High, p.1
HIGH, page 1
Contents
High
Copyright © 2021 Mary Sullivan. All rights reserved.
Dedication
Author’s Note
Happy
Fool to Cry
Paint It Black
Get Off of My Cloud
Indian Girl
Indian Girl #2
Indian Girl #3
Play with Fire
Under My Thumb
She’s a Rainbow
Faraway Eyes
Heaven
Sister Morphine
You Got the Silver
Loving Cup
Shine a Light
Dance Little Sister Dance
Mother’s Little Helper
Wild Horses
As Tears Go By
Heartbreaker
Some Girls
Can’t You Hear Me Knocking
Gimme Shelter
Angie
Miss You
You Can’t Always Get What You Want
Ruby Tuesday
Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby?
Send It to Me
Rocks Off
Salt of the Earth
Let It Bleed
Citadel
Backstreet Girl
Tumbling Dice
Jigsaw Puzzle
She Smiled Sweetly
I Just Want to See His Face
Connection
Let’s Spend the Night Together
Moonlight Mile
Monkey Man
Sway
Rip This Joint
Dead Flowers
Out of Time
Waiting on a Friend
No Use in Crying
Something Happened to Me Yesterday
Torn and Frayed
Memory Motel
All Down the Line
Crazy Mama
Sympathy for the Devil
Hot Stuff
Worried About You
Hand of Fate
Time Waits for No One
Winter
Coming Down Again
Slipping Away
Child of the Moon
Dandelion
Dancing in the Light
If You Really Want to Be My Friend
Stray Cat Blues
Sweet Black Angel
Lies
In Another Land
How Can I Stop
Wanna Hold You
Going Home
I Am Waiting
Out of Tears
Let Me Go
Shake Your Hips
Like a Rolling Stone
It’s Not Easy
Cool, Calm & Collected
Free
Till the Next Goodbye
Stop Breaking Down
Respectable
Can You Hear the Music
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
High
Mary Sullivan
Fitzroy Books
Copyright © 2021 Mary Sullivan. All rights reserved.
Published by Fitzroy Books
An imprint of
Regal House Publishing, LLC
Raleigh, NC 27612
All rights reserved
https://fitzroybooks.com
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN -13 (paperback): 9781646031702
ISBN -13 (epub): 9781646031719
Library of Congress Control Number:
All efforts were made to determine the copyright holders and obtain their permissions in any circumstance where copyrighted material was used. The publisher apologizes if any errors were made during this process, or if any omissions occurred. If noted, please contact the publisher and all efforts will be made to incorporate permissions in future editions.
Interior and cover design by Lafayette & Greene
Cover images © by C.B. Royal
Regal House Publishing, LLC
https://regalhousepublishing.com
The following is a work of fiction created by the author. All names, individuals, characters, places, items, brands, events, etc. were either the product of the author or were used fictitiously. Any name, place, event, person, brand, or item, current or past, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Regal House Publishing.
Printed in the United States of America
Dedication
For all those who choose to hold fast to dreams.
And for my mother, who has always been my light.
Author’s Note
Ceti
is a single star
in the constellation
Cetus
that is spectrally similar
to the Sun.
Happy
Sometimes I’m so high
it’s like I live in the clouds,
like I own the world.
Today from our nineteenth floor
I can hardly see my old school field
where the boys are playing soccer
in all the fog,
but I bet Will’s there.
I got my Messi ball and my cleats,
and I’m floating out the door
before Foxface gets here.
Take the stairs, all nineteen flights,
smelling laundry detergent and piss,
thinking someone should fix the lights.
Then run past the front desk, along the river
till I get to the game.
Dribble down the sideline,
trying not to stare.
Trying not to breathe
too hard.
Already had my practice,
now I roll my ball into the air
like I got all day.
Finally, Will goes,
“Hey, Ceti, wanna play?”
“Wassup with that?” Tyler whines.
“Shut up.
Just cuz she’s better than you.”
“You can have her.”
Tyler comes after me hard,
like he’s gonna slide tackle me.
I jump over him, pass the ball outside to Will.
He sends it back, one touch. I’m about to cross it
when Tyler cuts
me
down
and steals the ball.
I catch up to him
and flick the ball back to our goalie,
who punts it halfway down the field.
I’m happy when I’m playing.
Mom didn’t name me after a star
for nothing. But I don’t wanna think
about her or Foxface right now,
only about the next goal.
I wanna score.
Light rain is coming down,
and the ground is soft.
I’m running through the clouds,
cutting down the side,
dribbling around them, rolling it back.
Next goal wins, and I want this one.
I need it more than they do.
Mom hasn’t been able to make it
to any of my games yet—
maybe the quarter finals
on Saturday.
Will says, “You get this
and I owe you Tasty Burger.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Only thing that matters is me
and the ball
and the next goal.
I send one into space
between Will and the goalie.
He sprints and tips it in so sweetly.
Then throws his head back,
shaking his ridiculous, floppy hair.
Grabs me close enough
to smell his sweat and heat.
Something inside me melts—
I catch it in his dark eyes too,
like in that second
we could go from friends
to something else.
It feels so good
I think I’m gonna
die.
After he lets go
I still feel the warmth
where his fingers were.
Makes me want it
all over again.
Plays Khalid on his phone.
Nothing feels better than—
Says, “See you later, okay?”
“Yeah.” Wanna say, when?
I’ve only been waiting forever.
