Aftercare Instructions Read online

  “Ok, let’s do it, then,” Delilah says. “But I want to come back to Jersey tonight. So not all night.”

  “Deal!”

  Delilah shakes her head, laughing, and goes in to retrieve Will and her friend, Wade. I open my voice mail and delete Peter’s message without listening to it.

  Then we’re heading to a neighborhood in Brooklyn called Bushwick. Apparently it’s really hip, with loft spaces and artists and stuff. Wade says it’s the new Williamsburg, but that doesn’t mean anything to any of us except Delilah, who nods like he’s spoken gospel.

  We roll into Bushwick at 11:45 p.m. Among industrial buildings and car lots, there is a store with a neon Open sign lighting up a window, though it’s clearly closed. Above the door, the sign reads Friends. Two mannequin friends stare out at the lonely street in sunglasses and vintage dresses. Desperate for summer, maybe. Around the corner, there is a restaurant with a concrete façade and steamed industrial block windows. A man, hunched over and wearing a stained white apron, carries a garbage bag to the cans where two rats sit unfazed, chewing on trash. We park across the street. In front of the loft building where the party is.

  We get buzzed in, then climb wide concrete steps that smell wet and moldy with a trace of beer. It’s a girl named Kendra’s twenty-second birthday. We step into the apartment and all the surfaces are covered with cans and lime wedges and empty bottles. The music is on far too loud for how few people are soaking it up.

  Kendra kisses Delilah on the cheek, and thanks her about a hundred times for showing up. “I don’t know where everyone went.”

  A guy with greased hair and a half-opened black button-up shirt scoops Kendra away. “Actually, everyone is up on the roof right now. They’re shooting off fireworks.”

  “Oh, shit!” Kendra slurs her words together like a Slushie. “We have to go up there!”

  He looks at Delilah and raises his eyebrows. “A second ago she didn’t want to go. This is what I’m dealing with now. But you guys should make a drink and go up to the roof. Someone drove to Pennsylvania and brought back a shitload of fireworks.”

  “Hell yeah!” Will says. Rose rolls her eyes and grabs on to his arm. Wade breaks into the vodka and mixes it with lemonade for all of us. I grab a second bottle and pour the contents down my throat. It burns, and so do Delilah’s eyes.

  “Easy there, cowgirl,” she says, and pulls the bottle from my lips.

  I open my mouth to protest, but then say to Wade, “Make mine strong, please.”

  Then we’re climbing higher and higher, up onto the roof of the building.

  The vodka moves through my veins. People huddle together for warmth while sparks of red and orange and yellow and green shoot into the sky and pop and sizzle and people scream and cheer and teeth chatter. Rose busies herself watching Will so he doesn’t blow anyone’s eyeballs out with fireworks. Delilah makes the rounds, saying hi to people I’ve never seen before. I can see the Empire State Building. My dad always said he loved that you could see the building from any part of the city. No matter where you were. You could always find your way home.

  Tonight it’s lit green.

  I down the rest of my drink, mostly to keep myself warm. Mostly. Partly to keep myself forgetting that phone call. Forgetting sounds best right now. Easiest, anyway. A shriek and a whirl of a firework go off in my ear. I move closer to the ledge.

  A guy stands next to me, wrapped in a sleeping bag and smoking a cigarette. We catch eyes and he smiles. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” I say, and think back to my idea of kissing someone else, but swallow that quickly. I look out across the blur of rooftops and lights.

  “You know if you see them turn the lights out on the Empire State Building, you get to make a wish?”

  I look at him again. He’s looking straight ahead too. There’s an orange light cast across his face and when he turns toward me, he becomes a half shadow.

  “Is that what you’re waiting for?” I ask.

  “Taking a breather,” he says, then stamps out his smoke.

  We turn toward each other and for a second, we are locked. Eyes into eyes and a fluttering inside that could make me float away. I glance around for anyone to anchor me back down into asphalt and gravel. But I’m on my own. And where did that feeling come from, anyway?

