Looking for Group

by Rory Harrison

  DEDICATION

  For Donna

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I stole some names for this book, so now I need to thank some people. Thank you to Shelbyville High School’s Young Writers’ Camp students Clare Scudder and Abby Neeb, for allowing me to steal (then twist) their nicknames for Dylan & Arden’s World of Warcraft characters. Thank you to Twitter friend Shawntelle Madison for lending me her amazing name and letting me kill the character, too. Many thanks to Allison Trochessett, who had such a pretty last name that my best friend told me about it, thereby forcing me to steal it.

  I also stole some shared history. TYVM to my WoW guilds, Riders of Malkier, and The Lambchop Rejects— and especially to Sneakymaa, Whimmy, Farrin, Zamus, Fadain, Amadeous, BabyHuey, Matthea, Aegeous, Chilidog, Pyreah, Moonadrelle, Scythelord, Punky, and Sheya for ten years of good times. Go Horde or go home!

  I didn’t steal anything from my deliriously wonderful agent Jim McCarthy, or my tremendously brilliant editor Kristen Pettit— but I would if they asked me to. So many thanks to them for going on this road trip with me, over and over, for years now. I hope it was as special to them as it was to me.

  And finally, all the thanks in the world to my wife, Jayne, and my best friend, Wendi. I hope we always drive it like we stole it.

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  (2795.70)

  (Northwest)

  (Everything Is Relative)

  (Meet in the Middle)

  (2652.2)

  (My Mother)

  (Seven Days from the Salton Sea)

  (Jump on Your Toon; Let’s Go)

  (Real ID)

  (Silver)

  (This Is How I Meet the Only Friend I Have Left)

  (Keysmash)

  (Before)

  (Alarm Clock)

  (Directions)

  (Destinations)

  (Toasters, Pickle Plates)

  (Road Conversations)

  (2484.69)

  (Connected)

  (Section 8 Physics)

  (It’s Important to Secure Your Password)

  (Avignon)

  (2491.08)

  (Drawn Boundary)

  (2264)

  (Road Conversations)

  (Pick Something)

  (Longest Receipt I Ever Seen)

  (Nightswimming)

  (OTW BRT)

  (Warning)

  (2213.04)

  (Chapter Western Indiana)

  (Red Sky)

  (Rest)

  (2038.67)

  (The Difference Between Anticipation and Dread.)

  (1968.51)

  (Tonight)

  ( . . . )

  (Leap)

  (But That Thought Isn’t Over)

  (B A N A N A S)

  (Outlines)

  (Road Conversations)

  (Outsiders)

  (1720.05)

  (It Gets Dark Soon)

  (1465.77)

  (Webster State Park)

  (Two Things)

  (1085.57)

  (Worst Monument, F---, Would Not Drive Again)

  (Not Exactly a Road Conversation)

  (Push)

  (840.82)

  (333.80)

  (Check Out)

  (Almost Nowhere)

  (O)

  (O)

  (O)

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Books by Rory Harrison

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  (2795.70)

  I don’t believe in bucket lists. You can’t experience a whole life in fast forward. If somebody told you to eat the best chocolate cake ever in twelve seconds, you wouldn’t even taste it.

  That’s why I never applied to the Wish Foundation people.

  For a little kid, a trip to Disneyland is as big as it gets. But they don’t know what they’re going to miss. They have no idea how big the world is.

  I do.

  Better now than ever, I do, and this is something else I know: the entryway to the high school doesn’t want me. It’s pocked up, beaten up—doesn’t say hello. The name carved in the limestone isn’t even the building’s real name anymore. (Melvin Pfeiffer School, it says, in old-fashioned script, like on bibles.)

  The sticker on the glass, though—it says Laurel High School, and that’s what it is now. I ring the buzzer. Then I wait, a hundred years or something, until a woman’s voice crackles, “Can I help you?”

  I lean in. I think there’s a camera on this thing; I don’t know if she needs to see me or what. My voice breaks. “I’m supposed to register today?”

