Winter Town

by Stephen Emond

  “I’m a growing boy,” Evan said with a wink. He passed the sketchbook back to Lucy.

  Lucy, a lefty, started drawing, twisting her arm around the page, turning the sketchbook sideways, her head cocked at a forty-five-degree angle. “You’d think I lack thumbs, looking at my art. I draw like those dogs that paint with brushes attached to their paws.”

  Evan laughed. “What? What are you talking about? What dogs are these?” He leaned forward, resting his chin on his hand, ready for an explanation.

  Lucy relented and laughed herself. “I don’t know. Forget that. I was going for something.”

  “You missed it by a mile.”

  “Screw you.”

  Lucy handed him the sketchbook.

  “You know you deflect, like, every possible compliment?” Evan said, resuming his drawing. “You used to be so confident. What happened to that Lucy?”

  “Do I get an example?” she asked, leaning her head on her fist, looking tired.

  “Well, I don’t have any off the top of my head,” Evan said, retreating. He couldn’t think of one. He was sure she was confident, at least she was in his mind. Maybe that was just some ancient remnant from eight-year-old Lucy he was holding on to. Shooting her water gun in her mom’s face, climbing that tall tree in her yard. Maybe she hadn’t earned the confidence moniker in a while. Evan put down the pen and passed the sketchbook back to Lucy. “In general. No, all right, I’ll think of something, give me a second.” Evan leaned back in his chair, looking down at the table in front of him.

  The waitress came back with the orange juice and coffee. Lucy grabbed the coffee, closed her eyes, and took a sip. “Mmmmm.”

  “How about that talent show?” Evan asked. “How old were you then? You got up onstage and sang in front of our entire class. That was ballsy. That was so Lucy!”

  “That was really embarrassing, and it was, like, the worst moment of my life, ever. My parents made me do it. You suck. That was an awful example.”

  “All right, well…” Evan fumbled for words and clung to the next idea that popped into his head. “Your parents. What about when your parents divorced? You were so strong about it. I would have cried like a baby.”

  “Jesus, Evan. It’s like you’re trying to be offensive.”

  “No, I wasn’t—” Evan laughed nervously, and then apologized for it quickly when he saw the expression on Lucy’s face.

  Lucy put the pen down. “Yeah, I didn’t cry, but your family isn’t fucked up like mine.” One of the Apple and Microsoft guys looked over. “It sucked, but I knew it was better that way, too. If your mom and dad divorced, it’d be like going from the perfect parents to some crappy divorced-kid life, but I had the crappy divorced-kid life all along.”

  “Perfect parents aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, if that’s what my parents are.” Evan wondered how many children of “perfect parents” crashed and ended up as meth addicts or convenience store robbers. “Look. You’re right. I’m wrong. I have learned my lesson, and I retract all previous statements. Like, ever.” Evan knew this wasn’t the right time to back down, though. She was finally talking. About real stuff. Maybe she’ll open up about this lifestyle makeover, he thought. “I shouldn’t assume anything. It’s just—We just never really talked about any of that.”

  “Well, I was twelve,” Lucy said, shifting her eyes. “I didn’t want to talk.”

  “Sure,” Evan said, taking baby steps and happy with the progress. “That’s completely acceptable. I’ve made things awkward here. This is a lame breakfast now, isn’t it?” Evan waved his napkin in front of him. “See this? This is my white flag. I’m waving it.”

  Lucy broke into a smile. “It’s fine. You’re just a big dork. I’m used to it.”

  Evan was content with that answer. Big dork was a strong compliment in their world. “If you ever do want to talk, you know, about anything—”

  “It’s like this,” Lucy said. “If my nose wasn’t pierced and my hair wasn’t dyed, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.” Lucy started drawing again. “You’re just used to the long brown hair and the preppy clothes. This is more who I am. This is who I’ve always been.”

  Lucy finished her panel in silence while they waited for the food to arrive. Maybe she was right. Maybe it was just the clothes and the makeup. They felt extreme and sudden. They did leave an impression.

