There were twin televisions on the floor that faced each other, sitting on DVD players. On one screen was a close-up of a man’s face, cropped from the bridge of his nose to the bottom of his chin. He was unshaven, a tiny scar was etched on his cheek like a fingernail’s impression. The man whispered, My starling. Come back. The key is under the doormat. The video ran for a few seconds more without the man saying anything before it looped again with his plea. On the other screen, a barrage of images flashed like a shuffled deck of cards: [Back of a woman’s head] [Empty chair] [Green dress flapping on a clothesline] [Baggage carousel] [Back of a woman’s head] [Plane taking off] [Hairbrush] [Unmade bed] [Back of a woman’s head] [Rolling suitcase] [Vase of flowers] [Doorknob turning] [Back of a woman’s head].
Next I checked out a giant portrait that was made entirely from wads of bubble gum. According to the plaque beside it, the artist used spearmint, grape, banana, strawberry, and Bazooka Joe. I thought about what I could make with a hundred bags of Red Vines, what sort of landscape in licorice.
Soon after, I noticed the empty chair in the corner of the room. It was the same type of folding chair I had at my post. Dark gray, double-hinged, contoured back. I looked again at the museum guard sleeping at the opposite corner. I was confused. Was the empty chair part of the exhibit? Or did the east wing have two guards looking after the same room? I walked over to the folding chair. There was no plaque on the wall nearby to identify it as a work of art.
“You taking over my shift?” a woman’s voice said from behind me.
I turned around. She was roughly my height and wore the same uniform as I did. She was in her mid-thirties, with glasses and thin lips, her brown hair pulled into a ponytail. “No, I’m not,” I said. “I’m in the west wing.”
“You want to switch posts?”
“No, I was just looking around,” I said. “Hey, why are there two guards for this room?”
She laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Why don’t you go over there and introduce yourself?” She pointed at the man sleeping in the corner.
“I don’t want to wake him up,” I said.
“Just go over there and say hello. Trust me.”
I looked at the sleeping guard, his chest moving slowly under his tie, and began walking toward him. The floorboards squeaked beneath my shoes. Why is she having me do this? I wondered. And just when I thought I was about to startle the guard awake, I saw what he actually was—a sculpture made from mannequin parts and thrift-store clothing. A whirring sound like a fan came from somewhere within his chest. I crouched and saw that underneath the chair was a motor that made his chest move, a black box with wires rising through a hole cut into the seat. His eyes were painted open on his plastic face. I thought, He’s awake and sleeping.
“What a trip,” I said, standing up. “I totally thought he was real.”
“It freaks me out,” the woman said.
“I keep expecting him to wake up and start moving around.”
“You want to switch posts?” she asked again. “I’m sure Ms. Otto won’t mind.”
“Sorry, but I like where I’m at.”
“I don’t blame you. It’s not bad enough with the creepy guard, I also have to listen to that stupid video all day.”
We both looked at the televisions on the floor.
My starling. Come back. The key is under the doormat.
“It’s so irritating,” she said. “No wonder she left him. I’m Nadine, by the way.” She tapped her name tag.
“Carlos,” I said.
“Are you new here?”
“I just started last week.”
Ms. Otto came around the corner with a sheet of paper in one hand and Scotch tape in the other. “Carlos, I need to step out for a bit,” she said. “Richard Spurgeon, the neon sign artist, is going to be here soon to pick up his piece. Would you please put this up after he takes it down?” She handed me the sheet. In all caps it read: REMOVED FOR REPAIRS. “Sure,” I said.
Ms. Otto scurried toward the entrance. When she stepped outside, she swatted the air before her. The hills were still on fire.
“See you later,” I told Nadine.
“My starling,” she said. “Come back. The key is under the doormat.”
I laughed and headed back to my post.
