What is Real

by Karen Rivers

CUT.

  Wait.

  Dex Pratt is on a ledge. In the valley. Above the valley.

  He is baked. Show how he is baked. Zoom the camera in on his eyes. His pupils are huge. Which actually is weird because usually when he smokes pot, his pupils shrink. Discuss the difference. Don’t discuss anything. Zoom in to the black of his pupils and then zoom out and they are not his pupils, they are the black moving surfaces of the eyes of a…

  No, don’t do that.

  It isn’t that kind of movie.

  Use the black surface to show the reflection of the guy holding the camera, and the guy is Dex, and zoom in on his eye and show in the reflection that it’s also Dex. Dex and Dex and Dex, and he exists in so many layers, but in each of them he is alone.

  Show Dex on the ledge. Make the soundtrack something haunting or else some kind of song that’s a tearjerker. Ideally, Coldplay’s “Fix You.” That will get the audience rooting for Dex somehow being fixed.

  Show how Dex is unfixable.

  Show…

  DEX

  Holy shit, not this again.

  Show some kind of blinding light and then Dex rising up and twirling around. Somehow do that so it doesn’t sound as cheesy as it sounds and make it as terrifying as it actually is.

  I can’t do this now.

  CUT.

  CUT.

  I really fucking mean it.

  CUT.

  chapter 31

  I can’t make this stop.

  If this isn’t real, I can’t see how it isn’t. I am trying to force my eyes to stay open. It’s dizzying—I’m twirling around in the air. My arms and legs are so loose, they keep whipping around and it’s like I’m hitting myself. I force myself to not pass out. I force myself to keep breathing, even though the light does not feel like air. And when I look, it appears that the white light is going in through my mouth like smoke. It is going into me and I can’t stop it.

  I’m really genuinely piss-my-pants scared and I want to get off this fucking ride. Now. I can’t even pretend this is a movie that I’m making, because it isn’t and I’m not. And the camera is somewhere under Chelsea’s old desk under the stairs and I haven’t touched it.

  I’m going to die, I think.

  I keep breathing it all in. It stinks and I feel sick, but I make myself not throw up.

  “Stop this,” I try to say, but it comes out more like I’m gargling, which I guess I am. Gargling the light. And the light is bubbling in the back of my throat where the air is supposed to go and so it can’t, and the light is suffocating me and I am going to… I try counting but I can’t get past ten without feeling like letting go, passing out. I try picturing my mom and my sister. And my dad. I try picturing Olivia. I try picturing Tanis.

  I picture the lake.

  The light is water.

  That’s all. Just water.

  I know how to swim, because my dad taught me.

  I say that part out loud, only not.

  I am following the bubbles. I kick my legs. I don’t want to fall or sink.

  My hands are in my pockets. There are stones in my pockets. Dozens of stones. Stones are pouring out of my pockets. Orange ones. They’re warm.

  I smash to the ground. It hurts, but I’m awake. I’m aware. I force myself to sit up, but it’s like gravity is different. I wish I was high. If I was high, I’d wouldn’t be so terrified. I’d be able to sort this out.

  “Help,” I say out loud, just to see if I can talk.

  And then…

  This is the part where you say, What the goddamn fuck about this is real?

  Because…

  Olivia is next to me. Her hand on my arm. Her hand.

  My Olivia. Who I made up. Her hand. She was never real. Was she?

  I never gave her a name before. She was just The Girl. She was no one. She had no name. She was never meant to have a name.

  Her hand, broken nails. Wait. Not nails.

  Claws. Fucking claws. Her hand has turned pale blue. Then lavender. Her nails are not nails. Her nails are stones, and they fall away and under them are the claws of a bird that isn’t a bird.

  I think I am screaming.

  Her eyes are black vacant pools.

  “You came,” she says, but in a way that suggests what she’s saying is dirty. She leans forward and kisses me. I do not want to kiss her back, but then I am kissing her back. I think I lose consciousness. Am I conscious? My whole body is being touched; I cannot pinpoint sensation or feeling.

