Apartment 1986

by Lisa Papademetriou

“Hello? Callie?”

  “Cassius! Hi! Did you get my texts?”

  “What? No, Callie—I can’t read texts, and it’s too loud here—”

  “Ohmygosh! Oh, Cassius, I’m so sorry, but I have to go to school today it’s placement testing and if I miss it—”

  “Callie—”

  “—if I miss it they’ll call my parents and I won’t be able to take—”

  “Callie—”

  “—I won’t be able to take any of the electives I want and—”

  “Callie.” He isn’t shouting. If anything, his voice is softer than usual. He sounds small, like he has aged in reverse, or something . . .

  “Are you okay?”

  “I . . . I’m not sure where I am.” He’s breathing heavily, and I realize that he’s scared.

  “What? Wait—where are you?”

  “I just said that I don’t know!”

  “But—where do you think you are? Aren’t you at Eighty-Sixth?” That’s the subway stop where I was supposed to meet him this morning at eight forty-five.

  Where I was supposed to meet him, but didn’t.

  “I was at Eighty-Sixth, but when you didn’t show up, I thought maybe there was a mix-up and you went ahead to the museum without me. I got on the train—but there was some kind of an announcement. I couldn’t hear it—”

  “Nobody can ever hear those things, it’s like someone is trying to speak with a giant tin can on their head! Why don’t they—”

  “I think I might have gotten on the A or something—”

  “Oh my god—”

  Sometimes trains run on weird tracks, if there is construction or a track fire or if someone dies on the train, which happens more often than you would think.

  “I got off, but I’m not sure where I am—I can’t—it’s dark; the signs are so hard to see—” His voice is rising, and I realize that he isn’t just scared. He’s panicking.

  I try to speak in my most soothing voice. “Can you see anything? A sign?”

  “There’s a mosaic. Tiles—an M and an . . . an H.”

  “MH?” That doesn’t sound like anything. Why can’t he be someplace obvious, like Grand Central? “Okay,” I say. “Just breathe . . . Is someone around? Can you ask?”

  “I don’t want anyone to know that I can’t see!”

  “Okay.”

  “There’s no one here, anyway—Callie, I think I might be having a heart attack—”

  “You’re not. You’re just freaking out. Trust me, it happens to me all the time. Try to look at a cloud—”

  “I’m underground!”

  “Breathe! I’ll figure it out. I’m coming for you—”

  “Callie,” he whispers, and then I hear his voice choking. He can hardly speak, and I feel it, I feel it all over my skin that he is weeping. “Callie—I’m going blind.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m going blind . . .” He is whispering now.

  “I’m coming. I’m coming for you, Cassius.” The phone is hot against my cheek, like it might burst into flames. My face is wet, but I don’t know if that’s from sweat or tears or some other bodily fluid.

  “Callie—”

  “I’m coming! I’ll be right there! Breathe!”

  “Thank you—”

  I hang up and turn back toward the front door.

  But I’m blocked by Ms. Blount.

  My history teacher.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  In which the heroine reaches for the sky, but ends up in space

  “CALLIE VITALIS,” MS. BLOUNT says, eyeing me coolly. “It’s so nice to see you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Are you feeling much better?”

  “Uh . . .” I fake a cough. “Much better,” I say.

  “I’m so relieved, as placement testing is this morning. And I do believe that you owe me a revised essay?”

  “Right.” I pat my bag. “Of course. Got it right here.”

  Ms. Blount’s hair is always sculpted, as if she maybe pours it into a mold and then puts it on her skull. When she tilts her head, her hair stays still, like a hat. It’s creepy. “So you had better get to your homeroom.”

  “I . . . uh . . . I left something . . .”

  She checks the gold men’s watch that she always wears. “You have three minutes, Ms. Vitalis.”

  “Okay . . . right. Thank you.” And then I even add, “Good point!” as I back toward the stairs. Once I reach the stairwell, I peek to see if Ms. Blount is going to move on, maybe to terrorize the rest of the hallways. But she doesn’t move. She plants herself like a fireplug in front of those double doors.

  Poop.

