The Miranda Contract

by Ben Langdon

“Was that your mom?” Miranda asked.

  Dan nodded, wiping his face with his sleeve, wet against wet.

  “Let’s get inside,” he said, and waved her over closer. “Put your foot up here. Watch the edges.”

  She stepped up into Dan’s linked hands and reached her fingers over the window edge. He lifted her up a bit and she scrambled inside, feeling her way into the dark room, first onto a desk by the window and then carefully to the floor. Dan followed after her, scraping his already damaged hand as he scuttled inside.

  Shaking the hand, he muttered under his breath and walked to the other side of the room, flicking on the light switch. He stood by the door, relaxing a little as the light showed up the bedroom which hadn’t changed. Behind the door he could hear the sounds of his mother as she moved like a ghost around the house, but out of the rain and surrounded so suddenly by the reminders of his childhood, he switched off caring about his mother.

  Miranda dropped her shoes on the desk and pulled at her wet hair, straightening it while she looked around the room. They both glanced at the posters, the scattered action figures, frozen in a battle that would never be completed. There was a layer of dust everywhere and Dan wondered if anyone had been in the room since he had left.

  “Yours?” Miranda asked, as she picked up the guitar leaning against the end of his bed. She sat down and studied the strings, tightening one, then another, her face full of concentration. Her fingers moved like they owned the instrument, and in a way Dan’s never had.

  She smiled then, and put the guitar down on the bed.

  “You’re not as cynical as you pretend to be, Dan,” she said, and stood up, looking around some more. “I like your room.”

  “Thanks,” Dan said.

  “Can I borrow your shirt?”

  She picked up a shirt from the back of his chair and pulled at her wet top. Dan looked down at his own clothes and smiled. He had left home at fourteen but he figured his old clothes would fit her.

  “Help yourself,” he said, and then stepped back to the window, kicking off his wet shoes and pulling at his socks. “I’ll just … uh … check the window while you get changed.”

  She laughed, and Dan smiled, despite feeling like an idiot. He pressed his forehead to the cold window pane and looked outside. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Miranda’s reflection in the window. He knew he should turn away or close his eyes, but he didn’t. And watching her change made him feel a little at peace.

  “Come here.”

  Dan turned around and looked at her sitting on the bed. She wore a white t-shirt and track pants and sat cross-legged, eyes down, tuning the guitar.

  When he sat down on the edge, she passed it to him.

  “What?”

  “Play me something,” she said.

  Dan shook his head and passed it back, but she folded her arms and refused to take it. He felt awkward holding it out to her, and the way she smelled, the way she looked at him, the way everything seemed to shout at him to seize the opportunity, made Dan move next to her, like he was being reeled in. He pulled his legs up and sat across from her, like two school children, Indian style. His mind tried to lock on to a song, one he wouldn’t mess up.

  “I can’t.”

  He shifted the guitar to the side and looked at his hands. The bandage he’d managed to wrap around his right hand was wet and dirty. The tips of the hand were still red. No matter how much he wanted to pretend they were sharing a moment, Dan knew it was just a dream. Reality was a psychotic grandfather and a showdown in the morning.

  “I don’t remember anything,” he said.

  And he wished it was true.

  The guitar moved back to Miranda and he realized he was holding his breath.

  Miranda’s voice was light as she sang softly. It floated in the space between them. Just a word, followed by another. But so much more.

  The chords melted with her voice as the words of Janis Joplin materialized. She kept her eyes down, singing to the strings, and although her voice remained low the power behind them was undeniable. Dan reached out and touched her knee as she shifted into the chorus. Her head lifted eventually, their eyes met, and she stopped singing, although her fingers continued the music.

  “That’s cool,” he said. She gave him a mocking smile and wound up the song, wiggling a little as she moved to put the guitar away, dislodging Dan’s hand.

  “Cool?”

  “No, I meant that was… you know, beautiful.”

