Winter Town

by Stephen Emond

  “You’re stalking me!” Evan repeated, and Tim came over.

  “Oh, hey!” Tim said, and then shook Lucy’s hand. “Hi, I’m Tim. Do you like Duran Duran?”

  “Um, not really? Sorry?” Lucy said, confused. Tim looked disappointed.

  “How could we be stalking you?” Marshall said. “Last I got was a text from you saying you were at breakfast, with no mention of the mall, even though you know we love the mall. In fact, you might be stalking us.”

  “It’s not like we just showed up at the diner to surprise you guys, and you were just leaving so we tailed you to the mall or anything,” Tim said. “We do have lives, you know.”

  “I want to know everything about Lucy,” Marshall said. “Evan says you’re more badass than Wonder Woman.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Lucy said. “But I do have an invisible aircraft that’s kinda like hers.”

  “I’m so jealous!” Marshall said. “I want to see it!”

  “Well, you can’t, because, you know, it’s invisible.”

  Evan was glad to see Lucy warm up to Tim and Marshall in record time. He had known they’d hit it off, but watching them talk and laugh, Evan felt like she’d always been a part of the gang. Evan almost felt like a third wheel.

  “Hey, I have a question, if you guys will humor me,” Lucy asked as they walked aimlessly through the store. “Actually two questions. One, why Duran Duran? And two, since I never get to see Evan’s friends, what’s he like? Like when you guys hang out, is he all Waaah, I have too much homework to do! Because this guy is way too into his schoolwork.”

  “Yes! That’s definitely Evan,” Marshall said.

  “Aww,” Tim said. “He can’t help it. He’s in all the advanced classes.”

  “I knew it! You’re a buzz-kill!” Lucy said, and gave Evan a poke in the ribs.

  “Evan’s a lot of fun as long as you can plan it out. He’s a man with a plan,” Marshall said. “He’s going to help us film a horror movie. So, what’s cooler than that, right?”

  “I’m starring in it,” Evan said, beaming a little, showing off for Lucy. “I’m going to be pantsless.”

  “I am so impressed with you right now,” Lucy said. “I’m looking at you a little differently. Pantsless movie star Evan Owens.”

  “Ow!” Tim said, celebrating Evan’s newfound awesomeness. “Oh, and I just thought if you liked Duran Duran, then we could bond over it or something.”

  “We’ll find something. What about Tears for Fears?”

  “I’m onboard,” Tim said. “We’re, like, best friends now. We’re bonded by eighties music. It’s like superglue.”

  “We’ll leave you two kids alone, but first…” Marshall turned to Lucy. “We’re having a Christmas Eve party, and I do hope you plan to attend.”

  Lucy looked at Evan, caught up in the whirlwind of fun that was Tim and Marshall. “I guess? Sure!”

  “Of course she’ll be there,” Evan said. “Unless you guys have graduated from stalking to flat-out kidnapping by then.”

  Evan sat in the food court a half hour later, holding a table while Lucy got mall sushi. Lucy had been full of energy since meeting Tim and Marshall, who had that effect on people. Things were going really well now. He was glad she had come over that morning. All the stress he’d felt was falling away. Evan supposed that was Lucy’s effect.

  “Is anyone…?” a tall Asian man asked Evan, pointing to the empty chair reserved for Lucy.

  “Someone’s sitting here,” Evan told the man, the fourth person to ask in as many minutes. Evan looked around at the volume of people. Large families spreading over generations sat together, eating and laughing. Children ran around restlessly, ready to go back into the stores. Evan liked this time of year. It may have been artificial or designed by companies, but it gave everyone an excuse to be happy and to go out and enjoy one another’s company. Evan began to eat his slice of pizza when Lucy arrived.

  “Oh my God, the freaking lines,” she said, placing her food on the table. “Goddamn lady had to pay for sushi with a check. Who uses checks?”

  Evan laughed. So not everyone was enjoying one another. “And did you see that lady at the Hallmark store? She was returning enough gifts to last three Christmases,” Lucy continued. “Let alone the fact that there were only two cashiers working, so the line went out the door.” Evan remembered that she could always chat a mile a minute with him, and he was glad she was doing it. He also remembered that she used to sit in the corner quietly at school, too. It was hard to imagine it was the same person. She’d open up once you earned it, and then that was it. Pandora’s box would explode. Yesterday she’d been the shy girl in the corner. Today she was Mr. Hyde.