  The waitress brought out the food and set it on the table. Lucy’s toast, and Evan’s feast. “Here you are. Careful, plates are hot. Can I get you anything else?” she said, standing up straight and smiling.

  “No, I think we’re good,” Evan said, distracted by the thought that maybe Old Lucy had been New LucyTM all along. He pushed the sketchbook across the table.

  “Thanks,” Lucy said, and picked at her toast, looking at the jam strip. She picked up the pen and started to draw.

  Evan surveyed his multiple plates of food, comparing them with Lucy’s heated bread. “I feel like a fat ass now.”

  “Don’t, it’s cool. I’m just not hungry.”

  “Old Lucy used to eat,” Evan said, gulping the orange juice and hoping she hadn’t caught the term Old Lucy.

  “Okay, can we stop that now? I feel like you’re picking on me again today.”

  “Picking on you?” Evan asked, looking at Lucy’s last panel and chuckling. “I complimented you.”

  “You’re right. I’m just crazy.” Lucy shook her head and looked groggy. She nibbled on her toast, holding it with both hands. Her face dropped to a pout. Then, suddenly and with direct eye contact: “Look, I’m sorry about the cigarette thing yesterday. If it freaked you out or whatever.”

  “No. It didn’t,” Evan said, alarmed at the concern. He was glad she wasn’t still mad at him for blowing up. Before she’d said that, he’d forgotten about the cigarette ordeal completely. “It’s fine. Really. Serious this time.”

  “Okay. I thought maybe that was why you were mad at me,” Lucy said. She ran her finger around the edge of her plate, which still held a piece and a half of toast. “I had been thinking on the plane ride here about the time you stole your dad’s car to come get me. It was still on my mind while we were walking. Do you remember that?”

  The memory flashed in front of Evan like a bad dream. “God, don’t remind me. That was terrible.”

  “Come on, you didn’t even get caught,” Lucy said.

  “I was scared to death. Are you kidding me? We were fifteen. Not only did I barely know how to drive, but I was also scared for weeks that my dad was going to find out and run me over to teach me a lesson. Not to mention it was illegal. Can you imagine if it had been printed in the police blotter?”

  “I guess.” Lucy seemed to dismiss his rant. “It’s still one of my favorite memories.”

  “Seriously?” Evan asked, surprised. “If I recall this correctly, you got into some huge fight with your grandparents, and you were hitchhiking out of town when you called me. How could that be a favorite memory? I was furious with you.”

  “But you came out and saved me,” Lucy said quietly, looking up.

  “Well, yeah,” Evan said, his eyes shifting down. “I wasn’t going to let you get killed or anything.”

  “You stole your dad’s car and you drove out to get me. It was so sweet. You wouldn’t talk the whole way back because you were afraid you’d crash into a telephone pole or something. You were all frozen and nervous and shaky.

  “It was pretty amazing. It’s not easy to pull you out of that comfort zone.” Lucy started wrapping up the comic. She went at it like the ending was already written in her mind, written several panels ago, when she saw where the comic was headed.

  “What?” Evan asked. “That’s not true. I like doing new things.”

  “Pfft,” Lucy said. “You don’t know you well enough to make those kinds of claims. You want a cigarette?” she asked, pulling the pack out of her pocket.

  “Get rid of those things.” Evan waved her off. “That’s not change. Tha
t’s suicide.” He quickly completed his panel.

  Lucy helped herself to some of Evan’s hash browns. “What’s this now?” Evan asked.

  “We’re gonna be here all day waiting for you to finish that!”

  “I’m gonna starve!”

  “Waahmbulance,” she mocked, sipping from his orange juice. “Wanna brave the crowds and hit the mall?” Lucy asked, her eyes squinting a little.

  “Yeah, definitely,” Evan said, taking his wallet out of his pocket. Lucy slid the finished jam strip back to Evan.

  CARRY THAT WEIGHT

  The mall parking lot seemed at capacity. Evan had to park as far away from the mall as possible. Even the pressing air of storm all around couldn’t keep the crowds away. He found it hard to imagine there was anyone in town who wasn’t there.

