Stuff We All Get

by K. L. Denman

  Huh. “I’ll take this.”

  “There you go,” Mom says. “Want to find another cache?”

  “Um,” I say. “I’m actually pretty hungry. Maybe we could go eat instead?”

  Chapter Four

  The first few days of being grounded were bad. After a couple more go by, I feel like I’m losing it. I play around with my guitar sometimes, watching the colors, but I can only do that for so long. I’m not that good at playing and probably never will be since I only play alone. It’s tied in with my synesthesia and that makes it feel private.

  When I was little, I assumed everyone saw colors with music. But when I got older and talked about it in school, the other kids laughed or called me a liar. Even Mom was confused when I went home and told her about it. She took me to the doctor and had me checked out. When we got the diagnosis, the doctor said I had a special gift. I should simply enjoy it. I decided he was right, but I also decided to keep it to myself.

  When I’ve had enough guitar, I try other things. But watching tv or playing on the computer alone is boring. I’ve never been seriously into gaming, but I played sometimes with a couple of buds from the last town. I miss them. We’re keeping in touch online, but it’s not the same as having someone hang with you. I’m lonely and getting this restless feeling in my gut. I need to move or I’ll explode. But I’m not allowed to blow off steam by going out to shoot hoops or play street hockey.

  I’m almost wishing Mom hadn’t eased back on the chore thing. That’s how bad it’s getting. She stopped by the school and picked up my homework. I was so desperate for something to do, I finished it right away. By Wednesday I’m lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling and plotting my escape.

  But where can I go? And who can I see? There’s nothing and no one. I pound on my pillow, then look around my room. It’s a worse mess than normal. I haven’t finished setting it up the way I’d like since we moved. I remember seeing some old shelves out in the garage, the sort you hang with brackets. Maybe I could put them up on my wall? They could hold my books and cds. Most of my music is on my mp3 player, but sometimes I prefer the sound of cds. I don’t know why, but the colors are different. Vinyl albums are different again. Live music is best.

  I start sorting through the stuff on my floor, piling up clothes to make a work space. Under a pair of jeans I find the cd from the geocache. Famous. Huh. I’d forgotten about that. I decide it can’t hurt to give it a listen. I stick it into my stereo and start stacking my other cds.

  Whoa! The sound filling my room is amazing. I freeze and watch indigo swirling like dark blue smoke. Incredible acoustic guitar music pours out of the speakers. It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard. It must be a twelve-string. The player knows how to work it for all it’s worth. Blue swirls and ripples of deep green flecked with brown move in.

  The cds I was holding fall to the floor, and I barely notice. And then this girl starts singing. Her voice is weak at first, a faded blue. But after a few bars her voice takes off and soars above the guitar. The blue I see now is a summer sky. I drop onto my bed to watch.

  At first I’m so caught up in the sound I don’t pay attention to the lyrics. But after a while I wonder what she’s singing about. Lakes. Rivers. Traveling. The melody gives me the pink and gold of sunrises as she sings about taking off into the vast unknown.

  When it ends, I need to hear it again. Now. But before I can move, another song starts. This one feels different. The guitar pauses between notes, building slowly. I see muted and misty shades of green, yellow and mauve—the colors of an old bruise. When her voice arrives, it’s so uneven I can barely make out the words. I strain to catch them. The song is about loneliness. The vocals slip in and out of the guitar notes like they were supposed to be together but lost each other. It’s as if the music is saying as much as or more than the words. I catch phrases about arriving alone, leaving alone. There’s something about eternal solitude, about reaching for connection and always missing.

  It’s the saddest song I’ve ever heard.

  There’s an interval of static after the song ends, and I think that’s the end of the cd. I get up to replay it, but then a third song starts. This one is jarring after the flow of the first two. The guitar strings aren’t strummed and stroked. They’re getting slammed. Purple and black form a backdrop for flashes of blood red. But again, the music fits the lyrics, because this one is about being used and lied to. It’s about suspicion, about wanting to believe in someone. It’s about wanting to trust and getting mocked instead. Feeling like a fool because everybody knew—except her.

