Total Constant Order

by Crissa-Jean Chappell

  Light slipped across the lawn. Mama stood in the door, watching. I sat up and smoothed the wrinkles in my jeans.

  “What are you doing alone in the dark?” she said. “Who’s that on the phone? You’re going to get eaten alive by mosquitoes.”

  “It’s someone from class,” I said, “asking about homework.”

  “What homework?” she said.

  “You know. Math and stuff.”

  Mama didn’t look convinced. I could hear the TV’s applause before she shut the door.

  “What about your mom?” I whispered into the phone.

  “Like I said, we got in a fight. Besides, she’s never around.”

  Should I tell someone about his plan? Mama would freak out and call the cops. What if I went with him? I thought about it, thought about joining Thayer at the bus station, leaving school, my teachers, Dr. Calaban. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t just get up and leave. Not when I was just starting to get a grip on things.

  “Do you think I’m crazy?” he asked.

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I don’t know.”

  “You think I’m mentally ill.”

  “I never said that.”

  “My mom says I can’t think in a straight line. She’s the one who needs a shrink.” He sighed. “I’m sick of school, all those fake people. It’s a game. They buy it. I don’t.”

  “Stop,” I said.

  I was just grasping his words, trying to make sense of it.

  “Come with me. You’re always saying you don’t belong here, down south in the MIA.”

  I saw the letters floating in my mind. Thayer’s nickname for Miami sounded more like “missing in action.”

  “We can’t just leave,” I said.

  “Man, I thought you were for real.”

  “I take it back. You are crazy.”

  “Just for a few days,” Thayer said. I could hear a dog barking in the background.

  “Which days?”

  “Starting now,” he said.

  I was summoning my numbers when I remembered what Dr. Calaban had said. I couldn’t keep everyone safe by counting.

  “Please don’t go,” I said.

  I pictured Thayer roaming the streets and sleeping behind Dumpsters.

  “I knew you wouldn’t understand.”

  “Thayer, listen to me.”

  “I’m through listening.”

  “There’s nothing in New York that you don’t have here,” I said.

  Maybe even less.

  Escape

  I snuck inside the garage. My bike was mounted on the wall. The night was sweltering. If I could get to the bus stop in time, maybe I could talk Thayer out of it.

  I rolled my bike out and pushed off. There was a squeak as I tested the brakes, then the soft hiss of the grass. I looked over my shoulder. The windows in my house flickered blue. Mama was probably still watching the Weather Channel or the Food Network, although she hated to cook and never went anywhere. I pumped faster.

  At the end of the block, I turned onto US 1. A car behind me honked. I rode past the abandoned house where I took my first dose of Paxil. The FOR SALE sign was gone. Somebody had trimmed the trees.

  My legs burned. I rode past the playground, through intersections, and around burger joints. Cars zoomed off of the highway near school. A few older boys were playing basketball, but I didn’t stop to watch.

  “Hey, bike girl,” one of them called.

  I kept riding. I saw a Greyhound bus and wondered if Thayer was on it. Traffic was thicker downtown. This is where the skyscrapers began. The gray buildings pressed against one another—perfume outlets, Sunglass Hut, secondhand radios, wholesale jewelry. Homeless people camped near the Miami River Bridge, huddled under cardboard boxes, within spitting distance of the ancient stone Circle.

  I focused on the bus station’s address, which Thayer had told me. My obsessive-compulsive habits were actually good for something. Four, one, one, one, Northwest Twenty-seventh Street. Twenty was an even number. Seven was odd. I didn’t care whether they went together anymore. I had to keep them in place.

  A military green truck raced past me. The driver flicked a cigarette out the window. Sparks crackled on the road.

  All this time, I had felt invisible. Now it seemed like everybody was watching.

  I eased onto the sidewalk. The green truck was speeding beside me. I could hear the radio squirting out beats. I pedaled harder.

  “Want a lift?” said the driver, leaning out.

  I shook my head.

  “Are you lost?” he asked. He was wearing a denim jacket, oiled gray with dirt. “Need some money?” The guy dangled a balled-up dollar bill.

