Burnt Tongues Read online

  The kid outside Corine’s house that night with the video camera was filming his buddies chucking rolls of toilet paper over her roof. Knotting it up in her trees. Spreading white-tipped matches on her lawn so the next time it got mowed there’d be a fire. With the night-vision setting that made everything green and glowing like an X-ray, he shot them pumping mustard into her door locks. Recording every giggle as they slid the garden hose into a basement window well and turned it on. It was when he zoomed in on them smearing white shoe polish on her living room window that he caught Corine inside at that exact wrong moment.

  Even Corine admits that the video really does look like she’s lying on the living room couch without a shirt or a bra. That you could be looking at two sets of glowing Persian cat eyes hovering around her bare rack, with their little sandy tongues darting, if that’s what you wanted to see. But she’s only holding Sheeba and Sam-Sam. There’s no peanut butter or syrup involved, like everyone says. There totally isn’t. A girl can hold her cats, can’t she? What’s on that video is misleading. It’s a lie.

  This is the defense Corine’s sticking to, even with the tub in this bathroom fizzing and bubbling like those little packets of six-hour energy boosters do in water. Only the tub jets aren’t churning up guarana or taurine or caffeine. It’s hydrogen sulfide gas. There should be a science credit in this for me. You think of it oozing over the tub in thick waves, like the dry ice clouds that crawl over a punch bowl at Halloween, but it’s not like that. You sort of only know it’s doing anything because the air starts to taste like you’re rolling a nine-volt battery around in your mouth.

  Dana leans over the tub for a sec, then jerks back. She says, “Ugh, it’s doing something,” batting at her eyes all fast. Fanning her adorable little nostrils poked in her cutesy nose, bolted to her perfect stupid face.

  Pick any trophy from the glass cabinets just inside the school doors—track, soccer, basketball, state champs, national champs—and you’ll find the name Dana Vecchio engraved under all the little gold people frozen in sports poses. Coaches from the high school showed up to her games, and they’d tell her what her future would be. Dana and me, we never even talked till after this last winter break when her entourage suddenly had a lot more openings.

  The boy Dana tied herself to since first semester had this party. He’s the guy whose parents will go on weekend trips without hiding their liquor because he’s got a lot of As and touchdowns. Being with him, being seen with him, this upgrades Dana to queen of the sports parasites. So here she is partying like a queen should, downing hard lemonades and slippery nipples until her bad-idea meter doesn’t even blip when jock-number-whatever tells everyone to pile into the hot tub outside.

  The recommended capacity for this hot tub, whatever it was, they were over it by a lot. Dana says it was a mash of bodies in bras and underwear, sloshing out buckets of foamy chlorine water while they passed around bitter shots. And there the whole time, smashed right up against her in the bubbling tub of feet and tits, was her guy, with smiles and Jäger.

  This is what made her stupid for him, this smothering attention. The way he smuggled her into his basement bedroom all those times so he could suck on her neck. The way he was always so careful on top of her and the way he offered to mop her down with a warm, wet towel after he’d pulled out on her stomach. He’s a big believer in the honor system: “The more on her the better.” Dana’s bar for chivalry is pretty low.

  Yes, it was the shots. Yes, it was the hard lemonades. But Dana says when her man started sneaking his fingers into her underwear, she didn’t care that they were both smushed up against everyone there with them in that hot tub. Making out. Totally getting it on.

  Until somebody screamed.

  Until some guy said, “Aww, Jesus!”

  Then smiley boy wasn’t kissing her, and she opened her eyes. All around her in the water was a cloud of crimson, thick enough to tint the light underneath red as Valentine’s Day, blossoming out.

  Some girl yelled, “Oh, my God!”

  Her boyfriend’s fingers pulling really quick out of her makes a bigger explosion of red, with stringy webs of chocolate syrup and pearl globs floating up and sloshing into the

  tub filter.

  Her wet teammates try to mash their way out, splashing rust-colored water on one another. Red bits gushing all over them. Inside their eyes. Inside their screaming mouths. Fingers clawing and drunk bodies falling over the edge to the frozen concrete.

