Looking for Group

by Rory Harrison

  “I’m going to say something,” Arden informs me. Her voice is mercury, spilling and slipping unexpectedly. “Because I didn’t last time; this is going to be the last time.”

  Oh shit. I push myself back in the seat and look at her. All I say is “Okay.”

  Hands tight on the wheel, she whips back into the slow lane. Her jaw is tight and set, and she doesn’t look at me, not at all. “I don’t know if you have a problem with it, or if I’m getting too confusing for you or what, but I’m not a guy. I’m not ashamed of who I am. And I’m not going to drive all the way to California with you if that’s an issue.”

  Stunned, I gape. “I . . . what? Arden, what the hell are you talking about?”

  “You’ve done it twice,” she says. She holds up two fingers and waves them at me. “When we bought the car, and just now.”

  I don’t know what it is. I swear to god, I don’t, except then my Swiss-cheese brain kicks in. A hot, defensive blush burns up my throat. “I know who you are, boo! I was just trying to protect you!”

  “Yeah, that’s what my dad says, too.”

  And I take it back. I take it all back, when she says that—when this beautiful girl who wouldn’t even pick a fucking McDonald’s for herself says that—I change my mind.

  I do want to die on I-74. Right here. Right now.

  (2213.04)

  The world flattens, and there’s nothing. Nothing to look at. Nothing to point out to start a conversation. Nothing to look forward to, except getting back on 70 at the other side of the city.

  Spindly trees threaten to bloom but haven’t yet. There’s some green on the side of the road, but mostly, it’s leftover winter here. Everything’s dirty and deserted. Trash gathers on barbed-wire fences; the paint peels on billboards that only advertise the fact that you can advertise on the billboard.

  Asphalt hums beneath the tires and I’m starting to wonder why that cop even pulled us over. This road is so smooth, so straight, I could drive it in my sleep. There’s barely even traffic on it.

  Arden, though, drives it like it’s a demolition derby. Her knuckles are almost white on the wheel, she’s gripping it so hard. She’s wound tight, her jaw fixed and her lips flat and pale. For once, she doesn’t ride the brake and that’s not even a gift right now. It’s a sign, one I read too late.

  Everything under my skin is thrashing; I feel like a bag of snakes. I coil and uncoil against the door as I stare at spindly trees and empty fields. For a while, I hate that cop. It’s her fault any of this came up. Who gives a shit if somebody’s driving too slow? Almost, I convince myself she was trying to explode this quest.

  I don’t wanna be mad at Arden either, but I am, kind of. How come I don’t get credit for intentions? Why doesn’t it matter that I was trying to help?

  Arden’s phone rings. We exchange a look, but she picks it up to answer. As soon as she hears the hello on the other line, I know who it is. It was possible for her to get stiffer, and she did. Her voice is measured, and she puts on this grimace. It’s like she’s trying to smile, trying to get the sound of it in her words.

  “Yeah,” she says, tapping the brakes. “We’re making good time. Should be there by ten, I think?”

  Her lies aren’t even heavy. She doesn’t stop to think, or look panicked or anything. If anything, she’s tired. Bored. She feeds him some bullshit about stopping at the border to New York for lunch. We’d probably be a lot closer, except there was traffic backed up a long time, and then we left my phone at a gas station. Lost a half an hour doubling back for it. Yeah, I’ll be keeping a better eye on that in the future, ha-ha-ha.

  In this world Arden just made up for Concrete Blocks, we’re heading up to Caroga Lake for the week. I have a lake house in the Adirondacks; we’re meeting my cousins up there. It’s gonna be a good time.

  Arden hits the brakes again, but this time to slow down. Suddenly, we have signs—suddenly, there’s a city jutting up out of nowhere. It’s like somebody swept the landscape clean, then dropped Indianapolis smack in the middle of it.

  “Yes sir,” she says flatly, changing lanes once, and then back. The directions are kind of confusing here. Go this way, and the road ends, that way, you end up on an interchange loop. All kinds of interconnected lines on the map are accounted for, 74 and 70, east and west, 465 north and south, 65, 31 . . . jesus christ.

