by Lang Leav
She shook her head helplessly. “I didn’t know,” she whispered.
Ana’s dad turned to face her, his eyes filled with despair. “Mia,” he said helplessly. “You know I never touched our daughter—”
She shook her head in disgust. “Don’t you dare talk to me,” she hissed, before turning on her heel and striding away.
There was a tense silence in the room, broken only when someone began to pick up the shattered plates. Quiet murmurs floated from all directions as Ana’s mother was led up the stairs by a pair of somber-faced relatives. With his head bowed and averted from everyone’s gaze, Ana’s dad turned and left the room.
I glanced at Rad and knew that the look of horror on his face mirrored my own—although for different reasons.
“Let’s get out of here,” he muttered under his breath.
Outside, the sky was a dark, moody blue. There was a strip of orange along the horizon, one rolling spark of flame the impending night would soon extinguish.
“Want to go for a drive?” asked Rad.
“Okay.”
We walked to his car, a white sedan, which was parked across the street. I got into the passenger seat. There was a small tear in the upholstery, and I ran my fingers over it, thinking about the countless number of times Ana must have sat there. A flash of guilt opened me up like a fresh, gaping wound.
Rad got into the driver’s seat beside me and shut the door behind him. The silence between us was comfortable despite the strange turn of events that led us there. As we pulled away from the curb, I turned my head back for one last look at Ana’s house and could just barely make out her dad sitting bent over on the porch step, the light from the end of his cigarette glowing pitifully against the graying sky.
“Are you hungry?” asked Rad. We had been driving aimlessly for the last ten minutes through the suburban streets. We barely said a word the whole time, but it was a companionable silence.
“A little,” I admitted. I couldn’t remember the last time I ate.
“There’s a burger place nearby called Alfie’s Kitchen. Have you heard of it?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“It’s a hole in the wall. They only serve one type of burger, but it’s pretty damn good. And their strawberry milkshake is the best thing in the world. What do you think?”
“Sounds good,” I said.
Alfie’s Kitchen was a small beachfront kiosk that sat atop a grassy hill. Like Rad had mentioned, the place looked unassuming, but the crowd of people waiting to be served suggested there was something special about the place. A canvas awning the color of sandstone extended from the brick front, casting a block of shadow over the sprawling lawn where a number of plastic tables and seats were scattered across the patchy grass. A girl in a crisp white uniform and bouncy ponytail stood behind the counter, taking orders while two chefs behind her worked away in the busy kitchen. The air was filled with the rich smell of fried onions and the sound of sizzling patties. As we progressed farther in the queue, I noticed several photographs of celebrities taped to the sides of the walls, burgers clutched triumphantly in their hands and grins plastered across their faces.
By the time we got our meals, the tables were all taken, so we made our way over to an empty park bench a short walk away. The bench sat near the edge of a rocky cliff and overlooked the ocean. The sky was growing dimmer by the minute, and aside from the crowd in the distance, we were now alone. Toward the horizon, a man was preparing to launch a large multicolored kite into the sky. “I come here pretty often,” said Rad, sitting down on the park bench.
“Yeah?” I said, sitting beside him.
“The light is beautiful this time of day, especially during the summer. The sunsets go on forever.”
“It’s nice here,” I agreed, pulling my burger from its brown paper wrapper.
I didn’t realize just how hungry I was until I took the first bite.
“Strange day, huh?” he said, taking a sip of his milkshake.
“Yeah,” I agreed. I felt queasy all of a sudden and put my burger down on the bench. My fingers gripped the wooden slats.
“Are you okay?” Rad asked. He put his burger down too and turned to face me.
“I’m okay,” I said, taking a deep breath to steady myself. “It just occurred to me that I’ve never known anyone who’s died before except my granddad, but I was just a kid at the time.”
“Me too,” said Rad quietly. For a moment, he had a faraway look in his eyes, and then he shuddered as though shaking off a memory. “Hey.” He turned to me. “Can we make a deal?”
“What kind of deal?”
“Let’s not talk about Ana tonight. The last few days have been a nightmare, and I just want to feel normal again. Even if it’s only for a few hours.” His eyes looked into mine. “Is that okay?” He extended his hand to me.
“Yeah,” I said, secretly relieved. I took his hand, and we shook on it. I noticed the strange coloring of his eyes again. I wanted to ask him about them but wasn’t sure how to bring it up without sounding rude.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked. “Do I have sauce on my lips or something?” He fumbled with his napkin.
I shook my head quickly, feeling the heat rise to my face. “No,” I said, looking away. Then I turned my head back to face him. “It’s just, well, your eyes. They’re amazing, incredible. Like, they’re really, really cool.” My words came out all fragmented, and I wondered whether he thought I was a complete idiot.
“Oh, you mean the heterochromia,” said Rad.
