Our house was nice and came with a backyard and a pool. You can’t beat a pool when you wake up at six a.m. and it’s already ninety degrees outside. There was always a home-cooked dinner on the table, but we ate later than most of my friends. Every year we went clothes shopping for school, and I managed to pick things out that didn’t make me look too foolish. Life was pretty normal. I had friends, rode my bike, went swimming in the summer, and played basketball at Udall. If you’re not from the area, think about Udall as a really fancy YMCA.
The world was laid out before me just as you see it now. I was going to go to college; the future was bright with opportunity. Magic did not exist unless you were Harry Potter or, as my dad used to say, “If you ate some beans.” The things that went bump in the night stayed in your low budget creature features and certainly weren’t real.
That all started to change during the summer before my senior year of high school. At first, I just wrote it off as too many late nights watching scary movies. Maybe I had watched Lord of the Rings one too many times on Blu-ray. It seemed to happen slowly at first, and by the end of summer, it was an everyday occurrence. I was seeing things that no one else could see. It had to be said, I was slowly losing my mind.
I spent that entire summer ignoring my friends, hoping that as long as we didn’t hang out, they wouldn’t be able to see the cracks forming in my mind. I told myself little things to keep myself calm: “Most people who think they are crazy are probably ok,” followed by, “It’s the ones who think they are sane and everyone else is crazy that you have to watch out for.” Those two lines became my mantra for everyday life. From that point on, I was a rollercoaster of conflicting emotions and, really, who could blame me?
The summer seemed endless, and the things I kept seeing made me worried about what would happen when school started again. That was when the other shoe finally dropped. Murphy’s Law decided to strike me down with all of its twisted glory. I remember it just like it was yesterday: the day I burned my house down.
The details of how the fire actually started are still hazy in my mind. I remember being in a fight with my dad. He kept asking me why I had abandoned all my friends, saying that some of them had been calling and wanted to know if I was ok. He told me that he loved me, and no matter what was happening, we could work through it together. I just remember feeling so angry, knowing that I couldn’t tell him about what was happening to me. I just wanted him to leave me alone.
I ran toward the car, hoping I could get in and leave before he could push the issue any further. I felt a hand on my shoulder spinning me around. That was when my world exploded in flames. It was as if they just leaped out of my body. I had no control, no way to stop it. When I finally fell to the ground in exhaustion, the flames seemed to taper out. I was too weak to stand, and the fire was raging all around us. I felt hands slide under my shoulders, and someone was dragging my body out of the fire.
By the time the first fire engine arrived, the entire house was engulfed in flames. The fire department did what they could, but the house was a total loss. Mom managed to save the external hard drive and her laptop. That was all that survived the blaze. I tried talking to my dad about what happened, but he just told me it was over and it was better if we never brought it up again.
The last month before school started, and we spent it in an apartment. My parents had to pay for new clothes, because the insurance company was dragging its feet. The fire department was investigating the scene for arson. Apparently they thought one of us started the fire. If they only knew the truth, that one of us did.
Word had spread around town that I had burned down our house. Of course people believed it. The insurance company had refused to pay for the damage, and the fire department was working with the police to press charges against me. The single point of origin for the flames was what made them think it had to have been set. The only problem was they could not find any traces of an accelerant, and were having problems explaining how the fire spread so fast without one. I had a feeling that was the only thing that kept me sitting at home, instead of in jail.
I heard my dad on the phone having heated conversations with someone. It sounded as if he was trying to call in some favors. The words “you owe me” were spoken more than a few times. Surprisingly, not too long after his call, the insurance company decided to pay us in full. They also covered the cost of our living expenses during the investigation. The arson investigator even stopped by our apartment to apologize. I was not sure who my dad knew, but it had to have been someone important to turn the situation around so quickly.
With the fire behind us and the rebuilding project beginning, life seemed to settle back down. I had a gut feeling that wouldn’t last forever. School was going to be starting soon, and spending the summer under suspicion of arson was not going to help matters. Some of my classmates had already seen me around town and started to call me fire-starter. It didn’t help that I had spent the better part of the summer alienating everyone close to me. I still had one friend I could talk with, one that no matter how hard I tried wouldn’t give up on me. Alby—or, as everyone else knew her, Abigale Jones.
Alby presented her own unique set of problems for me. She was one of the people I had been noticing who seemed to change when I looked at them a little longer. Her ears were slightly pointed, and somehow she seemed to have vines that ran up the side of her neck. I almost asked her once when she got a tattoo, but I stopped myself before I could make that fatal error. I tried not to stare; the last thing I wanted to do was call any more attention to myself. I just wrote it off as another one of my delusions and started to wonder just how long I would be able to keep up the charade of pretending everything was ok.
I knew that she had noticed me staring at her, and she always smiled when she caught me stealing a glance. If only she knew what I was looking at. I was no ace with women, so I didn’t exactly know how she was taking this newfound attention. Was that smile a polite, come on now, Jackson, or was it a how you doing kind of smile. I assumed she just wrote me off as your average seventeen-year-old male.
