by Kim Zarins
“It’s time to fight,” says Ashton Blair, and he and his mostly pregnant army ride to the battle that will decide humanity’s fate.
“Um, Jeff, are you on something?” Mari stares at me like I’m stoned, and any scrap of confidence I had is gone. Without that mood driving my narration, I can’t even go on with it, because that story was nothing more than mood-spawn.
It’s a giant heap of suck.
“What did you expect?” I sound peevish. “You made me tell a story off the top of my head.”
“The top of your head is freaking weird, dude,” Cookie sings.
“Look, just stop,” Mari snaps. “For the love of Christ, stop.”
So it’s over. Everyone knows I’m worthless. I’ll stop hearing all this stuff about being a writer. That whole chapter of my life—that immortal feeling—is gone.
Alison sees me suffering. “You can’t just shut him off, you guys. He’s supposed to tell a story. So . . .”
People debate if they should move on or let me try again, but they definitely don’t want to hear about seaweed pants. I cringe into a smaller and smaller ball.
Pard says nothing—not a word. Instead, he gives me this half-angry, half-puzzled look, like, So that’s all?
That hurts, because I want him to think I’m a good writer even if I’m a sucky person. Out of all the people on this bus, it’s Mari and Pard whose artistic opinions matter. They’re both going places I also want to see. Even if it means following in their wake. On my freaking flet.
I’ll never be able to keep up with them. But I want to try harder, try again, even if it’s humiliating to speak out loud after this disaster.
Quickly, and against my will, I have a scene ready-made. I don’t want to use it, but it’s all I have.
With people wrapping up discussion, there’s no time to second-guess if this is wise. I just begin.
JEFF’S TALE, TAKE TWO
A husband and wife sit down in the psychologist’s office. The shrink’s legs are crossed, her hair is up in a twist, and her nails are painted red. Even her toenails. The couple brought along a little boy. He hates that shrink. He never eats the candies in her candy jar. There’s something odd about her face. It’s like a mask, showing sympathy, but the eyes are calculating, always at a distance. If Henry VIII married a woman like that, she’d survive him. No problem.
She asks the man questions, and usually the child doesn’t understand. The man keeps blaming his genes, and for years the boy took a special interest in his father’s pants. On this particular day the shrink says, “You can’t blame yourself for something that isn’t your fault.”
And the man just looks at the shrink. One day the boy will read about Tolkien’s palantir, and he’ll think of his father’s eyes. Quiet eyes with dark things going on in them. The man says, “What about what happened after? That was my fault.”
“No,” his wife says, and she puts a hand on his arm, but she does it like he’s made of glass. “We both broke down; we both did in our own ways. There’s no one at fault. We just need to move forward, somehow.” The woman smiles bravely.
The man looks nervously to the place where he thinks his five-year-old is lying asleep. He can’t see the boy, because the boy climbed into the giant dollhouse in the shrink’s office and was so quiet that everyone assumes he sleeps. But he’s not sleeping. Instead, he’s looking right at them through the cross-hatching of the plastic window.
The boy loved that dollhouse. It didn’t have partitions between rooms or even the first and second floors. I—he fit in it. He climbed in, lay on his side, and pretended he was Alice in Wonderland. It bothered Alice to outgrow the White Rabbit’s house, but I loved the snug feeling. My real house felt so huge and empty, since—since she—
I stop because the pronouns slipped up, and I’m not sure how to correct for that. I don’t realize I’m hunched, rocking back and forth in my chair, until Alison whispers “Hey” and rubs my back.
What is it about someone rubbing your back that calms you down and lets you breathe again?
Okay. Sorry. I don’t really have much of a story here. The story is kind of over, you know? After Bee died, it was all over. This is all just what happened after. The shrink has been working with the husband and wife not right after Bee died, but after my dad came back from his own trip to the hospital after . . . you know, an attempt. Sorry. I keep slipping. Maybe you already figured out the couple are my parents. Anyhow, it was part of the deal that my dad had to see the shrink. You know, so he wouldn’t do anything permanent to himself.
