Four Three Two One

by Courtney Stevens

  “I . . .”

  I had very little time to screw my face into something resembling a smile. Stalling, I said, “Uh, well . . . you really are forty tonight.” And then I swatted him with my napkin to buy myself a private thought. The napkin batting made everyone chuckle and one of the kids chanted, “Chan and Golden sitting in a tree,” and my mother said something to the effect of, “Who here had their forever sweetheart locked in by eighteen? Let’s see a show of hands.” She was proud, luminescent as the bug zapper on the back porch. Dad, who rarely spoke unless it was to yell at the television during a University of Kentucky basketball game or to read poetry to his cows (not a joke), raised my camera, a used Canon, and snapped a picture of Chan lifting the box to my hand. That could have been at Mom’s instruction, but maybe not—the guy read Wendell Berry to his bull.

  Only Gran looked twitchy and unimpressed.

  I leaned close to Chan’s ear, planted a kiss against his lips, and said, so only he could hear, “I wish you’d told me,” and he said, so only I could hear, “I tried three days ago.” This close, his anxiety beat against me like a hammer. He reached back in time and found a phrase. “Chan and Golden versus the world?”

  I nodded. I owed him that and much more.

  The world, it turned out, was a fairly large opponent.

  2. IN A PERFECT UNIVERSE

  $0

  After the dishes were washed and the silver was polished and returned to the sideboard, I walked Chan home. The night air was a towel taken out of the dryer too soon. Warm and damp. We were quiet, neither of us broaching the blazing-hot topic of the evening. I was soaking in thoughts and pruny from the effort. We were nearly to his door, and I came right out with my question. “Why in the world would you do that?”

  “Because I love you.”

  “And?”

  “No and.”

  Despite being one great big bounding teenaged love story with all the bells and whistles and firsts, loving me wasn’t the only reason he’d asked. I was certain. Sometimes a voice was like a deep, deep cave. Most parts, you’ve explored and mapped, but there are always uncharted sections. I knew what Chan sounded like when he was excited, happy, angry, hurt, worried, delighted; he was none of those now. He was something else entirely, and I had no idea what.

  He laughed uneasily, the whole thing so very backward that I felt outside of myself. “I guess you’re stuck with me now, Golden Jennings,” he said, fiddling with a button.

  “Guess so.”

  And we stared at each other oddly, and he went inside and I walked home. No kiss. No conversation. No text to say, Sorry that was strange as hell. We didn’t even exchange our nightly I love yous. I certainly didn’t think we’d stopped loving each other, but understanding each other . . . that appeared to be a problem.

  At home, I placed my sparkling new ring in the bathroom soap dish and collapsed resentfully at my desk. I was so out of it I didn’t hear Gran climbing the steps. She leaned halfway into my room. “Are we watching or do you need a break after that meal?”

  She avoided the word engagement. I was grateful she let the whole thing breathe and waved her inside. Gran shut the door and I opened tonight’s episode of Accelerant Orange. Sitting shoulder to shoulder with her, connected by a shared pair of earbuds, I felt better than I had all evening. Mom thinks we’re watching Miyazaki films, because sometimes we do, but really we’re obsessed with this inexplicable event in my life that is so bizarre, we, along with millions of other followers, can view its footage from any Wi-Fi connection in the world. Actors must feel similarly when they watch a movie they’ve starred in. Viewing the experience on the same thirteen-inch screen where I watched Netflix and cat videos built mental distance, but it also presented the delusion that Bus #21 wasn’t about my life. But it was. It really, really was.

  I hovered over the Play button. “You ready?”

  “Are you?”

  “What do you think the announcement is?”

  She twirled a diamond stud in her ear, which made me think of the diamond ring in my soap dish. “You never know with Carter.”

  Carter Stockton was one of those men with an Evinrude boat and a John Deere Gator in his garage. He had a Southern accent that pleased instead of grated, and a mouth buried under a mustache built for two. Gran thought he looked like a young Lionel Richie, and when I googled the singer, I saw what she meant.

