Wally

by Rowan Massey

  There was music. I hadn’t noticed because it was just part of me. It had never started or stopped. It was heavy metal, but hadn’t always been. It changed every day like weather. The sounds screamed at my ears and traveled down my spine. A voice shouted lyrics that I couldn’t pin down but loved anyway. I got into it for a long time.

  Space squished so that the ground came up, and the sky rushed down. My body was back. I took the planet up into my legs, and the universe down through my head and chest. When the two met somewhere in the middle, the explosion sent me flying in chunks through the hoards of people around me.

  They danced in slow motion. All their music on display in their muscles. Everyone’s hair was flying. Eyes were looking at the sky, excited.

  Spitz was next to me, doing something amazingly perfect with his feet. I wished so hard for Fiona to be with us dancing every night. Nando too.

  I really wanted Nando.

  I could understand the needs of the universe, and me and him had to happen. We were fated or something close to that. We would be like Spitz and Fiona. I knew it, and it made me fly around both on the inside and on the outside.

  Rain drizzled down our faces, making an even bigger mess of our blood, slicking the ground with reddish mud. Loud, intense days went by while the water leaked through my clothes and chilled my skin. My toes went a little numb in my shoes, and my socks felt squishy, giving the dance a silly texture.

  I was breathing hard, dancing crazy in the puddles. When I saw that I wasn’t in the middle of the crowd anymore—I was on the edge, and no one was close enough to touch—a lost, distant sensation swept through my head. I saw a girl stop dancing. She sat down in the mud, right where she was. She was smiling and still looking up at the sky. I went over close to her and the rest of the crowd, splashing my shoes in the water. Mud flew up at me a little more slowly than gravity said it should. She seemed to see something really cool, so I looked up at the night. The dark emptiness hung over us, as gorgeous as ever. Endless.

  “You look like shit.”

  Nando.

  He’d come through the filthy, thrashing crowd to come talk to me. I grinned.

  “Yeah, but I feel amazing.”

  “You’re going to get hypothermia and die out here.” His eyes were genuinely worried.

  “Nah, we always figure it out.” I shrugged and shivered hard. My teeth rattled.

  “Right,” he said, but shook his head, unconvinced.

  He walked past me, through the dancers. I somehow knew he wanted me to follow without his saying so. When we got to a clearing in some trees, he leaned his back against a tree trunk and looked at me from the corner of his eye.

  “So did he give you that job out of nowhere?” he asked. “Or is there a reason?”

  “Uh, I guess he wants to study me because I’ve been a fielder for a long time.” It felt like bragging. I kicked at a piece of plastic garbage, and it slid through the mud.

  “What does that mean?” He wrinkled his nose.

  “He’ll ask me a lot of questions. It’s going to be a pain. Take my blood. I don’t know if I’m going to do it.” Of course I was going to do it. It was money.

  “He’s been asking us about the batches,” Nando said, serious with thought. “Maybe he should start paying us too.”

  I smiled. “Yeah, I’ll tell him.”

  He glancing down my body and pushed himself off the tree. His right hand dug in his jacket pocket, and he took out a fist full of coins.

  “Turns out there’s a discount, after all,” he said. “Enjoy.”

  I took it automatically.

  “Thanks,” I said. I pressed my lips together, trying not to smile so big, and couldn’t look right at him. We stood there for a moment, saying nothing. It was awkward, but I liked that he was standing there thinking about me, even though I had no idea what he was thinking.

  “Your friend is looking for you,” he said, pointing his chin off to the distance.

  It was Fiona, sagging under our back packs. I jogged over and took my pack from her.

  “So listen,” she said.

  I looked back to Nando. He was walking away. He glanced back at me, paused, and kept going.

  “Wally, listen up,” Fiona said, and poked me hard in the arm.

  I turned back to her.

  “I didn’t want to tell you guys, but my dad took the shed down. He’s an asshole. I’m gonna just claw his eyeballs out one day. I swear.” She blew air out through her teeth.

