Maybe We’re Electric

by Val Emmich

  Lies, lies, lies. I thought I was done telling them. I’m just trying to make things right. Why is that so hard?

  “We should go,” Mac says with sudden gravity.

  “No. Please. Let’s stay a little while longer.”

  He’s right. It probably wasn’t a police car. I’m being paranoid. Even so, I don’t want to face the outside world yet. If there was a way, I’d hold off facing it forever.

  “Can we just live in this closet?” I say.

  “It’s a bit of a downgrade.”

  His breath nudges me. Our bodies are that close.

  “We can start a new society,” I say.

  “I have some leftover jerky in my pocket,” Mac says. “That should keep us alive for a few days if we ration it.”

  “I don’t eat meat.”

  “You’re better off eating meat than Oreos.”

  “I didn’t say I was healthy. I just don’t eat meat.”

  “There might be a few mice in here we can trap.”

  “Gross,” I say. “I wonder if Amazon delivers to closets.”

  “Amazon Crime.”

  It’s so stupid, it makes me laugh. “We can call our new society… Closetopia.”

  “Closetopia,” Mac repeats, testing the sound of it. “Where light never reaches.”

  “We live in perpetual darkness.”

  “It does get a little cramped.”

  “Just a little.”

  I feel better already. “You know we’ll have to procreate at some point.”

  Stillness. I may have gotten a little carried away by the new optimism flowing through me.

  “That was a joke,” I say.

  His voice blooms in the dark: “Closet life is no place for kids.”

  “You’re right,” I say, regaining my senses. “Closetopia should begin and end with us.”

  “We’re enough,” Mac says.

  I want to kiss him. I thought about it when we were slow dancing and I peered into his eyes, but I wasn’t brave enough. It seemed like he was thinking about it, too, how he stared back silently, but maybe I read that wrong. I’m a fine observer but not so good, it turns out, at interpreting. Now we’re in the dark, though. Without sight, everything becomes feeling. It overwhelms me, all the feeling. I want to give myself to it, to be the bold and honest Tegan that Neel described, but I need more to go on.

  “If we’re going to start a society together, I think we need to know everything we can about each other,” I say.

  “Okay.”

  “When’s your birthday?”

  “June fifth. Yours?”

  “September twenty-second.”

  “What would be your last meal?” Mac says.

  “Easy. Pasta,” I say.

  “Same. But what kind?”

  “Spaghetti with red sauce.”

  “For me, it’s lasagna,” Mac says. “And I want the whole pan to myself.”

  Dancing with him was beyond intimate, but this is a closer kind of close. When he speaks, his voice rumbles against me.

  “Favorite movie,” Mac says.

  “Dumb question.”

  “It’s not a dumb question.”

  “If you can choose one favorite movie out of all the movies ever made, then you have no credibility in my book.”

  “Fight Club.”

  I roll my eyes. “You’re such a boy.” And yet he’s clearly no fan of the Avengers movies. “If I have to answer. I’ll go with Wizard of Oz.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “You’ll never know.”

  I’m not lying.

  Mac cracks his knuckles, and the sound gives me mild anxiety.

  “Is Mac short for anything?”

  He clears his throat. “Macintyre. But nobody calls me that.”

  “I might have to start. I like it.”

  “It was my grandfather’s name.”

  There’s a joke I’ve been wanting to make. “I guess you can never use a PC, then.”

  “Only Apple,” Mac says. “It’s an unwritten rule.”

  I’m relieved that we’re in the dark, because I’m smiling like a huge dork. So many thrills at once. The thrill of getting to know him and also how much I like what I’m discovering.

  “Wait. Is that the same grandfather…” I stop myself.

  “Whose record I ruined?” Mac finishes. “Yeah.”

  I didn’t mean to bring up a sore subject. I was just trying to connect the many dots of Mac.

  He switches topics. “What do you do outside of school? Like, in your spare time?”

