You first, p.20
You First, page 20
I pause for a moment, staring at my phone’s wallpaper. A photo of us at Summerhill PrideFest two Junes ago. I’m kissing his cheek and he’s laughing up at the sky, the summer sun flooding his face like a spotlight.
Are you awake, I text.
No answer. He’s probably fallen asleep in front of the TV—unmoored without me, his teeth unbrushed, his new phone slipping between the couch cushions.
I slide the pillowcase onto the pillow C.C. gave me and hold it tight.
The mountain-night silence is fathomless; only the quiet shuffling of the box turtle reminds me I’m not technically alone. I never realized how much I valued the background symphonics of our little world. Usually Jay and I edge into sleep murmuring lazy banter about the day or stray thoughts about the last show we watched together. On nights when we don’t talk, I relax to the sounds of our bedroom: the muffled music from Jay’s earbuds, the rattle of our elderly air conditioner, the soft philosophical burblings of a stray roach on our wall.
I’d talk to anyone right now. Even a roach.
I squint through the darkness at the iguana tank.
“Are you there, Ted?” I whisper. It’s me, Levon.
Ted grumbles something testy from his tank.
“I’m nervous about tomorrow,” I tell him. “Don’t tell anyone, but I kind of hated the reptile work today. No offense. She said I did well, and I’m proud of that, but could I do this as a job? I don’t know. Maybe you get used to it. Maybe it’s noble, working with angry creatures, if you can show them empathy. But at what point would the flood of negativity overwhelm your empathy? Do you know what I mean?”
Ted is quiet for a second. When he speaks to me, I can almost decipher everything:
Humans make their own problems. To be honest, you’re a big mrfprhr of shkskpp.
I haven’t gotten an A on this particular translation, but one thing is certain: I’m getting better, fast. Not good enough to disperse a plague of pythons. But by the end of my time here, good enough to hold my own in Florida, and possibly impress the Senior Invasive Species Specialist exactly enough to buy me a chance.
I curl into a ball. My stomach is roiling.
Potatoes au gratin and infinite dread.
now
“Levon?” C.C.’s voice cuts the cool morning air. “Oh, there you are! Thought we lost you.”
I’m on her porch at seven a.m., watching the rope bridge sway above the surging stream and contemplating escape. Eleanor sits in front of my rocker, watching to make sure I don’t go through with it.
“Still here.” My heart starts hammering as C.C. steps onto the porch. I fake a grin of determination that probably looks more like indigestion. “Just gearing up for the day.”
C.C. wanders over in her pawprint jeans and a CAT PUNS FREAK MEOWT sweatshirt that it is entirely too early for. She takes the rocker next to mine, warming her hands on a steaming mug of tea. The mug is black and has all kinds of animal eyes on it. I shudder, thinking of wandering lost in a night forest while being secretly judged by creatures I can’t see.
“Sleep okay?” she says.
“Sure.”
“Hungry?”
“Not really.”
“Doing a little light reading?”
She gestures at the brick of a library book in my lap, of which I’ve read exactly four lines in the forty minutes I’ve been out here. My head still aches from yesterday, even with my morning ibuprofen.
“Yeah. It’s—engrossing.”
“You’ve got a long journey ahead, looks like.”
“Five hundred pages.”
She whistles. “I’m more of a two-hundred-page mystery kind of girl. Get ’em solved and then on to the next murder.”
“I hadn’t pegged you as the murder type.”
“Oh, they’re quaint hamlet murders. Always someone done in with a candlestick. Thrown off a belltower.”
“My dad and I both like epics. Long family sagas. The more intricate the better.”
“Why is that, do you think?”
I lightly rub page sixty-seven between my thumb and forefinger, a quirk I got from my father. “I guess I don’t like saying goodbye to characters once I get to know them,” I tell her, aware I’m giftwrapping part of myself in a metaphor and handing it over to her. “It’s exhausting, starting a book and trying to like new characters. They feel like strangers for at least three chapters.”
“Have you made friends with this one yet?”
