These Dreams Which Cannot Last

by Matt Flickinger

  No matter how much he hoped it would happen, none of the visions of their first kiss came close to the actual moment. Despite not being ready, all of it happening so fast, when he plays it back later, for once, he will have the perfect word to describe a moment: wonderful.

  Kissing Charlotte is like capturing sunlight. Like every unattainable word and idea swirling around him is right there in her lips. As she pulls away, Zain inhales and slides his hands from her back to her sides, her stomach tightening beneath his thumbs. Her eyes open slowly, ribs contracting as she exhales. She leaves her fingers resting gently on his cheeks. Her eyes are happy (and a bit sad). He looks into her eyes without blinking and she smiles (a new best smile for the list). Even with the tears burning the pimples on his cheeks, Zain feels strong. She rises from his leg and swings herself back over, sitting on the bank, closer now. Two words, actually: totally wonderful.

  23

  Empty Houses

  On his way up the driveway Zain flips through the mail, looking for the Runner’s World magazine that should’ve been here a week ago. Catalogue, bill, letter from Aunt Mellie, bill, coupon book, bill. The last piece is a bright orange envelope with “Urgent: Overdue” printed on its front. Another one, Zain thinks.

  After such an eventful afternoon, he thought maybe his house would feel different again. But as he opens the front door he is greeted with the same warm emptiness. He sets the mail pile on the kitchen table facing his mother’s spot with the overdue notice on top. The kitchen always feels creepier than the rest of the house, probably because of the tile and the stale air, and the clock ticking away loudly through the emptiness. Zain thinks there must be a scary room in every house. Like how kids in movies are always scared of the basement. No basements in the desert, though, so the kitchen was his scary room. Just when the house is empty or everyone is asleep, though. When he was little and woke up thirsty, late at night, Zain always opted for gulping water from the bathroom tap across from his room rather than going to the kitchen to fill a cup. He doesn’t avoid the room now, though, doesn’t set the mail on the table quickly and run back out to the living room, and doesn’t avoid looking at the clock like the movement of the second hand is ticking away toward his doom. Not now, just when he was younger (before the empty house became the normal house). It’s still an hour until his mother comes home. Unless she has plans. Zain slips the coupon book from the mail pile and heads to his room.

  Charlotte’s phone ding with a text from her sister. “Two days, seester!” She isn’t mad that it’s the first she’s received from her sister in a month. Distance is a family trait. If the Hansons had a crest, the motto “Out of sight, out of mind” would blazon the top of the shield. The image beneath would probably be wrinkled worthless papers grasped in the claws of two determined lions, facing away from one another. It’s not that her family doesn’t love each other (except maybe her parents), it’s just that they’re all busy. Busy with respective lives. Charlotte used to revel in the freedom this distance afforded her. Most of her friends outwardly jealous of the lack of family responsibilities and parental oversight. Over the last few months, though, starting with her self-inflicted isolation phase in the spring, she has begun wondering if the freedom of seclusion is worth the loneliness. Not that she wants to hang out with her family all the time, or that she would suddenly be capable of standing her too-perfect sister for long periods of time. More like wondering how different she might be if distance weren’t the default family trait. She taps out a text on her screen, “Two more days! Can’t wait to see you!” Other sisters probably text each other about all sorts of things, all the time, problems with friends, period pains, pretty little boys they kiss on river banks. Oh well, Charlotte thinks.

  When her phone dings a half hour later, she doesn’t look up from her typewriter right away. She finishes the paragraph, glances briefly at her phone screen, “Me neither!” then gets back to work.

  The grid on his bed is impressive. Coupons of all colors and sizes, for all sorts of products, spread out across his plain gray comforter. Zain started cutting coupons for recognizable things— canned goods from the pantry, powdered dish and laundry detergent, even daily vitamins—then just kept going. Cutting them out was meant as a helpful distraction, maybe save some money on their next trip to the grocery store and keep his mind focused on something other than Charlotte. Not that he doesn’t want to think about her at all, but thinking about the afternoon is kind of overwhelming. If he doesn’t stay somewhat occupied, all the day’s little moments collect and spill over in his mind, like a blender without a lid. Her body so close to his, her fingers woven with his on the way out of the park—before they saw the park ranger and started running—and the feel of her lips, first at the river, then later (bonus kiss!) on her porch before she closed the door. It all makes him so happy, but also kind of scared. He isn’t sure of what. He is sure, however, that most of the coupons he has cut out in trying to stay distracted is useless. Zain holds up the mangled book, stripped of most its guts, the few remaining pages hanging from the limp spine. He tosses the book on his bedside table and gathers some of the coupons from the grid into a pile. Unfolding stiff knees over the bedside, Zain takes the pile of usable coupons to the kitchen table.