  “Pooppooppoop,” I whisper. I realize that I can’t get out the front door. But there is no way—no way that I’m leaving Cassius on a subway platform. I have to get out of here! I think desperately, looking up the stairs. My classroom is on the fifth floor, and I start trudging up the steps, wondering if I could get out of a window. But I don’t want to drop three flights down to the pavement—

  And then it hits me—

  The fire escape!

  You can get to it from the roof! And if there is one place I know how to get to in this whole stupid school, it’s the roof!

  I run up the stairs, my thighs burning, praying that nobody catches me pleasepleaseplease because I have to get to Cassius. My chest is wheezing and my muscles are aching and I wish that I were an exercisey person because then this wouldn’t hurt so much and oh my god I just realized I’m going to have to go down seven flights of stairs on a fire escape! But that’s too intense to really think about and so I just tell myself don’t look down don’t look down don’t look down all the while I am climbing up and up and up . . .

  There! I reach for my bag and start searching for the key.

  Gah! It’s not there! It’s supposed to be in the little inside pocket! It must have fallen out. I frantically begin clawing through my bag, which is dumb, because who can find anything in this mess? And finally I think, Maybe Selena left it unlocked, so I shove my shoulder against the door, and am shocked when it actually opens. For a moment, I’m blinded by the blue sky, the bright sun, and I close my eyes and suck in a deep breath.

  “Callie?”

  When I open my eyes, I see Zelda.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  In which the heroine realizes that she really doesn’t know anything at all

  “WHAT—WHAT ARE YOU DOING here?” Zelda asks. She looks frightened and sad and like maybe I caught her doing something that she shouldn’t be doing, which is okay, because I am doing the same thing.

  “How did you get up here?” I ask her.

  “I told Selena that I needed a breath of fresh air. The cleaning lady. She told me that you come up here sometimes.”

  “That’s . . . true. But—listen, the testing is about to start.”

  “I know.” Zelda looks out, over the buildings. Then she peers down at the street below. “We’re so far up.” Then she looks up at the sky. “And we’re so far down.”

  I look toward the sky, following her glance to where a white cloud curls overhead, like a dragon tail. “Yes.”

  “Do you even know what I mean?” The way she asks this is like she doesn’t think I possibly could.

  “I do know what you mean,” I say. “Like, we’re totally small. And we’re totally insignificant—”

  “Doesn’t it make you feel like nothing you do will ever matter?” The wind lifts her long, blond hair away from her face and it is ridiculous because Zelda seriously looks like she is in a movie right now, but like a way different movie from the one I’m in, in which I have to climb down a fire escape and rescue a friend stuck in the subway. “Doesn’t it make you feel minuscule?”

  “Yeah, but I kind of like that. Like, no matter how much I screw up, it’s just—whatever, who cares? We’re so small.”

  “You never screw up, Callie. Your life is perfect.”

  “WHAT? Ohmygod, WHAT? That is ONE THOU
SAND BILLION PERCENT FALSE. How can you even SAY that when you’re standing there with your hair streaming out like you’re in a Selena Gomez video? YOUR life is perfect. You’re beautiful and smart and—”

  “Not smart.” Zelda swallows and shakes her head. She looks up at the sky. “Not smart enough.”

  “Enough for what?” Now my hair is whipping around, and of course it gets stuck in my lip gloss, and I try to spit it out, like bbbbfffffft, so I can add, “You’re one of the top girls in our class!”

  “Not the top girl.” Zelda looks me in the eye. “Two of my brothers went to Harvard. Even Jimmy went to Dartmouth.” Everyone in Zelda’s family calls her youngest older brother “Poor Jimmy” because he’s not the brightest. “But I’m not even on track to be as good as Jimmy. My scores are—” She shakes her head. “I can’t take tests!”

  “So what? You can play the cello and take ballet and you’re such a good writer, Zelda—”

  “Tests, though. That’s how you get into good colleges.”

  “That’s, like, FIVE YEARS from now!” My hair is whipping around like crazy, and a piece even gets stuck to my eyeball, but I just wipe it away. Why does it have to be so WINDY? God, I wish I had a KITE right now, but that would be rude considering that my good friend seems to be having a minor nervous breakdown, or whatever.

