The Opposite of Here

by Tara Altebrando

  And enter a small planetarium. Stars surround their first kiss.

  END MONTAGE

  We’re in his stateroom.

  I know if I say stop, he’ll stop.

  Only I don’t want to say it.

  It’s like the damaged version of my self is floating out of me—like a lingering spirit or tortured ghost that finally accepts that it’s not welcome here anymore. When it’s gone, I’m finally fully there. Exorcized of some of my past hurts. Healed. And for a moment, at least—with our bodies entwined—I’m exactly where I want to be.

  We lie together, just breathing. After a while, I lift my head. “Do you have a picture of her?”

  He stands and picks up his phone and wakes it up, and then he scrolls for a bit, taps around, comes back to me.

  She has a tiny nose and high cheekbones and an unruly head of wavy blond hair. Her nose is pierced and she has dark eyeliner on that has the effect of making her look even paler than she is. She has a broad smile and a crooked eyetooth and thin lips, and she’s wearing a pendant of some kind on a leather choker around her throat. Her eyes are bright and trusting and fearless. I don’t know if she’s pretty or beautiful or cute or any of those words I hate.

  I say, “She looks amazing.”

  He says, “She was.”

  Then we’re quiet and I want to ask more about her but not if it’s painful for him. Finally, he just starts talking. “She had a lot of anxiety problems, you know? Just insecurity kind of stuff that would spiral. Nobody knew why she was so worried about the SAT. I mean, she was so smart. My parents got her therapy because she seemed depressed and then all this … And Ray thinks there must have been more to it; more that we’ll never know. Like he thinks maybe the doctor did something physical to her? I don’t know. And I don’t know if we’ll ever know. I’m coming to peace with that. My brother, not so much.

  “All I really want is to find a way to remember her, to honor her, but separate from everything that happened. It’s hard. She made that bracelet for me, you know? She’d just sit in front of the TV and make them, and when I thought I lost it in the water, I seriously thought I was going to lose my shit. Even though it’s just a dumb string bracelet.”

  “Wait,” I say. “You still have it?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “I just can’t tie it on again. I mean it’s physically impossible to do it alone.”

  “Where is it?”

  He goes to get it and brings it over, and I tie it back on for him.

  Tight.

  I spot the floating glass girl on the way back to my stateroom to shower and change for dinner. She’s reading by the pool. I walk over to her. She deserves to know.

  “Hey,” I say.

  She says, “Hey.”

  “I wanted to talk to you. About the other night? The floating glass?”

  Her expression darkens. “I’m not crazy or whatever.”

  “I didn’t say you were.” I slide into the chair opposite her.

  “And I wasn’t drunk either.” She’s wearing a really cool swirly tunic, and even in the middle of all of this I’m tempted to ask her where she got it.

  “I didn’t think you were,” I say. “I have a theory, actually.”

  Now she looks at me like I’m the crazy one.

  “Did you meet a guy beforehand?” I ask. “Tall. Good looking. Super charismatic.”

  She pauses to think, then nods. “Yeah, actually. He was funny. I haven’t seen him since then. Do you think he drugged me?”

  “I think he hypnotized you.”

  “For real?” she says, and she looks like she might cry and I wonder if it’s because it’s not the only time in her life a guy has somehow taken advantage of her and how depressing is that?

  “Yeah, it wasn’t your fault,” I say. “It sounds like he can make people do things.”

  “Why would he do that? Like that specific thing?”

  “His sister drowned. There was a glass in the pool when they found her. It’s sort of a long story after that.”

  “That’s messed up,” she says.

  “What did it look like?” I ask after a beat, and I’ve found my own feet again, like I’m grounded again after being afloat.

  She looks confused.

  “The glass? Like, was it a regular glass or a champagne flute? What?”

  She sighs. “I don’t remember. I only sort of remember a feeling. That it was … magical.”

  Nora’s in the stateroom, and for a second I think about just walking out, not dealing.