  Everyone inside the house, packed into her boyfriend’s shower, his parents’ shower, his little sister’s shower, they gag and spit and knock heads fighting for the water nozzle.

  Outside, by herself, Dana’s in a half-empty tub of chlorine water and blood. Crying. It’s not nice to laugh.

  The next day, Dana’s gyno-doc will call this an inevitable miscarriage. For serious, I’m not making this up. But it was anything but inevitable to Dana, who had no idea she’d been drinking her baby retarded and Down syndromey for the past twelve weeks. Didn’t know she was sending little kidney bean Dana’s birth weight farther down into the gutter with every toke and beer bong she hit. Now, her doc doesn’t say any of this was the reason her mommy parts cleaned house, but she doesn’t say it helped, either.

  Dana’s name on those trophies doesn’t mean much after this. Maybe there’s some number of state championships you can win to make everyone forget about the time you shot chunks of your undercooked kid all over them but probably not.

  As the death cocktail rumbles in the tub, Corine pulls out her phone. Wants to take a picture of the three of us together before we’re not together anymore, but there’s no way. Not with me. She says, “Sorry” and “I’m totally sorry.” Those cruddy little phone pics, they can ruin lives. Ask my ex-boyfriend Trevor. Ask everyone he knows.

  Trevor would drive down from the high school at lunchtime to pick me up in his topless Jeep. I’d pull myself in by the roll bar really slow so everyone watching, every girl who wasn’t dating a more mature guy like me, could boil in jealousy for a sec. Behind the sub shop, I let him kiss me with tongue, let him go up my shirt. I’d smell the breakfast sausage and syrup on him as he leaned over me in the seat, fishing for my bra hook. The varsity wrestler in him was always pushing for the panties, and I’d have to say, “Eeeeeasy, killer.” Pulling his fingers from my zipper, I’d have to say, “Gear down, big shifter.” He’d feed the pink head of his boner through his jeans, and I’d have to say, “Pump the brakes!”

  Enough times of “respecting my boundaries” and Trevor stopped showing up for lunch. Stopped taking me home after school. I’d be stuck on the piss bus with all the bitches smirking at me like someone who didn’t know they were dumped. This wasn’t okay.

  He didn’t answer my texts until the one with the picture attached. When I held my camera phone to my bathroom mirror reflecting me in the first stages of slutty: glossed-up pouting lips, tousled hair, and some midriff. You know, classy.

  Trevor texted back: im not convinced.

  Slut bag: Phase 2 meant losing my shirt completely and popping the top button on my jeans.

  Click. Send.

  His text said: UR getting warmer.

  The next part is not my smartest move, true, but it was firing off some pictures of me, minus a bra, with my jeans pulled down, or it was back to going out with guys at my school. Back to movies at the mall and hanging at Cinnabon and our parents driving us everywhere. I mean, come on.

  Click. Send.

  So, the last thing I want to happen is what happens first. These pics traveling like they tell you STDs travel. Trevor giving them to two friends, who give them to two friends and on and on. Until a mostly naked, porned-up me pushing my chest together is on every guy’s phone at the high school I’m going to next year.

  P.S. Carrying around a topless me in your phone, e-mailing it to your entire contacts list, plastering it online, this is called child pornography trafficking. It’s a felony.

  This is what the cops
tell every dude, packed in and chained to all the seats inside a bus with steel mesh over the windows. Every guy who got pulled from fourth period and herded onto this long blue tanker with the sheriff’s seal on the side, waiting outside the doors of the high school. Cell phone companies have to tell the cops when they run across “potentially

  exploitive content.”

  Me screaming at the cops, me stomping and crying and saying that no one forced me to take those pics, that they were my idea, meant exactly squat.

  This is every guy I’d ever want to date. The older brother of any guy I’d ever want to have take me to the prom, with a criminal record because of me. An entire male student body having to attend court-ordered sex addiction groups, having to register as sex offenders on the federal database. Having to check in biannually with caseworkers until way after they graduate.

