Looking for Group

by Rory Harrison

  All at once, Arden breaks into a smile. “Awesome!”

  Whatever froze her in place has set her free, and now she’s flitting all over the room. She drops on the bed, and I’m almost disappointed for her that it doesn’t squeak. She doesn’t stay there, though. In a second, she’s back on her feet. She pokes into drawers, opens the closet. When she darts into the bathroom, she reappears almost immediately. “There’s a bottle opener on the wall in here.”

  I can’t help it; she’s slumming it and loving it, and it makes me laugh. As I settle in on the bed, I ask her, mock serious, “Are you judging people who need to drink on the can?”

  She lets her backpack slip from her arm. Sitting down beside me, she takes in all the glory. The bedspread, rust red with big green flowers on it, is shiny from cheap polyester and fireproofing. Low, bumpy carpet shows off a variety of stains that, I’m not gonna lie—somebody did try to clean them up. They’re outlines of spills now, little Coke crime scenes unintentionally remembered. One long look from cinder block to cinder block, then Arden beams. “I can’t believe this place is only forty-nine dollars a night.”

  Forty-nine?? That’s a lot. Almost all the cash I have in my pocket; all the money I have in the world. When we stopped for gas, I didn’t offer to pay for any, and I didn’t even try to pony up for the room. Am I a terrible person, taking advantage?

  As happy as she is, I feel guilty. “Maybe tomorrow we should sleep in the car to make up for it.”

  There’s something funny in the way Arden doesn’t reply immediately. She studies my face. I can see some kind of decision happening. Her dark eyes soften and she lays back, tucking her hands under her hair. “We can. If you want to.”

  She’s warm next to me; she smells nice. Clean in a way this room never has been. If she can leave a trace behind, it’ll be a better memory than the other people left. Arden Trochessett was here. Left it better than she found it. Sweeter than the metallic breath that the window-unit AC pumps out. All at once, I don’t care how confusing she is. I wanna kiss her. There’s no way I’m gonna kiss her.

  Instead, I ask, “How do you say your last name?”

  Like a smart-ass, she replies, “Your last name.”

  I want to tattoo her into my skin, things I can’t, a reminder. And to make sure I don’t try something she probably doesn’t want me to try, I press one finger between her ribs to make her squirm. It’s not a tickle; it’s an irritation. A poke. Enough to make her sit up and slide farther across the bed. When she flops down again, she does it on one side. With one arm and a pillow, she protects the other. Safe from me; away from me, she answers my question. “Tro-sheh-say. Like, say hey.”

  “Hey, Trochessett.”

  “Hey to you, too,” she answers, and melts onto her back.

  (CONNECTED)

  I’m broken into angles. My head rubs against Arden’s shoulder, but my torso points away. Hips, they’re turned toward her again; I’m a triangle, laying near her, not on her. Music thrums through the thin walls, vibrations that feel like bees on my skin. I keep drifting back and forth—awake, not awake.

  “All his teeth sharpened to points,” Arden says, waving a hand as she talks. She shifts, and her weight shakes the bed as she turns to look at me. “And get this. His hair is . . . it’s not white. It’s clear, I swear to god, it’s like silky fishing line . . .”

  The weird, drifting place of sleep-not-sleep lets the conversation stray. I’m not sure what we’re talking about. All I have on offer is trivia. “Polar bears have clear fur.”

  “Seriously?”

  “And black skin. There are black-skinned chickens, too. But how would you know?”

  “You’re blowing my mind here, Sutty. I mean, Dylan.”

  Oh, that’s right. Until last night, I wasn’t real to her, either. This Dylan person, taking up space in a bed she paid for, he’s imaginary. But getting realer, I guess—I smile when she calls me my real name; I roll toward her. When I do, I catch a hint of her scent—spicy and good. I never met anybody who smells as good as Arden does; it actually makes my heart buzz. “Either or, it’s all me.”

  Everything is still. In the quiet, I can almost make out the song playing next door. Only almost—it’s familiar but I can’t place it. Arden’s breath is warm on my hair; it’s a touch that’s not a touch—she probably doesn’t even realize she’s doing it. But I do, and I wish it was her hand, or her lips. Sleep sinks down again, pulled away when Arden tugs on the collar of my hoodie. Her knuckles graze my throat.