  “Oh shit…” We snuck into that shed a lot to stay dry when the weather was bad. “We’ll find something. I remembered to put some clothes in plastic when I washed them at the doc’s house. We’ll get changed and all.”

  “Actually…” she looked down at her muddy sneaker and twisted it into the mud. “I saw it might rain and told my friend we need to stay over at her place. Her mom doesn’t care.”

  “You sure?”

  “I can’t bring both of you over though.” She stood on one foot, then the other, biting her lip. “I hate it, but I don’t know what to do.” I could tell she felt bad.

  “Yeah, Spitz won’t leave me by myself.” I knew the score, and I didn’t mind. Me and Fiona had the same priority, and it was Spitz. “Okay, I’ll see you later.”

  “Be careful,” she said, and winced in a way that told me she really felt bad for me.

  “Yup,” I said. I moved fast to kiss her cheek even though she tried to dodge me.

  “Ew! You’re disgusting!” She pushed me away and made a face, but she was smiling. I’d left a bloody mark on her face, and she was trying to rub it away. I was still holding the money in my hand so I gave it to her.

  “For you guys to eat, or whatever.” She took it and put it in her pocket, not asking questions. Her eyes caught something beyond me. She pointed towards the crowd. Spitz was slowly making his way toward us. He looked like he was still a little out of it, looking up at the sky every other second.

  “He’s going to kill us for splitting up,” Fiona said.

  “Oh well. See ya,” I said, already running away, and she gave me a little goodbye wave.

  Spitz was going to try to beat me up in the morning, but just in our friendly way. I’d let him beat me. I’d pulled this trick before. He’d been so furious last time, it was like the rage turned him into another person. He’d left me with real bruises. I would have been mad in his place, so I’d taken my beating, and then we were cool.

  He was lucky enough to have a girlfriend who didn’t live outside. If he didn’t take advantage of it, I had to make him. Friends don’t let friends spend the night in the rain.

  I wove though the crowd, enjoying the way the lights spilled over their nonstop jumping and twisting. It was going to be scary spending the night without him, but it wouldn’t kill me. Maybe. I’d had a great night on the field, like always, so it didn’t seem like such a bad thing if the night went wrong later. I knew I could die, but I knew that every night. I hoped Dr. Sardana would give Spitz my job if I did.

  I wasn’t sure where I should head off to. The sky was drizzling again, and I needed a dry place to change clothes and bury myself in a blanket. A fire would be nice, but it would attract other people, and I needed to stay as invisible as possible since I was alone.

  I was hurrying in and out of the crowd and patches of trees, trying to make sure Spitz wouldn’t find me if he came chasing. I saw Nando leaving the field. That was as good a direction as any. I could secretly stare at his ass for a while.

  He took a shortcut down and across a small slope, heading for the nearest street. Walking alone through the dark made me feel like someone was creeping up behind me, but I kept my cool and my distance. I was too far behind him to tell who he met with under a street light. It was probably Rydel, going by the size of him. Before they left the pool of light, I thought Nando looked over at me for a split second. I hadn’t thought about the way it would look if he saw me, but I didn’t slow down. If he asked, I’d just say I happened to
be wandering in the same direction, which was mostly true.

  The black sky was heavy on my head. It was an empty feeling to walk around without Spitz. I walked about half a block behind them for three blocks. It felt safer having someone nearby who knew me.

  My shivering was more and more unbearable with every step. I couldn’t feel my feet anymore. I stopped in a deep doorway to take off two layers of damp shirts and a sweatshirt, and replace them. My pants and shoes were still soaked, but I figured it was good enough for the moment.

  I saw the end of the street up ahead, so I started looking down alleys, and trying to open the doors of a few abandoned buildings. Nando and Rydel disappeared into the double doors of a corner building. Maybe they lived there.

  Ten minutes later, I didn’t like the nearby alleys, which had no coverings, and I couldn’t get into a building. Doorways were piled with garbage, were occupied, or had a light on above them. I didn’t want to find plastic and cardboard to cover myself and share an alley with other homeless people, not without Spitz. Remembering the gunshots from the night before, I started hurrying along. The sooner I found a safe spot, the better.

