Page 37 of Play Nice

I don’t sleep. I chug water to sober up.

My burn has blistered yellow. It would be convenient if there were a nurse who lived down the street who didn’t now hate me.

What did I do?

What have I done?

I gather up the blank sheets of paper and Sharpies, leave them on the dining table, sad remnants of a failed experiment. It did communicate with me, but not my way. Its way. On its terms. The way it wanted to communicate.

It doesn’t need to play nice. I have nowhere else to go.

Nowhere I want to be, at least.

When Dad calls, I concede to him coming to get me.

I meet him outside.

“Jesus, Clio! What happened?”

I catch my reflection in the car window. I look psychotic. And I’m just now realizing, I forgot to put on shoes.

“Can you take me to get something to eat,” I say, my voice hoarse.

“Clio, sweetie,” Dad says, pulling me in for a hug.

I lean my head against his shoulder. He smells like smoke.

After what he did, burning the book, maybe he’ll forever smell like smoke to me.

I want to forgive him, to be at peace, to be happy in his embrace.

I want it to feel like it used to. I want to be who I used to be.

Before Mom died. Before ugly truths. Before any of this.

“What’s this?” he says, noticing the burn.

I consider confronting him about how he manipulated my sisters into a lie that estranged us from our mother. That did irreparable damage. But I just don’t have the energy right now. “I hurt myself.”

“How?” he asks, the distress in his expression eliciting in me a strange mix of guilt and satisfaction. He still loves me.

“Working in the house,” I say. “Dad. Please. Can we go? I’m starving.”

“You need shoes,” he says. He goes into the house and comes back out a second later with my heels.

He opens the car door for me, hands me my shoes, then goes around to the driver’s side. He starts the car, we back out into the cul-de-sac, and then he says, “You smell like cigarettes. And alcohol.”

I almost tell him that he smells like smoke, almost tell him that he smells like fascism, almost ask him if, after libraries, he plans on taking his flamethrower to the museums. I almost tell him how close I am to hating him. But my throat is sore, and I’m struggling to keep my eyes open.

“Clio. You’re making me worry. You’re making everyone worry.”

What does he want me to say? Does he expect me to apologize?

Everyone in my life wants me to behave in a very specific way that’s beneficial to them, and as soon as I deviate from their expectations, it’s an issue.

As soon as I act out of whatever role they cast me in in their lives, it’s somehow my fault.

“This pattern of behavior is concerning to me,” he says sternly. “I’ve seen it before.”

“What, with Mom? You and Leda like to throw that in my face. But I’m nothing like Mom,” I say, playing with my snake charm. “The only thing I have in common with her is great hair and a haunted house.”

“It’s that book. And spending time there by yourself.”

“Why can’t you even entertain the idea that she was right? That I’m right? Why can’t the house be haunted by a demon?”

“Because that’s crazy. Don’t you hear yourself?”

“Why is it crazy? If I was a son and not your daughter, would you assume I was crazy?”

“Not everything is misogyny, Clio,” he says, taking a sharp turn. “What happened to your arm?”

Now I can’t resist, can’t hold my tongue lest it shred the inside of my mouth. “It was Mom. She did it. Right? Right, Dad? She hurt me.”

“Clio Louise.”

“Fuck it. Can we just get breakfast? Please? Please.”

He sighs. “Okay.”

We go to a diner—a different one than Austin took me to, though it still reminds me of him—and eat in silence.

Dad pays the check and then we go back to his house. Amy’s not around.

“I’m going to sleep,” I tell him.

“When you wake up, we’re going to have a talk about what comes next.”

“Ominous,” I mumble. I climb the stairs to my room. I fall into bed, fall asleep in an instant.

—

When I wake up, it’s the middle of the night.

Yawning, I turn over and reach for my phone, wondering if Roy has gotten back to me.

I could have asked Helen for his number but wasn’t keen on swallowing my pride after our last conversation, forcing my return to the tragically archaic website of the New England Occultist Collective.

It was outside of business hours, but I called the contact number anyway, figuring there was a chance that Occultist Collectives might not maintain traditional business hours or whatever.

I left a voicemail stating my name and requesting a callback from Roy. I said he’d know what it was about.

But even if he did call, I wouldn’t know since apparently my phone is dead, RIP. Its absence aches like a phantom limb. I plug it into the charger and steep in my thoughts. I have to pee, which means I have to get out of bed—something that doesn’t really appeal to me.

I groan and kick off the sheets, swing my legs over the side of the mattress. Shuffle out the door and down the hall to the bathroom.

The lights are too bright. I squint, still sleep drunk as I sit on the toilet, wipe, flush, wash my hands.

It’s the hurt of my burn that pulls me into full consciousness. I turn off the faucet and lift my arm closer to my face, water dripping off my fingers.

The burn is pretty disgusting. Pink and yellow and shiny—the blister on the verge of eruption. Now would be a good time to have a charged phone, to Google how to treat a burn, something I should have done last night if I had been in my right mind.

