All the Lonely People

by Jen Marie Hawkins

  I stop dead in my tracks and hold my breath. There’s a liquid sloshing sound.

  “Right, right. I tried to tell him that. Nobody ever listens to me.”

  Except me, right now. I’m listening to him. And tried to tell who what?

  “Right, then. Talk to you tomorrow.”

  I attempt a sneak-away but step on a squeaky board that announces my location.

  “Hello?” he calls, somewhere out of sight. Then a moment later, he peers down at me.

  “Sorry,” I bumble. “I heard someone talking and—”

  He reaches down through the opening in the ceiling. “Come

  up here. I’ve got something for you.”

  Chapter 19

  : Something :

  HE TAKES MY hand and helps me up the ladder.

  It occurs to me for the first time how big his hands are compared to mine. My head swims as I get my bearings. Old brick walls surround us and slant upward. The pitch of the roof in the middle of the room is just tall enough for Henry to stand without ducking or stooping. On either side of the room, long tables line the workspace. On one side, there’s a sink and several plastic trays. On the other, there’s equipment of some kind, which I assume is for developing film. Rows of pictures hang from clothespins on wires above it. The ceiling has alternating white bulbs and red bulbs that illuminate the windowless space.

  It hits me then that George meant this was literally a darkroom.

  In the corner opposite the workspace, there’s a counter with a microwave and an electric tea kettle, and a table and two chairs. Henry pulls out one of the chairs for me.

  “This is my studio.” He pulls two mugs from a shelf above the kettle and sets them on the table, then sets a box of tea beside them. I sink into the chair.

  “Hangover prophylactic,” he says, and places a bag in each mug.

  I read the label on the box. “Mugwort?”

  He half smiles. “Drink this and take two aspirin, and you’ll wake up good as new.” He pours the steaming water from the kettle into our mugs. The aroma is rich and peppery, almost hypnotic.

  While it steeps, he takes a jar of honey and a spoon from one of the shelves and sets it on the table. His hands move nonstop. Sliding the kettle over. Turning the mugs. Turning the ring on his thumb. Wiping his hands on the back of his pants. I survey the room and pretend not to wonder why he’s so fidgety.

  “Look,” he says, sliding into the chair opposite me. “I owe you an apology. I should’ve done a better job looking out for you.”

  I stare at him. “What? Nobody asked you to look out for me, Henry.”

  “Actually,” he twists his hands together, “my dad did.”

  My spine stiffens. “George asked you to go to the Crow tonight?”

  He nods.

  Oh God. It comes to me one detail at a time. “I’m guessing you had different plans with your friends before he asked?”

  He gives me a half-shrug, half-nod.

  Here I’d been thinking that he came because he wanted to be there. Not to mention his friends changed their plans! All to witness my series of incredibly stupid decisions. Then Henry ditched them. And not because he cared that I got back safely, but because he felt responsible for me. Glancing down at the tea mugs, I feel sick all over again.

  Even this hangover tea is his way of keeping his word.

  I stand up. “Look, you don’t have to do this. I didn’t realize. I’m sorry I ruined your night.”

  “Wait.” He reaches out and takes my hand for the third time tonight. “Sit down. I promise you’ll feel better.”

  “I’m not gonna tell your dad, okay? Don’t worry about it. This is pretty much a regular thing for me. At home, I mean. Partying.”

  The corner of his mouth turns up.

  “Super regular thing.” I dig the hole a little deeper, fully committing to the lie.

  He bites down on the inside of his cheek like he’s trying not to laugh. “Sit down, Jo.”

  I think it’s the first time he’s ever used my name. My legs wobble as I sink onto the chair. He lets go of my hand and pushes my mug toward me.

  The liquid is warm and a little bitter. I add honey and stir, spoon clinking against the cup. We sip quietly for a few moments, and he peeks over the rim of his mug at me. The closeness becomes a little too much, so I stand and pace the room with my tea, studying the pictures hanging on the lines. Unlike the landscape photos on his Instagram page, these photos are of people. Nobody I recognize, until I get to the end of the line.