  “No, thanks. I’m going to a friend’s house.”

  The driver laughed. “Sure you are.”

  I waited for the traffic to thin out, then swerved behind the truck. I pedaled toward a cafetine, a Cuban restaurant where people stood on the sidewalk, sipping high-octane coffee from thimble-sized cups at a window.

  There was no place to chain my bike, so I left it leaning against the concrete wall. The cafetine was surrounded. Rows of elderly Hispanic women with plastic bonnets circled like hens at the window.

  I stood in line as if buying tickets for a movie. A waitress slapped down a sticky menu in a language that I couldn’t read. On the counter was some Nutella, a hazelnut spread. ANNA, read the waitress’s name tag.

  “What do you want, baby?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I mean, do you have a phone I could use?”

  She fixed her gaze on me. “There’s a pay phone across the street. But it’s broken.”

  “It’s an emergency.”

  “You hiding from someone?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  She dug into her pocket. “Here. Use my cell.”

  “Thanks,” I said. She stood there, watching.

  The phone was heavy. I stared at the Tweety Bird sticker peeling above the screen. Normally, I couldn’t stand to touch somebody’s germy phone, but it didn’t matter anymore.

  I punched the digits and waited.

  The phone clicked and rang a few times. It was Yara on the answering machine, peppering her speech with “please” and “thank you.” Mama said Dad always falls for a woman who says “Bless you” after a sneeze.

  Then Yara picked up for real. “Hello. Sorry?”

  I heard outer-space noises crackling and Yara saying, “Fin?” Then the cash register jingled.

  “Fin? I can hardly hear you. Are you in trouble? Your mom keeps calling. She’s frantic.”

  I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me. “I’m okay.”

  “Talk to me, chica. I promise not to get angry.”

  I stared past the highway. “I’m at a cafetine. On the corner of Second Street and First Avenue.”

  “What?” she said. “You ran away?”

  “Listen,” I said. “There’s this boy, my friend, Thayer. He was trying to get on a bus. He’s probably gone by now. I tried to find the station but everything is so confusing downtown, all those one-way streets. Then there was this truck driver…” I couldn’t explain. I had run out of words.

  “Stay put. I’ll call your mother.”

  When Yara hung up, I kept holding the phone. I listened to the dial tone, as if it could tell me what to do next.

  Frida Kahlo

  Your family’s coming?” the waitress asked.

  “Yeah. Gracias,” I said, handing back the phone.

  Seconds later, she returned with a Styrofoam cup of café con leche and a napkin heaped with sugar-dusted guava pastries. I sipped the coffee, which seemed to glow inside my stomach. I couldn’t stop watching the street. The urge to count simmered in my fingers.

  I asked Anna for a pen. She reached into her apron and pulled out a blunt felt-tip marker. I flipped over the napkin and started doodling. I drew spiky, punk-style tags and roller-skating robots. I drew Dr.
Calaban tangled up with her African violets, Mama sitting in front of a grinning television, Thayer blowing three perfect smoke rings—zero, zero, zero—with a skinny girl in a bandanna. The ink bled through the paper, ripping into dandrufflike shreds. I didn’t feel like tearing the corners to make them even. I kept drawing.

  After I had eaten the pastries and filled another napkin with doodles, a Nissan pulled up to the curb. Mama got out with an umbrella, although it was only sprinkling. She yanked me into a hug and held me a long time. When we finally let go, she licked her finger and wiped sugar off my face. Usually this would’ve sent me over the edge, but I didn’t move.

  “Well,” she said. “You gave me a fright.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” I said.

  Mama grabbed a fistful of napkins and patted down my hair. She looked at the empty cup of coffee but didn’t mention it stunting my growth. She peered over my shoulder and flashed an off-center smile.

  “You’re quite an artist,” she said. “Are you going to be the next Frida Kahlo?”

  “Who’s that?”

  “One of the world’s greatest women painters.” She crinkled her nose. “Don’t they teach you anything in school?”

  A ripple of embarrassment shot through me. “I haven’t taken art in a while.”

