by Pat Schmatz
Rasta pushes my hand away, laughing. She digs the kickshaw back up, tears it into tiny pieces, and mixes the pieces with the loose dirt.
“No, you won’t,” she says. “Kickshaws are not good.”
The next day, Sabi is gone. At breakfast, Tylee tells us that she never came back to Pieville after Social. The girl guides, Katrina and Shari and Lacey, came to clear out her slice before first gong.
“What’d she do?” Rasta asks.
“Do?” says Tylee. “She didn’t need to do anything. She just had to be her Sabi self. That’s plenty for expul, don’t you think?”
“Sabi’s nearly eighteen,” says Sully. “Straight to Blight. At least when I get expulled, I’ll know someone there.”
I don’t care one thing about Sabi — I’m actually relieved that she’s gone — but I will not let Sully leave CropCamp. No, no, no, no.
I have my second DM session that morning. Machete’s door opens, and she fills the frame. I duck under her arm, and the cool of the building falls all around me. She directs me to sit again in the cushy chair across from her. Probably the softest thing in CropCamp. I curl into the deepest corner, enjoying the break from the fierce sun.
“So. You had quite a first week. How does it feel, as the youngest camper here, to be part of the elite power cadre in girlville?”
Be careful, Rasta said. She’s going to push around and find our weak spots. She found Sabi’s somehow — got her to say or do the wrong thing and — wham, gone.
She did that to Sully, too. Not the wham-gone, not yet, but pushed her into thinking it’d happen soon.
Pushed her to me. Dusky Sully in the woods. Sully’s fingertips, Sully’s laugh, Sully’s eyes. Sully’s mouth.
“Our friend Sully has taken quite a shine to you. Why do you think that is?”
I snap up to meet Machete’s eyes. Can she see what’s in my head?
“We’re piemates,” I say.
“Proximity. Nona Raglisch is also in proximity, and that hasn’t put her in Sully’s path. So I’m wondering — what’s in it for Sully? She’s almost three years older than you. What do you think that she could be getting out of this?”
Machete slices right to the core of my own questions.
“We often befriend someone who has what we lack. What do you think Sully lacks?”
Nothing. Sully lacks nothing.
“It’s easy to see why you admire her. She’s bright, charismatic. But Kivali, you arrived here with independence as your outstanding characteristic. The question I left for your consideration last time was whether that independence is an asset or a liability. Independence without initiative is just reaction, rebellion. Did you initiate that little gathering the other night?”
Machete eases back in her chair and gazes at the square glass of the window. Outside, the heat shimmers.
“Or did you just go along with everything that Sully suggested?”
“If you think it was Sully’s idea, why did Sabi get expulled?”
“Sabi made decisions, and those decisions had consequences. We’re here to talk about your decisions.”
“Ms. Mischetti, what’s in the kickshaw?”
She grins so broadly, I can see all the way to her back teeth. She leans forward on her elbows.
“Now I’m seeing the real Kivali. You’re the first camper in this session to put that question out loud. I answer your question with a question. Why do you want to know?”
“I’ve never had anything like it.”
“No, I don’t imagine you have. You partnered with Emmett. He’s the next-youngest CropCamper. I was pleased to see you two make acquaintance. You’ll be good for him.”
“But what’s in the kickshaw?”
“You. You, and me, and Emmett and Tylee and Sully and Jyana and Lacey. All of us.”
She continues to smile. I stare at her.
“That’s not the answer you want, is it?”
“No.”
“You need your own answers, not mine. You need to know yourself deeply, and learn when and how to apply that self to the good of the greater community. I tell you that the kickshaw contains community. You say that you’ve never had anything like that. That’s something for you to think about.”
“How can I trust you if you won’t give real answers to my questions?”
She smiles again, and nods.
“Excellent question. More for you to think about, along with the ongoing question of independence. Here’s my most important question for you today: are you a leader or a follower?”
I’m not either. At least, I don’t think I am.