  “Hey! Skippy!”

  I sucked in a breath. Nando was in the doorway of the building he’d entered a few minutes earlier. I backtracked to go over to him.

  “How’s it going?” I said.

  “I don’t know. I think somebody is following me.”

  For a second my brain was too tired to understand. I looked down the street, then I was embarrassed.

  “No, man,” I said. “I just head out randomly until I’m about this far and then find a place.” I smiled and shrugged. My nose was runny from the cold, and I didn’t feel very cool when I had to wipe it on my sleeve, leaving blood and snot behind.

  “Jesus man,” he said, shaking his head, “you really are gonna die out here, aren’t you? Your feet must be like ice.”

  I looked down at my wet shoes. My feet were numb blocks of flesh.

  “I’ll figure it out,” I said. “Do you mind if I sit here and change my socks?”

  “What good is that when your shoes are soaking wet?”

  He took a flask from his coat pocket and handed it to me. I twisted the lid off and sniffed at the inside. I’d never gotten into alcohol and didn’t know what kind it was. Not letting myself over think it, I took a couple sips, winced at the burn, and gave it back.

  “You can stay here,” he said. “Just until morning. The shower isn’t exactly hot, but you can clean up.”

  “Really?” When he’d come outside, I’d started hoping that I’d be invited in, but hadn’t actually expected it. If I’d been feeling more energetic, I would have asked if I’d be staying in his bed, done some flirting, but it was hard to talk with my teeth chattering.

  I followed him through the doorway. It wasn’t warm, but it was a step above the cold outside. Everything in the small hallway was painted a shiny, dark green. Two girls were huddled up under the stairway. Their stuff was set out around them, and I figured they had rented the spot for the night.

  “This way,” Nando said, and took me down the hall to a door marked “bathroom” with a cardboard sign. He stopped in front of it and turned to me. “You have a dry towel?”

  “Yeah, more or less.” Damp, but workable.

  He rolled his eyes. “Wait.” He walked down to the last door in the hall and went inside for a few seconds, coming back with a worn out, but clean towel.

  “Thanks man, you’re the best,” I said, taking the towel. “You’re a life saver.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m a saint. Come on in when you’re done.” He turned and went back to the same door. It would be easy to remember which.

  Taking a tepid shower in a strange communal bathroom by myself wasn’t fun. I got out of the water as fast as I could. Drying off, I used my own towel on my head because of the bloody mess, and his for everything else.

  I looked at the way my hands were slightly tan compared to the pale white of the rest of me. In the mirror, I saw that my face was the same way. And my ribs and hip bones were too noticeable. Would Nando think that was a turn off? But the thought of him wanting me to take even just my shirt off was too awesome and unlikely for me to worry that much about my body.

  I dressed quickly, happy to be finally warming up. My skin felt soft and clean.

  A few minutes later, I was walking the few steps down the hall to the last door. I had ridiculous pictures in my head of him being shirtless, smirking at me, and inviting me into his lap. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to think normal thoughts that didn’t wake up my dick quite so much.

  When I knocked, the knob turned and the door was left cracked but didn’t open. I took it for a welcome and stepped inside. It was one of those maintenance rooms turned apartment, only big enough for a double bed plus a few feet of floor space. The door couldn’t open all the way without knocking into the bed frame. Nando was sitting up in bed, drinking from the flask. He held a heavy book on one leg.

  “I need some sleep,” he said. “How ‘bout you?”

  “I’m killed. Is that real wool?” I reached out and ran my hand across the gray blanket. It had the right itchy texture to be wool. That meant it would be super warm.

  Nando climbed over the bed and stood. He locked the two padlocks on the door with a set of keys, leaving me pressed against the wall in the small space. I was trying not to touch him at all because—god—I liked being close to him. Ruining whatever was happening would be way too easy.

  “You’re on that side,” he said, gesturing to the wall side of the bed. “I’ll turn out the light in a minute.”