When he was in the hospital, it was just Mom and me. When he tried to talk to me on the phone, I’d cry, because I thought he was dead like Bee and calling to say he missed me. He’d promise to come home soon, and I’d ask him to please bring back Bee, too, which upset him. Then he came home—without my sister. Mom told me to stop asking him about his trip to Heaven to find Bee, because he was very sad. She also stopped sleeping in my bed after Dad came home, and I didn’t want to sleep in the big bed with them, because I was scared of ghosts and maybe a little of him, if only at night. So I slept in any old corner or drawer. Someplace snug and safe.
My dad tells the shrink that it’s hard to keep going. There’s eating and drinking and sleeping, and it’s pointless without his bright-eyed child. The one who took after Mom, not him. The shrink mostly lets him talk but then asks what is going to keep him here, commit him to life, and keep him moving forward.
He says, “Jeff. He’s all I have left.”
She gets this concerned look on her face. “He can’t take that role.”
My dad is a really quiet guy, but this time he talks back. “Sure he can!” He looks over at me and sees my eye in the window. “He’s awake,” he says, sounding scared. “He shouldn’t be hearing this.”
Her voice is flat, logical. “No, he shouldn’t. You need to get a sitter. You can let go of him long enough for one appointment. Or you can hire a sitter to wait with him in the waiting room. Like I’ve said.”
There’s this pause, and my parents are both looking at me like I’m going to die next. Even though it was Dad who almost went next.
But now that my father sees I’m listening, that changes things. “Fine,” he snaps. “He won’t be back.”
The shrink sighs. “Let’s end early today. And, John, a minute ago, I only meant your motivation has to come from within you. Other people can’t hold that all-important role. It’s not fair on them, or yourself.”
“Fine. We’re leaving,” he says, his mouth angry, but his face softens a little when he comes around to the dollhouse. He does something I don’t like. Instead of looking at me through the window, he walks to the back, where I’m exposed as this kid lying in a fake house. Like this is pretend and not real.
“Let’s go, Jeff.”
But it’s my house, and I fit, and I understand that I’m not coming back, so I say what lots of whiny kids say. “Can I keep it?”
And Dad turns to the shrink with this hopeful, hurting look on his face, and it’s like he’s the kid, having to ask for the toy. She drones, “Sorry, no, other kids need the house.”
I brace my feet against the walls and my hands against the ceiling so no one can haul me out. It’s wrong, but I do it.
Dad goes to the other side to whisper with Mom. Through the window I watch Dad tilt his head, considering me. They both are. I can feel a showdown to get me to come out of the house. Meanwhile, the shrink sits back and studies us with those calculating eyes.
Then Dad moves where I can’t see him. Plastic toys clatter in the bin I can’t see. “Help me,” he says, and Mom gets out of her seat.
The window fills with a view of his jeans—the jeans he keeps talking to the shrink about, that caused me and Bee to have our asthma, and made Bee’s asthma so bad that she died.
He knocks on the little door. I open it, and it’s kind of thrilling because it feels like a real house, with all the ordinary customs of knocking and entering. Th
ere’s no proper doorknob, but it’s still awesome to snag the doorjamb with my fingernail and pull the door toward me. To see my front porch, I have to lie on my side and poke my butt out the back, but I try to stay inside the house as much as possible.
My dad is holding up a Lego man with royal blue pants, a red shirt, a yellow face, and the kind of smile you’d expect from someone made out of symmetrical shapes and primary colors. He’s holding the Lego man like it’s alive, not just a toy.
“I’m looking for Jeff so we can get ice cream,” the Lego man squeaks cheerfully.
“I don’t go places with strangers,” I say, because Mom taught me that.
Dad looks at me with the palantir eyes. Then his voice becomes his real one. Husky. “What do I have to do to get you out?”
“Get Bee,” I say. I am still angry that he ruined everything.
“Honey,” Mom says, and Dad turns his head and shushes her with his lips but no sound.
