by Chloe Garner
He nodded and lay on his side. She went back to the kitchen to cook, but by the time she got back, he was asleep.
She pulled a blanket up over his shoulders and sat and ate both sandwiches herself, then went back to her room to check on work. The launch plans were a tangle, and she needed to put some effort into straightening everything out, but her mind was elsewhere.
Lara had gotten through to him. He wasn’t the man he had been before, even now.
And that was when it hit her.
Lara.
She’d left the urn in the back of her car.
She grabbed her keys and went out to get it, but found it had tipped on its side and rolled around long enough that it was completely empty.
She stared at the ash scattered around the back hatch of the car, then sighed.
“Welcome to my car, Lara,” she said, closing the hatch and going back to bed.
***
The next morning, Robbie was gone again. The light in the hallway had gone out, so Lizzie spent a while looking for spare light bulbs and then gave up and went to buy some. When she got back, Trevor was leaning against the rail on the front porch. She tipped her head.
“You have a key.”
“You don’t like me using it,” he said.
“Nope.”
He shrugged.
“So do you want to let me in?”
“I want you to tell me what happened,” she said. He spread his hands.
“You saw it.”
“I saw Robbie almost get hit by a car and you treat it like it was normal.”
He shrugged again, eyes watching hers like he was reading her. She blinked, just to make a point. The corner of his mouth went up.
“So what did he do with the ashes?”
“He told you about them?” Lizzie asked.
“Mentioned it,” Trevor said. She twisted her mouth to the side.
“They’re all over the mat in the back of my car.”
He laughed, his face turning merry for just a second.
“I think she’d like that,” he said. Lizzie raised her eyebrows and he nodded.
“Not a lot of people get to travel that much after they’re dead. You plant them or you put them on display. She was never one for either.”
Lizzie shrugged.
“Glad you’re not offended.”
“You’ll find we’re hard to offend,” Trevor told her, pushing himself off the railing and walking away from the door out toward her car. “Promise to keep electrodes and pills to yourself, and we’re downright friendly.”
“Yeah, that’s how I’d describe it,” Lizzie said, thinking of that first night. He leaned his forearms on the top of the car and looked at her with one eyebrow up.
“Yeah, but had you promised not to probe them?” he asked.
“Do you have a standard disclaimer for that that I can sign?” she countered.
“I’ll get someone right on it,” he said as she unlocked the car.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Just… out,” he said after a minute and swung into the car. She looked at the bag of lightbulbs in her hand and shrugged, throwing them over the seat into the back and getting in. She looked at him for a moment, then started the car.
“So are you going to tell me what happened?” she asked.
“Nope,” he answered. “You now get to deal with what we deal with every day.”
“A cult leader who intentionally keeps secrets?”
He laughed, tipping his head back and then looking at her with a broad grin.
“Is that what you’ve decided we are? A cult?”
“If the shoe fits,” she said. “Secretive, strange behavior that you all understand but outsiders just don’t? Religious belief that there is an us and a them, and the them are out to get you? Belief that you’re special?”
“I never said we were special,” Trevor argued.
“But you think it, don’t you?” she asked.
“Well, I’m special,” Trevor said with a wink. She shook her head.
“You’re not a cult,” she said. “It would just be convenient to explain it like that.”
“So how do you explain it?” Trevor asked.
“There’s so much wrong,” she said. “And then there’s you.”
He grinned.
“Story of my life. Turn here.”
“Thought we were just wandering.”
“Nope,” he said. She frowned and he smiled again.
“Are you watching out for Robbie?” she asked.
“I watch out for all of them,” he said.
“He really doesn’t want me to be around you,” Lizzie said. “Why?”
“Because I’m going to open the door, if you want me to, and let you see our world. And he doesn’t want you to see that.”
“Why not?” Lizzie asked. “Why doesn’t he want me to understand?”
“Just here,” he pointed at a parking spot along the side of the street. She parallel parked into it and shut off the engine. He put his arm around the back of his seat and leaned against the door.
“What’s happened to him, every single time he’s tried to communicate with you or anyone about the world he sees?” Trevor asked.
“We institutionalized him,” she answered levelly. It happened. She hadn’t been in charge, back then, but she had to own it, anyway. It’s what she would have done, in hopes that it would help.
He nodded.
“So that’s part of it,” he said.
“What’s the rest?” she asked. He reached behind his back and popped the door, unbuckling his seatbelt and kind of rolling out of the car onto the sidewalk before standing and stooping to look back in at her.
“Walk with me,” he said.
She got out, looking at the light bulbs again, then locked the car.
“You do a lot of walking,” she said.
“I do,” he said, putting his hands into his pockets. “Gives me time to think.”
“I bet,” she said, falling into step next to him. He took a breath and looked around, and she waited to see if he was going to answer her, but nothing really seemed forthcoming.
