A Flicker in the Clarity

by Amy McNamara

  I flap my scarf across her face, and she sputters, picking wool fuzz off her lips. She rolls onto her side to look at me.

  “I’m not kidding,” she says in her own voice again. “We should do it. Let’s go up there. You wanna? Go see it?”

  “What?” I ask. “Where?”

  “Upstate. Your dad’s grave. When it gets warmer out again. We’ll take the train, make a picnic.”

  My dad’s buried in a small town along the Hudson where my grandparents used to live. He’s in a tiny churchyard in a family plot. The town’s cute. We drove through it once with Mamie and Patrick. I told Emma he was buried there only after we got home.

  “Serious?” I blink at her.

  “Dead,” she says.

  Places the Sun Hides

  I LOOK IN THE MIRROR and smooth a wrinkle in the short navy skirt I’m wearing. It was my mom’s when she was in high school. Em picked my outfit. I’m wearing the vintage skirt with a fitted and faded red V-neck T-shirt we dug out of a bin in a thrift shop, knit tights, and black high-tops. I feel kind of Technicolor, but I think it works. Give me anything worn-in and I’m happy. We trade jackets, because Emma’s is better cut, shorter, and highlights the whole skirt/tights/kicks combo.

  “Show up late,” she says when I check the time.

  “No.”

  “If you don’t you’ll look eager.”

  “Maybe I am,” I grin.

  While she tsk-tsks me, I check my reflection a last time, then head for the door.

  “That short skirt shows off your legs!”

  Even though we’re almost the same height, my legs are longer than hers, and, she loves reminding me, one of my assets.

  Despite her warning not to get there on time, I use those legs to sprint up the subway steps near his place just shy of seven. The cloudy sky is dragging its dark early over everything, dense and low like a foam ceiling, and people shuffle hunched beneath it. Scrubby patches of exhaust-colored snow hang around the corners like addled icebergs. I feel like I’m startling my fellow citizens with my nervous smile and bright-colored clothes.

  Just as I’m about to pass by the still-busy gift shop of the Roebling House, Theo steps out the door to the right of it, his face breaking into a smile the minute he sees me.

  Could be a new map. Places the sun hides.

  “Hey!” he says, sounding glad. “Perfect timing!”

  “Hey yourself,” I say back. Voices filter through the open door. Shouting. His mother, maybe.

  “Major drama in there,” Theo says, pulling the door shut and locking it up. “Can’t wait to get out of here.” He bends in the doorway to tie his shoe.

  “Nice kicks,” he says, lining his foot up to mine. Our high-tops match.

  He pulls a red knit hat from his pocket and yanks it down over his hair, then bounds in front of me on the sidewalk like a gift. A ball of something bright, reflecting in the puddles.

  “You look great,” he says.

  “Thanks.” I blush. I’m so nervous I can hardly speak. I try to slow my internal engine from murder-fast down closer to his easy idle. I drift a second out-of-body until I’m looking down on us, two kids on the sidewalk, Theo next to me like the best surprise ever, giving me that twinkle-eyed grin, the one that makes me think he’s maybe gonna kiss me. The one that makes me hope so. I wind myself back in like a kite.

  “Can you still go out?” I ask, stupidly, tilting my head toward their windows.

  “I’m not going back in there,” he says. “A chunk of plaster came down in the kitchen and another one in my mom’s office. It’s marital theater, my mom whirling fury, my dad shambling around the apartment in his robe, a book in front of his face like a shield, pretending it’s no big deal. He’s been ignoring a bigger crack in the back wall forever. We need to leave before you find yourself caught in a full-on Gray family skirmish.”

  I gape at him, unsure if he’s teasing or not.

  He laughs. “Nothing like that at your place, eh?”

  My quiet apartment. My mom wasn’t even home from work when I left. She’s been working late a lot. I haven’t asked her about it because I’m worried she’s finally started to look at my grades rather than trusting me to do my best and has come to understand there will be no merit money for college.

  A window squeaks open overhead.

