Welcome, Caller, This Is Chloe

by Coriell, Shelley

  “It’s not a rat.” Duncan spoke without taking a breath. “I’m pretty sure it’s a sub sandwich. At least it was a sub sandwich.” With a dust pan, he scooped a six-inch oozing brown mass from a bin marked Cans Only and dropped it into a small plastic bag he plucked from his trash cart. He wrapped the decomposing blob in two more bags and shoved it deep into a bin on his cart. With a spray bottle marked Pine Fresh, he cleaned the bin and doused the air. “Got it.”

  “And the crowd goes wild.” I threw my hands in the air and made mass cheering noises. “Another garbage crisis deftly dealt with by . . . Trash Man!”

  Duncan winced as he pushed his cart into the hallway, the wheels squeaking softly. “Trash Man?”

  I fell in step beside him, our way lit only by the after-hour security lights glowing a soft orange. “Do you prefer Garbage Guy? Rubbish Rescuer?”

  He groaned.

  I fingered the edges of his scarf, which still hung around my neck, noting that this one, too, had a lopsided red heart stitched onto one end. “How about Junk Hunk? Debris Dude?”

  “You’re a warped soul, Chloe.” He didn’t laugh, but that half smile curved his mouth. Mission accomplished.

  Duncan ducked into the next office in search of more garbage, which he sorted into the two circular bins on his cart. He worked quickly, efficiently. Duncan Moore was a guy who knew his garbage. He also seemed more at ease here than at school. On the ride from the hospital parking lot, he’d been stone still, but here in the office building, his face no longer looked carved in granite.

  “You’ve been doing this a while?” I asked. When I rescued Duncan and his broken-down bike on the side of the road, I’d expected to take him home. Instead, he directed me to a commercial office complex north of the hospital.

  “A few years. I have six office buildings where I handle trash.”

  “Must take a while.”

  He poured the contents of another trash can into his bins. “I’m home a little after eleven.”

  “Which explains why you sleep through econ.”

  “Doesn’t everyone sleep through econ?” He tilted his head, his gray eyes sparking with silvery bits.

  “I kind of like econ.” I took a small waste basket of paper and emptied it in the bin marked Recyclables. “All those business models, market analyses, supply-and-demand charts. It’s fun.”

  Duncan grabbed another trash can. “Like I said, Chloe, you’re a warped soul.” Yes, he was definitely different with his garbage. Almost relaxed.

  In a communal office area, he emptied a trash can and something clanked. He dug around and hauled out a dinged box with a frayed cord and said, “Yesssss!”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “A treasure.”

  “Uh, Dunc, it’s a pencil sharpener.”

  “Same thing.”

  “Exactly what are you going to do with it?”

  “Fix it.”

  “Why?”

  He stared at the scuffed, dented box, then me, clearly not understanding the latter. “Because it needs fixing.”

  I pictured Duncan working on the transmitter, the lights, and the clock. “You like to fix things, don’t you?”

  The trash cart’s wheels jangled and squeaked as he pushed them out of the office area. “Yeah, I guess so. After school I work in a thrift store fixing broken appliances.”

  “You have two jobs? No wonder you have no time for fun.”

  “It’s not bad.” He didn’t seem upset, more resigned, as if working two jobs was a fact of life.

  “So what kinds of things do you fix at the thrift store?” I asked.

  “Everything. Radios, dishwashers, old movie projectors, snow skis. And toasters. Bet you never met a guy who’s fixed a hundred toasters.”

  “I’m impressed. I bet you can fix anything.”

  The squeak of wheels softened as he slowed. “Some things can’t be fixed.”

  Like friendships broken by lies and frosty pink slurs. The thought slammed me. Could I fix the growing gulf between Brie and me? Did I want to? I slid my pin curls behind my ears. Of course I did. Despite the horrible words and flying tamale, Brie wasn’t a villainess. I believed that with all my heart because I knew I could never be friends with someone who had an evil heart. We were still connected.

  Long ago I figured out the BF connection, the invisible thread that linked friends. This thread was responsible for the times you finished each other’s sentences or showed up to school wearing the same color shirts or your hair in matching messy ponytails. Sometimes this invisible connection woke you in the middle of the night and demanded you text your BF. That was when your BF texted back: Mom gon. I’m @ d hsptl. I nd u. Merce. I’d been connected to Merce and Brie for years, and some part of me still hadn’t let go.

