Low by Anna Quon Read Free Book Online Page B

the hospital doors.
    Coming toward her down the hall was a middle-aged woman dressed in a red parka and men’s boots, heading outside to smoke, Adriana thought. “Hi, dearie!” the woman said in a loud, shrill voice that sounded like a caricature of herself. Mr. Song smiled at her, but she didn’t acknowledge him, continuing toward the doors with a strange, ambling gait. Adriana put her head down and held her father’s arm.
    After checking in with the assessment unit’s nurse, Adriana and her father sat in the waiting room for two hours, waiting for a doctor to see them. Adriana felt the darkness inside her spreading like a swarm of ants, creeping from her body into her head. She held her head with both hands, and covered her eyes. She didn’t want to see her father’s sad smile, or his tears, if there were any.
    Adriana thought about Jazz, and how she would hate Adriana for trying to kill herself. Jazz had just learned to let go of her father’s suicide and wasn’t likely ready to cope with Adriana’s feelings of utter despair. She didn’t want to see Jazz at all. She couldn’t bear to see her eyes.
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    After half an hour Adriana gave into exhaustion, and leaning her head against her father’s shoulder as he sat reading a magazine. She did what she had always done when faced with overwhelming dread—she slept.
    She dreamed of Peter and the pale girl with auburn hair. His face was painted white with black circles around his eyes, and he gripped the girl’s wrist with his white hand. She seemed terrified of him. Adriana looked at her face and saw it was her sister Beth’s, and that she was fading, blending into her surroundings. Adriana jerked awake, and blinked up at the ceiling. Her heart beat fast inside her chest and ears.
    Beth. In the dream, she looked as her mother had, in photos from many years ago, when she was a girl sun bathing on the beach in Croatia. At 14 or 15, she wore a striped bathing suit and showed off her long legs for the camera. Beth would not be so bold—she was still a little girl in Adriana’s books—but she had the same angular face that her mother had, the same long curls. Where her mother had been given to anger and screeching, Beth was timid and hysterical.
    Adriana didn’t know why Beth would appear in her dream, since she barely spent any time thinking about her younger sister. Beth was simply someone who reminded her of her mother, and of her mother’s absence.
    But Peter… Adriana tried to remember Peter’s face but couldn’t. Had he been lustful, violent or crazed? She didn’t think so. Menacing, perhaps, and clouded—but in the light of day, it was hard to remember why he appeared so threatening.
    Peter had never hurt her physically and his emotional clumsiness wasn’t his fault, Adriana thought, as she drifted painfully toward sleep. They had got together one night after a party during which they both drank too much and fell asleep next to each other in a sea of bodies Adriana awoke to see him still groggy with sleep, squinting at her and trying to place her. She felt exposed and her reaction was to giggle uncontrollably, although her stomach was drawn and sensitive to the light, and her head felt luminous and balloon-like. He blinked at her and smiled, and suggested breakfast.
    Peter was a talker and Adriana was a listener. She knew he would never understand her timidity and sensitivity, but she wasn’t looking for understanding—she was dazzled by the idea of having a boyfriend. Peter asked for her number or her email and she gave him both. From that afternoon she was waiting for his call, and over the next few days she lost a little hope. She concluded that his interest in her was casual, friendly, without malice but without depth. Disappointing, appalling and humiliating. And yet, when he finally called, to ask if she wanted to get together, she couldn’t help