by Andi Loveall
Why would anyone want to leave this place, with its delicious food and beautiful secrets? Why would anyone want to leave her?
He shook it off. He couldn’t be thinking about shacking up. He just couldn’t.
Anyway, there was still plenty of time before he had to go anywhere. Plenty of time to get to know her in a deeper way and decide where to go from there.
He looked at the clock on the wall, watching the seconds tick.
Raven and Lucius brought in the finished cake, a beautiful stacked glory with chocolate frosting and little decorative sunflowers. They sang happy birthday, something Devin hadn’t experienced since early childhood. Leon wasn’t the singsong type, and birthdays according to Aaron and Dave meant beat downs, girls, and a lot of hard alcohol.
A realization hit him as he listened to their voices: he loved these people. Yet for most of his life, they hadn’t even existed.
“Make a wish,” Raven said, smiling at him.
He blew out the candles, wishing time would stop.
***
On the Sunday, Devin was invited down to the basement.
He swore he manifested it, having spent all of Saturday night daydreaming about Walter allowing him to hang out down there. And then, the very next morning …
“Devin, would you like to come have a little chat with me?”
Devin nodded. He was rocked by déjà vu as he looked back over his shoulder at Lucius, who watched them until the study door closed him out.
“So … ” Devin crossed his arms. “What’s up?”
“Aye,” Walter said. “What is up? Well let’s see … The roof of me skull. The ceiling. The sky.”
“You forgot the solar panels.”
“What’s up is a horse’s ass. I think we’re both more concerned with the happenings below, wouldn’t you say?”
Devin swallowed, unsure if this was some sort of test.
“Uh … what?”
“Would you like to have a proper look around?”
“Are you serious? Hell yeah.”
The second trip down was a lot better than the first. Now that he was welcome, he had the freedom to touch, smell, and really look. Walter walked him around, unzipping the grow labs and pointing out the various strains. White Widow. Ridiculator. Silver Haze. Marshmellow. Some had fat buds bubbling out like succulents and others were more delicate and featherlike in a million shades of green. He wanted to shrink down to the size of a bug and dive right in, bouncing from leaf to leaf.
“In a way it’s kinda nifty,” Walter said. “It can be a shame not being able to show all this off.”
“Doesn’t anyone come down and work with you?”
“Casey and Abe stop by once or twice a week and help out for an hour or two if needed. My grow partner, Daniel, passed on last year.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I’ve kept it all going on my own.”
Devin looked around. “Man … If this were me, I’d retire now and keep all of it. You could seal it up in airtight plastic and have smoke supply for the rest of your life.”
Walter chuckled. “I’ve smoked it plenty. Perhaps I’ll start up again when I’m old and haggard, just to make dying a bit more beautiful. But at this age and with all I’ve got on me plate, it helps to stay clear minded as possible.”
“It must be kind of a trip though … I mean, right? My friend Aaron back home, he sold a little pot—but nothing like this.”
“It’s a living, breathing machine.” Walter nodded and looked around. “We built it slow and careful. Met the right kinds of folks and made smart decisions with them. Daniel and Casey were with us from the beginning. Every step of the way, trust was built … Aye, good roots and a lot of trust. That’s what’s kept it going. But the end is near. The wife feels that this should probably be one of the last harvests.”
“It’s a shame.”
“I agree with her. It’s nearing the right time.”
“What’s going to happen to the local supply if you duck out?”
“Someone will be there to pick up where I left off. As long as there’s lungs to take her in, someone will.”
“You speak the truth.”
“You know, son,” Walter said. “I’ll be needing some extra help around harvest time in a week or two here. Maybe you can give me a hand?”
“Really? Wow … Yeah, I’d love to.”
“Good then,” Walter said, motioning for the exit. “Now, get back upstairs.”
Devin did as asked, closing the study door and heading back into the kitchen. A half hour had passed.
“Hey,” Lucius whispered. “What was that about?”
“Oh uh … His chair broke and he wanted my help fixing it.”
Lucius nodded, appearing anything but satisfied. “I didn’t hear any hammering.”
“Glue,” Devin said. “We used glue.”
“Oh. Well did you see anything while you were in there?”
“No. He showed me a few of his books, and that was that.”
Devin got back to work, cursing himself for the “that was that.” It sounded too forced, and Lucius noticed it too.
“What books?”
“About homesteads like this one. But really cool, advanced ones. The best of the best.”
“Cool. Maybe I’ll ask him to look at it later.”
“Yeah,” Devin said, choking down a laugh. “You should.”
Let Walter figure that one out.
They made a vegan risotto and spinach salad for lunch, and before Lucius could bring it up, Walter distracted them by making the official announcement: He was indeed bringing on a new worker, and much to Lucius’s dismay, it was a guy. Apparently, he was only nineteen and had been traveling on his own since the previous winter.
“Another Canuck,” Walter said. “Toronto I believe.”
That made Lucius a little happier despite the lack of incoming vagina.
