by Amy McNamara
I close my eyes and inhale. “Why does that smell like a candy bar?”
“Cocoa mulch,” he says, his voice closer than I expect. I open my eyes to find him standing in front of me. He drops a few brown husks into my hand.
I lift them to my face and inhale.
“Tell me this,” he says. “Has worrying ever saved anyone from anything? Ever?”
I shrug, ashamed to be having this conversation.
“I’m not trying to make you feel bad. I just think people spend more time worrying than they do actually living.”
“A kid I knew died,” I start.
“And worry could have saved him?”
“Well . . . caution.”
“Ah, not the same, though, worry and caution.”
“I guess not,” I concede, feeling super stupid. “But maybe for some people it’s hard to stop.”
He stares at me a minute, bouncing the rake off its tines from one hand to the other. “I’m not saying it’s easy, especially if your brain’s tuned that way, but isn’t that all the more reason to resist? I mean, worrying kind of makes the thing come true. You know? In your head, whether it happens for real or not, you’re living it either way. What’s the quote? You’re paying interest on a debt you may never owe?”
He goes back to work, the rake tines jingle-singing next to me.
“I make maps.” I don’t know why I’m telling him this. Partly to change the subject but partly because he’s making me say things I don’t normally say. Some kind of magnetic fox power or something.
“Maps?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s cool. Like with software or something?”
No, maps for art, I think, embarrassed. I shake my head and play with the ends of my scarf. I hate having to talk about it. Explain myself. This is what it will be like if I apply to TeenART. A private world made public. My face heats up. I’m a citizen of Embarrassment. Their senior ambassador.
“Pencil. Paint sometimes. Whatever’s on hand. They’re not . . . literal. I mean, I make them for myself. It’s weird to try to explain!” I’m stammering. “It used to be something I did kind of for fun, but now they’re changing. They feel more important or something, like they’re . . .”
I don’t know what they are.
“Tools of resistance,” Theo says. He’s so right I’m quiet a minute. “Show me one sometime?”
He shovels mulch onto a large plastic tarp, then gathers the corners and drags it over to another rosebush, where he starts to spread it.
“And I’m in this fight with my best friend—I’ve been thinking about another map—the city without Em.”
“So, a moving-on kind of thing?” He cocks his head toward me.
I shake my head because I don’t know what it is, but the thought of losing Em, moving past her, makes me feel sick.
“She’s not speaking to me,” I say, my throat tight.
Theo stops and leans on the rake, squints at me through the mulchy dust.
I fidget under the inspection.
“What?” I ask, really blushing now. Glad for the fading daylight.
“Maybe I didn’t understand what you meant,” he says. “The city without Em sounds more like a map of lack than a tool of resistance.”
A map of lack.
My face must show how close I am to coming apart, because Theo sets his rake down, sprints to the other end of the yard, and pulls a second rake from under a bench. He brings it over to me and we work in silence until we’re both sweaty.
When we’re done, we lean the rakes against the wall near a heavy wooden door at the other end of the garden.
Theo gives me a sly smile and produces a dark skeleton key from a cord around his neck. Waggles it in front of my face, then slips it in the old lock.
I hit him on the arm. “You had a key.”
“You thought they made me hop the wall every time I come to work?” He grins, dodging my second blow.
“You work here?”
“I wasn’t spreading mulch out of the goodness of my heart,” he laughs. “Although I probably would. I love yard work, and you don’t get much of that in the city.”
“God, I feel so stupid!” I’m kind of giddy from the manual labor, my limbs full of blood and twitching. Drawing maps doesn’t really count as exercise. “You made me do that impossible climb for nothing!”
He clutches at his chest like I’ve shot an arrow into his heart.
“For nothing? Excuse me, but was I wrong? I believe I promised you something cool?”
“No, yes.” I shake my head. “You did.”
“The first time I came here, I was kinda . . . I don’t know . . . anyway, that’s how I got in,” he says.
“Over the wall.”
