90 Days of Different

by Eric Walters

  I noticed well off to the side a smaller boat and a couple of guys fishing. They waved, and I let go of one of the handles and gave a weak little wave back. I was relieved that one hand was enough to hold me in place.

  We continued to pick up speed. The spray in my face increased, the tube started bouncing a bit more, and I held on tighter. Still, it wasn’t that bad. I could handle this—and then the boat suddenly cut sharply to the side. I kept on going straight and skipped over the wake of the boat and into the air! As the boat continued to turn, I picked up speed, until it seemed like I was going to get in front of the boat!

  The driver changed course again, and as the rope went slack I slowed down dramatically. I’d weathered whatever had happened. I was fine. The rope started to snake through the water, getting tighter and tauter, and I knew what was coming next. This wasn’t going to be good. I gripped the handles as tightly as I could, and the tube and I jerked forward. Desperate to hang on, I felt like my arms were almost being yanked from their sockets!

  Back and forth the boat cut, and I shot over the wake and into the air, bouncing and landing and almost tipping over with each landing. My arms were aching, my fear fueling the adrenaline that kept me from flying off. I wanted him to slow down, I wanted him to stop, but I couldn’t signal without releasing a hand, and if I did that, I couldn’t possibly have stayed on.

  The boat pulled an even tighter turn, going in a circle, and I continued to gain speed as I was slingshot around the boat in a big circle, moving faster and faster. How long could I possibly hang on?—I flew off and skipped across the surface, twirling and barrel-rolling, spray everywhere, until I slumped down into the water. I gasped, swallowed some water and then bobbed back to the surface again. I was okay, I was okay. I had to let them know.

  I looked all around, trying to figure out which way was which, searching for the boat—there it was! I raised my arms above my head to signal them.

  The boat completed its turn and came back toward me. I treaded water and waited. It was coming up, as planned, on my right-hand side. It would be here to pick me up in a few seconds. There was only one more thing I needed to do. I reached down with both hands and pulled up my bathing-suit bottom, which had been dragged down to below my knees.

  The boat came up slowly. Ella was at the very front, waving and whooping, a big smile on her face. Despite it all I smiled back. And why shouldn’t I? I’d survived, and the different was done! The boat came up beside me, and the driver turned off the engine.

  “Nice work!” the spotter called out.

  “Most don’t last nearly that long,” the driver added.

  “You did good, Soph!” Ella yelled.

  I swam the few strokes over to the boat, and the spotter reached down and pulled me up, and I climbed into the boat.

  “Thanks for your help,” I said. “Do you have enough gas to do another run?”

  “Of course we do,” the spotter said.

  “You want to go again?” Ella exclaimed.

  “Again, yes. Me, no. It’s your turn. Different isn’t just for me. Well?”

  “Challenge accepted.”

  DAY 38

  I looked at that one message—again. It had all started on my timeline the previous evening. Some guy named James had said something about my Wonder Woman photo and then the picture of me in my bathing suit from the day before. He’d asked me out. I didn’t know him, and I wasn’t going to be dating anybody anyway, so I messaged him back. Thanks but no thanks. What followed was a message telling me I was nothing more than a tease and what did I expect when I was posting things where I was parading around in a bathing suit?

  First off, it was a bathing suit covered by a life jacket, and second, what was I supposed to wear to go tubing, a raincoat? And third, even if it was a bathing suit, I had the right to wear what I wanted without being judged, harassed or bothered by some idiot.

  I’d messaged him back and said just that. Big mistake. His reply was angry and filled with mean things. I was shocked that anybody would say such things. Nobody had ever talked to me that way in my entire life.

  I just hadn’t expected anything like this. People had made lots of comments—on my timeline, in private messages, in tweets—but almost all were supportive and kind and funny and playful.

  I looked back at the message. There was only one thing to do. I deleted it and then blocked James. With friends like him I didn’t need enemies.

  DAY 39

  The clock on the wall continued ticking away. It was nineteen minutes to midnight. It had been such a long day. Maybe time hadn’t stopped, but it certainly had slowed down over the last twenty-three hours and forty-one minutes.

  I looked down at my phone. It was turned off, as it had been for twenty-three hours and forty-two minutes, since one minute before midnight the previous day. Turned off and dead, it was still important. It was such a part of my life that it felt more like a part of my hand than simply something I held in my hand. It had been paralyzed, still, unmoving and unresponsive for the entire day.

  Of course, it wasn’t just my phone that had been off. The house phones had all been unplugged. All three televisions had been unplugged to stop me from inadvertently clicking one on. My iPod and tablet had been put away. I’d just turned my computer back on a few minutes earlier to get it ready to go, but I had deliberately walked away before I could be tempted.

  Today’s different was certainly different. It had sounded so simple, not much more complicated than leaving my bed unmade—although even that had turned out to be harder than I ever would have imagined. With this different, there were no heights, no speed, no possible way to get hurt or even scared. I didn’t even have to leave the house. Actually I couldn’t leave the house. It was that simple. For twenty-four hours I couldn’t communicate with anybody. No direct conversation, no telephone calls, no texts, no Facebook. Nothing.

