by Radclyffe
“Let me guess.” She studies me with her too blue eyes. “You have an internship for the summer. You’re pre-law at Yale.”
“Yes,” I stutter and blink, feeling a bit breathless. “How did you know all that?”
“I know everything.” She shrugs, quirking an enigmatic smile that heightens her intoxicating aura of mystery. “And I read your sweatshirt.”
I blush as I look down at my own navy Yale sweatshirt, which I’m wearing not-so-stylishly with khaki shorts. I feel silly. I don’t know what to say.
“Are you originally from somewhere around here?”
“Yeah,” I nod, clenching the pack of gum tightly in my fist, “my parents live about twenty miles north. You?”
Her smile fades. Something flashes in her eyes, and suddenly, she’s guarded. “I live here. I’ve always lived here.” Her eyes flicker past me, through me. “Probably always will.”
“Oh.” I look down at my sneakers. There isn’t anything I can think to say.
“We should have an adventure,” she announces abruptly, and that carefree enthusiasm reenters her tone.
“You don’t know me,” I say too quickly, because I want her too fervently. “I could be a serial killer.” I pause. “Or boring.”
She smiles yet again, broad enough to show her teeth. “I know you well enough to know that you’re neither of those things, Grace Aldrin. I know something else, too.” She takes a quick sip of her Slurpee. Her tongue is stained blue. “We’re going to have an adventure.”
Day 47, morning
“Grace.” Rory, the friendly cardigan-clad receptionist of Giles and Burke, sticks his head into the filing room. “There’s someone here to see you.”
I frown because I’m at work, and no one should be popping up to visit me at work. “Who is it?”
He shrugs, looking thoughtful. “A girl. She looks upset.”
I drop the file I’m holding because there’s only one girl I talk to who doesn’t work here. I follow Rory out to the front room, and sure enough, California’s sitting in one of the chairs. She’s slouched over a little, and her hair is less than perfect. As I get closer, I make out the faint tracks of mascara on her cheeks. She’s been crying.
“Rory,” I say softly, without turning back to look at him, “I need a minute.”
“Of course.” He nods, but I barely hear him because I’m already leading California out the door.
We sit on the cement steps leading up to the firm’s office. I drape my arm around her shoulders, and she rests her head against my shoulder. We take a wordless minute to stare out at the cartoon city, where the colors are too bright—the blue of the sky, the gray of the buildings, the green of the trees, the black of the asphalt, and the yellow of the lane lines. The world is humming, buzzing, twittering, bursting alive with action, but it doesn’t look or feel real. We’re three stories above the ground; the action can’t touch us. It isn’t real.
The minute goes by, and then California speaks. “I’m leaving. This town. Forever. This afternoon.”
Suddenly, everything is real. Too real. It hurts, and I forget how to breathe. I stare at her profile, and I can see her determination. She’s serious; this isn’t a joke, and she isn’t going to change her mind.
“It’s too much,” she goes on. “It’s too much, and I don’t deserve it, so I’m leaving, and I’m never coming back.”
I stare at her, and I feel my heart breaking. “You’re right,” I say as soon as I find my voice, “you don’t deserve it. You never did. You should leave.”
She looks up at me. “Grace?”
I smile weakly. “Callie.”
“Will you come with me?”
I kiss her fiercely in response, letting the touch of my lips say what I can’t vocalize. I pull back after a moment as soon as I remember where I am. I stand up, pulling her up with me. I ask her to wait for me.
I step back inside. Instantly, I’m under Rory’s hazel-eyed scrutiny.
“That’s her, isn’t it?” he asks. He knows everything about her (except the bruises, never the bruises) because I’ve told him.
“Yeah,” I nod, biting my lip nervously.
“She needs you, doesn’t she?”
This, I think to myself, is why I befriended Rory. His intuition and understanding and classy purple cardigans. “Cover for me?”
“Of course.”