  “I’ll leave you to it, then. Sorry,” I say. Sorry for what, I’m not exactly sure. Invading his space? Interrupting his breather? Or maybe for feeling something that probably doesn’t exist. Something I’m trying to conjure.

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” he says, then turns his mouth into something angular and magnetic.

  “I should probably find my friends.”

  “Okay,” he says. I start to turn when he says, “But you should know that these wishes always come true.”

  “What?”

  He gestures to the building and smiles again. Maybe I could get sucked into that smile and never find my way out. Maybe I’m imagining things.

  “Your wish must be very important,” I say.

  “Why is that?”

  “Because you’re here.”

  “And so are you.”

  And so we are.

  Just then the sleeping bag slips down off his shoulders. I reach out to grab it. So does he. But we both miss the fabric and catch hands instead. The smallest jolt shoots up my arm. I quickly retract as the sleeping bag drops to our feet.

  I turn to look at the Empire State Building.

  Still lit.

  Pushing its light into a starless night.

  I pick up the sleeping bag and hold it out toward him.

  “You take it,” he says. “It’s freezing up here.”

  That electric jolt has transformed into chills. He’s right. It’s freezing. I spot Rose standing near Will, who is now lighting bottle rockets and runing in circles like a dog as they pop into the sky. She’s yelling at him not to point them at the people on the roof.

  “We could share it,” I say without thinking. I want to take that back as soon as the words leave my mouth. I watch more shadows and splashes of light spray across his face, wanting to just burrow under the blanket myself until he disappears. Share?

  “That sounds perfect,” he says, covering us, flannel side down, slippery side up.

  I don’t say anything. I lean my body into his and let myself sink deep into the warmth around us and the booze in our blood and the breath and steam of strangers.

  “Your drink is gone.”

  I look into my empty cup. “I think I drank it really fast.”

  “Do you want something else?”

  I really, really do. I want something else. I want to know what something else feels like. I want to understand what it feels like to be without Peter. I want to show him I can exist without him if that’s what he wants.

  “Can we go together and stay under the sleeping bag?”

  “That sounds fun,” he says.

  “But wait. What about your wish?” We both look again toward the green glowing building. I have a few things that I could wish for myself.

  “I have been waiting for that.” He smells smoky and lemony.

  “Let’s wait,” I say, at the same time he says, “But it’s okay.”

  We both linger on this.

  “It’s okay,” he says again. “They turn out the lights every night. There’s always tomorrow.”

  There’s always tomorrow. There’s always right now.

  We make it back to the stairs to head down to Kendra’s apartment. Delilah grabs on to my shoulder through the sleeping bag. “Where are you going, Gen?”

  “Oh, hi, Del. This guy is bringing me back to the alcohol.” My speech slips together.

  “Who is this guy?”

  I look at him. He has wavy brown hair that’s kind of shaggy and greasy. His stubble is long, five days long, and his lips are wet like he just licked them. There’s something dark and deep about his face before the smile takes over. I’ve never kissed a guy with facial hair b
efore.

  “I’m Seth.”

  “This is Seth.”

  Delilah’s eyes look like flashlights shining into us, inspecting us. “I think I have met you before, actually.”

  “I think so too,” he says.

  “At school?”

  “Maybe.”

  “We’re fine, Delilah, we’ll be right back up.”

  Then Kendra finally stumbles through the hatch on the roof.

  “Delilah!” Kendra squeals. “When did you get here? Did you meet my boyfriend, Seth?”

  “I’m not her boyfriend,” Seth whispers to me. “She’s just wasted.”

  He pulls me closer.

  “My boyfriend, Sean. That’s what I said!” Kendra belly flops into a make-out with the other guy, and order seems to have been restored.

  I like Seth’s arm around my waist.

  Then Delilah says, “If you’re not back in twenty minutes, I’m coming to look for you.”

  I give Delilah the sign for scout’s honor.

  “I’m serious, Gen.”

