A Flicker in the Clarity

by Amy McNamara

  Tears sting the backs of my eyes. I should have kept my mouth shut. Even if she was flirting, it was automatic, didn’t mean anything. Emma would never go after someone I like. She’s right, I am paranoid. Flirty’s her thing, it’s how she is.

  I look at her narrow shoulders, the back of her head. She looks small, standing there, turned away from me. Like someone to protect. Em’s been crabby and tense since the Spain deposit was due, but she hasn’t said anything to me about it and I can’t make myself ask. I should never have said yes. It feels too weird.

  “Jesus, where is the train?” Emma asks, whirling back to look down the tunnel.

  “Signal problems,” an older woman next to me sighs.

  A group of middle-school kids runs through, loud and happy, all wearing overstuffed backpacks. One of them bumps Em and her phone flies from her hand and lands in the well between the tracks.

  “God dammit!” she shouts. “Watch where you’re going!”

  Then, before I have a second to stop her, she looks to see if the train’s coming and jumps down onto the tracks to grab it.

  “Emma!” I scream. I can’t help it. I can’t believe my eyes.

  She looks at me, at the shock that has to be wild on my face, and gives me this strange dark smile. She looks like a devil down there, like she’s been possessed and is not herself.

  We both hear the rails click.

  “Get up here!” I shout, leaning over with my arms outstretched.

  Emma pockets her phone and scrambles back to the wall and tries to hoist herself up. She grabs hard for my hands, but doesn’t catch anything with her feet and falls back down, tripping over the track and sitting hard in the muddy well in the center.

  “Oh my God!” She looks at me in disbelief and starts to laugh. Emma laughs when she’s scared.

  The rails click again. This time there’s a slight breeze. I whirl to see the beam of a train’s headlight just beginning to reflect along the far tiles of the station wall.

  Everything’s in hyperfocus. I look down the tracks. The headlight’s there, but I can’t see the train. Yet. If I don’t help her, she’s going to sit there laughing until it rushes in.

  I drop my bag and jump down after her. People behind me shout but they sound far away. Abstract.

  I wrap my arms under Em’s armpits and jerk her into a standing position.

  “What is going on?” she asks, as if we’re experiencing something mystical.

  I boost her up to the yellow platform edge until she can inchworm her body back onto it.

  The rails click again, and now I see the train.

  Time stops. Everything is silent, and for a second I’m nothing. Not Evie. No one. I’m absolutely gone.

  “What the fuck were you thinking?”

  A large man has me by the arms and I’m back on the platform. Words are flying from his face like bullets. The inside of his mouth is so red.

  He lets me go and pivots to Emma. People are staring.

  “You’re a pair of stupid little shits!”

  My arms feel like they’ve been torn out of their sockets.

  The train rushes in, and he boards it with everyone else, and then we’re alone.

  My knees loosen and I sit down on the filthy platform, right on the ground, lean against the wall, and try to find my way back down into my body from wherever I went.

  Emma crouches, muddy and silent beside me.

  All around us new people filter in to wait for the next one. People who don’t know what just happened. What we just risked.

  “I’m sorry, Evie,” she says finally, in a voice so quiet I almost can’t hear it.

  I look past her, beyond the outline of her face. This city is so packed with souls. I wish I could pin my heart to one of them instead, let it slip out, away from here, send it off safe, hurrying home with someone else.

  Hibiscus, Delicious

  EMMA SHOWS UP EARLY the next morning with a box of doughnuts and a tall coffee for me. The doughnut box inches over the top of my loft before her head appears, her smile not completely hiding the nervous look in her eyes.

  “Wake up, sleepyhead. I’m here to help you get ready for your date. Your mom let me in.” She lifts the coffee. “She said to tell you she’s going in to work today. Something about inventory or audit? I don’t know. One of those accounting-y words.”

  “It’s so early,” I moan, leaning against a pile of pillows.

  “Sleep’s overrated.” She hands me the cup. “You can sleep when you’re dead.”

  “Poor choice of words,” I say, closing my eyes again. I don’t forgive her. Not yet.

