Awake in the World

by Jason Gurley

  “I don’t believe in luck.”

  “Easy to say. Easy to say when it doesn’t hunt you.” With a long exhale, he said, “You know, last week I got hit by a car?”

  “Zach! Jesus!” Startled, I whacked his arm. “Why wouldn’t you tell me that?”

  “I just did.” He rubbed his shoulder. “Maybe because I knew you’d beat me up?”

  “You got hit by a car? What the hell!”

  He just shrugged, as if it were nothing. “I was on cart duty. This old guy just backed up, right into me. I figured he saw me, but … I closed my eyes when I fell down. I could feel exhaust on my head. I opened my eyes, and I was just … underneath the car. Not under the tires. He backed up right over me.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Well, he drove away.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I pushed the carts inside.”

  I whacked him again. “You didn’t tell Maddie? You didn’t file a report with—”

  “You know what else? I’m one credit short for graduation.” He ignored my consternation. “I’ve taken all the same classes everyone else has. I haven’t failed anything. But there I am, one credit short. I might not graduate.” His hand was cold in mine. “I feel like I’m losing ground. Like something’s chasing me. And I know I can’t outrun it.”

  “Zach…”

  “You, though … Maybe you’re a bit of opposite luck.” He gave me such a sad smile that I wanted to throw my arms around him. So I did, or tried to. One second he was there, and then he wasn’t. Instead, he was sprawled on the asphalt, staring up at me, bewildered. “Or … not.”

  “How did that—did I do that?”

  He put out his hand. “Help me up.”

  I did, then brushed grit from his hoodie. He started walking as if nothing had happened.

  “Years ago,” he said, in a low, confessional tone, “I told Mama nothing ever went on in our town. I said I wanted something to happen, even if it was terrible, just to break the monotony.” There was no trace of humor on his face. “Afterward, I told Derek it was all my fault. If I hadn’t wished that…”

  He trailed off, but I understood. He’d always talked about his father in the past tense. This, I knew, was something we shared. “My father left us, too,” I said. “I thought it was my fault. But it’s not. And it’s not yours, either.”

  His gaze was fixed on the distance, on the ocean. I was supposed to peel away, to go home. We were close to his house by now. But his fingers were knobby and slender, and his thumb lightly traced the back of my hand. His eyes were cavernous. I knew that feeling.

  “Zach,” I said softly. I stopped walking. I didn’t know what to say. “I just…”

  Something lovely happened then. He reached out and took my other hand, and it was as if he completed some invisible circuit. I rose onto my toes, and I kissed him. His eyes flew open in surprise. I curled my fingers behind his neck, just touching his hair, then tilted his face downward, until our foreheads touched. He shuddered. I didn’t say anything, and neither did he. I wondered if anyone had been this close to him. I didn’t think so.

  I felt like the first woman on Io.

  23

  Zach

  On the evening Derek was supposed to return from his latest weeklong shift, I’d been scheduled to close the market again. Instead, Maddie sent me home at five. We’d had slow weeks before, but I’d never seen her look so grave. I walked home, thinking about the math I’d done. If I lost the market job, the whole equation would change.

  At home, Leah met me at the door. “You need to see your mama.”

  My heart rate spiked—but Leah was smiling. She handed me Mama’s oatmeal, then closed the bedroom door behind me. The room was dusky pink. Mama was sitting upright.

  “Z.” Her voice was soft, a little hoarse. Like she hadn’t used it in a while. She patted the bed beside her, and I sat, cradling the bowl. “Z, I was thinking about you.”

  I smoothed her hair back. “I know, Mama. I could tell.”

  She smiled, and it was like taking a swallow of air after a year spent underwater. Before we lost Dad, it wouldn’t matter if the house was collapsing around us; Mama would smile, and we’d know that things would be okay.

  “I want to ask you something,” she rasped. I gave her water from the bottle beside her bed. “About your father.”

  My neck grew hot. I put my hand on hers. Should I stop her? I didn’t want to see her upset. But I said, “Ask me what, Mama?”

