Vibes

by Amy Kathleen Ryan

  But then he left without talking to me. He just ran away.

  I'm not going to think about this. That's it. I'm through thinking about him.

  I mean it.

  "So what do you want to do?" Mallory asks me.

  "Do you enjoy wreaking havoc?"

  "Havoc is my favorite pastime, second only to wreaking."

  "Then this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

  I lead Mallory to the edge of the Journeys parking lot, where I scoop up a whole lot of the sand and dust that collect near the wall of the school building. I can feel the grit working its way underneath my fingernails. I'm usually a clean person, but I like this feeling anyway. Dirt always feels comforting.

  "What are you going to use that for?" Mallory asks me.

  "You'll see," I tell him as I slip several handfuls into a plastic bag from a nearby trash can.

  I take him down Conway Street because it's lined with huge cottonwood trees and I love the sound of the wind moving through them. I make my mind quiet, and I can feel Mallory's mind is quiet, too, so I don't need my opera. Relaxing is usually the last thing I can do with another person around, and it makes me glad that Mallory moved to our school, because I can sort of relax with him.

  Then I feel him thinking about my plump, naked body, and I get a little grossed out.

  "So I guess Eva Kearns-Tate is your character ed partner?" I say, to distract him from his lurid thoughts.

  "Yeah, she seems cool."

  "Just wait," I tell him. "She has a nasty streak."

  "Really?" He lowers his eyebrows. "She was really sweet to me."

  Everyone thinks Eva is nice because they can't hear her thoughts. She was probably thinking nothing but horrible things about Mallory, and he was blissfully shielded.

  We turn the corner and the park comes into view. There's a really strong breeze, so my practical joke should go just fine as long as I'm careful. This one is much more difficult to execute because it relies on a lot of variables. I lead Mallory over to a bench that is perfectly placed behind a big bush. From the path we can't be seen, though we can get little peeks at passersby through the spaces between the leaves. Once they get past the bush, they're in full view. To give Mallory a good show, I'll have to time this very carefully.

  "So what do we do?" he asks me, his eyes on the bag of sand I've set between us on the bench.

  "First we do a few test runs." I check the direction of the wind, which is at our backs, and then I pour a little sand into the palm of my hand.

  "What the hell?" Mallory asks.

  "Shush," I tell him as I toss the sand to see where the wind takes it. It flies right into the bush at about knee level. Not high enough. I pour more sand into my hand, and when the wind picks up, I toss it as high as it will go. This gives the sand a better trajectory.

  "Dude. What the hell are you doing?"

  "Shush," I tell him again as I watch the sand and dust float through the bush to the bike path in a sheer brown cloud. "Perfect," I say.

  "Okay..." Mallory says, adding about four extra syllables to the kay to indicate he is questioning my sanity. "What next? Do we pour the sand in our shoes?"

  "We wait. And watch."

  We have to wait for a long time and I'm about to decide it isn't going to work, but then in the distance I see a woman running in baggy little shorts. Quickly I grab two big handfuls of sand, then nod at Mallory as though we are deep in conversation and he has just said something very witty. "You said it!" I tell him. "He totally did!"

  He looks at me with sincere concern.

  I peek over my shoulder at my target.

  I can catch flickers of her through the leaves. She's puffing along, in her own world, humming a little to herself. The wind gets particularly fierce when she is about to hit the sweet spot.

  I toss the sand into the air, one handful and then the other. It becomes a tornado of filth moving at about thirty miles an hour over the bush. The dust cloud drifts right where I want it to and hits her in the face just as she's coming into full view.

  She sputters, squeezing her eyes shut, then trips over her own feet and falls hard onto the pavement. "Oh! Ah!" she cries as she rolls on the ground, hugging her knee.

  She's hurt.

  "Oh, no," I say, but Mallory falls off the bench laughing.

  I've been doing this for a long time, but this is my first real casualty. I rush over to help her. When I get close up, I see that a layer of skin has been peeled from her knee, leaving an oozing red patch. It's so gross that I have to take a deep breath. A little sand in the face is one thing, but I didn't want to hurt anyone. Usually they just sneeze.

