Black Box

by Cassia Leo

  And I’ll be damned if I listen to some stranger about where and when to wear my gloves. I don’t care how good-looking he is or how cute his name is. And if this asshole asks me any more awkward questions, I’m out of here. I can find a cheap motel to stay in near the airport.

  I glance at Crush and he’s staring out the window. I get a weird pang of guilt in my stomach as I realize he’s not going to pressure me to keep the gloves on. I’m trying to make a point when there’s no point to be made.

  Fine.

  I pull my gloves back on just as the cab begins to slow down in front of a café with a cute little sign hanging out front: Render Coffee. The name sounds vaguely familiar. I’m sure Rina may have talked about it before. She’s probably even invited me to come here. She is ridiculously persistent in her attempts to get me out of the house.

  Crush hands the cab driver a fifty-dollar bill for a twenty-four-dollar cab ride then tells him to keep the change. I roll my eyes as I scoot out of the backseat and my boots land in some fresh snow on the curb. Crush taps my hip for me to move out of his way and he steps out after me. The driver sets our bags and the guitar case on the curb and nods before he gets back inside the cab and drives off.

  I should pull my hood up, but I’m frozen. Something about this whole situation feels weird.

  ‘Why do you look confused?’ Crush asks as he slides the handle of my carry-on bag over the telescoping handle of his suitcase.

  How do you tell someone that going to a coffee shop feels weird because it feels too normal? I’m not used to normal.

  ‘I don’t get out much.’

  My phone vibrates in my coat pocket and I curse myself for forgetting to turn off the vibrating ringtone. Crush looks confused by my response as I pull my phone out of my pocket and stare at it. The snow immediately melts on the screen and blurs the letters flashing in front of me.

  ‘I should probably check it inside.’

  He nods and I follow him up the eight concrete steps to the entrance of Render, amazed at how he makes hauling two pieces of luggage and a guitar case up a flight of stairs, and also holding the door open for me, look so fucking easy. He could probably carry the weight of the world on those shoulders. He flashes me a charming half-smile, as if he knows what I’m thinking. I brush past him, close enough to get a whiff of the warm scent wafting off his gray twill coat. He smells like a summer breeze in the middle of winter, and the scent stops me cold.

  I blink furiously against the memory; the tangy, metallic scent of blood . . . I can’t see through the blood, but I can feel. I’m broken in every sense of the word. I squeeze my eyes tightly and take another deep breath. I smell coffee now. I open my eyes and grit my teeth as I blink a few more times, to completely clear the memory.

  ‘Got some snow in my eyes,’ I mutter when I notice the concerned look on his face.

  The café is almost empty; just a couple of girls in hipster glasses hanging out at the bar counter overlooking the sidewalk, watching the snowfall. Looks like no one wanted to brave the storm for a cup of the best coffee in Boston. At least we have plenty of room to sit down with our luggage.

  The glass pastry case is filled with untouched croissants, muffins, scones, and quiches. I don’t eat this stuff unless Rina brings me something shitty from the local donut shop. People think it’s weird that I’m nineteen and I don’t drive. I don’t understand what’s so weird about that. I don’t trust myself with a car.

  Crush clears his throat and I tear my gaze away from the pastries. ‘You hungry?’

  ‘Are you buying?’

  He purses his lips and shrugs adorably, and I finally notice his eyes. They looked dark in the terminal, but they’re actually as green as mine. I’ve never seen anyone with eyes as green as mine, except for Meaghan.

  ‘I did ask you to come here, so I guess I’m buying,’ he replies.

  I turn back to the pastry case and point my gloved finger at a huge muffin with some kind of crumble topping. ‘I’ll take that and an iced mocha with extra caramel sauce,’ I say to the guy behind the counter.

  ‘Somehow, I am not at all surprised by that order,’ Crush says, shaking his head as he peers over my shoulder into the pastry case. ‘I’ll take a breakfast bagel and a non-fat cappuccino.’

  ‘Wow. You’re way more boring than I thought you would be.’

  He laughs as he pulls his wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans. ‘Just wait until we sit down and I entertain you with the topic of my senior thesis.’

  ‘That sounds like a threat.’

  He shakes his head as he hands the barista his credit card. ‘I guess that depends on how much you enjoy discussing the cross-cultural significance and dimensionality of emotion in music.’

  He doesn’t look at me as he waits for the guy to give him back his card. I get a strange feeling like he’s waiting for me to judge him. ‘I’m just a sophomore, so I haven’t chosen my senior thesis.’ And I never will. ‘But I think the study of emotion in music is probably one of the coolest thesis topics I could ever imagine.’

  He takes his credit card back from the barista then uses his finger to sign the white computer screen. ‘Maybe I’m as interesting as you thought I’d be.’

