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user195739573: when was the last time u cried?
user632723849: This morning.
user195739573: y ?
user632723849: I had a bad dream
user195739573: wat happened.?
user632723849: I was driving in my neighborhood but it wasn't my car, it was a bulky SUV, a car I'd never be able to drive, I was turning around the block when this kid ran in front of the car and I didn't have enough time to stop. I ran over him and I didn't know what to do and I was paralyzed I couldn't stop so I kept driving. I just kept going and went all the way on the highway and then across the state and then across the country but I had this terrible feeling like I wanted to cry and I couldn't and I wanted to crash the car and die but I couldn't.
user195739573: that's sad... :( poor kid
user632723849: When's the last time you cried?
user195739573: never.
user632723849: Really. You've never cried? Certainly you cried as a baby.
user195739573: nope. my mom said not once.
user632723849: I bet I could make you cry.
user195739573: wanna try?
user632723849: Yeah. When/where should we meet up?
user195739573: alibi. 10pm thurs
user632723849: See you then. Bring tissues.
*
Jane sat at the end of the bar, next to the pictures of people who left without paying plastered up on the black walls. Jane ran her finger over the faces of the guilty men, their features obfuscated and grainy thanks to the shitty security cameras outside. Jane didn't know what user632723849 looked like, but she loved talking to people in chatrooms of local people for the possibility of meeting up, which rarely happened. Jane once fell in e-love with a boy and they planned to meet at this very bar. She had been sitting in the same seat—it was her signature seat—and a boy entered, donning a terrible bowl cut and trembling from anxiety. They locked eyes, and he turned around and ran out. Jane sighed and the bartender, Mark, laughed.
Luckily, that was not the case this time. Sipping her gin and tonic, Jane lifted her eyes and there he was: He was lanky, probably ten years older than her, and his eyes communicated a confidence that he knew who she was. He approached her and held out his hand.
"Frank," he said. Frank ordered Jameson on the rocks. Jane chuckled.
Frank, smiling: "Is that funny to you?"
Jane, also smiling, thinking about all of her exes whose go-to drink was Jameson: "A little."
Frank talked about his upbringing, about his single mom taking care of him and his brother Cody, about how he worked at a supermarket for years as a teenager but it had since been turned into a different supermarket. Jane wondered what kept him in this town his whole life but she didn't ask. Jane planned on getting out ASAP, and she secretly hoped Frank would be the one to sweep her off her feet and onto the nearest train, escaping with her.
Frank: "What about you? You were born without water in your eyes?"
Jane: "Apparently."
Frank put his thumb right beneath Jane's left eye. Jane was shocked when she didn't flinch; instead, Jane felt warmth between her legs. Frank retracted his hand, took a sip of his Jameson. Impulsively, Jane blurted, "I can cum, though." Frank almost spit out the whiskey. Jane reached for her gin and tonic to take a sip but ended up downing the rest of it.
Frank worked as a schoolteacher in a middle school. Jane was in her last year of high school but she didn't say that. Jane sensed that he knew but was pretending he didn't. Jane thought about Frank's dream of running over the kid and wondered if it was some sort of subconscious message about his worries of ruining his students' futures. Or maybe he just secretly wanted to kill them. Jane wouldn't blame him. Middle schoolers these days were awful, sometimes just plain evil. Jane imagined Frank as her teacher. Jane blushed, the warmth spreading again, giggles erupting from her lips.
Frank: "What's so funny?"
Jane didn't know what to say, so she just laughed more. Jane's laughs intensified when she remembered she had school the next day—better yet, an algebra exam that she was certain she would fail. Finally, the laughs were too much; tears formed and fell, a spectacle so special, not unlike fireworks lighting up the sky.
Frank, cheering: "I did it!"
*
Jane liked to lie. Jane liked to lie most about her name and the amount of times she'd cried in her life. Jane's philosophy was: There is no such thing as objective reality, reality is what you make of it, so she made her own, a different one every day. Jane's motto was: You can't spell life without lie. But she uttered it only to herself.
Jane had a boyfriend, [X], who sat next to her in algebra class. The next day, Jane could barely look at [X] after her night with Frank, partly because she barely slept. Jane and Frank stayed until last call and Frank drove them home, swerving on the desolate suburban streets. They laughed the whole way, blasting A Flock Of Seagulls' "I Ran (So Far Away)," which Jane declared the best song of the '80s. They shrieked in euphoric unison when Frank almost hit a tree.
Nonetheless, Jane appreciated [X] because he moved his test paper to the edge of his desk so she could see his answers. Jane suffered frequent nightmares of failing algebra or chemistry and being held back a year. If that happened, Jane thought, she would find something to hang a rope from and a chair to stand on and you can guess the rest of that line of thought.
A few years before, Jane's dad's guts were splattered on the pavement after a semi-truck bulldozed him as he crossed the street. To be able to keep the house on only one salary, Jane's mom had her dad, Jane's grandfather, who worked in construction his whole life, renovate the basement to rent out. Brown tiles were replaced with grey floor panels. The desk where Jane watched YouTube videos was tossed onto the side of the road, along with the raggedy plaid couch and empty fish tank that held many neglected creatures over the years. Jane's childhood was wiped away and transformed into a clean slate for someone else. Since then, a block in her mind prevented her from remembering being a kid. A man who worked at the post office moved in. If Jane put her ear to the floor, she could hear him watching TV, eating dinner, masturbating, living life all alone, underground.
*
Jane received her acceptance from University of Arizona the next week. Again, her eyes filled with water. She cared less about studying than she did about living in the desert, the sunlight imbuing her with a sense of infinity and baptizing her with sweat. She yearned to sprawl out in the sand between cacti and stare at the endless blue sky. Jane couldn't wait to be free of high school, free of her mom, free of the stranger residing beneath her, free of [X].
What about Frank? Jane didn't know. They had plans this weekend.
[X] kept bothering Jane, flicking handwritten notes to her during algebra, showing up at her locker between classes, asking her why she was being so distant. Jane insisted they break up since she would be going away to Arizona. [X] did not take this well.
Jane woke up at two a.m. one night to [X] throwing pebbles at her window. She feigned sleep until he went away. On Saturday, Jane met Frank at Alibi. Jane felt far away, the sound of the pebbles hitting her window echoing in her head. Jane had an undiagnosed problem with dissociating. When something was wrong, Jane sometimes felt dizzy and detached from her surroundings, like everything around her was a cardboard cutout version of itself.
Just as Frank began to ask if Jane was OK, [X] walked in. He was stumbling with a stupid grin on his face when he saw her; he was obviously drunk. Jane shot a look to Mark, who she often shot looks to so he would shoo away an unfavorable man, and Mark nodded and asked [X] for ID. [X] ignored Mark and went straight to Jane and Frank. [X] punched Frank in the face, the collision of fist and nose causing Jane to flinch, though she didn't feel a thing emotionally. [X] continued to punch Frank. It looked like a fight between a son and a father, and [X]'s arm swung with the vigor of a guitarist getting lost in a cathartic solo, but Jane focused on the Television song floating from the jukebox, "Days," she loved that one, the relaxing chords and Tom Verlaine's sweet lilts, especially as he sang in the chorus, "Daaaaayyyyssssss," she closed her eyes and the tune was a pool she swam in, safely tucked away in Arizona surrounded by wonderful nothingness, the beautiful, arid abyss.
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