When my mother was growing up, she had a voice in her head that laughed at her when she felt worthless. He was an old man, apparently, white-haired and high-pitched who just laughed and laughed at her. It was one of those things she just told me one day in the car all of a sudden, like her two abortions and the LSD her father gave her for her sixteenth birthday and her marriage problems. As a daughter I just didn’t touch those other things, I couldn’t, but the thing about the laughing man made me scared. That was when my blood started feeling too loud. That was when the water coming out of the faucet in the bathtub started sounding like yelling. Despite my pushing and my easy life I was genetically insane. It became something I couldn’t push; I could just watch it.

The night things got really bad, the night I wore my white sundress and called Simon about Sylvia Plath, I kept hearing the sound of that glass table breaking at Saul’s Gatsby party. I put my hands over my ears, like I did in the movie theatre with Simon when the plot of the film got too loud. I was tired of fearing sleep and paralysis and insanity. I was tired of being privileged and smart and I was tired of feeling guilty about being tired of those things.

I hadn’t called Simon to say goodbye, really. I called him because I knew he’d call someone else who could help me. He’s simple, cause-and-effect. I pictured him googling “Mrs. Dalloway” on his phone and spelling it wrong. He’s not that kind of stupid, he would know what I meant. So like a coward I sat there with a stomach full of toxic pills and folded my legs primly, waiting for blue and red lights to arrive in my driveway. I sipped the vodka slowly, the way I always wished I drank it at parties. That was the worst I ever felt, sitting on that bed and waiting. My shoulder blades weighed more than old age and bad grades and teenage pregnancy combined, even though I’d never felt any of those things before. I felt like I was already expired.

Simon’s red car showed up with the medics, with its one broken headlight. They rushed toward my house and I smiled at them through the front window. In a burst of dumb courage I looked right at all of them and took a giant swig of vodka from the bottle. Simon scrambled and tripped on his untied shoe laces. I was out before I saw him stand back up.

There were times with Sloane when I felt real, like when we used to light candles and sleep on the trampoline. Sloane liked stars and outer space in the same way I liked the 1960s. We were smart and lonely a lot of the time together but then she got gorgeous and Roy made her life more literal and less theoretical. I hardened and she softened and she started making me feel young and dumb. I cracked a little then too, I guess. It was a building, gradual process, all leading up to that white sundress night. In the hospital Sloane was the first person I thought of, even though Simon was standing right there in the doorway with his head resting on the wall, exhausted by my complications. Sloane and Simon both had dark brown eyes and that made them similarly important to me. I looked at Simon from my hospital bed, clenching and unclenching his fists and breathing shakily and audibly. He was worried about me but if Sloane had been there she would’ve been stable. She would’ve been brave enough to come over and slap my arm, call me stupid, yell at me for the things I consumed. Sloane told me one time that my heartbeat was the loudest she’d ever heard. If she had been there instead of Simon she would’ve mentioned that again and how it probably meant that I was more alive, too alive to be in a hospital. I wanted to call Sloane but I was stuck in the bed by a needle in my arm.

“Shea,” Simon barely said. “Shea.”

“Simon you look like s***,” I said, crossing my arms. “Go in the bathroom and wash your face or something.” I never meant to be cruel but he was so quiet and dark-colored. Watching his eyes fall made me feel a rush.

“I’ve never been this scared before, Shea.”

Shea Shea Shea. He always said my name too much. “I’m okay. Go wash your face, you look like s***.”

He held onto the door frame, his long eyelashes stuck together. He was sweating through his t-shirt and it made me want to push him onto the ground.