Day 13, midnight
I don’t ask how she got my address. I don’t know if she followed me or asked the cashier at 7-Eleven or stalked me on the Internet. I don’t care. I don’t care that it’s midnight or that I’m wearing gym shorts and a T-shirt. I see her standing across the threshold of this tenement I call an apartment, and I can’t help but smile. She’s a ray of sunshine in the bleak corporate monotony that is rapidly becoming my life. I need her more than I need oxygen.
California tilts her head to one side, rests a hand on her hip, and drawls, “Ready for an adventure?”
I can’t see her eyes through the cat-eye sunglasses, but I don’t need to. I nod, and in an instant, we’re running down the stairs and out of the building. The only car parked out front is the cherry red convertible. I look at her, asking the question silently.
“It was my dad’s,” she answers, a shade quieter than usual. Then she perks up and gets in the driver’s seat. “Hop in.”
I get into the passenger seat.
She turns the key, starts the engine, and then we’re off. She taps the steering wheel as we stop at an intersection. “What kind of music do you like?”
“Pop,” I say, relishing the feel of the night air, the glow of the red light, the sheer magic of being next to her, “but not the stuff they play on the radio. Stuff that has folksy or bluesy undertones and powerful lyrics. Missy Higgins or Brandi Carlile.”
She nods. The light goes green, and we move forward. “I like everything, but especially songs that are loud and have a good beat, good energy. Usually ska, sometimes rock, but never the stuff they play on the radio. So let’s compromise.” She shoots me a smile before switching the radio on. She adjusts the tuner until some hip-hop song I’ve never heard comes on, and then she turns up the volume. “If neither of us likes it, it’s the perfect compromise.”
I can’t help but laugh at her logic. I can’t help but drum my fingers against the armrest. It’s chilly, but I’m not shivering. I’m exhilarated. “Where are we going?” I ask as she merges onto the freeway.
“It’s a surprise.” She goes straight to the fast lane; she speeds up, up, up. “People drive fast for the wrong reasons.” She grips the wheel a little tighter. “They do it because they can, because we’ve designed cars to go fast, so why the hell not?” She shakes her head.
“What are the right reasons?”
She smiles at me. “Speed reminds us that we’re alive, that we could die at any moment, and that we shouldn’t want it any other way.”
Day 38, evening
I haven’t said anything. Not when she picked me up at my apartment. Not as we drove to the diner. Not once we sat down and ordered. Not now. I’m staring steadily at my strawberry milkshake, but I can’t drink it or eat my fries because I’m too caught up on what I can’t ask her but know I should.
California doesn’t seem the slightest bit concerned with the bluish-purple bruise blossoming around her right eye. She doesn’t notice (or doesn’t mention) my preoccupation either. She just dips her fries in her chocolate shake and pretends that nothing is wrong. Maybe she isn’t even pretending. Maybe to her black eyes are as normal as flying pigs or talking dogs. Maybe she doesn’t care. She’s her normal self, smiling and bubbly, when she asks, “So, have you told anyone about us?”
I force my eyes away from my food, and I smile back at her, as I always do. “I don’t have many friends here.”
“That’s not the same as none.” She squints at me. “I haven’t, but I don’t mind that you’ve told someone. Who was it?”
I don’t have the slightest idea how she fin
ds me so transparent. “Rory, the receptionist at the firm.”
“Tell me about him.”
I shrug. Rory is just Rory. “He’s in his twenties. He takes classes at the community college in art history. He wants to work at a gallery someday. He wears big, thick Harry Potter glasses, but I don’t think he needs them. He owns at least fifty different cardigans. He’s gay. He’s one of the best friends I’ve ever had.” I realize I’m smiling, and I don’t know when I started.
She smiles back at me, but it isn’t one of her normal smiles. It doesn’t reach her eyes. They are cloudy, more gray than blue, bordering on wistful.
“Tell me about your best friend.”
“I don’t have one.” When she blinks, her eyes clear up, and she seems perfectly unfazed. “Any siblings?”
“A brother. He’s ten years older, though, so I may as well be an only child.” I take a sip of my milkshake. It’s good, even if I’m not really thirsty or hungry or anything but nauseous.