  “Theo!” Alo bellows, leaning out over us. “You have to come back up! Mom says you need to get Chester out of here. He’s howling and he won’t stop.”

  Theo groans and looks up at his brother.

  “Hey, Evie, are you here to babysit?” Alo notices me, looks hopeful. “I heard Mom asking Theo if you would ever be free to babysit.”

  Theo shakes his head at his brother. “No way, lunkhead. She’s here to see me, and I’m not here. Got it? Tell Mom it’s too late, you couldn’t catch me. I’m already gone.”

  “But . . . Chester!”

  “That one’s on you, little man. Take him for a walk yourself. Get out of there. Mom lets you circle the block; they won’t even notice you’re gone.”

  Alo stares down at his brother a minute, then sticks his tongue out at us and pulls his head back in. The window falls down with a bang.

  Theo laces his fingers through mine and everything inside me hums like I’m holding a ray of the sun. “Come on,” he says. “Wanna walk?”

  He stands there a second, like he’s thinking about where we should go. I’ll follow him anywhere. All I can think about is the feeling of his fingers woven warm through mine. The pulse between us.

  The window squeaks open again.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he says, dropping my hand and grabbing my arm to steer me instead. “I need to shake off the bullshit. I want to be well out of earshot, before I end up having to take Chester instead of hanging out with you.”

  Theo takes off running, pulling me along. I’m clumsy and strange next to him, not sure where we’re going or, really, what I’ve gotten myself into, but he’s easy in his body, so I loosen up. We pound down the cobblestones away from his place, toward the mist-heavy river.

  Flying Free in the Blue-Dark

  ONCE WE’RE OUT OF SIGHT, Theo drops my arm and we slow to a mellower pace, a rhythm of quiet footfalls, and it could even be nice, except I’m doing what I do when I’m nervous, filling the air with words. The mystery of whether he’ll kiss me or not is an irrepressible itch. I’m scared to even use words that end in s in case I accidentally say “kiss” instead. I want it so badly I chatter at Theo like a demented bird, tell him everything I never say out loud, how scared I am about college, about Em acting erratic, Mamie’s project that I want to stop.

  He looks skeptical when I talk about Em. It makes me feel like I have to defend her.

  “But I’m only telling you the bad stuff.” I pull my phone out of my pocket and wiggle it at him. “I know you hate them but she gave me this iPhone. It used to be hers. I had a crappy flip phone before.” He doesn’t look impressed, but I don’t care. I smile at him. “You’d love her. She’s beautiful and funny and crazy and kind.”

  I’m seized with an involuntary shudder that contradicts my words.

  “What was that?” Theo laughs, addressing the shudder. The way he’s looking at me, I can tell I’m blowing this. I’m acting too nervous and weird. I’m all over the place.

  I try to calm down, laugh, embarrassed. “I don’t know, I guess I kind of have this feeling like an end’s coming? And it’s not going to be a good one.”

  My face is flushed. I can feel it. I press a cold palm to the far side of my face.

  “Intense,” Theo says, looking at me funny. “So you go around all wound up like this all the time, dreading some ending?”

  I shake my head, try to be more specific, but find I can’t. I open my mouth, then close it. We walk another minute.

  “It’s just a feeling,” I backpedal. Laugh, nervous. “Emma’s brother died. I mean, that was an ending. You can’t plan for stuff like that.” My voice climbs, breat
hy. I don’t even sound like myself.

  This is my first date, and I’m wrecking it.

  Theo stops and squints at me like he’s trying to decide whether to say something.

  I look down, blink at our matching feet. Theo’s sneakers are wet, the rubber peeling away from the sides. Mine look overly neat, sturdy, stupid.

  “Is this what you do? Worry all the time, even about other people’s problems?” he asks.

  “You have to take care of people.” I say, defensive.

  “Why’s that?” Theo asks.

  “Because that’s what friends do,” I say, thinking about looking at the clouds with Em at lunch. Because you never know when you’re about to lose someone.

  We stop on a cobbled street just past the Manhattan Bridge, the East River a dark ribbon beside us. Theo looks over at it, face unreadable.