  She blows on the wound as a tear slides down her cheek. She'd looked like a college student from far away, but now I can see she has deep wrinkles around her eyes.

  "Are you okay?" I ask, kneeling beside her.

  "I think so," she says, but her voice sounds like it's being forced through a tight opening. Her eyes are watering like crazy from all the sand, but I can tell her knee hurts so bad that she doesn't even care about her eyes.

  "Can you stand up?" I ask.

  "Give me a minute."

  While I wait for her to catch her breath, I glare at Mallory, who is still giggling.

  When the woman stops shaking, she nods at me and I hold out my hand. We hook fists, and I pull her up. She wobbles at first, and once she has her balance she gingerly tries to put weight on her knee. "It's okay, I think."

  "Can you walk home?"

  "Yeah. You're such a sweetie, uh..."

  "Mindy Nightingale."

  I catch her thinking, What a cutie pie! And I feel even worse. "Well, you're a lifesaver, Mindy," she says before glaring at Mallory, who, upon hearing my alias, has turned magenta from laughter and is convulsing spastically.

  After she limps away, Mallory cannot stop talking about how cool that was. "You are a master! I mean, I've seen mischief in my time, but that was a work of art! You timed it all perfectly!" He pulls a cigarette out and lights it, his face aglow with admiration. "How did you know it would hit her in the face like that?"

  "Months of experimentation." I'm still cringing inside, thinking about her skinned knee, but I can't help feeling happy that Mallory appreciates my gift for evildoing.

  Still, seeing the way Mallory laughed at someone getting hurt makes me realize there's something a little ugly about that kind of laughter. Am I that mean, really, that I enjoy hurting other people? Do I want to be that mean?

  It occurs to me that Gusty wouldn't have laughed at the woman falling down. Gusty would have helped her.

  But I'm not thinking about Gusty Peterson anymore.

  JACOB FLAX IS ATTRACTIVE

  My weekend is totally sans fun. Mom digs up some carrots from her wormy garden and makes me eat carrot ginger soup, which is infinitely less satisfying than a meatiest, treatiest pizza. It's a little nerve-racking, spending so much time at home with Mom. Now that she's working a nine-to-five job, I figure that one of these days she and Minnie are going to cross paths, and I really don't know what I'm going to do when that happens.

  I spend a lot of time sewing up a new gypsy skirt patched together from surgical scrubs Dad left behind. Melon and mint green go surprisingly well together, and the skirt will look fabulous with the rag shirt I wove together from strips of green curtains. On top I'm all texture, and on the bottom I'm all pattern. I'm getting good at sewing. My new outfit looks like something I picked up at a couture boutique.

  It's a very complicated project, so I don't have time to think about Gusty Peterson at all. Well, I think a little bit about how proud I am that I'm not thinking about him. But that's it.

  Sunday night I try on my new outfit, and Minnie purrs really loud, so I can tell she loves it.

  So Monday morning comes, and I wake up with my usual lust for life, which is none. I lie in bed a little too long so that by the time I roll down my laundry-pile exit ramp, it's 6:45 and I only have time to take a quick cat bath
. "Am I doing this right?" I ask Minnie, and she crinkles up her yellow eyes and vibes me with adoration from the edge of my tub.

  I skip washing my hair and have to sacrifice the third layer of eyeliner, so my eyes don't look nearly dark and mysterious enough, but that's the breaks. I hurry out the door with barely enough time to fill up my travel mug. Mom calls after me from her bathroom, "I'll see you tonight, Kristi!"

  "Okay!" I yell. Ever since I found out Dad's coming home, it's easier to be nice to Mom. I don't know why.

  The walk to school is normal. I'm listening to Madame Butterfly today and that puts me in a good mood. For some reason all the best operas end in suicide—don't ask me why. Jacob catches up with me at the corner and prattles on. I'm so used to him trailing after me that I barely look at him until Felix Mathers, the cadaverous musical genius who plays nine instruments, yells from behind us, "Hey, Jacob, looking good!" When I glance back at Felix, he tucks in his chin and doubles his pace. He is one weird dude.

  I finally turn to look at Jacob and am completely shocked by what I see.

