by Dalya Moon
“Your clothes are really wrinkly. Is nobody looking after you at your house?”
“Don't worry about me, I'll be fine. Hey, did you want to come eat with us? James and Julie are over there.”
“Uh ... sure. Okay.”
We start walking together back to the table, where James and Julie now have three steaming piles of recently-stir-fried food. “Listen, Raye-Anne, this might be a bit presumptive, but would you like to be my friend? That means you can call me any time you want to talk, in a totally platonic way.”
“Are you joking?”
“No, I just want to be your friend. Guys and girls can be friends, like me and Julie.”
She hesitates, and I worry I've overstepped the boundaries of normal behavior, but she agrees to be my friend, and even shakes my hand.
We sit down at the table, and I say to James, “What's this about eating cow?”
“The vegan ate a cow?” Raye-Anne asks, her eyes wide. “This may be a sign of impending apocalypse.”
Julie laughs into her hand. I think we'll enjoy having Raye-Anne as a friend.
“My mother,” James says, as though that's an explanation. “She wanted to use some old farmer's almanac cure to help heal my two black eyes.”
“You had black eyes? But your eyes look totally normal,” Raye-Anne says. “How did you get two black eyes?”
“Never mind,” he says. “Not an interesting story at all. Very long, very boring. Anyways, my mother thawed out a steak and made me hold it over my swollen eyes. Totally stupid.”
“How did that do anything for your eyes?” I ask.
“It didn't do anything. But as I sat there at the kitchen table, holding the steak to my eyes, I started to feel these weird vibrations from the meat.”
“Vibrations?”
James looks both ways across the food court and leans in. “It told me to eat the steak.”
I stop shoveling stir-fried veggies into my mouth and put down my fork. “No.”
“Oh, yes.” Julie says.
“Let me tell the rest!” James says, stopping Julie with one hand on her shoulder. “So, I fired up the grill, salted and peppered that plump little steak, and I ate it right up. Then, two days later, my eyes were completely healed.”
“Two days? Sounds like normal healing time to me,” Raye-Anne says.
“The steak was magic,” James says. “It was exactly what I needed.”
The stir-fry in front of James contains no meat, so I say, “I don't understand. Are you off being vegan now?”
“I'm done with labels,” James says. “Done. From now on, I'm just James. I eat a mostly plant-based diet, because it's better for my health and the environment, but from time to time, once every few months, I may eat a steak. If I choose.”
“You sure seem happy about this,” I say. “Did you have bacon this morning?”
“No, but for the first time in years, I finally got that taste out of my mouth.”
“What taste?” I ask.
He whispers, “The snails. The taste of them. I've finally forgotten.”
* * *
After we've finished our lunch, Raye-Anne joins us at the arcade. Julie's delighted to have someone to play the dancing game with, and I'm relieved it's not me.
James and I do our best to save the human species by shooting aliens. I'm laughing and having fun, finally feeling better for the first time in a week, when I see, out of the corner of my eye, Austin's long hair. I turn, hopeful, but it's some other girl. A blade of despair pierces in, just under my breastbone.
I try to shake off the feeling, but you can't really shake off feelings. That's just an expression. You may have control over your reactions and the things you do or say, but you can't control your feelings. Feelings are like the weather; they come and go of their own volition.
Hiding the hollowness I have inside me, I try to put on an upbeat front so my friends won't worry. We play some more games and joke around, but I can't wait to finish our outing at the mall and go home.
* * *
Two weeks. It's been two weeks since we went to the lake, and two weeks plus one day since I met Austin, and I still can't stop thinking about her.
This morning, I took my weekly self-portrait and studied it on the computer, comparing it to the last year's worth of self-portraits. I'd like to put them all into a video some day, but for now I'm simply taking them as a way to record facial changes. My eyes in the recent picture are fascinating. Eyes can change quickly, because of the musculature around them. Psychological events may shift muscle tension, and so everything from love to loss is there in the eyes if you know how to look.
