by A.E. Hodge

The clipper bites too far into my nail, and when Savannah clamps down, I start to bleed. I’m so stoned that I don’t react until she does, laughing at her little gasp. She looks mad, so I say “sorry” and she keeps going on my other hand. I squeeze at the little cut under my nail until it wells up again. A fat, red worm crawls out of my skin, melting as soon as it gets big. All the slices of nail are on the floor between us, looking like larvae or eggs. Savannah doesn’t like it when I say that. She says it wouldn’t be so disgusting if I cut my nails more often, so I tell her how I used to be way nastier. How Tyler and me used to grow our nails out as long as the girls did. Maybe not as long as my mom’s North Carolina bless-your-heart, thirty-dollar press-ons, but long enough that they turned black at the ends from dirt and blood and food. They’d get caught in a snag of cloth, tear off to the quick and grow back sharp, jabbing into our skin, and making little blisters that we could bite open and suck out the pus.

Savannah tells me to shut up and stop squirming. She hates it when I talk about Tyler, but I don’t mean to. Me and him are like two yolks cracked out of the same egg and scrambled into different omelets. Savannah thinks that’s pretty funny.

Me and Tyler used to play a game where we’d grab each other’s arm at the same time and dig our nails in until the skin peeled away in little crescent moons or until the underside of our nail got blood muddy. When we let go, he’d always ask “did that hurt,” and I’d always say “no.” We stopped all that in sixth grade. Tyler cut his nails real short after Kelsey Woolworth said he looked like a girl. I painted mine black when I was at Mom’s house that summer, and Tyler made me scrape it off on the concrete when I got back. I said it was punk, and he said it was gay. A lot of my nail came off when I did that, and I had a ratty hole in the middle of my left thumbnail. Tyler said it looked tough.

We spent that summer getting drunk off stolen beer and sneaking into neighborhood pools to swim at night. When it got too cold to swim, we got drunk and watched TV instead. Being drunk was nice, but a few months into sixth grade, he started stealing weed from his brother, and thank God for that. High Tyler was way better than Drunk Tyler. Except for this one time when his brother barged into Tyler’s room and started tearing up his closet, all like “fuck you I know you took my weed.” Ian is basically the same as Tyler except taller and meaner and louder. Tyler was like “what the fuck no I didn’t” and Ian was like “I’m gonna fucking kill you” and they kept yelling at each other, which was annoying because I was supremely high and just wanted to watch the end of Spider-Man. Then, Ian was screaming at me, and he said he could tell I was high and I was like “no shit,” and he punched Tyler’s ear. Later, Tyler sat on my chest and put a pillow over my face until I promised to pay his brother back for all the weed we stole. My mom proves that she loves me more than my dad by sending me cash, so paying Ian back wouldn’t be a problem, it’s just freaky to be suffocating when you’re high. I thought I was gonna throw up for the rest of the night.

I had to spend three weeks at my mom’s house in July, and not having Tyler around that long was like forgetting how to talk. I’ve always hated being there. Like, yeah, it’s a nice house, but it’s in the middle of nowhere North Carolina, and she had to work or go out for drinks or have people over for little dinner parties that I wasn’t allowed at, so basically, it was solitary confinement. When I got back to Tennessee, I told Tyler we should run away together. It was close to midnight and we were pretty high and there was mulch in his hair from lying under the swingset that he shook off like happy shrapnel. He laughed, then said “yeah we should.” I could have kissed him, I was so happy. We could hitchhike and get jobs on a farm and live in a shed and eat whatever people would feed us and he wouldn’t have to live with Ian and I wouldn’t have to live with my dad. I could just play guitar and smoke and have a minute to calm down. I made him promise he wouldn’t change his mind when he was sober, and he said he wouldn’t. Should have made him write it down.

I wanted to spend every single second with him for every single day for my entire life. We spent every weeknight and weekend together. We were only ever apart for class. We listened to music on the bus and I put notes in his locker when he wasn’t there and at night when we swam I would keep my head above the water the whole time because he might come up sooner than me and I couldn’t stand the thought of me existing if he wasn’t there too.

Seventh grade sucked. Everyone else got tall and I was still five-fucking-nothing and the checkout ladies at Kroger called me “miss” before they heard me talk half the time. Tyler thought it was hilarious. I cut off all my hair in the sink and it got clogged and my dad asked “why did you do that” and it was kind of funny because I really didn’t know. Like, I didn’t mind if someone thought I was a girl for a second, and I didn’t mind when Tyler laughed at me, and I didn’t mind the way I looked, but I guess it was nice to be less noticed. Dad took me to a Supercuts that weekend, and they practically buzzed it. I painted my nails again, and this time, Tyler agreed it was punk.

