Saved

by Jade Lacy

The day of my reunion with Madison was thick with the promise of rain—not just in the clouds, which sagged low in the sky, their grey bellies folding over the hilltops that cradled our city, but everywhere, every inch of air was hot and humid and stuck in your throat. It was difficult to stand outside the mall, where the air conditioning tickled my back every time someone opened the doors, but I was afraid Madison wouldn’t be able to find me if I went inside. She was already ten minutes late.

‍ ‍Practice grace, I reminded myself, fingering the cross that hung over my chest. I was just nervous. Two years had passed since Madison moved across the country without so much as a goodbye. At the time, her departure felt like the end of the world. She was my best friend, after all. It took youth group and counseling and the excitement of entering high school to patch up the Madison-shaped hole in my life. Her reappearance was as unexpected as her exit—just a message on Facebook one day, asking if we could hang out. My parents warned me that she would not be the same girl I remembered from middle school. She needed, they said, to be saved, to be brought back to the flock, and I was the one to do it.

Finally, a faded red truck pulled up and Madison climbed out. Her hair glowed white against the diffuse light of the clouds, just as towheaded as when we were young. Without that halo of pale hair it would’ve been hard to recognize her.

People used to talk about growth spurts like they were magical transformations—we were destined to sprout legs and hips and shed our round stomachs in one fell swoop. I hadn’t experienced anything like that. People still mistook me for a middle schooler all the time, though I was sixteen. Madison, on the other hand, was the fabled swan. There was a deep line of skin—cleavage—above the neck of her tank top. The shirt only extended a few inches below her chest, leaving her stomach bare except the belly button ring that sparkled in the center. Her hips were still slim, but underneath them her legs seemed endless, two pale ski-poles gliding over the ground as she jogged toward me.

“They won’t fucking leave,” Madison mumbled, looking back at the truck idling by the curb. She brought her thumb to her mouth and chewed on it.

“Who is that?”

Madison turned back, remembering I was there. “Shit, Allie, you haven’t changed a bit.”

My face pressed into her neck as we hugged. Her smell was completely unfamiliar, marshmallow and strawberry and the coppery tang of sweat. Her skin was warm—everything was warm—so that when we parted we had to peel ourselves off each other.

“They’re gone!” Madison rummaged in her purse; it was a massive, slouchy bag of black leather and superfluous gold buckles. I fingered the back pocket of my shorts, which held everything I had—keys, my chunky off-brand phone, and a twenty-dollar bill from Mom.

Madison pulled out a small, plastic-y contraption. She pressed the thing to her lips and inhaled deeply, then blew out a puff of sweet-smelling vapor.

“Want a hit?”

“I don’t vape.” Keep cool, I thought. It’s still Madison.

“Shit, your parents aren’t watching from their car or something, right?”

“It’s just me.” I nodded to my bike locked up on a nearby pole.

“Oh my god, throwback!”

“Do you still have yours?” We used to ride our bikes everywhere together.

“God, no.” She laughed. “I’m way too old.”

The doors opened with a flood of cool air. Inside, the mall was all white walls and white tile. Signs still hung from the ceiling directing people to the Macys and Sears and AMC, though those businesses were gone now. Most of the storefronts were just grey metal grates with rectangles of stripped paint where the signs used to be. From the entrance I could only see two places open—a discount shoe store that looked like a hoarder’s cave, with mismatched boxes spilling out the front, and the back entrance to a Chinese buffet. The thoroughfare was edged with a glass wall overlooking the lower level of the mall, but the escalators had long been blocked off. There were only white-painted plywood walls, fake ficuses, and empty benches down there now.

Madison spun around slowly in the center of the walkway, taking in the emptiness.

“What the hell happened?” she asked. “It wasn’t exactly the Mall of America, but there used to be stores.” She ran up to the nearest gate and rattled the bars. The sound of metal on metal echoed across the whole mall, drawing stares from the few people wandering out of the buffet.

“Stop it!” I yelled.

Madison kept shaking the bars. “Let me in! Open the stores!”

In a panic, I pulled Madison back by the shoulders. I could feel her chest heave against my own. There was her sour scent again, too animal for the sterile interior of the mall.

She shrugged herself out of my arms. “Chill, Allie. I was joking.”

“We could get in trouble.” Even as I spoke I heard how baby-ish I sounded.

“You think anyone in here cares?” Madison said. Still, she walked away from the metal gate.

“There’s actually one sort-of cool store left,” I said quickly, breathing it out all in one exhale. “I could show you, if that sounds fun.”

Madison shrugged. “Lead the way.”

As we approached the store, I watched Madison, nervous to see her reaction. She looked forward, not seeming to notice that I was angling towards the bright, poster-covered windows of the anime store, so that I had to point it out.

“You still like anime?” She tried to keep her voice even, but I could hear her disappointment nonetheless.