  The one activity I can think of is something I can’t admit to having done: the throwing of shade. “I like to just, you know, read, watch stuff, listen to eclectic music. Lately, I’ve been kind of antisocial, I guess. I can be a bit of a loner,” I say, hoping I don’t come off as pitiful as I sound.

  “Yeah,” Mac says. “Me too.”

  Really? I’m pretty sure he’s the opposite of a loner. Maybe he’s got a different understanding of what that word means. “You’re friends with everyone.”

  “I’m friendly with everyone.”

  “Same thing.”

  “Not really.”

  Now he’s just splitting hairs. “These people you’re friendly with, do you hang out with them outside of school?”

  “Sure. Yeah. Some of them,” Mac says.

  “Then those are your friends.”

  He emits a sound, the start of a denial, but he breaks it off to allow for more thought. “I guess I don’t have super-close friends. I have some decent ones. Harrison and Glen mainly. And I’m pretty tight with Mike Chang. But no one that I tell everything to. Or even half of everything to. No one that I would go to, you know, in a snowstorm.”

  Interesting. I ask him, “Why do you think that is?”

  “I’m not sure. I guess I feel like they wouldn’t understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “Sometimes I don’t feel like smiling or joking around. Then it becomes ‘Oh, Mac’s in a mood,’ or whatever, like I can just snap my fingers. They don’t get why I am the way I am.”

  This sounds extremely familiar. Obviously I’m thinking of Isla and Brooke. And after talking to Neel, I’m rethinking where part of the blame for our rift may lie. “Maybe that’s because you haven’t opened up to them. Not fully.”

  He swallows audibly. “I’ve tried. I haven’t met a lot of people who I connect with like that. Any, really.”

  I want to ask if this also applies to girls in his life, as in girlfriends, but I delay too long and miss my chance.

  “It’s my fault probably,” Mac says. “A lot of times, when I get invited places, I end up making an excuse. I’d rather be by myself most of the time.”

  Some of the terms so often attributed to me come to mind: closed off, guarded. I never would have attached those same labels to Mac. Not from afar, anyway. I guess it’s like what they say about books and covers. As someone who loves a pretty cover, I always hated that saying—even if it’s the truth.

  I’m reminded of the initial question that led us here. “If you don’t like going out, then what do you do for fun?”

  His delay reveals my error. I know what he’s going to say before he says it.

  “It was soccer,” Mac says.

  Yup. That one hurt.

  “I’ve been playing for so long, I don’t even know what to do with myself now,” Mac says. “I’d rather not hang at home if I don’t have to.”

  He’s so dedicated to soccer that he forced himself to learn salsa to gain a competitive edge. Salsa! Not only did he get robbed of his one true passion, but he also lost his main way of escaping the madness at home—all because of me.

  “What if you went back to the team?” I say. “I mean, I understand why you left but…”

  I wish I understood less.

  “Honestly,” Mac says, “people seeing that video, it getting out there, I don’t even care. It’s not like I didn’t hear the rumors about my dad
. But the person who took the video, how do you do that to someone? He’s supposed to be my friend, my teammate. If you got something to say, come to me, you know?”

  “I know,” I say, my stomach shredded. How did that video even find its way to me? I’m pretty sure nobody else on Mac’s team even goes to our school. Is it possible Nightshade’s reputation has spread to other towns? The thought frightens me.

  “It seems wrong,” I say, “to let one person take away something you love and are good at.”

  Sage advice. Acquired from my guru.

  “I’ve been thinking of joining an indoor league for the winter,” Mac says. “There’s one at that new complex on Route 1. It’s just been hard lately to get motivated.”

  It makes me feel a little better that he still might have a way to return to what he loves, and it’s reassuring that even he feels unmotivated at times. Part of me wants him to start playing soccer again just so I can go watch him.

  “I don’t know,” he says.

  I can’t tell what this is in reference to, but somehow I totally understand what he means.

  He shifts his body, and his hand grazes mine. I pull it away. I wish I were brave enough to leave it there.

