Look Closer

by Stewart Lewis

  “Cool.”

  “What about you? I was worried when you texted. Something about another sign?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was it?”

  “Coach, if I tell you about it, it’s gonna make me sound batty.”

  “Okay, well, for now, we swim. Let’s do a few warm-up laps, and then I’ll time your 50-meter freestyle. Sound good?”

  I nod. Coach seems really excited, and I am, too. For the first time in a while, it feels like I could really do this again. But I want to do it for me. Not for my mother, not for Coach, not for medals or ribbons (although I still have those proudly displayed in my room).

  The water feels cold at first, but the key is to imagine your pores opening, letting the cold in so it actually warms you. There’s no sense in fighting it. This is something Coach taught me early on.

  On my practice laps, I lock into a rhythm and regulate my breathing. Like in a song, my arms are the guitar, my feet the bass, my breath the beat. But there is no voice. That is what I’m searching for.

  I can see the tiny, white, dancing bubbles and notice a red plastic boat at the bottom in the center of my lane, abandoned by some kid. It reminds me of being younger, how every time my parents said we were going to the neighbor’s pool, I felt this rush in my whole body. The pool was another world—a malleable, blue, sparkly world that made more sense than the real one. I can kind of understand what Edge means about aliens and other life. Sometimes this world we know is too unfair, too intense, too unexpected, to be the only one.

  Swimming is more about release than resistance. Yes, you have to attack the water, but gracefully, more like seducing it to work for you, to find the sweet spot of movement and speed. After that, it’s simply endurance.

  I dive down and pick up the toy boat on my last warm-up lap, placing it on the edge of the pool. Coach picks it up and says, “Thanks. I lost that when I was five, been looking for it ever since.”

  I smile, taking a rest and letting the sun hit my face. Hot summer days like this make me want to stay in the pool forever. Coach gets his stopwatch ready. The lanes are filling up, but mine is clear. People know who Coach is, and some even know who I am. I’ve been in the local paper a few times. No one is going to mess with our lane.

  “Okay, so like I always say: Be clear in your head. Find that rhythm and push it. When you think you’ve pushed all you can go, go farther. Your machine has all the right parts, make them work together. Strength and elegance.”

  He blows the whistle, and I’m off. It feels good, having the power and being in control. The water is silky and smooth, and my body kicks into gear like rapid muscle memory. I can kill it with freestyle. Still, my mind goes back to Tom Elliot and the sailor, and the ghost man, and if there’s any connection between it all. You’re a force, I can hear Coach say. Faster. Faster.

  When I reach the mark, it takes me a minute to catch my breath. Coach is looking at the stopwatch, his mouth resting in an oval shape.

  “What?”

  “Tegan. You haven’t been training, and you beat the fastest girl in the DMV by six-tenths of a second. In swimming, that’s a lifetime!”

  “I know, I know.”

  He does his little dance where he shakes his head and spins around. It’s charming even if you don’t know him.

  “How much did I improve, you know, since I was on the team?”

  “At least three seconds. What happened to you? Did you eat a lot of spinach?”

  “No, I’m eating regular stuff. And seeing signs.”

  “Well, so am I. Your name on an Olympic placard.”

  “Coach, easy.”

  He ignores me and does the dance again. The lifeguard with the abs waves at me. I wave back.

  I float on my back, facing the clear blue sky. Then I get out and dry off. We both sit on the bench near the lifeguard stand. Coach is still staring at the stopwatch, making sure it’s real. Kind of like me watching Edge walk away.

  On my way home, I see the ghost man, except this time, thankfully, at a distance. He’s behind a window, inside the flower shop. His face looks very pale and eerie behind the glass. I can’t tell if he’s smiling, or making some kind of mocking, childish face. I quickly turn away. Does he even exist? Does he know what is happening to me? Should I go confront him?

  I decide to keep going. I’m thinking about the fact that I broke my own record, about how I’m too scared to turn around and look back at the flower shop. I’m so lost in thought that when I reach the stoplight before my block, I take a step off the curb without looking up. A city bus speeds by, inches from my nose. I jerk back and a Chinese woman who’s jogging in place comes over to me. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m not sure,” I tell her.

  “Can I help you?”

  “It’s okay.”

  She reaches out her hand, “My name is Meili.”

  “I don’t need to know your name.” What if she tells me her name, and I see it somewhere? What if every choice I make from now on is going to affect whether people live or die? The thought is overwhelming, so much so that I feel like I could sink into a puddle on the sidewalk.

  She looks offended.

  “I’m a nurse. Are you dehydrated?”

  “Yes, I mean no, thank you. Thanks for offering to help. I just spaced out,” I say.

  The woman puts up her hands in surrender, but shakes her head a little while she jogs off. The light turns. I glance back to the flower shop window and the ghost man is gone.

  * * *

  Larry is in the kitchen drinking coffee and looking at stocks on his phone. That’s all he ever looks at on his phone.

  I sit with my glass of water, staring into space. I can still hear the sound of the bus, so close to my face, like it rattled my brain. Meili’s toothpaste breath. The ghost man making that grotesque face.

