What Z Sees

by Karen Rivers

  When I’m done, I’m breathless. Drained. Emptied. Like I’ve just worked out, only more than that. Like I’m clean again somehow. Like the singing has washed all this other stuff away.

  It’s the contrasts that make me feel wobbly, unsure. The mind-reading thing is so awful. The connections that I’m feeling are so strong, though, so suddenly necessary, so addictive.

  I don’t know what to do.

  I’m glad I told Axel. Maybe he’ll help me. Maybe he can. So far, he hasn’t. So far, he can’t. But just knowing that he knows somehow means that I’m only carrying half the load. And he kind of thinks parts of it are funny, which makes me see that they are funny, if that makes sense. He can see the lightness in it. The comic-book nature. Or maybe he’s just trying to make me see it. I know he’s worried. I know he doesn’t know what to do. What I can’t explain to him is that it’s okay that he doesn’t know. Neither of us know. But we don’t know together. That’s what matters.

  Together.

  It feels important.

  I’m thinking about Axel when I trip, gracelessly, falling down two short steps, my foot twisting on the heel, the heel snapping so audibly I think at first it’s a bone somewhere in my foot, my ankle, my leg. But it’s just the shoe. I sit there for a minute, maybe more, the throbbing in my foot coming into focus. It’s okay. I make myself stand up. Spot Hamster through the crowd coming toward me. Is he going to help me?

  Yes, I can see it.

  But I don’t want him to. Instead, I take the first hand that appears in front of me. I let a stranger help me up. The first thing that I notice when I see his face is that his thoughts aren’t there. Is he not thinking? What is it? At first, I’m confused. I’m so used to doing what I pretend I hate to do: glimpsing inside strangers, just for a second, just to get a taste of who they are.

  He’s beige. Like carpet fibres. Dense and woolly. I can’t get a read. It might be the pain in my foot, blocking. Distracting.

  His hand stays on mine. He pulls me over to his table.

  I’ll get you some water, he says.

  Okay, I say.

  The water appears in front of me, all ice and sweating glass. I trace patterns in the beads.

  You were really good, he says. Your voice is so rich. I love your voice. Is that creepy? Is your foot okay?

  He grins. His front teeth are slightly too far apart. He has freckles, but not like mine. His are pale brown. Undefined. I like the lack of definition of him. The blurriness. Nothing sharp here.

  I lean forward.

  What am I doing?

  I laugh with him.

  I tell him the joke about the muffins.

  I feel like myself. It’s so funny, like for the last month and a half, I’ve been swimming underwater, seeing everything through the lens of that, missing myself somehow. It feels so good to just be me. My foot is swelling, I can tell. It blurs my focus just enough, keeps me distracted just enough. I hardly need the bracelet but, once in a while, I see something dart in front of his face, like a furry animal moving fast and I don’t want to see it, so I press.

  It’s easy.

  It feels easy.

  John, I say his name. And that feels okay, too.

  Hamster comes over and tries to talk, but soon he drifts away. I don’t even notice. John touches my hand. He pushes my hair behind my ear and it doesn’t feel wrong.

  I like it.

  After that, I go home. Sleep dreamlessly. Wake up early and limp down to do the barn, not waking Axel up even though it’s his turn. I dig out the tents. We must have put them away wet after our birthday because they smell musty. It’s hard to do alone, but I set them up in a paddock we aren’t using for the horses. In a row: red, orange, blue. It takes a while. I hang the sleeping bags on the fence to air out.

  It takes a while and I’m sweating when I’m done all the chores and setting up camp. I go behind the barn and find some wood and build a fire ring from rocks. I’m excited, like I used to be when we did this. I haven’t even asked Axel yet if he will. But he will. I know it.

  I go back up to the house, to see if he’s awake. I don’t know what time he got home last night but it was after me. I go to his room and watch him sleep. I can smell the alcohol on him from the doorway of his bedroom. I didn’t even have to go in to know that he is hungover. Sick.

  I go back to the barn. I’m thinking I should ride. I should get Cake exercised, like always. But the barn makes me feel lost. It’s cool in there but somehow the stares of the horses make me feel uncomfortable. I go back up to the house and wait.