  I pressed Play. The opening screen read: Accelerant Orange is one New York City medic’s attempt to craft the remnants of Charter Bus #21 into a life-size art installment.

  This was episode 45. The title flashed: “Opening Day.”

  I clutched the center of my T-shirt. Beside me, Gran gripped the laminate edge of the desk. “He’s done. He’s finished it,” she said.

  The camera zoomed in on a street sign outside the Green-Conwell Hotel and then back to Carter. “Hey, y’all,” he said. “For you out-of-towners, or those who missed episode two, I’m standing in front of the Green-Conwell Hotel with a big announcement. Before I get to that, thank you, folks, for following this difficult journey.” Carter took a sip from his Venti cup and sighed in a way that made the world sigh along. “In a perfect universe, you wouldn’t know me and this series wouldn’t have a half-million followers, but here we are. Doing our best to honor the families of Charter Bus Number Twenty-one.”

  Gran squeezed my hand. I squeezed right back. There was always a lot of hand squeezing that went on during these things. Plus, she had a little crush on Carter, and I can’t say I blamed her.

  “People ask why I’ve spent so much time and money working on this project. I gotta tell you, I didn’t know myself at first. I saw rubble and ruin licking my streets last June and thought, Carter, somebody needs to do something. And you know how it is. Something became Accelerant Orange, and somebody became me. Every now and then stories climb inside you and start telling themselves.”

  Someone bumped into Carter and the image jarred. There was no “Sorry, sir.” New York bustled by on her way somewhere else. The camera caught the shuffle of air and an Alabama medic smoothing his mustache.

  “I hope you’ve enjoyed my interviews with the families. It’s been a while since I showed you progress on the bus itself, and I’m hoping that means people will attend opening day. Which brings me to my big announcement. The mayor of New York and the manager of the Green-Conwell have asked me to move the installment.” Carter panned down the street. “To here.”

  I was transported in an instant.

  I am on my back. The city rises around me. The sky is warm gray haze. The sun is the color of buttercream icing. I try to place where I am. Buildings: 1920s architecture. Art deco arches with polished ivory pastiche. The Green-Conwell. Thousands of interlaced clay bricks forming dulled red walls. The muted patina trim racing along its elegant rooflines. New Wesley Church. Bicycles bumping and thumping over metal plates in the street. The closest street cart: falafel platter, half chicken, half lamb over rice, for $7.99. Starbucks coffee sleeves, trash bags piled in heaps, pedestrians crossing streets before the sign changes. Dogs on leashes.

  Everything pauses like a movie. Everything except the blood.

  I am not at home. I am in New York City. There was an explosion.

  Gran twisted a lock of my hair around her finger and I leaped back to the present, where Carter was still speaking through my computer. “We’re gonna block off the street and sell tickets. You’ll be able to walk through the bus and see what each family has donated to remember these precious kids. All the ticket sales will benefit them.

  “Speaking of money. From your emails, I’m aware many of you can’t make the opening in person and you’re champing to do something good. As you know, there are four survivors of Bus Twenty-one. They’re teenagers who should be thinking about what movie to see on Friday night instead of how to recover from an explosion. I got to know one of them through this process, and he’s a remarkable young man. In fact, this display wouldn’t be possible without hi
s help.”

  “Not Chan,” Gran said.

  Not Chan. The survivor helping Carter would need the spine of a sea urchin or a hedgehog. When it came to Bus #21, Chan had the exoskeleton of a cicada, crunchy and firm, and easily pulverized. “Must be Rudy.”

  Carter kept talking. “This community can do something special for him, for all four of them. I asked myself, what did I need at that age? The answer was simple. Money for college. So, I’m starting a donation fund between now and the opening—the web address is on your screen—and I’ll make sure every dollar is split evenly among all four survivors. I believe the people who are watching Accelerant Orange can invest in these young people and remind them we believe their future is more powerful than their past.”

  I paused the show. My emotions usually hung from shipshape shelves like a freshly stocked vending machine, and now, they were . . . not shipshape. In fact, they bore the disheveled look of a thing that would never be shipshape again. Like a dump. Or preschoolers working forty puzzles on a brightly carpeted rug.