  “Down there,” she began. “In the dark. Do you—do you think he thought about us?”

  My eyes brimmed. There was no mistaking her meaning. She wasn’t asking if he put us out of his mind while he was on the job. She was asking if he thought of us then.

  In that heartbeat of a moment before he died.

  Before I could formulate an answer, her hand relaxed beneath mine. I could see her sinking, right in front of me, a woman drowning. Her eyes turned to glass, and then she was gone. But I knew where she went. Down there, into the deep. Where he had been. Searching those same deep waters for my father. She only came up now and then for us, for moments like this one.

  We were her oxygen.

  “Yes, Mama,” I said, knowing she wouldn’t hear. “I know he did.”

  I spooned oatmeal, then lightly touched her chin with the back of my finger. Her lips parted unconsciously, and I fed her, wondering how long it might be before she surfaced again.

  * * *

  While the girls ate dinner, I looked over their homework. They were only nine years old, and their math assignments left me reeling. Later, when they were tucked in, I reached for A Swiftly Tilting Planet.

  “Nope,” Robin said. “We finished it.”

  “We got tired of waiting,” Rachael confessed.

  “Oh.” I closed the book.

  “It’s not like we don’t want you to read—”

  I wasn’t upset. “You don’t need me to read,” I said. “How about this? New bedtime routine: twenty minutes to read to yourselves, then sleep. Fair?”

  As they burrowed in, each with her own book, I kissed them good night. When I emerged, Leah was at the table, writing out a note for Derek. She whispered, “They’re asleep?”

  “Reading,” I said. “I’ll give them a half hour.”

  She gestured at the note. “He’s still not home, and I’ve got an early shift.”

  “Yeah.” I sat at the table opposite her. “Hey—can I ask you something?”

  She scribbled her name and a heart, then pushed the note aside. “Shoot.”

  “You ever have a hard time making a big decision?”

  “You thinking about something big?”

  I shrugged.

  “College, maybe?” There was a twinkle in her eye. Like she knew something I didn’t.

  “Maybe. I don’t think it’s for me, though.”

  “No?”

  “I can’t see it.”

  “In another life I think I became a professor,” she said. “I always thought I’d be great at college. Sleeping in the dorms. Up at the crack of dawn for philosophy or something. Crash sessions in the library.”

  “You went to nursing school.”

  “No,” she said, with a sigh. “I’m a home health-care aide. It’s not the same thing.” She patted the table. “Anyway, that’s me, not you. Do you want to go?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t—”

  “—see it,” she finished. “That’s the second time you’ve said that. See what?”

  I glanced past her, toward the bedrooms. “Leaving them.”

  Leah nodded, took this in. “If it were me—and it’s not, but if it were—I’d think a bit further ahead. Ask myself: When I’m thirty, what kind of life do I want to have?”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to go.”

  “Think of it this way,” she said. “Those girls? They need good examples. Best example you can be? Put yourself first, at least on this one.”

 
“I … don’t know how.”

  “I know.” Leah looked sympathetic. Then she turned and looked toward the girls’ room, too. The house was quiet enough we could hear the sound of pages turning. “When they’re grown, they need to know they can get out. And if you stay … what will you have? What’ll you do?”

  We both knew the answer to that.

  All paths in Orilly pointed to the sea.

  “I think you should talk to your brother,” she said, standing. She pulled my head against her hip, patted my hair. “You’re a good kid, Zach. A good man. You’ll do the right thing.”

  * * *

  In the weeks following Vanessa—and that kiss—everything was different. Each morning, Vanessa waited outside our house, and we talked until the bus came to carry Robin and Rachael away. As I walked to school, Vanessa pushed the Kestrel alongside. We found each other between classes; we had lunch side by side, with Cece and Ada. We spent hours in the library loft—Vanessa charging through The Demon-Haunted World and then Contact, me slowly turning pages of The Varieties of Scientific Experience.

  I never told Vanessa my birthday was coming, so it was a surprise when she appeared at our door that evening. Robin opened it with a knowing smile. “Z,” she sang. “Your girlfriend’s heeeere.”

