How Much It Costs

They’re laughing around the campfire, thinking they’re being funny stoking it and throwing random shit in. There’s no humor in tossing a marshmallow into the flames. Just fucking eat it.

The entire week of family vacation has passed like this. Every day, my cousins have come into the house, soaking either to their knees or to their waists in river water. Russel would come bounding after them, sending spray along the walls and old wooden furniture, smudging mud onto the ground with his giant paws. Three-foot-tall James would scramble over to me with new freckles on his sensitive nose and scream about the fish he almost caught. Each time, I’ve given him a smile before Adelia has scooped him up or Sarah has nudged him away.

And every night, they come in smelling of sweat and fire, dirt from burnt twigs buried under their nails and little leaves clinging to their asses. When the little ones ask where I was, I trick myself for a moment that none of them have noticed me sitting on a fallen trunk beside the river. I’ve always had a clear view of them at their fire from behind the brush, but felt somewhat secure in my own privacy. A furtive glance from one of the girls I grew up with brings me back to reality. They must see the smoke I create. I don’t need a fire, just a pen. Maybe I don’t smell as bad as they do, but my eyes are red like I’ve been staring hard into the fire.

I think the shittiest part of all of it is that, no matter how high I am, the stars don’t look any better here in Colorado.

You should’ve taken him to court about supporting the kid. This wouldn’t have been a problem.

How could I? I was twenty-fucking-three, Kent. Did you know shit at twenty-three?

We don’t have time for excuses, Temi. What are you going to do with Marshal? I can’t keep paying for everything. He’s not my son. I have our children to worry about. But what’s he going to do without a degree? I can’t support him for the rest of our lives.

He won’t either, Kent.

Marshal is his own damn child.

On the edge of the river, it’s supposed to be quiet, but my mind tells me I can hear their voices on the wind. It’s been months since I’d heard that argument, crouched at the foot of the stairs, fingering a broken guitar string. His own damn child. But I’d never felt more as though I didn’t have my own damn family. Now, on this family vacation, I watch the smoke billow from my lips, try to blow away their words, and hope either they’ll shut the fuck up or I’ll calm the fuck down. This pen doesn’t get me like I need it to, but I couldn’t bring any bud.

The hoot of an owl, the snap of a twig a few yards away. A chipmunk comes damn near to my sneaker. I want to kick it into the river. It twitches away from me before I can even move, leaves rustling in its path. But there’s a louder noise behind me. My heart pumps because I know my hope that it’s a deer won’t be met.

As Adelia sits next to me on the trunk, I feel my end lift just slightly, and I’m brought back to countless days on the playground seesaw across from her. She used to be my best friend. I blow smoke in her direction, subtly enough for it to look accidental, and can’t help but feel gratified when her features contort.

“How do you get it not to smell?”

Ivy League idiot. “It’s a pen, not a blunt. They don’t smell like much.” Maybe I’m too high to see it, but her face doesn’t look as confident as it used to when we were four. “You’ve really never smoked?”

She keeps her eyes on the water as she shakes her head.

“Well, I could put you on if you ever want. Give you a family discount.”

“You sell it?”

I can see myself sitting at a desk, dragging myself through page eleven of my third anthropology paper of the night. 3:42 AM. The guy said he needed it done by nine. I’ve got a hundred bucks riding on this one essay. At least I’ve got Adderall—it’s making me over three hundred in a night.

Ding.

Patrick from Writing wants an eighth. I swear he’s the second Patrick to text me that in the past ten hours. No complaints on my end. I’m at a point where I’m making two grand off that business in a week.

It sounds like a joke to me when my mom complains about going back to work. I’ve got three jobs right now, and I’m a college kid struggling through clinical depression. Sure, only my job at Gerry’s Pizza is legitimate, but business off the books is always better.

Whatever it takes to get myself through college because my parents sure as hell won’t. They still ask me, “Do you really need to go to therapy? It just costs a lot, Mars. You can talk to us.”

You can talk to us.

Talk to me.

“Hey, Mars? Talk to me. Say something.”

I seesaw through murky atmospheres, back to my place next to Adelia on the trunk. There’s a pressure in my head that’s all too familiar, but I force myself to focus on her. I tell myself it’s like we’re four again, yet I know it doesn’t feel the same as when I let her cut my hair or watched Disney movies or tried weird concoctions she’d made with ingredients meant for her Easy Bake Oven. Somehow, she looks smaller now than she did many years ago, with eyes framed in thin lashes and skin much paler in the moonlight. Those eyes move from my face and linger on the pen in my hand.

There’s a dull ache in my chest, something I recognize would be much sharper if I were sober. It’s the same feeling that rose when I watched her glare at my dad during my graduation lunch. He’s a piece of shit, I know, I wanted to say. But he’s all I’ve got.

Back then, I kept my mouth shut because what could I say to her and that shining Columbian future, when we’d just sat through the most pitiful graduation known to New Jersey? Now, I don’t say anything because I don’t feel enough.

“Does it help?”

My lips part, but not because I have any words to pass through them. My face scrunches slightly—brows drawn and nose crinkled—as it looks back into Lia’s. She sighs and reaches slowly, taking the pen between her fingers as if it’s a rose covered in thorns and she can’t quite make out where the stem is smooth and where it isn’t.

“It doesn’t help as much as it used to,” I admit. Her hand stills in her inspection of the instrument.

“When did it stop?”

It’s a question I’d never considered. Squinting into the distance for an answer, I realize the sky’s turned from navy to black, the laughter of my cousins has long gone, and their fire has faded to ash. Maybe everything works like that if you don’t pay enough attention. When did it hurt most? When did I most want to feel numb?

“They told you I went to therapy, right?” I blurt out.

“Yeah.”

“It didn’t work in the end. I still had to withdraw. Now, Rutgers thinks I’m too fucked up to take me back. And won’t release my transcript to other schools because there isn’t much of a transcript to give.”

It’s quiet. I don’t know if she says “Shit” under her breath, or if I’m just hearing sighs on the wind again.

“That’s not when it hurt most, though. Nah. It hurt more when Mom acted like she was scared for me. And when I could tell Dad wasn’t scared at all. He didn’t care. It’s just always, How much will it cost?”

How much will it cost?

How much will it cost?

“I’m just this fucking thing, Lia. At least people could use me before. Now I just take up too much…Too much…”

She brings the pen to her lips, holds it there and inhales for what I know isn’t long enough. This isn’t for her—she’s more a child now than she ever was handling those dismembered Barbie dolls. I take the pen without even looking at her and bury it in my pocket.

Her voice is so tiny when she says, “There’s so much pressure.”

A breeze rustles through the leaves, down from the starless sky that Colorado deserves to take no pride in. It sends ripples through the river, but they don’t get far before flowing into nothingness. There are no words gliding through the air this time—I can’t believe I can finally hear the silence. I pretend that it lifts me slightly on our seesaw trunk, and hope Lia never knows what it’s like to go through life with no pressure at all.