Waiting for Fitz

by Spencer Hyde

  And it was true.

  We walked right out the door, slip-resistant booties and all.

  We walked into a breezy, starlit night and didn’t look back.

  Okay, that’s not entirely true. We looked back when we were a block away. The night was a bit colder than I’d expected it to be, but the temperatures in Seattle could be just as mercurial as Fitz, changing by the minute. I told him we should hurry to a bus before word got out that we’d escaped. I wanted to be indoors somewhere before planning our next move.

  “Look at all those stars,” he said, still holding my hand.

  “We’re free of the hospital, you know,” I said, looking down at our hands.

  “And?”

  He smiled, and I felt all my insides come untethered. My heart picked up its thrumming pace.

  “Let’s get to a motel. I have enough for maybe two nights, as long as we’re not too spendy on our shoes. I’d like to get a better sweater, too. I bet it will be colder tomorrow.” I had on my usual gray sweater, but it was pretty threadbare.

  Fitz hugged me to him, and I felt myself relax in his embrace. “I’ll keep you warm,” he said.

  I didn’t look up, but I could feel his heart beating against mine. I wanted to stay there forever, but we had to keep moving.

  He seemed to know where he was going, so I followed Fitz and smiled at the way he walked so confidently with my hand in his. We were able to find a bus, but the driver only knew of one motel near the ferry. It made our choice pretty easy.

  It was a longer ride than I’d expected, with a lot of stops thrown in, but I’d always enjoyed watching people get on and off the bus. It was this odd form of people-watching where I could give them narratives and imagine what their lives were like when they stepped past the sighing doors and back onto the pavement of reality. It was kind of inspiring, in a weird way.

  “You guys warm?” said Fitz, looking at the empty seats in front of us.

  “Are they acting cold?”

  “Just Lyle. He’s a snowflake,” he said, then wrinkled his brow. “Maybe that’s the wrong term. He’s a delicate flower.”

  “At least they made it out of the hospital,” I said. “I was worried that Willy would get his long braids stuck in a door or something.”

  Fitz just smiled and rested his hand on my lap.

  I mean, like I said, I was never really one to break the rules. I was always home on time. I always slept in my own bed or on the couch by our family dog, Duck. So being on a bus with a boy in a city I’d only traveled through during the day with Mom was like being in the Twilight Zone. I didn’t know how to get a read on the emotions, the colors, the scents, the lighting, or the other people we saw who were just going about their daily routines.

  When we arrived at the motel, we stepped off into a much colder wind. The blinking neon sign a hundred yards away had only half of the letters working —TEL. The bus drifted back into the nighttime sounds of the city. I smelled cheap, fast food and the salty ocean breeze.

  “Let’s hurry,” he said.

  “Wait,” I said, grabbing his arm. “If the orderlies find out we’re gone, they’re going to look to any form of transportation we could have taken. If they find that driver, he’ll point out exactly where he dropped us. It won’t take them long to take two and two and two and stack it all up to six.”

  “You love your numbers,” he said.

  “I’m serious.”

  “I know,” said Fitz. “And you’re right. Man, I’m so cold!”

  I thought of running into the motel and asking about other accommodations in the area, but then realized that wouldn’t work either. If the person working at the desk remembered telling two young people where to stay, then the trail would still be fresh for the police or whoever would come after us. At that moment, I imagined the police handing hound dogs some of our clothes to get our scent. Stupid, I know, but whatever.

  “Usually motels are in groups. Let’s just keep walking,” I said.

  The wind cut right through me. I had on sweats, but neither of us had any shoes on. Hopefully the people at the front desk wouldn’t look too closely or care too much. Hopefully Fitz was right about people in Seattle not worrying about that kind of thing.

  Fitz’s hair was all over the place, and I realized that his bandana looked even stranger outside of the hospital. Everything did, except maybe his shirt. Funny how that worked out. He used his body to try to shield me from the breeze, but eventually we just walked side by side at a fast clip for about four blocks before we saw a faded sign for an inn another half a block away.