  “Can we please talk?” she says, with some attitude.

  I can’t find words.

  She says, “It wasn’t my fault.”

  And even though I’ve been thinking the same thing, the fact that she says it actually makes me mad at her, even if it’s just because she doesn’t seem sorry, doesn’t feel bad either. Shouldn’t one of us?

  I say, “You fell in love with my boyfriend!”

  “It wasn’t a decision!” She says, “I’m sorry, okay?”

  “You don’t sound sorry.” I sit on the bed.

  “We didn’t do anything, like, physical, if that makes a difference.”

  “It doesn’t.” Or does it? I don’t know. I don’t want to be having this conversation at all except that I also don’t want to be the person I was yesterday who was living in some fantasy. I don’t even know why we’re having the argument. I wasn’t even in love with him! But she didn’t know that. How could she when I hadn’t either?

  “Did you, like, hang out behind my back?” I ask, now curious as to the specifics of how it even happened.

  She shrugs a shoulder, opens a drawer, and takes out a hot pink bra. “I mean, only a little. And not in some really calculating and planned way. Just we’d see each other places and talk and it sort of developed from there.”

  “So, like, who made the first move?” I can’t believe I’m asking this, but I guess I want to know and be done.

  “Move?”

  “You know what I mean.” I can’t stop looking at the bra.

  She sighs. “One day he asked me why I didn’t have a boyfriend. And I said something like, maybe the right person’s taken.”

  “Oh, jeez.” I get up and go to look at the balcony doors; anything to get her bra out of my line of sight.

  “What? I’m sorry. And he said, well, maybe that will change. And then the next time I saw him he was, like, asking for advice. He wanted to know how I thought you’d take it, if he ended it, and I told him that if he wasn’t into you anymore, he had to be honest and it didn’t matter how you took it.”

  “Well,” I say. “That much is true.”

  She says, “I don’t know what else you want me to say.”

  “I just wish you’d told me before now.” There’s no land as far as the eye can see. We’re stuck here.

  “If I had been able to think of a way to handle it better, I would have,” she says. “But then I also got caught up in my own, you know, loss. And having to hide it. And that was really hard.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Anyway, not like this is an excuse, but we haven’t been that close this year. I mean, something changed. You stopped wanting to come over, and things seemed weird.”

  Of course she would have sensed the shift. It’s time to put it behind us, along with everything else.

  I turn to her and say, “Something happened the night we were hanging out with your brother’s friends. That guy Todd Hendricks. He followed me outside, and he did something I didn’t want him to do. Your brother came out and that was the end of it but then I felt like your brother probably misinterpreted what happened but I didn’t know how to explain it and then I couldn’t stand the idea of seeing them—Todd or your brother—at your house so I just started making up excuses.”

  She looks off into the distance for a minute. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It felt too weird. I never told anyone. Until today. I told Michael.”

  Her tone change
s, softens—maybe with relief that we’ve changed the subject. “What’s going on with all that?”

  “I’m not sure,” I say.

  “And what about the other one?”

  “No idea,” I say. “There have been some … revelations. Since last night.”

  “Revelations?”

  “It’s a lot. I’ll tell you all together later, okay?”

  “We’re doing this painting party thing in like a half hour. You want to come?”

  Blank canvases on stands are perched in front of high stools. There are sets of paints and brushes in plastic-wrapped kits on each stool. The girls have saved a spot for me between Nora and Lexi. They’re in the middle of an animated conversation so only nod hi. And I think about turning around and leaving, because that’s what I do, except for once I sort of feel like staying. It’s a safe place to be for a little while before the talent show. The feeling of dread of actually, finally seeing Ray in the flesh is growing inside me, pulsing like some in-utero alien.

  “What about this?” Lexi says. “We show two teens—one of us, one of the guys—and they meet in the teen lounge or something and there’s all this chemistry. Like they start dancing together without even speaking. And then the song’s over and she says, “I have a boyfriend.” And he says, “Me, too.”