  I wave good-bye to her concern, and Seth and I continue our journey. He walks backward with his arms at my hips. I hop hop hop down each stair with his spotting.

  We keep almost kissing, but then not.

  I think that’s what we’re doing, anyway.

  His breath hits my lips.

  I hop away.

  When we make it to the apartment, we find it empty. Everyone is still on the roof. I don’t know how people keep warm up there. We mix more drinks with the sleeping bag draped over our shoulders like a cape. A cape for two.

  “Your name is Jennifer?” he asks.

  “Huh?”

  “Delilah called you Jenn.”

  “Oh, it’s Genesis. Gen.”

  “Genesis. Wow. Intense name.”

  “Yeah, my parents liked the band. My grandparents like the God stuff.”

  “Genesis,” he says again.

  I take a big sip of vodka-lemonade and it sparks and splatters through my veins. Our eyes hook together and he leans in toward my mouth. I block his path with my cup. He moves to my neck instead and I let him. My whole body tingles as I throw back the rest of my drink. Then we’re kissing and diving over onto the kitchen floor, still wound up tight in our sleeping-bag cape. His breath tastes like cigarettes, and I’m turning into a puddle he’s mopping up.

  This is for you, Peter.

  I lose myself in this kiss. There is an explosion and we are the only two people left on Earth. I push my body into his and run my finger along the button on his jeans. I need this right now. I am possessed. I need something else. Something new. He moves my hand away but keeps kissing me. I try again and he pushes me back a little harder.

  “Slow down,” he says, with his mouth full of my lips.

  “I can’t,” I say.

  “Can’t what?”

  He’s out of breath.

  “I just can’t.”

  So am I. Breathless.

  He scoots himself away from me and up against a cabinet.

  “Oh.” I fold my arms together over my knees. Reality creeps in.

  “You want another drink?”

  I nod. He fixes more drinks.

  No alcohol. That’s what the instructions said. And I’m drinking like it will restore everything that’s left me torn apart.

  No sex either. That’s what they said.

  Awkwardness hangs between us that I could mash up in my fingers like Silly Putty.

  “Sorry, I’m kind of a freak right now,” I say.

  What I meant to say is I’ve completely lost control of myself. Peter held me together. Without Peter, I beat up girls in the bathroom and let men with facial hair kiss me on my neck and fix me drinks and then I push things too far.

  “You’re not a freak.”

  “I am. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. I like it. I want it. Believe me. You seem really cool. And you’re gorgeous.”

  We touch fingertips and lock eyes. Pressure builds in that stare. The air gets thinner. We get heavier. The pull gets stronger. The one you can’t explain and can’t identify as fear or excitement or whatever as it pulls you into someone else. There is no stopping it this time.

  So I dive back in.

  Into Seth.

  And we swirl into each other like vodka and lemonade.

  End of Act 1.

  ACT II

  SCENE 1

  (This scene takes place in Peter’s kitchen. At rise, GENESIS drinks a tall glass of something a little too fast.)

  MRS. SAGE

  More lemonade?

  (GENESIS and PETER exchange a look.)

  GENESIS

  Yes, please. I guess I was really thirsty.

  (MRS. SAGE purses her lips.)

  PETER

  It’s fine. It’s really hot outside.

  MRS. SAGE

  Come, let’s sit down. I baked cookies.

  (GENESIS wonders what planet she’s landed on.)

  MRS. SAGE

  So, tell me about your family, Genesis.

  PETER

  Mom.

  MRS. SAGE

  What? It’s fine to ask. Isn’t it fine to ask, Genesis?

  GENESIS

  They’re not making fresh-baked cookies, that’s for sure.

  MRS. SAGE

  Well, now, that’s too bad.

  GENESIS

  Yes, it is.

  PETER

  Genesis, you do not have to talk about your family if you don’t want to. Mother, we talked about this.

  (GENESIS shifts uncomfortably. PETER’s little brother, JIMMY, enters and grabs three cookies off the plate.)

  MRS. SAGE

  We do not behave like hooligans in this house.

