Wayward

by Dana Spiotta

  “What’s wrong, honey?”

  Ally shook her head. “Nothing.” No tears, but her voice cracked.

  “What?”

  “It’s just that I’m so lucky, aren’t I?” she said. She looked at the blanket. “Can you imagine what some kids must go through? And can you imagine some sweet woman sewing blankets to comfort some kid she will never see?”

  It wasn’t funny, any of it.

  6

  As she waited in the line of cars exiting the fair, she looked at the Syracuse Streets Instagram page. There would be a protest against the police killing tomorrow at one p.m. in front of the Public Safety Building. She wondered if the boy’s mother would be there. She messaged the group:

  I was a witness to the shooting. I will attend the protest tomorrow.

  I can even speak if you want.

  No one messaged her back. (Sam had intended to go to more of the weekly Syracuse Streets meetings after the one she attended at the Luthern church. She managed just two.) Instead, the ACLU lawyer, Amina, called her. Yes, come speak at the protest. She would pick Sam up.

  * * *

  —

  The knock on the door startled her. Sam barely registered that Amina was beautiful and looked hardly older than Ally. Sam could feel her heart working hard in her chest and her breath getting shallow. When they got to the crowd gathering in front of the Public Safety Building, she looked down at herself. How would she seem to this crowd? Her hands shook a bit when she held them out. She did not want to stand up in front of people (not stand up in front of strangers again, not after the awful night at the Smiley Face, and not about something so important). She had no idea what she would say. She had to do it because maybe it could help somehow, and even if it didn’t, speaking was what made you a witness instead of a spectator.

  The crowd of maybe two hundred was chanting, “Whose streets? Our streets!” and then “No justice, no peace.”

  There were many speakers. Amina told her she should talk for about two minutes. Some teenagers stood behind Amina in matching T-shirts with Aadil’s face in black and white and the words “Justice for Adi” across the bottom.

  “What do I say?”

  “Just tell them what you saw and heard,” she said, smiling.

  Words were meager. What had she seen? The experience resisted language. Maybe she did make things too complicated, too cloudy with self-doubt, with self. Finding the right words was impossible, finding the perfect words a vanity. Flawed, stumbling speech was her offering to the truth.

  “My name is Samantha Raymond.” Her voice sounded odd, creaky and loud. “I was walking in my neighborhood when I saw Officer Amy Wayne shoot Aadil Mapunda. I saw her shoot him. I heard three shots. So did the other officer. We both saw it and heard it. Aadil Mapunda held a bottle of soda; it did not look anything like a weapon. I heard the other officer ask, ‘Why did you fire?’ I heard him. I saw her. I heard and I saw. Aadil Mapunda was killed because of who he was, not for anything he did.” Sam stepped back and tripped, stumbling as she handed the mic to Amina.

  The crowd chanted Aadil’s name. “Say his name, Aadil Mapunda.” Then they recited a litany of names, a catalog of murders. Aadil Mapunda was one of them now.

  Sam stood in the crowd while other people spoke.

  When the protest was over, she still felt the pulse of the crowd, an extra energy that discharged as she walked up the hill to her house. Her counterregulatory hormones had jacked through her and then bottomed out. Spent, she sat at her table and wished she had done better.

  If only she had shown up sooner to the scene of the crime. Maybe she could have shouted and stopped it somehow instead of just standing there watching. If only she had brought her phone and filmed it. If only she had gone to more meetings, more protests. Sam was so tired, but her body kept going anyway. A jumpy, erratic energy as if she were combusting the wrong kind of fuel.

  That night, Sam didn’t bother trying to go to sleep. She sipped some salted broth and headed into the miserable night streets. For blocks, she saw no one except a stray dog trotting the other way under the streetlights. What was she doing? Night patrol. Looking to see what could be seen.