  The doors click. That’s the answer; I let myself in fast, like there’s a countdown or something. When I walk, the bottle of pills in my bag rattles so loud that my heart pounds to cover up the sound.

  People are looking at me. There’s all kinds of baby-fat cheeks going on here. All kinds of soft and round, bright little eyes, clean little hoodies, and fit skinny jeans.

  I try to make myself smaller as I head for the office. I dunno how many of these kids are sophomores, but I’m older than them, I can tell. I’m an alien up in here. Or a wolf with clicky-clicky claws on the waxed floors. A winter wolf, starved and dangerous. I’m too thin; my chest is sort of caved in. If these round, fat babies looked close, they’d see the scars that trace my scalp; they’re pearl white under wiry brown hair.

  I don’t belong here; everything smells like blood.

  When I find the office, there’s a line. Late slips or some shit; some girl has a killer headache and wants to call her mom. It’s not even funny, but I’m trying not to laugh at her. She’s all neat and tidy, buttoned up and pressed—it’s like she came out a factory, out of a box with a plastic window. Her life’s so easy, she wants to call mommy instead of grabbing a couple Advil from the nurse.

  I almost, I almost want to ask her if she wants an oxy; I got a hundred of ’em in my bag. That’s what Medicaid gives you when you have a real killer headache, one that don’t respond to chemo or radiation. All that, I could say it, but instead, I stare at the patterns in the carpet until it’s my turn.

  Fact is, I’m not supposed to have that bottle on me. One, I’m not supposed to be taking them anymore, and more important for two, pretty sure there are rules at school about students carrying drugs. There used to be.

  “Can I help you?” the receptionist asks. It’s almost three, so she looks like she’s ready to slap somebody. Since I don’t want to be slapped, I keep my distance.

  “I’m Dylan Stefansky,” I say. When she just stares, I explain some more. “I’m just off hospital leave. I’m supposed to reregister.”

  The receptionist turns, left, right, searching for something. She plucks up a folder full of papers and starts to hold them out to me. Then her gaze sharpens. Looking past me, she frowns. “Is anyone here with you? A parent or guardian?”

  I flatten my lips. That’s a sore subject right there. “It’s just me and my mom, but I can do the paperwork.”

  “I’m sure you can,” the receptionist says. Straightening up, she holds the folder against her chest. “But I can’t register you without a parent or guardian.”

  My throat tightens. “She works nights; she’s sleeping.”

  Is that sympathy in the receptionist’s eyes? Is it pity? I’m sick of both of them, but they’re better than watching her lights turn off inside. She doesn’t care about me or my mom sleeping off her late shift; all she cares about is rules. “Perhaps she can take a day off. Or rearrange her schedule. I can’t register you without a parent or a guardian.”

  Rage is easy. It flies in first, bloody and ready. It wants me to kick the desk. Fling everything off of it: the late s
lip box, the sign-in sheet, the little plastic sunflower with sunglasses that bobs its head at me like it’s stupid. My face is hot and my hands tremble, but I just stand there. I force myself to stand there and say, real calm, “She can’t miss work, though.”

  The receptionist doesn’t sigh. She just shakes her head. “I can give you the paperwork to take home and fill out, but I can’t register you without a parent or guardian, Dylan.”

  “I went here before!” I lean closer. Maybe I even beg a little; I hate myself doing it, but I beg a little. “Please. You can check the computer. I’m in there.”

  For her, the conversation’s over. Instead of telling me to fuck off, she says, “I’m sorry.”

  Then she holds out the folder. Like a peace offering or something. She’s not sorry. She’s not sorry one little bit. I turn sharp and hard, and blow out of the office at top speed. Fuck the folder. Fuck her. Fuck this school.

  The halls emptied out when I was in the office, so nobody sees me stalk up to the front doors and slam into them hard as I can. Nobody watches when I cut down the stairs, to the car I left parked out front in the bus zone. I wasn’t gonna be in there that long, that’s what I figured. Guess I didn’t realize it was gonna be less than five minutes.

  All over, I’m shaking, but I get the keys in the ignition. It’s an old-ass car; it doesn’t even peel out when I slam my foot down on the gas. It lurches, like the transmission had to stop and google what to do. When the gear finally catches, I sail out of the parking lot.