  Would you like to know how many girls appreciate some skank turning their boyfriend into a pedophile? It’s zero. All these girls who’ll want nothing to do with me next year, just like the girls this year.

  If you don’t count the scrape of steel wool down your throat when you inhale, the Death Balloon Bathroom is pretty painless. The Internet was right on.

  From our Indian-style circle we’re slumping against the toilet, against the steps to the jetted tub, the plastic on everything crinkling and bunching up. If the song playing is number five or seven, we’ve all lost count. We’re breathing through dried-up mouths packed with cotton, and it’s not like we’re tired, but our eyes are shut.

  The coughing just happens. Your lungs jerk when you suck in another deep breath and try to hold it, so we didn’t do anything when Dana’s hacking fit started. You kind of expect the choking and the gagging part, but you don’t expect the stream of wet pasta that shoots out of her throat and splashes off the wall, all hot. Before Dana even wipes the bits off her lips, Corine’s leaning forward, hurling her lunch out past her teeth in a thick spray.

  All I want is to breathe my toxic gas in peace. To punch my own ticket, like, gracefully and stuff. Apparently, this is too much to ask.

  What’s in my stomach chainsaws up the walls of my throat and arcs violently into the pool of last meals piled on the plastic. Dana’s rigatoni. Corine’s fried chicken. My veggie burrito. The last things we expected to eat in this life mixed up and running together, dripping from our hair.

  P.S. This wasn’t on the Internet. No heads-up that said, “Before you bite it, be ready to puke like a fire hose.”

  Dana’s doubled over, holding herself, when the second wave of Corine’s heaves surge up and plaster the back of her head. Dana’s lunch, part two, gushes through the fingers she’s clamped over her lips, and I’m right after her, hurling and screaming like some invisible linebacker is Heimliching me. The little ribbons of blood swimming around in the cakey muck, it’s anyone’s guess who it came from. Fat tracks of tears cut down Corine’s face, pooling on her lips and swirling in with the long strands of spit hanging from her chin. As Dana rakes back the soaked clumps of brunette hair from her face, her hazel eyes are wide and panicked.

  This is not what those Asians described at all.

  Not peaceful.

  Not serene.

  Not fast.

  Another wrenching yak detonates in my stomach, and Dana’s pulling herself up, her feet slipping in the hot mess. Before I can spit out the clumps of barf in my mouth enough to scream, Don’t, Dana’s shoving her head through a hole she gouged with her fingernails. Clawing at the edges to slip her arm through and open the bathroom door.

  I shout, “Wait!”

  But she’s slithering out the opening headfirst, sliding into the bedroom, like a baby being born on a river of stomach butter.

  I’m yanking Corine’s soaked hoodie with my whole body. “You can’t give up!”

  Corine pushes me off as she spreads the tear with her shoulders, wiggling her wide torso through until it plops onto Dana in the bedroom. They’re both hacking and smeared solid with lung gravy.

  On my butt with my heels together, I keep booting the sticky parts of them jammed up in the door until I can shut it again. Standing. Even for the second it takes to twist the lock, it makes the floor spin and my legs fold in at the knees. My cheek hitting the fancy stone floor covered in plastic, covered in puke, creates a loud clicking sound, and there’s blood in my mouth.

  At the door, the girls are pounding—and whatever they’re screaming, it sounds miles away. Today was the last time I would eat breakfast. The last time I’d see my mom. The last time I’d hear this song. This was always the plan.

  Heaven isn’t me waking up in the arms of my dead gram-gram. It isn’t clouds and Jesus and hugs. It’s way too bright lights and some dude keeping your eyelids back with rubber-gloved fingers. It’s yelling and needles poking into your arms and lots of people sticking their face in your face, asking Sesame Street questions.

  “Can you tell me what day it is?”

  “Can you tell me what two plus two is?”

  “Can you tell me what state we’re in?”

  For angels, they’re pretty stupid.

  Later, when you know this is a hospital, you’re laid out in a room and it’s dark outside the blinds. There’s a guy with, like, eight pens jammed in his shirt pocket and a dick for a nose shuffling in, telling you you’re lucky the chemicals you mixed were never fatal.

