Playing Tyler

by T L Costa

  My mouth feels dry as I say, “Well, what if you are? You’re more than happy to be Rick’s little pawn.”

  “No.” His eyes are wide, wild, desperate, and his words are jagged. “I think that this conversation is over. Oh, and here, I got this for you.”

  He puts something in my hand, and when I open it I see a gold chain with a little heart. How did this conversation go so wrong? I have to say something, to try and turn this around somehow. “Tyler…”

  “Keep it. I’d feel stupid returning it.” His eyes look down at my hand and he walks away.

  I stand, wiping my eyes with the back of my sleeve. Oh, God, please don’t let it end like this.

  CHAPTER 21

  THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25

  TYLER

  The days move. Like move fast. Ignoring Rick’s suggestion of only clocking twenty hours a week, I fly all day, knowing that I’m changing the world. Making it better, safer. The kill count at the top of my screen keeps going up: for every terrorist down, that’s another American life saved. That I saved. Me. Sending another dad home to his kids.

  I don’t think too much about the fact that I’m killing real people. Except at night. Late in the middle of the night when no one is watching and it’s just me and my conscience and that voice that tells me that someone is dead because of me. It’s wild. Wild and lonely and maybe just a little bit wrong because how do I know for sure that the people I am blowing up are terrorists? I have to trust the intel that tells me so but sometimes, I wonder who that intel guy is and pray that he’s as good at his job as I am at mine. He better be right or I’m… well, I can’t think about what that makes me.

  I throw the sheets back, T-shirt sopping wet and clinging to my chest in a damp world of badness. I rip it off and throw it into the floor with the others. Have to do laundry. Wish Ani were here. A whole three days since we talked. Sucks. Bet 3am wouldn’t feel so bad if she were lying next to me. I could just roll over and wrap my arms around her waist and listen at her back, listen to her heart, listen to her breathing, and then I could sleep. But not tonight. She’s not here.

  Shit. I hit call and dial up Peanut and Alpha, see if they’re on. Alpha’s not picking up but Peanut’s light blinks and then the video box opens up and I see him rub his eyes, red curls flying all over like he’s some kind of punked-out clown. “Tyrade, man, what’s up?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Better be something or I just blew my shot at getting through this level of RAGE before the hour’s out for nothing.” He smiles. Wide, lazy, stoned.

  “Nothing. Just, fought with this girl.”

  “Girl? Wait, not SlayerGrrl? Like that girl, girl?”

  “Yeah.”

  He stares into the webcam, leaning in. “Let me see your face, man, move in closer.”

  Peanut’s a little off. Thinks he can read auras and shit. He’s cool, though, if you overlook all that hippie stuff. Good gamer. I lean in, squinting a little from the light on the screen. “What?”

  “Ah, shit. Man, you’re hittin’ that, right?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “SlayerGrrl, man. You guys hooked up, I can see it.”

  Maybe he can read auras. Like that guy on TV. Or does he just talk to the dead or something? Are ghosts like auras? Can’t keep track. “No. Well, kinda. She’s pissed at me, though.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “I have this… job that she doesn’t like.” I think that ghosts are different from auras. Think auras have something to do with crystals.

  “What? You get a job as a bouncer in a strip club or something? If so, I totally need in on that.” His smile gets even bigger.

  Hitler. Hitler was into crystals. I saw a show about it on the History Channel once. “Yeah, no, well, something like that, I guess.”

  “Can you quit the job? Girls can get hung up over stuff like that.”

  “No.”

  “Well, hell, you say you’re sorry?”

  “Sorta.” No. Maybe. “I’m not sorry, though, I mean, I need this job.”

  “Alright, well, there’s your answer, man.”

  “What, where?”

  “Tell her you’ll do it just until you get enough money or whatever to stop, and that you’ll quit as soon as you can.”

  “Think that’ll work?”

  “Hell, yeah.”

  “She’s like, really smart, though.”

  “Well, shit.” His eyebrows come together a little bit. “That is a problem.”