  I jumped a little, excited by the idea of any respite from the wind off the churning water.

  We hurried to the front desk of the inn and found that the rate for one night wasn’t that much more expensive than the motel. It probably meant the room wasn’t all that nice, but all I wanted was a warm bed and a warm shower.

  There was no clerk at the desk when we arrived. I rang the small bell, and we waited. It was one of those obnoxious tabletop bells that seem more like you’re insulting someone rather than just attempting to get somebody’s attention.

  A short man walked in, looking sleepy. His tie was loose and askew, and two buttons on his shirt had popped off. We stood close to the desk so he wouldn’t be able to tell that we didn’t have any shoes or luggage. Maps of the islands were spread out beneath a thin glass plate on the countertop, finger-smudges all over the little dots of green and large swaths of blue beneath. I traced the lines of the ferries from port to port until the clerk finished logging onto the computer.

  “One room,” Fitz said.

  I blushed and looked away. The clerk looked at me and then at Fitz and told us the price. He was maybe a year or two out of high school, and even that was a stretch. He didn’t seem to care about our ostensible rendezvous.

  When I handed over the cash, he gave us another odd look, but passed us the key and told us where the elevators were and when breakfast would be served, then he headed back to the dark office where he would most likely go right back to sleep.

  The room was garish and dirty. Loud and shiny decorations attempted to mask the awful smell of mushrooms and the beer stains on the walls and the floor. There was a nautical theme to the room, fitting seeing as we were near Fidalgo Island, with windows looking out onto the streets that led to the water.

  “We got lucky,” I said.

  “Very lucky,” said Fitz.

  “What were you going to do if I hadn’t gotten the money?”

  “Probably find some homeless shelter or sleep in one of those ATM portals that close off. I don’t know. It wasn’t the first thing on my list,” he said.

  I plopped down on the bed. I was so tired that it didn’t fully register that there was only one bed until Fitz sighed and dropped next to me, his body like a massive boulder hitting a rickety cot. His weight tugged at me, pulling me closer into the large indent our bodies made in the cheap mattress.

  “We got lucky,” I repeated. “Doesn’t mean you’ll get lucky.”

  “So presumptuous.”

  “Well,” I said, waiting for his response.

  “It’s the universe,” said Fitz. “Knows it owes me one.”

  “So arrogant. Classic tragic character flaw,” I said, smiling.

  We both stared at the ceiling for a while in silence. I could hear his breathing and his heartbeat, and I started counting the number of beats, the blinking on and off with each alternating aortic push.

  “We could watch a movie. Oh, and I’ll sleep on the couch. I’m a gentleman, after all,” he said, smiling. “Lyle, I’m not in the mood. Yes, I think you did a fine job earlier today. Thanks for taking a minute to talk to me. Go write some lyrics or something.” Fitz waved to his right, as if motioning someone away.

  “It’s the middle of the night,” I said.
<
br />   “Addie Foster. You’re supposed to be the comic character. You should say something funny instead of denying a movie. Shut up, Toby!” He laughed and rolled on his side and rested his chin against his hand. “Country singers. They ruin every possible romantic moment, don’t they?”

  “We’re a mess,” I said.

  The awkwardness of being alone with Fitz outside of the hospital was gone, and I felt comfortable just lying next to him, tapping my hand on the bed and blinking in my usual pattern. I waited a few minutes before talking, hoping he’d say something first.

  I wanted to ask him more about San Juan Island. Like, maybe since we were finally out, escaped, free, we could discuss why the island was so important to him, and why he had to go there before the middle of November. But I was too nervous, and I felt gross being in that germ-riddled room.

  I rolled off the bed and went to shower. When I came back, Fitz was on the couch, totally out, snoring like an old car engine starting up on a winter morning. I climbed into bed and tried not to think of all the people who had slept in that bed before me.