Since Panky had taken over the third cabin, there wasn’t anywhere for new kid to go but in with Lucius, which meant that Devin and Cora’s slumber party was about to become an official living situation. She seemed good with it, so he threw all of his stuff in his sleeping bag and lugged it over.
She lay on the bed and watched as he found a place for everything.
“I like seeing our stuff all mixed up,” he said, crawling across her and putting his little rock on the windowsill.
“What’s that?”
She picked it up and looked at it in the light.
“My mom had this thing about my eyes,” he said. “She always said they were like river rocks. She said a lot of stuff like that. My brother had ‘hair like chocolate pie,’ my dad had a ‘laugh like a bear,’ just weird shit.”
“She gave it to you,” Cora said, turning it over.
“She thought it matched my eyes,” he said. “This one day at the river, she just grabbed it from the water. She was so excited about it.”
“She was creative like you.”
“Yeah.”
“I’d love to see what she looks like,” she said. “Do you have a picture?”
“Just one, and you can’t really see her.”
He found his wallet and slipped out the worn photograph. Leon snapped the shot from behind as they were walking away. Michael was running ahead, pointing at something in the distance, and Devin was holding her hand, looking up at her as if waiting for an answer. What the question was, he couldn’t recall.
His mother faced away from the camera, her curly dark hair trailing down her back. He couldn’t see her face, he could tell by the shape of her shoulders that she was smiling.
Cora gazed at the photo for a few seconds, gently touching the edge. When she finally looked up, she smiled.
“I can see her,” she said.
“That’s my brother, right there … I don’t have a picture of my dad, but he pretty much looks like an older, angrier version of me.”
“So, he’s hot?”
“Please nev
er say that again.”
She giggled. “Would he like me?”
“Sweetheart,” he said, putting on a funny voice. “With a smile like that, there isn’t a father on the planet who could resist you—not even mine.”
“Good, because I might be scared to meet him otherwise.”
“ … You want to meet my dad?”
“Well one day, maybe … right? Wouldn’t you want to meet mine?”
“I never really thought about it, but yeah.” He smiled. “I guess so.”
“What should I say? When I meet him?”
“Don’t worry about it. You’ll have all the power. He gets really nervous around pretty girls so he won’t mess with you too much, although he might bring up some controversial topic and try to argue about it with me. If you keep your cool and don’t get sucked in, he’ll respect you.”
“Sounds kind of scary.”
“He’s not scary. I mean, he never beat me with a two-by-four or anything. What about your parents? What are they gonna be like when I meet them?”
She shrugged. “My dad is too busy to care who I date. Just as long as no one is raping or murdering me, he considers it none of his business. I don’t get to spend a lot of time with him, but when he does, he really spoils me, which means he would spoil you too. He’s always taken me and my friends shopping and bought us nice clothes and taken us to eat at nice restaurants. Or he would take us to amusement parks for the day—things like that. He feels guilty for abandoning me and my sister after he left our mom.”
“That’s kinda shitty … but cool, I guess. At least he’s trying.”
“Yeah.”
“What about your mom? What’s she like?”
“Uh … She was always sort of a party girl, but after the divorce, she cleaned up her act for quite a while. Until … She’s in rehab right now.”
“What? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I just did.”
“How is she doing?”
“Pretty good, apparently. We email like … twice a week. I don’t know. No matter how she’s doing when you meet her, she’ll probably flirt with you. Ignore her or you’ll make it worse.”
He smiled, looking at her picture on the wall. “Pretty green eyes, just like you. Did you know that only two percent of the world’s population—”
“Has green eyes? Yes I did.”
“I was going to say perfect tits, but yeah, that too.”
It made her laugh hard, and he grinned.
“I’m going to punch you.”
“I’d like it.”
“You’re one to talk about eyes,” she said. “I always wanted to meet a boy with beautiful blue eyes like yours.”
“Fail-whale,” he said. “I have gray eyes.”
“They look blue to me.”
“Bluish-gray.”
“More like grayish-blue. Have you looked at them lately? Maybe they changed.”
“You’re eyes are your eyes. They don’t change.”
“They do too! All the detoxifying food and fresh air. My eyes were hazel brown. When I moved out here, they turned bright green.”
“Maybe they’re just reflecting more green because it’s so green here.”
“No,” she said. “Eyes can change—ask Raven.”
“Ask the rock,” he said, holding it up to his face. “What do you think, is it a match?”
“Your eyes are more blue,” she said, squinting as she looked. “But it is close.”
“You just have to be right.” He snatched it from her. “Don’t you?”
“No. But I do try to be.”
“You know what I want to try to do?”
He set the rock back on the shelf and grabbed the side of her face with his hand, kissing her.
“Mhm,” he said. “You’re mine.”
She laughed as he attacked her with kisses.
“I want to kiss every inch of you,” he said. “Every single inch.”
“You kiss where I say you can kiss.”
“Please, give me a map of my allowed areas. I wish to begin.”
“Mmm,” she said, thinking. “You can kiss my arm, right there.”
“I accept,” he said.