  She did look totally hot when she was mad. Just have to keep that image in my head when I call. Sure, she may be mad, but it’ll be hot mad, and that’s gotta be good, right? I mean, if she was really angry she wouldn’t have looked all cute, she would’ve looked, I don’t know, bad or something.

  I sit up, grabbing the days-old bottle of Mountain Dew from the nightstand and taking a swig. Gross. Flat and nasty and it tastes like I feel. Digging my hands into the bones in my face, I stand up and move over to the old monitors, over to where I have the PS3. Right, call Ani, don’t play. Gotta apologize or something. Deep breath. Here we go. I dial. Wait. “Ani?”

  “What… Tyler?”

  “Hey.” Apologize, dammit. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry? Tyler, it’s like 3 o’clock in the morning.”

  What? Shit. Should’ve checked the time. “Are you sleeping?”

  “Not now.” Her voice is slow.

  “Look, I’m sorry about the Rick thing, OK? It’s just that I don’t have anything else. I’ll just do it until I get into flight school, promise.”

  Silence.

  “Ani, please, don’t make me lose you, too,” I say into the darkness.

  I close my eyes and I see it.

  The bright sky. The pier. The excitement to get to see Dad in action. The day was different. Still bright and virtually cloudless. I held Mom’s hand. Back when it was strong. Back when it was tender. When her face held feeling. Brandon ran ahead. He was thirteen. It wasn’t cool to stay with me. To stay with Mom.

  I feel hot as the memory pulls me under. Pulls me down like it does sometimes at night. Dad smiling.

  We were at a Memorial Day celebration at the soccer fields. My game had ended hours ago but we had to wait for Brandon’s game to be over. His team lost but Dad bought us all ice cream anyway. Flags and bands and hot dogs lined the picnic stations on the field. Dad in uniform. Dad telling me that one day I was going to be the fastest thing on the field, telling Mom to relax when I climbed on top of picnic tables and jumped off again and again.

  Music. Flags and smiling people all around. Everybody cheers when the floats with the old guys in uniforms and the trucks with lots of colorful flags pass by the park. Some man I didn’t know bent over to ask me if I knew my dad was a hero. His face was wide and red and smelled like beer. I hid my head in my mother’s sundress. It was soft and pink and everything she’s not now.

  I ran. My feet beat against the gravel of the picnic area. Stomping out my own little rhythm as I ran up and down. Taking my toy chopper, my toy Black Hawk, and ran up the length of the playground and up on top of unguarded boxes and crates and jumped as my mother ate her hot dogs and hamburgers and salad. As Dad kicked the ball back and forth with Brandon. Brandon was slower than me, couldn’t move like me, but Dad liked to help him out. Told me I had to be patient with my brother. No big brother liked to be shown up by his little brother. Dad said that it was up to him and me to help Brandon out.

  I climbed the jungle gym. The grit and yielding rust and taste of iron as I climbed. I tucked the chopper up under my chin. Both hands pulled. Tugged, moving my body upward. I looked at Mom. Gave her a triumphant smile. I was too high. Wait till she noticed. I jumped. Landing hard. Grinding my little feet into the gravel. Liking the sound. Liking the feel of the landing. Mom shrugged when people watched me. When the clucking old ladies would chide me and made like they cared if I hurt myself. Mom looked sick when she watched but she knew. Knew that I had to do it.
Knew that it made me feel better.

  Dad caught me in his arms mid-jump. Plucking me out of the air and tickling me till I cried out for him to stop. “Brandon and I are going to go, OK? We’ll meet you and Mom at home, OK?”

  “I wanna go, too. B always gets to go, it’s not fair,” I said, wanting to ride with Dad, who always drove fast and listened to music. Not like Mom, who went slow and listened to people talk about cooking on the radio.

  “Listen to me, buddy. You have to stay with your mom. I can’t leave her here all alone, you have to watch out for her. Promise?” He looked serious.

  I nodded. “Good, see you at home.”

  Brandon waves and they head out towards the parking lot. Their outlines fading into the sun as they went.

  It was the last time I saw my dad.

  We got home and they weren’t there and they didn’t return Mom’s calls.