  Larry looks up from his phone. “What’s wrong, kiddo?”

  I sigh. How could I begin to explain?

  “Well, Larry, let’s start with this. Do you really think an adult calling a seventeen-year-old ‘kiddo’ is okay?”

  He laughs, but I can tell he’s kind of taken aback.

  “What would you like me to call you?”

  “How about my name?”

  My heart dips from saying name. Will it always be like that?

  “Okay, come here, Tegan,” Larry says, waving me over to show me his stocks, some pattern that means nothing to me.

  “Am I supposed to be impressed?” I ask. “Because money doesn’t impress me that much.”

  “What about strategy?”

  “Better.”

  “Ah, wait, check this out.”

  He shows me a video of a toddler falling asleep while eating, which is pretty funny. I guess he does look at other stuff on his phone.

  I retrieve my glass of water and drink it at the sink, then I head upstairs. The same document is still open on my laptop: the college essay I never started. I take a shower, looking at the steamy tiles, expecting another name, but there’s nothing there. When I get out, the room is so steamy, I can’t find my towel. I stand there for a second, until my phone dings. It startles me, and I slip to the ground, landing on my side, completely losing control of my limbs. I look at the tiles again, getting up slowly. Still no names.

  The steam has cleared. I grab my phone, drying off as I plop on my bed. My side hurts from the fall.

  It’s a text from Edge.

  I’m not only into aliens and EDM. I like food trucks too.

  I send back a smiley-face emoji with sunglasses and ask him where to meet.

  19th and I in twenty?

  Sounds like a plan.

  I actually try to figure out what to wear, which I never do. My father used to tell me to wear what I wanted as long as I felt comfortable. But it’s different when going
on a date. I decide on a flowy pale-blue top with black shorts that show off my butt a little. I text Jenna a selfie (so unlike me) and her wow emoji reply tells me she’s impressed.

  I meet Edge on the corner. This time he’s got no skateboard, and he’s wearing a short-sleeved, button-down shirt. Maybe he planned his outfit, too.

  Along the park, the food trucks are lined up with only inches between them, creating the illusion of a wall.

  “This is what’s cool,” Edge says. “You can travel the world in one block. I remember when Korean tacos were authentic, before Takorean became the McDonald’s of street food and everything cool went corporate. But there’s still some real deals. Today, we’re doing Spanish.”

  He leads me to a truck that is all silver, with the word Pepe written in black.

  “You’ve heard of José Andrés, right?” Edge asks.

  “Yes,” I say, even though I only vaguely know the name.

  “These are the sandwiches he grew up eating, that his aunt would make in the middle of some tiny village in northern Spain.”

  “Sounds delicious.”

  “Got huge raves on Eater.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A food blog, dummy.”

  For some reason, Edge calling me a dummy doesn’t feel bad. In fact, with that black hair, high cheekbones, and those laser-green eyes, he can call me whatever the hell he wants.

  We order, and sit on some grass near the truck, our backs against a tree. Mine is a breaded chicken cutlet, but it’s like, artisan. The opposite of a chicken nugget. It also has some kind of tangy sauce, hot peppers, and arugula. His is ham, with grilled vegetables and pesto. Both of the sandwiches are in crusty baguettes. We give each other a bite. It tastes so good, and I’m so happy to be alive and with a boy and eating something delicious and being hungry for a change. It is one of the most perfect meals I’ve ever had.

  Then I see him again, across the park, carrying a broken umbrella.

  “Look!” I grab Edge. “Do you see that man over there? With the umbrella?”

  “No.”

  He’d ducked behind a tree.

  “Ugh, I keep seeing him everywhere. Frickin’ Ghost Man.”

  “Does he scare you?” Edge asks.

  “Yes. It’s creepy. Like seeing the names.”

  “I don’t know. I’d kind of like that if it happened to me. It would be cool.”

  “Look, it’s not cool when people are dying.”

  “They’re dying every day,” Edge says. “So are we.”

  “Yes, but, why are the names coming to me?”

  “Maybe you’re God,” Edge says.

  “Shut up.”

  I unwrap the sandwich to get the last bite, and there is a something written in small cursive on the wrapper, but it’s blurred.

  “Oh my God. Look.” I show it to Edge.

  He pours a little water on the distorted letters and they come into view.

  jean

  Edge holds it in front of him, letting out a small gasp.

  “Wait, look at yours!”

  He opens his wrapper, and there it is: another mushy group of letters. This time I pour the water, and it comes out crystal clear.

  fordham

  We stare at the two wrappers. People walk by with their food-truck items, smiling and laughing, going about their day. And we are holding a life in our hands. Or maybe not.

  “Holy shit. Tegan, you realize someone or something is giving you extraordinary power?”

  “I did swim the fastest 50-meter freestyle I ever have today.”

  “Oh my God. Hang on. I got a new people-finder app.”

  He takes out his phone, types the name and “DC” and “vicinity” into the app, and presses find.

  Two women come up locally. There are two addresses, one on P Street and one across the bridge in Arlington. We decide to start with the one that’s closest.

  We get into an Uber and neither of us say anything. The driver tries to chat us up, but we don’t really respond. Our minds are on one thing: Jean Fordham, and whether or not we can save her.