“I am. An only child, I mean.” She’s so carefree, careless, pure, even when the evidence of violence is fresh against her skin.
“Callie,” I say softly, staring at her as intently as I know how, “tell me about your parents.”
Again, her smile is weak and forced. This time, she’s the one who stares at her food without touching. “Parent,” she corrects. “I never had a father. Or I suppose I did, once, but he left. Probably before I was born, but maybe just when I was too young to remember.” She shrugs. “I don’t know. I never asked. He left the car. That’s it. It’s fine. I like the car. I’m glad he left. It’s better. He wouldn’t have deserved—no one deserves—well.”
I wait because I know she takes this game seriously, and if I just wait long enough, she’ll have no choice but to answer.
After a long moment, she starts talking. “I live with my mother—always have, always will. I don’t look like her at all. She’s tall. She has a crooked nose. Her ears are missing a crease. Her hair is kind of reddish and long and thin. She never smiles. She doesn’t leave the house. She has OCD. She’s paranoid. She—” She breaks eye contact, looks at her food, and there’s a second, a single second, in which she stops pretending. “Her brain’s just wired a little differently.”
“Callie.” I seize her hand from across the table. I hold it in mine. I press my thumb lightly against her wrist because I need to feel her pulse, to know that her heart is beating, to remember that she is alive. “Does your mother hit you?”
She cocks her head to one side and smiles at me wryly. “It isn’t your turn.”
Day 14, before dawn
“Here we are.”
California’s surprise consists of a neighborhood park. It’s small, sandwiched between two cookie-cutter suburban houses. It’s run-down and empty and probably more than a little forgotten. The foliage is lush, green, overgrown. The playground equipment is tarnished with rust, but it still sparkles in the moonlight.
“It’s beautiful.” I’m a little breathless.
She just smiles at me in that funny way of hers where I can’t tell quite what emotion she’s trying to convey. Then the moment’s over, and she looks away. “Let’s ride the seesaw. Everyone always talks about swings, but they’re so cliché. Swings are solitary, and no matter how high you fly, you can’t forget you’re alone. On a seesaw, you can’t forget you’re with someone. You go so much higher.”
I run over to the seesaw with her. It’s not the normal “plank of wood on a fulcrum” model. There are two small benches, with a larger plank between them. We each take one bench. The wood is hard, unforgiving, and everything creaks when anything moves, but I don’t care. I don’t care that I’m trespassing or that it’s midnight or that I’m wearing my gym clothes or that I barely know her. I don’t care that I’m dying or that the sun is dying or that the universe itself is dying because we’re on a seesaw, going up and down and up and down and up and down, and the night is chill, and the moonlight catches in California’s hair. I don’t care.
“Let’s play a game,” she says suddenly. “One of us asks a question. The other one answers. The first person answers her own question. Then the second person asks a new question, and then we start over. I’ll start. If you could go to any decade, when and where would you go, and why?”
I laugh because it shouldn’t be a surprise that she doesn’t ask simple questions. “The 1780s,” I find myself saying without really thinking it over. “I’d love to have been a part of the Constitutional Convention.”
“Of course.” She smiles. “I’d go to the 1920s or the 1940s because people didn’t take life for granted after the wars. Probably the ’40s, though, because they had better clothes.”
I laugh. “What’s your favorite color?”
“White,” she says instantly even though I would have guessed red from her car, her shoes, her lipstick. “It’s pure.”
“Mine’s blue.”
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
I’m laughing as I answer, “A Constitutional lawyer.” I pause. “Or maybe one of those guys who reads the Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July.”
She laughs too. “I want to be free.” Her smile disappears. “But not happy, never happy.”
“Why not happy?”
“Because happiness is an illusion, and I want to live something real, true, gritty but pure.”
“I’ve always wanted to be happy.” I look away, at the trees, the sky, the slide, at everything but her. “I’ve never thought I could be.” Until now, I think but I don’t say that.
