Awakening Foster Kelly

by Cara Rosalie Olsen

  Someone went to all my classes.

  They collected all my assignments.

  Then they brought it here and organized it.

  Who would go to all that trouble? It must have taken hours to trudge across campus, then drive it here and bring order to the chaos that was my daily homework. It wasn’t until I was hovering over the piles, my hip bones sinking into the edge of the table, that I realized I had missed one very important detail. Both hands flew to my mouth, covering a gasp that ricocheted around the room, repeating a dozen times before being swallowed up in the roar of the falls.

  “But—it can’t—who would—” It was implausible, I thought decidedly, instantly struck with the inaccuracy of my thoughts. It wasn’t implausible, because I was looking at it! My work hadn’t simply been collected and organized—someone had completed it. Or at least most of it, I saw upon lifting the corners, my trembling hands rustling the papers. Tuesday and Wednesday were in fact entirely finished, and nearly all of Thursday done as well.

  I took notice of my very dry mouth and closed it, swallowing a few times to invite moisture back into my throat. My mom regarded me with interest; lips pressed together, eyebrows fully raised.

  “Did you . . .?” I asked, the astonishment evident even in murmur.

  She laughed and raised her hands as if being robbed. “Oh, no! Don’t look at me,” she said, a wry smile pulling at the corner of her mouth. “Maybe your Biology I could have managed, but the English and History reports—not a chance. The format has changed quite a bit since I was in high school.”

  I could feel the pucker between my eyes. “If not you or Dad, then who?” I asked.

  Her chest rose with a deep breath. Cupping my cheek, she exhaled and replied, “I think you already know the answer to that, Fost.” Rising up on her boots, she kissed my forehead. “I’m going to make sure your father’s not gotten himself into trouble and went up on the roof. I’ll come check on you in a bit,” she said, then slipped through the door, leaving me for the second time today in a departure of melodious giggles. I remained stupefied and unmoving, and somewhat afraid to turn around. Will the piles have disappeared?

  For a moment, I just stared at the door, listening to the sounds of the room intermixing with each breath that whistled through my nose. When I became so riddled with frazzled nerves, certain I had imagined it all and there was nothing more than an enormous, empty table behind me, I spun around to surprise my surprise. Unfortunately, I spun so fast my vision blurred and it took a moment before the room stopped spinning. Blurry smudges of white poked through my distorted sight, immensely relieved at finding everything the same. Then I chided myself for playing into such foolishness.

  I allowed myself another breath, then extended an arm and began sifting slowly through the piles. I was careful not to tamper with the meticulous method of arrangement. Shaking my head, no less dazed than before, I straightened them so they were once again unskewed. I thought of something suddenly and began scanning the nearby area, looking up and down the length of the table for a note, an unfamiliar pen, anything to prove he had been here. On my hands and knees, I waxed wide circles, searching the area directly below the piles.

  There was nothing. Well, not completely nothing; I did find a lapel pin that must have fallen off someone during the last party or meeting. I stared at the cartoon tree pinched between my fingers.

  He couldn’t have.

  Breathy laughter aided the preposterous thought comfortably. I stood back up, and by the time the laugh had lost all traces of its humor . . .

  Could he? Was it even possible?

  My thoughts drifted to a conversation we’d had last Monday on the way to lunch. Nervous about the possibility of my whereabouts being discovered, I had launched precipitously into a loquacious rant, chronicling historical facts and findings from a research paper I’d turned in. Just when I was certain any good impression Dominic might have formed about me began its sordid death, he chimed in with details about the subject I had centered the report around. At that point, I had already known he was intelligent, but there was something else, a subtle difference in the way he relayed information to me. Though there was a genuine interest behind most everything I learned, the process itself was not at all that glamorous or interesting. When learning, my brain’s response was mechanical—like a hard drive, downloading and storing information perfunctorily without the need for repetition or rudiment. I absorbed knowledge. Anything I wanted to know, I could, and consequently everything I did know could be found by tracing one subsidiary fact back to its primary source. When asked by Emily—rhetorically, I realized too late—I had once tried explaining this. About three sentences in, she held up her hand, closed her eyes, and said, “You’re hurting me; I’m going to ask you to stop.” Dominic, however, had spoken about Margaret Cochran Corbin with none of the same robotics. Behind each bit of intel he shared, was the evidence of one having savored—and more than likely labored—the process, not only the result. This was something I could recognize, but didn’t quite understand. I could admire, though.

