angels

Her hands were gripping the steering wheel of her Mercedes. Her manicured nails had chips in them, and her knuckles were red from when she punched her fridge the other day in a rage about her Dad. Her arms, long and tanned, had scratches on them, either from her picking up her cat too roughly, or from men. She hasn’t told me much about the boys she’s been seeing, but from knowing her type, I can only guess they’re assholes.

Her sunshine blonde hair was pulled into a high ponytail with a bright pink scrunchie. Her lower lip wobbles as she stares silently out into the road.

“Hey,” I touch her arm. “We’ve got this.”

“I really hope that I’m like, doing the right thing. I mean, Dad has been trying to get me into one of these for years, maybe he’s right, I dunno. I just wanna feel normal. I can’t be myself anymore. I just wish I could leave my body for a few weeks. I hate being me.” her valley girl accent, her words slurred. I love her voice.

Her dad, a fat bald rich Irishman, has been trying to get her institutionalized since she turned 18. His eyelashes and eyebrows were so blonde that it looked like he had no hair on his face, so Sarah and I would always joke that he was a naked mole rat.

I remember watching him on Oprah in Sarah’s LA apartment, the one with the giant pink leopard statue she spent way too much money on for me to think about, “My daughter has let fame get to her head. She routinely abuses drugs and has multiple DUIs. Her Mother and I have been trying to get her help for years, and she refuses. We only hope she doesn’t hurt anybody as she-”

“Liar!” Sarah had screamed at the TV. She threw the remote at her Dad’s head, but it bounced off the screen and scared the cat, and I saw a blur of white fur as she darted under the couch. “Mom has cancer and doesn’t speak to you, asshole! By the way, you’re fat and your accent makes you sound gay!”

I had to make her chamomile tea and give her a Xanax for her to calm down. I placed it under her soft tongue for it to dissolve. She eventually fell asleep in my arms as an episode of Sex and the City played in the background. She was so cold and shaky. 

“We should be almost there, Abby, hello!” she took a hand off the steering wheel to wave it in my face. “GPS says five minutes. God, I’m nervous. Could you hand me a cigarette? There’s a new pack in my purse. I smoked a whole pack last night, it was crazy, I was so anxious.”

“No.”

Normally, I would comply with whatever she said. If she would’ve asked me to pass her a meth pipe, God knows I probably would’ve. Not because I wanted anything bad to happen to her, I loved her more than anything in this world and I know for a fact I would kill myself if I lost her, but because she was so hard to say no to. Despite everything, she still had a childlike essence, and saying no to her felt like I was slapping that little girl in the face and taking her teddy bear away. Seeing her big pond blue eyes fill with tears was always like a stab. 

“Abby!” she yelled indignantly, almost losing control and swerving to the right. Ugh, I know I should’ve been the one to drive us. “Don’t be a dick!”

“I’m not. It’s just that I don’t think they’re gonna let us smoke in there, so we should start practicing.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled. I hate myself.” her lower lip began to wobble again, so I started to stroke her arm again to calm her. 

Sarah would’ve never agreed to come to one of these places if I hadn’t told her I was going. Unlike Sarah, I didn’t have any parents bugging me to get sober or whatever. My dad died when I was eight and my Mom and I haven’t spoken in years. Last I heard from a cousin was that she was living in Florida and had a boyfriend who occasionally beat her. Poor Mama. 

But, two weeks ago, I knew I had to get help. I was lying on top of one of my boyfriends, Lucas Reeves. Yeah, another washed up child star, takes one to know one I guess. Both of us were naked and hot, way too hot. When I woke up, it felt like I had just made love to a demon. My skin was boiling, like if I didn’t do something fast, I’d catch flame, quicker than if someone threw gasoline on me. It was like I had a fever, but the fever was from hell and I was gonna die. 

I was on day four of my bender. Empty bottles of tequila, used condoms and cigarette butts littered the floor of Lucas’ bedroom. I suddenly felt so dirty, like this was a shitty movie scene and I was watching myself. I suddenly vomited all over Lucas’ chest, and it felt like an exorcism. Like my body was purging all the bad and evil from my body all onto him. The vomit was hot pink and sparkly, like a shade of Sarah’s lipgloss. 

Lucas woke up with a start and started screaming at me. He called me a bitch and told me to get the hell out of his apartment or whatever. I hurriedly put my clothes back on and nearly tripped over a bottle, but I’d never felt so alive. But I knew I needed help. 

I found this place on Google. Shady Pines Rehab and Mental Health Facility. I think that’s what it’s called. Maybe it’s Shady Birch. It just seemed legit, not like those places Sarah’s Dad has tried to send her to. I told her I was gonna go, and she hugged me so tightly I couldn’t breathe for a second and told me that if it was okay, that she was gonna come with me, that she could never leave me. 

“Hey, look, it’s here.”