  I’m safe. I’m alone.

  I feel so funny. Restless. Like I can’t remember what I used to do. Can’t think of anything. The thing is that I sort of told John. Not really. But a bit. About the colours anyway. He was so easy to talk to. I’ve never felt — outside of Axel and Sin — that desire to spill myself open. And he reacted like, well, like it was no big deal. He just absorbed it, stayed taupe and soft.

  His eyes were dark brown. Long black eyelashes. When he smiled, his eyes crinkled up around the edges like paper curling in a fire.

  I felt like I was falling toward him. Which sounds so unbelievably cliched, but true. He made me feel lopsided, like I’m a boat and the weight of the passengers is causing me to list to one side. And I can’t right myself.

  I’m not someone who has a crush. I’m just not.

  I do, though. I have a crush.

  I want to tell Sin but she’s not home, I can’t find her. Where is she?

  She’ll get it. Sin has a crush on Axel. That’s something I can deal with, though the more I think about it, the more I worry about that, too. Like if they actually do get together, will I lose them both?

  I find the phone and punch in her number. The house is so quiet that I can hear the couch settle under my weight. In the corner, our fig tree drops a leaf and it flip-flops onto the floor. Her line rings and rings, no answer. Finally her voicemail picks up.

  I need to talk to you, I say. Please call me back. I want to camp tonight. I put up the tents.

  I hang up and then open the line again and listen to the dial tone. I feel like I should call someone else just to keep the line busy to keep John from calling, not that he’s going to, but just in case. It doesn’t make sense, but I don’t want to talk to him. Not quite yet. I do. I’m scared he won’t call.

  I’m scared he will.

  After I left the club, I walked home barefoot. I guess I’m lucky I didn’t step on broken glass or something worse. I just couldn’t get over how good it felt to have my feet meshing with the pavement, the city smells wafting off the still-hot road. The night air rolling over and around me. As long as I didn’t connect with anyone, I felt good. Finally, I flagged down a cab for a ride. We don’t exactly live within walking distance of downtown and taking a bus seemed too bright and loud and full of thinking people.

  I let John kiss me before I left. It’s no big deal. I’ve kissed boys before. But this was different. It was. I can’t explain it, it just was. The hair on my arms stood up. I practically ran away.

  A door slams downstairs and the unmistakably heavy footsteps of Dad jar the house. It has to be him. My heart thuds like I’ve just found a body in the closet or someone has jumped out at me with a chainsaw. My chest is cracking. Why am I scared?

  Stupid. I stand up, panicked. Where can I go? I want to disappear. I make myself breathe calmly. I can just go upstairs and he won’t notice. He’s in the kitchen, opening and closing the fridge. I can hear water being poured into a glass. Ice clinking in. Which makes me thirsty but there is no way I’m going down there. No way.

  Quickly I run back up the stairs, change into jeans for riding. Riding — which I really don’t want to do — is preferable to talking to him. Especially now. Now more than ever.

  Axel wakes up. I hear him stretch and groan. I dart into his room. Let’s ride, I say. Let’s go ride. Dad’s here. Let’s just go.

  He looks at me funny, but he gets out of bed. H
e stuffs his legs into his jeans.

  I go down the back stairs that go off the deck that’s attached to my room so I don’t have to pass Dad in the hall. I don’t wait for Axel.

  I’m all hopped up on adrenalin. When I stood at the open door of the airplane, which feels like a billion years ago, forever, and I was going to jump out, that had nothing on this. Nothing. That was a fun kind of fear or, it wasn’t at the time, but now it seems like it was. Because it was before. When I could still have fun. It was a luxury fear. I guess I really did know, in my heart of hearts, that nothing was going to happen. I could jokingly have a heart attack without really having one. Now? Now everything is so serious I wouldn’t be surprised if I did.

  I half-run, half-walk to the stables, iPod in so I can’t hear if Dad calls to me. I’m just not up for it. For him. I know that, if I look at him, I’ll know too much that I can’t know. I can’t explain it, but I feel dread drenching me with sweat when I think about him.

