Mixed Signals

by Alyssa Cole

  He flashed me a grin that I didn’t understand. “Let’s just say I’m the son of diplomats. My dean says I’m not supposed to talk about it anyway. They got their revenge by sticking me here, in the worst job on campus besides the weekend bathroom cleaners.”

  “Yeah, worst job on campus. The job I was assigned two weeks ago and didn’t even think about getting out of.” I untied a new garbage bag and wondered just how dumb I’d been when I’d thought Devon hung the moon. I’d been great at multitasking but had shit taste in guys apparently.

  He made a sound of agitation. “My supervisor didn’t like me, okay? She didn’t like me, so she pulled some strings so I could be moved. It’s special treatment, but not in the way you think.” There was silence, except for the sound of squelching garbage and rustling plastic. “I’m having a hard time making friends, to be honest.”

  I rolled my eyes, even though he couldn’t see me. “You’re not some special snowflake. Making friends is hard. Making friends as shell-shocked adults who’ve spent the last few years scraping to survive is even harder.”

  He didn’t push back against that. “I know. The thing is, I used to be good at this. I had to transfer schools all the time because of my dad’s job, and breaking into the established cliques wasn’t easy. Along the way, I learned how to be cool, funny and interesting in five languages. But here, I’m trying to just be me, and it seems that me isn’t very likable.”

  This guy and his guilt trips. I was kind of glad we weren’t actually dating. That would mean he’d meet my mom, and they’d combine to form some kind of unstoppable guilt-fueled robot.

  I stopped sorting and turned to look at him. “I see you eating with a group of people every day at the dining hall. You have friends.”

  All the muscles in his neck tensed, just for a moment, and then he shook his head. “Those aren’t friends. They’re cool, but they’re people I know from the environmental club. We talk about club stuff all the time. It’s nice to have them, but it’s not like they know anything about me.”

  I didn’t even think he was trying to guilt-trip me this time, but it happened anyway. I was still mad at him, but the fact of the matter was that we’d been close once. Closer than anything, even though we’d never been in the same room before that first dorm room encounter. I didn’t like feeling all schmaltzy, but it kind of hurt to see him so lonely when I was standing in the same room. Because I knew him, obviously not as well as I thought I had, but enough to understand that he couldn’t have faked everything between us. I thought again about Arden’s expression when I’d hurled angry words at her—the one clear thing from that angry, drunken night—and the relief in her face when she’d found me in the woods, still alive. She was no one’s pushover, and she’d forgiven me without hesitation.

  “Do you still play guitar?” I asked, searching my brain to see if I recalled seeing one in his room in the brief moment after he’d been a dick and before he’d kissed me.

  “No. I didn’t bring it with me when we evacuated to the shelter, and I haven’t replaced it yet.” He tied up a bag that had borne no compost and tossed it aside.

  That little detail was what did it. He’d loved playing, and it was yet another thing gone from his life. In the grand scheme of post-Flare losses, it wasn’t much. But when I thought about how much of my anger and desperation I’d channeled into my music, and how I’d discovered my love of music because of him, I realized I owed him one.

  “Well, I still play and I’m really fucking good now.” Modesty wasn’t a strong point of mine, I was discovering. “Maybe...maybe you can come to my room and we can have a little jam session?”

  “With one guitar?” he asked carefully, as if he thought I was trying to play a trick on him.

  “Well, you can sing along,” I said. I wouldn’t offer him the use of my guitar just yet. That was an advanced friendship–level favor. “It’ll be fun, like when we used to video-chat. For a little while I thought you had the most beautiful voice in the world, you know.” I didn’t tell him that to make him feel better—it was true.

  “Remember that song we sang every night for a week straight?” He was working too slowly as he talked, but I’d harped on him enough for one day.

  He sang out the first lyrics to a Katy Perry song I’d shunned in the last few years. When Arden had asked me to play, I’d pretended I was too cool for some dumb song about fireworks, but really it had hurt to sing it without him. His voice had been higher the last time we sang, in a register closer to mine; now it was deep and resonant and did something strange to my insides. My heart kicked up, I took a deep breath, and then launched into the next line with him. We didn’t look at each other as we sang, as if that would kill the magic arcing across the room between us as we pushed our voices to join in a way our bodies had never been allowed to. We picked through our trash, the smells and textures anchoring us as our voices soared. His sifting increased to match mine as the music progressed, as if the song were connecting us even on this most mundane level.

  When we got to the last word, clapping sounded from outside the door.

  “Do another one!” an unknown co-worker yelled. My face flushed—not because I’d been caught singing, but because singing with Devon had felt so intimate, even though we hadn’t taken one step closer to each other.

  “Should we give them what they want?” he asked.

  I didn’t care what they wanted. It was what I wanted that mattered.

  I turned to look at him. His eyes flashed happily above his mask, and in that moment he could have passed for the boy I used to know. There was a twisting sensation somewhere inside of me as I looked at him, and I couldn’t tell if the feeling was good or bad.

  “Let’s do that Justin Bieber song you liked,” I said. “He was a shit, but he has a good repertoire.”