“Sort of. Sean isn’t easy to like, but he’s interesting. He’s a closeted gay super in Ireland in the late 1960s, when the church was persecuting people for using their powers.”
“Ohhh, I can relate. That happened to my mother’s cousins when they still lived in Dublin.”
“Did it?” I nod fast. “I could tell you about the book if you’re interested. And if you want, you could tell me—”
“Levon,” she says.
“Yes?” I say.
She studies my face. I look away, listen to the breeze tickling the sugar maples and the endless shush of water rushing someplace else.
“You don’t really want to get started today,” she says. “Do you.”
“No, I do.”
Bah-reep-reep-reep, says the cat.
“Oh, shoo, Eleanor. This isn’t your business.” C.C. sips her tea. “Friendly suggestion: Why don’t we take a ramble first? I like to walk at least five miles a day anyway.” She points a thumb over her shoulder. “We’ll walk back by the creek, follow it as far as we can. Bring old Sean O’Reilly if you want.”
“How’d you know his last name?”
“Lucky guess.”
I hesitate. I shouldn’t be spending Lynette’s money like this, on aimless strolls through mountain trails. And Jay—I owe it to our future to keep pushing through. But C.C.’s already pulling her duck boots on, and I have a feeling her friendly suggestion is less an invitation than a command.
***
Our found walking sticks thump the dirt trail in rhythm. The morning chill has blurred into muggy heat, so her sweatshirt and my flannel button-down are tied around our waists. As we pass a blue trailer half-obscured by forsythia bushes, I realize I am doing an inordinate amount of huffing and puffing. I could probably benefit from a few more of those 1812 Overture aerobics sessions, even if they don’t level me up.
“Oh, look!” C.C. points to a tree, where a birdhouse made from an old silver teapot sways from a rusted chain. “A birdie teahouse. Bet the sparrows love it.”
I smile. Jay would like the teahouse. He’d like a lot of the things we’ve seen on this trail: the summer shacks with flaking paint and names like Camp Six-Buck and Patty’s Paradise, the A-frame outhouse behind one trailer with a sign on it that said READING ROOM, the groundhog who stood up on two legs to greet C.C. (but regrettably was not wearing a bowtie and corduroy vest). I want to send him pictures of everything, but then I remember he doesn’t even know I’m here.
“Can I ask you…?” I say.
“Yes, I can get you speaking groundhog if you want.” C.C. chuckles. “Sorry. Go ahead.”
“If you traveled the world for so many years…” I hope this won’t sound rude. “How did you end up here?”
“To be close to my niece and nephew, mostly. And since I was here, the mountains seemed like a good place for my business. If you’re off the super-grid, especially in this country, you have to keep a very low profile.” She accepts the arm I offer as we step over a jutting tree root. “Besides, I like a small town. Don’t you?”
I weigh my reply. I still haven’t told her the whole truth about why I’m here. I don’t want her picking at it like Ma, pulling at loose threads in my plan until the whole damn thing unravels.
“I do,” I admit. “But what I like and what I need are different things.”
“What do you mean?”
My brain scrabbles for words. “Well, at a certain point, people are supposed to progress—at least, other people expect you to…and small towns and ambitions—like, certain bigger ambitions—that I have, or I’m supposed to have—are essentially…I’m not sure if ‘antithetical’ is exactly the word but, yeah.” I redden. I sound like the worst, most equivocating member of a high school debate team. “Does that make any sense at all?”
We come to a fork in the trail. C.C. steers me to the left, away from the deeper woods and into a new throng of brightly painted trailers.
“Yes,” she says softly. “I’m afraid it does.”
She’s about to say more when a wave from a stranger interrupts. “C.C.! Hey.”
“Hello, Mimi!”
C.C. waves back at a sad-faced older woman sitting on the steps of a purple trailer with a heart-shaped window in the door. The woman wears faded jeans and an embroidered blue blouse, and her waist-length black hair is streaked with gray and held back with a bandana.
