My Secret Family

Lift The Rag

Sophie

44 kg and falling

The afternoon lecture dragged on into the early evening and now the first glimmer of starlight peeked at us from tangerine clouds.

Ana, Mia, and I walked out of a very long and brain-numbing Statistics lecture, a requirement to complete our first semester.

Sue hadn't come to our breakfast study session and I felt a lingering sensation in my stomach that something was wrong. She was not answering her texts and she had missed English Lit, her favorite class.

She had once come to English Lit in her pink pjs and a blanket, taking the 45 minute bus trip despite having the flu, putting up with everyone's teasing along the way. Then after trying the dorms and not fitting in, she moved into her own apartment to be closer to class. Nothing could keep her away. English Lit, writing, was her life. If she wasn't in class then something had happened.

"What do we know about Sue, anyway?" I asked my friends, because despite being her friend since school she remained a mystery.

"That girl is so weird, " Mia replied, "she's always wrapped in her own enigma. I think she does it on purpose."

"I hate weak people, " Ana said, "we should consider telling her to leave our group."

We walked down the corridor to the lecture and when a strange number phoned I just knew what it would be about. I paused for a few seconds to prepare my response.

"Hello?"

A shaky man's voice answered, "Hi, this is Peter Webber, Sue's dad. Is that Sophie?"

"Where is she?"

"Please hurry, she'll be at home.

"Come on," I yelled at Ana and Mia, and ran off to the car.

Ana, dressed in her sixties inspired outfit of white gloves, jacket, and thigh-high boots, leaned against the wall.

"Wait, take a photo first, the light here is amazing."

"Later, Christ, Ana. " I said, and she reluctantly walked after us, making a point of striding slowly down the catwalk of Alameda College.

We rushed up to the apartment after an agonizing argument with the caretaker to let us in and found Sue in her room, barely breathing, but alive, her stockings wrapped around her neck and looped around the handle of the white-painted cupboard, her tiny frame slouched against the cupboard door, her face bright blue, like she had covered it in paint.

"Better call an ambulance, " Mia said.

"No time, " I said, fumbling to unknot the silk stocking from her neck. The fabric pulled deep into the folds of Sue's loose skin. I felt the faintest hint of breath against my hand. "We need to get her to the hospital fast.

I unwrapped the stocking and we carried her to the car, Ana pretending to help by holding her hand under Sue's back, slowing us down when she pretended her new white boots had some speck of mud and had to wipe it off. I ignored her and Mia and I maneuvered Sue into the back seat of my car. I started the engine and raced to the exit of the parking lot.

"Does anyone have her mom's number?"

"Her dad will phone, " Mia said, and I wondered if that was true.

A reversing car hooted at me when I exited the parking lot and when I braked hard to avoid it I heard something give way, a clunk where there should have been a squeak of tired brakes. The brakes were hard to control, I had to pump them, but they worked. I swore I saw another car follow us out of the parking lot, but it may have just been my nerves.

"Sue, Sue, wake up, Sue, " Ana said in a singsong voice, slapping Sue gently in the face with her gloved hands.

I missed the turn off to the hospital and turned up Quarry Road.

"Left! Left!" Mia shouted.

I drove on, looking for a place to turn around. The bright lights of another car flared up directly in front of us, clearly in the wrong lane. I swerved out the way and it sped off down the road.

"Where are we? For fuck sakes!"

"You fucking idiot, " Ana yelled, "you're going the wrong way, turn around!" I caught sight of her in the rear-view mirror, looking down at Sue's blue skin with a look of disgust on her face.

"Turn around!" Mia shouted, reaching over me and pointing at a picnic area ahead. There were bruises on her hand above her knuckles. Bite marks. "Colma Mercy is next to Lucky's, " she said.

I pulled in to the picnic area and did a u-turn, missing it on the first go because of the narrow road and because I was panicking, and because the brakes were not working properly.

I drove fast down the steep hill and I this time I felt the brakes give way completely, I pumped them madly to keep the car from running out of control, the car picking up speed no matter what I did. As we rolled down to the intersection I knew we could not stop. Mia shouted, "Look..." and that's when the other car, the same one that had nearly hit us on the hill, smashed into us. The last thing I saw in the fraction of a second before my head slammed into the air-bag was the driver's dark glasses and baseball cap. My head caught the edge of the plastic flap that exploded from the steering wheel as the air-bag deployed.

Who wears dark glasses at night? I thought before passing out.

*

Lift the rag. My mind played with the words scrawled into the mirror at Colma Community. The words surfaced, dived down. Rag the lift. No. Something else. The rag lift. A left girth. A theft girl. Maybe, but who would know about that particular incident in Spain with the jewelry and the sneakers, getting caught by the guard and kept in a room for two days until one of my lovers had scraped together enough money to pay off the policeman holding me? I had told no one.

The fat girl.

Yes, that was it. Lift the rag. The fat girl. The words rolled over and over each other in my mind. One of the little girls had written it in a way only I would see it. But that shade of lipstick reminded me of Cat, the ballet teacher.