  At the corner of Lodi, she saw a man from behind. He was near the sagging vestibule of a dark, abandoned house. A year ago, she would have stopped, turned, and hurried back the other way, frightened. But tonight she continued to walk right by him. She kept her eyes fixed on his back as she went by, her steps sure. He jerked his body out of view while looking over his shoulder at her. It was then she realized that he was in rough shape, probably living on the street. And he was taking a piss in that corner. She made an audible intake of air and hurried on, trying not to see anything. He scowled when she passed and moved farther behind the vestibule.

  Then he leaned his head back out, shouting at her. “Do you have a problem, bitch?”

  She shook her head, she reddened, she sped up her steps. Foolish to lurk and scour in the middle of the night. Foolish anytime. She rushed back to the house. Breathless and cold, she made a fire. She was too tired to eat. It had been so long since she’d slept. Did she lock the door? She should lock the door before she drifted off.

  7

  Here was what happened to her, although Sam would soon forget many of the details: She sat sleepily by the fire. She kept seeing things in the corner of her eye, but nothing was there. She figured she was just uneasy after days of barely any sleep. A little light-headed. Her heart rate slightly elevated, the way it sometimes was before one of her heat flares. Then she heard a noise behind her. She turned just as she felt a blow—a wickedly hard, blunt hit to the back of her head. She imagined a two-by-four or a blackjack—the thing hitting her heavy and inanimate. A weapon. She could not see who hit her.

  It occurred to her, as she lay there, that the police officer had hit her, the woman or the man or both. That it was MH. Or maybe the guy she’d seen pissing. The people who nodded out in the park, one of the street ghosts, the pale opioid zombies. She had it all wrong. She was not invisible. They were the invisible ones. She drifted off and then came to on the floor.

  Sam opened her eyes. She tried to lift her head, but too heavy. Pain. She felt the back of her skull where the pain was coming from. Wet.

  Her phone was in her pocket. She pulled it up to her face, touched the screen, tapped the word “emergency” and then 911. Before she spoke, she fell back to sleep. This she had no memory of either.

  Six

  Ally

  1

  When Joe said he would be in town over Labor Day weekend, Ally realized that she wanted to take him to the State Fair. She had always imagined that when she was older and had a boyfriend, they would have a laugh together at the corny stuff at the fair. Besides, she was a little sick of hotel rooms and hiding. When they were in New York, they got to eat out in restaurants, go to museums, walk in the park hand in hand. But since then it had been texts, phone calls, and furtive meetings in Syracuse in which she snuck into his hotel room.

  She liked hotel rooms, and she liked it when they had sex and then had room service. But it made her realize how limited they were. They had gone this far and now were stuck there. He’d said that it had to remain a secret affair even after she turned seventeen. She tried not to think about it, but the hotel reminded her of it just the same. They lay in the king bed. She had told her dad that she had another practice. (He was so unsuspecting of her, so oblivious to it all, so fucking clueless, that she didn’t even have to tell him anything. She could have just said, Gotta go, taken her car and left. He would still be like, Bye, honey!) Joe and Ally fooled around and then ordered breakfast. Even in the hotel he was paranoid about being seen with her; she had to meet him in the room and hide in the bathroom when the room service was delivered.

  “Have you ever been to the State Fair?” she said and took a sip of French-press coffee. It didn’t taste as
good as she thought it should.

  “Nope,” he said.

  “Maybe we should go today,” she said. “Instead of being cooped up here.”

  “C’mon, Ally, you know we can’t take any chances of being seen.”

  “No one I know goes to the fair anymore except if there’s a band they want to see, which there never is because it’s usually sad music for old people, like Herman’s Hermits with only one Hermit,” she said. He laughed. “The fair is for kids and parents. Plus no one I know will go on Labor Day weekend. Too crowded.”

  “Sounds great.”

  “But it’d be so fun to see the exhibits together. I can show you everything. Instead of you showing me everything all the time, you know?” She looked at him, suddenly bent on the fair. “Please?”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “If it makes you happy. You make me reckless, I guess.” He kissed her.

