Exit Wounds

09 | the girl i left behind

N I N E

LOS ANGELES, CA

          When I wake up the following morning, I can't help but feel like I've been trampled by a group of elephants.

          The distant sound of banging, like what you hear when there's a construction site nearby—even though we're staying right by the sea and the relaxing background noise from the waves crashing against the shore—doesn't help me feel any better, and I'm once again reminded why I shouldn't have come here. At least in New York I have an apartment way up in a tall building, where people mind their business and aren't overly loud, so not even the blaring honks of the traffic bother me too much.

          My migraine pounded against the front part of my skull like a sledgehammer as I slowly prop myself up on my elbows, using muscles that aren't nearly as strong as I need them to be. The room spins around me, even while I'm lying down, and I'm sweating like a pig, my body having grown a stranger to hot, humid weather, and the morning sun is so blinding I decide against trying to keep my eyes open.

          The banging noises only get louder and, while I'm not naive enough to put it past Sadie to be this loud out of spite after I embarrassed us both last night, I know it's coming from outside the house. Everything is locked—I made sure of it, even during my drunken haze, even though I couldn't even walk straight—which might explain why it's so hot in this bedroom; not a single gust of wind, the sliver of a breeze can enter. In New York, the only city in the world I can allow myself to love, I wouldn't be having this issue.

          Giving up on sitting upright on the bed, I roll to the side to lie on my back, happy to have a queen sized mattress all at my disposal. It does nothing to make me feel better, a classic sign of a crippling hangover that is likely to last all day. I'm no stranger to those, after years and years of destroying my body under the guise of chasing numbness, but I'm tired. The warmth and the buzz are only fun and comforting at first; once you start getting used to it, once you start building up a tolerance, there's no going back.

          I'm so hot, even when I kick away my covers, that everything feels like a fever dream, including the voice echoing my name. No, not my name—Rebecca.

          There's this moment in time I'm suspended in the air, suspended between realities, and I almost accept the hand my past reaches out towards me. I almost do that, giving into the temptation of fooling myself into believing things will ever go back to how they used to be, with me living in blissful ignorance, but I force myself to draw back my hand. I force myself to turn around, turn my back on the girl I left behind.

          "Rebecca!" the voice calls, exasperated, and I groan, pressing the heels of my hands against my closed lids. I can't make it go away by ignoring it or pretending to be dead—it didn't work the first time, clearly, and I've ended up right back where I started—and I know I'll have to get up eventually, but I don't want to. It doesn't matter what I want or what I don't, after all, and it's about time I get that into my thick skull. "Rebecca, I've been standing outside for ten minutes. The least you can do is open the door."

          I've never asked her to come here, so I really can't care any less about Michelle standing outside my front door—it's not mine in theory, but still—under the scorching sun of late spring while she treats it like her own personal hell. She's here because she wants to be, whatever her reasoning is, and there's no way of convincing her to do something she doesn't want to do. Though I'm aware I can't send her away or call the police on her, both because I don't trust them and because she can argue she's hanging out at the beach, it doesn't mean I need to welcome her inside.