Welcome to the Slipstream

by Natalka Burian

  “A big morning thing?”

  “Like last night—a big party. I guess it’s a brunch?”

  Alex and I looked at each other and then laughter just poured out of us—hysterical, tension-dissipating laughter. It felt great—really warm and fluid, like bathwater. I fell back onto the sleeping bag and let the good feeling run over me.

  I knew I shouldn’t be laughing, but I couldn’t stop. Alex climbed into his own sleeping bag, but the whole side, the side closest to me, was unzipped, and I could see his long body stretched out along the gap. He flipped onto his side and looked at me, with his head on his hand.

  Alex reached out to me for an awkward lying down hug, but then didn’t let go. He pulled me closer, underneath the top layer of his sleeping bag, so that there was basically no room between us. It didn’t feel friendly; it felt tingly. I was nervous. I knew that whatever it was that Alex and I were doing here was brand new to me. I’d never kissed anyone or anything. And I was seventeen, practically voting age. So pathetic, I thought. Stop now before you irreparably embarrass yourself. I knew that I probably should, for lots of reasons: Ida, Mom, being in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of lunatics. But all of that fell away with the only nonlunatic for miles all snuggled up with me. Listen to yourself—snuggled up! I thought. Could you be any more juvenile?

  But, pressed into Alex like that, I didn’t feel juvenile at all. It was like my body was filled with radio signals, like all of these secret messages were being sent—messages to open up. So I did. I opened my arms and my legs and wrapped them around Alex. He sort of shifted me up so that our faces were almost as close as the rest of our bodies.

  He put his hand on my cheek and then his mouth on mine. And then I just unlocked, letting my body send these silent messages to Alex’s body, messages that I didn’t seem to control at all. It was so easy, the opening and warming. After a few tentative seconds, I wanted more of it. I wanted all of it, this reaching up and into another body. It felt like magic. How did I not know about this? I thought. If I’d thought the noise at the Silver Saddle was shaking me loose, kissing Alex was like a car accident—turning something over that shouldn’t be turned over and knocking something down that should never be knocked down. Everywhere Alex touched me—on my face and on my arms and then under my shirt across my back—I felt the warmth and the opening rushing up to his hands, like my cells were flinging open the doors. I couldn’t help but touch him, too.

  I reached under his shirt and felt the solid, smooth warmth there. It was thrillingly different from my own softness. And as I turned into him I was giddy from his tallness, his non-girly smell, the rough sound of his breathing. All of it was so different from me. He was so different from me. And then I realized there was something beyond the radio signals and the touching—it was the reaching into another person who wasn’t me. Who was a vacation from me. I pulled back my head from all of the kissing and looked at Alex’s lovely face. I could tell that he wanted to say something.

  Maybe he wanted to talk more. But I didn’t. I really, really didn’t. I only wanted that beyond-verbal diving. Only feeling. I wanted to climb back into Alex and feel those normal thrills of the body. I wanted to confirm that even though my mind was running off, my body still worked, could still be normal, could still feel good.

  While it was happening, it was great. I felt that tingling—but better, more—and a joyful ferocity that I could never generate on my own. I was grateful for Alex and all of his skin against all of my skin. But I also knew that it wasn’t normal, that it wasn’t supposed to happen that way—under the darkness of a disaster, with a person you’re only partly sure of, only minutes after kissing another human for the first time. I knew it wasn’t normal, but I didn’t care, and that made me feel guilty. I knew it wasn’t fair to Alex, what had happened. I had been trying to do something very different from what he’d been trying to do. I should have pulled back. I should have said, “It’s best that you leave.” A good person would have said it.

  But I didn’t. I wanted to feel everything. I didn’t know when I’d get another chance.

  “Allo?” A voice called from outside of the tent.

  Alex and I raised our eyebrows in unison. I rolled away from him a little. “Yes?” I asked.

  Alex started to laugh again, but then clapped a hand over his mouth.

  “Good morning. Ulrike speaking. Please to come with me.”

  “Just a second,” I called.

