Luz Rosales
your dead best friend comes over for tea
Your dead best friend appears on your doorstep after you’ve put your youngest daughter to bed. It’s been years since you last saw her, and you’ve aged considerably during that time – your hair is graying, you have wrinkles around your mouth – but she looks exactly the same, so perfect, like a snapshot come to life.
She smiles at you, showing off her perfect teeth that have never been broken or chipped, and you feel a flush of jealousy, but still you invite her in. How could you turn her away?
You pour her a cup of tea, then sit across from her at the kitchen table.
Looking at her, under the bright lights of the kitchen, it strikes you that everything about you is dull, from your drab clothes to your house, devoid of bright colors and containing only a few decorations. You could be anyone, really, any single mother, but she is unmistakably your dead best friend. Her strawberry blonde hair is tied back in a ponytail. She’s wearing a low-cut blue shirt, so you can see the familiar shooting star tattoo around her collarbone.
Her only blemish is a scar on her throat that she definitely didn’t have before she died, the one thing about her that's changed. She scratches it absentmindedly with her manicured nails. She catches you staring; you look away.
“My son left for college yesterday,” your dead best friend says. “My house feels so empty now, but that’s a good thing, really. Having a kid is so exhausting. It’s good to have some time and space to yourself.”
You nod and sip your tea, wince at the bitter taste. There are times when you’ve regretted being a mother, when you thought maybe your life would be better if you had gotten that abortion, if you had taken that pill. Maybe you'd still have a boyfriend. Maybe you'd have a degree.
“It’s so relaxing.” She sighs. “I love my son, really I do, but he can be such a pain sometimes. When he was younger he was a little monster, always throwing tantrums. In fact--” Her expression changes, becoming more serious. She lowers her voice. “I’ve never told anyone this, but when he was little, I used to stand over his bed with a hammer.”
This shocks you. “Really?” you ask, unsure of how else to respond.
You can’t imagine your dead best friend doing something like that, can’t believe that she would even consider it. She used to get sad whenever you passed by roadkill. She couldn't watch horror movies because she felt too bad for the characters.
“I’m not proud of it." She shakes her head as if to dispel the very memory. “I never actually hit him – he never even knew – but I wanted to do it. It would’ve been so easy.” She’s been scratching at the scar all this time, and after she says this, she digs her nails in, pries it open until blood pours out. The blood stains the tablecloth and lands in her tea. She picks up the cup with shaky fingers and takes a long sip.
She wipes blood from her mouth. “I’m not a good person.” The wound in her throat is a gaping hole. “I’ve never been a good person--”
“If you just thought about doing it,” you tell her, "it's fine."
To some extent, you understand the frustration that drove her to it. You hit your eldest daughter once, when she was in elementary school. It was a single slap, but one that left her cheek red and swollen. You still consider it your lowest moment as a parent. The look of betrayal on your daughter’s face is one you’ll never forget.
“It’s more than that,” she says. Her hair thins rapidly. “You have no idea the things I’ve done.”
“Tell me.”
“No.”
“It’s fine.”
“You’ll hate me--” Her face slides off like a mask and falls to the floor, exposing the muscles underneath and the top of her skull. Her eyes are wide and glassy. The tattoo on her collarbone is no longer ink; it's carved into her flesh, a deep, fresh red.
“I’ll never hate you,” you say. You could never hate your dead best friend. You could hate everyone else in the world but not her, never her. This is the person who kept all your secrets in high school, from your bulimia to your suspected bisexuality. This is the person who once stayed up all night talking with you on the phone when you were on the verge of committing suicide.
“No,” she says again. Her voice is louder now, almost a shout. “No.” She picks up her face, but she doesn’t put it back on. She rips it in half.
The air goes out of the room. For several seconds, you can't breathe. For several seconds, there is no noise, not even the ticking of a clock.
You close your eyes. When you open them, you’re outside, by some train tracks. Your dead best friend is there, too, but she's younger, and she's holding a baby swaddled in a blanket. She places it on the tracks and walks away. You hear the blaring of a train in the distance, and you try to scream, try to move, but you can’t, you can’t--
You’re back in the kitchen. Your dead best friend is looking right at you.
“Do you hate me?”
You open your mouth to reply, but before you can, she lurches out of her chair and collapses. She comes undone in front of you. Her skin sloughs off, her bones crumble, her blood vanishes. Nothing is left behind.
You finish your tea. Something sharp lodges in your throat, making you gag. You cough it up into a napkin: one of your dead best friend's nails, bright pink and shiny.
“I don’t hate you,” you whisper.