  After being loaded up with so much social media, this was even harder. Like I’d been given a free sample of drugs, gotten addicted and now had to go off them cold turkey. Ella was right—social could become so addictive, so quickly.

  I’d put a notice on all my social media sites letting people know I wouldn’t be online in any way for the next twenty-four hours as my different for the day. With people so used to instant responses, it could be worrisome for them if there weren’t any.

  I’d also had a conversation with my father just before midnight. He was following me on a couple of platforms, so he probably would have known anyway, but I wanted to make sure so he wouldn’t worry when he couldn’t get in touch with me. As well I wanted to talk to him before the cone of silence fell over top of me. I guess I needed to talk to him.

  I normally checked in with my father regularly. With him gone, it had been four or five texts or calls every day. It wasn’t him checking on me as much as me checking on him and Oliver. I needed to know they were all right. I always did.

  For a while after my mother died I needed to know where my father was at all times. Oliver and I were only one parent away from being orphans. When he was even a few minutes late coming home from work, it made me panic. I’d stand at the front window waiting, staring, praying that the next car that turned onto our street would be his. I’d make bargains—please let his car be in the next five. I couldn’t help going through all the terrible things that could have happened to him, and then I’d start thinking about what would happen to us, how I’d care for my brother, how we would survive.

  But at least we had somebody who would adopt us. My aunt Janice and uncle Art would take us in—thank goodness for them. Even thinking about it now made me start to feel nervous again. It was a creeping sense of uneasiness rising up from my stomach and into my chest. I took a deep breath and shuddered it away. I wished it had been that easy back then.

  This was definitely the longest I’d gone without talking to my father in years and years and years—no, forever. I knew he and my
brother were fine. I knew that. Still, my father was going to be my first call.

  Ella had added one more element to the challenge, and that was the reason the TVs were unplugged and the iPod put away—I wasn’t allowed to even hear human voices. Not in movies, on TV or even in music. It had gotten to the point over the last few hours that I’d started talking to myself just to hear a voice. The annoying McNabb twins from down the way had been yelling at each other, and it had been like music to my ears. Even the sound of an ambulance going by a few streets over was reassuring—there were still other humans on the planet.

  The first eight hours hadn’t been hard. I’d been asleep. Waking up to complete quiet in the house, my first reflex had been to reach for my phone to check for messages and notifications. I’d fumbled on my night table looking for it before I remembered. Luckily, I’d put it across the room, turned off, with a little note on top to remind me.

  Fixing breakfast and eating in silence wasn’t a chore as much as a pleasure. At least at first. Then it got eerie. It got to the point where I would have even enjoyed having my brother here annoying me. I read the paper—I was allowed to read. We got the paper delivered to the door—something I’d accused my father of being old-fashioned for doing. Thank goodness for old-fashioned.

  I’d read somewhere that forcing people to do nothing was a form of torture, that it contravened the Geneva Convention—the agreement on the rights of prisoners. So instead of doing nothing, I’d done the things I was allowed to do—exercised, read, exercised some more and written by hand on paper.

  I’d spent an hour on the treadmill and elliptical machine. Normally, I would have listened to music or at least watched TV while I was exercising. The quiet made it harder. With nothing to distract me, I could only think of two things as I ran—why am I running, and when can I stop?…why am I running and when can I stop?…why am I running and when can I stop? It had become a mantra, a chant inside my head that had finally started to come out of my mouth. I had liked hearing my voice.

  My favorite activity throughout the day was eating. I’d eaten breakfast, followed by a second breakfast that would have made a hobbit proud. I’d had brunch, lunch, dinner and then a really, really big snack. By my own estimate, I had ingested enough calories to make an NFL lineman feel bloated and full.

  Throughout the day I’d gone back to reading the paper, and eventually I’d read it from cover to cover, including the business section and even the obituaries. I’d started on the obits simply to fill time. Then it had gotten to be more than that.

  First I saw her picture. She had dark hair. She was pretty, middle-aged, with warm eyes looking out at me. Her name was Brenda Carson. She was thirty-five, a mother of three. That made her two years younger than my mother had been when she died. I read through the obituary. She was a mother, wife, daughter, sister, aunt, friend and teacher. My mother was a teacher and all those other things too. Brenda was survived by her parents and one sister. My mother was survived by her parents and one sister.

  I’d never seen my mother’s obituary. I’d just assumed there had been one. I thought about asking my father. I’d hardly ever asked him anything about her. I wasn’t really sure if I was protecting him or me.

  Being alone and not allowed to communicate had meant I had time to think. I’d thought about who my mother was and what I knew about her. I’d realized there were gaps, and even things I thought I knew but maybe really didn’t.

  I couldn’t seem to get her out of my mind. I’d tried. The exercise, the food and even reading a book. None of it had worked. The book I’d been reading made me cry like a baby.

  I’d known enough about the book to expect somebody was going to die—somebody always seemed to die in these stories—but it had still opened the floodgates. I wasn’t sure if that was because I was already feeling vulnerable or simply because the book was so well written. Maybe both. Was I crying for the character who wasn’t real or the real mother who had died? Was I crying for the people left behind in the book or the people left behind in my house?

