MAGIC. chapter two

(2: Elias)

“How --cough-- are your --cough-- studies going, Elias?” My grandmother pats her chest and reaches for the plastic cup of water that’s sitting on the tray in front of her. “Straight A’s as usual?”

“Yeah, Gramma,” I say, watching the liquid in her IV bag drip, drip, drip.

“And your drawing?” She sets the cup down and peers at the sketchbook in my lap. “What are you working on?”

I get up from the hard plastic chair I seem to live in these days and hand her my book. She flips through it, murmuring things like pretty and I like that one. She stops when she gets to one in the back of the book and smiles.

“Who’s that?” she asks in a tone that makes me think she’s trying hard to sound merely curious. Probably because I know the picture she’s referring to is one of a girl, the only one in the whole book. The rest of the drawings are of things like zombies, pumpkins, and trees. “She looks sort of like the daughter of that teacher who slept with that student.”

My grandma loves to gossip. I clear my throat. “She is.”

Grandma looks scandalized. “Well,” she says finally.

The visit sort of falls apart after that. Eventually I pick up my backpack, take my sketchbook back from my grandma, kiss her on the cheek, and leave the hospital.

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When I get home, my mom is in the kitchen pouring herself a glass of wine. Not exactly a new occurrence. I walk past her in silence and open the fridge, looking inside at the shelves, empty except for the unidentifiable green hunks of food inside plastic containers. I let the door close and open a cabinet instead. There are jars of peanut butter and grape jelly. I take them both, find bread that isn’t growing hair, and make myself three sandwiches.

I look around at the now empty kitchen. My mom had left without a word, probably off to sit on the couch and cry. I open the cabinet underneath the sink and glance at all the wine bottles, some empty, some half-full. I take one of the latter and pick up my sandwiches, then head upstairs to my room.

I drop my backpack on the floor and set my sandwiches down on my desk. I flop onto my bed with the wine bottle and sigh up at the ceiling, feeling sorry for myself. Swimming in a sea of self-pity and bed sheets, I yank my long, drool-stained pillow from its place leaned up against my headboard and cuddle it. Sometimes I imagine my pillow is really a pretty girl who likes me and doesn’t mind about me being fat. She doesn’t care that I take hour-long baths and thinks Star Wars is cool and likes to melt ice cream and drink it, too.

I stroke the girl’s imaginary cheek, feel cotton and crusted-on macaroni and cheese under my fingertips, and realize that I am sincerely a loser.