Find Layla

by Meg Elison

She didn’t know that those knots were a biome for spores and bacteria. She didn’t know what the reaction would be when she introduced a lysis agent.

Life is hard and complicated and messy. Life is parasites that live in your gut and brilliant scientists teaching a gorilla to use sign language. Life is moths that drink tears, and the flu virus, and nothing you can control. Life is sometimes using a knife to comb your hair, because absolutely nothing else works, and life always finds a way through. I want to tell her what I always tell myself now: that’s life. It cheers me up and it calms me down. It reminds me to focus on what I can do rather than what I can’t.

That time I experimented on my own hair with a knife and dish soap in the bathtub wasn’t the first time I knew there was something wrong with my mom. Or wrong with me. That we were doing it wrong. But it was the first time I realized that help was not on the way. It was the first time I went from being a subject to being an observer—to really doing science. It was the first time I just took care of it myself.

What we have is symbiosis: that relationship between two organisms where they both get something they need out of it, like clown fish and anemones have. Like the anemone, she’s got secret sharp places. Like the clown fish, I’ve got better defenses than most of my kind. It works.

“I don’t understand why I can’t stay over. You’ve been to my house a thousand times. I’ve never even met your mom. Just your dumb-ass stink-bomb brother.”

What Kris won’t give her, I can give her. It’s like an affair, in a weird way. I can’t even breathe.

It’s not even dark outside yet, but I am done with the day. I lie there trying to hold it together until the day is done with me.

Kris should have sold me out. It would make her life easier, to have some cooler friends. And it wouldn’t have mattered to me. What could they possibly do to me? I’m already nothing.

I stopped wondering a long time ago why some people have lives like Kristi’s while I have this one. I don’t think there are any rules on that. It’s just what we get.

I wish she had watched the video and the world had died. I wish a scorpion had stung me for real. I wish I had something to show people, like here’s the scar where my mom used to be. I have nothing. That’s life.

I hate the glass in here. I wish I had a place with no windows. Maybe underground. One door with one key, no leaks.

I’ve seen the calm of other biomes. I’ve stolen it, like a parasite. What I don’t know is whether I can get my own and maintain it. Peace and homeostasis look expensive.

I made that video with my report card to show people that I’m not a fuckup. I’d be fine if somebody could offer me a closet to sleep in, and I won’t burn down their house or go to jail or anything, but I can’t become part of somebody’s family. Andy is gonna be like one of those baby monkeys that gets released into the wild and the other monkeys accept him and he forgets there was ever a before-time. I won’t ever forget, because it’s been my whole life. I’ll always be weird, like one of those gorillas that learned too much sign language to go back to the forest.”

What I want to do is set Jane on fire and post a video of me pointing and laughing, but that won’t prove anything other than that bitches be cold but also flammable.

I leave it and walk quickly out the door. I’m only stealing food that would have gone into the trash. If I take that money, if I say yes to some guy who offers me money, I become somebody else. Somebody like Mom.

Just remember that nobody’s opinions about you are as important as your opinions about you. If anyone threatens you or scares you, tell an adult. But try to let the rest of it roll off you. It doesn’t really matter.”