September was as hot as July, so we still went night swimming whenever we could. Usually, that was just weekends, but it was a Wednesday when we biked to the Aberdeen Hill pool. Aberdeen Hill was this fancy neighborhood for people who own multiple gas stations or, like, racehorses. What really mattered was that their neighborhood pool was massive, literally no one ever used it and there was a ten foot tall brick wall around it, so no one could see us once we were inside.

Getting to the top was the hardest part. I weighed less than Tyler, so he boosted me up. Then, I got on my stomach, and he basically used my arms like a climbing rope. I swear to God I thought my shoulder was going to pop out of its socket. We stood at the top for a second, breathing heavy and loud. Looking down, the caveman in my brain knew better than to jump from ten feet high into pitch black water, so I told Tyler I wanted to go home. He told me to stop being paranoid and jump. I said “no,” and he said “do it.” I blinked, and he pushed me. He told me later that I was supposed to land in the water.

I was screaming. My thumb was bent backwards, and my whole right hand looked wrong. There was a lot of blood on the concrete, and a mushy lump of skin sitting in it like a wet rag where it got tore off my arm. Tyler was still on the wall, and he jumped down, back to the outside of the pool and said he was gonna get help.

Before he came back, someone who lived in the neighborhood heard me screaming and called an ambulance and pressed their jacket on my arm until the EMTs came and put me on a stretcher. My dad showed up at the hospital, after my hand was already in a cast and I worked on a crossword until they made him sign some paperwork and take me home.

I didn’t try to talk to Tyler at school on Monday, and he didn’t either. I tried to play guitar, but I couldn’t with the stupid cast, so I threw it at my wall and then felt bad because the neck cracked and I wouldn’t be able to play it even after my hand got better. I had forgot that my dad was home, so he heard it hit the wall and got mad when he saw it. He doesn’t get mad the way most dads get mad. (Or at least not like Tyler’s dad, who’s a big fan of yelling and stomping and swearing.) My dad’s more of a rub-the forehead-and-ask-why kind of man. (“Why did you lie about your grades?” “Why did you think a whole bottle of cough syrup would fix your headache?”) So he saw me crying and sighed real loud and asked why my guitar was broken. I yelled at him that I couldn’t play it anymore so what was the fucking point and he told me not to swear and that I could come watch Die Hard with him in the living room when I felt like acting like an adult.

Tyler didn’t talk to me for a couple weeks so I learned to play my dad’s old keyboard, but only with my left hand. I learned how to jerk off with my left hand too, which wasn’t as good but was better than nothing. Mostly, I didn’t do anything. At school, I snuck out to the football field and sat behind the concession stand with my iPod all day. Half the time, I didn’t even turn it on. Everything sounded like static, and everything felt like nothing, except my hand, which sometimes hurt.

This random Thursday, there was a knock on my front door, and it was Tyler. He acted like nothing happened, so I acted like nothing happened too. He asked how my hand was, and I said it was okay and he said “cool.”

We watched a crime show where they busted a guy for dog fighting and they showed all his dogs in crates stacked on top of each other and as soon as the camera went outside, they all started barking and snarling and it was all so rotten I changed the channel while Tyler was still laughing. He went to use the bathroom and came back with the bottle of Oxy I’d gotten for my hand. I hadn’t taken any because I’d been smoking basically non-stop, but he asked if he could have some, and he’d been pretty nice to me, so I said sure and when he left he took the whole bottle.

A couple days later, Tyler asked if I could get a refill and when I said no, he said that was fine because his brother would know where to get more, and then suddenly, we were spending every weekend in the back seat of Ian’s SUV with a bunch of his weird friends, showing up to gloomy parties where they played the music so loud it rattled in the speakers and everybody drank from crackling plastic and some people traded pills and no one asked how old we were as long as we didn’t talk too much. Mostly, Tyler took pills and I smoked weed and we’d go find a hall closet or a bathtub or a backyard and just sit together in that interzone between awake and not, where everything good in the world comes from. Sometimes, when we were braver, we would sidle up to people talking and watch how the guys flirted with the girls, laugh at the jokes people made, and take hits off the joints getting passed around. We stopped standing out so much after a while, and the less we stood out, the more Tyler would leave me by myself. After a couple months, it was just me, waking up alone in someone’s closet with my legs asleep and a pile of shoes digging into my ass.