  “No. It’s today. If I don’t do well on the placements, I won’t get into the advanced classes. Janice says that if I’m not in advanced classes in eighth, I won’t be in advanced classes for ninth, or tenth—or ever. And then I’ll end up going to some third-tier school—”

  “Are you crying? Are you crying over a dumb test?!” I just can’t even deal with this.

  “You don’t know what my mother is like!” Zelda’s face is twisted and red, and I never thought someone as beautiful as she is could look so hideous. This is a big, fat, messy ugly cry like I must have been doing yesterday (was it just yesterday?) in the Frick with Cassius. And when I think about that, I realize that yesterday, I probably would have thought that Zelda’s problem was a big deal, too. And even if it isn’t a big deal to me—it’s a big deal to her. And I want to help her, but I just can’t right now.

  I take a deep breath.

  “Zelda, we’re friends,” I tell her. “I want you to know that my life is not perfect. In fact, there’s a lot of stuff you don’t know about me, okay? Like that my dad lost his job. And we’re broke. And I have never met Taylor Swift or been on Beyoncé’s yacht. The CW is not making a show based on my cousin’s life. I’m not related to the Kardashians. Just—none of it.”

  “But you look like Khloe!”

  “I do not look like Khloe; my nose is huge.”

  Zelda blinks, clearly shocked. “You . . . lied?”

  “I lied! About SO. MUCH. STUFF! Taylor Swift never gave me her family’s secret recipe for chicken soup! That wasn’t even my cousin you met the other day! He’s my friend and I have to go and get him because he is going blind and is stuck in the subway and doesn’t know where he is.”

  “Wait—” Zelda twists her fingers through her hair. “Is . . . is that true?”

  “Yes. That part is true. Now I have to go. But we can talk about your stuff later, okay?”

  “You’ll miss placement tests!”

  “Who cares? I’ve skipped an entire week of school. I’ll probably get kicked out of here, anyway.” I stalk over to the edge of the building. The fire escape doesn’t come all the way to the roof—just up to the highest window on the floor below—so I carefully lower myself onto it.

  “Ohmygod, be careful!” Zelda cries.

  I look up at her worried face. It’s a strange thing to realize that you totally don’t know someone, that underneath the skin you see every day is a whole world that you can’t even imagine. And that they can’t imagine you, the real you. Not unless you show them. They have no idea.

  Thoughts like that really make you think.

  “Zelda, I’ve got to go help Cassius.” I look up into her worried face. “Would you please tell anyone you see that I was hideously sick, and you put me in a cab home?”

  “Yes,” she says breathlessly.

  I check my phone. “One minute,” I tell her, meaning that the test is about to start.

  She nods, and turns to go, but a moment later, her head reappears. “Callie,” she tells me. “Good luck.”

  “Same to you,” I say. And then I remember what Anna used to always tell me before a test. “Go murder it.”

  “Okay,” she says.

  “It’s going to be all right. Everything is always changing!” And, as I begin to clatter down the black iron steps of the fire escape, I add, “Live without regrets!”

  “Okay . . .” Zelda calls after me.

  I really hope she can.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  In which I am a SUPERSLEUTH

  BY THE TIME I reach the Eighty-Sixth Street subway, I am more sweaty and grimy than I have ever been in my entire life, and a line from a song keeps looping in my mind, singing, “Back of my neck feelin’ dirty and gritty/back of my neck feelin’ dirty and gritty/back of my neck feelin’ dirty and gritty,” over and over again until I really just want to shout or make a weird noise to make it go away.

  Instead, that stupid song just gets louder as I hustle down the steps and into the subway. Okay, the Studio Museum of Harlem is at 125th Street. At the Eighty-Sixth Street subway stop, you can take the local train, the 6. Or you could go down another level and take the 4 or 5. Which would make more sense, because those are express trains, so they’ll make fewer stops before they reach 125th.

  That’s what Cassius would do, I bet.

  I take the steps down again farther. Only a couple of people are down there, which means one of two things:

  The train just came and left a minute ago.