  I’m not going home. For once in my life, I’m not going to the hospital. Somehow, I end up hitting an on ramp. My sludgy transmission finally gets into the spirit and opens up. The car stops rumbling, all the sound but the wind. Baltimore falls away.

  Before I know it, I’m forty-seven miles from home. Forty-eight. Forty-nine.

  Fifty. I’m not looking back.

  And no.

  I have no idea where I’m going.

  (NORTHWEST)

  Because she keeps the phone we get because of my Medicaid, my mother’s not gonna get the chance to flip out on me, personally. No. My mother’s gonna call the cops to report her car stolen. I can hear her already. No, I can see it, perfectly, in my head.

  Furious, her anger fills up the front yard.

  It’s generous, calling it a yard. What it is is a four-by-four patch of grass in front of our apartment. But my mother stands in it, bare feet, bathed in blue and red light. She waves her hands and points in the wrong direction.

  She always points in the wrong direction.

  When she says, “Dylan, go run up and get me a Coke,” she points at the back of the apartment. Sort of southish. The gas station is northwest, so she’s almost exactly wrong. If she wants me to run up to the store and get orange juice, she points west. If I’m supposed to run up to the pharmacy and get my medicine, east.

  All of these stores are northwest. There’s only one way out of Village Estates. Well two, if you’re being morbid. But hey, I got my miracle. I’m not allowed to be morbid anymore, fuck you very much.

  I’m also not allowed to head due west in a stolen car. A car that my mother’s reporting to the police probably right this second. But oh well. She’ll cry, because she’s good at crying when it gets her something. When it doesn’t, she’s a bone—dry and cracked. Dusty.

  You can tell a lot from the marks on a bone, and you can tell a lot about my mother from the lines on her face.

  She’s not that old, but there’s a fine network between her brows. A map of her life, written in old sunburns and new wrinkles. She wears too much mascara because she says the boys—her brothers, her son—got the pretty eyes in the family. Those lashes fleck when she blinks.

  By nightfall, she wears a stippled tattoo on her cheeks. It’s a snake, always a snake, riding the deep basin under each eye. According to her, men don’t like women who don’t take care of themselves. Men don’t like eyelashes unless they’re thick and crusted with paint. She never asks me what I think; to her I’m not a man. She has the answers.

  This is all the gospel truth, she says, but she says a lot of things that aren’t true.

  The first one was that she loved me.

  (EVERYTHING IS RELATIVE)

  Here’s something that’s true: you can cut the mold off the cheese and still eat it. It won’t kill you.

  The government used to hand out cheese, according to my mother. But it was knockoff Velveeta and that’s shitty cheese to begin with. American cheese is just plastic that melts, but I like it, grilled up on white bread, the soft, pillowy kind. Not the store brand. That bread’s half cardboard shavings, my mother says.

  I think there are signs of being rich and being poor, and when we had white Wonder Bread, it meant we weren’t poor. It meant mom got better tips than usual. Or she worked more hours. Or somebody gave us a donation, and that meant good bread and actual Coca-Cola. Generic soda’s okay, but there’s something off about it. Like the bubbles whisper on your tongue, Tried and couldn’t. Almost, but not quite.

  Generic is okay, for some things. For example, real Kraft macaroni and cheese is too . . . something. Too orange? Too big? It fills up my mouth the wrong way and I don’t like it. But the store brand is just right.

  Suddenly, I laugh. A thin, desperate wheeze that hurts. It digs into my ribs and inflates my head until it could pop. My hands slip on the wheel and the car swerves. Anxiety squashes the laughter, and I hurry to steer straight. Bad enough I stole this car. If I wreck it, that’ll be the living end. The living goddamned end, my mother would say.

  But what am I even thinking? Cheap mac and cheese? When’s the last time I ate anything and thought it was good?

  Radiation and chemo do that to you. Burn out whatever it is you taste with, leave you with a bitter metal tongue all the time. Mashed potatoes. Watermelon. It’s all like sucking on a dirty fountain penny.