  “I hurt your feelings,” he states, shoving his hands in his pockets. He starts to walk again.

  “No,” I start, but it’s true, so I shut up and follow him along the dark street.

  “It’s just, you should hear yourself.” He looks over his shoulder at me. “It’s like this girl is some brilliant torch or something. Did you ever consider that maybe that glow you think you see coming from your pal Emma is coming from you, instead? You’re the one making it all up?”

  “Making it up?” Jack was right. Theo’s weird, and he’s making me feel bad. I should leave. “I don’t lie.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” Theo says, exasperated. “More like you’re the projector and Emma’s the movie you’re showing, but Evie, all that light is coming from you.”

  He stops and looks back at me.

  “I look at you and see this beautiful girl—” Closes his eyes a minute. Opens them again. Shakes his head. “I wasn’t planning on, uh, going out with anybody. I just ended something. With someone—Lindsay. A month ago.”

  Theo sits on a big block of concrete with metal rods sticking up from the back of it like antennae. Pats a spot next to him. I sit too.

  “I didn’t mean to meet you.” He looks at my mouth. “That sounds weird. I wasn’t planning on meeting anyone for a while.”

  I bounce my heel off the edge of the concrete block.

  Theo runs his fingers over a frayed part of the thigh of his jeans. His hands are a weird combination of beat-up and elegant. “Linds and I had too many problems. Her parents were splitting up, and it was like I was supposed to—” He looks at me. “I mean, I know that’s hard, but I couldn’t breathe. It was like she expected me to save her.”

  The concrete’s cold under my thighs and I try not to shiver.

  Theo looks up at the cloudy sky, then back down at me.

  “I guess I’m saying it shouldn’t be complicated,” he says. “Not yet. And don’t sweat college. You’re either going to go or you’re not. Nothing bad is going to happen either way.”

  I open my mouth, then close it again. He doesn’t get it. I wrap my arms around myself, tight.

  Theo sees me shivering, takes off his hat, and pulls it down over my head. He smiles at me so sweetly for a second I forget to feel bad about anything else.

  “You know?”

  I nod without conviction.

  “I’m just saying there’s no deadline. Maybe Bly acts like it, but they’re wrong. Go to college if you want. When you want.”

  I start to protest, to bring up money, grades, competition, but he stops me midstream.

  “No scholarship? So find a way to pay for it. That’s what people do. But no matter what you do, you’ll still be who you are now, you’ll still have all your own things to work through, figure out.”

  My heart sinks. Why can’t I just go out and have fun with a guy like Emma does? Why does it have to be messy and complicated and awkward?

  Theo takes my silence for doubt.

  “Trust me,” he says. “I’ve been there.”

  “You went to college,” I say, sarcastic.

  Theo stands and starts walking. Across the river, city lights twinkle on, make Manhattan’s tiara. We walk toward a massive waterfront power plant, its metal twists and coils dove-gray against the darkening sky.

  “I went when I was fourteen. My parents made me.”

  “No way.” I laugh, despite myself, despite how serious he looks. “College? You’re kidding.”

  “Wish I were.” Then he flings an arm over my shoulders like touching each other is what we do.

  “Your brother wasn’t messing with me? You’re really one of those prodigy kids?” My voice is weirdly breathy. For some reason this thrills me.

  “Guess so. Wanna see my membership card?” he says, stopping and pretending to fumble for his wallet.

  “Where?”

  Oblivious to my shivery joy, Theo shakes his head, jaw muscle twitching.

  “Irrelevant.”

  “Irrelevant?” I laugh, incredulous. “Come on, where?”

  He’s silent a minute.

  “University of Chicago.”

  “Whoa.” I stop, put my hand on his chest. “You are a genius.”

  “Shut up.” He smiles and covers my hand with his.

  “Seriously!”

  He closes his eyes and shakes his head.

  “I’m good at math, physics, and languages. Basically, abstract formal systems. But please, please don’t be one of those people who make this into a huge deal, okay? I only brought it up because if you’re freaking out about stupid stuff like college, you need to know that you don’t have to go, if you’re not ready. It’s not complicated.”

