The One Thing

by Marci Lyn Curtis

  “Yes,” she sang with a friendliness that made me feel slightly guilty. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Just seems like it would be hard, is all,” I said, shoving my hands in my pockets, and then pulling them back out, and then folding them over my chest. I cleared my throat. “I mean, you can’t even see what you’re doing, so what’s the point?”

  “Frosting,” Clarissa trilled. “Frosting is the point. Ganache and citrus curd. Whipped cream. Fondant. And—oh—meringue. Besides, cake decorating is so much fun! And supereasy. You just have to go slowly and pay attention to what you’re doing—the position of the decorating bag, the amount of pressure you put on it, yada yada yada. Want to come to my next class? You should totally come. You’re so hilarious—the ladies there will love you. Doesn’t even matter if the cake turns out hideous, because really: still tastes like cake!”

  “Huh,” I muttered noncommittally as I made my way toward my desk, determined to fire up my computer and get working on this paper. Halfway across the floor, though, I tripped on Clarissa’s massive backpack, which she’d evidently deposited in the middle of my room. Grunting, I pushed it aside and said, “What the hell is in your backpack?”

  I heard the rattle of ice in a cup—iced coffee, I was guessing—and a pronounced swallow. And then she said, “In order to get a ride here, I had to go with Dad to work for a couple hours. He had patients to see. Somebody’s bladder to stitch up or whatever. So I brought my books, because it pains me to sit there for hours, listening to him talk to his coworkers about prostates and penises and hurtias.”

  “Hernias,” I corrected, and then, like the child that I was, I smirked. Because: penises.

  “Whatever. Hernias,” she dismissed lightly. “Anyhoo...the books! I’m reading two simultaneously because they both came in the mail at the same time and I couldn’t choose. They both sounded so good. Do you like to read? I’ll loan them to you when I’m done. You’ll freak—just keel over and die. I mean, the romance.”

  “No, thanks,” I said, not particularly keen on exploring the ins and outs of romance at this particular juncture. And besides, thus far I’d managed to conquer only Grade 1 braille, which worked like a simple substitution code. Most books these days were written in complicated, twisty Grade 2 braille, which I was still learning.

  “Sure?” she chirped. “You’d fall in love with the guys! The one in Enchanted Kiss is in this crazy-good indie band that totally reminds me of the Loose Cannons! The drummer is so insanely talented. And the lead singer is Mason Milton all the way, so swoony and—”

  I coughed like I’d just swallowed my tongue.

  “You all right?” Clarissa said.

  I clapped my hands together overzealously. “Yup. Totally fine. I just...” I cleared my throat. Twice. “You like the Loose Cannons?”

  She snorted. “I have an unhealthy amount of like for the Loose Cannons. In fact, the Loose Cannons take up so much Like Space in my brain that there is hardly room for anything else besides baked goods.”

  I sat down hard in my chair. “Huh.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I mean, the Loose Cannons’ lyrics? They slay me. ‘Eternal Implosion’ goes to some crazy-deep places, Maggie. Brilliance. Factor.”

  “Huh,” I said again. Because I was verbose like that. But honestly I didn’t know what else to say. I was too shocked. Clarissa just didn’t seem the type to like my kind of music. And anyway, she started talking again so it didn’t really matter.

  “A friend of mine—Jase Crenshaw?” she said. “He knows Mason Milton. I know, right? Mason Milton. They go to school together at Brighton.”

  My chair squeaked sharply as I jerked toward her. “Has Mason told him the Big Secret?” I practically shouted.

  I heard her collapse on the bed. Drum her fingers on my wall. “No. He hasn’t, no.” She blew out a loud exhale. “What do you think he’s like? I feel like he’s superhot. Or else superintense.”

  “Both. Definitely both,” I said with a sigh.

  A sigh.

  Dear God. I could hardly stand myself.

  “Anyway,” Clarissa sang, “I feel like the Big Secret can’t be all that hard to figure out. There’s probably this gigantic clue right in the middle of the website somewhere—so easy that it’s hard, you know? We should totally hang out more so we can brainstorm.”

  “Sure,” I said immediately. Because the truth of it was, there were certain sacrifices I was willing to make to attend a Loose Cannons concert. And hanging out with Clarissa Fenstermacher was one of them.