  Since Arden has her phone, all I have is the map in my head. It’s not good for this kind of driving; I know points—place to place—but the details, they’re fuzzy. When I think I’ve figured out the way, I point at the sign, then at the right lane.

  For the first time in over an hour, Arden acknowledges me. She nods, faintly, and follows my directions. Shifting the phone from one ear to the other, she summons that twisted smile again. It comes out with a dry laugh. “As far as I know, nobody’s bringing beer. But if somebody did, I promise none of us are driving.”

  And there’s Concrete Blocks, surprising me again. All things being equal, if I hadn’t ever been sick, my mother would probably party with my friends. She’d buy the beer, and I don’t even wanna think about that in detail.

  But there’s Concrete Blocks, stick in the ass, leaves strangers standing in front of his open door, Concrete Blocks being all understanding. Knowing a spring break trip away from home is probably about boozing; only being worried that Arden doesn’t get hurt doing it.

  He’s just trying to protect her.

  The venom in me turns to foam. It fizzes in my veins; I slump in my seat. Arden’s not wrong about me. It wasn’t the cop that fucked things up here. It wasn’t the Bobby; it was probably only half the fact that I bought a car with drugs. She said it then, too. I remember it now: I blew past it at the time, I asked if she was mad about the drugs and she was like, “Okay, that’s one thing.”

  There was the other thing. This thing.

  It’s easy to orbit around her in the game, and remember who she is, and get it right. We’re both chicks in the game, but more importantly, we’re not even human. Outside of the game, even, I know Arden’s a girl. I don’t doubt that; it’s not like it’s an opinion or anything. It’s a fact: Arden is a girl and always has been.

  Just the same; I’m gay and I always have been. I was gay when I was little Dylan, and I was gay when André marked me off his bucket list, and I’m gay now, wanting to hold Arden’s hand and lay next to her in the hotel and get her to look at me again. Or did I change? Am I bi or something? Or am I a dick who says the right words, but thinks the wrong things?

  I lied about who she was twice, twice when it was easier, and yeah, I thought I was doing it for the right reason, but shit. I’m just like her dad.

  No, I’m worse than her dad, because I know better.

  (CHAPTER WESTERN INDIANA)

  All the way on the other side of the city and burning daylight toward Illinois, Arden speaks again.

  “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  It’s a question that has nothing to do with anything. It’s literally out of fucking nowhere, but I cling to it. I grab for it, like it’s the last roll on the table, like it’s water in the desert. I need the sound of her voice and I’m going to scrabble for all I can get. I don’t care that there’s no context; I don’t care that it’s dangerous.

  I say, “Where would I get a boyfriend?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know, the internet?”

  Just the thought of that makes me laugh. It’s not like I don’t know about shit like Tinder and Grindr and why don’t they just call them Fuckr, that’s what I wanna know. But I’m underage, have a body by Frankenstein, and I live with my mother. Nobody in their right mind wants to hook up with that.

  I twist into the backseat to grab a snack, a treat—I find a bag of Skittles. I pull them into my lap and assure Arden, “Nobody put a ring on this, go figure.”

  “Unbelievable,” she says. A light—a smile! It starts soft at the corner of her mouth, but it lingers.

  It’s my turn to talk, and I realize, I don�
�t even know which way she goes. In my head, I guess I figured she’s a girl, she’s into guys—but that was before I knew about what she did in the camp bunk beds. “What about you?”

  I tear open a bag of Skittles, spilling them into my lap to sort. Arden says she wants the purple ones first, then the red ones. They smell good to me, but I know if I pop one in my mouth, it’ll just taste like fruity chemicals. Starburst, too. SweeTarts. Man, I used to love SweeTarts, the big ones that are chewy.

  Reaching over because I’m not sorting fast enough, Arden grabs a couple to get started. “No. I mean, I was kind of seeing a guy last summer, but it was just . . .”

  The candy clicks against her teeth. She’s not chewing it, she’s sucking it. Arden does things all wrong. She puts ice in her coffee and throws the top bun off her hamburgers. She’s the kind of gorgeous that makes girls stop and say daaaaaamn under their breaths when she walks by. I know; I heard two girls in the Walmart do it.