  “When I was your age, I wanted to be a painter. Even won a scholarship for art school. My father thought it was a waste of time, so I never went.”

  I nodded. She had never told me this before. I guess there was a lot about Mama that I didn’t know.

  Mama rubbed her eyes. She took out her pack of cigarettes, then put them away.

  “I’m going to quit,” she said.

  “Really?” I wasn’t sure what to believe.

  “You want to tell me what this is all about?” she asked.

  “It’s my friend. Thayer. He’s gone on a bus.”

  “Gone? Where?”

  “I don’t know. He wanted to run away.”

  “My Lord. What was he thinking?”

  Mama waited for an answer I couldn’t give. I leaned back, liking the fact that she was listening.

  “Where was he planning to go?”

  “New York, I think.”

  “New York?” She clucked her tongue.

  For a moment, we said nothing. Mama looked so exhausted. She hardly ever drove anywhere at night, much less in the rain. It must have been a big deal for her.

  “Which bus stop?” she asked. “The one downtown?”

  “Yeah. He might be there already.” I thought about Thayer riding the Metrorail, snaking above the traffic.

  “So why didn’t you tell me about this? And why did you try to bike over? Do you realize how dangerous that was?”

  I closed my mouth tight.

  “Let’s go,” she said, grabbing her keys.

  Manatee

  We sped along Biscayne Boulevard. At the end of the road was the bus station. Not really a station, more like a shack, with concrete benches splattered with bird droppings. Mama parked by the curb, even though there was no parking space, and we got out.

  The light from the street lamps shone onto the row of buses. I felt my pulse beating in my ears. Graffiti trickled across the bumpers. Had Thayer ever tagged a bus?

  Mama followed, huffing as I raced around the lot. By the time we returned to our car, I was out of breath. Nearby, a bunch of kids were shrieking, “Boys come from Jupiter because they’re stupider. Girls come from Mars because they’re superstars.”

  Still no Thayer. I could see panic in Mama’s face.

  “You don’t think he did something foolish?” she said.

  I searched the parking lot for his dreadlocked hair. It was like he never existed.

  “He’s not here,” I said.

  “I think we should call his parents,” she said.

  “He lives with his mom,” I said.

  “Well, do you have the phone number?”

  I glanced at my hand. “No.”

  I did, but I didn’t want to get Thayer into any more trouble.

  “Where else would he go?”

  I thought about the canal near our school.

  The next thing I knew, Mama and I were in the car again.

  “Show me,” she said.

  We drove past school and slowed when we got to the canal, the one Thayer had shown me. Mama parked near the power plant and we got out.

  And there he was, walking toward the canal, smoking, his dreads pulled back like a sphinx. He was whistling something, a cartoon theme song.

  I wanted to move, but Mama grabbed my hand so tight, I could hear things popping inside it.

  “That’s your friend?” she said. The worried tone was back. Her voice made a cramp shoot through my stomach.

  “Yeah.” I could hear Thayer, his whistling shrill and loud. I nodded and Mama tugged me along.

  “Walk quickly,” she said. “Don’t run.”

  At first I was frozen. I didn’t move. Staring was all I could do. It was dark outside, and all I saw was a thin shadow of Thayer, just the edges. But slowly he took shape, from the dime-sized holes in his floppy jeans, to the half-buttoned plaid shirt and pale hair, to his chin pointed at the water.

  I led Mama through the path near the power plant. A rusty sign warned, DANGER! HIGH VOLTAGE! with a scowling lightning bolt. The gate was open, as usual, and we eased through it.

  We heard the hiss coming from the plant. Overhead, a plume of smoke bubbled on the horizon. Mama tugged my sleeve.

  There was Thayer, waist-deep in the mucky canal.

  “Fin?” he called. “How did you get here?”

  “I thought you had run away. Like, on a bus.”

  “Came out here to think,” he said. He looked down into the canal. “They drift up here because it’s warm.”

  Thayer was hunched over an oval ring in the water. A manatee.