  Evan stepped out of the car and looked up at the clouds billowing—dark and light and swirling together. The wind was strong, and it was just starting to snow. Evan felt like he was caught in a perpetual slap, his cheeks stinging. He felt woken up. School and research papers and graduation slipped away. He looked at Lucy, who lowered her head and sped up her pace. Evan caught up. They started the trek through the sea of parked cars, heading toward the mall, that tiny box off in the distance.

  “Gawd,” Lucy said.

  “This is good,” Evan said in his outdoor voice. “You can walk off that piece of toast.”

  “So how many Dark Tower volumes are you going to get?” Lucy yelled over the loud whooshes of air. “I suggest getting at least the first three. You’ll finish them all before you come back here.”

  Lucy buried her hands deep in her jacket pockets and leaned against Evan as they walked. Evan knew he’d have to read those damn thousand-page tomes eventually. He and Lucy had always delved into fantasy epics together. It was like they shared a dozen hidden universes and it was imperative they both spoke the same languages. Even a book like The Hobbit, though, which is far less dense than The Lord of the Rings, had a certain heft to it. These things didn’t come short.

  “I don’t have the time,” Evan whined. “That’s seven large books!”

  “Tell you what, read the first four, and I’ll just explain what happens after that.”

  “All right, what can I get you to read, then? If I’m going to give up the rest of my year chasing the Tower, you’ve got to read something, too.”

  “I’m listenin’.”

  “Okay, this is pressure now. This has to be good.” Evan winced at a rush of cold wind against his face. “I want to say Gunnerkrigg Court, but that’s a Web comic and you can read it in, like, a day. Same goes for Achewood.”

  “All right, keep thinking. And I already read Achewood.”

  “It’s so good.”

  “I know! You could do an Achewood, too, though.”

  Lucy could sound like a broken record sometimes. It wasn’t that Evan didn’t like drawing or didn’t feel he had some talent at it. There were other issues. Like time. Or energy, or commitment, or having anything to say. Evan always thought of drawing as more of a hobby.

  “It’s just not my thing,” Evan said, exasperated.

  “Again with this!” Lucy said, giving Evan a push. He strayed a few feet with the momentum before curving back to Lucy. “What are you going to do with that talent? It’s senior year. I know you have some kind of plan in mind. You can’t make art because you’re going to be a big-shot lawyer and collect Christmas toys and marry someone just like your mom?”

  “I make art.” Evan felt attacked. Evan didn’t want to be like his dad. He didn’t think so, at least. “Where’d that come from?”

  “Come on. It’s so obvious you want to be like your dad. It’s fine, I just want to hear you say it.”

  “I’m just…” He wasn’t sure what he wanted to be.

  “Mm-hm,” Lucy said quietly.

  And he wasn’t sure what Lucy wanted to hear. “I guess I could be an artist.”

  “You should be. And you can have legions of little teeny-bopper fans groveling at your feet and tearing your clothes everywhere you go,” Lucy said. “I’ll be the first one. I’ll tear the sleeve right off your arm.”

  “Here’s the thing, though,” Evan said, trying to ground this pep talk in some level of reality. “It’s a hobby. No one makes any money doing comics. It’s like being a poet or a mime or something. It’s cool and all, but you can’t really make a living off it. You can’t raise a family from it.”

  “Evan, do you want to be a mime?” Lucy asked, concerned eyes effectively cutting the tension that was building.

  Evan laughed. “I looked into it, yes.”

  “And who cares about money? Where’s the compulsion to create and showcase and put it out there?” Evan and Lucy crossed the street to the mall sidewalk. Evan left a dollar with the Salvation Army Santa. “You should see some of the people in Georgia,” Lucy said. Evan let her continue. She didn’t often talk about Georgia. “I know some friends of friends who go to SCAD, the Savannah College of Art and Design. Like this one guy Matt makes these xeroxed-and-stapled comics, and every year he goes to the MoCCA festival in New York and sells them. He doesn’t live off it—I can’t imagine he even recoups the cost of getting a table there. But he meets all these other artists and trades comics with them, and he’s part of this whole community. It’s not their primary source of income, but it’s a big part of their lives and it makes them happy. And this other kid there does this Web comic about computers and stuff, and I know that’s not your thing, but he has all these people who visit his site and communicate with him, like he has his own fan club. One of my friends is in a sketch-comedy group. I don’t know that anyone sees their stuff, but they have a lot of fun with it.”