  “Wait. Fourteen? So, after camp with Jack?” I’m having trouble tracking our conversation because I’m so aware of every millimeter where his body’s touching mine.

  Theo’s head snaps up, eyes meeting mine with a cool spark of interest.

  “Ah. Your pal Jack finally confess?”

  “Confess?”

  Theo breaks away from me and jumps from the edge of the curb to avoid a massive gritty puddle. I walk around it. He eyes me sideways, waiting.

  “Let’s just say Jack’s not a fan,” I admit carefully.

  “What?” He looks surprised.

  He opens his mouth to speak, then shakes his head like he’s pissed off.

  “So, how smart are you?” I change the subject. “Did you graduate in, like, two years?”

  He smiles. “I dropped out.”

  I raise my brows.

  “It wasn’t my dream,” he says. “In case you haven’t noticed, my parents are intense. Like they know how we’re supposed to be, who we’re supposed to be. As if it’s even up to them.”

  He opens his coat.

  I shift a little closer, to the heat coming off his chest.

  “Laz’s mom, my dad’s first wife, was a lawyer for the Native American Sovereignty Fund. She died of breast cancer when Laz was two. My dad married again within the year and what did they do? Groom Laz for law, of course. From day one. Who does that to a kid? Like it’s his freaking duty or something.”

  “He hates it?”

  Theo shakes his head, mystified. “No. I don’t know. Who knows? Laz plays it close to the vest. He does not make waves with them.”

  He kicks a paper cup someone’s left in the street.

  “And you?”

  “I took matters into my own hands.”

  I must look shocked, because he grins and bumps my shoulder with his.

  “Relax. I quit. Walked away. And you know what? That was probably the best thing I ever did. Walking taught me who I really am.”

  “Which is . . . ?”

  “A person who makes his own decisions,” he says. “The walk was long. Gave me time to think about what matters.”

  I stop.

  “Wait. You walked home? From Chicago? Isn’t that like a thousand miles?”

  “More or less. A little less.” His jaw is set hard, proud.

  Wind whips across the river. An empty bag follows us down the street with a plastic whisper.

 
“If I go back it’ll be because I want to, because I’m ready.”

  “You walked?” I’m stuck on the impossibility of it. “The whole way?”

  He laughs at the look on my face. “I read Whitman, Thoreau, Ginsberg, the usual suspects,” he says, like that explains it.

  “Where’d you sleep?”

  “I picked up a tent. This country’s so beautiful.”

  “You walked back to New York City.” I say it with a laugh, like it’s not the most absurd thing ever. “How long did it take?

  “A little under six weeks.”

  I stop a second to take it in. Picture Theo small against the side of the road. Cars whipping past.

  “I could never do that.”

  “Haven’t you ever wanted to do something that scared you? Push yourself? Really be out of control? I kept lying in bed in my dorm picturing all that openness. I had to do it. See if I could rely on myself.”

  “And your parents were cool with the plan?”

  “Wasn’t up to them.”

  I picture him smaller, more like Alo, blond head and a backpack, bobbing along the edge of some endless highway, trucks flying by, covering all those miles alone.

  “They weren’t going to say yes. I made a decision and I left.”

  “If I did something like that, it would kill my mom.”

  He’s quiet a second, like he’s choosing his words carefully. “When people find out learning comes easily to you, they kind of flip out. It was worse in Chicago. My mom was this unschool celeb blogging everywhere about her ‘success.’”

  “Meaning you.”

  He nods. “I was a poster boy, and I wasn’t the only one at Chicago—this other kid was in med school, younger than me—isn’t that crazy?—but we never saw each other. There was no way to blend in. Fourteen looks fourteen. I was the story people couldn’t wait to tell, even my professors. I was a total aberration to everyone, all the time.”

  He takes a deep breath, straightens out of his slouch.

  “So you ran away.”

  “I left. Not the same. I was going home.”

  I gape at him.

  Theo laughs. Bends to pick up the plastic bag that’s still following us. He ties it into a small knot and pockets it.