  I supposed this meant the answer was yes; yes, it was possible, but in order to do my homework, in that small of a time frame, he would have had to—

  Without warning, a feral sound ripped the silence apart. Three feet into the air, shrieking at the top of my lungs, my hands balled into fists, instinctively preparing to fight off what was surely about to attack me. Somewhere in between the one and a half to two seconds it took me to process that I was not under siege, but the victim of the sound system, I landed on solid ground, shaking. It felt as though a quart of adrenaline had been released at my terrible jolt; my heart hammered and my breathing was loud and panting.

  “Only the sound system,” I reminded myself audibly, laying a hand over my heart. It beat so hard I could actually see the arteries’ protrusion—a small mound, bulging in frantic rhythm beneath my tank top.

  Sense and logic were returning to me with the aid of relief. My mother—not inherently a cruel person—must have accidentally flipped on the wildlife switch when first entering. While many of the effects remained constant, the wildlife noises were at random, simulating the frequency of what you might expect in a rainforest. The Macaw’s squawk had exploded into the air without any forewarning, just about rendering me soul and body. I inhaled until my lungs could expand no further, and then released the nervy exhalation and my residual terror along with it.

  Safely outside, I cringed, wondering if Dominic had a similar experience while visiting the Amazon room. It was possible he might not have been in here, I thought consolingly. Maybe—I liked where I was going with this—my mother had only relocated the piles in here, long after he had finished. I would find out soon enough. She came barreling around the corner, jogging, then lurched to a stop the second she saw me.

  “Oh, thank God! Was that you?” My mother’s wide eyes raked me up and down, looking for a source of harm or distress. “I heard your scream from all the way in the backyard!” She laid a hand on her head, yanking off the bandana unintentionally. Her eyes closed and she collapsed against the wall, sighing. Seeing I was indeed not murdered, she stared expectantly, as if to say, “Well?”

  Slowly, I began walking toward her, face open in apology and culpability. “Sound system,” I said on an exhale. It took a moment to register. Then, with all the understanding of a mother who knows her child well, she began nodding, doing her absolute best to keep the laughter around her mouth less noticeable than that which flourished in her eyes.

  “Sound system,” she repeated, putting an arm around my waist and turning us to continue down the hall. From the corner of my eyes, I saw her lips come together firmly.

  ~

  At first I wandered aimlessly about my room, finding miscellaneous things to do. Nothing imperative, but having slept through most of the last week, I soon found there was actually quite a bit in the way of cleaning. A fine layer of dust had collected on my bookshelves, dressers, and piano, Rho
da’s hair was skewed about the entire room in black tufts and wiry clumps, and the bathroom . . . the bathroom was repugnant. I wore rain boots, a surgical mask and two sets of gloves until every last every last justifiable distraction was rectified. My room sparkled and shone like a freshly waxed car, though I could scarcely enjoy it. Throughout the sterility escapade, my phone, plugged into the wall about six inches from the floor, continued to make all sorts of ostentatious noises at me. And while I put diligent effort into ignoring it, my phone would not be ignored.

  Buzz. Beep.Beep-beep. Buzzz. Buzzz. Buzzz.

  Someone was calling me—right now.