  Ulrike was silent. Alex and I stood up and tried to make each other presentable. Alex straightened my shirt and kissed me on the forehead. We walked out holding hands, and Ulrike didn’t say anything about it.

  While Alex and I had been trying to climb into each other, the camp had fully awakened. Some people were already bent over their cook fires, roaring under the morning sun. Others were still getting ready for the day, spot washing themselves with scraps of cloth and water from the large plastic jugs. We weren’t the best smelling group, that was for sure.

  “Are we meeting with Laurel?” Alex asked.

  “Van and Laurel,” Ulrike corrected. “Then ceremony and get the prophet.”

  “Sounds good,” Alex said as we rounded a cluster of tents and approached the tepee. It looked a lot less ceremonious in the daytime—the paintings along the side that had seemed relatively authentic the night before were embarrassingly crude under the sun. Alex held the flap open for us, and Ulrike stretched her arm across the opening, like human caution tape to keep Alex out.

  “Okay, I get it. I’m going to find Marine, I guess,” Alex called over Ulrike’s shoulder.

  I nodded and headed deeper into the smoke-filled tent. Laurel was sprawled across the floor of the tepee. It looked very much like she’d slept there, and not alone, either. Half-open sleeping bags and tons of clothing were strewn across the floor. There was nothing spiritual about it—it looked no more glamorous than the squats Mom and I had slept in a long time ago. And Laurel looked no better than the average squatter herself. Divested of her ceremonial garb, she appeared incredibly puny. An oversized pair of sweatpants and a ratty T-shirt with Goddess Bless This Mess printed across the front made her body look almost concave. Her white hair had been mussed in the night into an Andy Warholesque do. She half reclined against a large blue cooler and held a hand over her eyes.

  “Good morning, Van.” Her voice was gravel-rough—nothing close to the Nina Simone–like recording Marine had played on loop at the Silver Saddle. She waved Ulrike out, so that we were alone together. I thought about how crazy it was that I could feel so different alone-in-a-tent with Laurel than I had alone-in-a-tent with Alex.

  “Did you get some rest?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “That’s good. You’re going to need your stamina today. We’ll have another ceremony, and, when the sun is at its highest,” here, she pointed up to the sky, revealing her reddened eyes, “we’ll retrieve Sofia.”

  “Okay.”

  “Just you, Ulrike, and me.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I thought it would be everybody.”

  “No,” she replied, and sprang to her feet. “They will stay here, preparing to rejoice.”

  “Sure,” I said, nodding. “What about Marine? Is she coming?”

  “I wanted to have a brief word with you, too, about Marine, and about Sofia’s role here once she returns with our message.” She moved so close that I could taste her smell in my mouth. It was not good.

  “I wanted to talk about your role here, too, from now on.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You belong to us now—that is, you belong to Sofia, and she is of the greatest importance to us. She’s our prophet.”

  “Your bank, you mean,” I muttered.

  “Now, Van. Stop teasing. We’ll work together, to bring this message to any who will hear us. You and Sofia will work hardest of all.”

  “What message, exactly, is that?” I asked.

  Laurel cackled, the broken hysterical laugh of a
vaudeville crone. “Oh!” she said, slapping my arm. “You’re such a hoot! It’s going to be wonderful to have you around. Why, you’ll be the very first to know the message when we round up Sofia.”

  “Oh, right,” I said, but Jesus, dear Jesus, help me, was what I thought. I’d talked myself into believing that Laurel was loopy but not dangerous, a temporary sidetrack in our lives. Not my long-term life planner. What could I say? I wondered. You’re insane and I’m leaving? I needed Laurel to show me where we’d left Mom, and I had a feeling she wasn’t going to react well to any kind of defiance.

  Get out of here slowly; don’t let her suspect a thing. The element of surprise is all you have going for you right now, I told myself.

  “Well, I’m pretty hungry, Laurel.” It was true. The first rule of lying, Mom always said, was tell the truth whenever you can.

  “Of course.” Laurel brushed off my shoulder fondly. “One more thing I wanted to discuss this morning.” She paused. “Marine. And your friend.”

