Awake in the World

by Jason Gurley

  Vanessa adjusted the bag on her shoulder and waggled her fingers at me. “Zachary,” she said primly, and her lips parted into a genuine smile.

  I almost said What again, but she was gone before I formed the word. After she’d disappeared into the back with Mrs. Rhyzkov, I tried returning to my sketchbook. But the pencil wasn’t moving right, so I closed the book and leaned back in my chair. I watched the ceiling apprehensively.

  Vanessa. Okay.

  4

  Vanessa

  “Here’s the thing,” Mrs. Rhyzkov said, leaning across her desk and clasping her hands. “With your GPA, you’ll essentially have your choice of schools. I don’t understand why you would limit yourself to just one.”

  “But with my GPA, wouldn’t I get in?” I asked.

  She sighed. “Students who put all their eggs in one basket make me … uncomfortable. Can I ask a personal question?”

  “Okay.”

  “Is it just that Cornell is far away?” She gestured toward a map on her office wall. “Because I can say with certainty there are many other schools equally far from home. It’s wise to apply to at least a few more. To be safe.”

  It wasn’t just that Cornell was far away. Cornell was … well, Cornell.

  When I was small, my father would wake me in the dark. “Cass,” he’d whisper. (He’d wanted to name me Cassiopeia, but Mom wouldn’t agree to it.) “You’ve got to see this.” He’d bundle me outside, blanket and all, to point out the streaking light of the Perseids or Venus drifting like a champagne bubble.

  My father talked about space in awestruck but rigid terms. For me, however, the sight of such things created an indescribable feeling in my chest. When I was nine, I found words for that feeling: I saw Carl Sagan for the first time. He spoke about how small we were, yet how grand our aspirations; he spoke of the universe like a poet. My father grumbled about Sagan; he despised the easy popularization of science that Sagan represented. My father was a devotee of more serious scientists. It occurred to me, at that young age, that my father believed himself to be smarter not just than me, but everyone. The accessibility of science, of knowledge, somehow threatened him.

  As a teenager, I smuggled home an old issue of Popular Science beneath my jacket, as if hiding a porno. Its very title was an affront to my father’s sensibilities, but I didn’t mind. That issue had a feature about Dr. Sagan and changed the shape of my future. Dr. Sagan, I learned, taught astronomy at a university in Ithaca, New York. A university called Cornell. To my father, I’d fallen prey to the siren call of “science for idiots.” He wasn’t proud; he was disappointed. “You’re only about ten years too late,” he said. I would never forget the smug contempt in his voice. “Your hero’s been dead since you were a baby.”

  Later, after he’d left us, I learned that my father’s heroes were no different from Carl Sagan. Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking—in their way, they too made science essential to everyone. But it was too late to fashion that knowledge into a retort, and my father wouldn’t have heard me, anyway. He was already gone.

  That was the thing, though. He wasn’t gone gone. His face stared back at me from my own features in the bathroom mirror. I looked so much like him, sometimes, that my mother would look away. It wasn’t only the shape of my nose or the way my eyes crinkled like his; it was what he’d left within me, this devotion to the stars. Sometimes I wondered: Were the stars something I loved because I loved them?

  Or was it just him, still taking up space in my head?

  Cornell wasn’t just a top school for astronomy students. It was a rejection of everything my father represented. Choosing Cornell sent a message: You’re wrong about me, it said. Wrong about everything.

  “Okay,” I lied. “I’ll pick a few backup schools.”

  “Wise choice. You know, you and Ms. Vasquez, you’re my legacy,” Mrs. Rhyzkov clucked. “The first female chief justice, and the girl who named a star after me.”

  And named a black hole for her father, I thought.

  In the hallway, I was nearly bowled over by a tall, red-haired man. “Pardon,” he said with a quick glance to make sure I was all right. He passed through the waiting room and beckoned at Zachary, the artist boy. Zachary stood up and took a single step, and a ceiling tile cracked and fell onto the chair he’d just vacated. It detonated in a puff of white dust and tile fragments.