  Fucking Internet.

  This hospital psychiatrist, Dr. Pen Collector, says we could have sat there all night and the worst that would happen was the puking. A super, mega headache.

  Fucking Japan.

  Dr. Dicknose keeps his voice calm and steady and low, and I’m back in the guidance counselor’s office two weeks ago, fielding the same psychosocial assessment questions.

  “Do you sometimes feel like you have no hope? That nothing’s going to get better?”

  My ass is back twisting in a scratchy upholstered chair in the holding area outside the counselor’s door, parked across from two other girls counting the squares in the carpet pattern. We all had the same pink note that pulled us out of class requesting a “little talk.” We knew each other, but we didn’t. I told the big girl that what people were saying about her on that video with the cats was totally bullshit. To the sporty brunette girl, I said, people need to shut up about the hot tub thing, that none of those jock tool bags had any right to judge her.

  The two girls looked up at me, and they smiled.

  Dr. Dicknose is in full-on passive interview mode. If I had anything left to barf, it would have come up when he starts in with the tell-me-how-you-came-to-feel-this-way spiel.

  We should have done the toilet cleaner and ammonia. Or the bleach and weed killer.

  Past the doc assessing my future suicide risk, past my mom pacing in the hallway, there’s a little brown man wheeling a cart stacked with spray cans and scrub brushes. With the spray bottle he’s misting doorknobs and room numbers with something bright like raspberry Kool-Aid.

  The doc asks if there’s ever any conflict in my home life.

  Somewhere in this hospital Corine and Dana are getting these same questions. Already we’re the girls who couldn’t even kill themselves right. Our suicide notes are getting printed and passed around for laughs. Pasted and forwarded to infinite address books.

  The doc asks if I’ve ever been on any antidepressants.

  The quiet brown guy keeps spraying, keeps wiping.

  The kids at Watson, they’ll only be surprised now if we don’t kill ourselves. Our out-of-nowhere shock value is totally blown. Around the school there’ll be calendars where you can put money down on which date the Misery Triplets will try again. You can bet on the method. Dana, Corine, and me will have in-boxes chock-full of helpful tips like: “A gun in the mouth is always effective” and detailed instructions on tying a foolproof noose. Helpful diagrams included.

  The doc says, “Think of all the friends you’ll leave behind to suffer.”

  I’m wondering how hard it is to,
like, swap the clear fluid in my IV bag with whatever toxic disinfectant that raspberry Kool-Aid is. Not that hard, I bet. Simple, probably.

  Easy. Peasy. Japanesey.

  Charlie

  Chris Lewis Carter

  The shelter is closed, but someone knocks anyway, three quick raps against the door pane, a panicked knock.

  “Hey,” a man shouts. “Is anybody in there?”

  Three more raps.

  “I need help!”

  The sudden noise sends dozens of high-strung animals into a frenzy. Shabby dogs bark and paw at their cage doors. Ancient cats with mangy fur yowl incessantly. The entire back room becomes a cacophony of bitter howls and clanging metal.

  Three more raps.

  “There’s a fucking car still on the lot! I know you’re in there!”

  Shit.

  He isn’t leaving anytime soon, so I hit the outside lights and part some of the door’s blind slats with two fingers. Whoever it is, he’s plastered the opposite side of the glass with fresh red smudges that obscure most of my view. All I can make out is a long shadow that connects to a pair of penny loafers.

  I try more slats until I see a large man wearing a brown overcoat and a matching fedora standing on the stoop. He’s cradling a twelve-pack of Budweiser with one arm, careful to keep pressure on the sagging cardboard bottom.

  “Finally,” he says, crouching slightly to meet my eyes. “Open up. It’s an emergency!”

  I mouth the words We’re closed, but that doesn’t faze him.

  “You don’t understand. They tortured her,” he says. “Her eye, it’s . . . Jesus, I thought you people were supposed to be humane.”

  The kennel ruckus has died down. Through the door, I hear the Budweiser box meow. It sounds strained.