  A policeman at the door.

  Mom. She said, “Hello.” And then he said something, I couldn’t hear from where I was on the couch so I snuck closer. He looked at me and shut his eyes. Turned his head away.

  Mom’s face shattered. Shattered and then she fell and she was screaming. It was at that second, that second that my world of rainbows and tadpoles and bedtime stories became a world of black. A world of gray.

  They pulled Brandon from the wreckage. He was alive but barely. We rushed to the hospital. The police said that Dad saw the drunk driver heading towards them. Saw that there was no way to avoid the crash. They said he turned the car, changed the angle at the last second before they hit so that they wouldn’t hit face-first but rather so that Dad’s side would be the first to make impact, the first to hit. So that Dad would die and give B a chance to survive.

  I wonder if Dad would have done that if he knew what surviving would do to B. Mom knew. Mom and I both knew that world of color and light and happiness was over and would never come back. But B couldn’t deal. Couldn’t ignore the thud thud thud of the test choppers flying over our house day after day after day. Couldn’t stop reading about collisions and angles of impact. Couldn’t help but to smash the oxy they gave him for the pain.

  Couldn’t give up on the fucking rainbows.

  CHAPTER 22

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26

  ANI

  Why does my phone always ring when I’m running late for class? I shuffle to the side of the stairwell and pull it out of my pocket. “Hello?” I huff as someone bolting down the stairs knocks me in the shoulder.

  “Miss Bagdorian.”

  My feet freeze into the stairs. Mr Anderson. What do I say? Does he know that I’m aware that the kids are live? If I tell him that I know, then that would unlock a world of badness. He’s been very clear about his position about my contacting the test pilots directly, and if I talked to him about it, then he’d know that I’ve been talking to Tyler. I say, “Hi.”

  “Listen, pilot three has been reporting that the images on monitor B are grainier than the others. Doesn’t matter which camera he directs over to the monitor, that screen is just always grainy. Is there anything you can do for that?”

  So he doesn’t know. Well, doesn’t know that I know. “Yeah, I guess I can get into his unit remotely and dig around, see if I can figure out what’s going on.” I have to try it and see. “But it would really be easiest if I could speak to him or her directly. You know, troubleshoot while I have them on the phone.”

  Silence. The stairwell around me teems with students coming to or from class, voices echoing around me, but all I hear is the silence on the other end of the line. “I know. Speaking to the test pilots directly would make things simpler on your end. I completely understand. But your having any contact with the test pilots could compromise the success of the program. I’ve explained this before.”

  “Sorry,” I say, voice sounding small in the cavernous space. “It just seems more efficient.”

  “Well, I agree. It would be. However, our focus is the integrity of the feedback that the pilots give us.” His voice softens somewhat. “Besides, I can’t have them lying to show off because there’s a girl who’s smarter than they are on the other end of the line. One who knows her way around a motherboard better than just about anyone else on the planet. Men aren’t used to that sort of thing. So we just have to make do with a less-than-ideal manner of providing tech support.”

  “Sure, well, which pilot, number three?” I’ll fix it the second I get to my laptop. “Got it, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Let me know when it’s fixed, and check the other units for any similar errors.”

  “Will do,” I say, leaning against the wall, allowing the chill of the concrete to seep in through my sleeve, hoping that it cools the still-rapid pace of my heart.

  Oh my God. Is that Tyler outside of my dorm? Sunlight trickles down through the orange and yellow leaves giving his brown hair reddish undertones. A group of girls in front of me smile as they pass him, and I feel sort of, I don’t know, happy that someone so cute is here for me. Damn, do they even make guys hotter than him?

  He swipes his hair back and out of his face as I walk up to him. “Hey. You eat yet?”

  “A little.”

  “You hungry? Cause there’s this falafel place around the corner that’s really good.”

  “I have class in like five minutes. You should have called.”

  “Which class?”

  “Chem.”

  “You failing?”

  “No, I’m not failing.”

  “So skip it.” He looks me in the eyes and for a second I forget to breathe.

  “I can’t skip class.” He reaches out, but I don’t take his hand.

