by Lisa Bunker
As I get closer to the bridge I see there’s a moldy old armchair sitting out at the edge of the trees, and behind it a couple of paths going back through the bushes. I follow one over a little rise and find a clearing. Nobody’s around. There’s a place where fire has made rocks black, and there’s a bunch of beer cans and broken glass all around, and I have started to breathe through my nose because there’s a porta potty smell in the air. In fact, I can see some … well, you know, lying right out on the ground. Yuck. There are also a couple of logs for sitting on, a bunch of graffiti on the rocks, and there’s a mattress partially pulled apart and sorta shoved back in the bushes, which I might lie down on if it was a choice between that and, say, getting struck by lightning.
Then I hear a stick snap and up on the hill I see a guy with his hair sticking out all shaggy under the bottom of his bill cap. He’s coming down through the trees, going sideways to me, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t see me, but I still sneak back as fast as I can over the little rise and head in the opposite direction, toward the cave under the bridge.
It’s almost completely dark by this time, and a cold damp-feeling wind has come up. More clouds are filling the sky. A flashlight is another thing I didn’t think of bringing, so I grope my way back in the dark-gray light. There’s a lot of trash in the weeds, but it doesn’t stink like the fire-pit place, and toward the back I find a big old wide car seat. It has holes picked in it and stuff, but the plasticky cover is pretty clean-looking, so I sit down. I’m hungry, so I eat one of my apples with a swallow of water, and think about going up and trying to buy some food, but then I think of cops and trying to find this place again in the dark and I don’t go. Then there’s nothing left to do but wonder about what’s going on at home. Mom all upset, I figure, and Bea probably in trouble unless she lied about seeing me leave, and maybe even Grandy getting worked up. And I feel bad and stupid and lost and helpless.
Also, tired. Soon it’s completely dark except for the low gray glow from the clouds outside—gray with a tinge of city-light yellow. I can’t think of anything else to do except try to sleep, so I figure out a way I can sort of lean half-sideways on the seat without falling off when I relax into the Pose, and after a while I actually start to get sleepy. Then the seat tips and almost dumps me, so I get up again and stick a rock underneath it. Then I thrash around for a long time until finally, believe it or not, I fall asleep.
I have no idea what time it is when cold water on my face wakes me. The gray outside is darker now—I guess most of the city has gone to bed—and it’s raining. The wind is gusting in and spraying drops across my face. Not all the time, only the really big gusts. I’m shivering. I get up and try to drag the seat farther in under the overhang, but it’s too heavy. I do manage to pull it around partway so the back is to the wind, which maybe helps a little. I also manage to put one of the runners down on the toe of my sneaker, which hurts like hell, but eventually I get the thing stable again, and after a while I drift back to sleep.
When I woke up again just a little while ago it was still dark and still raining, but the dark was slightly lighter, so I figured somewhere up above the clouds the sun was beginning to come up. The rain and wind have both gotten less, so no more splashes of drops. That doesn’t mean I am comfortable, though. What woke me up was the cold. My teeth aren’t chattering, but only because my jaw muscles have basically seized shut, and the rest of me isn’t so much shivering as having little convulsions. And pushing against the Pose feels nearly as hard as it was on that lockup morning. It hurts bad.
So what do I do now? I’m hungry and thirsty and I need to pee. And that last one was easy to take care of, but no fun in the cold. And now I just drank my last swallow of water and ate my last apple, even the gristly part around the seeds, but it just made me hungrier.
Zyx, I apologize.
apologize question mark
Don’t you get it? I ran away. That means no Procedure. It means we’re stuck together forever, or until the end anyway. But if I go back … No, I can’t face that. There’s no right answer. What do you do when there’s no right answer?
no answer only be do now all right
But I’m not deciding just for me. I’ve decided for you. You’re stuck with my decision.
not stuck
Yes, you are. We’re stuck together. That’s the whole point.
zyx love felix
Stop saying that! It only makes it worse!
zyx love felix
Stop it! How can I … Wait, someone’s coming. Better hide the tablet.
