Suckerpunch Read Online Free Page A

in the bathtub. Britt’s eyes were hooded and glossy red. Ashley winked at me, her hair dripping emerald again onto her shoulders. The door closed and someone hit the lights.
    Darren’s voice was muffled as he tried to convince the manager he was alone.
    Hey, Oliver said. Are my eyes open?
    Shut up, someone whispered.
    I can’t see .
    Dipshit, the lights are off .
    Oliver started sobbing. A drunk girl who obviously didn’t know about Oliver’s dad started to giggle, a bell pinging inside my ears. I reached my hand out toward where Ashley had stood before the lights went out and grabbed air. The scent of roses was stronger, as if someone were standing right beside me holding a bouquet. A spotted shark glided out of the darkness with a face like my dad’s. Oh shit, I said, flinching. The shark snapped at me and I flinched again, needles bristled on my arm. I was having a bad trip and there was nothing I could do about it. It was likefalling off a high-rise building and telling yourself I don’t want to fall anymore . You just had to wait until you hit the bottom.
    Get out, get out, the manager yelled from behind the door. I call the cops.
    Some of us were drunk. Some of us were stoned. Some of us were on acid and had an aurora borealis in our head. But we were all on the same leaky boat in that motel bathroom, too dark to see where we were going, too smashed to even care.

3
    W HEN WE WERE KIDS , my dad would twist a lemon off its branch and toss it into the swimming pool. The first one to grab it would get a dollar. Enrique and I would jump in and paddle furiously toward the yellow fruit, a little sun bobbing on the waves. I’d grab the lemon first or Enrique would and then my dad would reach into his back pocket and pull out his wallet. He’d hand me or Enrique a dollar bill and one of us got to feel rich for a day.
    My dad worked long hours in a tall office building in Culver City. Sometimes he came home early with cardboard tubes of floor plans under his arm. In his office at our house there were blueprints thumbtackedto the walls, the bones of a gymnasium or bridge. His desk had a transparent T-square attached to the side that slid up and down. He used the lopsided coffee mug I made in kindergarten to hold his pencils. He had a snow globe paperweight, a miniature cabin surrounded by a dome of glass. Beside the tiny pyramid of logs, a man leaned on his axe. That, he told me once, is me in a nutshell.
    Now it was my mom who had to work, who drove off to waitress at this fancy Thai restaurant called the Palace, who came home tired and smelling of spices—lemongrass and curry and tamarind. If she wasn’t too exhausted, she sometimes made us empanadas for dinner and rolled out the dough right on the kitchen counter.
    It was a warm July evening and we sat down for dinner, the three of us, at a table designed for four. Where the bulk of my dad used to be was now an unobstructed view of the backyard, the pool’s diving board and lemon tree.
    The empanadas glistened on a platter. Some were filled with ground beef, onions, raisins, bits of egg. Some only had mozzarella cheese. When we sank ourteeth into them, we didn’t know what we were getting.
    Damn, I said. These are good, Mom.
    It’s been a while, huh?
    You should make them more often.
    It’s a lot of work, Marcus.
    Yeah, well, I said, then scratched my chin with my stubby finger.
    Enrique took a large bite from his empanada and the melted cheese stretched from his mouth like a rubber band. Hot, hot , he said, his mouth wide open.
    My God, Enrique, my mom said. What happened to your hand?
    We all looked at Enrique’s hand resting beside his plate, the pink and swollen knuckles.
    Oh, he said, pausing. I dropped a dumbbell on it.
    Enrique was always doing curls then—while he watched television, while he talked on the phone, five sets for each arm before bed. Still, I could tell that he was lying and imagined