“So what’s the rest of it?” she asked.
“You really are to the point, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Probably,” she said.
“Lara was, too,” he said. “Always working the next project. She got a lot done.”
Lizzie nodded.
“So?”
He shook his head.
“It’s not that simple,” he said.
“Sure it is,” Lizzie told him. “It just takes words.”
“Is this what you do with your for-sale therapy?” he asked.
“I don’t write any of the content,” she said. “I just help process data and get things to market.”
He shook his head.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It’s just words,” she pleaded. “Tell me what’s going on. What does he think is happening?”
Trevor looked at her, concerned.
“I know you don’t believe him,” he said. “But you can’t talk about it like that. It makes you an outsider. It makes it so that no one can trust you.”
“I’m here,” she said. “I’m trying to understand. But I don’t know if I can pretend to believe in the world that Robbie has in his head.”
“Let’s talk about something else,” Trevor said.
“What else is there?” Lizzie asked. Trevor grinned abruptly at a stroke of inspiration.
“How about you?”
“What about me?” she asked, and he grinned wider, turning backwards to look at her as he sped up a bit.
“Anything,” he said. “Anything that doesn’t have to do with Robbie. Do you have a boyfriend?”
“Do you have a girlfriend?” she mocked.
“No,” he said, then raised an eyebrow. She smiled despite herself.
“No,” she said. “I work too many hours and I’m
too picky.”
He blew air through his lips.
“That’s rehearsed,” he said. “What’s the real reason?”
“I am picky,” she said defensively and he stuck his chin out at her.
“When was your last date?”
“When was yours?”
He laughed.
“Struck a nerve, have I?”
“What?” she asked. “Because I’m a girl, small talk has to be about men?”
“No,” he said. “I’m hitting on you, and the natural place to start is whether or not some gorilla in a suit is going to pound me for it.”
“I would never date a gorilla in a suit,” she said reflexively, and he laughed.
“Then I’ve got a shot.”
“Shut up,” she said.
“Really,” he said, biting his lower lip, amused. “When was the last date?”
“I don’t know,” she said. It was truth, as long as she didn’t stop to think about it. “When was yours?”
“Do I look or seem like the kind of guy who dates?” he asked. “I’m one bad week away from homeless.”
“Where do you live?” she asked, and he grinned wider, like she’d sprung a trap.
“Now that’s a bit forward, don’t you think?”
She gave him an exasperated look, and he spun on his toe, turning so he could walk next to her again.
“We all do what we have to do,” he said. “So, what else about you?”
“What else do you want to know?” she asked.
“What do you do, when you aren’t working long hours?”
“Nothing,” she said, startling herself. “Really. You know, I cook and I jog and I have a spin class that’s… It’s something to do.”
“That’s sad,” he said.
“What?”
“You can do anything in the world and no one is going to bat an eye, and you can’t think of anything you want to do?”
“I love my job,” she said. “I help people.”
“I bet you do,” he said patronizingly, then shook his head. “You should figure out what it is that you’re really passionate about.”
“Finding a way to make families work when they find that they have to deal with mental health issues,” she said, stopping and turning to face him. He nodded.
“All right,” he said. “All right. I can see that.”
She nodded.
“Robbie’s progress is inspirational. If I could bottle what Lara did, I would sell it for free, just to give people the kind of hope I’ve gotten since he met her.”
Trevor looked at her hard for a minute, then took her hand in his and started walking again. She almost recoiled at the unexpected touch, then again as she considered whether or not she wanted to let him hold her hand, but then it was right, just for right now, and she went with it.
“I bet you’re a planner,” he said.
“Of course I am,” she answered.
“And a cleaner.”
“You’ve seen that one yourself.”
He grinned.
“This is all going to drive you nuts.”
“Don’t say that like you’re going to enjoy it,” she scolded, and he laughed.
“Oh, but I am. It’s going to drive you nuts, it’s going to drive Robbie nuts, it’s like someone just crafted the whole thing together and gave it to me as a present.”
“Lara dying,” Lizzie said. He looked at her with apologetic eyes, but he was apologizing for what he didn’t feel, not for what he’d said.
“If there were something I could do to change what happened, I would do it,” he said. “But I can’t. And, believe me, life is short. I can’t spend all of my time regretting the things I can’t change.”
“Doesn’t mean you can’t spend any time regretting them,” Lizzie answered, and he squeezed her hand and let go.
“It does, actually,” he said. “Come on. You’re going to buy me lunch.”
***
“So tell me about you,” Lizzie said between bites of her salad. He’d ordered a Monte Cristo, and it had arrived squatting over an entire dinner plate, a monster of a sandwich pretending to be a fried good. He was buried nose-deep into it and she shook her head.
“Sorry,” she said. “Finish your bite.”
He shrugged and looked away, chewing contentedly for a solid minute before he swallowed hard and blinked.