  It sounds like somebody messed her up. As the last guitar note fades to scabby brown, I hear a guy mutter, “Guess who.”

  I don’t know why, but that ticks me off. How could he say that to her? Was it him that hurt her?

  And who is she?

  I listen to the songs again. By the second listen, I think maybe she’s from Penticton because she mentions Skaha Lake.

  By the third listen, I know I have to find her. This girl understands me better than I understand myself. I could never put into words what loneliness feels like, but she gets it. She knows what it feels like to be mocked. She knows what it feels like to want to go. Just go.

  That last bit worries me. What if she stashed her cd in the geocache box and left? I imagine her with her guitar and a backpack at the side of the highway, thumb out for a ride. She’d be brave enough to do that. Anyone who creates music like hers, with lyrics that are so honest and so real, has got to have courage.

  I want to find her. But how?

  I take the cd out of the stereo and examine it. No clues there. Just that one word: Famous. I check the plastic sleeve it was in, and, again, there are no clues. I think back to when I found it in the geocache. Was there anything on the ground nearby? Not that I can recall.

  What about the logbook in the cache box? Everyone is supposed to record their name there. All right. There’s no guarantee that she wrote her name, but it’s possible. Only how will I know which name is hers? Maybe it’ll be obvious. Maybe she wrote that she left a cd. Or I’ll see a name that has to be her.

  I realize there’s another clue. The handwriting on the cd would match the handwriting in the logbook, right? Not bad, Zack. Not bad at all. Maybe having a cop Mom who nags about the details has advantages.

  Thinking about Mom makes me check the clock. It’s too late for me to head out—she’ll be home any time now. I’m going to have to wait until tomorrow. I am going, grounded or not. All I have to do is wait until Mom leaves for work and, bam, I’ll be out the door. It only took about twenty minutes for us to drive to the cache site, including that wrong turn. I should be able to bike there in under an hour, easy.

  Chapter Five

  Mom doesn’t leave for work until almost noon. It’s a long morning. But it’s good, because it means she won’t come home for lunch.

  She’s barely out of the driveway when I’m out the back door. It’s a cold, foggy day, not the sun-and-fun weather I’d expected in Penticton. I’d checked the city out online before we moved here. Every site was all about the swimming, boating and beaches. There was no mention of the winter weather, which is cold, drizzly and dull.

  I decide to look on the bright side. I can barely see the stop sign at the end of our street, but at least I’m out of the house and moving. I pedal as fast as the limited visibility allows, keeping my hands ready to grab the brakes. The pace and the feel of the cd in my pocket warm me, inside and out. I brought the cd along so I could match the handwriting, but having it with me feels like having a bit of her with me too.

  Half an hour later I reach the road heading to the viewpoint. I see a trail veering off along the hillside and wonder if it’s the same one the cache is on. It could be a shortcut, but I’m not sure. I decide not to risk it. I don’t like being on the road, since Mom could cruise by—but what are the chances? And the fog might make it hard for me to see, but it’s doing the same to everyone. I’m good.

>   And I am good. Another fifteen minutes of hard uphill pedaling, and I’m in the parking lot. There’s no view of the lake today, but I’m not here for that. Minutes later I’m closing in on the cache. The straight trunks of the pine trees are spooky in the fog. Some are almost like the silhouettes of people. The only sound is my tires, crunching on the gravel path. When I get to the spot where I think the stump should be, I stop and look around. I can hear another sound now: steady dripping. The fog has condensed into water drops that fall from the pines like rain.

  I get off my bike and stand there, straining to see the stump, uncertain about leaving the trail. It might be tough to find my way back. Then, like it was meant to be, a gust of wind parts the fog. And there’s the stump. I bolt for it, and seconds later I’ve got the cache box in my hands. I pry open the lid, grab the logbook and start reading. The last entry in the book is Mom’s, noting the date and our first names. I scan back from there.