  The sheets smelled like musty books in dusty boxes in the attic at home. I was wary of how often the sheets were washed, or what might be crawling around inside the mattress, but I tried to shrug off those thoughts and sleep. It didn’t work.

  It didn’t help that I kept thinking of how dangerous it was to let Fitz into my life. I considered waking him up to tell him that he shouldn’t get attached to me, that we wouldn’t end up together because we had too many issues to deal with outside of just normal living, normal loving. But I let him sleep.

  At some point in the night, I realized that I had free access to a sink and soap and no Martha to stop me. That was dangerous. I kept thinking of all the messy bodies that had made their way to those sheets—sweaty bodies, bodies with dead skin flaking off everywhere, bodies with other bodies. Fluids. Ugh. Gross.

  I took another, longer, shower and ended up laying down on top of the sheet. I know it really didn’t make a difference, but it was the only way I could justify being anywhere near that bed. And that’s when I heard it. It was a sound that I’d grown to love as a child, and one that always made me feel nostalgic, made me think of home: a foghorn sounded, sending its yearning call into the foggy night.

  Nine

  Maybe calling it a continental breakfast just means you need to have cheap orange juice and stale muffins and a waffle maker. At least here there was the option of little cereal pouches and some type of yogurt or whatever.

  “Grab it to go,” said Fitz.

  He took a banana and a cereal pouch and a couple muffins and stuffed them in one of the little paper sacks at the end of the counter. As we left breakfast, I remembered that we only had half of our medication, and only enough for one day. I mean, I always took my meds before or after breakfast, and in that moment, I worried I might feel the absence of the missing half. It made me worry. What would skipping my full dosage do to me? How would my body react? Even scarier was the thought of what it might do to Fitz, to his mind.

  I tried to push that stress away as Fitz took his half of his medicine and grabbed my hand, and we hurried to the old oak door and stepped out into the bright morning, the sun burning off the inlet fog.

  I relished the feel of real sunlight on my face after being inside for so many weeks. We didn’t get much outdoor time at the hospital, and if it was offered (read: rarely), it was only a small visit to a tiny courtyard enclosed by hospital walls. At least Doc was making some inroads by having Tabor take Group Talk outside, but that wasn’t enough for me. And the sun never truly reached its warm fingers into that small courtyard. At least not while we were there.

  We walked closer to the water, and Fitz started asking passersby about a secondhand store. The inlet was echoing the loud sun booming over my head. It made my heart beat fast, but in an excited way. I put my hand over the pulse and imagined some muscular fist opening and closing.

  Have you ever seen a heart beating outside of a body? I have. Doc had this video. It was nuts. He let me watch it because I kept nagging him. Your heart is this crazy strong muscle that flexes and flattens and fills again a hundred thousand times a day. It has all these nerves that keep it pumping.

  “Got it,” Fitz said, snagging my hand—and my attention—again.

  “Aren’t you enjoying this sun?” I said, surprised he was in such a hurry.

  “We can take all the time we want once we’re on that island,” he said.

  A breeze pushed against my body, and I decided to let my hair down and let it wander in the wind. I shook it out and tried to keep pace with Fitz.

  “Whoa!” he said, stopping when he saw my hair loose.

  “What? Never seen a girl with hair?”

  “Addie Foster,” he said. “The face that will launch one ferry boat.”

  I smiled. “I didn’t know you’d read The Iliad or The Odyssey or anything that wasn’t about the protocol of ninja assassins.”

  “So quick to judge, Addie,” he said with a giant grin. “You’ve got to tell me what kind of conditioner you’re using because, girl, it’s working.” He snapped his fingers with sass. “Tell me that’s not a mask, Addie. Tell me you’re not acting. Tell me something that reminds people why it’s nice to smile.”

  “Let’s just get our clothes,” I said, blushing.

  “Oooohhh. Now we’re in a hurry, huh?”

