by S. C. Megale
He drove off a little jerkily, wobbling as he took the right at the curb and disappeared from my view.
That’s when the elation dissipated. That’s when disappointment soaked through my blood.
It was over. Just as fast as he had showed up next to me, he was gone.
The jacket Cole had draped me with burdened me, and he didn’t set it on too comfortably. But I cherished its warmth and closed my eyes next to a mall trash can near the exit doorway. Because I’d timed everything safely, I had a good forty minutes until Mom or Dad would arrive to pick me up.
Images and everything we’d said flashed through my mind as I waited, as I almost dozed.
I woke to the buzz of my phone.
12
Wet hair stuck to my shoulders and goose bumps covered me a few hours after seeing Cole. I lay on a rough towel on my bed and shivered. Dad had showered and dressed me in nightclothes. He’d lathered clean-smelling lotions onto me and hosed me off with the shower nozzle, shouting demands that I tell him where the bomb is.
We call it waterboarding.
Now, as I rested on my back, Dad said he’d be right in with a surprise. I hoped it had nothing to do with my date earlier. Like, a “Congratulations! We’re So Relieved” card from my parents or something.
Speaking of, I didn’t reply to Cole. I was trying to be cool and play the game. Make him wonder about his card. Mags would proud.
But Elliot’s Facebook profile picture popped up on my screen and I tapped it.
He followed it with a thumbs-up emoji. I smirked.
Then I jumped. Orchestral music blasted through my closed bedroom door. I looked over just as Dad opened it.
“The Imperial March” from Star Wars blared from his phone in one hand. In the other, he held up high a clear, gas mask–looking piece of equipment.
“Oh God,” I said.
“Darth Maeve,” said Dad. Mom cut by him with the big boxy generator it was meant to hook up to and started fixing it to the outlet near my bed.
“Already?” I moaned. “Why didn’t the insurance deny us?” I despaired.
“Because they’re terrified of me,” said Mom with pride. “I went and picked it up from the medical supplier after I dropped you off.”
“Dammit,” I mumbled.
Dad’s hands lovingly closed in on my face with the mask. He pulled it over me. Its snug rim covered my mouth and nose, and I closed my eyes. The machine flicked on and began to buzz. Oxygen pushed in.
I could hear Mom rise and, I assume, survey the equipment with Dad. They were quiet.
More machine. More metal.
What if Cole saw me?
I didn’t open my eyes. I kept them closed long enough for Mom and Dad to leave.
I think Dad’s fingers almost touched my hair before he went.
* * *
The next day, I headed to the shopping center across the street from the mall. Earlier there, I’d picked up a new bandanna for François and bought myself some mysterious bohemian takeout—sauerkraut with social anxiety and sausages that couldn’t quite get it up. Cars seemed to patiently and affectionately pause on the busy highway for me to wheel past.
Between a Chinese restaurant with granite dragons flanking the entrance and a family-owned dry cleaner’s with dying lucky bamboo in the window, Laser Tag Planet’s neon Mars logo glowed.
I’d told Elliot I’d come hang out with him at his job one of these days, and I wanted to stay out tonight anyway. Otherwise I’d be wishing I were back in that restaurant with Cole, watching my water imprint a ring of moisture on the table.
Since I had to wait for a random person walking by to open the door for me, I checked my phone to appear occupied and relaxed. That was when I remembered I’d received a text from KC just saying Hey. I’d never replied to it, so I shot one back now before I forgot again.
I shoved my phone away fast as I spotted a stranger approaching with a dry-cleaning bag over her arm. I gestured towards the door, trying to get the request out rapidly and clearly before the woman assumed, like they sometimes do, that I’m begging.
She opened the door for me cheerfully, and I slipped in. No François toted along. I gave him the day off from school. The lasers would distress him.
The room inside was dark except for neon-green lights on the walls and screens playing a reel of overemphasized laser tag fun in the corners. Black couches for waiting by the front desk. A birthday party room to the right with a cheap table and wall decals of balloons and aliens. Some bored-looking adults held paper cups and talked.
“All right, bro, have fun!” said Elliot from behind the front desk. He ripped out a receipt and handed a ten-year-old boy the plastic laser gun. The boy bolted off through the double doors to the arena as his mother stuffed her wallet back into her enormous purse and headed for the birthday room.
I rolled up.
“Maeeeeeve!” said Elliot. He stepped around the desk and swung a huge hand at mine and clasped it. “You came!”
“Of course,” I said. “I told you I want to chill with you at work.”
“D’aw…” Elliot shook his shoulders bashfully. I cast my eyes around the room in the following pause and nodded.
“Cool place,” I said.
“It’s fun,” said Elliot. “Lots of kids.” He sighed. I knew he made pennies here, but his spirit glimmered like Waterford in everything he did. Then he jolted towards me. “WAIT, HOW WAS YOUR DATE?!”
I blushed and lowered my head, trying not to smile too big. “It was great.”
“Awww! What’d you do?”
“Just … ate. Talked.”
“Hey, that’s how it starts.” He crossed his arms.