  Suddenly, my stomach feels jittery and my mouth goes dry. I want to reach into my purse and take a pill from my emergency stash, but something tells me this guy would know they’re not medication. Then it hits me.

  What if my parents sent this guy to keep an eye on me?

  No, that’s crazy. That’s the kind of thoughts that will get me locked up again. But why else would he be this nice to me? He’s way out of my league. He’s 50 percent rock star and 50 percent Harvard.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asks and I nod as I grab the handle of my suitcase and pull it toward the tables in the back of the café.

  If I thought I had any chance of keeping up this charade for another two or three days, or however long it will take for this storm to pass, then I’d go home. But I’ve put too much work into this. I’ve been speaking with academic counselors and psychologists for weeks, building this elaborate lie of transferring from Massasoit to Santa Monica College. The purpose of this trip is for a job interview at a local youth center. It would have been easier to do the Federal Work Study program, but I thought they’d think I was more serious about putting the night of the party behind me if I told them I wanted to work with at-risk youth.

  I take a seat at a table and it’s a bit dreary in here with the glass ceiling of the patio enclosure covered in snow. Crush sets his guitar against the wall and moves both of our suitcases next to the case so they’re out of our way. He takes a seat across from me and I quickly pull off my gloves and tuck them inside my purse. He removes his gray twill coat, but he keeps his green hoodie on.

  He hangs his coat on the back of the chair and sits across from me. He stares at my hands for a few seconds before he looks up. ‘Do we know each other?’

  Mikki sits back in the wooden chair and nothing about the tattoos on her fingers or the color of her eyes, or hair, are familiar. I can’t grasp what it is about her, but I keep feeling as if I recognize something about her that no one would ever notice; like the curve of her neck or the sound of her breath. That’s insane.

  She chuckles softly as she crosses her arms over her chest. ‘Is that your best pickup line?’

  I smile back at her and shrug. I knew she would think this was a come-on. ‘It doesn’t matter if we know each other. We have plenty of time to rectify that. So what do you do? Do you work, go to school, raise hell?’

  ‘All of the above. I work in the admin office of the community college where I also go to school.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me where you raise hell.’

  Her eyes fall to the floor as she gently shakes her head. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you do? I mean, it’s pretty obvious that you’re a music major, but is that it?’

  ‘Actually . . .’

  The barista with the shaggy brown hair shows
up with our food and coffee. He flashes us a tight smile as he sets everything down on the table.

  ‘Cream and sugar are over there,’ he says, pointing behind him, then he walks away.

  Mikki grabs her iced mocha and takes a long draw from her cold beverage.

  ‘I guess this is where I ask you why you’re drinking an iced coffee during a blizzard, but I’d rather steer clear of clichés.’

  She looks at me as she crudely tears her muffin in half then breaks a piece off the bottom and pops it into her mouth. ‘You still haven’t told me what you do besides school,’ she says through a mouthful of muffin.

  I push my bagel and cappuccino aside so I can lean forward and watch her up close as she devours her pastry. ‘I told you, I’d rather steer clear of clichés.’

  She takes a long sip of her mocha then sits back to put some more space between us. ‘Are you calling yourself a cliché? What do you do, play guitar at local bars?’ She leaves the top of the muffin untouched then pushes the plate away.

  ‘You don’t eat the muffin top?’

  ‘Everybody loves the top of the muffin.’ She casts a scathing glare in the direction of the muffin top. ‘No one ever stops to think about the poor, neglected bottom.’

  ‘Somehow, I have a feeling you’re not being purposely contradictory.’ Her hands are trembling as she reaches for her drink. ‘Are you cold?’

  The café is stiflingly hot, but I don’t bother mentioning this. Something tells me she’s not shaking with cold. She pushes her coffee aside without taking another sip then she eyes the muffin top as if she’s considering compromising her principles to satisfy her hunger.

  ‘No,’ she replies, tucking her hands under the table.

  I’m overcome with an intense urge to reach underneath the wooden surface and grab her hand.

  ‘Why are you going to L.A.?’ I ask, hoping the change of subject will help her relax. ‘You said the rest of your life is waiting there. Does that mean you’re moving there?’

  I say a mental prayer that she’s not going there to meet a guy. Not sure why I should care. I’ve known the girl for thirty seconds.

  She stares at the table, a faint smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. ‘A job interview.’

  Her smile is hiding something and, truthfully, it looks a bit sinister. When she looks up from the table, she sees my unease and quickly casts her gaze downward as if she’s ashamed. What are you running from? I want to ask.

  ‘So why are you going to L.A.?’ she asks, still staring at the table.

  ‘To record a song.’

  ‘For your thesis or to get rich and famous?’

  ‘Both and neither.’

