Looking for Group

by Rory Harrison

  My knees crack as I scramble to my feet. I’m not trying to listen to them, but the whole house, all bare wood and glass, amplifies everything. I can even hear my socked feet rasping as I orient myself. The back, panicked part of my brain wants me to gear up and get the hell out. It’s always flight with me, never fight.

  “They’re pants,” Arden says, frustrated. There’s a wobble in her voice. “They’re just pants.”

  Concrete Blocks wants to know, “What’s wrong with jeans?”

  I spin in place, searching for my shoes, my stuff. I don’t know why I can’t find them— it’s not like my shit is all over the place or anything. Damn it, I want my bag. I just want to have it close. When I spot it, I snatch it up. The bottle inside rattles.

  Arden sounds trapped, struggling for a reply. Finally, she coughs up one word, “Nothing.”

  “Okay great,” Concrete Blocks says, like he won the war. “We agree, everybody wears jeans. Why don’t you go put some on, then?”

  Shit, where can I go, though? Not out the door; they’re right outside the door. Like an idiot, I look out the window. It’s a long way down, right into rose bushes.

  “Whatever,” Arden mutters. When she comes in the room, she’s not defeated. She’s just exhausted. Me, I just stand there, silent.

  No big surprise, she doesn’t go for the closet; she’s not changing the fucking pants. They’re nice, they look nice. They’re black skinny jeans with big, white flowers printed on them. They go real good with the black-and-white-checked shirt she’s layered over them.

  I think maybe for a minute she forgot I was even here. She pulls off her headband, her dark curls exploding into a halo around her head. With a swipe across her eyes, she puts herself together and I see the armor go on. I see the deep breath go shallow. Hardness spreads through her shoulders; her spine tightens up. And when she looks up, her green eyes stare right through me.

  “Sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

  “You didn’t.”

  Everything’s tense again, like we didn’t spend all last night getting the feel of each other outside the game. I’m holding my bag like it might run from me. She’s stretching the shit out of that headband, till the black fabric goes pale and loses its shape. It seems like a long time, but the silence doesn’t really last.

  Arden melts into motion again. She tosses the headband on her desk. “Yeah, so anyway, welcome to my life.”

  Everything around us dims. Probably clouds shifting outside the window, it’s just weather. But weather changes, and so does a room. Everything that looked clean and rich and perfect to me last night—now it looks like a stop sign. The neat edges warn, don’t touch. The sharp corners say, don’t get comfortable. It’s not a good place to be sick and sad. It’s not a good place.

  That realization gives me a flare of courage. I pull the strap of my bag over my neck. “You wanna get out of here?”

  “Yeah,” she says. She steps into a pair of boat shoes, then looks for her keys. “I noticed you didn’t have a car out there. What’s up with that?”

  The flare feeds a hard, hot seed right in the middle of my chest. It grows, little feelers stretching under my skin. They pulse; they warm. It’s that idea, that quest, coming back to life. The one that sounded so good when I was driving, and sounded so stupid when I was elbow to elbow with Arden in the game.

  And I dunno, maybe it’s the fact that the light shifted. Or maybe it’s realizing, even though I could turn around and go home, I don’t want to. Or maybe it’s some paladin bullshit, thinking I can sweep into this tower and rescue Arden the Good, I don’t know. It’s a lot of things, and a lot of those things don’t even have names or words to go with them. I just feel like maybe Arden never even got a chance to make a wish, let alone turn one down, like I did. This is what we do to feel better: we play the game. We go on quests.

  So I say, “You remember the Pearl Ship?” Because we talked about it in the game. We talked about Atlantis, and Avalon, the Bermuda Triangle, and El Dorado—all kinds of places that are supposed to be, or maybe never were.

  She squints at me, baffled. “Uh . . . maybe?”

  “Yeah you do,” I tell her. My hands curve the shape of a galleon in the air. “The one in the desert, the one—”

  “Full of pearls,” she says. It’s obvious she recognizes it now; just as obvious she doesn’t know why I’m going on about it. “Sitting out there full of treasure. Waiting for somebody to find it, yeah.”