“I’m doing that again,” he said. She raised an eyebrow at him and he grinned. “Okay, me. What about me?”
“Where did you grow up?” she asked.
“Little bit of everywhere,” he told her. “Only been out here for about the last six years. England, France, Germany. My dad’s a building contractor for the military.”
“What about your mom?”
He shook her head.
“Never met her. Never asked.”
“Never asked?” Lizzie asked. He shook his head, taking another huge bite of his sandwich that paused the conversation for a long time again.
“I wasn’t exactly an inquisitive child,” he said. “I kinda did what I wanted to, and Dad made sure there was food on the table when I got home at night.”
“You went to school in Europe?” she asked. He chewed.
And chewed.
“I did when they could make me,” he said.
“You speak French? German?”
“Enough to be dangerous,” he said. She smiled and he nodded.
“Nah, I was on my own a lot. Did a lot of the things that a good professional would have flagged as suspect, burned things, stole little things, broke unimportant things, like that. Figured out the way the world worked in my own way.”
“Sounds lonely,” Lizzie said.
“I think it would have been, for most people,” he said. “It was just life, though, for me. I didn’t know any better, and I still don’t.”
She shook her head.
“So do you have any hobbies or anything you do?”
“I do what I do,” he said. “Not really a lot else I can do.”
“And what is that?” she asked, not following. He shrugged and shook his head.
“We’re getting there.”
She shook her head.
“No. We aren’t. You keep making these… statements, like you’re giving me clues and you think I’m going to catch on. I don’t get it.”
“It’s because you don’t believe any of us,” he said.
“Do you all… see the same things?” she asked. He nodded encouragingly.
“Now that’s a better question,” he said, taking another bite. “That’s really good,” he said with his mouth full. She tipped her head to the side, waiting, and the corner of his mouth turned up in amusement as he kept her in suspense.
“Yes,” he finally said. “We’re all living in the same world that you can’t see, most of the time.”
“Most of the time?”
“Sometimes, what we see is different,” he said. “Just ours.”
“How do you know which is which?” she asked. He nodded again.
“Another good question. You know. Because I see things here that are real. You just can’t see them. And I see things that aren’t here, and I’m not there, but I’m seeing them anyway, and I know that I’m not there. No one else sees those, except in really rare occasions.”
Lizzie tried to listen to that all the way through a couple of times before she answered.
“And that’s what Robbie sees?”
“More or less,” Trevor said.
“Why doesn’t it drive you…”
“You can say it,” Trevor said. “It doesn’t drive me insane because no one was around to tell me that it wasn’t normal, among other reasons.”
“He was paranoid, whether or not we told him that what he was seeing wasn’t rational,” Lizzie said.
“There are a lot of reasons that I have it easier than Robbie did, and a lot of reasons he’s glad he isn’t me,” Trevor said. “But those aren’t really important right n
ow.”
“I want to hear them,” Lizzie said. Trevor set down his sandwich and leaned back in his chair, his mood quieting visibly.
“It’s because I have more control,” he said. “I get visions of things that are happening someplace else, but I’ve always known that they…” He twisted his mouth. “I’ve known that they aren’t something I can prevent. I know why they’re happening, if such a thing is possible. No, that’s not really it.”
Lizzie put her water back down on the table and frowned, trying to hear what he was trying to tell her. How many times had she asked Robbie what was going on, in his head, and he’d never been able to tell her? Just told her that she wouldn’t understand.
“Okay,” she prompted gently. He chewed on his lip.
“On the way here, I was walking down an ocean-front cliff road, and I watched a car go through the rail and down into the rocks maybe thirty feet down from there.”
She blinked.
“What do you mean?”
He nodded, with a small shrug.
“That’s where I was. That’s what I was seeing. Hearing. Smelling. Two people in the car. I don’t know if they lived or died. The chaos was done.”
“You didn’t say anything,” she said. He nodded.
“It’s because I could hear you, too,” he said. “I know I’m here. It was the walking that did it, flipped me. That’s how we say it. It’s like you flip through something and then you’re not where you were. Picking up a fork or closing a door. Going down stairs.”
“And then… you think you’re someplace else?”
“Depends on your grip on reality,” he said. “Where you are is real, too. You just can’t do anything, there. No one can hear you. Some of them, they can touch things. Sybil says she can throw things, and they just go through the people. I don’t know. But if you’re in the middle of the street when it happens… It takes practice to keep walking and get up onto the curb on the other side without something bad happening. You have to remember the space around you and keep moving like that’s where you are, even though it’s not what you see or feel.”
Lizzie considered that for a long time. Trevor watched her for a little while, then went back to eating his sandwich.
Robbie, running out into the street, how bewildered he’d been.
Falling down the stairs.
It fit.
It seemed so simple when Trevor said it. Why hadn’t Robbie ever said it like that?