  “Who needs sleep?” she tries instead.

  I do, I think. I barely got any last night, probably because I OD’d on adrenaline yesterday. I sit up with a sigh and pop the top on the latte so I can blow on it until it’s cool enough to sip.

  She scrambles up the ladder and sits in her usual place, perpendicular to me, her legs over mine, the box of fluffy doughnuts open between us like an offering. Their yeasty, sugary smell wafts up, making my stomach rumble.

  “So, I was out running this morning,” she says, instead of hello or I’m sorry. “And I passed this doughnut place I’d never seen before. Called Dough. Oh my God, Evie, wait until you taste this. They make them right in front of you. You have no idea how hard it was not to eat this whole box on the way over here.”

  She thrusts a gooey glazed doughnut my way and hands me a napkin.

  I bite into perfection. It’s still warm. The glaze is smooth, fresh, just the way I like it. The doughnut underneath’s an airy cloud of goodness. She bought enough for ten people, the box is packed with a variety of rounds, but Em knows I like glazed the best and there are two more of them.

  “Sublime, right?” She lifts a pink one out for herself. “These are officially doughnuts of apology.”

  “Mm, more like bribery,” I say, closing my eyes. Even though I’m still totally freaked out, this mouthful of heaven is hard not to accept.

  “Taste,” she says, thrusting hers in my face. “It’s hibiscus, delicious.”

  I try a small bite.

  “Yeah.” I chew, unconvinced. “It’s pretty good, in a complicated kind of way.” I shrug. “But why mess with perfection?” I finish mine in three more huge bites.

  She leans against the wall by the top of the window.

  “We shop today? Vera’s Vintage and the sale room at Urban? Or you can come to my house and take anything of mine. You like those jeans I just got. They’ll look great on you.”

  She has too much energy. I look at her closely. Emma’s done this before, gone for days where she hardly sits still.

  “You not sleeping much again?”

  “I never sleep.”

  She eyes me like she’s not sure if we’re okay or not.

  I’m not sure, either.

  Before I can decide, she says, “You shouldn’t have jumped down after me. Jeez, Evie. I was gonna get back up. It wasn’t a big deal.”

  I am about to sip my coffee, but I put it back on the ledge instead.

  “That was terrifying, Em.”

  “You made it that way!” she shoots back. “You’re always so worried about everything. God. I was fine. It’s not like I was going to stay down there. I’d have gotten up on the second try.”

  We stare at each other in silence. Emma can be persuasive. She’s so confident sometimes, so sure she’s right.

  I sit up straighter.

  She keeps her eyes wide, locked on mine, insisting I see this her way.

  What if she’s right? Maybe she would have gotten back up. Maybe I’m the one who made it dangerous. We’ve seen guys do that before, usually showing off for each other or for girls, and nothing’s ever happened. It’s possible to climb back up, like getting out of a swimming pool. You just have to be strong enough to boost yourself.

  Only she wasn’t.

  She just sat there.

  “No . . .” I shake my head slowly at her. �
�Emma, that was insane.”

  She looks like she’s going to argue with me, then she doesn’t. Her face goes from pale to pink and she starts to cry.

  “I’m such a fuckup.” She sets her half-eaten doughnut back in the box. There’s a splotch of pink glaze at the edge of her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Yesterday—I think Ryan is breaking up with me. . . .” Her voice trails off. She looks up at me. “He lives with someone!”

  She widens her eyes. “I went over there on my free period to surprise him? And when he came to the door he acted super weird—I could see her in there, behind him on the couch! This woman in sweats and a T-shirt, not even beautiful, but there she was in his apartment like it’s hers too.” She exhales. “Oh God, it’s totally hers too.” She closes her eyes a second. “He made up this lie about a book he was going to loan me, totally pretended I was someone from school, like he barely knew me. It was awful.”

  I’m silent. There’s no satisfaction in being right, but this whole Ryan situation never seemed like a good idea.

  “No one ever wants to stay with me,” she says, sounding so sad. “And then I get back to school, and Theo’s there waiting for you, this totally cute, nice guy—do you know how lucky you are?”