  I look down, like I wouldn’t be surprised to find myself naked, and then…

  I’m falling…

  Again.

  And…

  I’m in the dirt. I’m in the dirt and I’m naked. I don’t know where I am. Where am I?

  I lie on the ground. I can taste dirt in my mouth.

  I spit. I sit up. I try to get my bearings. I don’t like this. I liked it better when it was a movie, even if it was a movie with no camera and no crew and no director and no actor. Because movies are fiction and they are not real.

  I have lost. I am lost. I…

  Fell.

  Or jumped.

  I took my clothes off first because I am…

  Naked.

  Just like he was.

  I didn’t really; it wasn’t me. And why am I in charge anyway?

  Olivia.

  I am not broken; I can get up and I can run and there I am, running in the corn again and the dirt is soft under my bare feet. And then I am in the corn maze. I’m right in the center, marked by a statue of Our Joe’s dead wife, Roxanne. She looks like she is dancing in a ballet, something that old Roxanne likely never did. She looks young, which she wasn’t. I touch the statue, and it is wet and solid under my hand and definitely there. I am definitely here.

  “Roxanne,” I say, and my voice sounds normal. Like my voice.

  Roxanne looks exactly like Tanis. She has the same facial disfigurement. It’s genetic. Roxanne is Tanis’s grandmother. But you knew that. I knew that.

  Roxanne, Tanis says, is the one who found the pictures, and when she did, Our Joe killed her.

  Yes, that is what Tanis says.

  What Tanis said.

  At the lake.

  And why Our Joe will pay.

  And why I had to make it so big. Cinematic.

  My fucking idea because I am the director of everything (of nothing) and she must love me or why would she agree? Why would she let me?

  A crop circle?

  And it was here. In this corn maze. What Our Joe did. Where Tanis tried to run. “But I wasn’t there,” I say out loud, and I am crying and I couldn’t save her and I can’t save her now and I don’t know what she wants from me and I still don’t know how the crop circle can save her.

  LIVE.

  Tanis was once running naked in this maze crying and she couldn’t get out.

  I am naked in this maze. But there is a difference. I can get out. I can breathe. I can do this. I have done this maze before. Naked makes no difference. My penis flaps against my leg.

  Our Joe hurt her and took pictures, and the pictures are in boxes in the basement of his house, and those boxes are labeled Christmas 1994.

  And the RCMP will find them in the raid that we have staged that has to do with the crop circle. That has to do with nothing. But it would look good on film if someone was filming it. But no one is filming it. And this is real life. You can’t make the plot go the way you need it to go when you make it up in the first place.

  Between here and my house, there are a dozen people. Not really reporters anymore; now it’s just handfuls of freaks and conspiracy theorists and kids getting high.

  I try to think.

  I’m shivering.

  It’s not like I can go back up the cliff and get my clothes.

  Why didn’t I die anyway? How can someone fall and not only survive but be fine? How far was it?

  I make a decision. I start to slowly walk out of the corn maze. I speed up. I start to run. Who cares? T
here are so many stars up there. Other planets. Other lives. Billions on this one and billions out there. And I’m just one kid, running naked through the corn, hoping like hell not to run into some jackass with a camera.

  chapter 32

  When I get to the house, I can see someone sitting on the porch. Just an outline, a shadow.

  My heart is going to explode inside me like a Roman candle. If you took my pulse right now, you wouldn’t be able to count it, that’s how fast it is. T-dot’s pen on the desk. Tanis’s feet tapping. The percussion of the basketball on the court. All inside me. Too loud, too fast, too ragged.

  Who is it?

  I can’t tell.

  All I want is to get inside. Somehow it feels like if I’m inside, I’ll be okay. I’ll tell Dad. I’ll do…something.

  I gasp accidentally, just hungry for more air, trying to clear my lungs of the salt-acid taste of…whatever the fuck that was. The gasp makes the person jump up.

  I recognize the red boots.

  “Why are you naked?” Tanis says. “Dex? What’s going on?”