  I dart forward. Too fast; she startles. But when I grab her hands, she doesn’t pull away. I lower my voice, though, because I don’t know where Concrete Blocks is, but I do know how good voices carry around here. “Let’s go on a quest, Arden. You’re on spring break, right? Let’s go find it. You and me, right now. Fuck your dad; let’s go. Let’s go right now.”

  She doesn’t say it’s just a story. She doesn’t say you’re crazy, we can’t, it’s impossible, I don’t want to, it’s a bad idea, none of that. No. There’s no more words; instead, there’s motion. Arden sends me to the garage to wait for her. On my way, I liberate all the oranges from the bowl on the kitchen counter.

  Fuck me, we’re going.

  (DIRECTIONS)

  Leather seats. About a million times, I read books that talked about buttery leather, and I never got it. What, it’s greasy? It’s slick? I finally decided on slick. It didn’t make sense in context, but what did? Closed up in Arden’s car, I get it now. The seats are smooth, almost velvety, and not cold at all. Smooth and creamy and rich and all right, yeah, buttery.

  “Nice car,” I say when Arden finally slides into the driver’s seat. She had to pack and who even knows what she just threw in the trunk. Well, she does. Guess I’ll find out. Or maybe not. It’s a mystery.

  Starting the engine, Arden only sort of nods. “It’s my stepmom’s old car. She upgraded.”

  “How do you upgrade a Mercedes?” I ask her. It’s a fair question. The peace symbol’s right there on the hood, or maybe it’s a gun scope. Or propellers. What the hell is it? Now it’s gonna bug me until I find out.

  “You get a newer Mercedes,” she replies.

  There’s something dark and unhappy in the way she says that. Even though I know why, I can’t really wrap my head around it. Every nice thing I have, I hoard like a dragon on top of diamonds. There are days when I’d literally hiss and bite if somebody came for my books or my laptop.

  “What did you tell your dad?” I ask.

  With a bitter-edged smile, she shrugged. “Said I was going to buy jeans.”

  We pull out of the garage, and I hear nothing but my breath (labored, no stridor—that means I’m panting, but not whistling and wheezing). It’s impossible that a car has an engine this quiet. For once, I shut up.

  Clutching the armrest, I squint into pale morning light. It won’t settle; it bounces off the hood, off the windows of the houses as we pass by. This car feels like a glass submarine; all the world’s blocked out, but all the morning sun flooding in. We skim down the street, and it’s not till we get to an intersection that Arden turns to me.

  “All right, let’s get our quest on. What do I put into the Garmin?” she asks.

  “Just get back to I-70.”

  “But then what?”

  “You drive west for, like, a week, then turn left onto I-15.”

  We’re far enough away from the house now that she can smile. It’s not even against my will; I smile right back at her. We’re blowing this popsicle stand; we’re getting the hell out of Dodge. We’re alone together now, proper alone, like we are in the game—she scares me; I like it.

  “Okay, west for a week, then south for . . . another week? Or what?”

  “It’s forty some-odd hours if you drive straight through,” I tell her. Swimming in my leather seat, I twist beneath the belt. “Or like five days, if we go eight hours a day. We can take I-70 straight to I-15, or we can wander all over, pay a bunch of tolls and drive through endless Dakotas. You k
now what’s in the Dakotas? Nothing. You look up desolate online and you’ll get a picture of North Dakota.”

  “Okay, so you have an I-70 fetish, I get it,” Arden teases.

  With all the love in my heart, I flip her off. She’s so soft and pale; I feel like I can poke a finger right through her skin and stir her up. But I don’t. I don’t want to. Maybe there are other things I wanna do; that’s a thought that pops and sparks, but I leave it alone.

  After a light, after a nice little roundabout, Arden leans her head toward me and asks, “How do you know this shit?”

  I mean, isn’t it obvious? Doesn’t she know me? I’ve spent the last couple years wasting away in bed, with a laptop for my window outside. “A little Googlebird told me.”

  “Oh, okay, a Googlebird.” She reaches out and smacks the back of her hand against my shoulder. Not hard, just like, to change the subject. “You want to stop and get breakfast?”

  “We have oranges,” I say. Then I add, “I don’t have much money.”

