David-Mathew Barnes is a writer, currently based in Sacramento. In addition to The Marijuana Mermaid (his first short story in Nuvein), the five poems published in this issue of Nuvein are excerpts from his poetry collection, Sins of the Flesh, which will be published by Word Riot Press in March of this year.
Even though I was high, I was still aware of the fact that I was in Jeremy Nelson’s bedroom. He had brought me here, to his house that was obviously decorated by his wicker-basket-loving mother. To his bed with its red, black and white quilt and pillows that smelled like fabric softener and French fries.
In my state of mind (or lack of), I had lied and convinced Jeremy Nelson that I had lost my house keys. It seemed like a good idea when we were at school, but now that I was curled up next to his rail-thin body, I saw the lie as the conniving ploy that it really was and I hated myself for doing it. I was nothing more than a manipulating bitch.
He had discovered me in the hallway at school, poised and planted, waiting for him to stumble over me and my evil plan. I knew he would be leaving his U.S. History class. I knew that he liked it when I wore the black mini-skirt and knee-high go-go boots. I knew that he would feel sorry for me and want to help. Hell, I had almost conjured up real tears.
He was next to me, with his eyes closed and his full lips wrapping into half a smile. Strands of his dark hair were fanned out on his pillow as if someone had taken a permanent marker and drawn out lines on the linen. His eyelashes, like pieces of black thread, rested softly against the high edges of his cheekbones. He was too tall and thin. I was too pale and plain. There was nothing glamorous about me. Not like my best friends, Monica Ramirez and Sabrina Evans, who looked like supermodels. I wondered why Jeremy had never hit on them. Why was I the one in his bed and not some hot girl like Libby Montclair? God, I hated Libby Montclair.
I wanted Jeremy Nelson to love me because I had fallen in love with him from the moment he had transferred to Tanglewood from that school for fuck-ups in California. I wanted him to tell me that I wasn't a pothead and that my Mom and Dad were going to be okay, despite my Mom’s temper tantrums. She said my Dad’s bookstore was taking us to the poorhouse. I wanted to tell Jeremy Nelson the truth about why I was in his bedroom. If I did confess, I wanted to be reassured that he would forgive me. Forgive me for just being lonely.
The bed was a twin and was pushed back into the furthest corner of the room, away from the door and closet. There was a window, shrouded by dusty mini-blinds, the color of my mother's fake pearl necklace that she was given for her sixteenth birthday. She still wore them when she got dressed up to go out to The Red Lobster with my Dad. Above my head and tacked to the wall was a poster of The Eiffel Tower. It was a black and white photo and it was huge, covering up almost half the wall around me. There was a young couple, a boy with big shoulders and dimples and a girl with a beret, standing in front of the French landmark, staring into each other's eyes and contemplating either kissing or breaking up. I couldn't be certain if they loved each other or if their relationship was ending. I just knew they were in Paris and they were together and she wasn't a liar or a pothead and it didn’t seem like her parents were going to get divorced.
When I declared my keys officially missing, Jeremy Nelson had given me a hug in the hallway at school. He then put his arm around my shoulders, the inside of his elbow pressing against every inch of bare skin that my cotton tank top didn't cover. "Don't worry, Leah. You can come over and use my phone and wait for your parents there."
Jeremy Nelson didn't know that my cell phone was turned off and laying in the bottom of my purse and that my house keys had been stashed underneath the passenger's seat of Monica's shiny silver roadster. He also didn't know that Monica and Sabrina and I had been high since Christmas and that they were probably shooting up in the girls' bathroom at school, while I was in Jeremy Nelson's bed, half-conscious and completely guilty.
Secretly, I blamed Monica for my downfall. The pact had been her stupid idea. In September, Monica had decided that because we were seniors, it was time for us to see “just how much we can get away with”. She was the charismatic, conniving leader of our group and I breathed for every word she spoke. She had been in control of my life since she and I had met in the first grade and she told me on the playground, “I shouldn’t be your friend, because you aren’t very pretty, but I like you.” But Jeremy Nelson thought I was pretty.
It was the fish tank that took my attention then. It was sitting on his oak dresser, horribly misplaced amongst CD's, clothes and gold and silver framed pictures of beautiful girls that had probably lost their house keys long before me. The water in the tank gurgled through a filter and the glass seemed to hum like an underwater symphony. The fluorescent light glowed like a pale white sun as tiger striped fish shimmied and twirled through skull designed rocks.
I closed my eyes and I could see myself swimming with the fish, like a mermaid. I was quick and fierce, but graceful and delicate. I swam and pirouetted and shimmered in rays of aquamarine light. Jeremy Nelson was there, swimming next to me, reaching for my hand. I darted away from him and shot through the eye of a skull. He followed me, an odd desperation in the way he kicked and moved his long, thin, nude body, propelling himself. In the water, amongst the fish, he looked at me with a longing that I had never seen in someone’s expression before and it caused me to ache inside. But I also felt calm. I wanted to be kept safely in the fish tank in Jeremy Nelson’s room where heroin and divorce could never get me.
There was a radio on. I could hear it, but I wasn't sure where it was coming from. The volume was so low it was difficult to decipher lyrics or music or rhythm. But it was a woman's voice, sounding wounded and lost and emotionally screwed up, just like me. She was singing “Deliver me…” and the tenderness of her voice made me want to cry.
It was the gentleness of his breathing that made me open my eyes. It was soft and relaxed, almost like a lullaby, and it tiptoed across my skin like a thousand dandelions.
"What are you doing?" The sound of my own voice seemed to chisel away the secret interior of our newfound private utopia.
"I'm loving you," Jeremy Nelson exhaled and then the sounds became touch. The loneliness temporarily floated away. But I knew it would find its way back to me again.
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