  It really didn’t sound bad. It just sounded like a TV show where all the characters have great apartments and nice clothes and attractive friends but never work. “Are you in this sketch-comedy thing?” Evan asked.

  “Eff no,” Lucy quickly said. “I’d melt the camera film.”

  “They probably do it digitally,” Evan said, aware of how quickly Lucy dismissed any focus on herself. For someone who just spent a few minutes dishing out a pile of analysis, she sure didn’t like to take any.

  “Then I’d melt the”—Lucy gave it a quick thought—“computer chip.”

  “Come on. You’re the big dream chaser. You’d be good. I can see it.” Evan pictured Lucy in various wigs and mustaches, talking about crunchy frogs and cheese shops. The more he thought about it, the more he realized she should be on TV. She was watchable, unpredictable, sharp, and certainly theatrical. Give her a stage and she’d command attention. Lucy was a star in waiting.

  They entered the mall, where a vent blasted hot air from the ceiling. They stood under it and thawed.

  “I need to warm up,” Lucy said, out of breath and red-faced. A crowd of people came in from the parking lot and trafficked past them into the mall.

  “You never told me about any of these people,” Evan said, curious about Lucy’s suddenly blossomed social life. He really didn’t know much about it, but then again, she didn’t know much about his, either. She hadn’t met most of his current friends. Their time together always went quickly, and the rest of the year Lucy was the off-line type. Evan usually heard from her only a handful of times.

  “I’m a girl of mystery, Evan Owens. I don’t tell you everything.”

  “I guess not,” Evan said. He raised an eyebrow. “You ever date any of these guys?”

  “Maybe,” Lucy said, letting the intrigue linger a moment. “No. I did tear this one guy’s shirtsleeve off, though.”

  “Yeah, I’m not sure what to make of that,” Evan said.

  Surrounded by shiny reds, greens, silvers, and golds, Christmas trees, large candy-cane sculptures, and signs that shouted SALE! SALE! SALE! Evan took in the Christmas spirit. There were signs on every window, and Evan knew that eventually the walls would be bare and the crowds would be gone and there wouldn’t be all the excitement.
January was always a depressing month. Evan was glad to be doing something familiar with Lucy and glad that she had suggested it. It meant to Evan that things were getting back to normal. This was something they did every year, although Evan was pretty sure he wasn’t going to get a picture of Lucy on Santa’s lap like they’d done their freshman year of high school.

  It was hard to get anywhere in the mall or in any of the stores. People of every age were walking the same subleisurely pace. Evan huffed and reached his head around, looking for any clear path to walk comfortably. He felt a hand grab his and pull. Lucy, being smaller and used to having easier access in situations like this, pulled him through the crowds. Sorry. Pardon. ’Scuse me. It was the only way they were able to move.

  They ran from store to store like they did when they were children. Or like they would have, if Evan’s parents hadn’t been with them. Unsupervised kids. Evan felt an urge to be bad. They dashed into Best Buy, and he loaded Lucy’s arms with things she wasn’t buying.

  “Beats by Dr. Dre, you need these,” Evan said, placing a box of the expensive headphones on her already-growing pile of things she’d have to put back.

  “I don’t even have an iPod! Do these plug into a record player?”

  “Why don’t you have an iPod?” Evan asked, picking up a tricked-out wireless mouse. Lucy needed this. “Let’s go find you an iPod!”

  Evan and Lucy were making their way through a Barnes & Noble when Evan spotted someone with brown hair and blue-framed glasses duck down by the magazine shelf. He knew those glasses. Suspicious, Evan surveyed the area quickly and saw a familiar old-style hat with earflaps poking out above a low shelf. They were being followed.

  “Are you guys stalking me?” Evan asked, approaching Marshall by the magazines. He was surprised, but excited to introduce them to Lucy.

  “Evan!” Marshall said. “And you must be Lucy!”