  “Alex?”

  “How long can we expect him to stay with us?”

  “Oh, not long. He has to go back for classes. He’s in college.”

  “I see,” she said. “Well, we are always looking to add to our family. If he decides to stay on, we have a wonderful purification committee that can help him transition to life here.”

  “Purification committee?”

  Laurel nodded with such vigor, it seemed a danger to her twig-like neck. “They are spectacular. Of course, most of our cases are simple, but every once in a while you get a stubborn one. Like Marine,” Laurel sighed. “We’ve had to tolerate her—because Sofia was so fond of her—but, now that the prophet is truly one of us, we can dispose of Marine.”

  “I thought you were old friends.” I tried to say it casually, lightly.

  “Yes, and it was my great wish that Marine would join us, but she’s been,” Laurel paused, squinting up at me, “challenging me. You know—resistant. Even the purification committee couldn’t make progress with her. Although, I suppose we could give it one more shot, right?” Laurel smacked my arm with a tiny karate chop. “They’ve been doing wonderful things with hair removal.”

  “Excuse me?” I wasn’t sure if I was hallucinating, or what. I probably hadn’t been drinking enough water.

  “You know, where they extract the hairs of the body, one by one. They can be quite persuasive, and so creatively.”

  I kind of doubled over, there was such sudden fear in my gut.

  “Well that’s good to hear,” I said. “But, I’m sure Alex is leaving, so, he probably won’t be needing any purification.” I thought I might vomit from the panic. Were they going to try to purify me? Is that what they’d done to Mom? My legs twitched with the need to move away from Laurel. I had to find Alex and Marine and send them to get help.

  “I’m going to get some food, but I’m sure I’ll see you later,” I told Laurel.

  “Undoubtedly.” Laurel bared her teeth in what was not exactly a smile.

  I ducked out of the tent and tried not to run while I scanned the camp for Alex and Marine. I was walking at a normal pace, but my brain was like a pinball—my neural pathways were going to disintegrate at the rate and volume my thoughts barreled down them.

  I spotted Marine first, hanging her washing on a communal line. It was that bright bob of hair, the artificial red glinting under the sun as it turned back and forth, that caught my eye.

  “Marine,” I said, trying to moderate the level of my voice so that I wasn’t shouting. But I still wanted to convey my fury with her, for introducing us to Laurel in the first place.

  She looked up, her silt-dark eyes narrowed in confusion. I hustled over, and, as I approached, I realized she was already talking to Alex.

  “What the hell?” I hissed. I reached out to both her and Alex, taking hold of fistfuls of their shirts and pulling them toward me.

  “What?” Marine asked.

  “Seriously? What?” I angry-whispered. I looked over my shoulder and out over Marine’s, just to make sure none of Laurel’s followers were within hearing distance.

  “I thought you’d be pleased. I convinced Laurel that you should be part of the group going to bring back Sofia. She didn’t tell you?”

  “Oh, she told me. She told me a lot of things. Marine, just—” I turned my eyes to the sky, bright blue cracked through with wisps of cloud. I wondered how much to tell or ask her. I still couldn’t figure out if she was really on our side or not, although I figured she kind of had to be now, since Laurel had torture plans for her and all.

  “Please, just be straight with me. How could you bring my mom here? What do you think the deal with all of these people is?” I wiggled my fingers at my temple to connote loose-brained nonsense.

  “First of all, your mother wanted to come here. She insisted. Surely you know that when Sofia wants something it’s impossible to say no. And well, I trust Laurel,” Marine whispered cautiously. “She’s been my friend since we were very young.”

  “Okay, and when you met her, was it in a mental hospital?” I felt the slap in each word as I said it.

  “No,” Marine said. “A rehab facility.”

  Wow. I hadn’t actually expected it to be anything like that.

  “Laurel and I were in recovery together, and we both decided to become healers at about the same time. Laurel was good, very nuanced—her instincts were never wrong. If someone had a problem, she was so sensitive. She made them forget they had this problem at the same time she made them improve.” Marine’s voice was back at normal speaking level. “So I brought Sofia to her—”

  “Shh-shh-shh,” I parroted the way Ida had hushed me for years.