  “Look, Tyler. It was rude to hang up on you the other night, but I’m not so sure if–”

  “Stop. Listen to me. I need to talk. Need to tell you. I don’t care if you forgive me. I don’t care if you think that I’m wrong and that I shouldn’t be OK with what’s going on. I don’t care if you hang up on me or even if you don’t talk to me. You don’t ever have to talk to me again, ever, if you don’t want.” He leans closer to me, so close that I can catch the scent of the shampoo lingering in his hair. My throat tightens. “But please just be here with me. I’ll take whatever it is you can give me, however you want to give it, I just need you to be next to me. Need to know that there’s one person in this world I haven’t lost.”

  My fingertips stretch out, tracing the delicate skin on the back of his hand. “Tyler–”

  “Skip class. Don’t. That’s fine. Just don’t leave me.” He leans down and kisses me. His lips are soft and his breath is ragged and he licks my bottom lip with a flick of his tongue and I’m alive. It’s as if electric currents hum through my veins. My bag hits the ground as his arms snake their way around my waist and he pulls me in closer. “Please.”

  I run my fingers up through his hair and take his lips again. He did say “please.”

  CHAPTER 23

  SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27

  TYLER

  Bristol Street is off of Dixwell Avenue, only minutes away from Yale’s campus, but in socio-economic terms it could be measured by light years. Yale has architecture and fountains and courtyards with trees and Bristol Street, well, doesn’t. It has clapboard three-story houses and abandoned warehouses surrounded by chain-link fence and all sorts of little side streets that function as drug drive-throughs. Those one-lane, one-way side streets where the dealer stands off to the side and a car slows down so he can come to the window. Scary, but it is what it is.

  The three-story house that matches the address B gave me looks like it’s coming undone. Like Legos stacked by a two year-old. Wires running to defunct antennas and satellite dishes that pre-date the Clinton era stick out from the sides and top of the place like birthday candles gone wrong.

  Mom’s car is so in trouble. It’s the only car I had access to, though, and there’s no way I was walking. Hell of a way to spend a Saturday night.

  B wants to see me. Tonight, the text s
aid. In person. I didn’t want Ani to come, just in case, well, in case things were ugly and B was hurt or things with his friends were… bad. I didn’t want to leave her room. I shiver, remembering the way she moved. She got hungry, after all, and wanted to order in some Indian food. So now I’m late since I can’t say no to her like ever. It’s only been what, a month since I’ve met her? Little more? Crazy how fast things can change. Maybe I can go back to the dorm and see her after I talk to B.

  The door to the building does that click thing that signals that I can go in and I pull it open. Walking down the tiny, wood-paneled hall that smells like day-old frying oil and sandalwood incense, I feel a little sick. My brother lives here and he doesn’t have to. He could be in a nice home or at a nice school or whatever.

  The sound of Jeopardy and a chorus of people shouting answers in English at the TV and Spanish at each other flows through a door just in front of the staircase leading up. Damn, if I were that family, I wouldn’t want Brandon and his crew living here.

  Did I really just think that about my own brother? My heartbeat ticks up. God, I am an asshole. Assclown. Jackass. Brandon is sick. Druggies are not bad people, they are sick people and he just needs to get better. That’s all. God, I am such an insensitive dick sometimes.

  Upstairs. I can do this.

  The industrial metal door creaks as it opens and I climb the stairs. The corners of the stairwell are full of crap. Condom wrappers, empty Doritos bags and broken, well, everything. No needles. Don’t look for the needles.

  Upstairs. Gotta get upstairs. My heartbeat’s practically pulling me along, now, as I keep climbing, turning around the bend and everything seems to be a blur of blue and gray and squalor.

  This hallway is worse. Even smaller, tighter than the first. The junk lines the baseboard of the hall. Dust and water bottles and old shoes lie kicked to the side, doors clustered and thin. The smells aren’t as nice up here. Hot. A sticky hot that climbs up underneath my jacket and rises up to sit around my neck. My hand is shaking, pushing a button in front of a thin white door at the far end of the hall.