  The cache has been found quite a few times, mostly by families. They write about how they’re having a great vacation and where they’re from. Other entries are only a date and initials. I go all the way back to the first entry, written last April. This shows that the Wandering Woods family started the cache, and that’s it. Nothing special catches my eye.

  I comb through the logbook again, more slowly. This time I zero in on an entry from last October. It’s the single letter F. It looks familiar. I pull out the cd, and sure enough, the F in Famous is identical. All right! But my moment of elation is short. So what if that’s her initial? I still don’t know her name. And if she cached the cd last October, she could be long gone.

  I toss the logbook back into the box and snap the lid shut. I put the box back in the stump and cover it with the chunk of wood. What a waste of time. I turn to go to the trail and don’t see it. Great. I get to be lost now too? My stomach rumbles. I’m lost and hungry.

  I know the trail is downhill from where I am. I look at the dead grass at my feet and can see some stalks that are trampled. It’s all in the details. I follow the path of trampled grass, and my feet find the trail again.

  I peer through the fog, back the way I came, then peer the other way. It makes sense that the trail would lead down to the road by the lake. I decide to take the trail down the hill. It’s bound to be a faster way back.

  It isn’t. For starters, I can’t ride. It’s not only that the trail is narrow and steep. It’s also that I can’t see more than two feet ahead of me. If I don’t keep my eyes glued to the ground, I risk losing the path altogether. When I do look up, my eyes strain to penetrate the silent wall of white. The fog coats my eyeballs. They sting, and the water and the cold make my nose run. I’m dripping like the trees. If this fog were music, what would it be? I’ve never heard music that looks like this.

  When I come to a fork in the trail, I consider turning back. But that means dragging my bike uphill, and it feels like failure. I stand there thinking I should have brought the gps. I decide that since the path to the left seems to go down, I should take it.

  And then a sound comes out of the fog. It is so strange and piercing, all thought ceases. The hair on the back of my neck rises, and midnight blue ripples around me. I feel a million miles from anywhere and anyone, utterly alone. The sound repeats, and my brain comes back online. I realize the eerie, fluting call is made by a loon. I only know the sound from tv, but it’s unmistakable. It’s one of the musical bird calls that give me color. The loon calls again, and the midnight blue is a relief after the no-color of fog. I tilt my head, trying to pinpoint the loon’s location. It must be close by. And it must be on the lake.

  The calls stop as suddenly as they started, but they’ve guided me to go to the right. The trail is steeper and rougher than ever, and it’s hard to hold on to my bouncing, bucking bike. But within minutes I’ve found the road. I’m so relieved I shout, “Yes!”

  My voice sounds unnaturally loud, almost as startling as the loon. A glance at my watch shows I’ve been gone three hours. I’m going to have to hurry to make it home before Mom stops in on her dinner break.

  I do make it. I throw my wet clothes in the wash and park my butt on the couch mere seconds before she comes through the door.

  “What a day,” she says.

  “Bad?” I ask.

  “One fender bender after another. It’s this fog.” She sighs and runs a hand through her hair. “I’ve only got time for a quick bite. Did you eat?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Want to help me heat up some leftovers?” she asks.

  “Sure.” And that’s it. We heat up meatloaf and vegetables, scarf it down, and then she’s gone again. When I watch her leave, I notice my sopping sneakers by the back door. Mom didn’t catch that evidence of my jailbreak. After I stick the shoes on a heat vent, I’m out of things to do.

  TV? No. Video game? No. My girl’s CD? Yeah.

  I sit back with my eyes closed, watching her colors go by. Then I grab my guitar and strum along with her, watching our colors merge. They don’t harmonize as well as I’d like. I’m not sure if it’s because she’s so much better, or because I’m trying too hard. But what if we could play together? In person. Wow. That would be epic.

  I have to find her. But how? All I know is her name starts with the letter F. It would help if I knew what she looked like. I’ll bet she’s got red hair. Not carrot red, but that dark brown red. Auburn. Yeah, she’s got auburn hair. I’ve seen that color in the music. And her hair is long and wavy. No, maybe short and spiky. Not short and spiky. It’s long, for sure. But maybe it’s black? It could be black. Whatever it is, it’s thick and soft.