My eyes are definitely different today. It isn't the lighting, either, because I took a number of shots. In every single one of the new pictures, I look ... worse. I look like someone who's lost something, or is being haunted.
You know that trick they do in horror movies, where the person thinks he sees his dead wife, or the serial killer, but it's actually just a waiter? That happens for real. It happens to people in real life, and that's why they put it in movies. Of course you don't believe this phenomenon until it happens to you. Why would you? The whole thing seems crazy.
I've seen the old woman, Heidi, everywhere. Of course, it's not her—it's never her, but still my brain transmits a false image. It's the paper boy, or a neighbor, or the checkout lady at the supermarket, wondering why I'm hyperventilating in line.
And the birds. Have there always been a bunch of crows living around my house, watching me with their freakishly-intelligent eyes all day and night? Isn't a group of crows called a murder? Who the heck would give such scary creatures a suggestive name like that?
James doesn't understand my sudden fascination with crows. He and Julie think I'm paranoid, overreacting as a way to distract myself from the Austin situation.
The Austin situation.
I woke up this morning and did the same thing I've done every day for the last two weeks. I went to my computer and looked at the photos I took at the end-of-year party. I enlarge the images to maximum detail and look for a trace of illness on Austin's face. All I see is a beautiful girl, wondering why I never called.
I changed the sheets on my bed when Gran phoned to check in and remind me, but I left the pillowcase on the pillow Austin used on her one night here. I've been hugging the pillow and smelling it, and now it mostly smells like me—me, and Mibs, who's been sleeping on the pillow, as evidenced by little tufts of brown tabby fur.
Right now, as I'm stirring pasta on the stove, I fear I've made the wrong choice by trying to forget Austin. I pull out my phone to call James, knowing he'll talk me down.
By accident, I press the number for Julie. She answers, and sounds so happy to hear my voice, that I pretend she was the twin I meant to call.
“Julie, I keep thinking about Austin. Would you talk some sense into me?”
“Are you actually asking me for advice?” she asks. “Because I'm not going to say anything, unless you're ready to hear it.”
“Hit me with your best shot.”
“You're an idiot,” Julie says.
I pull the phone away from my ear and give it a dirty look, for all the good that does. “Thanks a lot, Julie,” I say into the receiver. “Much better than talking to James. I feel great now.”
“If your feelings are true, you have to go to her,” Julie says. “You know I want you to be happy. You might suffer if you see her, but you're suffering already. You mope around the house and you won't do anything fun whatsoever.”
“How am I supposed to have fun when ...”
“Exactly,” she says. “You have to go to her.”
I thank Julie, tell her I'll think about it, and end the call. I stare into the pasta water, bubbling on the stove. Julie's right. Forgetting Austin was not the right option. If Gran were here, she'd playfully slap me upside the head and call me a pickle-head.
I have to see Austin. Quick, what do I do? I turn off the stove, that's wha
t. Okay, stove's off, now what. Call her. No. Not big enough. I have to go see her. It's early evening, and maybe she's still at work, at that coffee shop.
“Mibs,” I say, snapping my fingers to get his attention. “Does Austin work at The Grind or at The Bean? It's called The Bean, right?”
Mibs gives me his yeah, totally, dude look, which is similar to his feed me look, only a hair less desperate.
“You miss Gran, don't you? Don't worry, she'll be home soon.”
Mibs makes a pathetic little cough.
“Hey, enough of that. Don't you die on me too,” I say, which I instantly regret. Who jokes about dying all the time like that? Me, apparently. How can I be around someone with a fatal illness and not say the wrong thing, constantly?
I should forget about Austin, for her benefit. She's got enough going on in her life right now; she doesn't need me and my dumb comments.
Mibs paws at my glass of orange juice, then takes a drink and makes a sour face.
“That's not good for you,” I say, pulling the glass away. “Why do we do things that aren't good for us?”
He blinks slowly, transmitting his kitty-cat wisdom straight to my heart. I have to see Austin, whether it's good for anyone or not. I can't go right now, though, because I'm too tired. That battle with Heidi tired me out.