  “I was in the corn maze,” I say. “Tanis.”

  “DEX!” I hear her shouting. And then I’m being lifted and not by Tanis. By someone big and tattooed.

  Gary.

  “What is in that fucking pot?” I mumble, and then I’m in bed and I’m asleep but I’m not. I’m dreaming that I’m not asleep dreaming about sleeping.

  Tanis is beside me, and then she’s gone and there are hushed conversations. And somehow the hushed conversations make me really fall asleep because there is something about that—about people talking quietly so as not to wake you—that makes you feel taken care of and so tired.

  That you can finally sleep.

  chapter 33

  october 1, this year.

  I go to school the next day. It is surreal to go to school. How can I go to school?

  The building looks smaller. It’s shrunk. The kids look more ordinary. Everything that happens here is ordinary. I want to rub “ordinary” all over me and have it catch.

  This is my life. My life is ordinary.

  Stacey waves at me from the office. Her sweater is fuzzy and pink and hangs off one shoulder, revealing a fat bra strap. Mr. V stands behind her desk, leaning, like it’s an effort to stand up. He’s leaning on her shoulder, and she looks up at him and smiles and nods.

  They are ordinary.

  This is an ordinary place where ordinary things happen, and I’m just an ordinary kid and ordinary is one of those words that, when you repeat it, begins to sound like something it isn’t.

  Then Coach is in front of me.

  “You’re expected to go to the games, even if you’re injured,” he says. He is a man who says everything like a question. A question there is no answer for.

  “I know,” I say. “Sorry.” It’s simple and I am sorry. I smile at him. For the first time in ages, I feel almost happy.

  “Did you have something to do with that crazy crop circle?” he asks. His breath is bad, like coffee and sausage. I reel backward, bang off a locker.

  “Coach,” I say. “No. NO.”

  I lie so easily now. It’s all I do. Everything is a lie. People want to believe lies. That’s why movies work. Bullshit is better than reality. The lies help everyone to believe in something.

  “Okay,” he says. “Okay, I believe you. But don’t let it get in the way of your game, son. The GAME is the THING.”

  I say, “Coach, I’ll be at practice today, I swear. I’ve been…my dad was sick.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Okay. Fine. How’s your knee?”

  “Better,” I say.

  “Better?” he asks. “Don’t bullshit me, kid. Never bullshit a bullshitter.” He laughs like he’s made the funniest joke of all time.

  I try to laugh too, but it comes out wrong, an air bubble, a balloon of something sad.

  “Funny,” I say, instead of trying the laugh again.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he says. “Let’s see it then.”

  I roll up my pants and show him. “It feels okay.”

  He leans over close and puts his hand on my leg. His fingers are warm and I jump.

  “Sorry,” he says and pulls back. They aren’t supposed to touch us.

  “You can come to practice,” he says. “But the second it starts to hurt, you’re out, understood? But you stay. You don’t get to slack off. Understand me?”

  I nod. I am not dizzy. I am fine. My knee is fine.

  I sit down in the foyer. The benches are stomach-acid green vinyl with years of words written in ink. Holes made by a million fingers. They are browning with dirt that will never come off. It’s quiet. I can hear the clock tick.

  I wait. I watch through the glass for a familiar car, and then, suddenly, there it is. I run outside. The air is cold like it has finally let go of summer and resigned itself to the Octoberness of the now and become autumn.

  I grab Olivia’s arm hard and pull her like a little kid over to the tree, the big oak tree. The leaves are as red as blood, outlined with migraine-shimmer silver, and I am…

  “Stop it,” I say.

  “What’s got into you?” she asks. “Wow.”

  “Wow?” I say. “You KNOW what it is.”

  She doesn’t look in my eyes. She won’t look at me at all. Her eyes are whirling from one thing to another. Never landing, a hopping bird, intent on not being caught.

  I’m still hanging on to her arm. Probably my fingers are leaving marks, or would be if there was anything to leave a mark on, my own nails digging into my own palm. Where does the lie begin and end, and why can I still see her?