  Finally, she looks up and in that one second I feel it again. This intense déjà vu.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re doing it for artistic purposes?’

  I chuckle as I reach for my cappuccino. ‘Do I look like the kind of guy who would do something for artistic purposes?’

  ‘Are you deliberately trying to confuse me?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  She shakes her head and looks away from me, toward the snow-covered foliage behind the café. Resting her hands on the table again, she closes her eyes and takes a slow breath.

  There it is.

  That’s how I know her.

  No fucking way. I have to be imagining this.

  My chest constricts with the anger I’ve been unable to shake free of for the past three years. Gritting my teeth against the force of the memories, I try to keep myself from wishing it’s her. If this is her, it doesn’t look like she’s coping well.

  It can’t be her. That would be way too much of a coincidence.

  She opens her eyes and reaches for the purse she hung on the back of her chair. She plunges her delicate, tattooed hand inside and comes up with a prescription bottle of pills. Her hands are still trembling as she opens the bottle and shakes out one blue capsule.

  She holds the capsule between her thumb and forefinger and holds it up for me to see. ‘I’m bipolar. Is that sexy?’ She pops the pill into her mouth and guzzles it down with some iced coffee. ‘Why do you look like you just saw a ghost? Have you never heard someone admit to being mentally ill?’

  ‘You remind me of someone I once knew . . . very briefly.’

  I push my cappuccino aside and I can’t even imagine eating the bagel now. I know this girl isn’t her, but I’ve lost my appetite. That’s the way these things go. Once you dredge up the memories you’ve spent years trying to bury, suddenly they’re everywhere. There are two people I’ve been trying to put out of my mind for years: the first is Jordan and the second is her. Though I’ve failed miserably on both counts. Sometimes I wish I never listened to Harlow about going to L.A.

  I began writing this song three years ago and worked on it every day for two years, until I gave up on it last year. It will never be perfect. There’s something missing; something I’ll probably never find, which is why I allowed Harlow to set up the meeting with Kane Bentley in L.A. to listen to the demo. It’s time to put this song, and the memories, and the longing to rest – if that’s even possible.

  Harlow met Kane at a charity event. Without my consent, she used her irresistible charm and wit – and maybe the promise of some social media seminars – to get me what may be the most important meeting of my career. Kane is a producer who’s worked with everyone from Michael Jackson to Lady Gaga. I have exactly four days to record and edit the demo before my meeting with Kane on Saturday. Every day the flights are delayed is one less day I have to record.

  So after one year of avoiding certain streets, certain songs, certain people, last week I dug up the song from the archives of my laptop. I dusted off the acoustic-electric guitar that I put in storage because it reminded me too much of her. Then I warmed up my flattened penny and I haven’t slept much since then. That’s the way these things go.

  ‘You don’t remind me of anyone,’ she says, standing from her chair. She begins scratching her head as she looks around the café. ‘Where’s the restroom?’

  She scoops up her purse then disappears through a marked door in the corridor at the bottom of the steps leading to the patio enclosure. I pull my phone out of my pocket and see I have another text from Harlow and one from Bethany: a girl I slept with a couple of days ago, after Aidan’s New Year’s Eve party. I hardly know Aidan, though we shared a dorm last year before I moved off campus. Harlow is the only person who really knows me and not even she knows everything about me. A consequence of losing someone close to you is that you also lose a piece of yourself. And you never really know when it’s safe to give away another piece.

  I wait at least fifteen minutes, while carrying on a text conversation with Harlow, before I decide to check on Mikki. I make my way to the restroom door and listen for a few seconds. Hearing nothing, I knock three times.

  The knocking on the door doesn’t startle me. I sit on the toilet with my panties chained around my ankles, staring at the cream-colored walls. I’ve been in here a while, and the meth is finally kicking in; my heart is racing and my fingertips are starting to get a little cold and numb. I’m not breathing fast enough to keep up with my heart. That’s okay. I like the numbness.

  Grabbing my purse off the sink, I pull a large, sharpened safety pin out of an inner pocket. I gave this safety pin a name because he’s my trusty little friend who I knew I could count on to make it through airport security. I call him Casper. I unclasp the safety pin and stare at the sharp point, the way it glimmers in the awful bathroom lighting. I press the point against the fair skin at the top of my thigh, almost where it meets my hip, then I drag it lightly across my skin. It stings a little, leaving a thin pink line that fills me with relief and revulsion. I dig the pin deeper into my skin and drag it across again, over the same pink line, applying more pressure this time. My stomach clenches inside me until I pull the pin away from my skin and let out a deep breath. Tiny red droplets of fresh blood bubble up from the scratch. I close my eye
s as I cross my arms over my belly and double over.

  The knocking has stopped. Hopefully, Crush has realized that he should just grab his fucking bagel and leave me, and my craziness, far behind.