  While I had a closetful of perfectly acceptable shoes, I’d worn nothing but flip-flops since I lost my sight. Even in the winter. I wasn’t sure why exactly, but I presumed it was because their thin soles helped me to get a sense of my environment, to detect tiny changes in the landscape and the slope of the ground and whatnot. Or maybe I was just too lazy to tie my shoes.

  Whatever the case, I liked the statements that my flip-flops made. They said, I think my toes are pretty, and they said, I don’t plan on dressing up any time soon, and they said, I have no intention of trying to outrun law enforcement today.

  At any rate, since my feet were always exposed they tended to be constantly cold, which in turn made them ghostly white. And as Ben and I sat side by side on his living room floor in front of the TV, they looked practically see-through next to Ben’s exceedingly tanned, exceedingly dirty feet.

  “How come your feet are so grimy?” I asked, leaning against the couch.

  He shrugged. “Haven’t been wearing shoes much lately because I found out my shoes are sweatshop shoes. I need some new, non-slave-labor ones, but Mom has been busy with work. And so: I have been barefoot.”

  “Sweatshop shoes?”

  “Duh, like the kind made in third-world countries by five-year-old kids. It was on the news the other day. Turns out, my favorite shoes were glued together by slave labor. I may give up shoes altogether. I may become shoeless.” I rolled my eyes as he went on, pointing with his head to a pair of white sneakers by the front door. “If you put them to your ear, you’ll hear the voices of a thousand disadvantaged kids forced to work for a penny a day.”

  My reply was interrupted by raucous laughter coming from the direction of Mason’s room, where Mason and David had been holed up the entire time I’d been here. Although Mason and I hadn’t actually spoken since my unbecoming breakdown in his room, in the past few days I’d noticed less tension in his shoulders when I was around, and he’d seemed to surface in the same room as Ben and me more often. Consequently, I thought maybe my little speech had made an impression. I grant you, it was just one flimsy, splintered piece of plywood slid across the giant ravine between us. Not enough to support the weight of either of us, but just enough to tell me that we weren’t as far away as I’d once thought.

  Grumbling at myself for getting distracted by Mason again, I kicked Ben’s grubby foot, just lightly. “It’s a good look for you, the dirt,” I teased.

  “Glad you’re finally coming around, Thera. Maybe we can reconsider that kiss?”

  I stabbed him in the ribs with my elbow and said, “Reasons that I will not kiss Ben Milton—GO: One, he’s seven years younger than me. Two, although he isn’t my brother, he feels like my brother. Three, he has grilled cheese sandwich stuck in his front teeth.”

  “Shit. Really?” he said, scrubbing his teeth with an index finger.

  “Four, he’s too young to cuss, but he cusses anyway. And five”—I lowered my voice—“I found a Loose Cannons CD hidden under his bed yesterday.”

  “Shit,” he said again, louder this time, making his Flabrador retriever—who had his legs spread out behind him like a frog and his nose propped on Ben’s knee—raise his dog-brows.

  I shot the dog a look. Honestly. Wally was a little too reliant on Ben for attention.

  “Please don’t tell Mason about the CD,” Ben whispered like we were in a James Bond movie and I’d just uncovered the truth about a top secret file.

>   I would have gladly tortured him for a while, but Mrs. Milton stuck her head into the living room and said, “Benjamin Thomas Milton, what did I ask you to do today?”

  Ben’s head fell back theatrically and he stared at the ceiling. “Scrub my toothpaste out of the sink?”

  “And?” she prompted.

  He filled his cheeks with air and then let it out all at once, flapping his lips. “Vacuum the Doritos out of my carpet before the room”—he made quote fingers—“turns into an ant pile?”

  “Could you take care of that now, please? I have the early shift tomorrow and I need to go to bed soon. I don’t want to be listening to the vacuum at midnight, like the last time you cleaned your room.”

  Ben gave me an apologetic shrug and took off, leaving me in the dusty, indiscriminate outskirts of my eyesight. But it was enough to just barely make out Mason, minutes later, as he came loping down the hallway, passing by the living room without noticing me. He headed straight out the front door, leaving it open for David, who was a few paces behind. David’s eyes snagged on me just before he crossed the threshold. He jerked to a stop.