  “But you hate my music.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe I was a bit…”

  “Maybe you don’t know what you like,” she finished for him. “One day I’m going to sing something of my own, you know. Right now I’ve got everything, you’ve said it yourself. But the songs aren’t mine.”

  “You should sing like that, like you just did.”

  “Maybe you should sing,” she countered. “I know you used to.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You won’t.”

  He knew she was right. She knew she was right.

  “So my mum is kind of insane,” Dan said, smiling to distract.

  Miranda shrugged.

  “What about your mum? Does she put heaps of pressure on you, lives her life through you? I bet you’ve got some stories to tell.”

  “No,” she said simply, her gaze still locked on Dan’s, daring him to answer her.

  “Oh, right,” Dan said, unsure of how to untangle himself. “It’s getting late.”

  She shrugged again.

  “What?”

  “Who are you supposed to be?” she asked.

  “You’ve asked me that before. Hell, you’ve seen me in action, seen my psycho family, what more can there be?”

  “When are you going to do something for yourself?”

  He wasn’t sure if she was being serious. She wasn’t smiling, but she worked in show business, knew how to act and play the audience.

  “Serious, you want me to be selfish?” Dan laughed. “All my life people’ve said I’m selfish. Are you kidding? I always do things for myself.”

  He went to stand up but she reached out and took his wrist.

  “What do you want right now?” she asked.

  The lights flickered and Dan felt a tremor through the electrical network as lightning struck a router box a few miles away. Thunder rolled across the bay.

  “I’m not going to kiss you, if that’s what you mean,” Dan said, laughing in the lightly strobing light. She didn’t blink. She watched him, took him in, and he wanted to stop everything, right there.

  “Oh thank God,” she said finally, releasing him. She rapped him on the shoulder with her fist as the lights steadied. He winced in mock pain.

  They sat silently on the bed, just breathing.

  Dan found himself pushing his mind outward, searching the grid absently, dulling his other senses, trying to distance himself.

  “You can though,” she said, refusing to let Dan wander off. “If you want.”

  She didn’t look like the pop princess. There was no glamor, just honesty. Dan rubbed his shoulder. Torn.

  “Ah, you’re Miranda Brody,” he said finally, and he felt a little removed, like he’d suddenly gotten older. “Even I know you’re way, way out of my league.”

  She looked hurt, her jaw moved a little, but she kept her eyes on him.

  “I’m just a girl.”

  “You’re not just a girl,” Dan said slowly. “And I’m not just a boy.”

  He looked away and stood up.

  Miranda scooted up the bed and turned her back to him as she lay down. She put her head on the pillow and closed her eyes. Dan stood with his hands across his chest, trying to work out what he was supposed to do.

  “You’ll be here, won’t you?” she asked. “All night?”

  “Yeah,” he said softly.

  “Don’t let the bad guys get us, Dan.”

  He breathed out. She seemed so far away from him now. He stepped to the door, turned o
ff the lights.

  “I won’t.”

  Of course he couldn’t sleep.

  The electricity was shooting around his body, intertwined with his nervous system, making him twitch if he stayed still for too long, and generally keeping him on edge. Since cracking the restraining cuff he had been holding on to as much energy as he could siphon, just in case he needed to let loose at whoever would come after them next. But the energy was rogue, too erratic and pulled from too many sources, not all of them of equal quality or power. He felt like he had gorged himself on junk food: seedy, full but not satisfied.

  And there was only one way to purge his system and start afresh.

  Outside his bedroom window, Dan could hear the distant roll of the ocean. It was dark out there, and cold and a storm was coming. He should stay there, inside, but he knew he wouldn’t.

  Miranda slept. She had her knees drawn up slightly and hugged his pillow to her chest. Dan caught himself watching the way her lips were parted, the way her shoulders lifted and dropped with a steady rhythm. She was alive and that was good. She needed him and that was good too.