  Dad’s is the last mind I want access to. I don’t want to know, I really don’t. I don’t want to know anything. Not his secrets, where he goes, who he sees, what he thinks of Maman, what he thinks of me. It doesn’t take a genius to know he’s cheating on Maman and if I know — once I know for sure — I’ll have to tell Maman. I won’t be able to let her suffer cheerfully innocent. It would be too awful. I couldn’t.

  I run until I’m out of breath and struggle to whistle for Cake, who, lazing on the far side of the field, doesn’t seem to notice my arrival. He used to come running. I guess I deserve to be ignored, the way I’ve been treating him. Even a good-natured horse like Cake is going to take offence at being mistreated. I get his attention and he lumbers over. He looks at me askance as if to say, “Who are you?” or maybe more like “Who do you think you are?” I feel conscious of my every movement. I am being judged by my horse. It’s almost funny, if I think about it.

  Almost.

  I hum to him like I always used to do. He looks strangely unfamiliar to me, that’s part of the whole distortion of everything: people (and horses) who I thought I knew just look different. Mixed up. Their proportions wrong, shifted somehow by their extra dimension, in a way that can’t be measured. Somehow blurred around the edges.

  I reach out to touch his velvety nose but he nickers and shoves my hand away, hard. Like he means it. For a minute, I can understand why horses make Sin so uncomfortable. There is a warning, a danger in his face.

  I sigh. I have to stop thinking like this. It’s silly. I pull his bridle and drag him into the barn to tack him up. Axel catches up to me, panting. Reeking, too. Stale alcohol.

  Sorry, he says. Thanks for doing the barn. I slept in. I’m sorry.

  No big deal, I shrug.

  You’re riding? he asks.

  Yep, I say.

  Cool, he says. I’m so late today.

  He grabs Detritus’s tackle and whistles for his horse. His hair is sticking up on one side. He looks so young, like he could be any age. Nine. Four. He looks the same as always.

  Did you talk to Dad? I call.

  No, he calls back. Snuck down the back stairs.

  Oh, I say. Me too.

  I force myself up into the saddle and try to find footing in the stirrups. They slip around under my sneakers. I should be wearing proper boots but it’s too hot and I can’t be bothered. Finally, I’m settled. I walk him into the ring. Around once. Twice. Then Axel is there. He starts to trot over. I speed up to a trot myself, away from him. I want him to want to talk to me, but when he does, I don’t want to. It’s such a push-pull. Come closer, go away. I forgot to put my bracelet on. I dig my fingernails into my palm around the rein.

  Want to camp tonight? I call from far enough away that I can avoid seeing too much. I’m going to ask Sin.

  Uh, he says. Sure!

  Not Gigi, okay? I add.

  Oh, he says. Okay. I can see him shrugging. Whatever.

  I ride in circles for long enough that I feel like I’ve given Cake a decent enough workout. I ride until it feels natural- ish again. It feels okay. Easy. I don’t even try any jumps. Just a leisurely canter around and around the ring, the ground and sky spinning around me like vertigo until it keeps going even when I’ve stopped, like a whirlpool that’s pulling me into its vortex. When I’m too dizzy to continue, I pull Cake up short and walk him back to the barn. Axel is gone. Back up to the house, I figure. Maybe sitting with Dad at the kitchen table, casually talking like it’s no big deal that he comes and goes with increasing infrequency. Like it’s normal. Like he deserves to get the Dad treatment, the hey-buddy-how’s-the-horses chit-chat.

  Maybe not.

  I wash Cake down, give him a good grooming. He’s patient, but I can feel him pulling away. I’m doing it too hard or not hard enough. He’s sidestepping. Antsy. Maybe he just knows I should be alone. Maybe that’s all it is. Nothing more than that. I’m closing the stall door when the phone in my back pocket rings, startling Cake. He rears up, flattens me against the wall before he settles back down. I pick the phone up out of the hay and check the number. It was Sin.

  I wait for a few minutes, just long enough for my heart to stop racing so hard, and I call her.

  Come camping tonight, I say. Okay? I set it all up.

  Okay, she says. Sure. I’ll bring some marshmallows.

  Great, I say. I feel so happy, just for that second. Running through sprinklers happy. Little kid happy. Ice cream happy. I go and roll the sleeping bags into the tents. Make it tidy. Make it just so. Open the little windows at the back. Put the camping chairs up around the fire pit.