  I drop her arm and she lets it fall, looking at it like it’s something that just happened to be in her coat.

  “Why are you fucking with me?” I ask. “You aren’t real.”

  There’s a long silence. A crow flies from the fence to a branch overhead and starts to call. His beak is open, and he’s staring at Olivia. She is a small bird and he is a crow, and she is small enough. The crow stares and calls. She gives a small, low cry.

  “Sorry,” she says. “Crows freak me out.”

  “Yeah?” I go. “Well, you know what freaks me out? You.”

  “Really?” she says. Her voice is faint. Scratchy. Like a recording. “You don’t like me?”

  I want to shake her. I want to hurt her. I ball my hands up by my sides. What is happening to me? I can’t kill someone who’s not there. I imagine my hands around her throat. My hands on my own throat. I want I want I want.

  I don’t know what I want. She’s what I wanted. I think about Tanis. New York City, right? I want New York. I don’t know what I think I’d do in New York. Work in some shitty restaurant? Who would hire me? What would I really do?

  “I love you,” I say. “But you aren’t really here.” I am crying. My tears are fish and they roll down my cheeks and into a lake that I’m standing in. There is water around my feet. I’m standing in water. What is it with this water?

  Olivia opens her blue eyes wide and turns to look at me. I force myself to look back. Her eyes are not blue. They are a color that is not a color. An oil slick on a rain-wet road. A tar pit. A mermaid’s call.

  “You,” I say. I want to run, but I stand my ground. “You aren’t real. I made you up.” I’m really bawling. The kind of crying you do when you are a kid and your dad tries to kill himself, that kind. The kind that almost kills you and doesn’t. The ugly kind with snot bubbles and blinding tears. “I don’t want to drown,” I say.

  “I have to go somewhere,” she says. She flickers. She frowns, like she can’t think what it is she is meant to be doing. Where she has to go.

  I blink. Squint. My eyes are blurry. The tree is draped around us like a curtain.

  The tree is draped around me like a curtain.

  I am alone. I am sitting on the ground, which is cool and damp. An empty chip bag is beside me and the wind moves it and it rustles. I can see the writing on the bag so clearly, it’s lik
e all of a sudden I can see. I couldn’t see before. I can see. There is nothing between my eyes and the bag. I look at my hand. It looks like my hand. My hand that I can always remember seeing, holding a book in front of my face. A camera in front of my face. A joint in front of my face. My hand that is always holding something in front of my face. It’s empty. I turn it over and look at the lines on my palm, clear and precise, like they were drawn there. Turn it over again, and I can see each hair, a pattern of veins. Normal. I have a normal hand.

  “Olivia,” I say. There are crows in the tree and they call. It sounds like they are saying my name.

  The crows are not saying my name.

  There is an orange stone in my (normal) hand, and then there are a hundred orange stones spilling out between my fingers. They rain down out of my hand and onto my feet until I’m standing in a puddle of orange pebbles but the pebbles turn into leaves before I can throw them at the birds, which is what I was going to do.

  I was going to.

  I was…

  I lean over and vomit. My vomit soaks into the ground, covers the leaves, spatters the tree. I vomit myself inside out. I vomit until I can’t stop.

  I don’t understand, I think. But then again, also, I do.

  I understand enough.

  I’m lying.

  I don’t understand a fucking thing.

  I sit down and lean my back against the tree, but the smell of my own puke is too much. A crow swoops down and eyes the puke, digs in.

  Through the veil of leaves, I can see T-dot running toward me, so I get up. I wipe my mouth. I take a breath and push aside the branches that are hiding me.

  “I got to tell you something, man,” T-dot says. “It’s important.”

  I squint. Everything is important.

  “Yeah?” I sigh. “What?”

  He goes, “Lundstrom’s saying that his dad is gonna bust up your place. So it’s going to happen. Just like we…I was just thinking, maybe you don’t want it to happen? I don’t know, man, it doesn’t feel right.”

  “Thanks,” I manage to say. “I gotta go.”

  I am trying to think.

  Can I think?