  “You didn’t eat any pizza,” she says.

  “I’m still full from lunch.”

  It’s not really true. I don’t do hungry the way I used to. I do get an ache, a groan in my belly—my body keeps track of what I need. Unfortunately, my brain is in charge of what I want, and right now, I want impossible things.

  Arden is sweet, and she believes my lie. Lunch was another state ago, a shared sandwich at a roadside stand. We stopped for the novelty, and because Arden felt like daring salmonella. Looks like she won though, she’s fine. Pink and flush and suddenly moving. Pushing off the bed, she dumps the pizza box in our fridge. Then she sweeps back. The bedsprings protest faintly when she falls in beside me.

  When she does, she curls toward me, and I put a hand between us. Against her chest, and it’s already done when I realize that maybe I shouldn’t have. Her heart is right there, underneath my hand, and I just did it, like I had a right to. There’s her pulse, smooth and regular. I feel it thrumming beneath her shirt. I feel each breath she takes, exhales. I stare at her collarbone, because I’m afraid to look into her eyes. She’ll read my mind.

  “What are you thinking?” she asks me.

  Never. Never am I gonna tell her I’m thinking about her skin and her mouth and how I know I’m not allowed to want her. So instead, I say something that will push us far, far away from dangerous things. “You were checking your phone before; heard from your dad?”

  “Yeah,” Arden says. It’s like she’s trying to be light about it, but bitterness creeps in anyway. “Wanted to know how long it takes to buy a pair of jeans.”

  “Did you tell him about a hundred twenty hours, give or take?”

  She snorts. “No. I told him we met up with some friends. I’m good for another night.”

  “Nice.”

  Arden curls toward me. Her knees brush mine and she sort of covers my hand with hers. Warm. She burns like a furnace. It makes me sweat, being so close, but it’s a natural heat. It’s good. “There’s a bunch of texts . . .”

  “Delete ’em.” Now I do raise my eyes; I roll a shoulder. “It’s my mother; I don’t wanna talk to her.”

  “No, really?” Arden says, a slip of a smile touching her lips.

  “I’m a pain in the ass like that,” I tell her. “A menace.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, lucky me: I love a menace.”

  We’re the same, the two of us. All this time, all this empty space in us, we’ve been filling it up together. Hours and hours in the game, with magic and meandering walks to our next quest, talks late into the night about whatever stupid thing came to mind. This is just evidence of it, whispered as the AC roars to life again.

  I let the very tips of my fingers press lightly against her soft skin. That’s as much as I dare. And we lie there together in the dark. We listen to other people’s music and car tires on gravel, coming and going. Going and coming.

  All hours of the night, until it lulls us both to sleep.

  (SECTION 8 PHYSICS)

  It’s my fault. I’ll say that up front.

  Morning rolls in like fog, hazy except for a bright spot of pleasure. I don’t need an alarm clock today. Arden’s plastered to my back, one heavy arm slung across my waist. Her fingers graze against my belly; sometime in the night, my shirt got rucked up to bare my skin. Her breath says stay; it falls evenly on my wiry hair. When she inhales, her body tightens against mine. Now I’m awake, and my body’s tight a whole new way.

  Str
angers touch me all the time. They grab my arms and roll their thumbs across my veins. On my face, thumping my back . . . they help me into wheelchairs and out of beds. Onto blue pleather bench-chairs with extendo-arms, lashing me down so they can push needles under my skin. There’s so much touching, but it’s all brief. Indifferent. I could be meat or a box of groceries or a bag of bones. Nobody lingers.

  Though Arden’s sleeping, this feels deliberate. Her arm around me on purpose, connected.

  Sometimes, you want things and know you’re never gonna get them. Sometimes, rarer, you get something you didn’t expect. I want to bury myself in Arden’s arms and fall asleep again.

  But my bladder has other ideas. Reluctantly, I slide off the bed. When my feet hit the floor, they burn. Walking through embers, I curse quietly. Sometimes, I only imagine I’m hurting. Side effect from the chemo. While it was destroying everything in its path, it didn’t stop to go oh hey, he might need these nerve endings later.

  Nope. Zap! Moving on!