  Zachary blinked, as if he couldn’t believe he’d escaped unscathed, then looked around and saw me watching. His face changed—was that relief? Gratitude? His hood had fallen down, revealing thick red curls that dangled over his brow. The hoodie had seen a few years; the knees and thighs of his jeans were worn thin. I was struck by how tall he was—well over six feet—and lacking in any sense of physical confidence. He was … knobby, I thought. Hands too large for his slender wrists. Shoulders so sharp I could’ve hung a hat on them. The boy was a walking coatrack.

  I waved, and that seemed to snap him to attention. The smile that bloomed on his face was the most unreserved thing about him. I couldn’t help but smile back. He dipped his gaze, almost bashfully, then limped out of the office, following the other man.

  Limped.

  I went after him, then stopped in the crowded hall, watching as Zachary pushed through the doors. It was windy outside, and he tugged his hood over those curls. As I stood there, Cece sidled up to me. Her eyes were glassy, her smile half-drunk. Was she drunk? I sniffed, then watched Zachary again. The boy in the hoodie.

  But not just any boy.

  My stranger.

  5

  Zach

  Each afternoon, I left Palmer Rankin and walked three-quarters of a mile to Maddie’s Market. My title was “associate,” but that just meant I did it all. On this particular afternoon, I was the associate in charge of collecting carts. I’d found them at all ends of the parking lot, but our customers didn’t always stop there. I’d found one parked in a grassy median in the middle of the road. I’d found one tipped over on an apartment lawn when I walked home at the end of my shift. I’d even spotted one at low tide, wheels rusted and clogged with grit, mostly buried in the sand. I didn’t retrieve that one.

  By the time I’d finished gathering them today, the sun had leaked out of the sky. Past the market, I caught a glimpse of the oil rigs, like campfires on a vast prairie. Derek, I knew, was probably out there right now. I understood why he was, but I never asked him what it felt like. Suiting up. Inspecting pipelines, welding joints, handling drilling assists. Working the same rigs that took away our dad. Everybody around him knew the story. But they wouldn’t ask why he did it. They knew why.

  Above the water or below, we carry the wrench. It’s what we know.

  The lament of the working-class man. I’d heard Dad recite it a hundred times. The first time I drew him, it was as that workingman, at the end of a day: slump-shouldered, sunken-eyed. An enormous wrench dangling from his fingers. Derek looked just the same when he came home these days.

  And one day, I knew, that would be me.

  * * *

  The girls were still up when I came home. Leah heard me shut the front door and came out to meet me. “Oh, thank goodness,” she said, sounding harried. “Derek isn’t home yet. I’m running late for a patient.”

  “Evening shift?”

  “This kind of work is all hours, Z, you know that.”

  I dropped my bag beside the couch. “I’ll take over.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She kissed my forehead, then gathered her things and disappeared through the door in a rush.

  I didn’t know what we would do without Leah. She was practically family. The girls wondered, but didn’t ask, why she wasn’t actual family yet. She and Derek had dated all through high school and broken up when he went away for college. Despite that, she had stuck around: helping Mama prepare Thanksgiving dinner, buying presents for the girls. After we lost Dad, Derek dropped out of school and came back to Orilly, and Leah was right here, as if he’d never left. They fell into their familia
r rhythms again. But Derek is a steam engine, desperately moving forward, trying to fill Dad’s shoes. Leah doesn’t complain, just gives and gives. I worry sometimes we’ve taken advantage of her big heart.

  I went to Mama’s door and cracked it, just a sliver. Inside: darkness, stillness. The steady rhythm of her breathing. “Night, Mama,” I whispered. I closed her door again, and for a moment I just stood there, feeling the house. The girls giggled in their bedroom. The rude thump of a stereo from our duplex neighbor rattled the plastic sheet that covered the door to my former bedroom.

  The girls feigned sleep when I peeked in, until I snapped off the light. Robin cranked out a fake snore, and Rachael couldn’t hold back her laughter. They were nine, the only twins in the fourth grade. Redheads, like me and Derek, but more freckled, and sparky, like neither Derek nor I had been for a long while.