  I stopped what I was doing and made eye contact with it. From where I was on the other side of the bed, I couldn’t see the screen. Only two, maybe three possibilities occurred. Unless it was a wrong number, and then there were more . . . it stopped buzzing. I released the breath I’d held while it ran its course and went back to pulling the bottom sheet around the corner. About ten minutes later it began buzzing again. And I would have answered it, I told myself, but I had a bottle of Febreeze in one hand and a lint roller in the other. No hands remained to allow me to pick up the telephone. This went on for another hour until, with a pang of anxiety, I realized there was nothing left for me to do.

  Rhoda—blessed angel—meandered in, sniffed my sweats and sneezed with such prodigious force, she was pushed back a few steps.

  “Oh, you’re right!” I exclaimed, bending to press our foreheads together. She sneezed again, stamping back, then climbed up onto my freshly sheeted bed. I wasted no time in dashing off to the shower to clean me. Redressed in the same clothes, I decided I could not put this off any longer. In truth, I hadn’t wanted to put it off; I just didn’t know what to say . . . how would I start this conversation? I thought I might be getting somewhere; that was, until I had voiced some potential openers aloud, to see what they would sound like in actuality.

  “Thank you for doing my homework—how’ve you been?”

  “Hi . . . I heard you came by and . . . saw me sleeping.”

  “So you and my mom have been talking, huh?”

  Near my bed, I thought seriously about crawling in next to Rhoda and taking a nap. I was very tired; cleaning my room top to bottom had imbibed what little strength I had gained from my hearty lunch, and after coming up null in the shower, my brain felt both swollen and numb.

  I reread Dominic’s note, again sensing an urgency in his words and knew that whether or not I was ready, it wasn’t right keeping him in undue worry—if he was indeed worrying. With a certain reluctance, I unplugged my phone, hoping that when the time came I would just know what to say. Despite all the buzzing and beeping, I was still shocked to see I had fifteen missed calls and twenty-two text messages. Emily’s phone generated this amount of activity in about an hour’s time. For me, these numbers were unprecedented. I flipped through them, picking one at random from Emily.

  Hello? Are you ever coming back to school? I’m starting to think you graduated and didn’t tell us. Idk, but lunch is not the same without your super rad lunchbox.

  I laughed out loud. The very first time I joined Jake and Emily for lunch, Emily about gave herself a hernia trying not to react to my reusable cooler. The next day I tried using an icepack, but everything was warm by third period. Eventually enough weeks passed so that unearthing my lunch no longer put Emily in danger, though it remained a stark juxtaposition to the rest of the student body’s bought lunches, and occasionally she still cracked up when I started unzipping pockets and removing Tupperware.

  I continued scrolling, and saw that Maddie had sent a text, too.

  So sorry you’re sick, Foster. Hope you feel better soon! Let me know if Jake and I can bring you anything!

  There were four from Jake as well.

  Hey! Do you still have that paper on Beowulf? And can I have it? I mean borrow it? I don’t understand a single word these people are saying. You kinda talk like they do sometimes, so I thought, you know . . . let me know, yeah? Oh, bummer on the barfing—you must be totally freaking out. I left a donut with your mom for when you’re feeling better. Sorry about the missing bite. I got kinda hungry.

  In total, there were around eleven texts from my friends. The other half—calls included—derived from the phone number I would momentarily be dialing. The texts had started off casually.

  Hi, just checking to see if you’re feeling any better. I came by after school to see you, but you were sleeping. Call or text if you wake up and feel like talking.

  There were a few more like that, conveying essentially the same thing, mentioning the Senior Piece with little detail, but as I continued to read his more recent texts, the tone took on a distinct dithering edge.

  Are you awake? Text me if you are. Please. I just want to know you’re okay.

  I checked the time and saw that that one had come through on Thursday at three seventeen in the morning. Nonplussed, I scrolled slowly, reading each message once, twice, three times. By the time I had reached the end, I had gone stiff all over with empathetic anxiety for him. Not for the first time, I wondered how the flu could flood him with this amount of distress. If not for what my mother had told me, I would have begun to wonder if I was reading more into it than I should be—but I did know differently.

  I began to pace.