  I’m all better now (Miracle, bitches!) but a Big Mac still tastes like shit.

  Right about now, I want a Coke and some cold fried chicken, and some peanut butter mashed up with bananas, and fried onions and green peppers, and probably some pickled onions and cucumbers. I want them only because I remember them—what they were. And what they were was good.

  My face gets hot, and that means I’m going to cry and that pisses me off more than anything. My bone-dry mother has a whole waterfall waiting to spill, whenever she wants something. Those tears fall when she wants them to. Me, I cry over a dinner I can’t have, and don’t have, and that wouldn’t taste good even if I got it.

  I cry about everything. The wrong song on the radio. A tag left in my t-shirt to itch me. My neighbor turning off their Wi-Fi because I stole too much of it today. The book I got that didn’t end the way I wanted it to. Cry, cry, cry. I’m salt-soaked probably seventy percent of the time.

  For a while there, it was all right. Mostly all right. You’re supposed to cry in the beginning, when they tell you that you’re gonna die. When you come to terms.

  But then, get with the program, damn it. Be strong. Be a role model. March off to chemo like a soldier and don’t stop until you beat that shit.

  I was a bad patient, because I cried at the clinic.

  Behind the desk there, there were school pictures from their patients. One of the biggest ones was Shawntelle Grace. Everything about her was perfect; when all her hair fell out, her head was smooth and round. She stayed beautiful, even I could see that. Black skin and brown eyes, and that smile. Damn, that smile.

  She didn’t cry; she kept on smiling the whole time she was sick. The ward scrapbook was full of articles about her; they all start with some variation of you wouldn’t know by looking at her, but Shawntelle Grace is fighting for her life.

  Then it goes on: here’s Shawntelle running her school’s food drive at Thanksgiving. Here’s Shawntelle reading to a brain-damaged puppy. Here’s Shawntelle, walking on water.

  The last one is here’s Shawntelle’s pink granite gravestone with a Mother Teres
a quote on it and pictures of the funeral procession. What a role model. That’s how you’re supposed to die, all dignified and meaningful. There’s rules. There’s a playbook. You’re not supposed to go out clutching and sobbing and scared.

  To get a story in the newspaper, you’re supposed to be cheerful every single day. Strong and brave and unafraid—a fighter. No staring at your ceiling at night, no panic attacks that turn everything slow motion. Definitely no sour sweat and puke on your skin and hiding in the dark because it hurts when you breathe.

  No. You need to be inspirational, so it’s sad when you lose this battle.

  They’re never gonna write that story about me. I mean, they can’t now, anyway. I got better. Shocked everybody. They called it spontaneous remission and acted like it was touch-and-go, but even I knew the tumor was gone. No more killer headaches. I stopped falling over my own feet. I saw straight, I remembered shit.

  I got better.

  But I still wasn’t the good patient. Because then, because then I was supposed to jump back in, like the last couple years didn’t even happen. They gave me a sheet of paper and said, “You don’t need those narcotics anymore, you stick to this schedule.”

  See, they don’t care if you’re a junkie if you’re gonna die. But once you’re sticking around, no more barrel-sized bottles of drugs for you.

  I didn’t detox right, either. Because here’s the thing—they were sure I was gonna die. I was sure. People stopped talking about the next round of treatment and started talking about palliative care, and you know what that is? They dose you up good so you don’t know you’re dying. More drugs. Not less.

  So then, we get the scans that came back blank, and holy shit. I’m all better. Even with the touch-and-go dance they did, they started talking follow-ups and five-year-out percentages and, yeah, detox. Practically overnight, they go from let’s give this sad fuck all the morphine in the world to no more drugs for you. What I got was a nurse who explained how I was supposed to taper down, eight pills for seven days, then six pills, down and around until no more pills at all.

  So I half-dosed myself out. Yeah, I did, because they were sure I was dying, then they were sure I wasn’t, and you know what I was sure of? Being that sick and in that much pain was agony. If it can go away like magic, it can come back like magic, too. I didn’t want to be left hanging if (when) it did.