  Gran and I faced each other. Her eyes were soupy with tears. “People are going to give,” she said.

  “No,” I said. Accelerant Orange was like rubbernecking an accident on the highway; everyone turned to see, hardly anyone cared enough to pull over and help.

  “I’ll start.” Gran seized control of my keyboard, opened a separate screen, and typed the address Carter listed. She put one hundred dollars into the account—the account that had already climbed to four thousand dollars in seconds—while I watched. I usually got twenty dollars in cash for my birthday. But a hundred dollars? That was steep love.

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I did.” She clicked back to the show.

  Carter was wrapping up his spiel. “I’m humbly asking you to join me on this Sunday afternoon, April fifteenth, in front of the Green-Conwell to see Accelerant Orange in person.”

  This Sunday.

  Bus #21. Back on the street.

  “I’m gonna close the way I always do, with one addition. To the four survivors, I’m here. If you want to talk or you need to discuss this project or you’d like to be involved, email me at busmedic421@wipturn.net. I’d love for you to be here to receive the college fund in person. If you can’t, we here at Accelerant Orange love you and believe in you. Thanks, y’all, and I hope to see everyone this Sunday.”

  Cut to black.

  3. LEAVE THE FAFSA UNMAILED.

  $4,128.00

  Gran wiped her earbud clean with the inside of her shirt. “Do you want to go?” she asked.

  “To college, or to the opening?”

  “Yes and yes.”

  “I don’t know.” I did know about college—yes—but the opening? She might as well have asked me if I’d considered living on Mars.

  There were noises in the hallway. Gran lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Think about your real answer. I’ll talk to your wardens.” She giggled at calling my parents wardens, and I did too. They weren’t strict, per se, but they’d grown particular about me adventuring too far from the nest.

  Mom knocked, and before I said “Come in,” she poked her head through the door wearing that same light, breezy happiness she’d had since dinner. “You two have fun watching TV?” she asked, to which Gran said, “I believe that was my favorite so far.”

  Slowly, Gran uncoiled the Tums roll she carried in her pants pocket, popped a chalky tablet into her mouth, and added, “Something at dinner gave me indigestion.” She disappeared into the hallway, and I steadied my face into an expression that wouldn’t make Mom think we were up to something. But Gran was always scheming. She’d started a commune, for God’s sake. And now she wanted me to consider college or New York, and I . . . I wanted my mother to leave so my brain could be alone.

  She was after a second viewing of Chan’s ring.

  “In the bathroom,” I told her.

  She disappeared, and the faucet ran—a dull white noise followed by a spritzing sound. Comet. She was cleaning scum from the soap dish. “You’ll have to be careful with the gold,” she yelled.

  “Gold doesn’t tarnish,” I yelled back.

  “Won’t tarnish, but it dulls.”

  I drummed my fingers on the desk. “Noted.”

  Mom was supposed to be sitting on the edge of my bed saying things like “Now, baby, are you sure about this thing with Chan?” Or “Don’t make Kentucky or the Hive a stereotype.” Or “You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. No rushing.” Instead, she returned to my room moony, twirling her own wedding ring around her finger.

  “He picked something classy.”

  I leaned toward my computer, hoping I looked uninterested. “Yep.”

  “A promise isn’t a marriage.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “But I . . .” She tsked. She was the queen of tsks.

  “What, Mom?”

  “I can’t help but think stability would be good for you. After everything that’s happened.”

  “Stability like early marriage?”

  “Your father and I got married when we were your age. Gran and Granddad too. It’s not that strange for you to be thinking long-term when you’re surrounded by people who have done it successfully.”

  “So you’re for this? Balls to the wall; go get married.”

  “That’s not what I said, honey.”

  “What did you say?” I was aware I had acquired a slight growl, and given the circumstances, it didn’t seem disrespectful.