  In desperate need of a friendly face, I found Rhoda lying on the end of my bed, her large head propped upon one paw. Her silky eyebrows rose up and down as I moved her visual field, following me back and forth across the width of my circular room. Much too nervous to sit while I called him, I took a deep breath and started dialing. Three numbers in I stopped, losing all bravado.

  “I can’t,” I sighed to the open air, then buried my face in my hands. Despite murmuring, my voice sounded loud and incredibly close, amplified in my ears drums. “What am I doing? I can’t just call him. I don’t know what to say.” Then something happened. My hands fell away without the slightest bit of tremor and my fingers began working with detached, but furious determination. I watched number after number appear on the screen, equally amazed as I was appalled and terrified. I stopped staring only when the phone began to rise, positioning itself comfortably above my ear. Then it had the nerve to starting ringing.

  “Well, hello,” he said, relief penetrating his voice. “You’re awake.”

  I opened my mouth to reply; for some unfounded reason, I was so taken aback by not only the sound of his voice, but the fact that he answered on the first ring, that the result was me choking on my saliva. Luckily I was able to pull the phone away in time, saving him from having to listen to succession of choppy bark-coughs as I worked to hurriedly clear my throat.

  “Hello? Foster?” He sounded confused more than anything else, but there was a note of bidden concern. “Are you there?”

  “Yes,” I croaked miserably, coughed hard, then in a more human voice, “Yes; I’m here, sorry.”

  “Oh,” he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “I thought the call dropped for a second.”

  “No, I, um . . . I just had a tickle in my throat.” It was the closest to the truth I was willing to go. Without warning, a crowd of jubilant voices began cheering. The sound, for all its ordinariness, was vaguely familiar to me, though I didn’t know why. I imagined him to be at a park or arcade, maybe.

  “One sec,” he said, then came the rustle of a hand over the receiver, followed by a shout muted on my end. “Go! Go to second! Go, go, go!” There was a great deal more of cheering, similar shouts, and a whoop of excitement from Dominic, before I heard his hand slip away, the remnants of a husky laugh waning. “Okay, hi, I’m back,” he said gratuitously and breathless. “How are you? Did you just wake up? Are you feeling better?” He sounded keyed up, a bit distracted, and was talking a little louder than necessary to compensate for the background noise.

  “I am . . . thank you,” I replied, smiling at the frazzled exuberance he exuded. The fear I had in calling him dissipated almost insta
ntly, replaced by the sheer joy brought on by hearing his voice after so long. Whomever he was with and whatever he was doing, though, I felt as if my call might be keeping him. “Should I—”

  “What was that?” he hollered

  “Would it be better if I called you back a litt—”

  “No! No, I want to talk to you. Now,” he asserted adamantly, then snorted in wry humor. “I’ve been waiting to hear from you for almost a week—as I’m sure you already know.” He laughed. It wasn’t his natural laugh, I could tell, and after a short pause he spoke again. With the brief lull in noise, I could make out what sounded like subdued concern. “Six days . . . you must have been really sick.”

  “I’m feeling much better today,” I chimed in immediately, wanting to assure him that I was fine and there was nothing to worry about. As soon as I did, though, another cacophonous roar engulfed my words, drowning me out. The high pitched squeals were distinctly that of excited children, and a sore happiness spread across my heart in longing and familiarity. I knew those sounds well and saying I was eager to see and hug my six-year-olds was a vastly poor understatement. Still, I was more than a little surprised to feel tears prick the corners of my eyes. I missed them even more than I knew apparently.

  “Sorry, what was that?” he asked. “I . . . missed it.”

  I cleared my throat. “Better today!”

  “Oh, good. Good!” he bellowed back. “You know,” he said, then paused. “It really is loud, isn’t it? Maybe I should—what?”

  “What?” I asked, confused and not entirely sure if he was addressing me.

  “You didn’t say something?”

  “No . . . I didn’t—sorry.” I winced. Sorry? It was very possible he hadn’t heard me and I took comfort in that—until, that is, I was sure he had.