  With a sigh he turned to the door and tested the handle. It was locked. Whatever happened on the other side, Miranda would be safe. He remembered the nights of his past in that room, a small sanctuary tacked on to a mad house. His mother lost it finally, terribly, after he was arrested. For his whole life she was on a precipice, teetering between a normal life and the absurd. Blue skin wouldn’t have helped, of course, and being a single mother complicated things further. She hid herself away and reluctantly pushed him out to school when it was time. He knew it was only because the police had come around and told her that she couldn’t keep him at home forever. They were nice about it, but the uniforms and the flash of official badges had sent her into a spin.

  But that was the past.

  It was time for Dan to let all of that fall aside. The present was more important. He checked the door again and grabbed a beach towel which hung on the back of the door. A wetsuit would have been better, but even if his steamer was still in the wardrobe it would have been too small.

  “I’ll be back,” he whispered to Miranda as he lifted the window. The breeze pushed inside and brought with it the smell of salt and ocean.

  The water was freezing, like it always was along the south-west coast of Victoria. Locals laughed at the tourists who stood along the bluff, shivering in their beanies and fleece. They laughed and then swept into the dark water like seals, wetsuits or rash vests depending on how much they had to prove. Even with a full steamer, the water was usually too cold for most.

  Dan sat on his board beyond the break, alone in his boxer shorts; bare legs either side of the board. He watched the silver line of the beach, waves crashing in white bursts, while the currents gently tugged at his legs, pulling him out further. It wasn’t much of a current but a part of him wanted to lie back and let the ocean drag him away from the land, away from Miranda and the mess of his life.

  He rubbed his wrist where the restraining band had been. There was a tingling sensation there still, but otherwise he was unfettered, his body free to draw upon the electricity around him. And that was the reason he had taken up his board and stalked down to the beach. Well, it had been one of the reasons. Miranda’s words, her presence, the crazy possibility of actually kissing her had also driven him out into the night. But the main reason, he kept telling himself, was to shake off any lasting effects of his grandfather’s dampening field, to hit the reset button so he wouldn’t be ambushed again.

  He slipped off the board, sinking silently beneath the surface, dropping away from the stars and from the sky.

  Ever since he was thirteen, Dan had used the ocean to cleanse his system and even though it was painful and probably dangerous, he always returned to it. When his body slipped under the breakers, kicking forward into the sea, it discharged its reserves of electricity in bursts of iridescent fireworks. Underwater the discharges were incredible and Dan sometimes sat on the ocean floor and watched his body force out the electricity. It hurt, but with his body enveloped in water everything seemed muted – cut off from everything.

  He sank now, his hands gently pushing his way into the darkness. And then the bright bubbles began to burst out from his skin, blistering and bursting all along his arms and then his chest and neck. Dan blew out some of the air from his lungs and it came out in bubbles, entwined with blue electricity. He blew again and watched the energy twirling like half-formed smoke rings.

  Looking beyond the lights, he began to see images from the past. It had happened before, in the sea or in dreams. The visions always started with swirling shadows, but most of the time they coalesced into faces. Sometimes they were his own face, as a child, perhaps, or more recent; but often they were of his father. Nico.

  Dan only had a handful of memories. The photographs were destroyed before he’d grown old enough to understand he even had a father, and neither his mother or grandfather mentioned him in any real way. They spat upon his name, cursed his stupidity. Dan grew up embarrassed by the man he never really knew.

  For a short time, Nico returned. Dan remembered him as a startled man, eyes almost too wide for his face, perpetually surprised by the world around him. He drank. A lot. And he couldn’t seem to find the words for his estranged wife who had grown frail and shattered while he was in prison. Without words, they turned their backs on each other. Theresa holed herself up in her room while he was in the house, so eventually he found reasons to leave.

  And there was no time for Dan. His father would find excuses to leave whenever his son appeared, hurriedly climbing into the attic at the back of the house like a possum. Dan’s grandfather soothed him with attention and after his powers manifested, Dan found himself easily distracted with new ways of imposing his will on the world around him. Nico would hide away, and so would Theresa; but Dan and his grandfather would take over the living room and use it as a base for exploring the wider world through electrical wiring and, later, through television.