“Is that the scientific term?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he smiled. “I hated the fact that my eyes were different when I was growing up.”
“Are you kidding? I would love to have your eyes.”
“Well, we can swap if you want; I’m not that attached to them.”
“You don’t want my eyes. They’re kind of goofy. My mum says they’re too big for my face.”
“I think your eyes are really pretty,” he said and then looked immediately embarrassed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Of course not.”
There was an awkward silence.
“You know there’s this series where the main character has different-colored eyes,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“Uh-huh. His name is Spike Spiegel.”
“From Cowboy Bebop?”
I nodded. “Have you seen it?”
“Yeah, but it was a long time ago. It must have been when I was going through my anime phase.”
“I’m probably still in that phase.”
“You are? What’s your favorite?”
“Uh, Macross . . .”
“Which series of Macross?”
“Super Dimension Fortress.”
“That’s definitely the best one,” said Rad. He shook his head and smiled. “Talk about a trip down memory lane.”
“I can’t believe you’ve actually seen Macross. I don’t know anyone else who has.”
“Me neither, come to think of it,” said Rad.
“I tried to get my boyfriend to watch it with me once, but he wasn’t keen.”
“Your boyfriend?”
“Yeah, Duck.”
“You have a boyfriend named Duck?”
“Well, that’s what we all call him. His actual name is Brian Duckman.”
“Oh, that makes sense.” He picked up his burger again. “So how long have you been together?”
“Since we were kids, basically. But we have literally nothing in common.”
“No?”
I shook my head. “We disagree on just about everything. I can never play my music out loud around him. And he’s not really into books. But I suppose they say opposites attract.”
“He doesn’t read books?” said Rad.
“Isn’t that a self-help book?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“I suppose you prefer fiction?”
I nodded. “Definitely.”
“What’s your favorite book?”
I thought for a moment. “The Land of Laughs, I think.”
“That’s a good one.”
“Do you remember the scene where Thomas is traveling through mountain towns while working on his father’s biography?”
Rad nodded.
“I think that’s always been my dream.”
“To write your dad’s biography?” There was a hint of a smile on his face.
I laughed. “Not exactly. But I would love to write something, maybe a book. I want to travel to a small town someday—one with fir trees and snowcapped mountains. Then I would spend an entire winter writing to my heart’s content.”
“I like the sound of that,” he said.
We were quiet for a few minutes.
“Actually,” he looked embarrassed, “I’ve been working on a book.”
“You’re writing a novel?”
“Yeah, I mean, it’s early days.”
“What’s it about?”
He frowned. “I’m not sure exactly. It’s a little hazy at the moment. I’m still waiting for the idea to come together.”
“I know what that’s like.”
“So I guess you’re working on something too?”
“Not really,” I said, looking away. “Only stuff for the school magazine.”
“Well, that still counts,” he said. “What have you been writing?”
“Mainly short stories. A few articles here and there.”
“Short stories are so underrated.”
“I know.”
“Have you read ‘All Summer in a Day’?”
“By Ray Bradbury?”
He nodded.
“I love that story,” I said.
“My teacher read it to our class in the third grade, and it’s always stuck with me. I remember feeling bad for the girl.”
“Yeah, me too.”
I thought of Margot, the sad, pale girl in the story who was shut up in a closet and robbed of her time in the sun. A cold shiver ran through my body.
“‘Mars Is Heaven!’ is great too,” Rad said after a few moments.
“I love that one as well.”
By now the stars were coming out one by one like pinpricks through a veil. I let the cool, crisp air into my lungs and tried not to think about small, confined spaces.
“There was a book I read when I was a kid,” said Rad. “I can’t recall the title or the author. But it was about parallel worlds. Sometimes I feel like I’m in an alternate universe. Like I switched places with another version of me, and I’m stuck here, in this world. I don’t know if that makes sense.”
“It does,” I said. “I feel like that sometimes too.”
“You do?”
I nodded. “Absolutely.”
“I suppose it’s like being a character in a book. The author has this idea of where the story line is going, and she sets up her characters accordingly. But it changes as she goes, right? All of a sudden, it’s the second draft, and you’re stuck with a different name and a whole other backstory. Then she writes you into an alternate ending. You know, sometimes I get this tiny glimpse of what things were, before the new reality takes over.”
“Exactly,” I said. “I know what you mean by a glimpse. It’s more of a feeling.” I frowned. “Well, I don’t know what it is exactly, but it’s something intangible. Which is why it’s so difficult to explain. There is a sense of something else—a different reality altogether—but then you’re snatched up by the present one, and you’re stuck here. I suppose the most obvious comparison is that moment when you wake up from a dream, and there are those first few seconds of adjustment. Only, I think I have felt that while I was wide awake.”