  Her skin is perfect. Smooth and light brown. I’m not sure if it’s light brown because she’s tanned or because it just is. And her body? It’s perfect too. She’s tall, but not as tall as me. And she’s slender, but not skinny. When I get close to her she smells like…

  Jeez. No way does she smell like barf. I get off the couch and take my sneakers off the vent. That pretty much ruined my fantasy. It’s time to get back to the facts.

  Famous. Could that mean she is famous? I doubt it. I’d recognize most famous voices, at least if they’re current. I spend the next few hours listening to female indie singers online. My search isn’t methodical. I listen to almost a hundred singers, and none of them are her. A few have a similar sound, but they don’t sing the cd songs. And none of them have names that start with F.

  Chapter Six

  After dinner on Friday, Mom says, “You’ve done your time, Zack. You’re free to go.”

  It takes about three seconds for the words to sink in. When they do, I don’t wait around to hear more. I grab my jacket and yell, “See ya,” as I dive out the back door.

  She follows me and yells, “Not so fast, mister. Where are you going?”

  I have to think about that. Where am I going? “Maybe I’ll take a bike ride.” I detour toward the garage.

  “I want you home by ten. Do you have your cell phone? Are your lights working?”

  I don’t answer until I’m outside with the bike, helmet on. I flick on the bike lights and wave my cell phone in the air. “See? It’s all good.”

  I’m gone before she can ask me more questions.

  I ride like a demon for the first twenty minutes. I don’t have a destination in mind. I just go. When I finally slow down, I am at the far end of Main Street, close to the waterfront. Penticton sits between Skaha and the much larger Okanagan Lake. We live near Skaha. Okanagan Lake is where most of the stores are—and the people.

  I’m looking for her. That seems crazy, even to me. But part of me believes that if I see her, I’ll know. Some vibe will connect us. I get off my bike and push it along the sidewalk. It may be downtown on a Friday night, but the place is dead. The tourists aren’t around in February, and that equals not much happening. Only a few restaurants are open.

  Still, I need to look. I come across a music store and stop to stare in the window. There are some sweet guitars on dis
play. I’ll bet this is where she got her guitar. A flyer taped to the door catches my eye. It’s advertising guitar lessons. Huh. Maybe I should take some. What if she’s the instructor? I study the sheet of paper to see if there is a name, but there isn’t. Still, it could be a lead worth checking. Then an awful thought occurs to me. What if she is the instructor and she’s ten years older than me?

  No way. That voice, it belongs to a girl around my age. I know it. This is like one of those hunches Mom talks about. She doesn’t ignore them. She says you gotta go with your gut instincts. I’m going with my gut.

  Another flyer advertises a gig featuring local musicians. It doesn’t list all the performers, but the show is tomorrow night at the community center. Finally, a break. I am so going.

  I hop on my bike and cruise down to the waterfront. I’ve still got a couple of hours before I have to be home. I pedal slowly, feeling more relaxed than I have in days. It’s good to be outside. I notice a group of kids up the street and wonder if I know them. Probably not. But then one of the girls looks my way, and I recognize Charo.

  She calls out, “Zack? Hey!”

  I don’t want to hear about my butt, so I crank my wheel to the right and pedal hard. I don’t pay attention to where I’m going until I realize I’ve driven into a parking lot. When I stop to look around, I hear music.

  It’s not any music. It’s the guitar melody of her traveling song. It’s coming from the building in front of me. I’m almost at the door when I notice the sign: Slick Sal’s Neighborhood Pub.

  A pub? She’s playing in a pub? I crane my neck to see inside, but the main door opens into a dark foyer. Should I go in? I could try. What’s the big deal? I might be underage, but it’s not like I’m going to try buying beer. I lean my bike against the wall, take a deep breath and go for it. I’ve made it to the doorway when the singing starts.

  It’s not her.

  Some guy is singing her song.