“That’s my friend,” C.C. says. “Mind if we stop for a second? She’s been having some trouble.”
“Sure, yeah.”
We walk up the gravel path to the aluminum steps where Mimi sits. She sets down her knitting and tolerates introductions. Her handshake is like a Halloween skeleton’s: bony and noncommittal.
“Thanks for the casserole,” she tells C.C.
“It was my pleasure. How’s Gavin?”
“He’s…you know. None of this is easy.” Mimi glances at me. “My daughter took off. So my grandson’s staying with me.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Ugh. “About your daughter, I mean. Not—”
“It’s fine.” She turns back to C.C. “I don’t know what to do for him, you know? Kid’s so anxious all the time, it makes me anxious. I try to be patient, but I’m not any good at this stuff.”
“Mimi. Don’t say that.”
“It’s true. He’s scared of the weirdest things. Rabbits. Hair dryers. He can’t even go to the market with me without bugging out. I know he’s been through a lot, but for heck’s sake…”
Gavin emerges from the door behind her and I’m relieved when Mimi goes quiet and greets him with a big smile and a gentle hair-ruffle. He’s a skinny kid with his grandma’s black hair and grave brown eyes. He’s wearing rolled-up jeans and a tissue-thin shirt that says BE KIND in faded letters.
His eyes get bigger when he spots my superband.
“Hey, I’m Levon.” I lift a hand and give him a grin. “I’m staying with Miss C.C. for a couple days.”
“Did you fly here?” says Gavin.
“Nope, I came here on a train. I was pretty scared.”
“How come?”
“Trains scare me. Pretty much everything scares me.”
He nods with solemn eyes, like he gets it on such a deep level that there aren’t even words for it.
“What’s your power?” he says.
“Well, I…”
A chipmunk peeks out from behind Mimi’s stone fire pit. For fuck’s sake. The little goblins seek me out every time, the way a zit seeks out a forehead the night before the prom.
Not now, I mouth.
The creature twitches closer through the ragged grass.
“Oh look, Gav, a chippy! Aw, he’s so cute.” Mimi pokes Gavin and points to the chipmunk. Gavin is unamused. He backs up the stairs and presses himself against the trailer door. Mimi gives C.C. a look like see, I told you.
And then I spot it: the sun-bleached hula hoop on the other side of the fire pit.
It’s automatic now. My mind slips into Show Mode. Everything in the yard becomes a potential prop. The basket of plastic food. The doll-sized Jeep.
Do you really want to do this? I ask myself. But my face is already smiling.
“You…want to see something cool?” I ask Gavin.
He pauses for a long time, frozen against the door. Then he gives me a tiny nod.
Okay. I’m in this now. I lay my library book in the grass and conference quickly with the rodent.
“Listen, I have a baggie of trail mix in my pocket,” I mutter, crouching in front of the fire pit. “Play along and the whole thing’s yours.”
“The fuck is trail mix?”
“It’s got raisins, nuts—”
“How many nuts?”
“Like, fifty, at least. Three different kinds.”
“Pick out the raisins and you got a deal.”
I sigh. “Fine.”
“And find me some mushrooms while you’re at it. The ruffly orange kind.”
He’s a diva, like most of his pouchy-cheeked brethren, but he’s also a quick study. Five minutes later I’ve got him jumping through the hoop, assembling a pickle-spaghetti-waffle sandwich with the fake food, and doing a ridiculous rump-shake on the hood of the plastic Jeep. Gavin’s pretty unmoved by the first few tricks—I can respect that—but the dance is what gets him. When he laughs it’s sudden and wild and sounds like the seal pup Leo had to train for that cornball boy-befriends-seal movie, and when I hear it, I have to laugh too.
C.C. watches us. Head tilted, a thoughtful look on her face.
“Can he play fetch?” Gavin fumbles a superball out of his pocket.
“It’s gonna cost you six acorns,” grumbles the chipmunk.
“He can,” I say to Gavin. “Come on down from there, okay? You can have the first throw.”