  “Also,” she said, sitting down, “you were a bad influence on me when we were kids. I’m thinking of one incident in particular. Any guesses?”

  “That doesn’t seem probable,” Evan said, diving comfortably into her non sequitur. He gave it a quick thought but came up blank. “No guesses.”

  “The rock in the street?” Lucy raised her eyebrows. “You made me roll a giant rock into the middle of the street at night. We could have seriously messed up someone’s car, or worse!”

  “Come on. You know it was cool.” Evan turned a little red. Lucy went from shy girl to chatty, but Evan went from placing giant rocks in the road to being on-target for class valedictorian.

  “Not cool, Ev. And Mr. Genovese? Threatening to tell our parents?”

  “That’s right. ‘What’s the matter with you, Lucy? You know better than that!’ Oh, he was pissed.” Evan looked at nothing in particular, with the ghost of a smile still on his face as he pictured the scene. Evan had been the more aggressive of the two when they were kids. He was a little hyper, and spontaneous. He always wanted to be outdoors and exploring, or spying on people. Lucy was the quiet one, and it always took some egging on to get her to act. Evan looked at her disheveled appearance and thought of his straight-A persona and wondered if they were slowly changing places.

  “What were you thinking?” Lucy asked as she drank her Sprite.

  “That’s a really good question,” he said. “Another is this: Why would you agree to that? Clearly ten-year-old Evan’s attempt at impressing you succeeded.”

  “Oh, yes,” Lucy said, lifting a piece of sushi. “To this day, I’m searching for the man who’s gonna roll a large rock out into the road for me.”

  “That’s really crazy. God, what else did we do?”

  “Laser tag,” Lucy offered.

  “Oh, that’s right!” Evan said. It was hard for Evan to imagine current-day Nega-Lucy drumming up enthusiasm for laser tag. “Remember that kid? I was supposed to be the traitor on our team, and that kid got so pissed off at me when I shot him. He said he was going to kick my ass.”

  “He wasn’t going to do anything,” Lucy said. “I would have beaten him up before he got the chance.”

  “Remember, he was following us around all night and you kept saying I should just fight him and get it over with, but I didn’t want to, because I was a chicken. But. Then I did go look for him because I knew you’d never let me live it down if I didn’t.”

  “That’s right….”

  “And then we found him, and he was eating ice cream with his mom and dad and sister.”

  “It’s hard to be tough when you’re ten,” Lucy said.

  “I should have clobbered him with a chair in front of his whole family,” Evan said coldly.

  Lucy snorted with laughter.

  “I’m serious,” Evan said with a smile. “Now I’m angry again. I want to find that kid.”

  “See, you’re a bad influence still. Total hard-ass.”

  Evan wondered why he hadn’t brought any of this up yesterday. They had years between them. How could they have nothing to talk about? It was fun. It felt good. It was easy to pretend that they were kids still and that nothing had changed. This was nice.

  “Remember the caves?” Evan asked. “We’d have to walk
through half of our neighbors’ yards to get to them, behind that big hill. And we thought it was like in The Hobbit, and if we went far enough into the caves we’d find some giant dragon. Sleeping on a bunch of treasure. I’ll bet if we went there now, we couldn’t even fit in the caves. We should really go there, just for the hell of it.”

  “We’re seventeen,” Lucy said, about half done with her lunch. “I don’t know if we can get away with tramping through everyone’s property anymore.”

  “We could make a comic of just this, of our old stories and stupid stuff we did as kids.” Evan felt inspired suddenly. This was easy, telling old stories, and they were practically a comic strip already, with their long walks and ruminations and witty banter. The only question was which one was Calvin and which one was Hobbes. And with Lucy involved—

  “Oh, that would be awesome!” Lucy said, her eyes widening.

  “We could do a series about the laser tag, and you and I would be the main characters. And the caves. That’d be cool, right?”