Alby was thin, but still had some curves. She packed on more muscle than you would have thought possible for someone who didn’t look like a bodybuilder. Some of that had to do with her being athletically gifted, but most of it came from her being dedicated to the gym. She was captain of the school’s volleyball team. You could see her from a mile away, the bright blonde ponytail bouncing slightly as she walked. The top of that trademark ponytail added a few inches to her already impressive six-foot height. The good news for me was that I was almost one hundred percent certain that I had been placed firmly in the friend zone. That meant when I got caught staring, it was more of a laugh-and-forget-about-it kind of thing, and that was exactly what I needed right now.
Senior year came and went without too much actually happening. I had continued to see things, but as they became a more consistent part of my life, they also became easier to ignore. Who cares if that guy’s teeth are a little too sharp, or if Alby’s ears are just a little too pointed? As long as I could sneak through the day without staring awkwardly at too many people, it was a win. Somehow, through all the craziness, I had managed to keep my grades up and, while I wouldn’t be headed to the University of Arizona right away, I would be able to knock out some credits at community college and then hopefully transfer in later.
The best part of community college was I got to stay in our newly built house for at least one more year, and save some money for off-campus housing when I finally transferred to U of A. I wanted to make as much money over the summer as I could; that way, I would be able to focus on my studies during the semester. I had been looking for a job for about a month when I got a call from Alby.
“Yo, fire-starter, what’s up?”
“Damn it, you know I hate when you call me that, Alby. What if I started our calls by saying, ‘Yo, what up, Albalicious’?”
She laughed into the phone. It was a sweet sound to hear.
“Ok, ok, I’ll stick to something less dramatic. Anyway, my uncle just called me, and it turns out the guy who was going to work with me overnight at his copy shop just took another job. He doesn’t want me working there alone at night, so if you haven’t found anything yet, the job is yours.”
I managed to complete a little fist bump in the air without dropping the phone. “Hell yeah. Thanks, Alby. That sounds awesome. He isn’t trying to pay us like four dollars an hour or anything, right?”
She laughed again, music to my ears. “Since you asked, it pays nine seventy-five an hour, plus all the horrible coffee you can drink. Best news for us is he basically needs us there just to stock supplies. No real customers come in to make copies at 2 a.m. There is a sweet TV in the back, so we can have a few movie marathons every week.”
“This job just sounds better and better. Light work, good pay, and more time with my best friend. Thanks for doing this, Alby.”
I could almost hear her wink before saying, “No problem, fire-starter. See you Monday.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. She just had that effect on me. Even though I hated when people called me that, coming from her it was almost a gift instead of an insult. Having a job locked in place freed up the rest of my weekend. I was looking forward to enjoying my last weekend of freedom before I became a working man.
Recently, I had started my love affair with running. I wasn’t sure what happened, or if it was just because I was young, but I had started having these bursts of extreme energy. At first I just tried to not worry about it, thinking that they would eventually go away. If I went more than a couple of days without working out, I couldn’t sleep at night. It was like my body was calling out to me for exercise. I started by just doing some stretching and lifting some weights in our garage. That lasted about a month before a half an hour of lifting was not enough to get me back to normal. So I started walking.
I’d never been exactly what you call in shape. I was a shape, it wasn’t in, and would more likely be referred to as round. Not saying I was extremely overweight, but I carried a few extra pounds around like a badge of honor. Late night movie sessions, early morning mochas, and a healthy supply of cake had started to catch up with me. So I was the first one surprised by my new need to work out. My parents kind of watched me from the corners of their eyes, almost afraid to say anything, like it might break the spell.
So walking around the neighborhood worked for a while. I started out with just a mile. After about three weeks of walking, I was doing four miles and still not burning enough energy to sleep through the night. My body just needed more. It was the strangest feeling to have uncontrolled bursts of almost endless energy. People started to notice that change in my body, too. Alby had poked me more than once in the stomach and said, “Where did you go?” It was a new feeling for me, and one that I was starting to enjoy.
With four miles of walking not being enough to take the edge off, I started to run. The first day I went just a little nuts and ran about eight miles. That night when I woke up for work, I could barely move. I limped into work, earning a good laugh from Alby. It was three days before I could run again, and I was bursting at the seams with energy. I figured this time I would run two miles and then walk three, and see how it worked out. When I woke up not in pain, I knew the new plan worked. This continued for the next three weeks.
The midpoint of summer rolled around, and now I was running every morning after work. It felt good to get out there. My body kept asking me for more, and I wasn’t sure what else I could do. The energy just wouldn’t go away, and I was starting to get worried that at some point I might pull something out of a Heroes episode and go nuclear. Nothing that I found online could explain what was happening to me. It was just another one of those things in my life that didn’t make sense. The one plus for the summer so far was, when you work the graveyard shift, you end up saving a lot of money. While everyone else was out spending, you were tucked in bed, sleeping the day away.