I'll go tomorrow, first thing.
CHAPTER 13
The very next morning, I'm showered, shaved, and dressed in my best clothes before nine.
I'm standing across the street watching the window of The Bean when I realize I probably look suspicious. I sit on the bus bench, and my sweaty back is starting to stick to the wooden slats when a bus pulls up.
The bus door opens with a mechanical whoosh. “Hey, kid. You waiting for an engraved invitation?” the driver says.
“Oh, don't mind me, I'm just stalking someone,” I say. “I mean, watching someone.” I make a show of looking at my invisible watch. “Is this the number eleven? I'm sorry, I'm at the wrong stop.”
Faces fill the windows of the bus as the people on board turn to stare. From beside me, up the street, come the sounds of shoes clomping, and giggling. It's two girls—Missy and Facepuncher, from the lake.
I put my hand up over my face and pray they don't see me. Do they live here? Am I going to start seeing a lot more face-punched guys? I try to will myself invisible as the girls clomp onto the bus. Finally, the bus wheezes away, leaving me alone again on the bench, only now I'm the most conspicuous stalker on the planet.
An old woman walks out of The Bean. It's Heidi! She's coming to kill me! My body freezes in place, which is not the most helpful reaction.
Nope, false alarm, it's not even a woman, but a hippy-looking old guy with a leather braid headband. As my heart rate returns to life-sustaining levels, I try squinting harder to see past the reflections on the windows of The Bean.
Is that Austin in there? I can just see the top of someone's head from here, moving back and forth behind the counter. Is that really her, or another blonde? Maybe Austin already died, I think, which is also not helpful.
“For proper stalking, you need binoculars,” a man says, joining me on the bench. He wears a nice-enough gray suit, like a business man, but the pants are about three inches too short, and he's wearing a hat, which you don't see much in the summer. His face is deeply-lined, and the hair showing under the hat is as white as flour. His eyes are intensely deep—so deep I can barely see them, like holes. Despite being warm, goosebumps shoot up my arms.
“You're Zan, aren't you,” he says. “I knew your parents.”
I stop breathing, all the better to appreciate the sensation of my guts curdling.
“That was some nasty business,” the man says. “Any idea if what your father was trying to do actually worked?”
“I don't know what you're talking about,” I lie.
“Zan. Zan the little man. Dan's little junior man, like his old man, but smarter, right? You're smarter than old man Dan, aren't you, Zan?”
“Gee Mister, I think you have me confused with someone else. My name is Alex.”
He turns and looks at me with those dark holes where eyes shouldn't be so far back. “My friend Heidi was trying to help. Why won't you let us help you, Zan? We can take your suffering away. We can take it all away.”
I pretend to push my sleeve up and check my imaginary watch again. If ever there were a good time to suddenly remember I need to be elsewhere, it's now.
I sneak a sideways peek at the man, even as I'm pretending to ignore him. I've seen him before—a couple weeks ago, in the hallway at school. He knew my name then too.
Keeping my voice as calm and steady as I can, I say, “Look at the time. I've got to get to my appointment. Seeya around.”
When I stand up, my thin khakis stick to my legs. My shirt is moist, soaked with sweat. Is he going to follow me? He doesn't seem to be moving, but I don't know if I dare look, except out of the corner of my eye. Why am I so panicked? We're in public, right in the center of town, with people all around, going about their business.
I catch the attention of a woman carrying her groceries in one arm and a toddler in the other.
Help me, I plead with my eyes.
She smiles and nods on her way past, oblivious to my distress. Of course, she can't hear my pulse like I can.
I start to cross the street when I hear a sweet voice in my ear: Don't be careless.
I halt, and a big SUV speeds by, fanning my hair. Carefully, I check both ways, then cross the street, at a slow jog and trying to look casual. Instead of going into The Bean, I circle the block, keeping an eye out for Mr. Bad Suit. The bus bench is empty. The whole street is empty. A little too empty, but I don't know, maybe downtown is always like this. Maybe I'm imagining things, going crazy. Maybe I am crazy. Wait, crazy people never think that about themselves, do they? How can you know you're crazy and yet still act crazy?