  JIMMY

  No shit! I’m starving!

  MRS. SAGE

  Language!

  PETER

  Jimmy, this is my girlfriend, Genesis.

  JIMMY

  We’ve met. I know your sister.

  GENESIS

  Yes, of course. She came to one of your birthday parties, didn’t she?

  JIMMY

  Yes! At the Museum of Natural History.

  MRS. SAGE

  As I recall, no one came to pick her up once we were back home.

  GENESIS

  I picked her up.

  MRS. SAGE

  That’s right. Late. I never did meet your parents. You said your dad was out of town for business that weekend.

  GENESIS

  He was a playwright. So he had to go to New York sometimes.

  MRS. SAGE

  A playwright. Hmm.

  JIMMY

  How come Ally hasn’t been at school?

  PETER

  You know the answer to that.

  JIMMY

  I’m sorry.

  (MRS. SAGE clears her throat.)

  MRS. SAGE

  Jimmy, I doubt your homework is finished.

  JIMMY

  You’re right about that! That’s why I came down for brain food.

  (He reaches for another stack of cookies, and GENESIS laughs.)

  JIMMY

  Will you tell her I say hi if you talk to her?

  GENESIS

  I will.

  JIMMY

  It’s not the same without her.

  GENESIS

  I know the feeling.

  MRS. SAGE

  Okay, Jimmy, that’s enough.

  JIMMY

  Peace out!

  (He leaves.)

  MRS. SAGE

  So, where did your sister go?

  PETER

  Mom, can you please just ask her questions about herself and not about everything I’ve already discussed with you?

  GENESIS

  It’s fine.

  MRS. SAGE

  Yes, Peter, it is fine. Does your family go to church?

  GENESIS

  You didn’t discuss that part?

  PETER

  Gen
esis, why don’t you tell her about … the book you’re reading.

  GENESIS

  Um?

  PETER

  Or …

  GENESIS

  Something I…?

  PETER

  Genesis volunteers reading to elderly people.

  MRS. SAGE

  That’s wonderful!

  GENESIS

  Well, I did once because I had to for a class.

  MRS. SAGE

  I see.

  GENESIS

  I don’t do much.

  MRS. SAGE

  I see.

  PETER

  That’s not true. You read. You love the ocean. You love spicy food. And theater.

  GENESIS

  Used to. But, anyway, what good is that?

  PETER

  You are thoughtful. And observant.

  MRS. SAGE

  I hope that translates into a goal of some sort in the future.

  PETER

  You take good care of your mother.

  MRS. SAGE

  Is she ill?

  PETER

  That’s enough. Can this interview please be over?

  MRS. SAGE

  I suppose.

  GENESIS

  We don’t go to church, Mrs. Sage. My grandparents take us sometimes if we’re staying with them, but my parents, or, uh … my mom doesn’t.

  MRS. SAGE

  You are always welcome to join us on Sundays.

  GENESIS

  Thank you, Mrs. Sage.

  PETER

  Okay, Mom, we’ll be upstairs. Come on.

  GENESIS

  MRS. SAGE

  Nice to meet you, again.

  Door stays open.

  (They exit. MRS. SAGE bows her head.)

  (Blackout.)

  DO NOT HESITATE TO CALL WITH ANY QUESTIONS

  I wake up sticky. Sticky from the inside out. My eyes are stuck together with makeup and crust. My mouth is stuck together with dried saliva. My skin is stuck to my sheets. My sheets. My bed. I’m in my bed, and I have no recollection of how I made it back here. I bolt up and look around for my phone, but I haven’t plugged it in. All the contents of my head slide down into my stomach, twisting together until I feel like I’m going to puke.

  Which I do.

  Over and over.

  Then I curl up on the cool tile of the bathroom floor. The pressure in my head swelling.

  I remember the guy. The kisses. Just letting go. I remember sinking. Vodka and lemonade. More kisses. But I can’t remember what I did. How far it went. When I try to think, my brain just pulsates inside my skull. Where is my phone?