Still 4 Days to Go
Now it’s night again, and I have to explain everything that has happened today.
I was afraid the person coming might be hat-hair guy, but it wasn’t. Actually I thought the person was a girl, because of the long hair, which was all I could see at first, but then he gets a little closer and I see it’s a guy, and he looks young. Not a teenager anymore, but not much older. He’s wearing skinny-leg jeans and a leather jacket with fringe on it, beat-up hiking boots, and a backpack with the straps scrunching the jacket into bunches. He stops a few feet away.
He doesn’t look dangerous. He doesn’t look dirty or homeless, either. Just a guy you might pass on the street and not notice. We look at each other for a minute and then he says, “Hey, little brother.” His voice is soft, and he kinda looks sideways at you and then away when he talks. Shy, though, is what it says, not shifty. He reminds me of Ash.
I don’t say anything. I just sit there with my heartbeat shaking me back and forth a little.
“My train isn’t going to be by for a bit yet. Mind if I sit down?” He waves a hand at the weeds and rocks around us, like, Dude, you’re hogging the only seat.
I still can’t talk, but I shift over and hunch myself up. He drops his pack and flops onto the seat, letting his head roll on the back, sticking his skinny legs out in front of him. “Thanks,” he says. Then he says, “I think maybe the rain is going to stop soon. I hope so. It is seriously unfun catching out in a downpour.” Then we sit in silence. I’m so hungry my stomach hurts, and I feel shaky and weak. I think again about climbing up into the town and trying to find a grocery store, and my stomach makes a noise like some undersea creature crying in pain. It actually sounds out loud in the stillness.
The guy glances at me, then pulls his pack around and opens a drawstring and takes out one of those sandwiches inside a triangle of clear plastic like they sell in gas stations. When I see it my stomach makes another noise and all of a sudden my mouth is full of water, but it comes into my head that he must have stolen it, and I get panicky. Could I be arrested for eating stolen food?
He pops the lid, pulls out one of the matching wedges, and holds it out to me. “You want something to eat?” he says. I catch a whiff of chicken salad and my hand moves by itself, but I pull it back again because I’ve still got the panic going, and I say something stupid, like, “Is it … I mean, did you … uh uh duh duh …” He looks at me, puzzled but not upset, and I feel ashamed, so I change my question. “Are you sure?” I say. “Half a sandwich isn’t very much.” Meaning, the half that’s left for him.
“Oh, no worries,” he says, “there’s plenty more where that came from,” and he tips the pack so I can see what looks like a chip bag and the edge of some kind of box and a bottle top. This does not answer the question of stolen versus bought, but I don’t care anymore. I take the sandwich half and bite so far into it that it paints mayonnaise on both my cheeks, and then I gobble the whole thing in about ten seconds.
“Hungry,” he says. “I know how it feels.”
“Thanks,” I say. My voice comes out thick, from the mayo. I would really like to eat the other half of the sandwich too, but I don’t dare say anything about that.
“No worries.” More silence. Then, “So, what’s your name, little brother?”
“Felix.”
“You can call me Malcolm,” he says. “’Cause that’s my name.” He smiles a little. I’m s
tarting to feel more relaxed, and pretty soon, sitting there with the light getting warmer—there’s a touch of gold now—I ask the question that’s on my mind. “So, you’re here to catch a train?”
“That’s right. Should be by in half an hour or so.”
“What’s it like?”
“Riding the rails? It’s totally gnarly.” I want to know more, but I’m not sure I’m allowed to ask. After a second, though, he goes on by himself. He talks about the proper way to jump onto and off of a train, and about wearing dark clothes so the bulls won’t see you—the bulls, he says, are the railroad police—and about how an open boxcar is great if you can find it, but that’s kind of a romantic notion really because usually it’s flatcars or other kinds with platforms on the end, and the only kind that’s really no good to ride is the tank cars. He talks slowly with pauses between, and smiles to himself and shakes his head, like he’s listening to himself along with me. “Gnarly,” he says again, and then there is a long silence. Then he says, “What about you, little brother? Where are you headed?”
