The Dream of Doctor Bantam Read Online Free

Tabitha’s bed, her face numbing, and she stared at the wall. The psychedelic-painted CD player was silent and she let it stay that way.
    You cunt, she said to the silent walls. You have the messiest room I’ve ever seen.
    The Lisa Frank diary had a little padlock on it that she smashed easily with the screwdriver. The back of the cardboard cover was filled with lipstick blots, one per day for a week, MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY written underneath. And each page, save ten or fifteen at the back, had a date written on it. The dates began sometime last November. Beneath every date Tabitha had written:
    GET THROUGH TODAY
    Every day, fifteen lines of it. Every day was the same.
    She made herself pronounce it over and over in her head until it stopped meaning anything to her. She closed the book and set it down on the quilt, then she folded one of the corners over it. She could feel it, lying there, only feet away from her while she lay on the bed.
    Eventually the feeling came back to her face; by that point she had taken a lighter to the notebook. She masturbated with Tabitha’s purple speckled vibrator and she fell asleep again on the floor, curled in the blanket.
    Once they stayed up late in Tabitha’s room listening to the Buzzcocks and the Smashing Pumpkins while Tabitha smoked two bowls of marijuana, and Julie talked about all the possible situations a veterinarian might have to deal with on a given day; she wanted to care for animals back then, and Tabitha smiled, lazy and slow like a cat, and she dug her hips deeper into the mattress. Julie finally stopped talking and she turned to look at Tabitha; Tabitha’s eyes were closed; her head burrowed into her watermelon pillows. Soft mucus hissed in her nose as she breathed and dreamed. Julie pulled the blanket over both of them and sat up with her knees at her chest and the blanket pressed to her chin. The green smell of pot lingered in the fabric. Julie sat smelling it until she felt tired and she took the short walk down the hall to her own tiny bedroom, her kitten slippers kissing the carpet. And in the morning Tabitha’s hand touching her cheek, just two little hours before school: wake me up before you go-go.
    Julie woke up in her regular place on the floor. It was still dark outside and she was still alone and the smell of smoke under the door was beginning to fade, and in the closet were a stack of things she seriously had thought she could sell.
    Help me, I think I’m falling came from Linda’s bedroom, where the ashes had long since settled into the sheets.

3
    The morning of her seventeenth birthday, Julie knocked on the bathroom door for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes—her mother had long ago left for work.
    Jesus Christ, she moaned. I’m going to die of a burst bladder on my birthday, you bitch, open the goddamned door—
    Then Tabitha finally pulled back the inside bolt; Julie came inside. She was on her side on the matted burgundy bathroom rug, beginning to lie down. A pile of shampoo and conditioner bottles lay scattered around her, their contents oozing against their plastic sides as they rolled against the tile.
    Julie, said Tabitha. Happy birthday. Happy birthday.
    She tried to lift her head, smiled, tried to lift her arm. Slowly, slowly her arm reached toward her sister’s face.
    You have to go to the doctor, said Julie, her voice shaking.
    I’ll be fine, said Tabitha. Just fine.
    She wiggled her legs and made herself sit up. Her energy gone, she sat there breathing on the bathroom floor while Julie watched. Then she pulled herself into a standing position against the counter. She’d never been this fucked up before.
    Just fine, she said again. Her eyes closed and her head lolled forward.
    Julie caught her and helped her to bed. She could carry her sister all of a sudden.
    Linda and Michael came home, ready to take them all to dinner. She told them they’d have to wait. Tabitha slept all day and the next day besides. Julie stayed away from school the