1st Place Judge Selection
The glowing green letters on the alarm clock next to me read 2:48 am and I’m pinned down by Max’s weight on my thighs. I am staring down the barrel of a gun pointed at my face. I think it’s a pistol, but I don’t know anything about guns. I’m a fucking pacifist, or something.
I’m stuck between anger and shock and I don’t know what to do. I should scream, I could wake up his family. I should call the cops because this is fucking terrifying. I don’t want to be rude so I can’t do any of these things. I don’t want to make Max upset. What a stupid girl.
My life is supposed to flash before my eyes when I’m facing death, but I can’t think of anything but him. He was new and exciting after the two years I spent supporting David while he tried to make a music career work. But now? It's been nine months since we bought Molly off the hippie outside Toad’s Place and kissed in the middle of the night on the green while I shook from the early September chill underneath my velvet jacket. We’re a long way from the time he spent living in a hotel room where we watched the walls melt during a DMT trip or when he threatened to kill himself in the same hotel room.
My friends joked that this is the year I would die. They never understood that my drug use was solely recreational. I mean, I only went to work high once. Max had the real problem. He was the reason I had to count my pills daily. Things changed for us the day Max announced that ketamine was a better medication for his bipolar disorder than Prozac.
He laughs loudly, talking to himself in nonsense sentences, slurring his words and I realize he is far drunker than I am. There are pill bottles lined up and powder dusting the neat desk and I wonder what cocktail of downers and uppers he's on this time.
His face is floating above me like a maniacal ghost.
I’m stuck here, my wine-drunk reflexes are too slow, there’s a gun in my boyfriend’s hands, and I don’t know if it’s loaded, but does that really matter? I’m three hours from home and it’s far too late to drive. The whole agreement was that I would drive us here and Max would drive us home. I’m so stubborn I’d rather die than drive myself home.
He squeaks when I grab the barrel of the gun in my hand and wrench it away from my face. His noises remind me of a chipmunk, and I giggle, despite myself. Surprised at the sudden movement, Max topples off me and lands hard on the wooden floor. I’m hoping his entire family wakes up and rescues me. I peer over at him and grimace. He scrambles to his feet, gun still in his hand, still laughing.
“Come here,” I say as I pull the blankets up and motion for Max to get into bed. It’s the only thing I can do to stop his erratic behavior and pacify him. Stroking his hair usually helps. I take the gun from him and feel its weight in my hand as he climbs in next to me and curls up against me, with his head in my lap. I put the gun in the nightstand drawer, next to the pill bottles for ancient Adderall prescriptions and expired condoms and close the drawer, hiding his secrets beneath the baseball lamp and its companion little league trophy that sit on top of the nightstand. Max sighs, curling up against me, and burying his face against my ribs.
He’s a child again. I picture him at five, before he was doctor shopping and pretending to have ADHD and sleeping under desks in the school library. Before I was at his bedside in the hospital after an unsuccessful suicide attempt. Long before I felt like I had to take care of everything. I hate children. I never wanted to be a mom.
“Max.”
“What?” He sits up to look at me and his eyes are wide and nearly black in the streetlight coming through his window, dimmed by the juvenile curtains with the dog print. He’s trying not to cry.
“It’s three in the morning, what the hell are you doing?
“I don’t know.”
“Why do you have a gun?”
“Why not?” Max just shrugs.
“It’s dangerous, and maybe you’re not in a good mental state to own a gun? What if you accidentally shot me?” I’m trying to keep my voice even and I’m not sure if it’s to keep from crying or to avoid setting him off again.
“It’s not loaded.”
“Okay. But, this feels, I don’t know. Like you’ve really crossed a line. I don’t know how else to describe it, it’s not okay. I don’t get why you’d think this is funny? I think all of this is becoming an issue, it’s starting to scare me.” I'm shaking from the fear of how he might react, and I realize I’ve never been this assertive with him before.
Max flops back on the bed, pulls a pillow over his face, and screams into it. It sounds more like a whimper than any kind of sound a man would produce. His voice is muffled when he speaks again.
“Can we just talk about this in the morning? I can’t do it right now.” He rolls over, facing the wall and keeps the pillow on his head. End of discussion.
Max is curled up in the fetal position beside me, shaking like one of those tacky toys I used to see all the time at Cracker Barrel. The kind that’s a mechanized raccoon tail in a fake potato chip bag. His inability to remain still is a side effect of the prescription methamphetamine he takes daily. I really wanted one of those toys as a kid, but now that I have the adult human version, it’s lost its appeal.
I’m trying not to cry as I lay back down, as far away from him as physically possible, unable to sleep.
Max’s mother, Angie, is pounding on his bedroom door, North Jersey Italian mom that she is and screaming at us to get our lazy asses up. I pretend to wake up at the same time as Max, but I’ve spent the last few hours staring at the neutral ceiling, trying to decide what I should do.
The sun is shining and even through the curtains I can tell it’s a beautiful day and maybe we can make some progress and work through what happened last night, or I can forget about it and enjoy this weekend away.
“Let’s go to the mall.” Max’s voice breaks through my thoughts.
“You want to go to Buffalo Wild Wings, don’t you?”
“Let’s go.” He’s already out of bed and putting yesterday’s clothes on. I guess he’s not showering. Why bathe when all he’s going to do is drink until he passes out in a chair, my car, or the marble tile floor in the bathroom. It’s business as usual for him.
“I’m going to shower first.”
“Fine, whatever.” He’s already out the bedroom door. I hear Angie try to stop him in the hall outside the bedroom, but he blows her off and thunders down the stairs, on his way out to smoke a cigarette.
I peek my head out of the door, Angie is still there, leaning against the wall, rubbing her temples with her index fingers.