  The sea pressed against his chest and Dan knew it was time to kick back to the surface. He lifted upward, slowly, turning in the water like a seal, the lingering trail of energy spiraling behind him.

  When his head burst from the surface he shook himself clear and looked to the dawning sun coming up from the east. He treaded water and noticed his board rising over the waves closer to shore. And there on the beach were two figures, standing where he’d dropped his clothes and shoes.

  He could tell one was Miranda.

  He dipped his head under the water and glided towards the breaking waves. The other was his mother. He surfaced and then dived again, coasting along with the waves, anticipating the bodysurfing to come.

  Theresa was waiting.

  When he stumbled through the choppy waves at the beach, Dan found himself without a plan. There was a genuine sense that things would change, somehow, but the expunging of energy hadn’t brought with it a revelation on how to face down and destroy his grandfather.

  He stopped at the thought, the water still running upward passed his ankles before pulling back to the ocean again.

  He hadn’t thought of destroying the Mad Russian. He couldn’t do it. Not back at the bridge and not in the future. He knew there had to be a different way.

  Miranda’s arms were wrapped around her body but she was looking at him, and he could tell she wanted to come down and meet him. Her life was in danger. She was a pawn and the longer they played the game, the more likely she’d become a victim.

  He half-raised his arm and walked out, his toes feeling the hardness of the sand make way as he moved up the beach. He stopped at the pile of clothes he’d dropped and scooped up his shirt, wiping his face in it.

  “Hello,” Theresa said, eyes averted.

  He smiled. The wind picked up and blew his hair forward.

  Theresa looked old. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her body, too, the elbows jutting against the white t-shirt which se
rved as a nightie. Her legs were bowed and blue, her bare feet calloused but now comforted by the sand. Seeing her there, out in the open, her hair whipping about, Dan felt like shouting. He had no idea what he would shout, but he just felt the need to exhale loudly, to get rid of something. His mother hadn’t been to the beach, as far as he knew, for nearly ten years. But here she was.

  With Miranda.

  “You said you’d watch me,” Miranda said softly. It wasn’t a reprimand. She pushed back the hair which escaped from her pony tail and sank her hands into his jeans. They looked good on her.

  “I had to … the waves were calling,” he said, hooking his thumb back towards the water. Miranda smiled and looked down at the white sand, leaving Dan to look at his mother. “What are you doing here?”

  Theresa was watching him, her eyebrows turned up in confusion like they always were. Her thin lips were guarded but she was looking at him, really looking at him.

  “Aren’t you cold?” he asked, stepping towards her, shaking sand off his towel and opening it for her. She stepped back a little, her arms still wrapped tightly around her frail body, but Dan slung the towel around her shoulders and settled it there. They were close now, his chin level with the top of her head. As he pulled the towel around her he caught the smell of his mother’s hair. And then he felt her arms shifting beneath. He stepped back but her arms shrugged their way out and her hands reached out to take his hand between them.

  “Mum.”

  Theresa lifted his hand and placed it against her cheek. He could feel the coolness of her skin, windblown as she stood on the beach. He could feel the scratchy dryness too, something which had plagued her for years.

  “We’ve made breakfast,” Miranda said. “Back at the house.”

  Dan turned into the offshore breeze and saw Miranda smiling at him, like she’d just orchestrated some kind of miracle. He couldn’t stop smiling back even though he didn’t want to concede anything to her just yet, and he felt his eyes strain against the wind and tears.

  “Come on,” she said.

  Back at house the three of them ate in silence. Theresa kept her eyes down and ate like a bird, bony fingers playing with toast, tearing it apart slowly, methodically. She’d drop a crumb into her mouth as she listened to Dan talk about the ocean and answer Miranda’s questions.