He has no idea how happy I am
right now.
And someone left an Orange Crush on the sidelines.
I grab it. Drink down the sweet sparkle
in one long gulp.
Tyler goes, “Who’s your daddy?”
Don’t know if he’s talking to me.
It’s after-school pick-up time,
and no one’s collecting me,
especially Foxface.
He’ll never be my daddy.
A man in a suit stops, says,
“You’ re good.”
“Thanks.”
“I used to play—” He laughs.
“About a million years ago.
Heard the girls team made the finals—”
“Yeah, we’re gonna win, too,”
I tell him.
A kid yells from the playground, “Daddy!”
Arms out, running like mad.
A flash of light crosses the sky,
bright in the dark November—
got to check Mom now.
I snag my ball, sky blue with darker jags
like bird wings,
and take off
toward home.
Fool to Cry
I fly past Will. Can’t wait today,
even though he lives on the seventh floor
of our building.
He’s with his sophomore friends
and I’m only in ninth.
Anyway, I love shooting up in the elevator.
Mom used to say, “Ceti, you’re not a falling star,
you’re a shooting star. Remember that.”
No one’s in the hallway
so I boot my ball down the old brown carpet,
do a fake around the defender,
roll back,
and score!
Score again—Mom’s home and Foxface isn’t.
But she’s not moving.
I run to her,
put my head on her chest
to hear her heart
beating.
A half-eaten Dunkin’ Donut with sprinkles
rises slowly up
and down
on her gray T-shirt.
“Mom, are you good?”
She looks up with glazed eyes
and smiles.
“Sorry, Ceti babe, I forgot
to go to the store today.”
Her eyes are like the rain
streaming down our windows,
and she’s the glass.
I don’t want her to break.
“It’s okay, I can get something to eat.”
In the kitchen,
I’ll find a spoon in the sink,
a ball of tin foil and a needle in the trash.
She’s crying and crying now.
I want to say,
Why don’t you do something instead,
but at least
she’s still
here.
Paint It Black
When Mom starts shivering
I go to her closet for a sweater.
I don’t know why the inside of her door
is painted red,
but it’s been like that since we moved in.
She has a poster tacked up of “Paint It Black”
when Brian Jones, her favorite Rolling Stone,
was in the band.
We started listening
after Mom bought the red pick-up truck,
with Stones CDs in the glove compartment.
We played them over and over,
the music filling up the space between us—
her in the driver’s seat
and me next to her, reclined all the way.
If her back didn’t hurt.
she’d hold my hand
until I fell asleep.
I pick up Mom’s black sweater
from the dirty clothes scattered across her floor,
make-up, bottles stuffed with cigarettes,
tinfoil, a lighter, a tub of Vaseline.
When I used to sleep in here
the sheets were clean and white,
not gray and matted with her long honey hair
and his short dark ones.
And it didn’t smell gross
like throw-up and smoke.
A silver frame peeks out
from a pile of junk in the closet.
The Disney castle looms
behind us like a fake background.
It doesn’t even look like us—
Mom in her bikini top and jean shorts
and me with two braids,
just like any other six-year-old kid
in Florida.
I slide the picture
in my hoodie
and shut the closet door.
The wooden edges
are coated with black splotches—
dark heart shapes in the corners,
creeping over the red,
like she’s painting her door black.
Get Off of My Cloud
I come out with Mom’s sweater
right as Foxface comes in.
I’m not supposed to be in their room.
I look down so he can’t see my eyes.
But he’s in a good mood, singing along,
Hey, hey you, you
get off of my —
He tosses his MAGA cap onto the couch
next to Mom, slouches beside her,
his head ted so I can see the whole
tattoo on his neck—
an orange fox with its mouth open,
glistening sharp teeth,
yellow eyes snarling.
A black and white skull
on top of this. Other skulls
are tattooed on his fingers,
one like the ring
Keith Richards wears.
The gold cross in his left ear
is the only religious thing about Foxface.
Protection from evil, he says.
Right?
I think the song is stuck
cuz it’s playing over and over.
And now she’s singing and sort of dancing
but not really. More like falling—
but at least she’s not crying anymore.
Don’t know if I can call what Foxface is doing dancing.
His arms are swinging like some crazy puppet
and his body’s like a beater going around
and around.
Hey, hey
you, you—
The words are puffs of smoke
that swirl up to the ceiling and disappear.
Her hair’s a greasy tangle
and she smells so bad.
Maybe that’s why she pulls off her pants
so all she has on is her gray T-shirt
and sweater barely covering her.
Foxface grabs her, laughing.
Before they bring me down
I got to go
jump on my own cloud.
I grab my Messi ball
and run out the door
down the stairs again.
Back to school to practice
cuz I’m gonna be so good
she’ll stay
clean.
Indian Girl
When I was five Mom got me a pair of moccasins
with two layers of fringe,
and a thunderbird in red, white, and black beads.
She said they’d give me supernatural power.
And I believed her.
At night she’d sing me to sleep,
little Indian girl, little Indian girl
little Indian girl—
I wore my hair in a long braid
down my back and told everyone
I could turn into a thunderbird.
I raced them through the playground
and flew past them every time.
“Why don’t you have sneakers?”
they asked.
“Because I’m an Indian,”
I said.
“Is that why you smell?”
They laughed and laughed.
“Because you live in a teepee?
A peepee!”
“No, I don’t. I live in my truck.”
They frowned. “What do you mean,