I nodded. Maybe.
Actually, no. Not maybe. I can’t get hopeful.
Elliot must have read something on my face, even in the dimness.
“What?” he said.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I’m worried.”
“About what?”
I rescanned the evidence in my head to make sure it really was there.
Cole was jittery. He didn’t talk deeply. He hesitated when I asked to hug him.
And man, did he drive off fast.
But he also looked at me hard. He poked my temple. Don’t these mean things too?
“I guess just because I’m the one who asked him out, you know?” I said. “He could have said yes to be polite. Like, gotten the dinner over with and did his good deed for the day.”
“Son.” Elliot gave me a face. “Take it from a guy. He wouldn’t have said yes if he didn’t want to.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“It’s okay if he’s figuring it out as he goes,” said Elliot. “Sometimes it takes me a few dates to figure out where I’m at. He prolly spent all night thinking about you.”
I nodded, half to get him to stop talking about this and half because I love Elliot. In no part because I agreed with him.
“Anyway.” Elliot punched my arm. “Guess what?”
“What?”
“I’m off work!”
My mouth dropped. “What, no! Dammit!”
Elliot laughed. “You know what we should do?”
I gulped. He held up a finger at me and walked around to the desk again.
I stared as he returned with two laser guns in his hands.
* * *
Flashing red and green lights rotated around the arena like a disco ball, but everything else was black. Speakers snarled and rumbled out alien monster noises, and every now and then the shooting engines of a spaceship soared across the audio loop.
Bells rang everywhere. Kids clacked their triggers a million times and screamed and ran around.
Glitter clung to the fabric of my shirt from some of the weird obstacles and glimmered when I got “hit” with the laser. I lifted the plastic yellow gun in my hand and pulled the softer-than-cream trigger. A laser beamed out of my gun and struck one of the reflective target pads attached to a little girl’s jacket as
she dove for cover. I laughed.
Elliot ran across the center of the room, clicking his trigger over and over and laughing too. Three little kids, who must be regulars, jumped out of their cover and tackled him to the ground.
I rolled out of my own cover to his rescue. He reached out a hand and grabbed the handle of my wheelchair, pulling himself free. He hopped onto the back of me.
“Retreat!” he hollered. “Retreat!”
I charged off with him.
Back in cover, he stumbled off me and panted, wiping sweat from his cheek. “I need to get those bastards back.” He shook his head. “Cover me.”
I thumped him, and he ran off for revenge.
My arm was tiring from hoisting the gun around. My breath quickening. I needed to take a break.
At some point during my extraterrestrial adventure, I’d felt a vibration on my cell and assumed it was KC responding. So I tucked the gun onto my footplate and pulled out my phone.
My eyebrows rose.
I replied immediately.
Safe.
He buzzed in alarmingly fast.
There was a brief pause.
Oh shit. I suppressed my smile.
I sent a second text that I probably—no, definitely—would regret.
A pause.
My heart skipped. My head was tilted, gaze glued to the screen.
He was hot right now, wasn’t he? Like, was that what was happening? I darted my eyes around to make sure no kids were nearby, and for some reason, something told me to strike while the iron burned.
Behind me, the alien-monster audio loop screamed with hatching eggs and goo glopping from the yolk.
Why did my fingers know what to type so fast?
All the little pterodactyl alien babies in the audio loop hatched and squealed tinny little squeals and scrambled in every which direction while I waited, hooked to the screen.
A text came in from COLE STONE. But instead of the message preview, the screen just said: (No subject)
That meant the text was nothing but a photo.
My thumb shook over the message icon. Heat pulsed down my body and I fumbled my breath.
I pressed the button and opened the photo from Cole.
Blood shot through my veins like the laser beams from the gun. Every muscle tightened, and my lower body went weak.
The word breathed from my mouth.
“Fuck.”
13
I used the side of my chair to bang open the wide teal door of the handicapped bathroom stall. Kinda … winded. No one else was in the restroom, and brown paper towels lay wet at the sink countertops. It smelled like chlorine.
I’d headed here immediately after Cole’s text, making sure my phone was on vibrate and telling Elliot I needed to check on something “medical.”
I guess you could say that’s what I was doing.
Shakily, I took one last glance at the picture Cole sent and the following few exchanges of me cussing my satisfaction at him (that escalated kinda fast) and him asking me how much I liked it anyway, then where I’d like it, and finally a few lines of him saying I made him hot af.
Our fun ended when he suddenly became more calm and monosyllabic in his reply texts. I can assume he’d wrapped up … whatever had started him off in that mood, and he said he thought he heard his mom get back from grocery shopping downstairs.
As crazed and pumped with adrenaline as I was, I still cringed when I caught myself in the mirror above the sinks. There was no way I was able to return any photos to Cole when I could barely look at me. Before I was eighteen—and, you know, sexting was legit illegal and I wasn’t about that life—I had a good excuse not to engage. Now my only excuse was cold, all-encompassing fear. But even my reflection I could shove away and feel an ecstatic buzz. He said I was sexy. He said I made him hot—I mean, I saw the proof. But did he mean that? Was he really thinking of me?
