I cover my head with the blanket and the deputy says show your face. Don’t cover your face again, inmate. My name isn’t inmate. I tell him my name is Merry. I tell him I’m sorry for talking back so much. I’m praying about it.

* * *

—

A new voice sings and the voices are quiet. The new voice has a deeper voice than the old voice who left. The new voice sings Nina Simone. She sings Billie Holiday. I close my eyes and I’m driving across a desert with the sun in my eyes and the radio blaring and the sand in the wind stings my skin. I’m listening to my iPod.

   The new voice brought a bag into a diner for her boyfriend. He said it was safer that way, if she did it for him. She’ll be here a while. The new voice says she didn’t know what was in the bag. She’s not lying exactly. Schr?dinger’s heroin. Doesn’t matter anyway. She didn’t have a choice and the voices agree. The voices know about those sorts of choices. The voices understand. You do what your man says.

The voices try to talk to Aaliyah. They don’t know if she’s still here. She doesn’t answer. I say she’s gone. She’s lost in her mind. Or released. Or dead. The voices say to shut the fuck up.

I wonder how long I have before I pick the first hole in my skin. I look at my mangled hand. I’m already gone.

The voice asks what I’m in for. I was telling a story. I say misdemeanor assault again. The voice only says “Oh.” I think she’s mad at me now. I don’t like it when the voices are mad at me. She says, “Who did you piss off?” The voices discuss. It’s a fair question. She’s not mad at me. But I am.

Day-Day isn’t around, so I tell the story to the voices and hope they understand.

* * *

—

I loved her. Autumn. We were living together, a little town house in Maryland. It was one of those relationships you think are perfect because you don’t fight on road trips, or when assembling Ikea furniture. I had a dog and she had a cat. I painted the walls. We talked about weddings and children, but neither of us made the kind of money for all that.

   Then, two years in, Autumn texted me and said it was over. She said she loved me but she wasn’t in love with me. She said the problem was I was sad all the time. It was depressing just being around me anymore. I should move out and we should date and she’d try to fall in love with me again. I agreed because I loved her.

I found a room to rent in Virginia, closer to work. Where I’d been living in Maryland, I had an hour commute each night, which, while standard by D.C. suburbs, was fucking draining. Sitting in a work van in traffic that never moved. She called when she needed me. I’d sit in traffic, then make dinner, and she’d let me stay the night after we fucked. We’d drive down to Kings Dominion and ride the roller coasters and I’d finger her in the bathrooms. She’d call and I’d meet her at the security desk of the National Archives, where she worked, and we’d fuck in the stacks. I pretended I was fine with it. I pretended I was happy.

I’d been patching myself together so long, hiding behind whichever version of me I thought would be least upsetting to everyone else. Meanwhile, the damage I was ignoring was just festering. That’s how life is in the margins. You can’t afford new brakes, so you’ll need new rotors. You can’t afford a root canal, so they have to pull the tooth. You don’t have the time, resources, or money to even begin to diagnose your mind, much less treat it, so you turn up the radio so you don’t hear the sound of what’s breaking. I had kept my anger tucked away. I liked my anger. I thought it kept me safe.

   I went to the VA and told them I was depressed. They gave me meds. Lots of them. They’d assign me someone to talk to as soon as possible. The waiting list was down to three months. I was getting better. I wasn’t sad. I was fucking vibrating. I never slept anymore. Who needs to sleep when you’re fucking alive. I spent my nights on the Internet.

That’s how I saw a picture of them together—Autumn and, let’s call her “Karen,” because she was one. Some picture on MySpace. Someone new on someone’s top eight. Some feed. Here’s a funny thing: my ex before had cheated on me with Karen. Small world really.

I had met Karen when I was a bartender. She was camped at my bar one night with her entourage, downing kamikaze shots and whooping. One would leave, come back, report on some situation that grew more hilarious each time; they’d laugh and order another shot. I asked what was so funny.

Karen’s volunteer spokesperson said, “You know Twofer?” I did not. Karen, exasperated with her spokesperson, said, “Heather. Two for the price of one, get it?” Listen. I didn’t like Heather either. Heather was a bouncer who’d called in sick that night. Heather was why I was washing my own glasses—my barback was covering her shift. Whenever Heather did show up, she was rude and never picked up glasses. But Karen and her entourage didn’t work at the bar, and I didn’t like them talking shit about one of us, the staff.

Karen’s spokesperson said, “Heather asked Karen out. So Karen said to meet her next door. She’s been waiting there like an hour.” This was hilarious to them—the sort of hilarious prank the rich kids pull in a John Hughes movie. I waved down a bouncer and told him to go tell Heather.

   All that to say, I thought Karen was an asshole long before she fucked my next two girlfriends.