  Two photos of Zara stare back at me. Some of his photos look like commissioned portraits, but these look like art. She’s draped in a blanket, bare shoulders and legs sticking out, lying on a hardwood floor. It occurs to me that she’s probably naked under the blanket, based on the placement of the fabric. A strange pang turns over in my gut when I imagine myself as Henry and look at her through his eyes.

  “Are these the pictures Mons was talking about tonight?” I glance at him.

  He nods. “Yeah. He’s a little jealous.”

  “I kind of picked up on that.”

  “I’m sorry about him, too, by the way,” he says. “We call him Mons Pubis. I’m sure you can guess why.”

  “Because he’s a dick?”

  Henry chuckles. “Nothing gets by you.”

  I glance over at him. “Why do you hang out with him, then?”

  “Old habits die hard and all that.”

  We both go quiet for a moment.

  “So how does all of this work?” I point to the red bulbs on the ceiling.

  He reaches up to a light panel on the wall and flips off the light, putting us in momentary darkness. Then flips another switch and bathes the room in a hazy red glow. He joins me in the workspace and feeds some film into the viewfinder, then turns on the big bulky machine that looks like an oversized microscope.

  “Go ahead, take a look.”

  I peek down through the lens at the negative. It’s one of the photos of Zara, but in this one she’s wearing a dress.

  “The red light,” he explains, “won’t expose the film the way the white light will.”

  I look up at him. Our proximity suddenly occurs to me. I could move one inch forward and touch any part of him.

  Jesus. Not that I would! I take a step back, bumping into the table behind me.

  “I see the tea is sobering you right up.” He smirks and places the negative back in its sleeve. “A warning, by the way. Mugwort produces extremely lucid dreams for some people.”

  “Oh, great.” I look down and swirl the sepia liquid around in my mug, watching the steam rise from the surface like a spell.

  “More of those.”

  “More of what?”

  I meet his eyes. “Lucid dreams.”

  Henry leans back on the table and tilts his head to the side. His eyebrows knot together above his nose. He doesn’t ask me to elaborate, but the shadows in his expression do.

  Maybe it’s because I can’t possibly embarrass myself any more than I already have, or it’s the comfort of the relative darkness, but something about him makes me want to open up my head and pour my negative reel of thoughts directly into his viewfinder. Let him pick through them and develop them at will. “My pop has been communicating with me through dreams.”

  He doesn’t laugh. “How?”

  I shrug. “I keep getting these premonitions. Of things I’m supposed to do and places I’m supposed to be. I’m going to find him. It just hasn’t worked yet.”

  Henry says nothing. Just stares at me like a museum exhibit.

  “Forget it. I sound unhinged.”

  He shakes his head. “I have dreams like that sometimes. My mom died, too, you know. And we lost a close friend a few years ago. Sometimes I talk to both of them in my dreams. It always seems incredibly real until I wake up. Never premonitions, though.”

  But it isn’t real. That’s what he’s implying. We sip from our mugs for a while, not talking. The peppery aroma dazes
me. It’s like being suspended in that moment just before you sneeze.

  “I only sang tonight because I dreamed it.”

  He looks up at me.

  “In the dream, Pop was in the audience. I thought maybe if I could recreate the dream exactly, it’d make it real and he’d be there.”

  He watches me carefully. The fact that he’s not freaking out only encourages me. I tell him about the gumballs. And the shoes at the airport. And all the other times I had dreams about mundane things that later came true, with Pop waiting quietly in the periphery. The only thing that didn’t come true was Pop.

  He doesn’t say anything as he goes back to the table, switches the red lights for the white ones.

  “I came here to find him.” I squint as my eyes adjust, wondering if the mugwort has some sort of truth serum property.

  “Find him where?” Henry asks. “I don’t mean to pry, but… I saw the urn.”