Before going to bed that night, he went to the bathroom and spent a few minutes shining his headlamp in his face and studying the fibers of his iris. They did look very blue. Maybe they would keep getting brighter until one day they were glowing like Christmas lights and capable of shooting lasers at his enemies. Maybe they had been changing his whole life and he never noticed.
That was the way it worked with change. It was always happening, even when you couldn’t see it. One day his eyes were bluish-gray, the next they were grayish-blue, and suddenly he was living with his girlfriend and contemplating an entirely different future than the one he was contemplating last month.
When he got back, she was asleep. It hit him then, as he watched her in the candlelight, her hair twisted up and above her in a silky heap, her eyelashes like dark feathers against her creamy skin.
This was where he lived. Him and his girlfriend Cora.
It would have been terrifying if it hadn’t been so much fun, which said a lot, because it was pretty damn terrifying.
Chapter Four—Fighting
His name was Jason Rockwell, but everyone called him Rocky.
Walter rolled in with him on Tuesday night, and upon handshake, Devin knew that he wasn’t going to like him. It wasn’t the gallons of cologne the kid was wearing, nor did it have anything to do with him explaining that he was “Canadian, not American,” with an unnecessary look of disgust on his face—that was actually pretty funny. The kid could be from anywhere and stink as much as he wanted to. What he couldn’t do was leer at Cora.
“Jackpot!” Rocky’s eyes were huge. “You are so hot. And so blond. Are you like, Swedish or something?”
“ … Thanks.” Cora motioned to their surroundings. “And no. I’m a native.”
“A native American? Whoa … you don’t even look black.”
It made everyone laugh, including Rocky. He looked real proud of himself, even though it was clear he didn’t understand why it was funny.
“Finish this sentence,” said Lucius. “The girl jumped on top of …”
Rocky looked at him. “Huh?”
“The sentence. Finish it. Anything you want. The girl jumped on top of …”
“My dick?”
Devin snorted. Lucius shrugged, appearing impressed.
“A vulgar answer is better than none at all. Nicely done.”
“Hi,” Panky said, snapping a picture. “I’m Panky.”
Rocky didn’t seem surprised by the camera, posing perfectly as soon as he saw it. He looked Panky up and down and then turned back to Cora.
“Do you like snowboarding?”
“Um. Yeah. I guess.”
“My family has a cabin in Vail,” he said. “It’s perfect for snowboarding.”
“Vail is pretty far.”
“Not that far.” He gave her a little smile.
“Aye, watch it there lad before you ruffle some feathers.” Walter nodded toward Devin. “She’s already well snatched by that one there.”
Devin narrowed his eyes. Damn right.
Rocky avoided his eyes and nodded, not appearing fazed enough for Devin’s liking. Walter led him off to the cabins. He carried his pack for him, which was a giant red thing, well over one hundred liters with all sorts of stuff hanging off of it. Walter didn’t seem to have a problem with it.
They finished up a standard welcome dinner—a big salad, rice and beans and all the fixings, hard-boiled eggs, soup, and stir-fry vegetables. When Walter and Rocky came back down the hill, Rocky picked up right where he left off. Luckily, the bombardment of first-dinner questions distracted his attention away from Cora’s boobs. How long had he been traveling? Where had he been traveling? Did he have a girlfriend? Panky asked that last one. She had been eyeballing him since the minute he arrived, and he seemed p
retty keen on pretending he didn’t notice. It was working for him.
“No girlfriend,” he said, shaking his head. “I can’t limit myself to just one girl. I know that sounds bad and all, but if any of you had spent a month in Brazil you would know. These Brazilian girls, man. American girls don’t even compare.”
Panky made a face. “Sweeping generalizations are always fun.”
Raven politely ignored both comments. “How did your parents feel, honey? Were they nervous about you going to Brazil all by yourself?”
“They paid for the whole trip,” he said, stuffing an entire egg in his mouth. “Brazil. Peru. Costa Rica. Cancun. Orlando, Florida. Those are the places I stayed for longer than two weeks. I only stayed in Orlando because part of the trip was that I had to visit my grandparents. They took me to Disney World. It was cool, man.”
“So how’d you end up here?” Devin asked.
“A friend in Florida worked up here at a camp last summer, and he was always talking about how righteous it was and how there were beautiful girls everywhere.” He shot Cora a smile. “Looks like he was right.”
Cora looked back at him, obviously unimpressed. Panky’s eyes darted between them.
“I’ve not been to Peru,” she said. “How was it? Did you do Machu Picchu?”
“Of course. You can’t go to Peru and not do Machu Picchu. We did a four-day trek. Some people in my group were complaining, but it wasn’t even hard for me. I work out every day.”
“I bet you do, slugger.”
It made Devin choke on his water. Rocky didn’t flinch, but he did give her a look-over, as if he had only then noticed she was hot.
“You’ll know I do,” he said. “You’ll see me tomorrow.”
Devin stared. Yeah, flirt away. Keep those sleazy eyes distracted.
He and Cora went back up the hill that night, leaving the others in the living room using the Internet.
“So what do you think,” he said as they walked. “About Blondie Brazil.”