  “Anything you draw is cool. And I get to be part of it! Ooh, I want to be a character!”

  “Well, yeah, you’re half the story.” Evan took the last bite of his pizza. The cemetery walk was feeling more and more like a fluke. She’d been gone for a year, really, so it only made sense that it would take a day or two to adjust. Lucy was Lucy still. Case closed.

  “I think it’s more interesting if we make the dragon actually there. All my memories of the caves involve a dragon. This is good! This can be, like, a whole thing. We can make a comic of Aelysthia!”

  “Oh, no, not Aelysthia. What is this turning into?” Evan laughed. The days of Aelysthia being bold and colorful enough to inspire volumes of books were long gone. Half of the material had been thought up when they were children, and half of it grew out of sarcasm and boredom. Some of it could land them in a mental asylum for having thought it up. Evan had to think they could do better.

  “Yeah, yeah, but we take all that stuff, and we mix it up with our own childhood, we make us the protagonists, we write out a whole story for it, you draw it, and we put it online!” Lucy bounced in her chair. She was getting increasingly excited over the idea, and her excitement was contagious. Her involvement made it easier for Evan to sign on.

  “Okay. I like it,” Evan said. “Because I suck at stories.”

  “That’s the easy part. We’ll do it together, it’ll be fun. Promise. I want to be an ass-kicker. My character is brutal.”

  “That sounds right,” Evan said, and slapped the table. “I’m in!”

  Evan and Lucy walked back to the car. The snow had gotten heavy. Already, the parking lot was in need of a plow and the cars were covered in thick snow.

  “So what does my character do?” Evan asked, holding his hand over his head to protect it from the wind. “Maybe he’s, like, an artisan or something.”

  “That’s perfect! Like, you can draw stuff and it comes to life.” They reached Evan’s car, which was sleeping under a white blanket of snow.

  “Or I can build stuff out of snow. Like weapons,” Evan said, thrusting a pile of the snow off the hood of his car and onto Lucy.

  “Let me help you clean off your car,” Lucy said. She pulled in a lump of snow and heaved it Evan’s way. “I’m the ass-kicker, remember?”

  The snow hit Evan, who ducked behind the car. He laughed and leaned over the hood, knocking more snow her way.

  Soon the car was clear of snow and ready to be driven, and Evan and Lucy were cold and wet and tired.

  * * *

  It doesn’t take much more than a flurry to cause traffic, and this was an official snowstorm. The highway was backed up for miles as Evan and Lucy sat in Evan’s mom’s Honda. They’d just passed a particularly troublesome highway entrance and were now heading toward a bridge. The afternoon had a blue quality, blue, white, gray, and wet, with flashes of red taillights all around. The inside of the car was toasty as Evan had the heater running on high. They edged farther along, one wheel rotation at a time, and Evan wondered how much faster they’d get home by walking.

  Evan tapped the gas and brake pedals alternately, slowly and rhythmically. He was patiently following the chain of cars ahead, leaving plenty of space. Hands at ten and two. He was comfortable, and the quiet was nice. He and Lucy were talked out at this point, but it felt okay to be quiet now. It had stopped being an uncomfortable silence. There didn’t need to be talk for talk’s sake. Instead, he reflected on the day and took a sip from the peppermint mocha he’d gotten to go. Evan tapped his fingers against the steering wheel to “Let It Snow” playing on the radio. Lucy leaned against the window.

  The jolly DJ said to expect several more feet of snow in the next twenty-four hours and to keep off the road if at all possible. Too late for that.

  “I have to do this paper thing for school still anyway,” Evan told Lucy. “I should probably take tomorrow to work on it.”

  “Okay,” Lucy said, her head tilted away, eyes fixed on the railing on her side of the road.

  Evan looked at Lucy and wondered briefly what she was thinking, and if she was all right with taking a day off, and if she felt as comfortable as he did in the car at that instant. He wondered if she was having fun. He thought, for a moment, to ask her how she was feeling, but then thought better of it. Then he thought about what he was thinking about and felt less content.

  Evan got home after Dad. This meant he would run into him, which would mean some kind of lecture, likely on the history paper he still hadn’t started. Dad’s primary form of communication was the Lecture. Evan knew that it was just his way of looking out for him, that it was Dad’s way of expressing concern, but a lecture is a lecture. They’re seldom enjoyable.