  Something weird is up with the trains.

  So far, I am feeling like Sherlock Holmes, only with better people skills. Flyers are posted on the pilings. The 5 train is, for some mysterious reason, bypassing all station stops until 138th Street—Grand Concourse.

  “Grand Concourse?” I say to myself. A middle-aged man in a bomber jacket is standing near me. “Excuse me, can you tell me what neighborhood Grand Concourse is located in?”

  “Mott Haven,” the guy replies. “Check the map.” Then he jerks his thumb toward a map on the wall.

  “Mott Haven?” I repeat, but I dimly remember Cassius saying that there were an M and an H on the wall. I look at the map. Right—the first stop after Eighty-Sixth Street is usually 125th Street. But today it’s 138th.

  That must be what happened—Cassius got on the 5 and got off at the first stop, but today it’s Grand Concourse.

  Cassius is in the Bronx.

  I wait there for seven minutes (which feels like seven hours, honestly and truly) until a train comes. Finally, it does, and I avoid the totally empty car because I know it must be empty for a good reason—like it’s one thousand degrees inside or else someone puked on all the seats—and I get into a nice, clean, not-too-crowded air-conditioned car, and I just sit there while the train clicks and clacks and rumbles on, and zooms me up to Cassius.

  When I step out of the train, he is sitting there. He is sitting on one of those strange wooden benches that are left over from 1492, or whenever the subway was first built. He is sitting very straight, staring ahead, looking at the cars but, I know, not really seeing them, at least not well.

  “Cassius!” I call out.

  I guess I sort of expect him to jump up and run—gazelle-like, and maybe through a field of daisies—over to me and thank me or something, but instead, he closes his eyes and leans his head backward. He just sits there like that as the few strangers from the train pass by, not even noticing this boy who is just staring at the ceiling and . . . I don’t know. Breathing, I guess.

  I walk over to him. “Cassius,” I say again. And then I sit down beside him.

  “You’re here,” he says, still looking up a
t the ceiling.

  “I’m here. I made it! I totally found you. I was like Nancy Drew—so, like, the 5 was skipping some stops. We’re at 138th Street. In the Bronx.”

  Cassius nods slightly, as if my blathering is still sort of fluttering around his head.

  “Isn’t it great that I figured out where you were?” I’m a little embarrassed that I felt the need to say this, but I really just kind of want Cassius to be proud of me.

  He lifts his head up and looks at me. “What do you think MH stands for?” he asks, pointing to a tile mosaic.

  “Mott Haven,” I tell him, and am a little annoyed that he still hasn’t said how, like, impressed he is and how grateful he is, but whatever.

  Cassius just nods quickly and takes a little shuddery breath. “I think I’m getting worse,” he says. “It’s hard to tell, you know, because it’s only changing bit by bit when it’s happening to you.”

  “Yeah.” Anna got glasses in third grade, and she told me that she just thought that everyone saw a blurry chalkboard. She didn’t even realize that her eyesight had gotten worse over the year.

  “But it’s happening.” He sighs. “I can still manage, but . . . Look, I’m sorry I freaked out on you.”

  “Why are you sorry? Seriously, I don’t think you’re freaking out enough.”

  Cassius shrugs, and his lips turn down. They look like a steel crowbar. “It’s like they say: whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

  I stare at him a moment. “Nobody says that.”

  “Lots of people say it, Callie. They say it to me all the time.” He lets out this laugh. It’s a bitter laugh. “All the time.”

  “Anyone who says that to you is a total jerk, because that saying makes zero sense.”

  He holds out his hands palms-up, like he’s going to explain it to me. “Well, emotionally you . . .”

  “Are you kidding right now? Going blind is supposed to make you stronger? That’s—that actually pisses me off.” I’m thinking about Grandma Hildy, too. Her son died—did that make her stronger? No! It made her sad. It made her sad for years. There is a little place in her that will probably be sad forever. The fact is, not everything is something you can get over, okay? I have never heard of this stupid saying before, and I’m glad, because if I saw that written on a mug, I would SMASH THAT MUG!