go from there. I’m just prac­tic­ing my var­i­ous reac­tions in the mir­ror. It’s two hours before the party, and I have to make sure I wear some­thing that a per­son would wear if they were not the type to send anony­mous poems to peo­ple. If I wear too much black eye­liner I will look sus­pi­ciously capa­ble. I have to wear clothes that make me look like I don’t care about any­thing. Ripped jeans, an old Jane’s Addiction t-shirt my brother Bobby gave me, and my hair in a pony­tail. I prac­tice my reac­tions in the mir­ror one last time. My best one-liner is, “Wow. That is weird.” Then I have to shake my head and look a bit puz­zled, but not too puzzled.

The front door rings and I hear Bobby open­ing the door and talk­ing to Jeff. I can tell from the low way he’s speak­ing that he got high before com­ing to pick me up, and he knows I hate that. It’s depress­ing being around some­one who gets high all the time. It’s one thing if it’s at par­ties where everyone’s pass­ing around a joint, but every day—in the morn­ing, in the after­noon, at night—I hate that.

When we get to Jamie’s house I can hear a crowd of voices com­ing from inside. Nobody comes to the door so we turn the knob and walk in. There aren’t as many peo­ple there as I thought. A bunch of them are sit­ting around the cof­fee table doing Jäger shots. I don’t see Michael with them, but when we walk into the kitchen he’s there with his head stuck in the refrigerator.

“Hey!” he says when he sees us. He and I are dressed almost iden­ti­cally, except for the chain wal­let hang­ing off his hip. I want to make out with him. His eyes are dark brown and he has shoulder-length brown hair. It’s soft and parted in the mid­dle and I love the rings he’s wear­ing on his fin­gers. Jeff nods at him and smiles and I go over to give him a half-hug. I have to sit down, but I stand still and force myself to not avoid his face. Then he’ll know.

“Nice t-shirt,” he says to me, and points at the one he’s wear­ing, which is a Jane’s Addiction one, but different.

“Bobby gave this to me,” I say.

Just then I hear the slam of the front door and Shari’s loud, obnox­ious voice. “What up, peo­ple!” It’s like she knows where I am, because sec­onds later she walks into the kitchen with a six-pack of Corona and starts load­ing it into the refrig­er­a­tor. Everyone says hi to her except for me. This is eas­ier than with Michael. She coolly walks past me with a cig­a­rette in her hand and stands too close to Michael when he lights it for her. I want to leave the room, but I shouldn’t because it will be obvi­ous I sent the poems. I ask Jeff to get me a beer and light a cig­a­rette myself. I strain to hear the con­ver­sa­tion between Shari and Michael. I don’t real­ize it, but I’ve been tap­ping my foot on the linoleum floor and a few peo­ple notice the sound and look at me. I press my foot down hard and take a deep drag from my cig­a­rette. Jeff isn’t back with my beer yet. I wait. He finally walks in with his blood-shot eyes and hands me my beer. I can smell pot smoke com­ing from the liv­ing room. I walk in and sit with the oth­ers but don’t do shots. I take a hit off the joint a girl passes to me. Michael and Shari are still in the kitchen, and stay there as the liv­ing room grad­u­ally fills with peo­ple. I tilt my chin to one side and rehearse the words in my head, “Wow. That is weird.”

Michael walks in first, and he’s fin­ish­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with Shari. All I can catch is the last part, “...And I sat there and read it over and over again. It was the weird­est thing because I still can’t fig­ure it out...”

They plant them­selves across from me and I real­ize Jeff isn’t in the room. Michael waves at me and grins. I wave back and return the smile. I go over to him and offer him a cig­a­rette, which he takes.

“Did you start the paper for Pinskey’s class?” I ask. My chest feels so tight.

“Yeah, actu­ally,” he says. “Before I got here. I kind of have to because I owe Ms. Lankman all this make-up home­work from when I was sick.” There is a brief pause because I’m scram­bling to talk about some­thing. “Speaking of writ­ing,” he says, and tucks a piece of stray hair behind his ear, “I wanted to tell you about this thing I got in the mail the other day. Actually, I brought it with me because I knew you were com­ing tonight. Apparently, Shari got some­thing, too.”

“Wow. That is weird,” I hear myself say, unsure of the deliv­ery. “Was yours anony­mous? Because I got one and I have no idea who sent it to me.” I don’t know what I’m doing.

“Get the fuck out of here!” he says, and his body jolts upright. “What did yours say?”

Before I can answer Shari leans over to us and starts with her stu­pid Long Island whiny voice, “Are you two talk­ing about that creepy thing that Michael got in the mail? Because I got one, too. Don’t tell me you got one too, Nicky,” she says. When she says my name it comes out like Nick-ay. It’s the first time she’s spo­ken to me in six months.

“Yeah,” is all I say.

“Creepy, right?” she asks. “What did yours say?”

Before I can answer, this kid Jeremiah saves me from a fit of stut­ters. “If you guys are talk­ing about that weird let­ter going around I want to know what yours said. I brought mine with me to show every­one.” He stands up and starts pulling out ran­dom objects from his pock­ets: matches, a lighter, an empty Pez dis­penser. Finally he finds a neatly folded piece of paper. He unwraps it from the dense square he’d folded it into.

He’s about to read it, but inter­rupts him­self and says, “This is creepy. Only one per­son knows the ref­er­ence. You guys remem­ber Kirsten? She moved away a year ago? So I called her and she says she didn’t send it. Okay. So. ‘Night after night she lay alone in bed. Her eyes so open to the dark. The streets all look so strange, they seem so far away. But Charlotte did not cry.’” He fin­ishes as if he just read a news­pa­per arti­cle. I rec­og­nize the words. They’re lyrics from a Cure song.