I look for the busiest street and head there, stopping in front of shops to check the reflections in the windows for people who might be following me.
I'm not crazy, I tell myself. I know crazy.
Gran and I had a neighbor who thought she was nine months pregnant. Year after year, she was about to go into labor at any moment, according to her. She'd buy tiny little baby clothes, sometimes pink and sometimes blue, and show them to Gran. Gran looked so sad, watching the woman pushing an empty baby carriage around.
What I don't understand is, our neighbor lady could do basic math. She had to know nine months plus three years is not nine months. She always knew the day's date, always had clean clothes on, and most people she encountered probably didn't even guess she was crazy.
But late at night, at four in the morning, sometimes I'd hear her. She'd rant for hours, this one-sided conversation full of swear words, anger, and pleading. “I just want to have my baby in peace,” she'd wail. “Why won't you leave me alone?” Those were about the only parts I could make out. The shouting was loud enough for me to hear across the street, but the things she said weren't usually sentences. Just words.
The next morning, she'd be looking a little tired and would pat her swollen abdomen—swollen with what, I don't know—and say the baby kept her up late kicking. Most times she'd fix her gaze on a spot over your shoulder, but sometimes she'd look right at you, lucid as anyone, begging you with her eyes to keep complicit in her delusions.
One day she moved away, and Krystal moved into the house with her son. The whole neighborhood breathed a sigh of relief.
The woman came back once, and I saw her standing in front of the house, looking at the garden. Gran went to check on her, and she promised she'd be back for a visit right after the baby was born, but she was really busy right now, getting ready for the baby's arrival. “Isn't life wonderful and magical?” she'd said to Gran, and Gran had to agree. We all have our own perspective.
As I put my hand out to open the green wooden door of The Bean, I swallow hard and will myself to not think about crazy
people.
* * *
The girl is Austin and also not Austin. Has two weeks' time erased her face from my mind? Or have I overwritten reality with a fantasy version? This girl makes my heart soar and sink at once.
She's Sadmachine! Of course, she's the girl Julie and her friends call Sadmachine, and she's Austin's cousin. That's why she's fooling my emotions. There's a strong family resemblance, although this girl was not quite as blessed with the genetic lottery. Then again, she probably doesn't have an inoperable brain tumor.
When I reach the front of the coffee line, I stick my hand out and say, “Hi, I'm a friend of Austin's. I'm Zan. We've met, I think. I'm a good friend of your friend Julie. Well, mostly James. Her brother. No, I take that back. Julie is also my best friend. The twins are my co-best friends.”
In response, Sadmachine gives me a blank, dazed look. She's the exact opposite of someone you'd expect to find working in a funky little coffee shop. Finally, she shakes my hand. Compared to people who simply order their soy lattes or non-foam mochawhatevers, I probably am strange and stupid.
“The twins in question being James and Julie,” I say, continuing to talk and thereby removing all doubt about my stupidity. “Because they were, ah, born at the same time. James and Julie. Not that I was there. I'm a few months younger. And I was born in Kansas.”
“Kansas,” she says, a hint of amusement crinkling in the tiny lines around her eyes. Now that I see a bit of a spark in her, I can appreciate her as a person with good qualities, though not undeserving of her nickname of Sadmachine.
“I came to see Austin,” I say.
“Austin's really sick.”
“I know. I was hoping I could see her.”
Sadmachine looks at the big clock on the wall, which is the hugest clock I've seen outside of a bus depot—so big you might not recognize it as a timepiece, but be blinking at the giant beige thing covered in roman numerals while asking someone for the time. “Austin doesn't have very long,” Sadmachine says.
“You could say that about all of us,” I say solemnly. “Days, months, you could walk out of here and get hit by a bus.” As I say this, I picture the girl James saw at the bus loop, toppling to the ground, annoyed about all her papers scattering, but not appreciating the fact she was hit by a bus and lived.