“It’s whatever,” I said, though I did still watch the shows we liked as kids, where girls our age transformed into magical warriors clad in sparkly dresses. “They’ve got, like, other cool stuff in the back though.”

The store was new, haphazardly built into the shell of another failed business. The shelves crowding the center of the store were all unpainted steel, though the horde of figurines that filled them provided more than enough visual stimulation. The man working gave us a nod as we walked in, then returned his attention to a small T.V. behind the counter, which played a show with big-breasted girls shooting large guns.   

“That guy’s watching some crazy shit,” Madison whispered.

“I know. It’s not very… appropriate.” I almost said Christian, but I didn’t want to mention the C-word to Madison, lest she startle like a foal. I led us, head down, to the back of the store, where we were out of the man’s sight.

The first thing Madison noticed was the array of Japanese swords. She rushed up to a katana zip-tied to the wall and stroked the length of its blade.

“Is this what you wanted to look at?” she asked. “Are you some kind of ninja now?”

“I actually thought…” I gestured to the other corner of the store, which was dominated by a display of stuffed animals, each one huge and round with a disproportionately tiny face. “I don’t know if you remember, but we were supposed to go to Build-A-Bear the week you moved away. Build-A-Bear is gone, obviously, but… next best thing, I guess.”

Madison looked at me for a long time. I was embarrassed, about to retract my plan, when I noticed her eyes were shining. Her eyelids fluttered faster until drops of water gathered on the bottom lashes, and she looked away.

I was breaking through, I thought. I reached out and squeezed her hand. She squeezed back, rubbing her eyes dry with the other hand.

We chose keychains with plushie cats for one another, since those were the only things we could afford. For Madison, I picked a black cat with white-tipped ears. For me, she picked a light grey tabby. Madison kicked me lightly in the shin as we checked out, trying to get me to look at the show on the cashier’s little TV, which was just flashes of nude tones in my peripheral vision. She ripped the tag off her keychain right away and placed it proudly on the strap of her purse. I clipped mine to one of my belt loops so that it bounced on my hip as we walked through the mall.

We had just enough money left to split a pretzel. The one worker at Auntie Annie’s, a girl about our age, eyed us closely, perhaps wondering who we could be to each other, looking as different as we did now.

We ate at a formica table with built-in chairs. Madison pulled the pretzel apart before each bite, separating the crust from the bread inside. It was time, I knew, to get into things, to begin my real work.

“What was Arizona like?” I asked.

“Different. You have to look down when you walk because there are rattlesnakes.” She gutted another section of the pretzel and popped the soft bread in her mouth.

“Is that why you came back?”

“The snakes? No.” She barked out a laugh. “My parents sent me back.”

“They didn’t come with you?”

“I’m Grammy and Grampy’s problem now.”

“What happened?” I asked. I couldn’t fathom being shipped off away from my parents.

“I went to rehab.”

My mouth dropped open. It was all I could do to close it again. Madison smirked at my reaction, but there was no joy in it.

“It was ‘pain killers,’” she said, pumping her fingers in air quotes. “I had this friend group at school; we all did them. Someone’s mom had a prescription, then we found dealers through friends. My parents sent me back here to keep me away from those people.”

I had no idea what to say. I felt miles away from Madison. I could only think of condolences I’d heard on TV. I repeated a few of them, I’m sorry and I’m here for you.

“If anything, I think I was the bad influence. I didn’t start it, but I was the only one in the group who was really addicted. I was hooking up with our plug just for the pills. I didn’t like him at all; it was gross, honestly. I swear.” She stared at me with an imploring expression. I wasn’t sure what she wanted.

“Addiction makes you act different. I get it.”

She smiled, a little relieved, though my words sounded hollow even to myself. “It’s kind of the stupidest thing. You don’t even feel high after a while. I thought of it like medicine. I only felt normal when I was using. Whenever I sobered up I felt like shit.” She pulled her vape out of her bag and took a long, deep hit, blowing the smoke straight up.

“You shouldn’t use that in here. There’s kids,” I said, though there was only one other family all the way across the empty food court.

“It’s just nic,” Madison said.

“It’s addictive.”

“Chill, dude. Lesser of two evils.”

“If your parents sent you here to get better you should get better.” I knew this was not the way to help Madison, but the vape was right in front of me, a clear problem with a clear solution. How was I supposed to unravel the rest of her trauma? I was lashing out, I realized, at the impossibility of the task my parents had given me, and, too, at Madison, for being so much more complex than I could handle.

“You didn’t see me in Arizona. I’m a saint now.” Madison hit her vape again, this time blowing straight out toward me. “My parents have basically given up, by the way. That’s the only reason they let me come back here. Moving to Arizona was supposed to fix me.”

“You were never bad before.” I still didn’t know why she’d left. My parents were the ones who told me she was gone, and there was no explanation, no address for letters, no number to call.

