Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self (26 page)

“Go,” she said, her face so close to mine I could see my eyes reflected in hers. Her mascara had pooled into black smudges under her eyes; I knew I couldn’t look much better. “This isn’t little-kid shit anymore. They’re gonna find out who called. They’re gonna look.”

I understood her but I didn’t move at first, not until I imagined myself answering questions at a police station, the look on my parents’ faces when they got the phone call, the look on Libby Carlisle’s face when she got to give my speech tomorrow, when she got to tell everyone she’d been right about me all along. I started to back away slowly.

“You wanna let the fucking school burn down, stay,” said Geena. She wouldn’t take her hand off of the receiver.

I stared at Geena for a long second. Then I took off running, stopping in the middle of the parking lot to take off my heels. I kept running, the asphalt stinging my feet through my panty hose. Halfway up the hill behind the school, I stopped to look back, vaguely recalling Sunday school and Lot’s wife turning into a pillar of salt. Already I could hear sirens in the distance. I watched Geena sitting on the curb beside the pay phone, fists curled backward into cushions for her chin. She looked small and still and ready. I turned then, shut my eyes, and ran breathlessly toward the dam. I didn’t stop again until I had crossed the bridge and hopped the fence that took me back to Eastdale. On the other side, I stopped to catch my breath, and then kept running, knowing even then that a better person would have turned around.

T
hroughout the writing process I’ve had the support of my immediate and extended family and stepfamilies, who have lent me their homes, their money, and occasionally the details of their lives, which are better than any I could invent. There are too many people and favors for me to list all of them, but consider me eternally grateful. Many thanks to my mother, who taught me to be honest; my grandmother, who taught me the value of a good story; and my father, who taught me how much you can say without words.

This book would not have been possible had I not been so lucky in my friends, who let me show up on their doorsteps and sleep on their sofas, helped me move back and forth across the country, made me feel at home in new cities, answered their phones in the middle of the night, and told me when to hang up and get back to work. Among them: Jeanne Elone, Miriam Aguila, Dana Renee Thompson, Lailan Huen, Teresa Hernandez, Ileana Mendez-Peñate, Reina Gossett, Nell Geiser, Rachel McPherson, Laleh Khadivi, Sean Hill, April Wilder, Jennifer Key, Joel Creswell, Elizabeth Snipes, Sarah Wiggin, and Tiara Izquierdo. Thank you. Special thanks to Alexis Pauline Gumbs, for so often being my first and favorite reader. I am thankful for the support, financial and otherwise, that I’ve received from numerous institutions. The Iowa Writers’ Workshop gave me time, money, and, most important, faith that my writing mattered to an audience—all rare and valuable for emerging writers. Special thanks to Connie Brothers, Jim McPherson, and Adam Haslett. The Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing is one of the best places a writer could ever call home. I’m grateful to the entire UW-Madison creative writing faculty, and the late Carol Houck Smith, for making my fellowship year possible. Special thanks to Jesse Lee Kercheval for being a constant source of sound advice. Thank you to Columbia University, especially the Kluge and Mellon scholars programs, for giving me the room to try these stories in their earliest forms and to Missouri State University and American University, for giving me homes while I finished them.

I’m indebted to my amazing agent, Ayesha Pande, who is a fantastic supporter and advocate and fielder of frantic phone calls and emails; my editor, Sarah McGrath, who gave the book so much of her time, energy, and attention; and her editorial assistant, Sarah Stein. Thank you to all the editors and journals who have published stories I’ve written, and to those who took the time to send encouraging or instructive rejections. Special thanks to
Phoebe,
which took a chance on my first short story, and
The Paris Review,
which has been so supportive of my work. Many, many thanks to Radhika Jones for her work on the story
Virgins
.