He gets on his belly, so his face and one hand fill the doorway. “I tried,” he says. “But I wasn’t allowed.”
This gets my attention. He’s finally admitting the truth.
“I ran after her,” he continues, “but you know Bee was really fast. She wanted her wings, and I couldn’t stop her. She flew. And then I woke up back here.”
My five-year-old self believes him. She could run with me on her back, without me weighing her down. I didn’t think anyone could catch her. And she’d be really into having wings.
“You’re a slowpoke,” I scold him. These were harsh words at the time. “And now we lose.”
“Yeah.” He’s being honest. Dad and I are the slow, quiet ones. Mom and Bee are—were—bright, fast, warm.
Then he asks out of the blue, “Do you like your bed?” I shake my head, and he says, “Do you want me to build you a sleeping box? A house like this one, that you can keep in your room?”
And I nod.
He reaches one finger through the door and touches my hand, there in the front entryway with the round red rug stickered on the brown floor. “Okay. The hardware store closes soon. Let’s hurry.”
That’s logical, so I agree.
And he waves good-bye at me, and I wave too, and then I shut the door, and I meet him outside the house, the front side, and I leave the office for the last time. And we go to the hardware store.
And we move forward.
I don’t say “the end” because I’m still living this story. But I stop speaking, and then there’s this hush. I stare at my hands and wait.
If they think my story sucked, I can’t face them ever again.
I told two stories, and both times no one interrupted—well, besides Mari stopping me from finishing the first one. But no one broke in to add something like they did with everyone else’s stories, to tweak a detail or share a thought. It’s like I speak in a void. It’s like my life.
Finally, Alison takes my hand and says my name and nothing else.
Her face has none of its cocky glory. This time she looks wise and serious and real.
“I never knew,” she says, and I shrug, but she cups my chin in her hand, and slowly moves in to kiss me. It’s a sweet, adoring kiss on the cheek, the kind Bee used to give, and my throat catches, because for a second, she’s almost in reach.
My sister, I mean.
“That was beautiful,” she says—Alison says—and I know everyone is watching, but it’s like we’re the only people there. She weaves our fingers together. “And so are you.”
There’s something sisterly in that, too, even if it isn’t true. I shake my head and say, “Thanks, but—”
She squeezes my hand. “No ‘buts.’ Just ‘thanks.’ When people want to love you, let them. When people open a door like that, never close it, not even to hide.”
I turn my hand over to get a better look at her long fingers. “Okay. Just thanks.”
She gives a mini-chuckle.
Our hands are laced together, and I’m not even hyperventilating. In fact, I feel calm, like the universe is holding me up.
Alison Chavez has been my crush since I first laid eyes on her. Larger than life, wilder than the Wild Things, someone I’ve had only brushes with in the hall or the parties that Cannon got me into. My great social goal had been to hold her attention for more than five minutes and maybe even make out with her. I finally have her attention, although I don’t think making out is going to happen, maybe ever.
But this is pretty nice.
People start chiming in now, saying they liked the story, but they’re quiet, and I’m hoping it’s because they got it as much as they got the Morpheus story. This dollhouse thing is the same story, really. Dreams, desire, death. And me, trying to understand my father, my Black Knight, and this emptiness and how to live with it. It’s the same story I’ll be telling for the rest of my life, maybe.
My head snaps up when Reeve slams his clipboard. “What gives? That wasn’t even a proper story—it wasn’t fiction.”
“Jesus, Reeve,” Rooster says at the same time that I say, “I’m sorry.” I forgot the rules. I just bled for no reason.
“Don’t worry about that, Jeff,” Mr. Bailey says, his face concerned.
“Seriously? Then I want to tell a second story,” Reeve whines. “Everyone likes his story because it’s got a suicidal dad and a dead sister.”
I freeze, and Alison’s hand wraps tightly around my wrist.
“Reeve, that’s enough,” Mr. Bailey says, his voice sharp.