  The beast’s spatula-shaped tail made a swirl as she dove. She looked about ten feet long, as old as the dinosaurs, so out of place in that canal near the smoke-belching power plant. Yet this was her home. We were the ones who didn’t belong. Still, at that moment, I felt as if I belonged there with her. I wanted to know what she was thinking and if she felt alone, like me.

  I made my way toward the canal, sinking up to my knees in mud. I didn’t like the look of the brownish tide, or the thought of what was wiggling in it—mosquito larvae, bloodsucking leeches. I could hear Mama calling my name but I didn’t listen. I stepped into the water, which was warmer than I imagined. As I shuffled forward, the bottom sloped to a drop. I pushed off and doggy-paddled, my T-shirt ballooning.

  I looked over my shoulder to find Mama, but I couldn’t trace her in the trees. I got within inches of Thayer when the manatee poked her lumpy snout at me. The aquatic mammal looked like a boulder. I paddled closer, hoping I could coax Thayer out of this mess before we ended up in jail.

  I treaded around the canal and again the manatee blocked me. I reached out to touch her, to confirm she wasn’t a mirage. She rolled over. Her back was crusted with barnacles and powerboat scars.

  As I moved close enough to grab Thayer, he threw his arms around the putty-faced beast. She must’ve weighed a thousand pounds. I thought she might drag us down, sinking into the tangle of weeds, holding us there until we drowned. But she didn’t.

  The manatee swerved in my direction. Ducking down, I spied another manatee, a calf, gliding out of the foggy water like a ghost. I rose up, heaving.

  I was startled by a splash and turned around. Mama inched into the water. Thayer didn’t seem aware of her, not even when she called his name. He was drifting away from all of us.

  Thayer started coughing and spitting up mucus. His throat made a whistling sound when he breathed. One, two, three, gasp. We all heard him panting. Up close, his lips and fingernails were a bluish color.

  “My lungs,” he said. “Burning.” His voice was raspy.

  Mama twitched, shin-deep in the canal. She wouldn’t go any closer. />
  When Thayer tried to talk, his words were chopped up. “Hurts,” he said. “I can’t breathe.”

  He was dodging and paddling, elbows flaring, around the muddy shapes in the water. I tried to reach him, one, two, three times. He went left. I went right. He dodged again and then clenched his arms around me. My heart almost stopped. We were sinking into the murk.

  “Kryptonite,” he said.

  Thayer was still wheezing, all blue.

  Grabbing his wrists, I tugged. Then Thayer gasped, “Let go.”

  We bobbed in the water, soaking wet, our T-shirts floating. The instant I let go, the manatee bumped me. I thought about what Thayer had said. They were trapped in the modern world. But they were surviving, coping in their own way, as Thayer had taught me to do.

  A siren grew closer, red lights spinning. Thayer dangled in the water, trapped, and I kept thinking how this should be embarrassing, me in my wet clothes and he paddling there like a wild animal. I saw that he wasn’t struggling. We were calm, both of us there, not saying anything, just hanging below the surface.

  The silence washed over me like a wave. I didn’t have to think anymore. I just drifted, weightless, in the underwater quiet. I could’ve stayed in that silence forever, coasting in a place where nothing pulled at me, not even gravity.

  Then a man grabbed me from behind, invisible, hauling me into light and noise. As I was hoisted up, I sputtered, trying to stand, my legs scissoring under me, searching for something solid.

  The ambulance siren cut off.

  Lying in the damp grass, I watched the paramedics surround Thayer. I hadn’t seen them pull him out. I could barely see his tangled limbs, bent like the number seven. His hands were slightly open, as if cupped to hold water.

  A paramedic with Buddha arms tilted Thayer’s head back and leaned in. He pinched Thayer’s nose, covered his mouth with his own, and blew. One, two breaths. Thayer still wasn’t moving. The man pushed down on Thayer’s chest, pumping once per second. Two breaths. Fifteen pumps.

  The odd-numberness bothered me. My mind latched on to it and conjured a list of things I hated: the smell of chalk, shag carpet, insurance commercials. I counted forward and backward. It wasn’t working anymore.