I stopped next to the silver hand dryer, not quite ready to leave. I took a deep breath and pulled up Mags’ text thread. That’s when I started grinning again.
I laughed out loud at her blasé reaction. Not a single damn thing could bring me down right now.
What type? How many fucking types of dick pics are there?
Is there literally a National Audubon Society Field Guide to this?
Half of my mouth lifted.
There was a knock on the bathroom door.
“Maeve, you better not be dead in some stall.” That was Elliot.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Help me out.”
He opened the door and scanned me. Everything seemed to be in order.
“Get over here,” said Elliot.
I rolled over to him, and his large, warm hand fell on my shoulder as I passed. He muttered, “Giving me a damn heart attack.”
* * *
The next day was Sunday, and that morning François trotted along the gravel dog park with a rubber Frisbee in his mouth. A parade of mutts all different shades of mud followed him, going after the toy. I sat with a few other disconnected owners at the bench. Stains and puddles darkened the gravel all around; whether water or slobber or projectile canine vomit, none of us could tell. But it smelled, and the wire fences were rusty.
François had the time of his life. He wriggled with a dorky swagger and his shoulders seemed high. The mutts tried to jump on him for the Frisbee.
His sweet little uniform hung off a hook on my wheelchair, along with his leash. I let him play off-duty now. The exercise was good for him, and the sociability. He was awkward with other dogs because of his isolated training to be my companion, and now it was like a kid’s first time on the schoolyard blacktop.
“God.” The middle-aged, corpulent woman next to me bristled in her tan coat. “It’s getting too cold already.”
The air was crisp, yeah. Late autumn in Virginia seemed to put a thick piece of glass in the sky. The sun was there, sure, and bright, but no heat penetrated.
“Which one is yours?” I said.
“The little Chihuahua-terrier mix.” She pointed. I followed her finger to a feisty little triangle-eared dog swiping François’ Frisbee from his mouth at just that moment. François didn’t fight back—I didn’t think he understood aggression. He instead rolled on his back immediately and spread his legs, tilting his head in a bashful way. Damn, did he learn this stuff from me?
“What a cutie,” I said. Not trying to be one of those overprotective owners that would demand the mutt return the toy and apologize.
“Yeah. I’m gonna get out his sweater soon.” The woman shuddered visibly and crossed her arms.
“So you do the whole dressing-them-up thing?” I said with more humor than accusation.
“Oh, I’ll have to this winter.” She pursed her chapped lips gleaming with skin-tone lip gloss. “Farmer’s Almanac says it’ll be the coldest winter in a decade.”
“Damn,” I said. “Are those things accurate?”
François leapt up and scurried away with flattened ears as a bigger, boxier dog nipped him.
“My husband is a master gardener,” said the woman. “He swears by them.”
“Hmm.” I nodded.
Was it weird that every single time someone casually said the word husband, I felt envy? I looked at my phone. There was a message, but not from Cole. I guess he needed to process where we’re at too.
I didn’t want to keep playing text-tag with KC. I replied right away.
“So, yours is the white-golden one?” the woman said. “He’s licking the inside of that Doberman’s ear now.”
“Yeah,” I replied without looking up from my screen. “He’s a little slutty.”
The woman’s face pinched up.
I noticed he ignored the reshoot question. If he was going to skip the reshoot, I’d lie for him to Mr. Billings. KC and I had been friends way long enough.
That would really be my only day to chill. The day after was my “appointment” to sabotage Wheelchair Charity Woman at Quinten’s nursing home (I’d
already left him a voicemail to prepare him for the mission) and the day after that was the reshoot.
He didn’t reply again.
When François’ eyes were a little pink and his mouth never closed to hide his tongue, I knew he was dehydrated and called him in. With weak, floppy hands, I redressed him in his uniform. Many think that at this gesture, François would transform into a machine of militaristic duty. He did settle down, but his eyes darted for the mutts and he pulled a little towards them as we made our way to the gate. I waved goodbye to the woman on the bench.
Cold wind rustled through the trees in the distance, and like crashing waves, I knew it was only moments before the chill would bowl over me like uprush. As François and I mounted the sidewalk that would take me home, my teeth began to chatter.
A tickle spread in my chest.
14
The puffy green jacket I wore was stuffed into every corner of my chair the next night. Although light rayon and warm down, it burdened me. I struggled to keep my posture erect. Mom wouldn’t drop me off at Greenbriar Towne Center without the coat zipped and tucked.
The shopping center was laid out with high-end department stores, restaurants, and wreaths hanging from lampposts. Buttery storefront light spilled onto the brick sidewalks. At the pinnacle of the center was the huge, white ice rink—spherical bright bulbs illuminating it beneath an awning. Skaters drifted around it counterclockwise.
It was just past 7:30 p.m., and already dark. I moved forward and jostled over the bumpy brick terrain. If were being totally honest, I didn’t always mind the bumps—especially with Cole to think about lately—but tonight they only made sitting straight under my coat harder.