It was a quarter after four. I looked at the sheet and read the words out loud to myself. I thought about the mechanical museum guard in the east wing, just sitting there, dozing away the hours, no ambition, no heart, no pain, which all sounded appealing to me at that moment. I set the sign on the floor and placed the Scotch tape on top of it. With my eyes closed, I leaned back in my chair. I saw the ash sifting down, a child’s handprint on the hood of a car. I saw Will walking down the hallway by himself. I saw Mira’s face. Her big blue eyes. Her hand rising to her mouth when she turned to leave. My throat felt tight, my chin started to twitch. I was trying to make myself stop crying, which only made it worse.
ISABEL
It was the 7th of February, the one-year anniversary of Gabriel’s passing, and I was doing surprisingly okay. Yes, I thought of him and of course I got sad, but it wasn’t crippling me like I’d imagined it was going to. It helped that I had Heidi and Vanessa at my side.
The three of us were eating oranges on the couch in the living room. It would’ve been nice to hang out in the backyard instead, to eat our oranges at the patio table under the big umbrella, but there was too much ash floating around, coating everything with fine white flakes. On the walk home, the air had smelled like burnt cedar. My eyes itched and felt sandpapery.
Heidi dug her fingernail into the navel of her orange, spraying a tiny cloud of mist. Vanessa’s orange was already unpeeled, the skin in a mound on the glass coffee table. She thumbed out a wedge and popped it into her mouth. “These are good, Is.”
“We have a ton of them.” I pointed out the orange tree in the backyard. “Remind me before you leave and I’ll grab some for you.”
“Thanks.”
Heidi rolled her eyes and smirked.
“You too, Heidi,” I said, sliding a piece into my mouth.
She nodded and ripped off a chunk of skin.
I got the feeling she felt threatened, like all of a sudden Vanessa would swoop in and become my new best friend.
Vanessa slid her napkin over the coffee table where she’d sprayed the glass with her orange. Last night I’d told her about Gabriel, how he drowned, how much I missed him, and she had listened intently and said all the right things like Oh, Is, that’s so awful, I’m so sorry, I can’t even imagine what that was like for you, her voice a roll of gauze wrapping around a wound. Then she opened up with her own experience with grief, of a childhood friend who’d died of leukemia. It made our bond stronger: A new level of understanding who we were had been revealed. She didn’t say much about Wilson and why she transferred to Millikan except that she used to hang out with the wrong crowd. Drugs and stuff, she had said. It got out of hand. I figured she’d tell me more when she was ready.
Vanessa jerked her head toward the backyard. “Is that your little brother?”
I turned around. Roland was at the edge of the flower beds, crouched and walking sideways with his hands over his kneecaps.
“Unfortunately,” I said.
“He’s cute.”
Heidi coughed, nearly choking on her orange.
“There’s nothing cute about him,” I assured Vanessa. “Wait till you meet him.”
“What’s he doing, anyway?” Vanessa asked.
“Trying to catch a lizard,” I said. “That’s all he does. Watch SpongeBob and catch lizards.”
“And fart in his hand and lift it to your nose,” Heidi added.
Vanessa scrunched up her face.
I stood up from the couch and walked to the sliding glass door. Roland now had the tip of his foot in the flower beds and his hands out as if he were warming them against a fire. I’m not sure when his fascination with liza
rds began. Last week while he was watching cartoons, I flipped through the journal he was required to keep for Ms. Pritchard, his fourth-grade teacher. Below the dates, he wrote only one sentence to describe each day:
1/30/06
Yesterday I caught 2 Lizards.
1/31/06
Yesterday I was holding a Lizard’s tail and it broke off but the tail was still moving.
2/1/06
Yesterday I caught a Lizard that was only big as my pinky.
2/2/06
Yesterday I caught 2 Lizards and 1 didn’t have a tail.
2/3/06
Yesterday I found out Lizards can bite but it didn’t hurt.
In the margins, Ms. Pritchard had written with a red pen: Oh my, you must have lots of lizards in your yard! Below her comment, Roland had penciled: Duh.