That mixes me up, and I go to talk a couple times but stop again. He glances at me through his hair, hanging forward and loose. “You’re pretty young-looking to be out on your own,” he says. “Whadja do, run away from home?”
Asking it right out like that makes it easy to answer. “Yeah.”
He nods and does the fish-lips thing that people do when they’re agreeing. “That’s cool,” he says. “Man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”
Him calling me a man like that makes me feel about seven years old, and all of a sudden I want more than anything in the world to see my mom’s face. He says, “None of my business, but where’s home?”
“Littlefield.”
“Not far, then. Just up the line.” He doesn’t say, So you could get back easily if you wanted to, but I think it, and then I start twitching, because I can only imagine how profoundly squirmworthy it would be to go back. Malcolm is staring at his boots, which he’s flopping back and forth in the dirt. If he has noticed how I talk and move, I can’t tell. He says, “Well, you’re welcome to catch on with me, if you want, when my train comes.”
“No thanks,” I say, and now we both know that I don’t want to go any farther.
“That’s cool,” he says again. More silence. “This is a pretty nasty place to stay, though,” he finally goes on. “Even if the sun does come out.” He seems to make up his mind. “Listen,” he says, sitting up and looking right at me for once. “I know a house with some good people in it, if you, you know … need a place to stay.”
I don’t say no this time, so I guess I must think it’s an OK idea. Strangers. Scary stranger yesterday. Nice stranger today. I feel like there are a whole bunch of rules for life that I didn’t even know existed yesterday. What’s the rule about nice people telling you other people are nice? Do you believe them? Again I talk without knowing what I’m going to say. “How would I find it?”
“Oh, I’ll walk you up there, if you like. It’s not far.”
“But, your train.”
“No worries. There will be another one tomorrow.”
I don’t want to make this guy miss his train, but my feet are so cold, and my stomach is twisting around like that little sandwich only made it mad. And he’s right about where we are—it’s a wet chilly hole in a cliff with a bunch of trash and a car seat in it. No place to live, even for a little while. “OK, thanks,” I say.
“Cool,” he says, and pushes himself to his feet. He picks up his pack and puts it on. I get up too, bent-kneed at first because of the cold and the Pose, and gather my stuff. Then he starts picking his way through the weeds toward the light, which is getting strong now, and I follow. When we get out under the sky, I see there are patches of blue. The air tastes cool and soft. It’s a fresh morning. Malcolm gives me a nod, and we start hiking up toward the city of Portland, Maine.
The streets when we reach them are quiet house streets, not busy business streets. First we pass through a couple of blocks of big houses with large clear windows where the lawns are clipped and the garages are freshly painted and there are nice shiny new cars in them. Then we pass a school and a building that looks like it might have offices in it. A block down a side street there’s a storefront with some neon that my stomach makes me turn toward, but Malcolm says, “We can get some breakfast at the house, if you want,” so we go on.
After the business street the houses look older and less well cared for. They are also a lot closer together, so there’s less room for flower beds and stuff, just skinny side yards mostly covered in asphalt with two or three cars crammed in, or little weedy patches. It’s one of these houses he stops at. It’s set back a little from the street, with a tiny double weed-patch front yard and concrete steps going up. I stop at the bottom of the stairs and think for a second about running off down the street, but he says, “Come on,” and I do.
The door from the street opens into a bare little room, not even a room really, just a place with a couple of closed doors, a couple of bicycles, and a hall that goes back to another closed door at the end. It’s open overhead, though, with the stairs wrapping around, and every little sound echoes up into the space. The stairs are so old that all the places people touch when they climb are dark and shiny. We go up with our footsteps echoing, past a little square window with colored glass in it, to a landing and another door.