“Boys or girls?”
My eyes snap back to her, and I can see that she’s perfectly serious. I blush, but I know I can’t lie to her. “Girls.”
She smiles that smile and the butterflies in my stomach start to flutter away. “I like everyone.” Then she frowns, delicately, thoughtful but not upset. “Well, I don’t actually like everyone. I mean that I could like anyone. It depends on the person. The good of the heart, you know?”
I take a moment to absorb what she said. I relish the up and down, the wood against the spine, the wind, the moonlight in her hair. I’m the closest I’ve ever felt to not dead, and I think that it’s enough. Life; California; this moment in June.
Day 24, night
“Hi,” California says as she invites herself into my apartment. “I’m sorry I didn’t call or anything. I know it’s late.” She looks absently at the green LCD display of my microwave, which reads 3:26. “Or I guess it’s early. I guess it doesn’t matter because I’ve told you that I hate technicalities, haven’t I?” She smiles, lets out a small laugh. “I do. I really do. They’re perversions of the truth. They hurt, and—some hurt’s good, you know, but some isn’t. People abuse technicalities. They shouldn’t. But people do a lot of things they shouldn’t. I’m sorry. It’s late or early or something, and I’ve woken you up. I should stop rambling. I’m sorry. I should stop apologizing when I don’t mean it.”
“Callie,” I say because I’ve just woken up and I’m not alert enough to think of anything but her name, her smile, the way she can just go on and on and on without stopping to think or breathe or regret. “Do you want some tea? Water? I don’t have much else.”
“No, I’m fine.” She looks around, her eyes darting, rather like a hurt animal. Everything about her is just the slightest bit off. Her hair is out of place; her curls are disheveled. She’s wearing slippers and an Oriental brocade robe that doesn’t quite reach her knees. She isn’t smiling. “Well, I guess I’m not fine. That’s kind of the point.” She stops again. She isn’t looking at me. “You should go back to sleep, Grace.”
“I don’t want to.” Gingerly, I reach out, rest my hand on her forearm.
She practically jumps at the contact. “I shouldn’t be here. I should leave. It’s just,” when her eyes roll up to the ceiling, they’re wet with tears she refuses to shed, “I had to get away. I needed oxygen. I wanted to see you.”
“Callie,
” I say because there isn’t anything else I trust myself to say. My heart’s too loud. Everything inside me hurts, and I can’t help but think that if this is love, I shouldn’t want any part of it. But I do. Because she makes me feel free and not dead, and I’m beginning to understand that that’s infinitely more important than happiness. What I feel for her is real, true, and gritty but pure; this is the dream. I pull her closer to me, and ever so slowly, I wrap my arms around her. I lean close, close my eyes, inhale. She smells like sun and grass and wind and sky and summer. Then her lips slide against mine. They’re soft, and her lipstick tastes like cherries. I run my tongue along her lips, breathing, biting, tasting, until she parts them. She’s warm, inside and out. Our breasts are pressed together between us, and I can feel the steady beat, beat, beat of her heart. She’s so alive, and so am I.
A Round Trip
Warren Smith III
I hear the familiar sounds of the train. I hear the people sharing their stories of daily life, the chug, chug, chug of the wheels moving over the tracks. I just listen and stare out the window. The world outside seems to be on fast-forward. As I watch, the train begins to slow at the next train station. The station fills with lights and movement and I glimpse a sign that says, Follow Your Passion. It’s just one of those signs advertising some new hotspot in the city, but instantly I remember that one night that changed me. How he changed me. A night I will never forget.
*
The train’s whistle blew, followed by the conductor’s shout of “All aboard!”
With my ticket in hand I got on. I was making my routine trip to work, and I took a seat right next to the window like always. I pulled out my little spiral notepad and placed it on the pull-out table. I carry it everywhere. Being a writer, it feels a part of me. I write all kinds of things: dreams, to-do lists, stories that pop into my head, song lyrics I hear on the radio. That day I was focused on figuring out what I was going to have for dinner.