I opened the sliding glass door and the scent of burning trees blew in. “Don’t step on Mom’s flowers,” I told him.
He fluttered his hand behind his back, waving me off.
“She’s going to get mad.”
“Okay.”
Roland lunged at the ground with his hands out, then turned around and tiptoed out of the flower beds with one arm lifted, a thin tail hanging from his fist. I closed the sliding glass door.
“I used to catch grasshoppers when I was a kid,” Vanessa said. “God, I was such a tomboy.”
Heidi swallowed an orange wedge. “It means you have lesbian tendencies.”
Vanessa scowled.
“I’m only teasing,” Heidi said. “Don’t get your panties in a wad.”
I looked at Heidi and opened my eyes bigger as if to say Be nice, and she repeated my expression, mocking me.
Vanessa tapped me on the knee. “You need to swing by the museum and meet that guy I told you about. He’d be perfect for you.”
“Oh, stop it,” I said.
“What about me?” Heidi chirped.
Vanessa turned to her. “You have your Matt ‘Massive Forehead’ Hawkins.”
“He doesn’t even know I exist,” Heidi whined.
Vanessa turned to me. “I’m serious. Come by.”
“Just introduce me at school,” I said.
“I never see him there. And when I do, you’re not around.”
“Then it’s not meant to be,” I said. “I don’t like to force things. It just makes the whole thing awkward.”
“Oh, Is,” Vanessa said, exasperated.
That was the thing with me and Gabriel. It happened naturally. In class, we’d tease each other, he’d bump my elbow while I tried taking notes, I’d poke his side with my pen, then after class, just small talk in the hallway, by the lockers, then serious talk, long conversations about our families, what we loved, what we feared, what we wanted to do when we were done with school, then hands, hands and skin, then kissing and love, then he was gone.
While I was watching Heidi break apart her orange, slipping her thumbnail between two pieces, I had tunnel vision—the world through a glass tube again, the sound turned low—and I pictured the three of us as skeletons. Vanessa lifted an orange wedge with a bony hand to her skull, Heidi’s chewed piece slid behind the bars of her rib cage. I wiggled the fingers of my right hand and imagined the tiny bones rattling like dice.
“Is, what’s wrong with your hand?” Heidi asked.
I made a fist and stretched out my fingers, again and again. “It fell asleep.”
“That’s weird,” Vanessa said.
“It happens sometimes.”
Heidi made a face like she thought I was crazy.
Roland opened the sliding glass door. “Can I bring him inside?” He raised his fist, the lizard’s tail dangling from it like a broken rubber band.
“No, Rolo,” I said. “Let him go and come meet my friend Vanessa.”
“Please.”
“I said no.”
Roland twisted his face and closed his eyes halfway. “I said no,” he mush-mouthed.
“That’s really mature.”
“That’s really mature,” he repeated.
“My name is Roland and my parents are big morons living in North Carolina.”
He stepped back from the sliding glass door and slammed it shut, the glass vibrating in its frame.
“My God,” Vanessa said, swiveling her head slowly. “He’s a little monster.”
“At least you don’t have to live with him,” I told her.
Heidi wiped her mouth with her napkin. “I should probably get going.”
Vanessa stood up from the couch. “Same here.”
“We should all do something this weekend,” I said. “Maybe Shoreline Village.”
“I have to work at the museum on Saturday,” Vanessa said.
I turned to Heidi. “Let’s swing by. Then we can go to Shoreline Village afterward.”
“Hopefully Carlos will be working,” Vanessa said.
The sliding glass door opened again and Roland flew inside with his palm up, hollering, “Look, look!” He turned his hand over the coffee table and the lizard’s tail fell onto the glass, twisting and squirming like a worm.
Vanessa shrieked and covered her mouth. Heidi jumped to her feet, grabbing her purse.
“Roland!” I shouted. “Pick that up right now and throw it away!”
He was leaning over the coffee table, watching the tail wriggle side to side up close. “Wait till it stops moving.”
“Now.”