  My mouth falls open, then I close it again.

  “Lucky?” I manage.

  She nods, tucks her hair behind her ears. “Yeah, when I tripped on the rail yesterday and fell back into that muck between the tracks, all I could think was how perfect that was, you know? Like a metaphor for my whole life! I always end up stuck in some muck at the center.”

  She takes an uneven breath, balls my blanket in her fist.

  “I mess everything up. You’re so normal, Eves. You do it all right. I can’t even get my parents to listen to me about Mamie’s project, about anything, much less find some normal, decent guy! Guys only like me for sex. And then this cute one shows up at school and brings you a present.” She stops and blows her nose on a napkin. “It was so romantic. And I’m sorry if I was a little flirty. I was jealous.”

  I move over close and give her a hug.

  “Ryan is a loser,” I say.

  She stiffens.

  “I mean for lying to you.”

  “I really like him, Eves,” she says.

  I want to scream at her, You don’t even know who he is!

  “You’ll find someone better. So many guys like you! You just have to pick the right one. A nice one.”

  “Nice is so boring,” she laughs, wiping a tear from her cheek.

  “And Mamie—”

  “Her show’s coming up,” Emma interrupts, shoulders falling. “My parents think we should go.”

  “Of course we’re going. Fine, whatever. We decided that already. We’ll protest the show. Remember? We’re going to make her see what she’s doing to you.” I’m acting like I’m certain about it now. I guess I am.

  Emma looks like she’s considering it again. Nods, slowly.

  “We’ll wear black and smudge ash on our faces,” she says, turning to me, suddenly energized by the idea. “Oh my God, how cool would it be if we could get a bunch of people to join us, and, like, totally disrupt the whole thing? Mamie wants to talk grief and loss?” Her eyes widen at the thought. “We’ll give her grief. We’ll get Alice and Mandi and we can make noise like those women who wail at funerals! You know? Everyone in black? The ones who make that wrenching sad sound, what’s that word?”

  I laugh. “Ululate? Oh my God, you are a mad genius. We’ll be Bly’s first ululating group. Hey! Something unique for our college apps.”

  She smiles at me sideways. “Now you’re talking.”

  I smile. “A night she won’t forget.”

  “She’s not getting away with making Patrick into art. She’s gonna see us, seeing her.” She narrows her eyes at me like she’s assessing whether I’m really in or not.

  “I’m in,” I say.

  “I still think we should pull the fire alarm,” she says.

  “We won’t need to,” I say as confidently as I can. “I have your back on this one.”

  “YHMB?” She grins.

  “IHYB,” I confirm.

  My stomach does a nervous shimmy.

  Kiss

  THEO COMES TO THE DOOR light on his feet, in a pair of jeans and a dark-green T-shirt that says “This Is What a Feminist Looks Like.” He meets my eyes through the window and grins, cheeks bright with color, hair wet like he’s just out of the shower.

  When he smiles like that, it makes me realize I need to have more faith in love. This is the rush people sing about, reach for, this feeling like you’re falling into a wave. It lifts you high, pushes you out into something bigger and better than your small self. It’s like discovering another type of force.

  “So, your mom said yes.” He grins, lifting the gate so I can step into the warm, dark shop.

  “She did.” I follow him up to their apartment. “What if she didn’t?”

  “I’d be disappointed,” he says.

  “Wouldn’t you wonder why? Doesn’t it bother you not to know?”

  “If you’re trying to make the case for a phone, it won’t work. I appreciate the element of surprise.”

  I can’t take my eyes off him in front of me on the stairs, his long legs taking the steps two at a time, the pale bottoms of his bare feet, the line of his shoulders, the shape of his back.

  “Something smells great,” I manage to say.

  “I made pizza. Not too original, but I’m told I’m good at it. I hope you like lots of toppings.”

  “Toppings are great.”

  Suddenly I’m nervous. Not the kind where I’m about to start yammering a mile a minute about something irrelevant, but a bigger kind, a deep nervousness, the type you get when you realize you’re home alone with a guy you like and anything could happen.