  We were elbows-deep in refuse and our masks muffled our voices, but as I said, modesty wasn’t my thing. We sounded good. Just like that, the band was back together.

  Chapter Twelve

  Although it was frustrating being relegated to desk duty at the maintenance job, it allowed me to get a lot of my reading done. I’d pretended like reading was no big deal to me when Danielle had suggested I work in the library, but that had been to prove a point. In reality, Professor Grafton’s disaster lit class was my favorite by far. It wasn’t just that the reading selections were from fantastically well-written books, but also that none of them seemed to have been picked haphazardly. There was a unifying theme of growth through pain and unthinkable loss that was reinforced with each selection. Each work complemented or contrasted the others that had preceded it, and you were forced not only to think, but to feel. Our latest assignment was from a Murukami novel.

  Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart. I read that line over and over, letting it absorb more deeply into my understanding of life. It seemed to represent everything I’d learned since venturing out into the real world over a year ago. It was the encapsulation of that wistful look people got right before sharing something very sad. It was the distilled form of what I felt when I pushed away thoughts of Dale and Kenny and blood in the snow.

  “So, is there some part of ‘organize the stockroom’ that I was unclear about?” Joe asked as he walked into the room and dropped a pile of dusty hammers and screwdrivers for me to put away.

  I slid the photocopied excerpt from Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore under the logbook, and he pretended not to notice. If I seemed too eager to work, he’d know something was up, so I was sure to move slowly as I gathered the tools that had been left by a contractor two hours before. “Sorry the place is a mess. I’ll make sure it’s in order before Fred gets here for his shift.” Fred, another student worker, had not been pleased about having to do his work and mine the week before, when I’d spent the entire shift reading a book we’d been assigned about a teenage
girl who was the sole survivor of a nuclear apocalypse. The loneliness of her daily existence had been realistic and terrifying to me. Sometimes I forgot how lucky I’d been in the aftermath of the Flare. I’d had food and warmth, family and friends to trust and even a cute guy to crush on. When Fred had come in, he hadn’t cared about my realization that I’d actually had a pretty normal teenage existence, despite the feeling of being denied something by the disaster. He’d just wanted to know why the drill bits hadn’t been put away.

  Joe sighed. “Yeah. I want you to do your job, but more importantly, I don’t want Fred trailing after me listing the things he had to do because you didn’t.”

  “Well, if you’d checked my references, my mom would have told you I can’t clean for shit. I’m good at doing actual work, though. Maybe if you put me on one of the work crews, I could be more helpful.” I gave him a toothy smile and blinked expectantly at him.

  Joe scratched at his neck. “I’m sending Hernandez out to the lighthouse. We were doing some fortifications before it gets thrashed by another winter, and he’s going to close it up. If you run, you can probably catch him before he goes.”

  Excitement thumped from my chest to my throat. I dropped the tools back onto the desk with a crash and booked it for the door. I crossed the threshold, then stopped and poked my head back in. “Who’s going to put all this stuff away?”

  “Fred can deal with one more day of double duty. I’ll give him a candy bar to make up for it, and that should keep him from griping too much.”

  “Thanks, Joe!” I whirled and ran up the stairs. Edwin was just starting the ignition when I ran up to the passenger side of the truck and raised a hand to knock on the window, but he was already reaching over to open the door before my knuckle hit the glass. “Did you sneak out of your shift early? If you get in the back, I’ll throw a blanket over you and haul you away before anyone notices.”

  “I would never shirk my duties, Edwin,” I said. I climbed in and pulled the door shut, and turned to see him regarding me doubtfully. “Joe said I could come help you close up the lighthouse.”

  A strange expression shifted his features for a millisecond, almost so quick that I could have imagined it. I wondered if maybe he didn’t want me tagging along with him, but then he smiled and shifted the car into Drive. “Cool. I don’t have too much to do, and the view is awesome. People aren’t usually allowed inside because of asbestos and structural issues, but since you’re rolling with a VIP, you get the special tour.” He plucked at the collar of his flannel jacket, the one that made him look like a sexy lumberjack.

  “Is the VIP meeting us there?” I asked.

  He replied with an annoyed hmph and we were quiet for the rest of the short drive. I liked the playful Edwin I’d gotten to know since we’d started spending more time together. Too much for my own good, actually; willpower alone wasn’t proving to be an effective crush-repellent.

  When we pulled up to the edge of the lake, I remembered a crucial point about the lighthouse. “We have to walk there,” I said, looking out at the thin path that snaked out into the water toward the structure. White paint peeled off the square base building, revealing ominous streaks of red below. It was just brick, but from a distance it looked like blood. I hated that I knew that from real life and not a movie. The red roof and green trim were more inviting, so I focused on that.

  “Yup,” Edwin replied, climbing out of the truck.

  “On that thin, crumbling rock pile that’s supposed to be a bridge.” Murky water lapped at the rock bridge, splashing up the sides and emphasizing how guardrail-less the thing was.

  “Yessiree,” he said. He popped open the trunk and handed me a sweatshirt. I had on a denim jacket and a warm scarf, but the wind off the lake was chilly, carrying early tidings of winter from the great North.