  They drove in his black Audi. Ally hated to admit being impressed by a car, but as Joe shifted and accelerated, the car took corners and gripped the road like you were on a ride. It had black leather seats and a burl wood dashboard. It was exciting to be driven in it. It really was.

  They walked from the parking lot to the fairgrounds, which required using a pedestrian overpass. She could see how this exposure made him nervous. He kept looking around as they walked. But it was cloudy and a little rainy, which made them feel less exposed. By the time they walked through the gate, he seemed more comfortable. He even let her hold his hand.

  They ducked under the cover of a kiosk and studied the map. Then Ally looked up and saw her mother walking toward them. Her heart started going so fast she could hear it in her head. Her mother hadn’t spotted her yet. If she moved Joe behind the kiosk, her mother wouldn’t see them and all would continue as it had been. But instead, Ally looked intently at the map. She put an arm around Joe and leaned into him.

  “Let’s stay here a minute and see if the rain stops.” She knew—could feel it on her skin—that her mother now saw them. Out of the tiniest corner of her vision, she could see her mother stop and look their way. She turned to Joe and kissed him. She waited for the fallout, the blowup, the meltdown.

  She waited. But minutes went by, and nothing. Finally she looked in the direction of her mother and saw that she was gone. How was it possible? Her mother had seen them. Seen her with Joe, who was not only a man, but a much older man. And not only a much older man, but someone her mother knew as a colleague to her husband (ex-husband). Yet she did and said nothing.

  “Ready to go check out some long-haired rabbits?” Joe said.

  “Yes, yes, I am,” Ally said.

  They saw the animals, looked at the winners of the county art fairs, and even shared a giant sundae, despite how Joe was usually against consuming sugar of any kind. It was the oddest thing, the run-in with her mother. Not only did it surprise Ally that her mother had let her be, but Ally had also discovered that on some level, she wanted to get caught. She wanted things to blow up. Was that true?

  When she got home, her father told her that her mother had witnessed a shooting.

  “What? When?”

  “A few days ago, in the middle of the night. It was bad—a cop shot some poor kid. An unarmed kid.”

  “Jesus, is she freaked out?” Ally said.

  “Of course, Ally. Anyone would be, and she’s always way more everything than anyone else. Did she say anything to you?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Maybe you could check in with her? I know a call or a text from you would help.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Ally said. She was a little ashamed that she had blocked her mother, but she also didn’t feel like starting up some big text thing with her.

  2

  The next day, Ally drove to her grandmother’s house for a visit. At Joe’s suggestion, she listened to Mark Frosh on the Joe Rogan podcast. Frosh was a billionaire philosopher guru who was made famous by a viral tweetstorm about how to make money and retire by forty. Not make money, “acquire wealth.” It inspired the FIRE movement (Financial Independence, Retire Early). The whole idea of FIRE was presented not as greed but as liberty: work for yourself so you never have to work for someone else. “Self-investing” was his term. He was also famous for speed-reading books and finishing a book a day. Apparently he listened to books at double speed all the time. Ally knew that Joe listened to podcasts and audiobooks sped up 1.7x. Everything was about efficiency and velocity. This had also struck her at the YAD pitch simulations. All “innovative” tech really amounted to (the Fourth Industrial Revolution, etc.) was velocity. Increased processing times, superior compression, and efficiency all just meant faster. Progress = speed, but no one ever questioned that equation or even the idea of progression itself. Blind pursuit of velocity in all things seemed a little effed up to her.

  Mark Frosh also suggested listening to things you wanted to learn, like a new language, on subaudible levels during sleep. He had invested in an app that used biofeedback to sync deep-sleep brain waves with inserted learning pods, but it was still in beta testing because it turned out that sleep brain waves were really complex and there were unintended consequences in which the biofeedback caused the wrong waves and prevented the sleeper from getting rapid eye movement sleep.

  “So we are still working on it,” Frosh said, “but what a tool once we get it down.”