“Neither is superior,” she continues. “But they carry different responsibilities and different types of power. Once you decide which way you want to interact with the world, with your community, I can help you develop your skills.”
I look out the window. I’ve never felt anything as comfortable as this chair. It holds me in a soft, cool calm. Since losing my skin, nothing’s been calm. The wind blows right through me. Every time I see Sully, my stomach practically goes into convulsions. I could fall asleep in this chair.
“Kivali.” Machete speaks softly. “Remember: if anything gets too big for you, too overwhelming, you can always come to me. I might not know the answers, but I can help you think through the questions. And our sessions are entirely private. By law.”
What I really want to know is, why does Sully pick me over everyone else? Or does she? She can’t possibly like me the way that I like her — that’s too much. But if she does — what do I do with that? How do I get through the next eleven weeks of feeling like this? And what happens after?
“It’s a lot to handle at age fifteen, all these new feelings.” Maybe Machete has a peephole into my skull. “All these changes and decisions. That’s why most parents hold their children until seventeen. Even then, it’s difficult. You’re extraordinary, and I want to see you do well. Anything you need, you let me know. If you do well, we’ll all do well.”
Her clement gaze strokes my cheek, wiggles through cells of skin and bone to find my thoughts. Gentle. What if I trust her? I might. If I meet her eyes, I’ll say things out loud.
“As you think about leadership and initiative and community this week, remember the strengths you arrived with, the very things that draw Sully and Rasta and the others to you.”
A shiver runs somewhere along the crease where my physical self and my feelings hinge together. I blink back the rising wet in my eyes.
“You may go now if you like.”
I’m not sure I can. Maybe I don’t want to.
“Or if you like, you may stay here and rest a bit longer.”
I want to. I do. But she doesn’t like Sully. She wants to expul her. I can’t stay here. That’s like going over to the other side. I uncurl my legs and stab my feet onto the floor, straightening my knees.
She does not stand and make me walk under her arm. She stays at her desk. I look in her general direction as I open the door, but I don’t meet her eyes.
“Thanks,” I say.
“You are very welcome.”
I believe her. Without my skin, I believe everybody. I walk through the cool entryway, open the screen door, and step onto the sun-blasted porch. The heat embraces me, holding me from every angle.
MACHETE IS RIGHT. I’VE just been going along with things. Maybe that’s why Sully acts like nothing happened between us. Maybe she thinks that I think it’s no big deal. How can she know how I feel if I don’t tell her?
The gong rings after Solitude. Sully and I walk up the path together. I’m so nervous, I can’t breathe right. Am I going to do it? No. No, shut up. Yes, do it. Hurry, do it now, before she splits off with the Saturdays.
“Sully,” I say. “Meet me back at our pie after Block Four?”
“Sure,” she says.
Easy as that.
When the gong rings to end Block Four, I run down from the fields. I stop at the spigot, wash my face. Run for my slice, grab my t
oothbrush. Brush my teeth. Put my nose inside my coveralls and sniff. I don’t want to stink. I think I’m okay.
I wait on the back side of our pie in a wild fidget. My heart should calm down and stop making me sweat. It won’t. Our precious free time ticks away. Where is Sully? Maybe she forgot. Maybe she doesn’t want to come. Maybe something better came up.
Finally, finally, she saunters down the path. I wrap my arms around myself to keep from running over and grabbing her and shaking her and yelling, Where were you? What took you so long?
“Hey, Lizard,” she says. “What’s up?”
I turn and start walking into the woods. I hope that movement will settle me down. My armpits pour cold sweat.
“Where are we going?”
She trots up alongside me. I pass the fork and continue on the main path.
“Again, the Lizard speaks not,” she says. “It’s a surprise? A CropCamp hike?”
I want to be in the center of the oak grove. I want to set the soles of my feet on that patch of grass. Maybe in that place, I can find enough solid ground inside me to speak with initiative. Not be such a follower. We walk in silence, and I forget everything I had decided to say. The grove is farther back than I remember. Nothing from those first couple of days seems real anymore — Lizard Radio speaking in the night, the vaping bender, the grove. All that was before Sully.