  While I thought about the BF thread, Duncan, too, had traveled in his head to a deep, thoughtful place. His garbage cart was still, his gaze pinned on something across the darkened corridor. Was he thinking about the things he couldn’t fix? Without the scarf around his neck, I could see his pulse slamming below his jaw.

  I grabbed the trash cart and sent it rolling down the hall. “Okay, time for a little fun.”

  Wide-eyed, Duncan stared from me to his runaway trash cart and back to me. “Fun? Here?”

  “As someone very wise and with wonderful taste in old shoes once said, fun is everywhere. We just have to make it.”

  Duncan headed for his trash cart. “Hate to burst your bubble, but garbage is not fun.”

  With his trash cart once again in hand, he squeaked down the hall, leaving me looking at his broad shoulders and the curve of his faded jeans. The pocket was torn, but someone had attempted to patch it with lopsided stitches, and I pictured Duncan’s own hands fixing that tear. Always fixing things. Always working.

  I whipped off the scarf, tossed it through the air, and looped it around his neck, drawing him back to me. That wonderful sea-swept smell mingled with pine cleaner.

  When he turned to me, he looked more curious than angry.

  “Time to play,” I said.

  “Play what?”

  I reached for the trash bin marked Recyclables. “Garbage Games.”

  Duncan whistled. “I’m impressed.”

  “You should be.” I made the final two folds on my paper wings. “It’s my special variation of the Sparrow, and last summer it obliterated my brother Zach’s Canada Goose.”

  Duncan studied his airplane, which was also impressive, nose heavy with a good deal of surface area. He spent the past ten minutes constructing it, and it was fun to watch his concentration. He liked to work with his hands, and he was good with them. I remembered his fingers sliding along my thumbs and the bubbly heat. That had definitely been a nice feeling.

  “Your family’s into paper airplanes?” Duncan asked. Thankfully, he was not looking at my flushed face but at the Sparrow.

  “No, only my youngest brother. He taught me how to make them when I was five or six.” Zach had been infinitely patient and indulgent. He was also the brother who packed me in his backpack when I was two and tried to take me to his second-grade class for show-and-tell. “We have this ongoing paper airplane competition. When I was little, he let me win some to keep things close, but now it’s pretty serious. He started med school in August, and before he left, I debuted the Sparrow and nudged into the sweepstakes point lead. I haven’t lost once with it. Ready to fly?”

  Duncan stared at his plane as if he didn’t know what to do next.

  “You didn’t race airplanes as a kid?” I asked.

  Head shake.

  “Never?” My eyes grew wide.

  His shoulders bunched in a nonchalant shrug. “I had a deprived childhood.” I could tell he’d meant it to come across as flippant, but truth weighed his words. His hand curved about his plane, and I thought he’d crush it.

  “The deprivation stops here.” I hopped off the desk I’d been sitting on. “Let the games begin.”

  I explai
ned we’d fly the planes down the office corridor, earning points for distance and hang time. Not surprisingly, Duncan’s carefully crafted plane gave my Sparrow a run for its money. I won the first round in both distance and hang, but he swept the second. By the third and final round, he was checking the air for wind drift from the vents. A nice red flushed across his cheeks, and his eyes seemed more silvery than gray, like starlight on the ocean at midnight. “Final heat,” Duncan said. “Winner takes all and gets major bragging rights.”

  Someone in the office had turned down the heat, so the air had grown cool, but next to me, Duncan was toasty warm. I’d had too many cold shoulders lately. Brie. Merce. Clementine. I moved a bit closer. Duncan lifted his plane. “Ready?”

  I nodded. On the count of three, we released our planes, but I didn’t watch them. Instead, my gaze stayed on Duncan. Upturned lips. Wide shoulders edging his plane farther. Face relaxed. He was such a different person here with his trash cart.

  “Niiiiice,” he said, and I figured the race must have ended. I didn’t look to see who won. His face had that little half smile, and it sent something tingly swirling the length of my body.

  Yes, I thought. Duncan Moore was very, very niiiiice.