  “Thanks,” I said. I sniffed it surreptitiously as I slid it on and zipped it up. It smelled a little bit like the wash powder he used—that we all used—mixed with sweat.

  He’d hauled a duffel bag out of the backseat and slung it over his shoulder. When he walked past me, he jerked his head in the direction of the lighthouse. “Come on. You won’t fall in.”

  “I’m not scared,” I said way too fast for it to be true. I annoyed myself with the defensive instinct that always led me to react first and then think about what I’d said. Of course I was scared. Dark water lapped at the edge of the stones, making the path nice and slick, which wasn’t exactly what I was looking for in a bridge.

  “This bridge is scary as hell,” Edwin said with a shrug and began walking. “But think about it. Going to the lighthouse wouldn’t be as fun if we could drive right up and walk in.”

  He would say something like that.

  I followed closely behind him, watching where he placed his feet as he walked. He called back when there was a loose or particularly slippery rock, although he was never out of arm’s reach.

  The walk felt surreal. The waves of the lake frothed and churned on both sides of me, and from this vantage point the lighthouse seemed like the only place that existed in the expanse of dark sea. There was just me and Edwin and a darkly romantic lighthouse looming up out of the waves...

  The thought was just the beginning of a fantasy, but it was enough to distract me at the wrong time. I made a little sound as I lost my footing, but Edwin was always paying attention, luckily for me. His head turned the slightest bit, and then he swung his arm back and scooped me toward him before I could fall. I didn’t know if I would have hit the rocks or hit the water, but I much preferred being flush against Edwin’s strong, muscled back, with his forearm pressing into me and keeping me upright. My arms were wrapped around him, hands splayed over his chest as I held him in a vise grip.

  Turned out almost falling into a lake was kind of an adrenaline rush. That I was instead pressed up against a guy I had the hots for didn’t help. I didn’t know if the unsteadiness I felt was because of Edwin or my near miss.

  “Fuck, dude. Are you okay?” He was standing rigidly, like one small move could send me tumbling into the water.

  “I am. Okay, that is. Yes.” I wasn’t making sense, but that was pretty much impossible given the position I was in. He was warm and his smell was pleasant and inviting, like pine needles and some other hard-to-pin-down manly stuff that wasn’t old sweat. I inhaled deeply and then let go of him. “Death by small, slippery pebble would be a majorly embarrassing way to bite it after everything else I’ve been through.”

  “Let’s take the necessary precautions then,” he said. His hand clasped mine, and I pulled in a lungful of cold lake air at the shock of it.

  Edwin is holding my hand. The words looped in my brain, driven by my racing pulse.

  He didn’t look back until we made it to the small island where the lighthouse sat sentinel, and I wished desperately I could see his expression. Was he annoyed at my clumsiness? Worried?

  He let go of my hand slowly, and I slid both of mine into my pockets, just to give me something to do with my jangling nerves. Edwin hiked the duffel higher onto his shoulder and glanced at me. “Hm. The interior isn’t entirely safe...maybe you should wait out here.”

  “A girl trips once and she’s known as a klutz forever?”

  “Look, there’s a loose floorboard on the steps. I can’t risk you tripping over your own feet and taking us both out.”

  “You’re such a jerk, Edwin.” I jogged in his direction with a fist raised in play, and he took off running. I followed after him, around the lighthouse and then pounding up the front steps and through the door he’d just fumbled open. I’d run a decent hundred-meter dash, but Edwin was fast. He was already on his way up the stairs as I jogged through the empty visitors’ center on the first floor of the lighthouse. A cold breeze gusted into the room, and I pushed against it, up the short spiral staircase. The sky was blue outside the door at the top
of the steps, except for a strip of be-flanneled arm.

  “Did you think I was just going to keep running, like a lemming?” I said with an incredulous look when I reached him.

  “This is called a widow’s walk, Mags. I was just being careful. And yes, if you were focused enough on beating me to a pulp, you might just crash through the railing.” He dropped his arm and we both turned to stare out at the amazing view. The lighthouse wasn’t very tall, but from where we stood you could see the points where the Oswego River and Lake Ontario collided, as well as far out onto the lake. A few fishing boats bobbed against the horizon line. It was peaceful, and only in the silence of the waves did I realize how frenetic my mind had been since I’d arrived at school. At home, I was surrounded by nature and quiet. Oswego was no bustling metropolis, but school life was shuffling from a cinder-block dorm room to a fluorescently lit cafeteria to a stuffy classroom, and then back. Even working at the farm didn’t provide much relief, because I was still stuck in the dank compost room.

  “You stay here,” he said. “I just have to do a window and door check so no meddling kids can get in and ruin the work we’ve spent the last month doing.”

  I doubted he knew how much I needed the moment alone, but he was observant enough that it wouldn’t have been a big surprise.

  As he clanked about downstairs, I circled the perimeter of the lighthouse, taking in a view of the area most people didn’t have access to. Downtown fanned out from one street of densely packed buildings to the more rural areas. The cooling tower and containment structure of Falling Leaf loomed in the distance, feeding energy into the power lines that unfurled from it like the shoots of a plant. It looked bleak and ominous, so I circled back around to the seaside view again, where birds wheeled and clouds scudded overhead.