“Yeah, Reeve, shut the hell up,” Bryce adds. People chime in.
Reeve stands on his knees and faces the whole angry bus. “My dad shot himself, so why can’t I tell that one? Why not? Then you’d all like me.” He claws at the clipboard like he wants to tally something but is too upset, and when he speaks again, his voice comes out shrill and breaking. “It’s not fair! Jeff’s not the only one with a sad story, and he’s going to win, but I was in the house. I was in the house!”
His throat closes on that last word and shreds it. There’s chaos as people murmur, and Parson offers to pray for Reeve, which Reeve furiously rejects, and Mr. Bailey tries to quiet him down. It takes a while.
“He shouldn’t have talked about you that way,” Lupe tells me. “Don’t listen to him.”
I nod, but I hope Reeve will be okay. And he’s right. We all have more than one story to tell. We have hits and misses. Stories that speak to one moment and not to another. He chose a vindictive story at the start of our ride. He should be allowed to get a second chance.
I did.
Pard hasn’t said a word, but he knows me better than anyone else. I’m not sure how he’ll take this new story, or if he even listened. I’m hoping he did. He knew a little bit about my dad, and, of course, he knew about Bee. Maybe finding out where my so-called coffin came from will fill in a blank.
I turn around to face him. I’m prepared for indifference, or a derisive sneer, or a thin white eyebrow raised in a meh salute.
I’m not prepared to see Pard crying. Rooster looks up at me, his forehead creased like he has no idea what got into Pard. It is the strangest sight. Rooster has an arm around Pard’s shoulders, and Pard cries into Rooster’s chest—or, really, his armpit.
As I watch, Pard raises a hand to shield his face. Rooster’s armpit kind of shelters Pard like a cave.
“What did I do?” I ask Pard, twice, but he’s not coming out of it.
“Hey,” Rooster coos, looking down at Pard. “It’s okay.”
I mouth What? at Rooster, and he shakes his head like he has no idea.
Alison reaches over the back of our seat to stroke Pard’s hair, but Pard burrows farther into Rooster and tries to hide. He’s no longer crying, and he breathes calmly, but he’s not going to talk about it. His eyes are usually so bright, in joy or anger, that I forget how small and deep set they are, now that all the light has gone out of them. Like death has touched them. It gives me a panicked feeling to see.
Rooster is actually b
eing kind of sweet, mothering Pard in his gentle, lumbering way, and I wish I could have done something, leaned over and held him like that. I wish I could be close to Pard without all this sexual tension of his messing things up. Sometimes I really wish sex didn’t exist, because friendships would be so much better.
Pard peeks at me for just an instant and looks away, and his face shows he’s not insulted, just completely crushed.
It’s my story about a family torn up over a kid’s dead sister.
I’d just raked him through hot coals.
He has that desperate, anguished look that wants to tell me what’s eating him. I don’t know what it is he needs to say, but I’m here.
Only he can’t say whatever it is. He never could.
I’ve wondered if there was some guilt there. He and his sister must have been in seventh or eighth grade when she died. At that age they might have argued and been snippy with each other. Maybe she died suddenly after they’d had a bad fight. Or maybe he feels like it was his fault, like he ran into the street, and she ran after him to haul him back, only to get hit by a car. Something like that. Something that agonizes him every time he thinks of her. That’s the vibe he’s given all these years, at least. And now that feeling is back, and he’s caught crying where everyone can see.
I wish—I want—
“Pard . . . ,” I begin, but I don’t know what else to say. Eyes shut, Pard shakes his head no.
In six weeks summer will be here, and then we’re all off to different colleges, and I’ll never see Pard again. Ever. Why bother, in that case?
But seeing him cry with his body curled into Rooster, his hand partially covering his face, his eyes scrunched and hopeless—I can’t ignore that. I can’t look away, because our sisters are our most private shared experience, and that bond matters.
I can’t let Rooster’s armpit be the only place Pard can turn to.
THE BUS DRIVER’S PROLOGUE