“Yep.” He wiggles the key a few times until it engages, and the door swings in, heavy on its hinges.
“That’s mysterious.”
“After you.” He extends his arm with a flourish and I step out. While he coaxes the old lock shut again, I bend and grab a rock. Theo’s right. Who needs a map of lack? Chalk would work better, and I make a mental note to pick up some, but an artist makes use of the tools at hand. I scratch a pair of rakes crisscrossed like swords onto the soft surface of one of the bricks. I’ll map where I’ve been found.
Theo smiles at me, ready to go.
I glance at my tiny rakes. I’ll map it right on the city itself.
Souvenir
IT’S DARKER ON THE STREET SOMEHOW, like we left our lighter selves in there and slipped back out into the city as shadows. We walk toward my place in silence, Theo with his long-legged gait, and me trotting next to him, trying to match his stride.
“Sorry,” he says, noticing my scurry. “I walk super fast.” His face has darkened, or maybe it’s just how the bluish streetlight hits it, but he looks like he’s working something out.
“So how did you find that place?” I ask. “Are you like one of those Hidden New York people going around sneaking into locked places?”
“I was hiding out.”
Not what I was expecting. I look up at him, but his face is unreadable. I slip my phone out of my pocket and check for texts. It’s a reflex. My phone’s on airplane mode until my month rolls over.
“Hiding out?” I ask, eyes on the screen.
He doesn’t answer.
I look up.
“I hate phones.” He says it evenly, but his tone is cool again.
“Okay . . . ?”
Maybe he’s crazy. This doesn’t feel like my life. There has to be a catch here, somewhere. I slip my phone back in my pocket.
“So, don’t expect me to have one,” he says, like that explains the random conversational turn. “I can’t stand them. Everyone walks around half here, dim-lit by screens.”
He touches my arm and I flinch. I can’t help it. He looks at me, startled, like I’m the one acting weird.
“When I told you to climb up that wall, you looked at me like I was insane, but you were looking me in the eye. You know? People on phones never look at each other. My mom and dad text when they’re in the same room. It’s so messed up.”
I stop caring about whether or not he’s nuts, because now he’s grinning at me, his hand on my arm, shaking it a little like he’s trying to wake me up. For a second I see myself reflected in his eyes, smaller and perfect, like I’m not just me, but half of something else, a him-n-me.
“Why were you hiding out?”
Theo’s face closes up. Another cold spot. He drops my arm and keeps his eyes on the sidewalk.
One sidewalk square silent.
Then two.
Then three.
If I had chalk in my pocket I’d drop to the ground and outline myself. Place where Evie murdered her own chances. So much for the tools of resistance.
Another endless minute, then Theo clears his throat.
“I needed a place to stay.”
“You needed a place to stay?”
He nods. “I was in ther
e three nights before they noticed me.”
Okay. He is crazy, and you’re not supposed to taunt crazy people, but tell that to my mouth, which is already open wide and tripping over its disbelief.
“Three nights?” I forge ahead, incredulous. “You slept in there? Outside? Like a homeless person?”
A lot of people are nuts. Statistically speaking some of them must be cute. I squint at him peripherally, like I’m not conducting a sanity inspection, but he’s not blind.
“Oh yeah. Now you’re really freaked out,” Theo says, sounding somewhat satisfied. He makes a weirdo sideways face at me. Cackles.
“So, like, um, was it some kind of religious retreat?”
Theo laughs. “I’m totally scaring you!”
I smile, but still shove my hand in my pocket, wrap it around my phone. “Because my friend Emma’s Catholic, and they—”
“I’m not religious.”
He wrenches my arm, pulling me to one side. This is it, he’s going to murder me. Of course he is. No one this cute pays attention to me. I let out a small scream and kind of skip to catch my balance. Why don’t I ever trust my instincts?
“Wow, jumpy! You were about to step in dog poop.” Theo points to a smeary mess on the sidewalk and steadies me with a hand at my back.
“Oh! Ha!” I try to recover. “Sorry! I mean, thanks.” I’m jittery. “Did they call the cops when they found you?”
