Page 3 of Black Box

‘To record a song.’

‘For your thesis or to get rich and famous?’

‘Both and neither.’

Finally, she looks up and in that one second I feel it again. This intense déjà vu.

‘Don’t tell me you’re doing it for artistic purposes?’

I chuckle as I reach for my cappuccino. ‘Do I look like the kind of guy who would do something for artistic purposes?’

‘Are you deliberately trying to confuse me?’

‘Excuse me?’

She shakes her head and looks away from me, toward the snow-covered foliage behind the café. Resting her hands on the table again, she closes her eyes and takes a slow breath.

There it is.

That’s how I know her.

No fucking way. I have to be imagining this.

My chest constricts with the anger I’ve been unable to shake free of for the past three years. Gritting my teeth against the force of the memories, I try to keep myself from wishing it’s her. If this is her, it doesn’t look like she’s coping well.

It can’t be her. That would be way too much of a coincidence.

She opens her eyes and reaches for the purse she hung on the back of her chair. She plunges her delicate, tattooed hand inside and comes up with a prescription bottle of pills. Her hands are still trembling as she opens the bottle and shakes out one blue capsule.

She holds the capsule between her thumb and forefinger and holds it up for me to see. ‘I’m bipolar. Is that sexy?’ She pops the pill into her mouth and guzzles it down with some iced coffee. ‘Why do you look like you just saw a ghost? Have you never heard someone admit to being mentally ill?’

‘You remind me of someone I once knew . . . very briefly.’

I push my cappuccino aside and I can’t even imagine eating the bagel now. I know this girl isn’t her, but I’ve lost my appetite. That’s the way these things go. Once you dredge up the memories you’ve spent years trying to bury, suddenly they’re everywhere. There are two people I’ve been trying to put out of my mind for years: the first is Jordan and the second is her. Though I’ve failed miserably on both counts. Sometimes I wish I never listened to Harlow about going to L.A.

I began writing this song three years ago and worked on it every day for two years, until I gave up on it last year. It will never be perfect. There’s something missing; something I’ll probably never find, which is why I allowed Harlow to set up the meeting with Kane Bentley in L.A. to listen to the demo. It’s time to put this song, and the memories, and the longing to rest – if that’s even possible.

Harlow met Kane at a charity event. Without my consent, she used her irresistible charm and wit – and maybe the promise of some social media seminars – to get me what may be the most important meeting of my career. Kane is a producer who’s worked with everyone from Michael Jackson to Lady Gaga. I have exactly four days to record and edit the demo before my meeting with Kane on Saturday. Every day the flights are delayed is one less day I have to record.

So after one year of avoiding certain streets, certain songs, certain people, last week I dug up the song from the archives of my laptop. I dusted off the acoustic-electric guitar that I put in storage because it reminded me too much of her. Then I warmed up my flattened penny and I haven’t slept much since then. That’s the way these things go.

‘You don’t remind me of anyone,’ she says, standing from her chair. She begins scratching her head as she looks around the café. ‘Where’s the restroom?’

She scoops up her purse then disappears through a marked door in the corridor at the bottom of the steps leading to the patio enclosure. I pull my phone out of my pocket and see I have another text from Harlow and one from Bethany: a girl I slept with a couple of days ago, after Aidan’s New Year’s Eve party. I hardly know Aidan, though we shared a dorm last year before I moved off campus. Harlow is the only person who really knows me and not even she knows everything about me. A consequence of losing someone close to you is that you also lose a piece of yourself. And you never really know when it’s safe to give away another piece.

I wait at least fifteen minutes, while carrying on a text conversation with Harlow, before I decide to check on Mikki. I make my way to the restroom door and listen for a few seconds. Hearing nothing, I knock three times.

The knocking on the door doesn’t startle me. I sit on the toilet with my panties chained around my ankles, staring at the cream-colored walls. I’ve been in here a while, and the meth is finally kicking in; my heart is racing and my fingertips are starting to get a little cold and numb. I’m not breathing fast enough to keep up with my heart. That’s okay. I like the numbness.

Grabbing my purse off the sink, I pull a large, sharpened safety pin out of an inner pocket. I gave this safety pin a name because he’s my trusty little friend who I knew I could count on to make it through airport security. I call him Casper. I unclasp the safety pin and stare at the sharp point, the way it glimmers in the awful bathroom lighting. I press the point against the fair skin at the top of my thigh, almost where it meets my hip, then I drag it lightly across my skin. It stings a little, leaving a thin pink line that fills me with relief and revulsion. I dig the pin deeper into my skin and drag it across again, over the same pink line, applying more pressure this time. My stomach clenches inside me until I pull the pin away from my skin and let out a deep breath. Tiny red droplets of fresh blood bubble up from the scratch. I close my eye

s as I cross my arms over my belly and double over.