  Another knock. ‘Miss, are you all right in there?’

  Fuck. Crush has enlisted the help of the nerd behind the counter. I quickly get dressed and stuff the open safety pin into the pocket of my skinny jeans. Maybe it will prick me while I’m walking around looking for a place to sleep tonight. Stupid storm. What kind of cheap motel room am I going to get with $70 in my bank account?

  I had to buy two plane tickets for this trip and both of those were canceled today. One of those flights has an overnight layover in Chicago and the other – the flight I was really going to take – was a direct flight that was supposed to land at LAX in five hours. The flight with the layover isn’t supposed to land until 2:00 p.m. tomorrow. But now that all flights are canceled, my parents and Meaghan and Rina are going to start looking for me. Rina will find my letter. I can’t wander the streets of Boston. It won’t take long for the cops to spot a girl with black hair, tattoos on her fingers, and a scar running from the corner of her mouth to the point of her chin. I have to hole up somewhere until this storm passes.

  A key slides into the lock and the bathroom door opens just as I’m drying my hands on a paper towel. ‘Can’t a girl take a piss in private?’ I say, pushing past the nerd.

  I walk right past Crush, ignoring him when he calls out to me. ‘Where are you going?’

  I want to shout back, I need a cigarette or I may become homicidal! Pushing through the door, a flurry of icy wind blasts me in the face. I gasp and curse at the same time. ‘Fucking shit!’

  Crush appears behind me at the threshold looking a bit pissed off. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

  ‘What does it look like I’m doing?’ I reach for the pack of cigarettes in my coat pocket, but my pocket is missing and my wool coat doesn’t feel like wool.

  I’m not wearing my coat.

  ‘Get in here before you freeze to death.’

  My hands tremble as I stuff them into my jeans pockets in an attempt to cover up my moment of meth-induced mania. I step back inside, making sure not to touch him as he stands like a fucking stone column in the middle of the threshold. I can feel the embarrassment curling my shoulders as I attempt to retreat into myself. Why am I here with a complete stranger? And why is this stranger so fucking concerned with my safety? Offering me a cab ride and some breakfast, knocking on bathroom doors, chasing me out of coffee shops.

  ‘What are you, some fucking superhero for freaks?’ I mutter as he takes the seat across from me at the table.

  ‘Super-freak?’

  I smile reluctantly at this joke, but the moment he smiles back I feel sick to my stomach. I take a deep breath as a wave of regret overcomes me and, the guilt comes. Whenever I’m high around friends or family, there’s always a measure of guilt for not being totally present. But I don’t know this guy. Why should I even care if he thinks I’m a bit weird or spacey?

  Because, for some weird reason, he seems to care about me.

  ‘That will be your nickname.’ I reach for the discarded muffin top and break off a piece. ‘Super-freak.’

  He smiles, probably thinking I’m going to put the muffin in my mouth. ‘Ah, hypocrisy flourishes in the face of hunger.’

  I break up the muffin and watch it crumble from my fingertips onto the plate. ‘I’m not eating it. I’m merely destroying it and everything it stands for.’

  ‘What does the muffin stand for?’

  ‘Conformity and exclusion. If you’re not the best or the prettiest – or the tastiest – then you’re worthless. That’s what the muffin top stands for.’

  ‘God,’ he whispers. ‘Can you be any more charming?’

  ‘Maybe if I had a drink or two in me.’

  ‘It’s ten o’clock in the morning.’

  ‘Yeah, and it’s really fucking cold. So cold we may all be frozen to death by tomorrow morning. Do you want to spend the last day of your life worrying about the appropriate time to start drinking? Cause I’m pretty sure the appropriate time was about one hour ago when they canceled all the flights.’

  He nods as he stands from the chair and begins to put on his coat. ‘You make a good case. I will not be filing an appeal this time.’

  I pull on my black wool coat and he leaves some cash on the table, then we grab our luggage and head for the door. Yanking the drawstrings on my hoodie as tight as I can, I brace myself for the inevitable blast of cold air. Crush exits ahead of me, presumably to absorb the brunt of the blast.

  ‘I know a place just around the corner from here on Mass,’ he shouts over the whoosh of the wind. ‘You think you can make it? Looks to be at least four inches of snow on this pavement.’

  ‘I’ll let you know if I feel a bout of death coming on.’

  We keep our heads down as we drag our suitcases down Columbus Avenue through the snow; or, at least, I attempt to. It takes about fifteen seconds of this for me to regret every single piece of clothing I packed in this suitcase in my grand scheme to appear normal. We’re halfway down the block when the chest pains begin.

  ‘Wait,’ I wheeze, clutching my chest as I try to catch my breath.

  ‘Do you have asthma?’