From what I can remember, the building looked sort of like a mall, big and sprawling with lots of windows, but I couldn’t see anything inside. The grass was fake, bright green and had weirdly shaped hedges placed around the lawn. 

The tires crunched under the gravel. Sarah turned into the parking lot. Suddenly my heart was hammering and I felt nauseous. 

She turned the Mercedes off. She jiggled her car keys in her hands and I knew she wanted a cigarette so badly. 

We got out of the car together, arms linked. The smell of artificial grass made me more nauseous. I could almost taste the cigarette that Sarah wanted. 

We walked through the automatic glass doors and I swung my head around, looking everywhere. The lights were too bright, casting sharp, sterile shadows that felt too clean, too calculated. The brown leather sofas were immaculate, but the people sitting on them looked anything but—hollow-eyed, their red-rimmed gazes distant. I noticed none of them had shoes on. The colour of the wall was a dull blue, like the colour of a bruise before it faded. On the huge front desk in the middle was the name of the facility and a Bible verse that my eyes betrayed me by reading. 

Do not love the world or anything in the world, 1 John 2:15

What an odd fucking quote to put in a rehab centre. 

“How can I help you?” the lady at the front desk asked. She had horn-rimmed glasses and a mole above her lip. Her hair was greasy and tucked behind her ears. She was older, around my Mom’s age, with a nose like hers, long and crooked. She was, by all accounts, ugly. 

Her gaze settled on us and her mouth formed a tiny o. 

Sarah walked up to the desk confidently and started drumming her nails against what I assumed was its marble surface. Her pink Juicy Couture tracksuit was stained at the left hip, with something yellow and crusted. Vomit, maybe? 

“My friend found this place on Google and we wanna like, stay here, I guess? But please don’t trap us here. I know this one girl, Amanda, and she got trapped at a place like this and fuck that. We just wanna stay here for a few weeks.”

“You’re Sarah Barry, right?” the receptionist chirped. The sad heads sitting on the couches looked up. I wanted to jump over the desk and strangle her. “I loved you in that movie with Dustin Hoffman! You were so cute! How old were you again?”

“I was nine.” Sarah answered, her jaw twitching.

The receptionist’s smile faltered for a second. She jabbed a key into the computer, the clicking of the keys filling the silence. Then she looked at me, her eyes flickering like she was trying to place me.

“You... I’ve seen you before. God, where...” she trailed off, still typing.

I expected that reaction. Everybody knows Sarah, not a lot of people know me. I’m the brunette, not the blonde. I’ve never had the level of fame that Sarah had. I was on a Disney Channel show as a kid that not a lot of people know about, and then a few movies when I was younger, one of them was this Christmas movie with Lindsay Lohan that got a lot of attention at the time. It was on that set where I met Sarah. She played my sister in the movie. 

However, I truly met her on a red carpet for the Nickelodeon Teen’s Choice Awards. I was wearing a tight blue dress that I was horrified made me look fat. This was back when Mom was around. She had told the stylist to put my hair in a bun so that I would look more serious, and not to accessorize me much. I just had a blue heart pendant resting in that hollow space between my collarbones to match my dress. I had no idea why Mom wanted me to look serious for a fucking Nickelodeon event, but my stylist complied and Mom and I had a screaming match about it where she slapped me across the face and told me that I had everything she ever wanted and that I was an ungrateful brat, blah blah. 

I remember I was staring at Hillary Duff’s legs in her orange dress when Sarah came and stood by me. Sarah was always nice to me on set but didn’t grow close, we were always too exhausted and anxious to ever have a real conversation with each other. She linked her arm in mine and whispered in my ear, her lips brushing against my earlobe, you’re the prettiest girl here. I’m so jealous. But you’re too pretty to hate. Cameras flashed and like Pavlovian dogs, we grinned cheekily at the cameras.

I knew that love didn’t exist in our world, it wasn’t allowed, like cannibalism. Not from our parents, or the directors, or the agents or the paparazzi with their Cyclops camera eyes. But in that moment, with her space buns, lime green tube top and denim mini skirt, Sarah looked like a fallen angel that smelled like bubblegum. I had stopped praying years ago, after Dad died, but when I did pray, I always prayed for love. Either for someone to love, or for someone to love me, it didn’t matter. But I finally had it. 

Suddenly, a doctor with a long white coat stepped into the waiting room. Seems like we got priority over all the normies on the couches. The doctor was a woman, with broad man shoulders and tiny brown eyes. 

“Girls, why don’t you come this way? Let’s have a chat.” she smiled, but it looked plastic. Nervously, Sarah and I walked towards her. The doctor’s heels clacked on the floor. It was the only noise I could hear, everything else was eerily silent.

“Listen,” I said, jogging up to meet her stride, she was walking so fast. “Are you a good doctor? Like, are you kind? Because my friend, she really needs someone kind. Someone to love her.” 