“No cops.”
“Why—”
He shakes his head, cutting me off. “Nah, that’s a story for another time. It’s how I met Father Joe, though, and he got me into boxing.”
“A priest got you into boxing?”
“Excellent, right?” he says with a half smile. “Sparred with him this afternoon.”
I point to his lip. “Did he give you that?”
“Mr. Play-by-the-rules? Ha, no,” he laughs, touching his stitches. “That would totally destroy him. This was something else. Unrelated.”
We round a corner close to my place and there they are, Alice and Jack, lounging in the deepening chill on the stoop of Alice’s redbrick town house looking all couply and cute, Alice bundled in a plaid wool blanket, with Jack wrapped around her from behind, a step above.
My stomach rolls over.
“Eves!” Jack spots us before I can change course. He raises an arm to wave as we approach, but his hand stops midair, hovers there a minute while he squints to see who I’m with. “Where’d you go this afternoon . . . ?” he says slowly, like he’s trying to assess the situation.
The tables have turned. Even though Jack’s sitting there wrapped around Alice, I’ve thrown him for a loop by being out with Theo.
“Where you headed?” he tries again.
Emma’s always reminding me that just because someone asks a question, I don’t have to answer it.
I step ever-so-slightly closer to Theo.
“Hey, Jack, hey, Alice.” I try to keep my voice flat, like I’m totally underwhelmed to see them. Then I turn back toward Theo like he was in the middle of telling me the most interesting thing ever.
If I’d been paying attention to anything other than the electric shiver in the air around Theo and me I would have avoided this block, with Emma’s and Alice’s houses, one on either end. I’ve walked it a billion times. Broke my wrist practically on this very spot when Emma braked sharp on her bike and shot me off her handlebars.
“Evie,” Alice’s voice rings out. “Did you talk to Em?”
I narrow my eyes in the dark to see if Em’s out too, sitting with them on the stoop, but she’s not. It used to be the three of us on Em’s stoop—Emma, Jack, and me—warm on the self-heating stadium cushions Mrs. Sullivan keeps in the cupboard in the foyer. How neatly I’ve been swapped out for Alice Weir.
“Been busy.” I quicken my pace. Theo slows and catches me by the shoulder. For a second I worry he’s going to echo Alice’s question, ask me why I haven’t talked to Em yet, but he reaches to untangle something from my hair.
“Souvenir?” He grins, his face so close to mine our foreheads nearly touch. He lifts his palm to show me a cocoa hull. “Did you want that there? Something to remember me by?”
Before I can answer, Jack stands and starts down Alice’s stoop.
“Dude. Is that Theo Gray?” He squints at us, surprised.
“Hey, man.” Theo nods, throwing his shoulders back and straightening up.
I roll the cocoa hull between my thumb and forefinger and we pass them by, walking the rest of the block, each of us lost in our own silence.
Between Thrill and Disaster
HE SQUEEZED MY HAND GOOD-BYE.
That’s it.
I stand in the hallway by our door a minute. What does that mean? A hand squeeze. When I let myself in, my mom has Mrs. Gray’s colcannon on the table, and she’s humming something cheerful. I sit across from her ready to be mildly peppered with questions about where I was and who I was with, but she’s weirdly preoccupied, checking her phone. She only half listens when I tell her where the food came from, and asks me nothing about my tour. Must have been something good at work. She looks happier than she has in a while.
I push the food around my plate and replay our good-bye. Theo’s lean-in-over-me, breath-on-my-face almost-kiss . . . then the awkward hand squeeze. I cup my hand over my mouth to smell my breath. Smells like colcannon. Thanks to the mirrors in our lobby the weirdness was infinite—endless Theos squeezing endless Evies’ hands.
Agony.
Blindfolded on a fire escape. That’s what this feels like. Treacherously high. Teetering at the point between thrill and disaster. A hand squeeze!
Not as bad as what I did to Jack . . . but still.