“You’ve just described it perfectly,” said Rad. “But the idea is crazy, right? I’m sitting here on this park bench talking to you, and it feels solid and real. But maybe in the original version of this story, we were never here.”
“Which means the park bench never existed in the first place.”
“Scary thought, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But I like your theory—about us being characters in a book.”
“Do you think it’s possible?”
“I do,” I said.
“Then who do you think created us?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s like one of those mirrored rooms where you see a thousand versions of yourself. Someone created us, someone else created them, and it goes that way in an infinite loop.”
“Well, if that’s the case, my creator must be a masochist.”
I could tell he was only half joking.
My mother was up when I got home later that night. She was standing in the hallway, her face a storm cloud of anger. “It’s two in the morning, Audrey,” she said. “Where the hell have you been?” I opened my mouth to speak, but she held up her hand to stop me. “You know what? I don’t want to hear it. I know it’s going to be lies anyway.” She glared at me, wrapping her sleeping gown tighter around herself. Her voice dropped, but it still retained every bit of its venom. “Everyone at the reception saw you leave with that boy,” she hissed. “Do you have any idea how that looks?”
“We were just talking, Mum,” I said, looking down at my feet.
“Talking?” she said, raising her voice again. “Until two in the morning? What’s wrong with you, Audrey?” She crossed her arms and sighed loudly. “Ana—your friend—is barely cold in her grave, and you’re trying to get your hands down her boyfriend’s pants.”
I looked up at her, furious. “How dare you!” I screamed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Yes, I do,” she said coldly. “I saw the way you were looking at him. How do you think Duck would feel about that?”
“Duck wouldn’t care, Mum.” The words didn’t come out as confidently as I had intended. Until now, I hadn’t even thought about Duck.
“He wouldn’t?” she said. “Are you out of your mind, Audrey? I hope you haven’t forgotten that if it wasn’t for Duck, you wouldn’t even be here right now.”
Tears sprang to my eyes, but I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of seeing me cry. I pushed past her roughly and was halfway up the stairs when I heard her call after me. “I don’t want you seeing him again. Do you hear me, Audrey? It’s finished.”
“Shut up!” I screamed. “You can’t tell me what to do!”
I slammed the door shut, anger rising inside me. I took a few deep breaths, willing myself not to cry. It had been such a strange night, and I wanted to collect myself and make sense of what I was feeling. Deep down I knew my mother was right, and I felt a bubble of self-hatred rise to the surface. It was clear to me now that I shouldn’t have left Ana’s house with Rad. But it happened so quickly that neither of us had time to think about the consequences. And now it was too late to turn back.
Three
Candela caught up with me just as I was walking through the school gate.
“Hey, Audrey,” she said, a little out of breath. “What happened last night?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, you left Ana’s house with Rad. Everyone was talking about it.”
“How crass.”
“People can be assholes,” she agreed. “So, what happened, anyway? You didn’t answer any of my texts last night.”
“Sorry,” I said, “I got home really late.”
“Really?” She raised an eyebrow.
The school b
ell sounded.
“Hey, let’s skip class today,” said Candela.
“I can’t. I’ve been falling behind.”
“Audrey.” She grabbed my arm. “You look like you need a break. And besides, one day won’t kill you—will it?”
A few hours later, we were sitting on the sandy shore of our favorite beach, watching the surfers glide across the waves. It was unusually warm for August, and we were enjoying the rare bits of sunshine that broke intermittently through the gray clouds. Candela passed me a joint, and I took it from her gratefully.
“Thanks,” I said. “I really needed this.”
“Me too,” she said. “What a god-awful week it’s been.”
I held the end of the joint to my lips, drawing the smoke into my lungs.
“Go easy, Audrey. You know that stuff can make you weird.” I nodded, handing it back to her. She took a couple of quick puffs and then stubbed the joint out on the sand. I watched as she placed the rest of it carefully into a pillbox.
“I know I shouldn’t have left with Rad last night.”
“I thought you didn’t know each other. I mean, one minute you were asking who he was, and then the next thing we knew, Lucy said the two of you left together. So what happened?”
“Well, I was feeling anxious,” I looked at her. “You know . . .”
Candela nodded. Her mother suffered from panic attacks, and she knew I had started having them.
I took a deep breath. “So I went outside for some air, and Rad was there, on the back porch. We talked for a little bit, and then the fight broke out and we left.”
“God, the fight,” Candela’s face was suddenly animated. “Did you see what happened?”
“I missed most of it.”
“It was nasty. Ana’s uncle turned up a bit drunk. He walked right up to Ana’s dad and hit him. Really hard too!”
“Yeah,” I said softly.
“Not that the bastard didn’t deserve it,” she added.
I remained quiet.
“You know, I can’t believe the police haven’t arrested him yet. I mean, you’re the one who saw them through the window with their clothes off and going at it, so maybe you should speak to the cops.”