  “What’s your worst trait?” I say, wanting to tear my hand clean off.

  The dark quiet reigns as he ponders. “I think I try too hard sometimes to make people happy.”

  The idea spreads like a weed in my mind. I meant physical trait, but he misunderstood.

  “What’s yours?” Mac says.

  My worst personality trait is the complete opposite of his. “I try too hard sometimes to make people unhappy.”

  He laughs, thinking it’s a joke. But my silence soon corrects him, turning him awkwardly still. I hug my knees. I’m as small as I can get.

  “Well,” Mac says. “Good thing we’re in Closetopia. Where there are no consequences.”

  I breathe too deeply and it smooshes our bodies together. “I love Closetopia.”

  “Closetopia loves you,” Mac says.

  He shouldn’t use that word. Love. It’s too dangerous on his lips.

  Neel said to not back down. No shyness. No fear.

  “I’m curious,” I say, scrunching up my face. “Are you… with anyone?”

  Time stops. My breath hardens in my lungs. Forehead is pinched so tight I might give myself a stroke.

  His answer arrives and plays at magical half speed: “No.”

  I exhale like a silent ninja.

  Now what? What does a person do next?

  Be the ninja, Tegan. Be the ninja.

  “Why haven’t you kissed me yet?” I say.

  This ninja is crazy.

  “Because I’m a little scared of you,” Mac says.

  I’m set loose, going all in, and too fast—I face-plant into his skull. Instant head throbbing. Concussion-type scenario. A Shakespearean tragedy. “I’m so sorry,” I say, falling away in disgrace.

  But I’m pulled back, collected, and this time I find only softness—lips, his, mine, over and over and over.

  2:21 AM

  The door swings open, our heat escaping in a sultry fog. Despite my deepest desires, we can’t stay in the closet forever. We’ve ignored discomfort for too long and are paying the price. Our necks ache from pretzel-shaped bending. Legs rippling with pins and needles. Hair soaked from thick shared air. We wedge ourselves out one by one.

  I glance down the hallway, half expecting to see someone staring into the front window. But there are zero signs of life. Except for the two of us.

  I take a seat on the bench. Mac slides onto one of the exhibit tables and I don’t have the heart to tell him to get off. He’s just a few feet away from me in the back room, but it feels too far. Pressed against him in the dark closet, I felt invincible and free. Now with light and distance between us, I feel small and on display, and it brings doubt. A moment ago I was kissing him and he was kissing me back, and now I can hardly look at him. How do I get back into his arms? It seems such a long way to go.

  Mac, meanwhile, swings his dangling legs, relishing the open space he lacked in Closetopia. He’s had his share of girls, I know, so kissing me was probably no big deal. Was it just fun or something more? Was it bad or exceptional? Was it worth doing again?

  He inspects a device to his right. “What is this thing?”

  I’m grateful to him for saying something, anything, because I don’t know where to go from here.

  “It’s called a hand battery,” I say. “One side is silver, the other copper. When you press your hands on it, the needle tells you how much electricity you have in your body.”

  He places his hands on the device and reads the meter. “Eighty-two. What does that mean?”

  “That means you’re hot. I mean, your body is.” I pretend not to be mortified. Mac may like the sound of my voice, but right now I despise it.

  He seems proud of his high number. My reading is down in the sixty range.

  “Some people say the higher the electricity in your body, the more prone you are to getting struck by lightning. But I don’t think that’s true.”

  “You don’t think anything’s true,” Mac says.

  “That’s not true.”

  “There. You just proved my point.”

  Busted. “I guess I have a hard time believing in what others seem to buy into blindly.”

  Mac gives me a tough stare. “You have to believe in something.”

  But how? I’ve been doubting for as long as I can remember. The hand battery reminds me of one of those memories I keep failing to forget. I decide I’m going to share it because there are no consequences in our new society. Mac promised.

  “When I was really young, I made one of those handprint art thingies at school,” I say. “You know, you put your hands in paint and press them against the paper. Obviously, my handprints didn’t look like anyone else’s.”