  “Wait, he’s gay?” Charlotte says.

  “Yeah. I mean, that’s what’s cool about it. It’s unclear. It’s intriguing. Open to interpretation.” She holds up a finger. “No, wait. This is even better. We flip it. Have him say I have a girlfriend and she says me, too. It’s even more surprising that way. Right?”

  “I like it,” I say.

  “We can shoot it after this ridiculous gathering,” she says, turning to me.

  “What are we painting?” I ask.

  Nora points to the front of the room, where a completed painting sits on a stand facing us. It’s a tropical beach scene, with four Adirondack chairs with their backs to us, a few palm trees.

  “It’s like they picked it just for us,” Lexi says.

  “The blue chair is mine,” Charlotte says.

  “I’ll take the peachy one,” Lexi says.

  “Nat?” Nora says.

  There’s a lime-green chair and a yellow one. “Green,” I say.

  “Perfect,” Nora says.

  Charlotte’s Shaun comes in, smiles when he spots her.

  “I dared him to come,” she says. “He’s going to be so bad at this.”

  The teacher guides us through the painting, and it turns out that Shaun is not as bad at painting a tropical beach scene as Charlotte thought he would be.

  “Never underestimate,” he says when he reveals his painting, which is near perfect.

  Charlotte nods slowly. “I’m impressed.”

  Dinner is back in the Top O’ the Mast, and it’s like I’m a different person since I was last there. We’re at the same table we were at four days ago, so we’re next to the same fish tank. I can’t be sure, but I think there’s a fish missing—a sliver of silver that had some blue on its tail; I wonder whether any of the other fish notice that the head count is off.

  We chat about everything and nothing—Lexi talks herself out of her two-line movie idea; my father tells an origin story about the word “posh”—“port out, shore home” cabins were considered best; my mother tells a story about a horrible sunburn my father got on their honeymoon. I want to tell them all what I’ve learned about Ray and Michael and Amelia except not really. Not yet.

  The girls think the talent show sounds fun but then luckily decide that the Ping-Pong tournament sounds more fun, so we all head there.

  I have a plan.

  INT. TEEN LOUNGE -- NIGHT

  A group of teens are gathered around a Ping-Pong table. A girl and a boy--NATE and LEXI--are playing. The competition is tense. Lexi serves. Nate misses. Lexi readies her next serve with a flirtatious smile.

  Nearby, another girl--this is NATALIE--turns to the girl--CHARLOTTE--beside her.

  NATALIE

  I’m just popping out for the talent show.

  Charlotte gives her a meaningful, skeptical look.

  NATALIE (CONT’D)

  I’ll explain everything later.

  There’s already a sizable crowd in the Lunar Lounge when Michael and I enter. We take seats at the back.

  The host is the same crew member who hosted the movie-theme-song game on our first night. He says, “All our performers have been vetted for quality. Just kidding. But they did read the daily newsletter and knew you had to sign up yesterday if you wanted to be a part of this today.”

  There’s still no sign of Ray when it starts.

  First on stage is a six-year-old girl named Lucy who sings an amazing jazz song that I don’t know but which I think the host said was Nina Simone’s. When she’s done, the crowd goes wild. Michael and I exchange impressed looks. It’s going to be hard to top.

  An older woman in a tight dress does a Bollywood dancing sort of number that’s pretty cool.

  Still no Ray.

  The host wheels out a cart full of glasses and a guy gets up and plays a song on them with his fingers on their rims. It’s the “Hallelujah” chorus. Also impressive.

  There are a few more singers—a girl sings “Part of Your World” and the whale moms groan—then a guy plays a harmonica, then two sisters do a capable dance routine, then a guy plays piano—that ragtime song the ice cream truck at home plays.

  Still no sign of him.