  You would think, no more nerve endings, no more pain, right? Sorry, no. Because there’s no signal and my brain thinks there should be one, so it makes one up. And let me tell you, it never makes up awww, the soft feeling of a puppy pile. It’s more along the lines of carpet covered in pushpins and thumbtacks.

  After the bathroom, I come back into the room and I’m disappointed. In my absence, she shifted. Now she’s sprawled facedown, clinging to a pillow. That moment, that perfect moment waking up in her arms, that’s gone now.

  So that sucks, and my stomach decides to give a twist. I scoop the change off the dresser and head out to the vending machine. Sometimes a nice, icy Coca-Cola makes everything better. Maybe it’ll taste like something today! Breakfast of kings and queens and soon, me. Cold pizza to go with; it’s almost like I made it to college or something.

  With a hand pressed against the jamb, I open the door. I figure I can squeeze out, grab my soda, and get back into bed before Arden wakes up. It’s a plot, vaguely nefarious. As my eyes adjust to the angle of the sun, I wonder if I’m taking advantage of her. No, I don’t have to wonder. I am. I know that.

  It’s wrong to ask for more. It’s wrong to want a part of her heart while I’m at it. Nothing stops me from wanting it, though.

  Sometime last night, she moved the car. The space in front of our room is empty, a crumpled pack of Camel Menthols decorating it. I shuffle to the vending machine and spend all of Arden’s change, but I do get two cans. Two. See? I tell myself. You can think of other people, and sometimes you even do.

  It’s not till I get back to our door that I realize—wait, the parking lot is empty. There’s a semi parked at the far edge of the gravel, still idling. It hums low, competing with chattery morning birds. The white Chevy that sat in front of the office last night sits there, still. Dew hazes the windows, thick enough that I could sign my name in it.

  “Why’d you move the car, Arden?” I ask her, though I’m talking to myself.

  Turning, then turning again, something flashes in the gravel. Bright. Brilliant. Maybe it’s a diamond, I think idly. You never know when you might find something good on the ground. I found a ten dollar bill on the playground once. Crumpled into a green nugget, it fit perfectly inside my fist.

  The glint in the lot though, is not jewels. It’s glass. Greenish, perfectly square chunks. Not very much of it; I swallow hard. When you bash a car window in, most of the glass goes inside the car. Steal the car, the glass goes away with it. Physics, Village Estates style.

  It’s just a fact in my neighborhood— don’t leave anything good in your car. And don’t bother locking the doors, because sometimes kids only want a joyride. They drive it out of gas, and leave it on the side of the road. A lot of times, you get it back. And if you locked it, you’ll have to replace the window when you do.

  Anxiety grips me. Arden’s Mercedes isn’t the same as my mother’s fifteen-year-old Monte Carlo. It’s a rich car. A fancy car. It matters if it’s gone!

  Oh fuck, it’s gone, our ride is gone. That nice car, all leather and air conditioning that works and stereo so good the bass thumped all through my body—it’s stolen. In the middle of the night, maybe a hundred feet from our bed. How did we sleep through it? Why didn’t she have an alarm? Or maybe she did; it’s not hard to cut the wires on one. (You hear stuff where I live.)

  Tears spring up, angry and hot. It’s not fair, but so what? Life isn’t fair. We’re trapped in the middle of nowhere at the Baytes freaking Motel. In Ohio. What was I thinking, when I thought we could make it to California? What the hell? I was out of my mind!

  “No, no, no,” I say it over and over, like my voice is out of my control. My face is hot and slick, and that awful, warbling sound falls from my lips. Arden’s voice comes soft and right behind me.

  “Oh my god.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. I push a soda into her hands and duck back into the room. I’m hiding in the awful, wet-aluminum, cinder-block, wood-paneled jail cell that’s the end of the line.

  The quest. This friendship. This . . . something more.

  I killed it. All of it.

  Arden will never forgive me.

  I don’t know if I can forgive myself.

  (IT’S IMPORTANT TO SECURE YOUR PASSWORD)

  She follows me. She has to; it’s not like she can drive away.

  “I can’t believe they stole the car.”