  I looked up at the clock again—it was one minute to midnight! I’d lost track of the last few minutes and almost overextended the different.

  I pushed the button at the top of my phone and held it until the phone started coming back to life. It wouldn’t take very long to be ready to receive and make calls. I had to admit I was curious to see what had happened on my different platforms over the past twenty-four hours. In the past few weeks I hadn’t gone more than thirty minutes when I was awake without checking or posting, tweeting or blogging, replying or calling, or—my phone started to ring!

  Instinctively I went to answer it, then stopped and looked at the clock at the top of the screen. It was still 11:59. I wasn’t going to be caught one minute or even a few seconds early. It rang and rang and rang. I could see it was Ella calling, but I couldn’t answer until it was the next day—12:00 AM flashed on the phone.

  “Ella!” I screamed into the phone.

  “Soph, you’re alive!”

  “I’m alive. Did you miss me?”

  “Me and everybody else, it seems. You won’t believe how many posts and hits you have. You have to go online right away and let everybody know you’re all right.”

  “I’m going to call my father first.”

  “Won’t he be asleep already?” Ella asked.

  “He might be, but I think he’d want to hear from me. I’ll put something online before I go to bed.”

  “Good. Now get a good night’s sleep. After all, you’re going to need it for tomorrow’s different. Good night.”

  I hung up, waited a few seconds and then called my father. Talking to him would make sleep so much easier.

  I punched in his number and it started to ring and—“Hey, Soph,” my father said, his voice barely a whisper.

  “Hey, Dad, I didn’t wake you, did I?”

  “Of course not. I was waiting for your call. Your brother tried to wait up as well, but he just fell asleep.”

  “I just wanted to say good night.”

  “Good night, Soph. And thanks for calling.”

  I put down the phone. I exhaled deeply. That eleven-year-old inside of me could relax. Now I’d be able to sleep—right after I wrote a little bit about the day before.

  DAY 40

  “Turn right here!” Ella yelled.

  I cranked the wheel and made the turn into the alley. There were fences on one side, and on the other were the backs of stores, some parked cars, and dumpsters and garbage cans and piles of trash. It was much darker in the alley than it had been on the street. We edged forward.

  “Why are we here?” I asked.

  “We all have to be somewhere.”

  “Somewhere, yes. In a downtown alley at two in the morning, not necessarily.”

  “That’s where and when he wanted to meet.”

  “Where who wanted to meet?” I asked.

  “Slow down—I think the parking spot is just up ahead.”

  I slowed down and also hit the door-lock button.

  “There it is!” Ella said. “Park under that big moon painted on the back of that building.”

  I drove into the empty spot.

  “Turn off the engine, and let’s get out,” Ella said.

  “I’m not doing anything until you tell me why we’re here. We’re not going to break into a building, are we?”

  “Of course not. We’re just dressed like cat burglars.” Ella pulled something from her purse. “Put this on.”

  It was a black woolen hat. I pulled it on and was now completely dressed in black from head to toe, as was Ella.

  Ella got out of the car. I hesitated for a second before I turned off the engine and got out as well.

  “So if we’re not committing a crime, why are we dressed in black in an alley in the middle of the night?” I asked.

  “I did say we weren’t breaking into a build
ing. I didn’t say we weren’t going to be committing a crime. Well, technically a crime.”

  “What exactly does that mean?”

  “Some people consider it a crime, and others consider it art,” Ella said.

  I was going to ask her to explain when I realized the answer. The entire alley—the fences, walls of the buildings and even the dumpsters—were covered in bright colors, streaks and patterns and pictures, some crude, some beautiful and detailed.

  “We’re going to be doing graffiti?” I asked.

  “I think the correct term is street art. We’re going to be street artists.”

  “But neither of us is able to draw stick people.”

  “And that’s why we’re not doing it alone. I think that’s our host,” she said as she pointed down the alley.

  There in the shadows was another shadow coming toward us. He was carrying a large bag over one shoulder and a small ladder on the other. He also was dressed in black, and his face was shielded and shaded by a hood pulled over his head.

  “Hey!” Ella called out.

  “Are you Ella and Sophie?”

  “We are. So you must be Night Crawler.”

  His name was Night Crawler? We were here in the middle of the night to meet a guy named Night Crawler?

  “That’s my street name.” He stepped out of the shadows, and I stepped back and gasped. He was wearing a skeleton mask. He pulled the mask off. He was young—not much older than us—and he was smiling.

  “Pleased to meet you both,” he said, and we shook hands.

  “Should we have masks as well?” Ella asked.

  “This is more for dramatic effect, more for my persona than anything else,” he said.

  “I guess that’s sort of like a superhero,” I said.

  “Or a supervillain,” Ella added.

  “So should we call you Night Crawler?” I asked.

  “Cody will do. I’m not hiding my identity from you two. Some of the people who own the walls of the buildings aren’t so thrilled. So are you ready to go?”