At this point nobody’s really talk­ing, and thank­fully instead of the whole thing com­ing back to my let­ter, this girl Simone says she also got a let­ter. She didn’t bring it with her, but she men­tions some­thing about it being personal.

Jeff walks into the room, his eyes now slits, and sits down. “I got this thing in the mail,” he says. He licks his lips and takes a sip from a ran­dom cup on the table text to him. He kind of just sits there with his droopy eyes while every­one waits for him to say something.

Someone finally pipes up and calls out impa­tiently, “Well?”

“It was just a note. Nothing fancy. It said, ‘She doesn’t love you.’”

I feel peo­ple turn­ing to look at me. The room is still and the only sound is the music com­ing from the cd player on the other side of the room, remote and point­less. People get up and migrate to the kitchen for more drinks. Shari and Mike fol­low them. Jamie is fuss­ing with the cd player and it’s just Jeff and me. I’m play­ing with the lighter in my hand, flick­ing it over and over. Jeff is still sit­ting in the chair, his eyes still droopy. I want to know where all these let­ters are com­ing from. I’m one of the few who didn’t get one.

“You don’t love me?” Jeff’s says out of the blue.

Jamie leaves the room. I hear a roar of laugh­ter com­ing from the kitchen. It seems the party has tem­porar­ily moved and we’re alone. I put the lighter down and turn to Jeff. He’s wear­ing the same clothes he wore to school the day before. He keeps purs­ing his lips, rub­bing them together, and he leans his head back to rest on the wall.

“Jeff...” I start to say.

“Did you send me that note?” he asks. His voice sounds hoarse and faded.

“No. Of course not,” I say.

“Well, then who did?” he asks.

“I really have no idea,” I say, sud­denly feel­ing my throat tighten.

“It doesn’t mat­ter any­way,” he says, “except for what the note says.”

“But, why does it—” I try to fin­ish, but he inter­rupts me again.

“I don’t get it, Nicky.” He throws his arms up and then lets them flop to his sides. “I love you. Why don’t you love me?”

Jamie comes back in the room, fol­lowed by the rest of the entourage. Jeff and I sit in silence, and some­one passes me a joint. I take a deep hit and hold it in. I look around the room; every­one is talk­ing to some­one. I watch Michael for a while and count how many times he tucks a strand of hair behind his ear while he’s talk­ing to Jamie. I for­get that Shari is in the room. My guid­ance coun­selor at school says that because I feel threat­ened by Shari I am hyper-aware when she is in my pres­ence. I see her walk up to Michael and inter­rupt his con­ver­sa­tion. Her back is to me.

Just as I start think­ing about the let­ters she turns around and looks straight at me. I watch her lips curl into a smile, and I know what the smile is telling me. I fig­ured you out. I wrote the other let­ters. She tilts her head to one side and cocks an eye­brow, and in an instant turns her back to me again and leans into Michael. And then I know how: Shari used to be friends with that girl Kirstin when she was dat­ing Jeremiah; Shari used to be Simone’s best friend before me; she knows how I feel about Michael because I had told her last year. She got my poem in the mail, must have known it was from me and then wrote more of her own to look like I did it all. When was she plan­ning on uncov­er­ing me? Dumping it all on me?

A minute later she walks passed me on her way to the kitchen. “So,” she whis­pers in my ear, “we never found out what your let­ter said, Nicky.”

The let­ters were my idea first! I want to yell. Why do you have to take every­thing away from me?

I remem­ber what my guid­ance coun­selor told me to do in these sit­u­a­tions: take slow, deep breaths. “It says for you to go fuck your­self,” I hiss as she walks away all non­cha­lant. And she doesn’t get very far because I lunge at her and grab her by the hair. I pull her down and throw her on the floor. I’m on top of her, throw­ing punches like I’ve done it a hun­dred times before. She’s cov­er­ing her face with her hands, squirm­ing beneath me, but I have her pinned and I’m scream­ing, “Tell them you wrote the fuck­ing let­ters! Tell them you wrote it! Tell them!” Someone is try­ing to pry me off, but I push them away and keep punch­ing her face. “You fuck­ing bitch! You fuck­ing bitch! Tell them!” There is blood but I don’t know from where. Finally two pairs of hands grab me by each of my shoul­ders and drag me off.

Shari is lying on the floor cry­ing, her hands still cov­er­ing her face. I keep scream­ing the same thing over and over and every­one is very quiet.

“Alright,” she cries. “Alright. I wrote the let­ters. Now get that fuck­ing bitch away from me!” she shrieks. She’s sit­ting up now, wip­ing her face, heaving.

I promised Bobby I would call when I was ready to leave. But I don’t. I walk out with­out my coat and head home. All the houses on my block are asleep, includ­ing mine. The blue hue of the tele­vi­sion is the only light in the liv­ing room.

“Nick?” It’s Bobby.

“Yeah?”

“How’d you get home?” He sounds sleepy.

“I walked.”

“Don’t do that next time.”

“Okay. Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” As I head upstairs he calls me back. “Nick?”

“Yeah?”

“Mom left some mail for you on the kitchen table.”

When I turn on the kitchen light I look at my hands; my knuck­les are cov­ered in blood that has dried to this dark red color. There is only one enve­lope, and I should have expected it. I tear the damn thing open.

“I won­der who’s the lily and who’s the weed? It’s not a tough guess. Ha ha.”

As I walk up to my bed­room I won­der if I broke her nose. Not to be a dick, but I hope so. I really do.