I realized how stupid I sounded so I closed my mouth. The doctor looked at me through the corner of her eye and smiled. We walked into a room that had two hospital beds, a fat, expressionless nurse sitting on a stool, and posters about sobriety, all featuring a sunny, sterile scene. Hospital equipment, stethoscopes, a blood pressure machine. 

“I’ve been doing this for fifteen years.” she had a Southern drawl. “You girls need serious help from what I’ve heard, and our clinic can provide that for you.”

She gestured towards the two hospital beds. I guess she expected Sarah and I to sit on the opposite beds, but we sat next to each other on the bed beside the door. The paper sheet crinkled beneath me. A clock was poised on the wall. The ticking sounded like someone was clucking their tongue at us over and over again. 

The doctor moved closer, her eyes small and beady, like a bird’s eyes, cold, unblinking. Down the hall, a scream sliced through the air, jagged and raw.

I’m so fucking stupid. 

“I just realized, I forgot something in the car.” I laughed nervously. 

“That doesn’t matter right now,” the doctor said, her voice flat as the nurse fastened the blood pressure cuff around Sarah’s arm. Sarah tensed, pulling away, but the nurse just gripped her arm, pulling her closer.

“No, it’s important, I really did forget something. My health card! I forgot it. I have no ID on me whatsoever.”

The doctor was growing impatient. She narrowed her eyes on me. “Like I said, it’s fine.”

Sarah began to understand what was happening. Everything moved fast.

She ripped the blood pressure machine off her arm so violently it knocked the whole machine to the ground. The nurse shouted something out. The doctor then moved to the door, blocking it from us. Her eyes were on fire, just like how my body was. 

“You better move.” I growled.

“Just calm down,” her voice was calm and steady, but her eyes weren’t. “Just sit back down on the bed, let’s finish the examination.”

“Fuck this!” Sarah screamed. With a flurry of pink, she shoved the doctor over, and I pushed the door open. We ran through the automatic doors, ignoring the receptionists’ cries for security. Sarah’s black Mercedes was waiting for us like a chariot in the parking lot. We got in quickly and locked the doors. 

Sarah burst into tears. “We need to move to Mexico!”

“Aren’t you on a no-fly list because you tried to bring coke into LAX?”

“You’re right, okay, why don’t we dye our hair and move to some small, shitty town in the Midwest? We’re never gonna be normal…” she was panting. If I didn’t do something quick, she’d start hyperventilating, and I didn’t have any Xanax on me. 

“Here, look.” I grabbed her purse from the dash. I zipped it open. It’s a Louis Vuitton, but Sarah dragged it around everywhere so now the purple leather has lines on it like a palm. I fished out her favourite lipgloss and opened it, the pop noise bringing her out of her stupor. 

I told her to face me, and she turned her tear-streaked face to mine. I swiped the lipgloss across her plump bottom lip and traced the sharp curves of her cupid's bow. She seemed to relax a bit. I just wanted her to start the car, but I knew if I asked outright, she’d freak out, thinking someone had followed us. I didn’t want her driving into a tree.

“We’re gonna go home.” I smiled at her half-heartedly, but for some reason, that set her off.

“Did you see that stupid Bible verse? I don’t wanna be alone and unloved!” she sobbed. “I’m tired of people hating me, I’m cold!” when she got in these moods, nothing she said made sense. She was like a toddler, scared and small. 

Suddenly, cars pulled up all around us. Black and sleek, and men jumped out of them, frenzied and fast like rabbits. 

“Oh god…the paps…” she was sobbing so hard her breathing was unnatural. A snot bubble formed in her left nostril. 

Flashing lights were everywhere. Even though our windows were down, I could hear them hollering at us. A couple of them knocked on our windows. I heard my name, I heard Sarah screamed over and over again. 

I pulled my window down a bit, nearly blinded by the flashing lights. Even though I was as sober as a stone, I felt dizzy and drunk. “Fuck off you animals! Can’t you see she’s hurt?”

Abigail! Tell us about Sarah, is she okay? Is she checking into rehab? Is she drunk? Sarah, over here! 

I quickly pulled my window back up, my finger shaking and nearly slipping off the button.

“The coke wasn’t mine!” Sarah sobbed to nobody in particular. “It was Andrew’s, I don’t touch that shit!”

I could see the headlines already. The photos they would take, me mid-scream, howling, Sarah’s face red and puffy from crying, her snot bubbles. A picture is worth a thousand words, as they say. 

“It’s okay angel…it’s okay,” I pulled her close to me and she cried harder. I pushed her hair off her sweaty forehead and kissed her gently there, like how a mother would. “Let’s go home.”

As Sarah groped around her pockets for her keys, I heard my Mom’s voice in my head. You ungrateful brat! You have everything I’ve ever wanted! Fuck, what I wouldn’t do for a drink.