  My stomach falls through my feet at the mention of the urn. I think about it, lying on the river bottom, or washed out to sea. I wonder what he’d think of me if he knew I lost it.

  “Thing is,” I stare at the floor, “I can’t be sure it’s him in the urn. I never saw his body.”

  Henry opens his mouth to say something but stops short. He returns to his place at the table and I follow him.

  “There’s this one dream,” I say. “I keep having it over and over. He always shows up at this one place, and even after what happened tonight, I have to go there. To make sure.”

  “Where?”

  I hesitate. “It’s in Liverpool, where he grew up.”

  “But where, specifically?”

  I shake my head. “I can’t tell you. I don’t talk about the dreams until after they’ve happened in real life. Kind of a superstitious thing.”

  He nods as if this makes perfect sense. I twirl my tea and make a tiny typhoon, knowing good and well this conversation is not normal. That I’m not normal.

  “You asked me about ley lines.” He meets my eyes. “There’s a theory that you can communicate on ley lines. Telepathically.” It’s casual, non-committal, the way he says it. He doesn’t know I read the interview in New Ages, and there’s no way I’m confessing to it.

  “I’m a physics major,” he continues. “So this whole ley lines thing—at first, it felt like an identity crisis. But the more I studied theory, the more it made sense. We’re all made of energy, and energy can be neither created nor destroyed. What comprises a soul? Where does it go?”

  I take a breath. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s not just science that aligns with it. In maths, there are coincidence points. Two lines occupying the same space, like an overlay. If you apply the properties of ley lines to any number of physics or even mathematical theories, things become… possible.”

  I sit up straighter, not quite following. “The possibility of?”

  “Deliberate, conscious communication.”

  Something squeezes inside my chest.

  “So what does science say about premonitions?”

  “Well, they’re mostly regarded as pseudoscience because they violate the principle of causality, which says an effect cannot occur before its cause.”

  I look down at the table.

  “But some physicists,” he continues, “believe that time is fundamental. That disordered causality may exist.”

  I look back up at him. “So science can both confirm and deny something, depending on the scientist doing the analyzing?”

  He slides his glasses up on top of his head. I’ve never seen him take them off before, and my face flushes like he’s ripped off his shirt. I blink the embarrassing thought away and pull myself together.

  “Our perception of reality is a lot like uncorrected nearsightedness. For instance—” he leans over the table, close to my face, and lowers his voice “—when I look at you now, up close like this, I notice the precise details. The texture of your hair, the shape of your face, the freckles on your nose, even the little flecks of gold in your irises.”

  His peppermint-scented breath vibrates across my lips and heat crawls down my neck. I don’t breathe. I am those little gold flecks right now: small and hidden but discovered. Terrified because I’m being seen.

  He moves to his original spot and all the air in the room shifts with him. “But further away, I can’t see any of that. It’s a blur. Our reality is shaped by what we can see. What we can capture with a lens.” He gestures absently to his workspace. “And we can’t see everything.” He slides his glasses back onto his face. “Physics works like my glasses. It’s a tool that corrects the nearsightedness of our perceived reality. Imperfectly, nonetheless. It’s still blurry if I look to either side instead of directly through the lenses.”

  “Tool?” The word comes out in a whoosh. “Like the magnets?”

  “Well, I meant the principles of physics. But since you brought it up, we can apply one to the magnets, too. The magnets help me find ley lines. They work like dowsers. But there’s something called the Observer Effect. It’s a principle that says by simply observing something, you change the nature of it.”

  Kind of like he just did to me a minute ago, one impulsive moment away from my face.

  “That sounds… complicated.” I swallow.

  “Okay, think of it like this. When you check the pressure in an automobile tire, you can’t use the gauge without air escaping. The change is small, but present. So when I use magnets to locate a ley line, it may alter the nature of them. The location or the quality or the movement. The Observer Effect explains inconsistencies in mapping them, to a point.”