  I herded Robin away from the door. “I didn’t tell her to say that.”

  But Vanessa stage-whispered, loud enough for Robin to hear, “But I did.”

  “Vanessa!” Derek called out. “We’re grilling cheese sammiches!”

  Vanessa held aloft a plastic container. “I come bearing dessert.”

  “Z got a caaaake, Z got a girl cake,” Robin sang. Rachael swatted her with a spatula.

  “I didn’t tell you about my birthday,” I whispered to Vanessa.

  “Yeah, but you forget,” she said. “I know everything about you.” She recited my Social Security number. “I saw your application, remember? I promise not to steal your identity … again.”

  Before I could think of a clever retort, Vanessa said, “I need to use the ladies’ room,” and Rachael crowed, “I’ll show her where, me, me,” and snatched Vanessa’s hand. As my sister yanked her away, Vanessa lightly touched my fingertips with her own, and my heart swelled hot, like a furnace.

  24

  Vanessa

  After dinner, Derek insisted Zach give me the tour. I’d only ever seen the kitchen and living room. I knew there wasn’t much more, and that Zach wouldn’t want to. But he said, “C’mon,” and led me down a short hallway. The baseboards looked as if they’d been chewed; decade-old water stains decorated the ceiling. But all I saw were the dozens of framed photos on the walls. One, tinted red with age, drew my attention.

  I tapped the photo of a cheerful baby wearing a football onesie. “That’s not you. Derek?” Zach nodded, and I said, “You’re practically twins, though. How many years between you?”

  “Ten.” He shrugged. “I don’t think they planned for me. And the girls—” He paused, glanced toward the other room. “They definitely weren’t.”

  “Well, they’re perfect.”

  “Yeah. They saved the best for last.”

  The whole Mays family history played out on that wall. I fell in love with one image in particular. In it, Zach’s parents stood in front of stained-glass windows. Zach’s mother held him close to her chest, and he gaped at something out of frame.

  “You’re so tiny!”

  “Derek took that one.”

  “You look just like your mother. She’s beautiful.”

  He wound a red curl around his finger. “The hair was all Dad, though.”

  In the same photo, his father was broad-shouldered, barrel-chested, with a brushy red mustache and thick sideburns. “He’s a brawler,” I observed.

  “He had presence,” Zach concurred.

  Zach wasn’t upset by the photos, I noticed. That was my first hint that I’d made a grievous error that day I kissed him. Zach’s father wasn’t like mine; he hadn’t abandoned his family. Zach clearly loved the man.

  No, Zach’s father was dead. I felt like an asshole.

  Zach didn’t seem to notice. He showed me a few more photos, then pointed at the end of the hall, where a door stood ajar. Inside, I could see the corner of a mattress on the floor. An alarm clock was plugged in right next to it. Hanging from the ceiling, above a plastic tub, was a wet suit.

  “Derek’s room,” he said.

  The next door was inaccessible, masked behind a sheet of clear plastic. Blue tape held the plastic in place. I looked at Zach, but he averted his eyes and walked past that room. Instead, he pushed open the door nearest us. “And this is the girls’.”

  This room could have been teleported in from some other, nicer house, miles from Orilly. The walls were pale yellow. Where the rest of the house was filled with secondhand furniture, everything here seemed reasonably new. Each of the twin beds was made up in colorful sheets—one printed with Disney characters, the other with Star Wars battles.

  “Robin’s into the usual girl stuff,” Zach said, gesturing toward the bed decorated with Mulan and Ariel and Tiana. “But Rachael’s hero is this Jedi girl. Ah … Ah-something, I forget.”

  “Ahsoka,” I said. “She’s badass.” He looked surprised. “What? I like Star Wars.”

  He pulled the door shut. All the light in this house, I saw, was contained in that bedroom. I didn’t need to ask to know that Zach and Derek had scraped to afford that bedroom set. I wondered if the girls knew how much their brothers loved them.