  “Left all your gold in the bank, huh?”

  “Yep. But I can pay you back. When I die, you can have my stuff.”

  If we were in game, that joke would be hilarious. When people get pissy because something’s not going their way, they threaten to bail. Like, screw you guys, you can’t do this without me. Except, it’s a whole game full of people, and yeah we can. So they get wound up, then you make fun of them until they leave. And when they do? You yell after them, “Can I have your stuff?”

  It’s one of the many ways you can call somebody a pissy little dick in Warcraft without saying it directly. (You have to be sneaky; pissy little dicks report you to the mods.) So then, sometimes you just say it to be funny—just now, I said it to be funny.

  But Arden’s smile fails. She grips the wheel with both hands, a muscle flickering in her jaw. The pulse fluttering in her throat seems to race; she’s stiff all of a sudden. Plastic and molded into place.

  That joke in real life? It’s not funny. I realize that now, a little too late. Not funny, when I’m sitting next to her, rubbing the knot the PICC line left behind after my last round of chemo.

  Not funny after she agrees to go on a quest with me; just not funny. Everything gets heavy. Her eyes fall, like she’s reconsidering all of this.

  She’s crazy if she doesn’t. I’m not dying, but I’m not okay. It’s really fucking obvious, too. Right now, she’s probably worrying—What do I do? What did I get myself into? Her expressions are shadows; they flicker across her lips and brow.

  Reaching out, I say, “It was a shitty joke, I’m sorry.”

  Too nice to agree, she makes a soft sound. One that says she heard what I said, but she’s not gonna reply.

  Now I have to promise. Seal it with a vow. “I won’t do it again, all right?”

  “All right,” she says, her lips flat and pale.

  She drives fast, but in the Mercedes, it barely feels like we’re moving.

  (DESTINATIONS)

  I don’t set out to start a fight. It just happens. I keep sorta happening, and I need to stop.

  The greasy haze of hash browns lingers in the air. It competes with the leather, and I have to roll the window down. It’s funny—sometimes I can’t smell anything, then other times it’s all too overpowering. The breakfast that smelled good a half hour ago is turning my stomach now. Touching the button, I look at Arden and say, “Can I?”

  “You don’t have to ask.”

  “But can I?” I ask.

  “Yes,” she says gently. “Of course.”

  Then, nothing. I get the stink out, roll things back up, and we’re silent again.

  I’m used to saying things with my hands with her. Crafting my words, being the perfect version of myself in text. Online, I feel like I come across as smart. I say exactly what I mean, clean and smooth. There’s no um, no uh. Everything I type is pronounced right. My grammar’s better and there’s no hint of a white trash accent.

  In person, if I’m tired, or angry or not thinking about it, I can catch myself drawling like hill and holler people, like coal people, because that’s my family. Come to a reunion sometime and you’ll get your fill of accents—and three different kind of deviled eggs.

  Arden’s voice is silk.

  I dig through my brain to find conversation. I’m bad at this, I realize. I haven’t had to do it a lot. Doctors ask questions, and other patients are happy to bitch about the hospital with you. I don’t remember the last time I talked to my mother. I don’t remember what her voice sounds like when she’s not flaring her nostrils and exhaling disappointment.

  “There’s quest goals on the way. Like, stop at Rock City and commune with seven states of being before you go forth.”

  With a trace of a smile, she says, “Rock City, huh? Have you been there?”

  “I haven’t been anywhere. ’Cept the hospital.” Warming up now, I tug at my seat belt. It cuts at my neck and I want it off. I have a feeling though, that I’d get a big, sad puppy look if I took it off.

  Arden digs her phone out and hands it to me. “Look up the address.”

  Brushing it aside, I shake my head. “It’s in Tennessee. That was just an example. It’s not on the way.”

  “You know that off the top of your head.”

  “Let me tell you a thing.” Settling again, I push the window to let in some air. At first, it feels good. But then the wind rushing in starts to thump. It presses into my eardrums, and vibrates on the seats, and digs into my skin. I know I’m not imagining it because Arden winces, and opens her window a crack.

  With everything equaled out, Arden touches my elbow. “Tell me a thing.”

  “I go on road trips on Google,” I say.