  I had all kinds of exclamation points flying around in my head as I took my shoes off and tossed them in a corner. I crawled over the bed, feeling aware of every second, and sat against the wall. My back pack was still around my shoulders. I laughed at myself and took it off, throwing it over by my shoes. It landed in the middle of the small open area.

  “Nice,” he said sarcastically, and sat the way he was when I’d walked in. “Make yourself at home.”

  “Sorry,” I said, and I sounded way too out of breath. I got under the blanket when he did and made sure I was only using the very edge of it and not hogging any. The pillow on my side was square and smelled musty, but it was more than I usually had. It felt strange and awesome to be on a bed again. It had been years.

  He picked up his book from where he’d left it on the sheets and tilted its open pages towards me.

  “See all these?” he said. “That’s what the world is made of. Even brains are made out of this stuff. The air and sky and planets are all on this one page.”

  It was just a bunch of colored squares with letters in each one. It reminded me of Dr. Sardana’s emotion pie. I didn’t know what to say, so I nodded slowly, like I was thinking about it. He closed the book and put it on the floor. When he switched the lamp off, it was completely dark without a window.

  I could feel his movement on the mattress and hear his clothes brushing against the sheets. He was laying out next to me and making himself comfortable. When his leg hit mine, I scooted away a little and turned on my side. Then I wished I hadn’t turned facing him. He was inches away from me, and I could sense him there. It was exciting and relaxing at the same time somehow. I could smell his breath on the air. I pulled the blanket up over my nose and mouth because the scents made me feel too close to him, and it was making the blood in my body rush around…and down. The blanket smelled even more like him, and I put it down around my neck again.

  “You smell like a wet dog,” he mumbled.

  I laughed. I probably did, even after the shower. “I’ll be sure to put on perfume for you next time.”

  I didn’t even know I could flirt when I was so nervous. He laughed, which made me feel good.

  “Is anybody else working for the doc in his lab?” he asked.

  “Um, I don’t know. I didn’t see anybody else.”

  “Hmm. So, I’m just gonna ask.
You have a sex thing going…?”

  “No, man. I wish people wouldn’t think like that. He’s cool.”

  “Alright, alright,” he shifted, but I couldn’t see him at all. I might as well have had my eyes closed. If he touched me, I wouldn’t have any warning and probably jump out of my skin. My body was pulling towards him to see what he’d feel like against me. I had to force myself to keep still and not think too much about what was right next to me. Spitz was going to laugh it up when I told him about it.

  “If he says anything about another job, I’ll tell him he should hire you,” I said.

  “Man, that would be so awesome,” he said, his voice softened. “Thanks.”

  “Why do you want to work for him, though?”

  He let out a breath.

  “Shit, people who aren’t dealers don’t seem to get that the doc is the doc, not some boring old volunteer. He’s eccentric so people don’t realize he’s got a lot going on.”

  “Like what?” I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Putting out the best versions every time Barkley asks him for a drug he needs. The best anywhere. That by itself is impressive. When it comes to his drugs, other cooks scramble to get their hands on his formulas and copy them. He keeps it very real around here. You know, he gets respect from guys like Barkley. I’ve seen the doc act like he didn’t care if he lived or died. Made Barkley back down in his own house. It gives me fucking chills just thinking about it. Then he goes out and babies a bunch of fielders every night. Weird guy.”

  “So, he’s important. He must be so rich,” I thought out loud.

  “Yeah. Is his house off the charts?”

  “I don’t think he cares about house stuff. It’s really nice, though. He has gates on his doors to the basement and to the upstairs.” As soon as I said it, I wondered if I was supposed to tell anybody things like that.

  “What kind of people did you run into while you were working with him?”

  “Nobody. It was just me and him.”

  He moved his head, and I wondered if he was looking towards me. He didn’t say anything for a while, and I thought the conversation was over. My eyes were tired, and I relaxed into the mattress. I was warm and really wishing I had a bed of my own to sleep in every night.