Finally, the path opens ahead on the right with a breath of space and light. I don’t face Sully until I am planted in the dead center of the grove. She comes more slowly behind me, looking up at the trees.
“Sweet. How long have you been stowing away this secret spot?”
“Since that day we were late for dinner.” My voice works. “We need to talk.”
“Okay.” Sully nods. “You’re mad about the kiss, right?”
“No!” I can’t stand on my shaky legs anymore. I drop to sit on the grass, and Sully sits cross-legged, facing me. “No, not mad. I feel . . . I don’t know. Like I’m nervous all the time. Like I don’t want to eat. Is this normal? Is this what people feel?”
I can’t look at her. Half my guts are splat on the ground between us. I might as well put out the rest.
“Sully, are you a samer? I mean, would you ever be one?”
“Lizard.” Her voice is so soft, I dare to look up. Her eyes are dark — not lit up, just warm. Deep warm, deep true. “I don’t know what I am. I like some boys, and sometimes I like girls. You’re kind of both.”
She looks down, shakes her head.
“Marrying someone like Aaron, that’s what I’m supposed to want. I’m even trying to want it, but it’s just not working. I’ve got damage. That’s a long story you don’t want to hear, and it might not even matter. Chicken or egg, it’s in me now. I can’t make myself fit here or anywhere else.”
This is the Sully I love. The Sully who lets me see her. She doesn’t let anyone else see her this way. Not Aaron, not Rasta, not anyone.
“I feel like that, too,” I say. “All the time, all my life. Sometimes I think that I’m really not from here.”
“What do you mean?”
I take a long blade of grass and start to pull it apart, one green thread at a time.
“My foster, Sheila, she found me.”
“Found you?”
“On the sidewalk, newborn. Nobody ever figured out who put me there or why. The only clue is that I was wrapped in a yellow T-shirt with a picture of a lizard on it. That’s why I have the thing about lizards.”
Sully leans in, all listen and no speak. Have I ever been listened to so closely? I don’t think so.
“Sheila gave me Sauria for a middle name. It means lizard. When I was little, she used to tell me that the saurians dropped me here to save the world.”
I drop my head and find another blade of grass to shred. I sound like such a little kid. Dropped me here to save the world. It keeps reverberating in the silence of the grove. I wish that Sully would say something. Finally, I look up. The intensity of her gaze turns everything inside me to hot liquid.
“I knew that you were special the second I heard your lizardy voice. Me, I’m all grandiose blah-blah-I-don’t-belong-here, but you might actually be from somewhere else.”
“I think it’s just a story that Sheila made up.”
“Here I am jazzing around in your biz, throwing you all off everything, and you’re probably some kind of lizard superhero. I’m an idiot.”
“No, you’re not! I mean, if there’s anyone here who’s special, it’s you. You’re not like anyone else, ever. Nobody else can make me feel like this. It’s — I don’t even know what it is. But it’s so big. So much.”
Sully shakes her head. She looks down again, breaks a twig in half. Puts the pieces together and breaks it again. Then she looks in my eyes.
“You and me, we’re friends. No more jazz. It’ll just drag you down with me.”
“No, don’t say that! I feel you everywhere. All the time. Since you kissed me, it’s all I can think about.”
She looks at me with such sympathy, I can hardly stand it. I don’t want sympathy. I want that super-gravity force to pull us together again. I want her to want it like I want it.
She stands, gives me a hand, and pulls me up. I want her to put her hand on my neck again and pull me in, but she’s still all sympathy. She likes me, but she doesn’t feel like I do. I cross my arms, look at the ground. Sully reaches out her finger and catches the tear that spills over my lower eyelid. She puts her finger in her mouth.
“Tear of Lizard. Probably has magical powers.”
She sucks on her finger, and I can’t breathe.