  Zach skipped the next door, heading back to the party.

  “Hey,” I protested. “No fair not showing me your room.” Before he could stop me, I turned the knob of the door he’d tried to leave unopened. But right away, I knew I’d fucked up. If all the light in the house was in the girls’ room, this room was its direct opposite. It was stuffy and dim. I saw prescription bottles, a glass of water—and someone lying quite still in a bed. Her eyes were open.

  Zach reached past me and sharply closed the door again.

  “I—” I stammered. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t—”

  Zach’s face spun through a series of complex emotions, and he opened his mouth but changed his mind. He turned and left me standing in the hallway. A moment later, I heard the front door bang shut.

  I wanted to just hide in the bathroom. When I emerged from the hallway, the rest of Zach’s family stood gathered around the cake, which now blazed with candles. They looked from me to the front door and back again, their smiles collapsed.

  “I just—” But there weren’t words. “I’m really sorry.”

  I went through the door, calling Zach’s name. He hadn’t gone far. He stood outside, hands shoved in his pockets, staring at his feet. His breath fogged around him. When I arrived, he started walking, and I did, too. But an icy wall had formed between us. I could see him—but I couldn’t reach him.

  Under other circumstances, I could have appreciated the view. The sky had shifted violet, and sparse Christmas lights twinkled on a few houses. The sea breeze had claws.

  I apologized again, but he said nothing. I walked alongside him, feeling like such a shit. He’d told me about his mother. And I’d been to the house before. I knew someone slept on the sofa; I’d seen the blanket, the pillow. I’d just forgotten, and now I’d hurt him. Again.

  Abruptly, he turned left at Ynez; my momentum carried me a few steps in the wrong direction, then I doubled back and caught up. By the time he left the sidewalk and started across a barren lot, a gibbous moon had risen. The light stretched Zach’s shadow like a compass needle, steering us toward his destination.

  I knew where he was taking me.

  I’d watched him infiltrate the impound lot often enough to know his routine. While he plodded toward the fence, I pushed ahead and started to climb, as I’d seen him do. I navigated the spiny bits at the top, then dropped to the other side. Zach stared at me through the chain link.

  “What?” I asked. “I know a guy
who does this all the time.”

  He climbed over. From below, I heard him curse when he reached the top. When he landed, he fingered a rip in his jeans.

  “You have to go over bowlegged,” I said. “Or that happens.”

  He frowned, and I knew he’d figured it out. “You’re a spy. You and that telescope.”

  “Well, now we’re in this together. Accomplices.”

  “You never thought about reporting me?” he grumbled. He started walking toward the boat.

  “I never saw any crime.”

  “We’re trespassing.”

  “Oh, trespassing.” I shrugged. “You say trespassing. I say adventuring.”

  “If we get caught—” he began, but I stopped him.

  “Would you knock it off?” I said. “Let me apologize to you, dammit.”

  He fell silent, watching me.

  “Well—I’m sorry.”

  He stared at me. “Okay.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Let’s go inside, then,” he said. “Before someone really does report us.”

  He clambered up the boat ladder, but I stayed at the bottom. “From now on, I’m a vampire,” I said. “I don’t enter unless you explicitly invite me. I’ve already made that mistake once tonight.”

  He almost smiled. “Fine,” he said. Without offering an invitation, he disappeared into the wheelhouse. A moment later, honeyed light washed onto the deck. Then he leaned back out. “Coming?”

  It was too cold to debate the semantics of what constituted an invitation. I climbed the ladder. My feet made thunk-thunk sounds on the deck. “It’s hollow,” I said, surprised.

  “Yeah. It’s a boat,” he said.

  He turned toward the wheelhouse, but I stopped him. “I’m sorry. I thought it was your room. It was thoughtless. I was thoughtless.”

  Zach shifted uncomfortably. “The ceiling in my old room turned to mush. There was a storm. It leaked. And then it caved in, right on top of me while I was asleep.” He looked up, saw the horror on my face. “I mean, it was, like, months ago. A year, maybe?”