  Oh, I can. She’s flapping around like a bird with a broken wing, and it’s clear nothing like this has ever happened to her before. I scrub my face with a hand towel from the bathroom. It smells like harsh soap and cigarette smoke. It’s rough, and it rasps on my skin. Cleaning everything off, leaving me red and raw, it’s like punishment and correction all in one.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell her again. “I shoulda warned you about a place like this. I shoulda said something. I’m sorry.”

  My thoughts nag—You should have left her in Amaranth. You should have left her alone. You’re dragging her down, boy, all the way down into the dark. Look at you, shame on you, you’re as bad as Mom.

  “Stop apologizing,” she says, sort of snappy. “We have to think.”

  Her irritation cauterizes me. It’s unexpected; I didn’t realize she had barbs at all. I mean, inside the game, she’s hardcore and hilarious; she makes dead baby jokes. She’s made dead me jokes. But that was in fun. This is real.

  Real was what you wanted, wasn’t it?

  I drop the towel on the bed and pull my shit together. She’s got her phone out now, and that makes sense. The cops probably care if somebody steals a Mercedes, but I know a couple things from experience. “Okay, um. Call the station, not 911, that’s for people dying and shit. They’ll come out and take a report.”

  Her eyes turn sharp. Arden squints, baffled. Baffled at me, like I just turned stupid or blue. “I’m not calling the police.”

  Well, that’s it. The stress of real life done broke her brains. Twenty-four hours on the road, and she’s already lost it. Sympathy wells in me; I’ll talk her down. She needs it, obviously. Reaching out for her, I say, “They’re not bringing it back, Arden.”

  “I didn’t think they would,” she informs me. “But I can log into it on my phone. It’s got a tracker; they can turn it off by satellite.”

  My mouth drops open. I hear the words coming out of her mouth. I even recognize them. But that’s the craziest, science-fictiony-est shit I’ve ever heard in my life. There she is, screwing around on her phone like she’s on the deck of a starship and I’m drooling like the yokel that aliens abducted from the cow yard.

  “Shit,” she says.

  Brows lifting, I lean forward. At this point, I kinda can’t wait to find out what she says next. Maybe jet fighters are gonna scramble and bring the Mercedes back. Why not? It would make about as much sense. “What?”

  Incredulous, she waves the phone at me. “They hacked it. I can’t log in.”

  “They hacked your car.”

  Groaning, Ard
en drags a hand down her face. “They hacked the car. Damn it, damn it, damn it.”

  My hand falls on her arm. I was going for her shoulder, but this works. Squeezing it gently, I catch her eye. I can be reasonable, I tell myself. I can be helpful and thoughtful and all that, I can. As gentle as I can, I go on. “Then you’re gonna have to call the police. Insurance won’t pay for it if you don’t file a report.”

  Arden claps her hand over mine. Instead of brushing it away, she holds it there. Now she’s the one in charge, the one who’s calm. She doesn’t search my face; she looks right in my eyes. Steady and sweet, she explains, “If I report it, we’ll never make it to California.”

  “I . . . what?”

  Hope is a salt knot, caught in my throat. Of course you tell the cops that somebody stole your robot car. Of course she goes home, where shit like this never happens. This quest is over, isn’t it? Is it not?

  “The cops will go straight to my dad; the car’s registered in his name. Dylan, he doesn’t give a shit if I leave for a while, but he’ll lose it over the car.” She pauses. “I’m not ready to go home. Are you?”

  “You’re sure.” I don’t ask; it’s flat disbelief. I thought maybe she’d make it maybe as far as Indiana or even Missouri before she took off. Fled for the comfort of Mercedes-land and Apple-land and rooms-that-probably-weren’t-the-scene-of-a-murder-in-the-seventies-land. But she’s staying? She wants to keep going? For the second time in as many days I find myself wondering if I’m dreaming this.

  With a squeeze, Arden lets go of my hand and turns a tight circle. It’s like she’s summoning something, thinking with her body, something. When she stops, she swipes the screen of her phone, then jabs at it. Suddenly, the room is full of dial tone.

  “What are you doing?”

  She stares at me, all business. “Creating an alibi.”

  The speaker clicks. “David?” a man says. “You’re up before noon.”

  “Yes, sir,” Arden replies stiffly. Her posture shifts ever so slightly. “Dylan’s mom got breakfast, doughnuts, you know.”