  My breath hitched. What had Mason told his bandmates after I’d left his room the other night? That I was a stalker? A lunatic fan? Suddenly, I felt like one of those jackasses who had resolved to ride out a hurricane in a trailer park. A storm was knocking on my front door, and now there was nowhere to go.

  David put a hand to his chest. I held my breath, waiting for the ax to fall. “Be still my heart,” he said. “Maggie Sanders: the mystery girl. You look as lovely as ever.” Then he loped over and crashed down beside me, bumping his shoulder against mine. “Do me a favor and explain that little scene in Mason’s room? Mason won’t tell us jack shit.”

  I blinked. Mason hadn’t told his friends about his suspicions? I waved David off with one hand, and, staring at the tattoo on his forearm, said, “It was nothing, actually. Just, you know...a misunderstanding.”

  “Then you and Mason don’t have a thing?”

  I felt a weird tickle in my throat. I swallowed over it. “Nope.”

  He kicked his spindly legs out in front of him and laced his hands behind his head, leaning against the couch. “Is there a reason you’re here at eight P.M. on this beautiful summer evening, listening to reruns of...” He glanced at the TV and cringed. “Holy crap, it’s even worse than I thought: So You Think You Can Dance?”

  I shrugged.

  “You know it’s Saturday night, right?” he asked.

  “So?”

  “So we are heading out to the Strand. The Dead Eddies are playing a reunion show there tonight and you should come with.”

  “The Dead Eddies? No shit?”

  He smiled with one side of his mouth. “I shit you not.”

  “Wow.” The Dead Eddies were...well, they were the Dead Eddies. I’d loved them since forever. Still, the thought of being around Mason without the benefit of sight made a hard knot settle in my stomach. In fact, the thought of being around Mason at all made a hard knot settle in my stomach.

  I swallowed. “Are Carlos and Gavin going, too?” I asked.

  David picked casually at a loose fray on his jeans. “Gavin’s tied up at some dinner soiree with his parents, and we haven’t seen Carlos since he stormed out of rehearsal a couple days ago.”

  “You guys have a fight?”

  David shrugged, a motion that involved the entire upper half of his body. “Sometimes he doesn’t see eye to eye with the rest of us. He was hell-bent on changing an arrangement, we disagreed, and he took off. His usual MO,” he said dismissively. “Anyway: the Strand?”

  “Um,” I said, stalling. “Isn’t the Strand that place in Bridgeport? The over-twenty-one club?”

  “Yup,” David said.

  “You guys have fake IDs?”

  “Yup.”

  “Well, I don’t have one, so I guess I’m out.”

  “Yeah, but here’s the thing: I know a guy who knows a guy who owes me a solid. I can get you in.”

  Grasping now, I blurted, “I forgot my cane at home.”

  He shrugged. “You can borrow my elbow for the evening. Or Mason’s.”

  I swallowed so loudly that I swore he could hear it. “But Ben—”

  David let out a massive sigh, like I was being extremely thickheaded. “Ben is ten and you are seventeen. He will completely understand.” And before I could protest or even say good-bye to Ben, he yanked me upright, out the door, and into the driveway. As he guided me into the backseat of Mason’s car, he said to Mason, “Hey, man, I invited Maggie to come along.”

  “Ah,” Mason said. Which was technically only an acknowledgment of both my existence and the fact that I was tagging along. Still, Mason didn’t sound mad or upset or broody, and so it felt like a victory.

  If I were to jump up and down on a pogo stick while wearing four-inch heels, on the up-bounce I’d probably be just tall enough to hold on to David’s elbow without reaching. So when I stumbled on the steps of the Strand’s back entrance, I sort of dangled from his arm. Mason, who was directly behind me, steadied me by the waist while I regained my footing. “You all right?” he asked, taking his hands away but leaving what felt like two burning palms on my sides. I responded with something that sounded an awful lot like “Gumph,” to which he replied, “Good,” as though I’d uttered an actual word. Which only proved that he was accustomed to starstruck girls who were unable to respond to him in English.