  Jacob Flax got a tan.

  "What the hell?" I say to him as I lurch to a halt and yank off my headphones.

  "You like?" he asks. His skin is the perfect shade of pale brown, which brings out his white-blue eyes. He smiles at me, and I can see that already the gaps between his teeth are starting to close. His hair has yellow tips that brighten up everything about him, and he's put just enough gel in it so that it lifts off his forehead in perfect messy curls.

  He is completely transformed. I am so shocked that black spots crowd my vision and I have to take deep breaths.

  Jacob Flax is ... attractive.

  "You're..." I pause, because I don't really want to say it, but somehow I can't help myself. "...attractive! What the hell did you do?"

  He is so thrilled, his cheeks turn a beautiful shade of blushy peach. His teeth positively glisten. "I got my new set of invisible braces so my teeth look better. And I had my hair highlighted, and I got some of that self-tanning cream, but I'm also going to the tanning booth, so pretty soon the color will be real. Cool, eh?"

  My entire sense of reality will need to be revamped, from my base assumptions about physical matter to my understanding of evolutionary theory. Jacob Flax is not supposed to be attractive. It just isn't appropriate.

  "But—"

  "Also, Abercrombie and Fitch had a sale." He twirls around, and I realize that his pale blue T-shirt, which matches his eyes beautifully, clings to what I can only describe as muscles on his chest and arms. Small muscles, but they're there. He smiles gleefully. "So I guess taking charge of my life is kind of paying off, huh?"

  "Yeah," I say.

  "Hey, nice outfit," he says. Jacob's eyes travel down my breasts and then over my new patchwork skirt. "I think this is your best work yet."

  "Thanks," I say, but I turn away and start walking to school because I get an image of myself in a string bikini. For the first time I'm not grossed out by Jacob picturing my boobs. And that disturbs me.

  "Anyway, now that I'm attractive, I have something very important to talk to you about, Kristi."

  "Oh, no, Jacob. I can't," I say, because I know what's coming. He wants to take me out. He wants to slobber all over me. He wants to rub his skinny body on my fat body. "I'm kind of overloaded right now."

  My voice wavers a little bit, and that's enough for Jacob to jump all over it. "Why? What's up? Are you okay?"

  Normally I wouldn't tell him a single private thing about me, but I'm desperate to make him stop imagining rubbing my boobs with tanning oil. "My dad is coming back on Thursday and I'm kind of freaked out."

  "Wow, Kristi." He grabs my arm and turns me toward him. We're almost at the school building, and we're right under the pink tree, standing on a carpet of pink flowers. "That's super serious."

  I am suddenly distracted by the fact that Jacob has said two s-words and I'm completely dry. "You're not spitting."

  "I figured out I should swallow before I talk. Aren't you freaked out about your dad?" He is so concerned that I feel the need to walk away from him.

  Concern from others is the last kind of vibe I can cope with. Concern makes me feel sorry for myself, and then I just start crying, and then people want to comfort me, and I really hate that. A lot. "Yeah," I say, "but it's no big deal. I'm over all that."

  "But he's your parent, and he left you right when you started going through puberty! I mean, it's like you're a whole different person now, and he doesn't know you at all!"

  "My Aunt Ann has sent him pictures," I say as I grind my toe into pink flower petals to see if they'll bruise.

  "Stop trivializing this!" He's so exasperated that he spits all over me.

  "Swallow, Jacob," I say as I wipe off my neck.

  "Sorry." We walk across the schoolyard toward the building. He lets his shoulder touch mine every few steps, which is as close to hugging as I ever want to get with him. However attractive he is, he is still Jacob Flax. To prove he is still Jacob Flax, he begins talking again in his squeaky voice. "Anyway, I understand that you're feeling overloaded, but I wanted to ask you about Gusty, since he's your character education partner. He seems like a nice person to socialize with. Not stuck-up at all."

  "No one that gorgeous could be humble, Jacob." I guess now that Jacob isn't an eyesore, he hopes to join the ranks of the cool. More power to him, I guess.

  "Since you know him better than I do, how would you suggest I approach him to ask if he wants to socialize?"