  “Past bedtime,” I pointed out.

  “Leah didn’t read to us.”

  It was late. But I couldn’t say no. We’d been reading our way through A Wrinkle in Time and its subsequent books. And not for the first time, either. This was our second lap through the series. I picked up the third book, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and began to read. It was my favorite of the series, and I read longer than I otherwise might have. Two chapters later, Robin was asleep, and Rachael blinked sleepily at me.

  “Sing?” she whispered.

  My voice was nothing like our father’s. He’d had a rich baritone, clear and strong, even at a whisper. I didn’t have to ask Rachael which song; there was only one. Dad’s father had sung it to him when he was young, an old folk tune about a frog who romanced a mouse and married her.

  I put my hand on Rachael’s cheek, and she closed her eyes.

  “Froggie went a-courtin’ and he did ride, mm-hmm,” I sang softly. I’d hardly made it to the second verse before she was asleep as well.

  I slipped quietly into the hallway. Derek wasn’t home. Our neighbor’s music had stopped, though I heard the murmur of a television through the walls now. I had a slice of toast, then brushed my teeth and unfolded my blanket onto the couch. Before I fell asleep, I thought of Vanessa, the new girl. I’d embarrassed myself today; next time I’d have to think of something better to say.

  I worked on that for a while, until sleep came.

  6

  Vanessa

  Cece was still distracted. Not glassy-eyed—but off her game. She was uncharacteristically resistant to my subtle attempts to extract an explanation, so I had to go for the direct approach.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  “Nothing.”

  “Girls,” said Mr. Herrera, our AP Spanish teacher.

  I looked at Cece. “¿Qué pasa?”

  “Nada,” she said back.

  Mr. Herrera looked satisfied and went back to his desk work. I lowered my voice and said, “So—what’s up?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re all spaced-out.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “You’re lying to me. I don’t believe a word you’re saying.”

  “Climate change is real,” she said.

  “Fine. I believe some of the words you’re saying.”

  With a coy smile, she returned to her notebook. She’d been doodling for most of class, but I resisted the urge to snatch it away from her. She wasn’t herself, though. Until recently, Cece had been laser-focused on college. Her life revolved around test scores and her GPA—which at the moment was, I thought, about a tenth of a point higher than my own.

  Not that I was counting.

  She spotted me looking and curled the cover of her notebook to obscure her work. Then she changed the subject. “I saw you,” she said. “Staring at Zach.”

  “You weren’t even there.”

  “Yes, I was.”

  I amended my statement. “You were there. But you weren’t there.”

  “I can keep a secret,” she said, undeterred. “Besides…”

  I lifted one eyebrow. “Besides what?”

  “If you get distracted, maybe your grades will suffer.”

  “Because that’s how you want to win, huh? By hoping for your enemy to trip and fall on her own mechanical pencil?”

  “Did you know there’s a betting pool?” she asked.

  “Jesus. It’s not a competition.”

  “Everything is a competition.”

  “Well, fine. I withdraw,” I said. “I’ll bomb the next exam, and you can be Queen Valedick of 2013.”

  “No fun if you throw the game.”

  “But it’s okay to wish for me to blow it,” I said. “Anyway, it’s not a game.”

  “Everything—” Mr. Herrera shot Cece a stern look. When he returned to his work, she hissed, “Why were you watching Zach? Did you talk to him? You didn’t tell me.”

  “I didn’t know I had to.”

  “Um,” she said, adopting a Valley-girl lilt. “Like, we’re besties, like.”

  “I thought we were at each other’s throats.”

  “Eh,” Cece said dismissively. “Better for the pool if we play it that way, maybe. It’s up to seventy bucks.”

  “Who gets the money?”

  “Not us.”

  “Unless we place bets.”

  “Ooh,” she said, picking up the thread. “One of us takes a dive…”

  “We split the winnings…”

  “This is good.”

  “How do we decide who dives?”

  “You dive, of course,” Cece said.

  “I already said I don’t care.”