  I anchored myself on the warm bricks of the building while David rapped on a metal-sounding door. The bass inside the Strand was rumbling through my shoes, pricking the underside of my toes. It wasn’t the Dead Eddies playing—not yet—just some semicurrent deejayed song mixed with another semicurrent deejayed song.

  The door opened and music charged loud in my face. “Paulie!” David hollered over the noise. “So Marcus said I could slide in through the back door whenever I wanted.” There was a pause in which I suspected Paulie—a bouncer?—looked unconvinced. David went on to say, “You can ask Marcus if you don’t believe me.”

  “This is a big night, kid,” Paulie said in a gravelly voice. “The kickoff for the Dead Eddies’ reunion tour. There’s a line clear down Sixth.”

  “Right, but the thing is that there are only three of us, so we won’t even make a difference in the room capacity.”

  Paulie didn’t say anything for several beats. He just stood there, smelling vaguely of body spray and spearmint gum and steroids. Finally he grunted, “Is the girl of age?”

  David said, “Paulie, what do you take me for?”

  Paulie exhaled a rather extreme burst of spearmint in my face. “Don’t make me regret it, kid.”

  And then we were in.

  The place was beyond packed. We took maybe five steps and were stopped by a wall of people. “YOU GOOD JUST STAYING HERE?” David hollered.

  Like it mattered to me. “TOTALLY.”

  David took off to thank Marcus, leaving me alone with Mason, who, due to the number of people crammed in the place, was standing shoulder to shoulder with me. I’d never had a regular conversation with Mason, so I wasn’t really sure how to behave. Should I open with a joke? Small talk? Finally, I went with something honest.

  “IT’S CRAZY IN HERE!” I hollered over the music, and he said “I KNOW, RIGHT?” and I said “WHEN THEY PLAY ‘THE BEGINNING OF IT ALL’ I MIGHT TOTALLY, LEGITIMATELY HAVE AN ANEURYSM,” and he just laughed. This marked the longest dialogue we’d ever had, and definitely the most normal.

  Just then, a cacophony of probably a half-dozen different perfumes floated up in front of us. I heard a chorus of squeals, and then an awed female voice, clearly the spokesperson of the group, yelled, “I CANNOT BELIEVE IT! IT’S REALLY YOU!”

  “OH,” Mason hollered back, “YOU GUYS THINK I’M—RIGHT. I GET THAT ALL THE TIME. I JUST LOOK LIKE THAT GUY.”

  I could hear the disappointment in the girl’s tone as she said, almost in a whine, “BUT YOU LOOK EXACTLY LIKE HIM.
YOU’RE REALLY NOT HIM? THE GUY YOU WALKED IN WITH, HE LOOKS JUST LIKE—”

  “NOPE,” Mason shouted back. I felt his shoulder raise and lower apologetically. “JUST A NORMAL GUY AT A CONCERT. THANKS FOR THE COMPLIMENT, THOUGH.”

  Then the girls were gone.

  I waited until the song ended, and then I leaned toward Mason and said, “Smooth, by the way.”

  “Just wanted to enjoy the night, by the way.”

  I smiled in his general direction. I liked being with this Mason, the one I couldn’t see. He seemed more human somehow, more real. I wasn’t distracted by the hair and the eyes and the...everything. I wasn’t trying to hide anything from him.

  David made it back right as the Dead Eddies took the stage. The crowd went insane. Everyone was screaming, jostling into one another, dancing. I’d always loved to dance, but usually I was overly mindful of how my body was moving. But tonight I wasn’t worried about what people thought of me. I wasn’t uncomfortable. I wasn’t self-conscious. I wasn’t trying to prove anything to Mason. I wasn’t anything but the music. My stomping feet were the downbeats and my hips were the chorus and my arms were the keyboard riffs.

  When the band launched into “The Beginning of It All,” we were jumping up and down, matching the beat. My hair had fallen out of its elastic band, and it undoubtedly stuck out in a tangled explosion, but I didn’t even care. Due to Mason’s close proximity and the fact that I actually, literally, could not help touching him, all at once we were dancing with each other without the formality of dancing with each other, complementing each other’s movements perfectly. Every bend of his body seemed to seek out mine, every arch in mine fit perfectly in his. When the song ended, there was one fragile second when we didn’t move, when we just stayed there, sort of smashed up against each other. And then we took a step apart.