  When he returns, the sunset spills slotted light across the checkered grid of remaining coupons. They look lonely, so far from each other in the spaces created with all the others’ absences. Zain slides his sketchpad from his bag and opens it. The art contest flier is folded behind the front cover. He unfolds it and reads “All mediums welcome.” Zain flips through the sketch book, past the redraw of the doors, past an angel with wings made of fingers, and past two empty suits in combat. He stops on the page with the man standing over the small body. The vast background he’s dreaded filling with the boring details of the surrounding alley stretches out in all directions over the shoulders of the crouching figure. He looks over the top of the pad at the spread of coupons, all those colorful leftovers. Already cut and destined for the trash. “What happens to the leftover?” he says. Over and over, the question plays as he gathers the papers in his hands.

  Charlotte presses hard on the period key of her typewriter and sits back. She raises her hands over her head, and shouts, “Aah! Yes!” A certain bit of cheesiness is excusable when you finally. Finish. A. Story. Especially this story.

  She has never really figured out what constitutes irony. But keeping only the last line—the line that gave you the most problems—from a story that you couldn’t figure out how to finish and using it as a last line in a story that you complete in one sitting must qualify. Especially if the changed line and the new story is better. She reads the final paragraph again.

  The desert storm fills the fields and streets, the rain finally reaching the dry ditch behind the girl’s house. The beautiful, shirtless boy stands in the ditch bottom as it fills. He races the water to the street, ducks and sprints through the tunnel, the water of the valley roaring behind him. He reaches the other end of the tunnel just in time. He spins and sprints up the embankment.

  All that time she wasted staring at the old story, she thinks. She didn’t realize she was actually done with it, too done to finish. It wasn’t the story she couldn’t give up on, but her words. Many of them still work, they just needed a different boy.

  24

  Saturday and Sunday Mornings

  Zain wakes to his phone buzzing on his bedside table. Saturdays used to mean bacon. The sizzles and pops in the pan drawing him back into consciousness with a warm scent that settled into the walls, smelling up the house all through the weekend. The house is cold and quiet now. Zain grabs his phone and pulls up the text, “I finished my story. You might like it.”

  Slouched on the side of his bed, looking down at his phone, he considers his response options. There’s cool, right on, or—the usual— no response. She’s not just the girl who gave you your first real kiss (7th grade truth or dare doesn’t count), Zain thinks
, she’s Charlotte. She’s real and cool and talks to you and listens and then kisses you. He types his response and sends it before he can stop himself. Before he can think too much more about it, or regret using the word love, “I would love to read it.” He would love to read her story. Not because he could help like she’s helped Zain with his work. But because she is offering and because maybe she’ll read her words in her voice. Maybe on the river bank and he will find a way to move across the space between them and kiss her this time (yeah, right). It’s worth a shot, he decides, a text at least.

  There’s a knock on his bedroom door. “Are you up?” his mother asks, through the door.

  “Yes.”

  “Get dressed. We need to run some errands.”

  Errands? His mom never asks him to run errands.

  “Okay,” he says.

  It’s been a while since he’s gone anywhere with his mother. The car feels smaller. As he buckles up, Zain has to move the seat back, so his knees don’t graze the dashboard. The first stop is Walmart. Zain’s mother tells him to try on some jeans and pick out some winter shirts while she looks in the ladies’ section. Zain hates shopping for clothes. It might be different if they could go somewhere else, somewhere cooler, he thinks, but probably not. He wouldn’t know what to select anywhere else either. Zain pulls a pair of gray slim fit jeans from the shelf, then a baggier blue pair. He finds two black long sleeve shirts. One of the shirts is plain black cotton. The other of his usual athletic style, the stitching a grey color. When Zain comes out of the changing rooms his mother is holding a button up orange plaid shirt. She looks at Zain’s slim fit jeans and nods, “try this on. You can wear it for Thanksgiving dinner.”

  Zain is usually excited for the trip because El Paso means staying with Aunt Mellie. She is, without a doubt, the coolest person in the family. A seriously interesting college professor with strange collections tucked into every corner and cabinet of her house: records, books, art pieces, old photos and magazines. If she didn’t look so much like his mother, he would assume his mother had been adopted. They’re so different. What Zain really likes about Aunt Mellie, though, is that she talks to him like he is a real person. Last spring, after his dad died, so many people (counselors, teachers, random friends of his mom) started asking him how he was and if he felt okay and if today was a good day or a tough day. Zain knew most of them were trying to help, but they had never asked before, so he had a hard time being all that nice or talkative. Aunt Mellie had always asked about him, though, listened, laughed, really cared about his answers.

  As cool as Aunt Mellie is, this year, Zain just wishes he could stay in River Valley. For the first time he has a reason to stay. Charlotte will be in town and told him that she wants him to meet her sister. Maybe go to a show, she said. Hanging out with Charlotte and her college sister, listening to a band, sounds better than another mostly boring Thanksgiving in El Paso. Zain tries on the weird orange button shirt, and looks into the mirror. It fits, but makes him look younger. Like a little boy. His mother looks up from her phone when he comes out, “That’s nice.” Zain goes back into the dressing room and pulls the shirt over his head, not bothering to unbutton it. He tucks it between the two black ones on his way out of the changing room.

  “She’s not even here yet,” Charlotte says as she enters the kitchen. Her mother has fixed pancakes, again.