  “I’m sorry,” Arden says. “Explain?”

  “The Googlebird. I drive all night on different highways on my computer, so I can give you directions all over. I like the roadside attractions. Like, the headstone capital of the world, or the world’s biggest teacup, that kind of shit. I know all of them. I know how to get to them.”

  She smirks, “Yeah, right.”

  “You know any? Try me.”

  She doesn’t know any, but I watch her type something into her phone with her thumb. Her gaze darts back and forth from the road as she scrolls. Finally, she looks up in triumph. “The corn palace,” she says. Challenge accepted.

  “You mean The World’s Only Corn Palace? Mitchell, South Dakota. You take I-90 to Highway 37, left on Havens Avenue, right on Sanborn, right again on Seventh Avenue, and the parking is free.” I don’t add, how about that? but I kinda want to.

  Arden laughs, her eyes lighting up. Once again, she scrolls on her phone, looking for another place to throw at me. She sticks the pink little tip of her tongue out when she does it. It’s a perfect triangle, like a kitten nose. I don’t love the hell out of it. It doesn’t wreck me. It doesn’t.

  “Carhenge.”

  With a snort, I say, “Alliance, Nebraska, north of I-80. And there’s a Foamhenge in Virginia.”

  Arden hoots with laughter. Her curls bounce, and her smile broadens. Drumming on the steering wheel, she sticks her tongue out again. She hums and murmurs to herself, then lights up. Turning to me, she throws down a challenge. “World’s Largest Ball of Twine.”

  “So easy,” I say, pretending to be disappointed. “Darwin, Minnesota—north of I-90, off Highway 12.”

  Arden taps the brakes; the car shudders. “Wrong!”

  Holy shit. Wrapping my arms around myself, I try to squeeze my heart back to a regular beat. It’s not a heart attack. It’s not even anything. It’s just anxiety and surprise, and I don’t like being startled. I’m a hypocrite like that. “Uh, not wrong. It lives in a gazebo, in Minnesota, on First Street!”

  “It’s in Kansas,” she says, glancing at her phone to be sure. She sounds kinda like she’s talking to a slow kid, which I don’t appreciate.

  “My dick is in Kansas. Lemme see.”

  “No,” she says. She leans a
way from me, making a face. “I’m right, you’re wrong. Just admit it.”

  “If I was wrong, I would.”

  “I’m waiting, because you are.”

  This is why they don’t let you drive in kindergarten. I mean, even if you could see over the wheel and reach the pedals. The whole way it would be exactly like this, tiny, hot tempers flaring. Poking each other with metaphorical sticks. My face is red and the blush is spreading to my ears. I can be wrong, but she doesn’t have to talk to me like I’m an idiot.

  I lean against my door. “What’ll you give me if I’m right?”

  “A ride to California,” she says.

  That’s when I start to doubt. Is this a dream? A hallucination? Is this everything that’s happening in the last blink of my eye? Maybe I didn’t get better. Maybe this is the last coma. Anxiety winds a chain around my neck; it pulls it tight. I don’t want this to be made up. I need this. I need her and suddenly I hate her for making me doubt all of it.

  Thrusting out my hand, I say, “I have to call my mom.”

  That tears a hole right through the moment. Arden’s expression fades to neutral. Curls waver around her face, a dark halo as the wind streams through the windows. I don’t even want the air anymore; it smells like oil and worn-out road.

  Reading my mind, Arden closes the windows and the car seals tight as a mason jar once more. Then she hands me the phone.

  Dialing with just my thumb, I listen to the ring. Only twice, and then she picks up, my mother. Her voice crackles, not because the connection is bad. That’s just how she sounds, like ice cubes settling in a glass of warm water.

  “Who is this? Is that you, Dylan?” she demands. Her voice cuts, the brittle edge of something sharp. Holy shit, she’s pissed.

  My palms sweat; I shrink in my seat, growing smaller and smaller. If I compress myself enough, maybe I’ll disappear. Panic zings around my skull, electric and terrifying. My mouth won’t open and I don’t say anything, which worries Arden. I know this, because she reaches toward me. Plaintive and strained, she prompts, “Say something.”