“You need to understand about me,” she says. “I am truly not good. I will do the wrong thing every time. It’s a genetic defect, passed pure from my da.”
“You are good. I can see it.”
She shakes her head, no, no, no. Stares into my eyes and lets me see her in there, behind the lights, behind the flash, into that lonely secret place where she truly believes that she’s not good.
She puts her hands on my shoulders and draws me in close enough to set my entire body on electric fire. She reaches into my hair, close up to my scalp, and shakes my head gently back and forth.
“You are so irresistible,” she says.
My knees almost unhinge.
“For once in your life, Sullivan.” She’s not talking to me anymore. She’s not even looking at me. “Do the right thing.”
She resists. She takes her hand from my hair, and her eyes, those eyes that say so many things her mouth doesn’t say, she takes them away from me. Turns. Walks out of the grove. Leaves me shaking, skinless and alone, with the vibration of her body still shimmering through me. I sink to the grass.
It hurts. It hurts like nothing has hurt since that eight-year-old day in the school yard. And like that day, I can’t understand why I hurt so bad because nothing is broken. But still, it hurts so much.
The tears come fast and hard, harder than they have since that day. Once they start, I can’t stop them. I shudder and sob and it’s almost like a watery vomit, the way the tears rip themselves up and out of me. I cry until my eyes go dry, until I’m empty and silent. Finally, I roll over and look at the sky and touch the earth beneath me.
I am not eight. This is nothing like that, and I can’t cure it by pretending to be a lizard. It’s time to get real. Sully does not feel about me like I do about her. She is my piemate, and she is my friend. That’s it. That needs to be enough.
But she said that she likes boys and girls. You’re kind of both. She said that. So why wouldn’t she like me best?
I shouldn’t have talked about lizards. It made me sound not-sane. Or too kidlet.
I sit up, brush myself off, and trudge out of the grove. The gong rings. I trudge faster so I won’t be late for dinner.
RASTA PULLS ME ASIDE on the Quint that evening.
“Lizard, what did she do to you?”
Can everyone here read things right off my face?
“You’ve hardly said a word since your session — was it awful?”
Oh, she means Machete. Not Sully.
“She was okay,” I say. “But she blames Sully for the power-cadre thing.”
Rasta tips her head. Did I say Sully in some different tone of voice?
“She talked about leadership and initiative.” I rush on. “And about making decisions and stuff. You know, decision-making.”
Rasta’s head stays tipped. I should tell her — no. She wouldn’t understand. If it were her, she’d tell me. But I’m not her. I’m just not.
“You like her,” she says. “I can tell that you do. But Lizard, be careful. Something about her just feels wrong, even when she sounds right. Do you know what I mean?”
Machete. Not Sully. Machete.
“What do you mean, wrong? Wrong in what way?”
“The kickshaw way. Feels good, so you relax and don’t notice that it’s wrong.”
“But Rasta, maybe the kickshaws are good.”
Rasta looks off to the reddish west. Quiet. When she speaks, it’s barely over a whisper.
“I think I might throw up in her office tomorrow.”
“No, you won’t. You’ll be fine.”
She sighs and lies back on the grass. She holds up her hand.
“Strong alliance, right?”
I touch my fingertips to hers. I don’t say it back, and I don’t meet her eyes. Of course she notices. She notices everything.
It’s Wednesday morning, and Sully doesn’t holler me awake. Maybe she’s being considerate like Nona asked her to. Her feet move across the floor, rustle zip-zip, and gone. No movement in Nona’s slice, though. Nothing at all. I doze a bit, then blink awake again. Somebody moans.
“Nona?” I whisper. “Is that you?”
Another low moan. I pull coveralls on, slip outside, and stand at Nona’s door. She never opens her windows. Never. Not even when it’s sweltering hot.
“Nona? Are you okay?”
It’s a fresh morning, full of bird tweedle. A gentle breeze wafts over my skin. Nona moans again.
“I’m coming in.”
I unzip the door. Nona is huddled beneath the blankets.