  I lift my stiff leg and lay one sneaker on my thigh. My nail flicks the hard end of my shoelace.

  “I brought it home and my parents put it on our fridge. They kept it there for years. I don’t know how long it was. I just remember we got a new fridge and they put it on the new fridge, too. Then one day it was gone.”

  I toss aside the shoelace. I look at him and find him looking right back at me.

  “What did you do with it?” Mac says.

  “How do you know it was me?”

  He seems embarrassed that I had to ask—embarrassed for me. It’s like no matter what I think I know, I’m always trying to catch up to where he is.

  “I tore it up and threw it in the garbage,” I say.

  He drops his eyes like it was his art I ruined.

  “My parents asked me what happened to it. I said I didn’t know. They didn’t believe me, but they never mentioned it again.”

  The wind howls as if shedding its own pain.

  “I felt terrible. I thought about making them a new one, but it wouldn’t have been the same. My hands were so little when I made it.”

  Mac doesn’t say anything, which bothers me at first. But I realize he’s prone to his own forms of destruction.

  “You said you didn’t know that the record you scratched belonged to your grandfather,” I say. “How’s that possible? Your dad never told you?”

  His eyebrows lift as if to acknowledge how improbable it sounds. “When I was young, my dad’s parents were always around. They’d come to our house for birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Then one year they didn’t come, and they never came back. No one said anything. There was no explanation.” He still can’t seem to believe it. “Then, a few years later, I found my dad in the basement crying. First time I ever saw him cry. The only time. I asked my mom what was wrong and she said Grandpa died. We didn’t even go to the funeral.”

  I say the words that I know aren’t enough: “I’m sorry.”

  “I knew it was weird not going to my own grand-father’s funeral, but I didn’t even realize how weird until recently. It’s
normal in my family. Aunts, uncles, friends, they disappear from our lives and no one says a word. I can’t even wrap my head around all the people my dad has pushed away.”

  He sighs through a clenched jaw. It turns out Mac is way more of a loner than I realized and for reasons beyond his control. “Why didn’t your dad want to go to the funeral?”

  “I think he did. He just couldn’t bring himself to. They probably got into some stupid fight, he and my grandpa, and they were both too stubborn to let it go. It’s sad.”

  I was thinking the same thing. But I get the sense he means it’s more pathetic than heartbreaking.

  “I had no idea that the record my dad was always listening to was a family heirloom,” Mac says. “I would have liked to know. I might have wanted to listen to it. But it doesn’t surprise me one bit that I was never told.”

  I can’t help but hurt for him. He never got to say goodbye to the man he was named after. Then he unknowingly damaged his memory. It was more than a record of music; it was a record of a man.

  “Did you ever try to replace it?” I say.

  “Yeah,” Mac says, fatigued by the subject. “It’s impossible to find. Some special import from England or something.”

  While his dad may have deserved what he got in some way, my parents probably didn’t. Even though the art I trashed began as mine, it had become theirs and I took it from them. Worse, I destroyed their precious myth. They believed that my hand was normal—better than normal even—and they realized in that moment that I didn’t share their belief. I’ve never been able to buy into the idea. Just a moment ago, in Closetopia, Mac’s hands were touching my face, neck, hair. Meanwhile, I held his back with just one hand and tucked the other far out of reach.

  It’s what I’ve always done. I hide my hand away. I don’t even realize I’m doing it. It’s become habit. But there have been times tonight when I either forgot to hide it or couldn’t. Like when I was wrapping Mac’s hand or doing push-ups or dancing salsa. Was it so terrible to forget about it for a few moments? For me, no. But what about Mac?

  “Do you think…”

  He waits patiently for me to finish.

  “Do people think I’m ugly?” I say.

  His eyes avoid me and his cheeks seem to redden.

  “I really don’t know what people think,” Mac says, staring at the floor. “I mean, obviously you’re really pretty.”