“Good morning,” I say as I step into the hallway.
“It’s almost twelve-thirty.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to sleep so late.” I look down at my bare feet on white carpet.
“You’re not the problem. He is.” Angie jerks her head in the direction of the stairs. I nod.
“Yeah, I’m sorry if we woke you up, I don’t know what’s going on with him lately.” I move toward the bathroom and turn to Angie before closing the door, intending to excuse myself, but she speaks again before I can say anything.
“He’s a spoiled brat. Good luck with that.” We maintain eye contact for a few seconds too long before I smile slightly, duck my head, and open the bathroom door. I turn the shower on and distract myself by going through all of Angie’s skincare products in the bathroom closet.
“Can you stop fucking tapping on the table?” Max is glaring at me and his expression is demonic in this garish neon light. He’s irritated and I can feel his feet kicking the table because he can’t stop moving, not even for a second. I’m irritated by him and the football game on the six-foot screen behind his head keeps stealing my attention.
“I’m not tapping. My finger keeps sticking to the table. It probably hasn’t been cleaned since this place opened in 1997.” I’m pretty sure every Buffalo Wild Wings in America opened in 1997. Being in here feels like being trapped in late 90s South Florida, without the gator tail appetizers.
He’s on his tenth cocktail and I’m only on number two. I guess he’s winning. I’ve been dreading checking the time, but I guess we’ve been here for a few hours. I glance at my watch, it’s nearly six-thirty. Max has excused himself to the bathroom no less than six times and I’m struggling to maintain my patience.
“Are we going to talk about last night, or why you get so agitated whenever we go to your parents’ house?”
“No.”
“Why not? This is important, talk to me. What’s going on with them?”
“I just hate being there. There’s nothing else going on. They’re shitty parents. What time is it?”
“Half after six, I think.” I look at my watch to confirm, even though only thirty seconds have passed. Being near him is torture, but I still want to try.
“We should leave.” Max doesn’t wait for a response. He just gets up and moves towards the bar to close out, leaving me sitting at the sticky table. I can’t decide if I’m more disgusted by the bar table or myself and I feel like I should be pushing harder to resolve this.
He's snoring before I even hit the turnpike, the collar of his Members Only jacket pulled up to his ears. He’s shutting out the whole world, including me. I shouldn’t have to do this, I shouldn’t feel responsible for another person, I shouldn’t be taking care of this grown man like he’s incapable of caring for himself. It shouldn’t be my problem if he ends up dead.
The only cool thing about this drive back from Newark to New Haven is that I’m driving east. And driving east feels so much more wholesome than driving west. West is full of promise and adventure, but east is just going home. I’m feeling morose and trying to envelope myself in the feeling by playing a Bright Eyes album I loved as a teenager. There are metaphors about mirrors, the singer being haunted by the ghost of a woman, and lines about stars hanging in the sky.
Instinctively I look up, expecting the familiar stretch of black velvet sky, dotted with the silver sparkle of distant stars, but there’s a blood moon tonight and it’s low in the sky and it fills up most of my windshield. It’s so hypnotizing I may crash this car and kill us both. Max and I will die together in a fiery wreck on the side of I-95, traumatizing the perfect lives in Fairfield County with our deviance from the norm.
“Max, wake up. Look at this.” Instead of driving us off a bridge to earn our own commemorative plaque, I try to shake Max awake to show him this moon. I foolishly think he’ll be impressed by this.
“I don’t care. Leave me alone. Let me sleep.” He shrugs my hand off his shoulder.
“I promise it’s worth it, please just look at the moon. It will make everything okay.”
I’m desperate for this, please just let me have this. It could turn everything around and we will be better people. The moon holds that kind of power.
“Lis, I don’t fucking care about the moon. I’m so sick. I want to sleep. Just shut up, okay?” He turns his body even further away from me. His face is gone as he presses himself against the passenger door and all I can see of him is his rounded back and his curly hair.
I just keep staring at the moon and driving and hoping for a resolution that’s still vague in my mind. I’m having a hard time breathing so I roll my window down to breathe in the humid summer air and I’m crushed with the scent of lilacs from somewhere off the highway.
Max suddenly sits upright, and the movement momentarily distracts me from the road. He slams his hand on the power button of the stereo and the sudden silence is disorienting.
“I need to piss. Pull over at the next rest stop,” he says. He rubs his eyes with his palms and groans.
“We’re so close to home. Can’t you wait?”
“No. Just fucking stop. Jesus Christ, why are you so difficult?”
I sigh as I signal to pull into this too-bright highway oasis. Fast food and disgusting bathrooms and exhausted tourists. I hate these places. I shove the car into park and leave it running.
Without a word, Max throws open the door and sprints toward the glass doors of the rest stop. I watch him run away from me and part of me hopes he runs right into them. He left the car door wide open. I guess he really couldn’t wait.
I lean out the window and have a staring contest with the moon. I imagine that I look insane to anyone who walks by, but the fog in my mind clears and I have a plan. I turn the stereo on again some warbling voice fills up the car again.
I reach over to the passenger door and pull it closed. I might be a terrible person, but it feels thrilling to do something like this for myself.
My hands are shaking as I shift my car into reverse and back out of this parking space slowly, my eyes on those glass doors. I stop for a moment, car in reverse and roll down the passenger window. Max left his phone sitting on the seat. I pick it up and throw it out the window onto the asphalt, but I can’t hear the sound it makes. I glance down and shift it into drive. Before I have time to rethink my actions, my foot is off the brake and on the gas pedal. I’m smiling as I drive eighty-five miles an hour, following the moon back home.
I imagine the speck of Max running into the space my car occupied a few minutes ago. I imagine him being confused and angry as he looks down at his phone and I smile, turning the music up as loud as I can.
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