After spending the night working with Alby and trying not to get caught checking out her neck, she totally busted me. It was at the worst possible time, too. She had been bent all the way over, filling up the bottom tray of a printer with paper. We had a relaxed dress code overnight, and she had come in wearing a fitted workout shirt and a pair of tight shorts. Her shirt had pulled away from her shorts and I was fascinated by what I saw. I had moved around behind her, using the angle to get a better view of her back, trying to follow the patterns I was seeing.
She must have felt me move around behind her, because she stood up and spun around, pointing a finger in my face. “Did you get a good look?”
I froze. How do you tell someone that you see weird roots growing along their spine? Maybe it would be better if I just told her I was checking out her butt. I didn’t know what to do or say, so I fell back on my most basic move. The shrug.
She raised one eyebrow at me. “You are not getting off the hook that easy, Jackson. Tell me just exactly what you were looking at when I was bent over.”
My voice was still stuck in my throat. I didn’t know what to do. I tried to up the ante. I pulled out all the stops and laid down a smile and a shrug. Just to keep making it more awkward, I also started to turn furiously red.
This time I did not get a smile or a raised eyebrow, but a small punch to the shoulder. “Come on, Jackson, we talk about everything, so if you were checking me out, just say so. It’s not like tomorrow you won’t have a job and be friendless. You might be if you don’t talk to me, though.”
I stammered for a few seconds and then sucked in a deep breath. Well, this would be the day she knew I’d finally lost it. The first person to know I was totally insane. “I wasn’t looking at your butt, Alby.”
This earned me a pretty big frown. I was kind of surprised; I thought maybe she would have a little relief, or maybe she was just mad because she thought I was lying. I didn’t know how to say what I needed to, so I just blurted it out. “It’s not that you don’t have a great butt, Alby—you do, not that I was looking, mind you. But for the last year, I have been seeing things and I swear I see some kind of roots or something following your spine. Sometimes I forgot I am pretending not to be crazy, and I just stare when I see them. I have been trying to figure out if it’s real or if I am just imagining it.”
At the same time, I felt relieved and totally exposed. I took a deep breath, waiting for her to tell me I was crazy. To tell me that she never wanted to see me again. Maybe she could just hit me again and tell me to man up and just admit I liked her ass. I didn’t know what I was expecting, but it was definitely not what happened.
She reached out and grabbed me by the arm, hard. Her grip was harder than I would have thought possible. I could feel her fingers digging into my flesh. “What are you?”
I looked at her with pure confusion. She was starting to scare me, and the grip on my arm only grew tighter. “What do you mean, what am I? I’m just your friend. It’s me, Jackson.”
I felt her grip on me slightly relax, and let out a big sigh of relief. Her eyes were searching my face, looking for any kind of deception. “You really don’t know, do you?” She continued to watch my face, and must have believed what she saw there. Alby finally released my arm, but I could tell her body was still coiled with tension. It was like she expected me to attack her.
“What should I know, Alby? What are you talking about? Is what I am seeing real?” I grasped desperately at the smallest glimmer of hope that what I was seeing was real. It would make things easier just knowing that I was not crazy. It didn’t matter to me that I might not ever be able to tell anyone what I saw; I just wanted to know it was real.
It was like she became a different person. “Of course what you are seeing isn’t real. God, I’ve been your friend for so long, and instead of just telling me you like my ass, you come up with some crazy story. What is your damage, Jackson? Seriously.”
With that, she walked out of the store and left me standing there confused an
d alone. I tried to call her cell, but it just went to voicemail. I couldn’t bring myself to leave a message. The next night when I showed up for work, she wasn’t there. Before I left in the morning, her uncle came into the store, which was odd. I noticed he had the same markings around his neck, but I made sure not to look at them.
He called out to me when he noticed where I was. “Jackson, can I see you in my office for a minute?”
I knew something was up. I had worked here the entire summer and had maybe seen Alby’s uncle one time. When we got into the office, I knew my day was going from bad to worse just by the look on his face.
“Jackson, we have decided to stop running the shop overnight. I’m just going to rotate one of my morning and afternoon people around to stock supplies. I hate to do this to you on such short notice.”
I didn’t say anything; what was there to say? I lost my best friend and my job all in one night, all because I decided to open my big fat mouth. I just looked back at him with a bit of shame and frustration on my face.
He finally took pity on me and started talking again. “Alby wanted to make sure you were taken care of. She knows you need this money for college in a few weeks. God, that girl has a way of getting what she wants. First she talks me into hiring you, even though I only need one person working, and then she has me pay you for the rest of the summer when you won’t be working here anymore.”
I almost didn’t catch that last part. He was going to pay me for the rest of the summer. It felt kind of wrong, like Alby just talked him into it so she would never have to see me again. I just nodded my head in acceptance. “Alby has a way of doing that, Mr. Jones. Thank you again for giving me the job in the first place.”
He stood up and handed me my last check and gave me a slight pat on the shoulder on my way out. I should have felt worse about getting fired, but I really didn’t. I just wanted to get my friend back. I missed her already, and all I could think about was her reaction to what I had said. There was more to it; I just knew it. I wondered what she was so scared of that she cut me completely out of her life. If I had to guess, it was not because what I said was crazy, but because what I said was true.
The Arena Page 4