  Evan came in through the back door into the kitchen, took off his wet, dirty shoes, and got a glass of milk.

  “Is that you?” Mom called from the living room.

  “It’s… it’s me,” Evan called back. “If by you, you meant me, then yes.” Evan drank from his glass and wiped his mouth. He started looking in the cupboards.

  “Dinner’s going to be soon, so don’t eat anything,” Mom called.

  “Hey, champ,” Dad said, walking into the kitchen and dropping his briefcase on the table. He also went for a glass of milk. “Coming down hard out there,” he said, looking out the window. He loosened his tie as if it were choking him. “Maybe I’ll work from home tomorrow.”

  “The firm won’t miss you?” Mom asked, entering the kitchen, and she and Evan shared a knowing look, certain he’d be going into the office, snow or not.

  “We’ll see,” Dad said, and took a drink from his glass. He turned to Evan. “How’s your paper coming along?”

  “Good,” Evan said. He leaned back against the counter. Evan didn’t understand the need to check in daily. It implied some kind of mistrust, or that he was expected to fail at this task. Evan was top of his class. He could write this paper in his sleep, and he had a whole two weeks to do it. And Dad knew this, too. Evan wondered how much of this was about the paper and how much was about Lucy. “I’m still researching. You know, figuring it out.”

  Dad nodded. “I want to take a look when you’re done.”

  “Yeah, sure, Dad,” Evan said.

  Dad ruffled his hair. “I’m gonna keep bothering you on this ’til you finish, just so you know. Could be a long vacation.”

  “Dad, I’m working on it,” Evan said with a laugh. “Promise.”

  The sun had set, dinner was eaten, and upstairs under the light of his desk lamp, Evan watched his history book sit like a brick. It wasn’t that he hated homework or was bored by history, or even that he was stuck on ideas for his paper. The problem was that his head was racing with ideas and images for his comic with Lucy. It was like there was a need to purge them from his brain immediately before they dulled or disappeared. If he could just get the images out of his head and onto paper, then he could focus on the history report and make headway there.

  Eva
n pushed the history brick to the side, pulled his sketch book over, and started sketching. He drew quick ovals and rectangles over stick figures, looking for shapes, appealing sizes. He filled out the stick figures and connected the shapes, making realistic faces and cartoony ones, elongated bodies and short, squat Calvin-and-Hobbes-style characters. He took out his brush pen and added details—clothes, facial expressions, hair, Lucy’s nose ring, Lucy with her cropped black hair, Lucy with long brown hair, Evan himself with all sorts of hats. He drew a tiny Evan carrying a large rock, with Lucy trailing behind. He liked this cartoon—he liked the characters small and round, ageless, like a comic strip you’d see in the paper. Once he had the style figured out, he wanted to make it better, draw it bigger and with detail. This was ready for the expensive paper.

  Mom knocked on Evan’s open door. “Yeah, Mom.”

  “Hi, hon, whatcha working on?” Mom said songfully. She stepped inside and looked around the room as if it were a spaceship. Mom peered over Evan’s shoulder as he closed his sketchbook. He didn’t want to explain that he was working on a comic strip or why he was drawing pictures of Lucy. It would lead to art-gushing and romance-gushing and a myriad of awkward looks, and, really, it would just be embarrassing.

  “Just doodling before I work on the paper,” Evan said.

  “Oh, good. Your dad would be a lot more comfortable if you just got something down on paper, I think, even if it’s not finished or good. He just wants to see that you’re working on it.”

  “Yeah, no, I’m working on it. I’ll write something tonight. I’m gonna start now.”

  Mom wasn’t exactly the best motivator; where Dad was adamant about work and structure and success, Mom was keen on seeing Evan enjoy himself. She sounded guilty asking about the paper, and Evan was sure his dad was waiting on a full report from her. He considered tossing the whole thing and playing his video game, but, alas, that was not the Evan Way.

  “Okay, well, have a good night, sweetheart,” Mom said, kissing the top of Evan’s head and exiting the room.