  “I see.” I don’t see. I’m still a little wasted.

  “I’m saying the answers are all out there for the taking. But we’re far from grasping them all, separately or together.”

  He smiles and launches into theoretical physics—a passionate stream of concepts I might struggle to follow even if I was fully sober. He talks about inclined planes, string theory, multiverses, quantum entanglement. I’m listening, but more than anything, I’m watching the way his eyes light up as he talks about synchronicity and combined energies and ionic bonds. He gestures in front of him like he’s painting a picture in the air. He’s a constant ripple of movement and thought and energy.

  One thing is for sure: Henry isn’t pretending to be smart.

  He blows out a tired breath at the end. “I said all of this to say that I’ve been trying to make contact, too, but it hasn’t worked yet.”

  Though the rest seems like alien language, I understand this part. And also the disappointment in his face when he says it. He and I at least have this in common.

  “How do the magnets help you find the lines?” I empty the rest of my tea, lick the last of the honey off my lips, and set the mug down, feeling sleepy and warm.

  “It’s hard to explain but…” He pauses and locks eyes with me. The air between us crackles, like a chemical reaction is taking place. “I could show you sometime.”

  I take a mental snapshot.

  Caption: wowzer

  I glance at his lips. Just a peek, long enough to observe the pillowy quality of them. What would physics say about that? Were his lips that plump before I looked at them? Or was it the effect of my gaze that made them that way?

  When I meet his eyes again, I know he saw me look. The bottom of my empty mug suddenly becomes the most interesting thing in the observable world. If there were leaves there to read, they’d say Hey, remember Dylan?

  Dylan would be crushed if he knew I was sitting here in this intimate space, telling some other guy all the things I can’t tell him. Some other guy, who takes my word for it when I tell him irrational things instead of asking about my meds. And I keep thinking things about this other guy that I should not be thinking. Because he is only babysitting me as a favor to his dad, and ultimately, my mom.

  Alcohol makes me stupid.

  “I’m really sleepy. I think I should go to bed.”

  He
nry nods. I stand and head to the ladder. When I glance over my shoulder, his eyes are waiting for me.

  “Thank you for the tea,” I say. “And the babysitting.”

  He smiles at me as I leave.

  Chapter 20

  : I’m Only Sleeping :

  SUNLIGHT SHINES ALL around us as my mouth maps a shady trail over his skin.

  Behind his ear, down the tender side of his neck, over the point of his throat. I part my lips and taste the sticky sweetness in the divot where his collarbones meet. A shudder settles over me as I inhale the peppery, intoxicating scent. He’s a dreamy nightcap in the middle of the day. Warmth beats down on my exposed back. My knees chafe from friction with the crisscross embroidery of the picnic blanket. The thread makes little x-shaped indentions on my shins.

  Dylan’s chest rises and falls beneath me, leaner than I remember. It’s only been a little more than a week since I’ve seen him, but I’ve somehow forgotten his details. My hair fans over him, trickling over the ridges of his stomach—defined muscles I never bothered to notice or appreciate before. He shivers as my mouth dips further and further south.

  It’s different this time.

  Long fingers grip the tops of my arms and pull me back up. Even with my eyes closed, my face finds his in an instant. Like an ionic bond, we fit. I smile against his lips.

  My fingers draw invisible lines on his collarbones, over the puckered ridge of a scar on the left side of his chest—another detail I’ve somehow forgotten. I linger there, tracing it, trying to remember what it looks like. I can’t process all five senses at once. His hands are everywhere.

  My bare thighs slide over the protrusions of his hipbones—skin on slippery, damp skin. Though I know what comes next, for the first time, the curious anticipation of it makes my legs tremble.

  I sit up, lashes fluttering against the glittering daylight. Body bared and back arched. I’m not a girl, but a physics lesson: the inevitability of an inclined plane. Our energy is combined at a single meeting point. We are perpendicular lines occupying the same shimmering vibration. Synchronicity in human form.