  When I pulled my car into the driveway at the Tuna Can later that night, I still felt the wonderful rush of heat from my evening with Duncan. After our airplane race, he went back to emptying trash, but not before admitting he had fun.

  One dose of Chloe cheer: Check.

  Now time for another.

  I walked into the Tuna Can just as a pair of scissors whizzed through the kitchen and pierced the wall.

  Grams tossed a cellophane-wrapped DVD on the kitchen table and glared at her hand, which was curved in a rigid half curl. “Piece of crap scissors,” she said under her breath. “Don’t work worth a damn.”

  I didn’t bother to dislodge the scissors from the wall, nor did I offer to help open the DVD case, which had obviously been giving Grams fits. Instead, I sat at the table and said, “If you want to get the scissors fixed, I know a guy who’s good at fixing things.”

  Grams blinked, as if she hadn’t realized I’d walked in the door. She patted my hand. “I’m sorry, Poppy. I’m not the best company tonight.”

  “I am.” Thanks to Garbage Games and queenly radio shows about to debut. “And because I’m in such a stellar mood, I’m going to take you to the movies.”

  Grams picked at a smear of dried jelly on the table. To my knowledge the Parkinson’s hadn’t affected her hearing, although last week I noticed her speech slurred and she swallowed as if she had too much saliva in her mouth. “Or maybe we can do it this weekend,” I added. “I know you had a busy day.”

  The memory of looking at assisted-living facilities must have flicked a switch. Grams jumped from the chair and grabbed her purse from the counter. “You fly, I’ll buy.”

  Relief washed over me. This was my old Grams.

  By the time we got to the theater, Grams was in high spirits. “Man, that’s one smokin’ hot heinie.” She pointed to the life-size cardboard cutout of Brad Pitt promoting his upcoming release. “You know he got his start on Another World, but some dipwad in casting canned him after two episodes. The moment I saw Brad on AW, I knew he’d be a megastar. I mean, with a heinie like this.” She patted Brad’s cardboard butt, her cheeks flushed.

  At times like this Grams seemed so normal, like the Grams who’d walked me to school, attended my parent-teacher conferences, organized my birthday parties, made question bags, and taught me to make tamales de dulce. She was nothing like the woman who drove her Jeep into an ATM and was found half frozen on the beach at three in the morning.

  Before the movie, Grams needed to use the bathroom. “You go inside and get us a seat, Poppy. I’ll be out in a flash.”

  I pretended to check my watch. “We have a few more minutes. I think I’ll stay out here and enjoy the view a little longer.” I tilted my chin toward Brad Pitt’s butt.

  “That’s my girl!” Grams went into the bathroom, and I waited.

  While I would never admit it to Grams, I wasn’t hanging around to ogle Brad’s butt. I wanted to keep an eye on her, like she used to wait for me when I was six. My toe tapped against the nubby carpet. Ten years ago when she stood outside a public bathroom and waited for me, did she worry about me not being able to work the lock on the toilet stall? Was she concerned I might slip on the water on the floor near the sink?

  I stopped tapping and hurried toward the bathroom. As I reached for the handle, the door swung open, and I stumbled to a stop.

  My former BF seemed equally surprised. Her eyes bright, she curved her lips in a soft, frosty pink O before her whole face twisted into a villainous vixen glare. That initial glint in her eyes gave me hope. The BF thread still connected us. There in the bathroom doorway, it tugged at my chest.

  “Hi,” I said as Brie slipped her tube of lipstick into her purse. “You here to see the late show?”

  “I’m on my way out. Merce and the gang are waiting for me in the car. We’re heading to Extreme Bean.”

  To talk. Brie, Merce, and I had spent hundreds of hours talking at the coffee shop. I tucked my hair behind my ears. Talk. Brie and I needed to talk now, to heal this thing that had festered between us. “Was the movie any good?”

  “Yes.” Brie snapped shut her purse. “Here alone?” The last word sounded like some kind of disease.

  “No, I’m here with a friend.” She didn’t need to know aforementioned friend was my eighty-two-year-old grandmother.

  “Nose Ring Girl?”

  My toes curled. Brie had always been one to label others. Outsiders had been her brainchild, although I, too, had labeled Clementine Nose Ring Girl. Suddenly, it sounded mean.