  “Bad?” I offer.

  She looks thoughtful. “A bad fit.”

  “Nothing since then?”

  “There’s nobody I want to hang out with at my school,” she says. Her lips are lined purple, distractingly dark. “Mona tried to set me up with one of her friend’s nieces but it was just awkward.”

  Intensely curious, I speed my sorting because I want to watch her face. Emotions cascade over it. They leap from brow to lash, to lips, to eyes. She’s got so much expression going on, I could stare at her for hours. “Was she a dog or something?”

  “No, she was nice,” she says, and I think she probably means it. “Bisexual, chill about me, you know. Zero chemistry, though. She’s into jocks, I’m into . . .”

  “Giant cows,” I joke. My character in the game, in case you forgot.

  “With their big brown eyes,” Arden says wistfully, then breaks into a new smile. “I don’t know, maybe. You’re more fun to look at in real life, though.”

  Rolling my eyes, I try to play off the blush. I try to hide everything buzzing down in my chest. She’s flirting with me, right? She is—I don’t think she just got over being mad; instead, she moved on, and this is what we do in the game, right? This is what we’re good at. I swallow the knot in my throat before I reply; I don’t want my voice cracking in front of her. “Whatever, whatever.”

  “Dylan,” she says. “You all right?”

  Even though I know it’ll end badly, I pop a couple of lemon Skittles into my mouth. Ugh, oh god, it’s like chewing furniture polish. My mother sprays Pledge in the house when we have visitors. It smells classier than air freshener, she claims. Because people can’t look around at our prefabricated bullshit furniture and figure out we haven’t been having the maid in to polish the antiques.

  With a deep breath, I look to her. “I’m sorry,” I say. “About before.”

  The mood hazes, just for a second. Then Arden says, “Don’t be sorry. Just don’t do it again.”

  Because she’s gracious, I’m ashamed. For doing it, for trying to put the blame on her or the cop or anybody but me. I’m pretty bad at this, I have to admit. I suck at being next to her in the real world. Makes me wish for pixels.

  Arden clears her throat. “So anyway . . .”

  “I do like this one chick,” I say suddenly. I suck down a half a bottle of water and finish the thought. “Purple hair. Huge glowing yellow eyes—she keeps me up all night.”

  “Lucky girl.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I say with a thin laugh. I gesture at my everything: my weedy, knotty body. “She’s getting alllllll dis.”

  “I’ll steal you away,” Arden says. “You wanna get married?”

  To my surprise, I don’t stammer. I don’t stumble; I look at her and it’s easy. “Well yeah, but I don’t even know if you’re pan or bi or what.”

  Softly, all her lights turning back on inside, Arden says, “I’m everything. I’m the whole world.”

  (RED SKY)

  I drum on the dashboard, wearing myself out. All of a sudden, I have this nervous energy that I have got to get out. It rumbles and buzzes. I’m all alive for no reason at all, except we’re heading west and the sun follows us with every mile.

  Turning to Arden, I squeeze her hand. “You ever been to California?”

  “Yeah,” she says. Her concentration drifts away, like she’s trying to frame a memory or something. It comes back, sharp and bright. Her eyes are so green. “Yeah, with my mom and dad. They left me with my grandmother, and they went to Napa. A wine-tasting tour or something like that.”

  “Boring,” I say, dropping into my seat. “What did you do while they were boozing it up?”

  Arden shakes her head. “Not much. There were—wait. Oh yeah! Oh my god. I totally forgot this!”

  “What?”

  Arden leans forward. She talks a little slow, like she’s not sure about her own memories. “There were . . . there were wildfires when we were out there. In the mountains.”

  Now that’s something I never thought about. Like, for me, tornadoes are a real thing. Blizzards, too. Occasionally hurricanes. But wildfires? That’s something exotic. I could try to picture it, but instead I crowd into Arden’s space. Squeeze it out of her squishy memory.

  “What did it look like?”

  A strange smile spreads across her face. “ I went outside to get the mail, right? And everything was red. It was like I was on Mars.”

  “The hell?”