***
C.C. tosses a pebble in the creek. It makes a soft plink! and then disappears in the murk.
“Do you know what I think?” she says.
We’ve wandered a half-mile from Mimi’s. I was keyed up and not in the mood to rest, but C.C. made us take a break and sit down on the grassy bank. There’s a blue star on the back of my hand, an ink stamp Gavin gave me after the chipmunk show. Mimi told me he had a whole system with his Tupperware box of stamps, and if you got a blue star, you were pretty much his pal for life.
“I think you know what you love,” says C.C. “But you don’t take it seriously. You think that because you love it, it must not be serious.”
I blow out a breath. I wish I hadn’t spent half the walk here yammering on about Pease & Caritz.
“There are things you can do, you know,” she says. “With that talent. Birthday parties, festivals—”
“It’s not a talent. It’s me being silly.”
She shakes her head at me, lips pursed. “I’d like to propose we take the training in a different direction.”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t want to talk to snakes and alligators. Do you.”
“It’s not a question of want.”
“It is, though! You have to be motivated to practice after you leave here. If you don’t, all the benefits will dry right up.”
“I’ll have plenty of chances to practice.”
“He says with a grimace.”
“I want to focus on gators tomorrow.”
“I don’t think that’s a good—”
“I don’t care.” I fling a stone into the creek. “I made this choice, and I want to follow through.”
“But it’s not right. Not for you.” She lays a hand over mine, where Gavin’s blue star is. “Listen to me. I care about my customers. I want them to be who they’re meant to be. Not who someone else might want them to be.”
“Yes, well, who are you to decide—” I close my mouth. I can’t do it. I can’t sass an old lady in pink-framed glasses. “I’m sorry. Can we be quiet for a while? I’d…like to read.”
“Of course.” She raises an eyebrow, rests her freckled forearms on her knees.
I bring out old Sean O’Reilly and start the same passage I’d tried to read a dozen times on C.C.’s porch this morning. I force my eyes across the page. With his x-ray eyes, Sean spots his crush, Tom Boyland, sneaking a smoke behind the church after Mass and has impure thoughts that have no chance of becoming action until page two hundred and ninety-six (I flipped ahead). I feel C.C.’s eyes on me. Staring. Jay does that too, when he’s mad at me and I’m placidly reading. It becomes a battle of wills: how long can I hold the facade before I close the book on my finger and turn to face him again?
In this case, I make it to the end of the page. But when I turn back to C.C., she isn’t looking at me after all.
She’s staring at my makeshift bookmark.
“Levon,” she murmurs.
“Yes?”
“Where did you get that?”
“This thing?” I’m not quick enough to invent a cool lie. “It’s a wallpaper strip. I, uh, peeled it off my wall. By accident.”
“Oh my.”
“Why?”
She hesitates. “This might sound silly, but…it looks exactly like the wallpaper I put up in my first apartment.”
“Really?” It’s hard to believe deer wallpaper was this much of a thing back then, but I guess nothing was too weird in the seventies.
“Yes. Well, it wasn’t an apartment, technically. It was half a house.”
A tiny chill runs down my back.
“Like…a duplex?”
“Exactly. It was a great little place. I lived in a town called Summerhill when I was twenty-four…I had a job at the animal haven over in Kingston.” I’ve stopped breathing. Sean O’Reilly is clutched in my hands like a rescue rope. “What a year that was. I lived at…let’s see, can I remember? 4343—”
“Spinney Lane,” we say together.
She jerks backward in the grass, spooked. I leap to my feet as if a ghost has floated up from the creek. We look at each other wide-eyed, the pieces of this puzzle slowly snapping themselves together.
The room was hers. The one Lynette didn’t want us to change. My reading chair was hers. The animal books left behind. The hair bands that became our sort-of wedding bands.
I think of the notecard Lynette slipped the check into. How she looked at it for a beat before she sealed the envelope, a glimmer of fear and hope in her eyes. In a flash I understand: I was sent here to WildWords Talk Training as a gesture of friendship, but also as an undercover overture.