  “Don’t put words in my mouth,” she said. “I was simply stating that your relationship with Chan has always been solid, and I want solid things for your life. That doesn’t have to be marriage, early or late, with Chan or without, but never underestimate a good man to love and a great place to live.” There were no windows in my room, no way to point to a specific location, but she gestured widely with her arms, and I understood she meant the Hive.

  She wanted to keep me here. No big surprise. Kids raised in the Hive often stayed in the Hive. They learned a trade or an art form and they invested in the neighborly family who had invested in them. There were no repercussions for those who didn’t follow suit; we weren’t a dangerous, insidious cult or anything, but there was pressure to leave the FAFSA unmailed, on the kitchen table, for a very long time.

  “What about a career? College?”

  “You could commute. Take online classes? I think we could help you swing the cost of PCC, maybe. Your art is already very good, honey. You could open a shop and sell prints like gangbusters.”

  Did people still sell things like gangbusters? I didn’t think so, and certainly not from a commune in the middle of nowhere, Kentucky. I jumped right to the heart of the matter. “Maybe the world’s not so bad out there, Mom.”

  “Oh, sweetie.” She gave a soft, haughty laugh and flattened the wide cuff of her capri pants until it rested against her calf. “You of all people know how bad it can be.”

  I chose not to answer, and she chose to smooth my comforter, which was already military straight. After which, she moved on to my headboard, searching for something to do that would keep her wisdom and influence in my domain for another few moments. Atop the right wooden post was a stack of red beanies. She wove her fingers into the loose fabric of the topmost beanie as if testing its moral fiber. “What you guys have, what you nearly lost”—she suppressed a sigh that always came when a reference to New York was made—“what we all nearly lost . . . is it wrong for me to want you to spend the rest of your life feeling safe and loved?”

  As had always been true, agreeing with my mother was the only way to get rid of her. “You’re right, Mom. Now, I really need to finish this paper.” I angled my computer screen toward the opposite wall and nodded toward the door, since she seemed to have grown roots.

  “Don’t stay up too late,” she said.

  I was finally alone. Not totally alone. Gran’s voice was still there. Do you want to go? Do you want to go? Do you want to g
o? What if I did?

  I opened an email window. Forty-four times Carter Stockton had invited me to reach out, and forty-four times I’d ignored him.

  Dear Mr. Stockton,

  My name is Golden Jennings and I survived Bus #21. I’ve been following Accelerant Orange, and I’d like to talk.

  CAROLINE

  I was eating takeout from Taco Bell when bombs surfaced in their conversation the first time. Someone, maybe Johnny, maybe Dozer, had seen fifteen minutes of The Hurt Locker on TNT and wouldn’t shut up about it. There was some discussion of whether you had to be batshit or just not give a damn if you worked with bombs. I took another bite of a chicken quesadilla that needed more sauce and wished my homework would finish itself.

  Simon said, “Bombs are unpredictable.”

  And because I was testing my boundaries or nauseously tired I said, “Bombs are pure science.”

  Pure science is the wrong phrase to describe what I meant, but that’s what I said, so I can’t change it now. I meant bombs are systemic. Reliable. At least, that’s what my chemistry teacher drilled into our brains during a section on chemical reactions. Therefore, one could be perfectly sane, care about the dignity of life, and be a bomb maker. The army employed bros like that all the time.

  “Normal people make bombs. Crazy people set them off,” I told the guys.

  Simon paused the game and looked away from the screen. “Okay, little Miss Pure Science, tell us how to make a bomb.”

  “Potassium and sugar.”

  “That’s a heavy-ass redneck bomb. What if it needs to be portable?”

  “Google homemade C-Four and start from there.”

  “Really?”

  “No, asshole. I’m pretty sure you have to buy C-Four, and the government doesn’t take too kindly to purchasers.”

  I shouldn’t have called Simon an asshole. Not then. Not ever. Such brazen behavior led to “corrections” makeup couldn’t easily cover. As such, I didn’t ask why three dude-bros wanted portable bombs. I pretended I was bored with the conversation and buried my nose in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Surprisingly enough, they went back to their game and Doritos.