  “Yeah, but you’re a lying liar.” She wore a sly smile. “Who lies. About lying.”

  The bell jangled overhead. We filed into the hallway together. “Why did you ask if I talked to him?”

  “I saw him before. He was looking at you.”

  “He doesn’t know me.”

  She shrugged. “Put a pair of tits on something, boys are all about it.”

  I looked down at my chest. “My body missed the memo.”

  “I saw him,” she said. “Before. You were in the office, and he was … I could tell he liked talking to you. You, I couldn’t tell so easily. I just…” She hesitated. “I don’t want you to be collateral damage.”

  “Please. He’s a person, not a bomb.”

  Cece swapped books at her locker; then we exited into the gravel courtyard between buildings. It was cluttered with discarded cigarettes and old potato chip bags and skinny freshmen who lumbered about in a fog of body spray. “They seriously need to clean this shit up,” she muttered disdainfully.

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “Look,” she said. “He’s a sweetheart. Seriously. I’ve gone to school with him my whole life, and you’ll never meet a nicer kid. I swear.”

  “Collateral damage, though? Come on.”

  Cece sighed, then turned to a knot of seniors who leaned against the wall, passing a cigarette. “Hey, Boyd,” she said. A boy with a scraggly topknot looked up, smoke leaking from his nose. “Zach Mays.”

  Boyd shook his head, waggling the topknot. “Abandon hope, all ye who—”

  Cece didn’t wait for him to finish. “See?”

  I was unconvinced.

  “Freshman year,” she said. “Someone hacked the district computers, erased a bunch of records. Kid from the hackathon group got caught and expelled. They got all the records restored, except one. Guess whose.”

  “That’s awful. What happened?”

  “They held him back.”

  “That’s fucked up. It wasn’t his f—”

  “Sophomore year,” she went on. “Zach got tall over the summer, so he got roped into basketball tryouts. He’s no athlete, but he tries. Takes one shot. Nowhere close to the basket. Hits those big metal things that hold up the whole backboard, right? The whole goal comes down. Like, falls off the ceiling, shatters on the floor.”

  “So he’s a little unlucky. Nobody believes in luck.”
r />   “He slipped on a dry floor, then fell down a flight of stairs and broke his arm,” she said, ticking off the episodes on her fingers. “Junior year, he worked at the Dairy Queen. He was robbed, like, four times. Nessa, the Dairy Queen had never been robbed before.”

  “So he’s—”

  “He got his driver’s license,” she went on. “His brother bought him a little Geo Metro. You know, those death traps you can buy used for, like, fifty dollars and a sandwich? It spontaneously combusted. In the parking lot. It caught a bus on fire, too.” She put her hands on my shoulders. “Collateral. Damage.”

  “Bad luck isn’t contagious,” I said.

  “What if it is?” She was serious. “What if it rubs off on you?”

  “Cece.”

  “Look,” she said. “Zach’s sweet. He’s just had … a really hard life. I don’t think he quite knows how to be. So … just be careful. Okay?”

  “Good thing I only talked to him one time. Overreact much?”

  “It’s not that you wouldn’t be the best thing to ever happen to him,” she said, ignoring me. “You would be. For sure. But I don’t know how he’d handle something good happening to him. Nothing ever has.”

  “That’s a little melodramatic,” I said. “Can we just—”

  The bell rang, silencing me. None of the kids in the courtyard moved except Cece, who held the door for me. Our next class was health ed, and we took our seats at the front of the room as Mrs. Harriman tried gamely to stuff plastic organs back into a model of a torso. The late bell rang a couple of minutes later, and Zach plunged through the door. His sketchbook fell out of his bag. When he reached for it, he kicked it by mistake. He retrieved it, then limped toward his desk, pausing long enough to smile—a little—at me.

  I smiled back.

  Cece clucked at me.

  7

  Zach

  “Yo,” Vanessa chirped. She came from nowhere and slid into a perfect pose, reclined against the locker beside mine. “Zach.”

  I shut my locker and slipped my backpack on. “Vanessa.”