  “I brought Sofia to her,” Marine repeated in a whisper, “because I thought she could help. But . . . Laurel is not quite . . . the same.”

  “Well, you probably won’t be too surprised to hear that Laurel has big plans for Mom and me. Big long-term plans.”

  “What do you mean?” Alex asked.

  “I mean that she said to me, just now, that she expects Mom and me to stay on with the organization. Permanently.”

  “Are you sure that’s what she meant?” Alex asked.

  “Oh I’m sure. And she definitely wanted to make sure you’d be out of the way, Marine.” I pointed toward her throat.

  “She did?” Marine looked genuinely shocked.

  “I’m sorry, but yeah,” I answered. “I know our plan was to roll on out of here when my mom, I don’t know—” I hunted for the right word, but fell short. “Came to. But I don’t think it’s going to work out like that. I think you both need to get out of here. I mean it—Laurel is fixing to harm you guys!”

  “Fixing to harm us?” Alex smiled.

  “It’s not funny! She’s talking about torture, and purification committees.” I whispered it as fiercely as I could.

  “Well, yeah, that’s disturbing,” Alex said, all humor gone. “But, all the more reason we need to stay and help you.”

  “No offense, guys, but I think we’re going to need more help than just the two of you. Serious, serious help.” I shook my head, trying to clear things up in there.

  “You mean the police?” Marine said.

  “I don’t know.” I felt my face crumple the way Alex’s did. “Maybe Chantal, or someone from the Silver Saddle? This seems like something she would know how to fix.”

  “Do you want me to call her?” Alex asked. We had dropped the whispering, but still kept our voices low. I flicked my gaze to the outermost corners of my vision, to make sure we were still alone.

  “No, I want you to go get her. Or someone. I want you to check on Ida. I need to know what’s going on,” I said, my voice crackling with urgency. I realized how bossy it all sounded after it was out in the air between our three faces. But I didn’t care. “And Marine,” I said, equally bossily. “You need to go with Alex, and show him how to get out of here.” I sounded like Mom on the phone, I thought. I felt kind of
pleased about it until I saw how miserable Marine looked. “Look, I really don’t think it’s safe for either of you to be here on your own. You have to do this, Marine. Please. I don’t know what you feel like you owe us right now, but please, I’m begging you. I cannot live here!” My voice had climbed into the screech zone. Alex and Marine both shushed me and Alex rubbed my back.

  “Of course I’ll go with Alex, if that’s what you want,” Marine began. “But I think someone should stay and help you here. Don’t you think I should do that?” she asked Alex.

  “Please, go with Alex. I told you, Laurel is trying to get rid of you. There’s no way you’d be able to help here. At least in Vegas you can check on Ida while he explains to Chantal. It’ll be so much faster. Please, please?” I could feel full-fledged, hysterical crying swell underneath the skin of my face.

  “All right, Van.”

  “You guys have to leave right now. Like this instant.” I grabbed both of their arms and practically swung between them like a little kid between her parents.

  “What? Van, no. Not when you’re this upset,” Alex said. “Right?” He directed this last word to Marine. I looked into Marine’s enormous eyes and tried one of mine and Ida’s mind melds: this-is-serious-come-on-come-on-come-on-get-out-of-here-now-bring-help. I wanted them gone before I drew more attention from the camp. I could feel myself unraveling. I must have looked pretty desperate, or maybe the mind meld worked. Marine nodded at me.

  “Take my phone,” she said. “It has a little battery left. I don’t know if you can get reception anywhere, but keep it turned off unless it’s really an emergency.”

  I fought the urge to roll my eyes.

  “I don’t want to leave you like this,” Alex said, holding my hand.

  “I’ll be fine. Please, we need more help. And I need to know how Ida’s doing.” I wanted them to leave so I could get to raving and crying already.

  “It’s a long walk,” Marine said. “Do you have any water?”

  Alex shook his head, but looked at me the whole time Marine spoke.