  7.

  give comfort

  The car drops us off at a building that looks like apartments, but then we notice a sign atop the arch in the entryway: The Church of Scientology. Edge makes a noise.

  “Here we go,” he says.

  Inside there’s a half-circle desk with a woman behind it. She has granny glasses and a toothy smile. “Welcome. What can I do for you?”

  “We’re actually looking for someone named Jean…” I say.

  The woman stands and points toward an office behind her. On the walk back, we can see into the offices on the side. People are holding silver tubes connected to a metering device. I had heard about this through the Jasons; they knew somebody in Scientology. It’s called auditing. In another office, someone asks, “Do birds fly?” over and over to a man who is nodding his head every time like a robot.

  I grab Edge’s hand and whisper in his ear, “We need a code word, you know…if we have to get out of here.”

  “Okay, how about pomegranate?”

  I start to giggle.

  “It’s my favorite fruit,” Edge says, and it feels as if he’s confessing some intimate detail about himself.

  When we get to the office, I see her name on the door, and I tense. What if she has a heart attack while we’re sitting in her office?

  “Are we winging it?” I ask.

  Edge nods and knocks on the door.

  Jean Fordham is short and plump, and she’s got a bob haircut and a no-nonsense look on her face. She doesn’t smile but points to the two guest chairs in her office as if she’s expecting us. We sit, and there’s a silence that seems to be boiling in the air. Finally, I say, “We were wondering if you’ve been in any danger lately.”

  “Do you have any enemies?” Edge adds. “Or any health concerns?”

  Now Jean smiles and holds up her hands, “Wait a second, are you FBI? You look a little young for that. Can I ask how you even came to be here? Do we have any mutual acquaintances?”

  We both shake our heads, at a loss. What are we doing here?

  “Well, then, let me ask you something. What’s your greatest downfall in life?” She’s glaring at us, almost daring us to answer.

  “Losing the spelling bee in fourth grade,” Edge jokes.

  “My father dying,” I say, to be honest.

  “I see,” she says, then takes off her glasses and stares at me. Her eyes seem empty. “What if I told you that you could be free of any harm that experience caused you?”

  “That’s kind of silly. He’ll always be dead.”

  “But what we do here, is take control of our thoughts. In other words, you can choose to feel pain or choose to be free of it.”

  “Kinda like boxers or briefs?” Edge asks.

  She ignores Edge and asks me if I would watch an introductory video.

  Without letting me answer, she hits a button on her desk and automatic blinds come down so that the office is completely dark. A flat-screen TV behind her turns on and creepy music starts. Asteroids fly across the screen (Edge likes that part), then the music turns triumphant. Dots appear around a map of all their churches. There’s a man who looks like a lumberjack holding a monkey. Then another man, who looks like a Ken doll, starts talking about Scientology. When the testimonials come on—from the country western singer with bug eyes saying through Scientology she found “real inner peace and joy,” to the personal trainer who says, “Thanks to Scientology, I’m building drug-free bodies,”—Edge and I both turn to each other and say it at the same time.

  “Pomegranate.”

  Jean turns off the screen and tries to show us a personality chart.

  “I’m sorry. This has been a mistake,” Edge says.


  “I tell you what. I’ll give you a book, free of charge. You might be surprised at how it helps you take control of your life.”

  “More like give up control,” Edge says under his breath, and I giggle. She hands us the books, and we thank her.

  “Tell me something,” she says. “How did you know my name? Where I worked?”

  “Oh, I think we were looking for another Jean Fordham.”

  She gives us a skeptical look and says, “Well, read the book. My door’s always open.”

  As we leave, I whisper to Edge, “Yeah, to lock us inside.”

  Outside, we immediately start laughing.

  “That was so creepy!”

  “It’s a total cult,” Edge says. “You have to give them all your money.”

  “Do you think it’s her? That she’s the one? She seemed pretty healthy to me.”

  “Apparently, you don’t get sick if you’re a Scientologist.”

  “Only in the head.”

  Edge laughs and pulls up another Uber on his phone.

  “Let’s check the other one.”

  Once we’re in the car, Edge seems forlorn. I ask him what’s up, and he tells me he’s thinking about Tom.

  “You know, one time in fourth grade we skipped school and stole a bunch of candy from CVS. It was my idea, but when we got caught, he took the blame. He was that kind of kid. He always had my back.”

  The car ascends the Arlington Memorial Bridge, and I lean my head on his shoulder.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Edge.”

  He pulls the rock out of his pocket, running it through his hands.

  “I just wish I had texted back.”

  “I know,” I say, as the driver pulls up to the address. “I know.”

  * * *

  We get out. We’re at a nursing home. We give each other a look, silently acknowledging that this must be the right place. Here we go again.

  Inside the vestibule, there’s a homemade sign stating the visiting hours that looks like it was made by a child. Edge checks the time on his phone. “We’re good.”

  The woman at the front desk has thin glasses and a severe haircut. Edge tells her we’re here to visit our auntie Jean, and she seems to buy it, handing us a notebook to sign ourselves in. She points down the hallway.