One time, I woke up and couldn’t find Tyler. I had drank too much, slept too long, and everyone else was passed out or gone. It wasn’t a big apartment and I looked in every room, on the back porch, in the cars parked out front, in the tub, in the cabinets, behind the couch, anywhere he might have hidden, waiting to pop out and startle me, but he wasn’t there. I tried calling him, but it went to voicemail, so I tried calling Ian but Ian didn’t pick up, so I tried calling Dad and I tried calling Mom but they didn’t pick up either, so I started typing six-one-five again like I had another number to dial, but I didn’t. I heard someone coming up behind me on the porch and I didn’t want them to see me crying, so I went to the street and started walking in the direction I was pretty sure would take me home.

An hour or two later, I was completely lost, and Tyler finally called me back and asked where the fuck I was and came with Ian to pick me up. He told me that tomorrow we were going to someone’s house in Brentwood and I said “okay” and sure enough at ten o’clock the next night, I was getting out of his car in front of some ugly not-mansion, and that was where I met Savannah.

I probably got hard as soon as she started kissing me, I can’t remember. I can’t remember a lot about it. I told her it was my birthday as she started palming me through my jeans and she said “happy birthday” and I said “thanks.” My dad had taken me to the Outback Steakhouse in Cool Springs for lunch because that’s what I wanted even though I don’t eat meat. I just wanted the blooming onions so he bought them for me and ordered a brownie too, but I felt sick from all the grease, so he ate it by himself after I blew out the candle. I still felt like I was gonna barf all those hours later because after the blooming onions, all I’d eaten was two beers and a bunch of Jell-O shots. Tyler disappeared like two minutes after we got out of the car and I’m less shy when I drink and I didn’t want to be alone in a stranger’s house on my birthday and I didn’t want to have to remind Tyler that it was my birthday either, so I drank too fast and threw up bad, which was how Savannah found me. She helped me up and wiped my face and got me a glass of water that sloshed painfully in my stomach as she pulled off my pants. Her hair felt like water, it was so soft, and I asked her where she went to school and she just laughed, so I laughed too.

She drove me home after, when we were both more sober. I asked for her number and she said “seriously?” and I said “yeah” so she gave it to me, and then she didn’t text me back for two days even though I texted her five times. She said she wouldn’t be my girlfriend until I was in high school, and I said that was okay, it was only a few months away, but still, she barely kissed me again until August even though I went with her everywhere.

Tyler said I’m lucky my girlfriend can buy alcohol and told me I should make her get us beer and whatever. I said okay, but I’m not gonna do that. I don’t want to see him so much anymore. It’s like pulling a rib out of my chest, but I gotta do it. Savannah was like “he didn’t even remember your birthday,” and like, it’s true. Maybe this is what growing up is supposed to feel like. It’s not like I’m gonna miss sitting around his house and getting stoned with randos. Savannah lets me hang out at her place after school and she asks how my day was and listens when I tell her. She smiles when I kiss her and she knows just the right way to touch me, the right things to say.

I think I love her, but it’s too soon to say that, so I just tell her that I wish she could cut my nails every day. She laughs and says she would, except then I wouldn’t have any nails left, so I tell her she can trim my fingers when my nails are gone, and when my fingers are gone, she can start on my arms. It’s supposed to be romantic, but she makes a face, so I shut up and when she’s done with the cutting, I sweep up all the shards of nail, and she gets the Neosporin from the bathroom. It’s slimy and I jerk away when she puts it on my fingertip and she’s like “don’t be a baby.” It looks like pink eye gunk when it mixes with the blood and I want to wipe it off when she goes to get a Band-Aid, but I’ll wait. After she’s gone, I can wash it all off, make sure it won’t heal so fast. It’s mine, and I want it to last.

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“To the Quick” by A.E. Hodge and the artwork titled Poolside Revelation by Sophia Ashley Saguinsin appeared in Issue 44 of Berkeley Fiction Review.

A.E. Hodge (they/them) is a Tennessee writer, currently based in Los Angeles. Their short fiction has been published in Popshot Quarterly and The Masters Review, and they contribute to the music section of Merry Go Round Magazine.

Sophia Ashley Saguinsin (she/her) is a comic artist and storyteller at UC Berkeley. Striving to constantly improve her art, she one day hopes to publish a story of her own..