Malcolm puts his finger to his lips. “It’s still early,” he whispers. “They’re all going to be asleep. But welcome to the House on Harmony Street.” Was that the street name? I didn’t notice. I give him a look, and he whispers, “Because everyone who lives here always gets along so well,” and I totally can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic or not. We go in.
Bare floors. Not much furniture at all. Someone has been drawing pictures on the walls with crayons, which now that I type it looks like I mean a knee-level scrawl of a little house with curly smoke and a tree and birds drawn by some rug rat, but that’s not what I mean at all. On one wall there’s a life-size unicorn—I mean, life-size if unicorns are the same size as horses—and it’s done in a bunch of different colors and it’s wicked cool. Malcolm sees me looking and murmurs, “Nice, huh? Lauren did that.”
A skinny black-except-for-white-face-patches cat runs up and wraps itself around my leg, purring, and Malcolm whispers, “Still hungry? No doubt there’s a ton of spaghetti left over from last night.”
Something in me just lets go, finally, and I follow him into the kitchen, thinking, Whatever happens happens. One corner of the kitchen is higher than the other. There are a couple sick-looking plants in the window, more art on the walls, and a sink full of dishes with stuff caked on them. Malcolm opens the fridge and pulls out a white bowl with a plastic bag over the top. It has a big wad of spaghetti noodles in it with sauce and cheese bits on them. He gets two forks out of a drawer and we both start taking bites, standing there in the middle of the kitchen with him holding the bowl.
While we’re still eating I hear a door and footsteps and a girl comes in. She’s got straight red hair that’s cut so it comes down to points in front, and the red is so dark and bright at the same time that I figure her real hair color is more like her eyebrows, which are brown. It’s really cute, though. She’s cute. She’s like Malcolm in age—early twenties. She’s wearing nice clothes, which surprises me at first, because I figure, Saturday morning, pajamas or whatever, but then it’s clear from the talk that she’s on her way to her job, which is some restaurant thing. She shows no surprise at seeing Malcolm and me there, just says, “Hey,” and goes past us to the fridge to get juice. Once she has it she leans against the counter and says, “So, stranger, what’s your name?”
“Felix,” I say, through a mouthful of noodles.
“Hey, Felix. I’m Lauren.”
I swallow. “You drew the unicorn.”
“Yeah.”
“Awesome unicorn.”
She tips her head and smiles, and when she s
miles she gets a whadayacall, a dimple, at the corner of her mouth, and also her eyes light up, and I think, Wow, if I liked girls.
Once my stomach is full—I have a glass of water from the sink too—I start yawning like crazy. Malcolm tells Lauren, without going into details, that I had a rough night, and she says, “You can crash on the couch if you like,” and then she’s gone to work, and all of a sudden there’s nothing I want to do more than lie down on something soft and warm and clean. So I do. I kick my shoes off and scrunch into the corner of the couch, which seems good for the Pose, and the cat comes running over and curls up on my stomach, purring, and the vibration of the purr and the warmth of its furry body spread through my whole body and I’m out.
When I wake up again, I figure from the stiffness and pain and the flat taste in my mouth that I have been asleep for a while—maybe a couple of hours. The cat is gone and the room is empty, but I can hear someone making noises in the kitchen. I get up kinda slow, trying not to make a sound, but I guess I do anyway, because I hear footsteps and then a new person comes in from the kitchen.
This new person is short and sorta round around the edges, and I feel a little squirt of squirminess, because I can’t tell right away if I’m looking at a male or a female person. Whoever it is has a nice face, though, with a smile and chubby cheeks and eyebrows up like, Hey, what’s going on? The cheeks are part of what’s throwing me off. Along with the rounded edges they say girl, but the clothes and the little bit of hair on the face say boy. So I think to myself, When vo speaks, I’ll know, but it doesn’t work out that way. “Hey,” vo says, in a medium-high, slightly scratchy voice that could totally go either way. “You doin’ OK?”