“Just a second.”
“I have to go, Is,” Heidi said, slipping her purse over her shoulder.
I left Roland by himself in the living room and walked Vanessa and Heidi to the door, apologizing. The sky was still a pumpkin color from the brush fire. At the end of the walkway, Heidi turned around and made the thumb-and-pinkie signal, letting me know she’d call later. I closed the front door and headed back to the living room, fuming. Roland was still hunched over the coffee table. He nudged the lizard’s tail with his fingertip.
“Wait till Mom gets home,” I said.
Roland shrugged. He pinched the lizard’s tail and tossed it outside, then wiped his fingers on his pant leg.
“You’re disgusting,” I told him.
“You’re disgusting.” He was doing that mush-mouth thing again.
“My name is Roland and my parents are—”
“Shut up.”
“My parents are big—”
“Shut up, shut up!” He pressed his hands over his ears.
“My parents—”
“La la la la la,” he chanted, heading into the kitchen.
“Are big morons—”
“I can’t hear you. La la la la—”
“Living in North Carolina!”
He swerved toward me and began swinging his arms like helicopter blades. I grabbed hold of one of his wrists, then the other, his body jerking as he struggled to break loose. I could feel the narrow bones of his arms twisting in my hands and I thought about all the bones in his body, lashing and jerking, and for a split second I imagined myself dancing with a skeleton.
Roland kicked my shin, hard, and I let go of him. His face was pink with hate. “I’m telling Mom and Dad,” he threatened.
“Oh yeah? You know their number in North Carolina?”
He said nothing and stormed off to his room and banged the door shut.
I sat down at the kitchen table and rubbed my shin, wondering what sort of bruise I’d get, what shape of scarlet. I looked outside the window and remembered I’d meant to give Vanessa and Heidi some oranges to take home. The tree slumped with the weight of the fruit at the end of our yard. Orange suns glowing under an orange sky.
CARLOS
The neon-sign artist, Richard Spurgeon, showed up at the museum with a pale yellow blanket folded under his arm. I hoped he didn’t notice that I’d been crying, that my eyes were pink and swollen, but then I thought I could blame the brush fire, my allergies, all the ash floating around.
His hair was dyed black and was messy, as if he’d just woken
up from a nap outside the museum. He wore a wrinkled white T and jeans, his tennis shoes looked like they were mauled by a mountain lion. There was something about his eyes that reminded me of Will’s—not so much the color but how deep-set they were, the arc of his brows. I felt ashamed again for not helping my friend when he’d asked for some money.
“Is Janet around?” Richard asked. It was strange hearing someone call Ms. Otto “Janet.” Like if Snake called me “Mr. Delgado.”
“She had to step out,” I said. “She told me you’d be stopping by.” I picked up the REMOVED FOR REPAIRS sign and showed him.
“Shit,” he mumbled. “I really wanted to talk to her.” He bit his bottom lip and dragged a hand through his hair. “Did she tell you when she’d be back?”
“She didn’t.”
He laughed. It was the kind of laugh that someone makes when they’re really upset. Then he muttered something under his breath that I couldn’t make out, some criticism about Ms. Otto’s timing.
Richard stood before his neon sign, half of his body radiating pink. The “coit” part of the sign was still sputtering off and on.
“That’s my favorite one in the whole exhibit,” I told him.
“Thanks.” He leaned in close and lightly flicked the glass tube. It clinked like a wineglass.
“Too bad it’s doing that,” I told him.
“I kind of like that it says ‘No more us for you’ every now and then. It adds to the piece.”
“I thought that, too.”
“It’s very Duchampian.”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
Richard crouched down and pulled the black cord from the wall socket and the sign went dark. It was practically illegible without the hot pink light burning inside of it. He touched the glass tube and quickly pulled his hand away as if he’d been stung. “I’ll have to wait until this cools down a bit,” he said.
“We have rubber gloves somewhere,” I offered.
“That’s all right,” he said, chuckling.
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