  We walked to the outer banks of the small clip of land where the ferry launched for the islands. It was oddly pleasing to have a sensory experience that was incredibly normal, yet had been absent from my life for so long. Just everyday stuff—doors opening and closing, people talking, the smell of fish and fried food, airplanes scudding through the sky, kids zipping past on skateboards, kites in the air, Frisbees, dogs barking, bells over doors ringing.

  “Where are we going?”

  “A thrift store is up here, apparently. It’s the only one around. Run by the Episcopal church. We’ll see what they got, then make our way to the ferry.”

  I checked my watch and frowned. “Did you turn off my alarm?” I said.

  “Yeah. You were in the shower, and it kept beeping. Why do you need an alarm? What’s it for?”

  “It reminds me to take my pills,” I said. There it was again, that red light going off in my mind. Wait. That red light appearing, not going off. On. Turning on.

  “What?”

  “My pills. I’m worried about the fact that we only took half.”

  “It’s one day, Addie,” he said.

  “I’m going to be so sick later today,” I said, dreading the inevitable stomach lurching and empty feeling I got whenever I forgot my medication—the same feeling I felt the day before when breaking the pills in half. Would it be worse because of the new environment? I had no way of knowing.

  “I like having a clear head,” he said. “I think better when I’m not on so much of that garbage.”

  I thought about reminding him that he was doing better than ever before because of those very pills, but decided not to say anything. I guess he was right. It was only one day and half the dosage. But it didn’t stop my mind from sending stress signals to my heart and tightening my chest whenever I thought of him without his pills. I’d only known him with those pills. Who would he be without them? It’s not like he hadn’t dealt with those emotions before, though, right?

  It worried me, but the outing was moving, so to speak, and I wasn’t able to slow it down. I mention that so to speak. I speak, so to speak. Too much momentum. I tried to stay in the moment and move on.

  The sun was starting to rise behind the evergreens, and it threw some pretty crazy shadows all over the rolling landscape. I enjoyed the sun as little beams hit me and warmed me all unevenly. I noticed Fitz was sweating more than usual, but wasn’t sure if it was the lack of medication or his anxiety about whatever awaited us
on the island.

  When we stepped into the store, I squinted so my eyes would adjust to the cheap, fluorescent bulbs. I hated fake light.

  One wall was lined with suits and blazers and ties and dress shoes all in the most ridiculous array of colors I’d ever seen. Most of the clothing was far too bright to wear, no matter the comfort level or functional appeal. Not the best options. But I walked down the women’s side to find, surprisingly, some really pretty sundresses and some nice shirts.

  “People are calling this secondhand?” I said.

  Fitz popped around the corner wearing overalls and a straw hat, and I started laughing.

  “Truly. Walt Whitman himself,” I said.

  “My namesake, in a way,” said Fitz. “Just wish I had a stalk of wheat I could hold between my teeth. And a banjo. Lyle is over here laughing, and Toby is telling me some clean jokes for a change. Thanks, guys,” he said, calling out to the empty space behind him. He started dancing a hoedown-type jig and lifting his knees as high as they could go and slapping them and yipping. Yawping, Whitman would say.

  “Just don’t go throwing all your clothes off and rolling in the grass,” I said. “Don’t go full Whitman on me.”

  “What?” He stopped dancing and raised his eyebrows and tilted his head.

  “Have you never read Whitman’s poetry?”

  “Only the ‘Captain, my captain’ one.”

  “Well, he usually takes off his clothes about halfway through his poems and starts rolling in the grass,” I said. “Not saying it doesn’t sound freeing, but I’d like not to make it too obvious that we are escapees from a mental ward.”

  We both said goodbye to our booties. What a sad parting! He decided on flip-flops because they were cheapest, so I went the same route.

  Fitz turned back to the men’s side. He found some soft gym shorts and a nice big sweatshirt that said I Love My Grammar’s Synonym Rolls! It had this cheesy cinnamon-roll man leaping in the air with a giant smile, clicking his heels together. It looked dumb, but it also looked warm.