  “Totally, man, that’s amazing,” said Joe Rogan.

  Can you imagine letting an app collect data on your sleeping brain? Ally had read that without REM sleep, people rapidly deteriorated and would go mad in like two weeks. But hey, why not use sleep for some utility other than sleep? She had also read that nobody can actually multitask and that the whole superman high-achiever dogma (Jack Dorsey, Peter Thiel, Ray Dalio, et al.) of only sleeping four hours a night just made people sick and probably gave them Alzheimer’s. But sure, invade our sleep too, farm that out for ultra-achievement, for “full density productivity.” Productivity was a measurement of output per unit of input; which meant you always needed to get more than you put in, which was also kind of effed when she thought about it.

  Frosh and Rogan circled back to goal setting and FIRE. Okay, but financial independence and retire early for what? Maybe if you retire you won’t have to speed-read (speed-listen to) books or utilize your brain waves while you sleep?

  She switched off that podcast and listened to NPR. Then she turned that off and listened to the sounds of the road as she drove.

  Ally loved visiting her grandma Lily’s house. When she arrived, she could see Lily working in her garden, picking the last of her little perfect tomatoes for their dinner. She would cook chili or paella or pasta. Lily would have bought her favorite crusty bread from the bakery for them. After dinner they would sit on the couch and have homemade apple crisp or pie and stream a movie. It was exactly what Ally wanted and needed.

  But when Ally got close to Lily, she saw how loose her clothes were. Her eyes had a puffiness under them, and her skin looked dry. Lily hugged Ally and led her into the house. She still smelled the same as she always did, like lavender soap.

  They did all the things Ally counted on. Ally told Lily about her college applications, her summer activities, and her life with her dad. She told her about the fiasco of her mother’s stand-up. (“You know she didn’t mean to upset you,” Lily said. “But she is so clueless—that was so private. She has no boundaries of any kind,” Ally said. “When it comes to you, I’m afraid that is true.”) Ally trusted Lily and almost told her about Joe, but then she felt weirdly ashamed and self-conscious. What would Lily think of Ally having a secret affair? Maybe that would be okay with her, but Ally knew that she would dislike Joe, dislike all the development stuff he did, and positively hate all the pretend benevolence that veiled the moneymaking and the power it gave him. So no, she wouldn’t spill about J
oe.

  They didn’t watch a movie, because they were both too tired. They sat in their pajamas on the sectional drinking tea.

  “I have something I’ve been meaning to give you,” Lily said. Then she pulled out a long narrow velvet box, the kind that snapped open and held nice jewelry. She handed it to Ally.

  “Thank you, Grandma,” Ally said. The last time she’d gotten jewelry from Lily was on her sixteenth birthday, when she gave Ally her gold cameo ring.

  “Open it!” Lily said, laughing.

  Ally pressed the catch and it sprang open, and there on the pale gray silk was Lily’s string of real natural pearls. Ally loved these pearls (not too big, not graduated, and with the most exquisite sheen of creamy opalescence). She gasped.

  “Put them on.”

  Ally put them around her neck and clicked in the little silver safety clasp.

  Lily covered her mouth with her hand. “My god, you are so beautiful. Born to wear those pearls. I think your mother will kill me. She wanted me to wait until your graduation to give you any more of my nice jewelry. But I don’t want to wait.”

  Ally was so glad to get them, but she sensed that it meant something bad was happening, something dreadful.

  Then Lily said, “Honey, I need to tell you something serious. I have what they call leiomyosarcoma.”

  “What’s that?” But Ally knew all about “sarcoma,” had looked it up before. It was from “sarkoma,” which meant fleshy substance, and “sarkoun,” something that leads to a growth of flesh—i.e., a tumor. “Flesh” itself was fascinating; it was from Old English, from “flaesc,” meaning meat (“sarcasm” also came from the same root via “sarkazein,” which meant to strip off flesh by means of a sneer or taunt).