  “And for our final act,” the host says, “we have a passenger who is going to dazzle us with some of his hypnosis skills. I’ll call him up in a second, but we’re going to need a few volunteers for this one. Anybody? Anybody? I have five chairs up here, and we’re going to need to fill them.”

  A voice from behind us: “I prefer to choose my own victims.”

  It’s Ray.

  “I mean, volunteers.”

  Michael gets up and blocks Ray’s path. “You have to stop.”

  Ray tilts his head, an uncomprehending robot. “Stop what?”

  “I must have had too much to drink at dinner,” the host says. “I’m seeing double.”

  A few people laugh. Ray pushes past Michael and sees me.

  I can’t believe he showed up.

  He can’t believe I showed up.

  “Okay,” he says as he steps up onto the stage. “Let’s get this party started. Show of hands for willing volunteers.”

  I raise mine.

  “Natalie, no,” Michael says.

  “Don’t worry,” I say. “It’ll be fine.”

  But Ray doesn’t call on me. He picks a few other people, but then I’m the only one with my hand still in the air. “Fine,” he says. “Natalie.”

  “Wait,” the host says. “You two know each other. Is that like against the rules?”

  “Rules, schmules,” Ray says, and some people laugh.

  “And the rest of you are …”

  He goes down the row of chairs with the mic and people say their names, “Joe. Lisa. Frank. Angela.”

  “Nice to meet you all,” he says. “Now I want you to concentrate on one thing. I want you to concentrate only on the sound of my voice. Just the sound of my voice. I’m going to say the word “bananas” in a few minutes and when I do, you are all going to fall into a deep sleep, and when I say that same word again, you will wake up in an altered state and will listen only to me.”

  I don’t know whether I believe in hypnosis or not.

  I don’t think I do, but I’m not sure.

  This is the only way to find out.

  Ray says, “And here we go. Again, just the sound of my voice, nothing else, no interruptions. You’re very relaxed, very focused, the time is now, the time is yours, and bananas.”

  There’s this thing we learned about in driver’s ed called highway hypnosis. It’s something that happens to long-distance truck drivers. Their body switches into this mode where they’re driving but they don’t even realiz
e they’re consciously doing it. It’s like they get to their destination and wake up there.

  I feel truly awake for the first time in my life while pretending to be hypnotized.

  I hear every word; every joke; every silly thing the other people on stage are made to do. I hear every cough. Every laugh. The clank of glasses on tables. The sound of shifting chairs. The underlying hum of the boat.

  Ray goes easy on me. He gives me a simple direction, to fall asleep on the person beside me. I lean into the man next to me, wanting to see what Ray will have me do next, wanting to figure out why he is even doing this, why he needs this, what he hopes to prove or find. He moves on. Leaves me there, completely in control without his knowing it.

  I think about speaking up, blowing up his game. But all the other volunteers are going along with it, doing increasingly nutty things. Are they actually hypnotized? Will I somehow jeopardize them if I speak up?

  I choose silence.

  I feel like everything that came before all of this was stuff I let happen but didn’t choose.

  But you can’t go through life in a daze, it turns out.

  You need to kick and claw and push and pull and scream.

  You need to stand up for what’s right—or even just for yourself.

  You need to be wide awake.

  You need to be exactly where you are whenever you are because blink and you’ll miss it.

  Anything else is wasting time, wasting words, wasting kisses and turns around the sun.

  Anything else is bananas.

  The people beside me look dazed, and I guess I do, too. My hair is in my face; I push it out of the way and smooth it behind my ears.

  Ray is taking a bow, then he says, “And please, a big round of applause for the real stars of the show.” He waves his arm in our direction, and the crowd goes wild. I want to bat away the applause; it’s too loud, too close.

  “What happened?” the guy next to me says to me.

  I don’t have time to answer.

  Ray’s heading for the exit.

  I look for Michael. I catch sight of him getting up, and following Ray.

  I stand and bolt toward the exit. I see Michael way up ahead down the long hallway, and I run as hard as I can after him.