  “That’s what it looked like,” she exclaims. Her words tumble out, rolling over each other. “Red. Like, the sky was red, and the sun was up there. Glowing, through the haze, it looked like another sun from another planet. Here’s the weirdest part, though. I tried to take pictures of it, but they all came out normal.”

  I squinch my eyes at her. Is she yanking my chain? Arden jokes, but she doesn’t usually make shit up just to see if I’ll believe it. That’s one of the nice things about spending my nights with her, in person or in the game. She’s stand-up. I don’t have to worry about her getting a rise out of me just for giggles. “Normal how?”

  Arden checks her mirrors, changes lanes, then looks back at me. “It was my dad’s old camera, a pretty good one. It’s got all these auto-correct settings on it, and I guess it saw red sky and was like, nope. Shift that back to blue. I tried it with my phone, too, and nothing. When we got home, my dad was like, what the hell did you take so many pictures of nothing for?”

  Protective of Arden, even in a past tense where it’s all done and all gone, I tense. “Did you tell him? Did you explain?”

  Her smile fades, then shifts. It’s more rueful now. Quiet. “No. They didn’t come out, so what was the point?”

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t your fault,” I say stridently.

  “It could have been.”

  If I poke her, then I’m as bad as her dad. But I want to poke a little bit, because she’s got to have some pride in there somewhere. The only thing I’ve managed to accomplish so far in my life is almost getting arrested for sailing down a culvert in a pool, kidnapping Arden from suburbia, and walking out of a high school admissions office because I was too embarrassed to explain my mother wasn’t ever gonna come down there. Despite all that, everything wrong with me, I think I like my dumb ass more than Arden likes herself. And that makes me crazy, because she’s amazing.

  The quiet goes on long enough that Arden peers at me. “What?”

  “You know what?” I tell her. “We get to California, this time? We’ll find my ship. And then we’re gonna find some fires for you to take pictures of.”

  Arden takes her hand back and my heart sinks. But then, she rubs her palm dry on her leggings. Then she takes my hand again, lacing our fingers together. Gently, she brushes our joined touch against her cheek, so soft—so sweet. I like that she did it out of the blue; from the shade of pink crossing the bridge of her nose, I think she likes it too.

  “What if there are no fires when we get there?” she asks.

  I shrug. This one’s easy. “Then we�
�ll set some.”

  (REST)

  We passed the casket capital of the world, drove right through the Crossroads of America. Now we’re cutting through scrubby, smooth Illinois, at least the southern tip of it. Chicago livens up the state, but that’s 200-something miles north of here.

  Arden claps my shoulder with the back of her hand. “Rest stop!”

  Then, she yanks the wheel so hard, the car shudders as it veers. As happy as I am that she decided to take a stop for herself, it would be nice if she didn’t try to scare the shit out of me at the same time. We cut down the road marked CARS, and she glides into a spot. Bounding out of the car, she leaves me in the dust.

  I don’t have to go or anything, but the longer I sit there, the better a walk-around sounds. I ache from sitting, and I’m trying to place exactly where we are. There’s something good coming up in Illinois, something Arden has to see. I don’t want to tip her to it, but I want to make sure we don’t accidentally blow past it either. There’s probably brochures in the rest stop.

  Yeah, time to get up. Time to move.

  Unfolding my legs, I climb out of the car. Humidity coils around me, and that sucks. But it smells like there’s rain coming. I turn, searching. Then I find a silver maple and nod to myself. Its leaves are turned over. All of them, cloaking the tree in ghostly green instead of a deeper shade. That tree knows that rain is coming too.

  Inside, just like I thought, there are brochures. About sixty million things to see in Illinois, but I shake my head. Half of them are on highways far away from here. A few more, they’re just restaurants and hotels, nothing special. Some caves, it looks like, but the last thing I want is to put myself down in the ground. I just don’t.

  When I don’t see what I’m looking for, I turn my attention to the map on the wall. Walking my fingers across it, I find the red dot that represents where we are. Then I splay my touch along the line and stop. I smile; Vandalia, Illinois—we’re not there yet. Tucking that fact in, all warm and safe against my chest, I head outside.