The knocking has stopped. Hopefully, Crush has realized that he should just grab his fucking bagel and leave me, and my craziness, far behind.

Another knock. ‘Miss, are you all right in there?’

Fuck. Crush has enlisted the help of the nerd behind the counter. I quickly get dressed and stuff the open safety pin into the pocket of my skinny jeans. Maybe it will prick me while I’m walking around looking for a place to sleep tonight. Stupid storm. What kind of cheap motel room am I going to get with $70 in my bank account?

I had to buy two plane tickets for this trip and both of those were canceled today. One of those flights has an overnight layover in Chicago and the other – the flight I was really going to take – was a direct flight that was supposed to land at LAX in five hours. The flight with the layover isn’t supposed to land until 2:00 p.m. tomorrow. But now that all flights are canceled, my parents and Meaghan and Rina are going to start looking for me. Rina will find my letter. I can’t wander the streets of Boston. It won’t take long for the cops to spot a girl with black hair, tattoos on her fingers, and a scar running from the corner of her mouth to the point of her chin. I have to hole up somewhere until this storm passes.

A key slides into the lock and the bathroom door opens just as I’m drying my hands on a paper towel. ‘Can’t a girl take a piss in private?’ I say, pushing past the nerd.

I walk right past Crush, ignoring him when he calls out to me. ‘Where are you going?’

I want to shout back, I need a cigarette or I may become homicidal! Pushing through the door, a flurry of icy wind blasts me in the face. I gasp and curse at the same time. ‘Fucking shit!’

Crush appears behind me at the threshold looking a bit pissed off. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

‘What does it look like I’m doing?’ I reach for the pack of cigarettes in my coat pocket, but my pocket is missing and my wool coat doesn’t feel like wool.

I’m not wearing my coat.

‘Get in here before you freeze to death.’

My hands tremble as I stuff them into my jeans pockets in an attempt to cover up my moment of meth-induced mania. I step back inside, making sure not to touch him as he stands like a fucking stone column in the middle of the threshold. I can feel the embarrassment curling my shoulders as I attempt to retreat into myself. Why am I here with a complete stranger? And why is this stranger so fucking concerned with my safety? Offering me a cab ride and some breakfast, knocking on bathroom doors, chasing me out of coffee shops.

‘What are you, some fucking superhero for freaks?’ I mutter as he takes the seat across from me at the table.

‘Super-freak?’

I smile reluctantly at this joke, but the moment he smiles back I feel sick to my stomach. I take a deep breath as a wave of regret overcomes me and, the guilt comes. Whenever I’m high around friends or family, there’s always a measure of guilt for not being totally present. But I don’t know this guy. Why should I even care if he thinks I’m a bit weird or spacey?

Because, for some weird reason, he seems to care about me.

‘That will be your nickname.’ I reach for the discarded muffin top and break off a piece. ‘Super-freak.’

He smiles, probably thinking I’m going to put the muffin in my mouth. ‘Ah, hypocrisy flourishes in the face of hunger.’

I break up the muffin and watch it crumble from my fingertips onto the plate. ‘I’m not eating it. I’m merely destroying it and everything it stands for.’

‘What does the muffin stand for?’

‘Conformity and exclusion. If you’re not the best or the prettiest – or the tastiest – then you’re worthless. That’s what the muffin top stands for.’

‘God,’ he whispers. ‘Can you be any more charming?’

‘Maybe if I had a drink or two in me.’

‘It’s ten o’clock in the morning.’

‘Yeah, and it’s really fucking cold. So cold we may all be frozen to death by tomorrow morning. Do you want to spend the last day of your life worrying about the appropriate time to start drinking? Cause I’m pretty sure the appropriate time was about one hour ago when they canceled all the flights.’

He nods as he stands from the chair and begins to put on his coat. ‘You make a good case. I will not be filing an appeal this time.’

I pull on my black wool coat and he leaves some cash on the table, then we grab our luggage and head for the door. Yanking the drawstrings on my hoodie as tight as I can, I brace myself for the inevitable blast of cold air. Crush exits ahead of me, presumably to absorb the brunt of the blast.

‘I know a place just around the corner from here on Mass,’ he shouts over the whoosh of the wind. ‘You think you can make it? Looks to be at least four inches of snow on this pavement.’

‘I’ll let you know if I feel a bout of death coming on.’

We keep our heads down as we drag our suitcases down Columbus Avenue through the snow; or, at least, I attempt to. It takes about fifteen seconds of this for me to regret every single piece of clothing I packed in this suitcase in my grand scheme to appear normal. We’re halfway down the block when the chest pains begin.

‘Wait,’ I wheeze, clutching my chest as I try to catch my breath.

‘Do you have asthma?’

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