  “Her name is Clementine, and no, I’m here with someone else.”

  “How nice. You have two friends.” Brie’s breathy laugh was cold, and I took a step back.

  Just then the bathroom door opened, and Grams walked out, passing us without a word. Her shirt was untucked, and a giant water spot soaked the front of her sweater. “Chloe? Chloe?” Grams called, her high-pitched voice wobbly.

  “Grams.” I waved, trying to get her attention. She wandered a few steps to the right then left, her gaze clouded. “I’m right here,” I said louder.

  Grams stared at me with a slack expression and shook her head before spinning toward the theater. A long piece of toilet paper trailed from her waistband and tangled around her orange Converse. She stumbled, bumping into the wall. Righting herself, she shook the toilet paper from her shoe. “Piece of crap carpet.”

  Next to me Brie let out a loud laugh as she waggled a hand at the toilet paper still bobbing behind Grams. Others in the lobby turned and twittered. Then Brie gave me an evil soap-opera-villainess grin.

  As a rule, I didn’t hate. Hate was another ugly four-letter word. So I had a hard time putting into words how I felt toward Brie as a confused Grams stared at all the people laughing at her, but it wasn’t nice, and it wasn’t very Chloe-like.

  My computer dinged.

  Chloe, Are you still there? Gabe wrote. Do you still want to cancel your account?

  I stared at Gabe’s avatar in the corner of my screen. My stomach churned like a whirling pool of seawater, frothy and angry.

  Merce, Brie, and I joined OurWorld three years ago. We’d created the social networking accounts so we’d be only a click away from one another at all times. Gabe and OurWorld had connected us during times of boredom (What is lip gloss made of?), times of excitement (Ohmygosh! Alex asked me to homecoming!), and times of heart-shredding sorrow (Is it okay to be pissed off at my momfor dying?).

  Gabe’s avatar waved at me. Select Yes to cancel your account. Select No to maintain your account.

  My mouse hovered over the Yes button. Was I ready to disconnect from Merce and Brie? To snap the thread?

  Pictures of Brie making fun of Grams in the movie theater flashed in my head.

  I clicke
d Yes.

  Once you leave, you lose all files and friends, Gabe wrote. Are you sure you want to cancel?

  Two months ago I couldn’t have imagined life without my two best friends, the two human beings who knew my thoughts before I said them, who hurt when I hurt, who knew my deepest dreams and fears.

  My hands started shaking. Best friends knew you. They knew where you were vulnerable, and that was the heart of the issue with Brie. She knew I hated being alone. She knew I needed people like I needed air. She had taken that from me, or at least she’d tried to. Despite her lies and gossip, despite her power as high school royalty—Brie had not turned everyone against me. I had Duncan and the rest of the radio staff. I was not alone.

  My mouse attacked the Yes button.

  Gabe’s virtual hand reached out and grabbed the hand of my avatar, walking me past an image of a globe. As I walked off screen, Gabe waved. The globe and Gabe faded away.

  My heart constricted, and I couldn’t breathe. It was as if Gabe had taken all of the oxygen with him.

  Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

  How silly. My virtual world with my former BFs was ending, but I had a very real, very good world, an entire universe, without them.

  Dead Air: Silence on the radio when there is no audible transmission.

  — KDRS Operations Guide, p. 482

  “AND THIS”—DUNCAN OPENED THE DOOR AND MOTIONED ME inside the small room fronted with glass—“is the queen’s castle.”

  “Don’t expect me to freakin’ bow,” Clementine said with a snarl. She sat in one of two chairs before a long table piled with electronic equipment. The control room was small, about ten feet square with one wall of glass that looked over the newsroom. Gray egg cartons covered the other three walls.

  For the past few days Duncan and Clementine had been giving me a crash course in all things radio during my lunch hour. Along with Mr. Martinez, they schooled me in broadcast writing, interview techniques, FCC regs, and program production.

  I ran my fingers along the chair that in a few days would be my queenly throne. “This is where I’ll do my entire show?” The station ran live programming Monday through Thursday after school until six and on Friday until ten. My show would be the bright, shiny star of the Friday night eight-to-ten slot.