  As I walk up to the house again, I feel really okay. For the first time in ages. I feel like it’s somehow going to work out. Axel knows. I’ll tell Sin. Somehow the three of us, together like always, will figure it out. I know we will.

  We have to.

  AXEL

  Chapter 11

  AXEL’S TIRED FROM acting like it’s all okay, when it’s not. It’s just not okay. Not just all the stuff with Zara, more than that.

  There’s also the stuff with Sin.

  Camping out was ... well, he can’t use the word fun because it was so emotional. Zara finally telling Sin and Sin crying and crying. Crying wasn’t the result he was expecting. He was expecting ... shock, maybe. Or just surprise. Maybe disbelief. But the tears were startling.

  He wishes now, looking back, that he hadn’t been quite so drunk. But there was something about the fire, the marshmallows, the tiny tents, the stars in the sky and all that fresh air: He just drank and drank and drank some more.

  Zara and Sin huddled there, both of them crying. Then there was laughter but by then he’d lost the thread of the conversation. Something about a boy. Someone named John. Who was that? He wasn’t sure. Someone Zara met? It wasn’t clear. He’d removed himself with the bottle; that was the problem. He’d taken himself out of the equation.

  A couple of times, he’d noticed Zara looking at him. Directly. Reading his thoughts, no doubt, but he wasn’t having thoughts, just a blur; a carnival ride of images that barely meant anything to him so couldn’t have clicked with her.

  He was sort of hiding from her. Hiding behind Southern Comfort, the most disgusting drink ever, its sweetness biting into his teeth and tongue. Maybe she glimpsed something in the way he looked at Sin. More than once. Her face lit by the fire, he was so drawn to hen

  He was so ...

  It was wrong. He made himself think of Gigi. Passed out, actually, right there in his chair thinking about Gigi. So even Zara couldn’t have seen anything she shouldn’t have about Sin.

  Anyway, that wasn’t the point. The point was that now Sin knows. Sin can help him. It’s not just him, carrying the knowledge and not being able to help Zara, to fix her. To really totally understand. It’s shared.

  It’s definitely better that way.

  They didn’t talk about much else, just Zara, which was good. It made him feel whole somehow. It was all out there. But he did keep thinking about Des.
About Wick. About that. He wanted to bring it up. Get Sin’s take on it, maybe. He wanted to confess how it made him feel. He wanted to voice it.

  But he drank instead. Couldn’t articulate this selfish thought. This ...

  It’s just... Maybe it was highlighted by watching Zara and Sin. Hugging each other. Rolling on the grass laughing. Lighting their marshmallows on fire. Sobbing. Sitting so close. He just wanted to be between them. Stuck in the middle of their friendship. Held safe.

  And he’d thought that Des was his friend like that. Des and Wick, but mostly Des. That Des was his Sin, sort of. That Des was ... Weren’t they blood brothers, after all? When they were ten or twelve or something, they’d stabbed each other’s fingers with sewing needles and done that blood brother thing. He remembers they’d had to try a bunch of times to break the skin. Skin was tougher than they’d anticipated. The needle jabbing and jabbing away and finally that bead of crimson. He’d thought that meant something.

  Now that he’s had time to adjust to the whole issue of them being gay, he’s suddenly reeling from the secretive- ness of the whole thing. It’s that they didn’t tell. They had a secret and he didn’t know, wasn’t part of the secret, wasn’t included. Not that he’d have wanted to be included included, but he would have liked to have known.

  Wasn’t Des his best friend? Obviously, it’s not like they’re girls or something, telling each other everything and giggling on the phone late into the night, like Zara and Sin. But this isn’t exactly a small detail that could be overlooked in casual chit-chat either. What it comes down to is that he feels embarrassed. That he didn’t know. That they didn’t tell him. He feels like maybe he was kidding himself all along. He was never really part of the group. It was rich Wick and rich Des and he was just the kid who owned the stables where they kept their fancy horses. Maybe they never ever considered him as an equal. Maybe he was a joke all along. Not part of the club. The elite. Like Hamster: always on the outside looking in, and privately the butt of a lot of jokes. On the periphery.