  "I don't know, Jacob, but don't say 'socialize.' Ask if he wants to hang out."

  "Hang out. Got it. You don't need to mention this to Mallory," Jacob says just before we get to the door. People are flowing past us into the building. As one senior girl rushes by, I hear her thinking, Beauty and the beast. I'm not Beauty. Jacob gives my arm a little shake and I look into his eyes, which are dancing nervously. "I'm not sure Mallory is a very friendly person, and I would appreciate it if you did not discuss my personal matters with him."

  As if gossip about Jacob were a social currency I could ever use. "I won't."

  "And, Kristi." He rubs his hand up and down my arm. His mouth is twisted into a sympathetic half smile. "If you need to talk about your dad, just tell me, okay?"

  "Jacob, chill, please. I'm okay." I put on my headphones, turn up the volume, and walk into Journeys.

  I hover through the morning like a butterfly in a gravity-free environment. Nothing touches me. In Explorations of Nature we've reached the reproduction unit, and David has brought in these huge orange stargazer lilies for us to stare at while he lectures about stamens and pistils and pollen and bees and crap. Hildie keeps raising her hand and asking him to repeat himself, and at one point he rushes over to show her how to spell pollination. She leans toward the table, and he leans closer to her. Martin Jacobson sniggers, and that makes David straighten up quickly, stroking his black goatee. He gives us each a list of vocabulary words and assigns us a freeverse contemplation about the role of the wind in the reproduction of flowering plants.

  We all file to the Contemplation Room and I find a table that I can have all to myself. Here's my poem:

  Oh, wind, I love the way you rub pollen on my pistil.

  Your sweet caress really gets my nectar flowing.

  You can pollinate me anytime you want.

  Pollinate me from behind

  Or face to face.

  Pollinate me in the middle of the night

  Or in the morning before work.

  I don't care if you stalk me or stem me,

  Just make sure you put your metal to my petal,

  Gusty, lusty wind.

  I write the entire last line before I realize that somehow Gusty's name snuck into my poem. Gusty's name doesn't belong in anything I think or write. I erase it so hard that I wear through the paper. That was totally, completely, absolutely an accident. That's all. Accident. Chance. It has nothing to do with Gusty Peterson.

  I cl
ose my eyes and hold my breath until I can clear my mind completely. I have Charlotte Church's flawless tones blaring in my brain, and I concentrate on her soprano and let her soothe me. She has finished one aria and begun another by the time I feel almost totally normal. I am calm enough now to maybe work on another Gusty-free verse for Explorations of Nature.

  I open my eyes and who do I see sitting across from me?

  Gusty Peterson. Naturally.

  I smell the peppermint and leather, his unique scent I can't help liking. He's biting his lower lip as his green eyes flutter over me. He smiles tentatively.

  I cannot report what expression is on my face—that's how surprised I am.

  He slides a piece of paper toward me and raises his golden eyebrows. I look down to see the words I'm sorry about the way I acted.

  My face must be asking some kind of question, because he takes the paper back and writes, I got really embarrassed during our last meeting, and I don't deal well in situations like that. And then I made that announcement at Processing last week and I wanted to talk, but then you were talking to Mallory.

  His expression is confusing to me. He doesn't seem able to lift his eyes high enough to look at my face, but he isn't looking at my breasts, either. I think he's looking at my hands, and that makes me glad that I filed my nails and painted them pink this weekend. I could turn down Charlotte Church so that I can hear his thoughts, but somehow I don't want to. I want to pretend I'm not an overplump psychic with ginormous gazungas talking to a supernaturally good-looking egomaniac. It feels nice to pretend we're two regular people sitting in an irregular school. It's like a vacation from the inside of my head.

  Hesitantly, he writes something more on the paper and slides it over to me. I was thinking it might be fun to do our next character ed assignment at Pluribus after school today. We could get some grindage.

  Assuming that grindage means food and not human body parts, I nod at him. I'm terrified and happy at once. All that emotion crashes through my body and ends up at my eyes, forcing tears that I can barely fight back. How freakish would I have to be to start crying now? And anyway, what is my problem? Grindage. What the hell is cathartic about that?