  “No reason not to start our family week out nice,” Charlotte’s mother says, plopping a steaming pancake onto a plate.

  “Nicely,” Charlotte says.

  “Charlotte,” her father says, not looking up from his newspaper. He crosses his legs and a bald knee peeks out from his bathrobe. Charlotte grabs her coffee mug from the cabinet and pours a full cup. Her mother sets a plate of three enormous pancakes in front of her as she sits.

  “These are ridiculous,” Charlotte says. Her father shakes his newspaper.

  “You’re welcome,” her mother says.

  “Thank you, mother dear,” Charlotte says. After the second pancake, Charlotte taps out and heads to her room to text Zain.

  How was your morning?

  I had to go shopping for clothes. You?

  My mother made giant pancakes??

  I like pancakes.

  She’s been so domestic lately. It’s only cuz my sister is coming home.

  Oh.

  When do you leave?

  I’m back from the store.

  For El Paso?

  Oh. Tomorrow morning.

  Can you get away later?

  Totally.

  Lol. You love that word.

  It’s my jam.

  Lol. What time?

  7?

  We’ll swing by and pick you up

  We?

  Toni and me.

  Cool.

  Totally.

  At 6:30 Zain scrapes his plate and loads it into the dishwasher. His mother took a glass and a bottle of wine and her premade Walmart salad-for-one into her room a half an hour ago. He weighs sneaking out again. He could crack the door and slip out before the hour to wait on the porch until Charlotte and Toni pull up. Probably better not to press his luck, though, he thinks. First off, he got away with it last weekend and he doubts his luck will hold up for a second round. Especially since this time she’s still awake. She might hear the door or worse, Toni’s car. He pictures his mother in men’s pajama bottoms, chasing them down the street, wine spilling from the bottle in her hand. Secondly, the whole run home a week ago, he’d been worried about getting caught, but, more than that, seeing that look in his mother’s eyes again. It hadn’t really registered after the BPM until he thought about it later. His mother wasn’t just pissed, she had been worried. Even if it was mostly pissed, he’ll just have to ask.

  He knocks and opens the door before she calls him in. “Mom?”

  She sits up in bed as he cracks the door, “What’s up?”

  “I was wondering if I could go over and hang out with Jackson and some of his theater friends tonight.”

  She takes a sip from her glass and mutes the TV. “Jackson hasn’t been over in a while. You guys still friends?” The cork rolls off the table as she sets her glass on the table next to the bottle, half empty already.

  “Ya. I just haven’t seen him in a while.” Zain says. It’s not exactly a lie, he thinks.

  She looks at the clock on the dresser across the room.

  “If not—“ Zain starts.

  “Be home by ten,” she says.

  Zain nods, “Ok. Thanks.”

  “We leave at nine in the morning.”

  Zain closes the door and retreats to his room. He pulls the clothes from the plastic Walmart bag on his bed and takes the tags from the black cotton shirt before pulling it over his head. He pulls off his shorts and retrieves his favorite jeans from the top of his laundry hamper, leaving the new ones folded on the shelf. No need to look like he’s trying too hard.

  Sitting on the front porch, as the sun disappears down the street, Zain thinks about Sunday mornings as a kid. How he used to climb into the smelly warm bed with his parents at seven thirty, no earlier. He always woke at six and snuck to the living room, sitting so close to the living room TV it made his eyes water. Turned the volume way down and watched cartoons. Then that show about space exploration, sometimes drawing rockets on the screen with his foggy breath and a finger during the commercials. The show seemed so long until the credits finally rolled up over the screen. Before the morning news, he’d turn off the TV and tiptoe down the hall, open the door so carefully. His father always welcoming him with a sleepy smile.

  A red car bumps up over the curb and screeches to a stop behind the Honda Civic. Charlotte looks out from the windshield, smiling. Zain jogs down the walk quickly, looking behind him, hoping his mother is still in bed. He opens the passenger side door and squeezes into the backseat behind Charlotte. Toni nods into the rearview, “Hey there, Hall Pass.”

  25

&nbs
p; First Show

  The show is only a couple miles from his house and the street is lined with cars. Nothing like the college party from the other night, but still a pretty respectable showing, according to Toni. She clicks off the car and (thankfully) the screaming singer’s voice blasting from the speakers. Charlotte takes the last sip from Toni’s big gulp and lifts the seat. As soon as he’s out of the car, Zain can hear the drums. They walk up the sidewalk toward the music. A deep thrumming picks its way through the hollow beating of the drums. That’s the bass guitar, Zain guesses. Charlotte and Toni walk arm and arm through the side yard gate, Zain following.

  The band is backed up against the rock wall of the backyard, speaker stacks punctuating the front of their performance space. A group of people bob their heads just feet from the band. As Zain, Charlotte, and Toni stop at the back of the group, Charlotte asks loudly over the music, “Who is this again?”

  “Miguel from The River Bitches?” Toni says. Charlotte motions to the bass player. Toni nods, “It’s his new band, The Debutaunts, like ‘taunts’ with an au.” Charlotte nods again and they all stand listening.