Madison gave me a long look I couldn’t interpret.

“Let’s go somewhere else.” Madison got up without waiting for my approval, wiped her greasy fingers on her purse, and walked back into the depths of the mall. I cleared the table and jogged after her.

When Madison heard me approach, she broke into a run.

“Hey!” I shouted. Her laugh echoed in response.

I pounded my feet faster against the tile floor. The thunk and squeak of our shoes would’ve drawn stares if there was anyone around to see us, but the mall was barren. For every open store there were ten lying dormant, and I didn’t see a single person except Madison, flailing her arms to the side, her little black cat swinging wildly against her purse.

Madison stopped at the plywood barricade that blocked off the lower floor. As I ran toward her, she hoisted her body over the wall and dropped onto the other side. I could hear her feet flying down the immobile escalator. I had to follow her.

My landing sent up a small cloud of dust. This section of the mall had been closed since I could remember. Slowly, stopping at every creak of the metal, I descended into the darkness of the lower level. I kept my hand on the wall to stay steady. I could feel the dirt gathering at my fingertips and a strange softness to the plaster—rotting, I guessed, from decades of humidity. At the bottom of the escalator was a short corridor that opened up to light again on the other side.

Madison sat on one of the abandoned benches. She was inhaling from her vape. The smoke cloud caught the fluorescent light from far above, looking like her hair in the sun—white, nearly translucent.

“They can’t see us down here,” Madison said. She jutted her chin up, indicating a large marquee that blocked the sightline from the balcony.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Having fun. Come here.”

Our thighs pressed against each other on the small bench. The smell of her vape was strong, but sweet. I found myself inhaling deeper.

“Remember when we pretended to be high schoolers and tried on prom dresses?” Madison asked.

“They could totally tell we were kids.”

“It was so obvious, dude. I think we both said we were dating the quarterback.”

“On rival teams.”

“The boys wanted to fight each other but we begged them not to.”

“Our friendship was stronger than their rivalry.”

We both laughed then, harder than we should have. The joy we’d shared before, crammed into one dressing room with four poofy gowns each, was still alive now, reverberating through our abandoned hideaway as we wheezed for air.

Madison was the first to catch her breath. “Do you still want to go to prom together?” she asked.

“Of course,” I said. “You, me, and the two quarterbacks.”

We smiled at each other. She was different now—her face had deepened so much. The puff of baby fat around her cheeks was gone, revealing large divots under her eyes. Still, though, she was Madison. I did know how to return her to innocence, I realized. It was just this, the memory of our old life.

Suddenly, I noticed our faces were very close. Then, she kissed me.

Madison’s lips were rough, not like I remembered, chapped all around and too insistent against my own. I pulled away. I caught her, for a moment, leaned forward with her lips puckered and her eyes slammed shut, a desperate look across her face.

“What are you doing?” I scrambled to my feet. “I’m not like that.”

“Yes, you are.” Madison stood over me.

“We were kids. It doesn’t count. I didn’t see it like—like that.”

“We were fourteen,” Madison said. “I know we never labeled it, but, Allie, it’s not normal to kiss your best friend.”

“Little kids don’t know what it means. They just do things.”

“What are you saying?” Madison grabbed my shoulders. I was frightened. “Allie, I love you.”

“We were just friends,” I said. I tried to explain what I had learned at church—sometimes we wander off the path, sometimes we sin without knowing, but we can be saved. She cut me off.

“My parents saw us kissing; that’s why we went to Arizona. That’s why I couldn’t contact you.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“I know it was real,” Madison continued. “I thought about you every day. I never forgot.”

It was nothing. I had repented. My parents, the church counselor, they all assured me I was normal, these past mistakes didn’t mean too much, and as long as I knew it was wrong the sin would be scrubbed away; I would be clean. Father, forgive them, the counselor had said, for they know not what they do.

“I’m not like you,” I said. “I’m not a dyke.”

Madison slapped me. The sound echoed like a crack of thunder. I saw her for a second more, saw the anger lighting up her face and her eyes that said this misery is yours too. Then, before the echo was gone, I turned and ran.

My keychain caught on a nail as I scrambled over the wall. The tabby cat plummeted to the ground, just another piece of trash in the abandoned mall, destined to lie there until the whole building was demolished.

Outside, silver-white rivulets of rain poured from the sky. The heatwave had broken. I ran to my bike—the same one I used back when Madison and I were little, riding to the mall together, sneaking kisses behind racks of dresses. I pulled off the lock and pressed my foot on the pedals, but the wheels wouldn’t budge. I shielded my eyes from the rain driving overhead to see closer. Somehow, though they had been pristine this morning, the spokes of the wheel were now rusted in place, as if the years of childhood I had tried to forget passed all at once while I was inside. I picked up the bike and started for home. As I walked, I willed the water to wash away all that I had been before, to make me pure once again.