“Oh,” my mom says, as if we’ve been talking to each other and not eating in silence.
“Yeah?” I take a bite. Theo’s mom’s dish is fluffy and buttery and tastes like heaven.
“I thought I saw Emma near our door when I came around the corner,” she says, taking a sip of water. “I waved at her, but after I looked in my bag for my keys, she was gone.”
“Em?”
My mom nods.
“She came by?”
“Well, I thought it was Emma,” my mom says with a little shrug. “But I don’t know where she went.”
I reach across the table for my phone. No messages. Weirdest day ever. Some kind of portal’s obviously open between my normal life and Unpredictable Otherness. May as well keep stepping through.
I shove a few more bites in my mouth, then stand to clear my plate. I can’t keep wondering. Emma was here. She wants to talk to me too, face-to-face. Time to go see her.
Wild Eyes Wide
THE WHOLE WALK OVER I TRY to plan what I’ll say, but when I get there words are beside the point. The noise of a fight pours through the front doors. I peer in. The windows into the foyer are only slightly obscured by lace curtains. I can see the three of them almost as clearly as if I’d been invited inside. Emma’s dad is shouting, and beneath his cacophony, Mrs. Sullivan murmurs like a mourning dove. The dogs, Grizzle and Sam, are running nervous barking circles around Em, who’s closest to the door, arms crossed over her chest. Her dad kind of spooks me when he’s like this. I doubt my dad would have yelled. Mr. Sullivan can really lose it.
My heart starts skipping around inside me like it’s already decided we should get out of here. I didn’t count on this.
I’m just starting to back down the steps when their front door flies open. Emma bursts onto the stoop, wild eyes wide. She stops when she sees me.
“Why are you here?” she demands.
Not the warmest welcome.
Before I can answer, their door swings open again and her dad barrels out, nearly crashing into where she stands frozen on the top of the stoop.
“You will not leave!” he bellows, clamping a hand on her shoulder. Then he spots me.
“Evie.” He stops short, composes himself. He looks just like Patrick when he does it, this suppressed fury
face he made when he’d had it with us bugging him. Patrick was at his nicest when Mamie was around.
Mr. S. wraps his mouth into a straight line that’s probably meant to be a smile.
“Well then.”
We stand there a minute, the three of us, in stunned silence.
The front door opens again and Mrs. Sullivan steps out, her hand at the collar of her blouse.
“Ah, Evie,” she says in her super-calm voice. “I saw you through the window. At least it’s family at the door and not someone else. How wonderful!”
Emma hates it when she talks like this. She says her mom acts like anything other than nice is a sin. I’ve never seen her yell. When they fight Emma’s the one making all the noise. I can’t remember Mrs. Sullivan ever reprimanding us for anything. She’s more likely to offer a gentle suggestion, a reminder to rethink. Emma told me just once she wanted to see her mom go nuts and totally lose it. I said but then the world would end, there’d be too much disturbance in the natural order. Emma doesn’t know what she’s asking for. Her mom has it together.
Mrs. Sullivan sweeps us all inside like we’re a manageable mess, her eyes wide, that calm smile. “Come in out of the cold. Evie, if you can stay I’ll make tea for you girls. I’ll bring it and the rest of the ginger cake up to Emma’s room.”
About fifty expressions flash across Emma’s face rapid-fire, like she’s a sped-up time-lapse, reliving every look she’s ever reserved for her parents, until she settles on a death glare, keeping her back to her mother and her fists clenched at her sides.
Still. It’s not a rejection.
I follow her in.
An Act of Love
I TOUCH MY FINGERS LIGHTLY ON Patrick’s bedroom door when we pass it on our way to Em’s room. It’s been closed since he died. I do it every time I walk by, but never if Em’s looking.
I follow her into her room.
“What about trust?” Emma shouts. She slams the door so hard on trust her chalkboard falls to the floor and the walls issue a gritty, crumbling-plaster shush. Grizzle snuffle-whines outside her door. He was Patrick’s but sticks close to Em now. I crack the door and let him in.