  I try to breathe.

  Their apartment is mostly dark, a few under-cabinet lights on in the kitchen, the oven light, and the bridge twinkling outside the windows.

  Theo heads to the oven to check on his pizza.

  “Another minute or two,” he says, throwing a kitchen towel on his shoulder. “So.” He breaks my silence. “The film people were here all night last night and into this morning, and they were using our roof. If you’re cool with it . . . they left some gas heaters up there?”

  “Okay?” I don’t know where he’s going with this.

  He eyes me a minute. “How do you feel about a date on the roof?”

  “Are you going to make me climb up there?” I ask.

  “Ha!” Theo laughs. He opens the fridge and pulls out a bottle of water. Sets it and two glasses next to plates on a tray and opens a drawer for silverware. Laughs again to himself.

  “We can watch a movie up there? It’s a pretty sweet place to hang out, especially at night, if you’re not freezing, which, thanks to the film crew, we won’t be. My dad and I built a deck up there. During the summer we project movies onto the neighbor’s wall.”

  “And there’s no climbing involved?” I joke, but my heart’s still skittering. Why am I doing this? Turning something amazing into something scary? Fear and excitement are kissing cousins.

  “Scout’s honor,” he says, holding up two fingers in some sort of honorable scout-like gesture.

  “You were a scout?”

  “Are you kidding?” he scoffs, laughing. “They would never let us do that. Way too bigoted and mainstream for the radical offspring of Margaret and Porter Gray. My mom takes Alo to this alternative scouting group now, but there was nothing like that around when I was younger.”

  I laugh with him and say something random about Bly’s scouting retreat, but I feel like this can’t be my life. I’m an imposter. I’m about to be found out and shown the door.

  “A movie on the roof sounds awesome,” I say, trying to sound like a girl who has nights like this.

  Em and I spent the entire day shopping, trying stuff on, doing and undoing my hair until we decided to leav
e it tousled and down. I didn’t really have money to spend, but I ended up buying a new lip gloss to wear with a pair of her jeans and a not-too-tight, just right Les Thugs T-shirt Jack brought back from Paris last year. Over the T-shirt I’m wearing Emma’s cherry-red vintage sweater, the one with the pale-blue buttons.

  Theo pulls the pizza from the oven on a wide wooden paddle.

  “If you take that”—he motions to the tray—“I’ve got this. You won’t need your coat up there. Those heaters are strong.”

  I follow him up through his house, along a third-floor hallway past their bedrooms, up more stairs to a small landing, then we climb a last set of narrower steps to a slanted door overhead. He pushes it open and we step out onto the roof.

  I’m standing on a private deck beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s rickety, and made on the cheap, and totally marvelous. A low railing of mismatched wood encloses the three open sides. Someone’s wrapped it in small-bulb string lights. At the far end is a white brick wall from the building next door, which is one story taller. A beat-up but comfortable-looking outdoor-style U-shaped couch faces the wall, with a big square table in front of it. On the table a few candles flicker in hurricane lamps next to two big bowls, one full of popcorn, the other a variety of movie candy.

  “Okay?” Theo asks, setting the pizza on the table with a smile.

  I am the luckiest person ever. I shiver a little and smile.

  “This is . . . ,” I say, awestruck. “It’s like the bridge is yours.”

  I think about how many times I’ve tried to reorganize our apartment, arrange our old furniture in new ways to make it look better. My efforts seem small and unimaginative compared to this.

  “Yeah.” He grins. “Cool, right? My parents have no money. They never have. The only smart financial decision they ever made was buying this building for nothing back when they met. It was a wasteland down here. They had no idea it would turn out like this, that they’d eventually be able to make some money with this place.” He stops a second, looks around. “I’m gonna do the same.”

  “Buy a building?”

  It sounds so incredibly grown-up I feel naïve.

  “Well, real estate.” He nods, taking the tray from me. “I’ve been saving for a few years. I want to get something, somewhere. I’ll never be able to afford anything around here, but I’ll find a place.”