I open the cabinets looking for a Band-Aid or ointment or whatever. There’s a tub of Vaseline that might be as old as I am. I get it out and set it on the counter.

Before I make any poor attempt at delayed first aid, I think better of it and just leave the wound alone. I peel off my dress and take a cold shower, emerge shivering but clean.

I wrap myself in towels and go back to my room, find some clothes to change into. My dance team sweatshirt, some Soffe shorts. I look like a teenager, but I feel about a thousand years old, my bones weary.

The cold shower was a bad idea. I’m freezing. Dad and Amy always blast the AC. I go out into the hall to fetch a blanket from the linen closet.

There’s a light on downstairs. They never leave lights on. Someone’s awake.

I find the fuzziest blanket available, wrap myself inside it, wear it like a cloak, and head downstairs, careful not to trip over my blanket train.

“Dad? Amy?” I call out, keeping my voice low.

The light is coming from Dad’s study.

What else is hidden in here?

Maybe the devil lives somewhere in the words “I know I shouldn’t.” Or maybe God does.

There’s a stack of photo albums on his desk. I lower myself into his comfy rolling chair and start to flip through.

Pictures from childhood. Leda, Daphne, and me on the first day of school.

At our dance recitals. At Six Flags, soaked from a log flume.

Leda at the kitchen table doing her homework.

Daphne outside in the yard dribbling a soccer ball.

Me posing with my hands on my hips, wearing a tutu as a shirt over a pair of jeans, a heart on my cheek drawn with red lip liner.

The three of us with Dad and Amy on a beach in Maui—our big family vacation before Leda left for Harvard. There’s a magnificent sunset behind us. It’s a beautiful photo.

I go through another album, where we’re all younger. Leda and Daphne in matching dresses, having a tea party on the kitchen floor in our first house. Me in a bib and onesie sitting in a high chair, frowning, green mush smeared across my face. Somehow, Mom isn’t in any of these pictures.

I slam the album closed, and Dad’s computer screen illuminates.

His password is written on a Post-it in his top drawer. Amateur hour.

I type it in, and up comes Chrome. His email. I open Google and check his search history.

Healthline. Symptoms of a nervous breakdown.

Mental Health Services NJ.

Behavioral Help northern New Jersey.

Psychotic episode.

Psychosis.

Genetic psychosis.

Delusions.

Can grief cause delusions?

Can grief trigger psychosis?

How do you get someone mental help when they refuse?

5150. Psychiatric Hold.

I push away from the desk, and a sharp pain ignites my forearm. The blister. It’s split open. My skin curls back, releasing iridescent ooze.

Footsteps. Upstairs. Coming downstairs.

Panicked, I stumble out of the study and into the kitchen, get a glass down.

“Clio?” It’s Amy. She wears a matching pajama set patterned with berries. Her hair is pulled back in a French braid. She looks like she’s coming from a sleepover.

“Oh, hey,” I say, my voice high and squeaky, giving away my anxiety. I clear my throat. I fill the glass with water from the fridge. “Sorry, did I wake you?”

She shakes her head. “I’ve had trouble sleeping lately. Daphne thinks I should try these CBD gummies, but I don’t know.”

“What about melatonin?” I ask. I offer her the water.

“I tried. No luck,” she says, accepting the glass. “Thank you, Cli.”

We haven’t spoken since Memorial Day. She doesn’t know what to say to me, and I have nothing to say to her.

Except maybe Is my father about to try to have me committed?

But I know she wouldn’t answer me. All she’d do is go right upstairs and tell him.

Then he’d confront me. It would escalate.

I’d try to defend myself and get frustrated and cause a scene that would then be cited as proof that I’m unhinged and need help. Crazy is quicksand.

I can’t mention the demon or Mom or the house. I can’t do anything but apologize. Play nice.

“I’m sorry about the barbecue,” I say, hoping she can’t detect the glaring insincerity. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Her eyes well up and she puts a hand to her heart. “Thank you, Clio. I know you didn’t. I know.”

“We’re okay, then?”

“Of course,” she says. “Are you okay? We’re worried about you.”

“So I’ve heard,” I say. “But you know me, Amy. When have I ever not been okay?”

She opens her mouth to say something, then changes her mind.

I fake a yawn. “I should get back to sleep.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” she says.

I give her a hug and go upstairs to my room, locking the door behind me. In the soft, warm light of the lamp on my bedside table, I examine my burn.

Skin puckers around where the blister burst. I reach out to touch it, graze it with my fingertips. There’s a sheen to it. I’m still oozing. I stare as the ooze goes from watery clear to yellow to pink to viscous red. Blood.

I grab my towel off the floor and press it to the wound, which is difficult because my hand is shaking. A deep breath.

When have I ever not been okay?

I gently pat away the blood, the ooze, the color. Now the burn looks like a pale eye staring back at me. Watching.

Hello.