Streetlights Like Fireworks

by Pandolfe, David

I also keep wondering why Lauren didn’t mention having a boyfriend before tonight. God, I came within seconds of making a total fool of myself. I try to picture who the guy might be but can’t think of anyone from school, that’s for sure. Maybe it’s some college dude preying on high school girls or some guy living in a nearby town. Either way, doesn’t he care that Lauren is hanging out with me in a motel room in North Carolina? I want to be mad at her but it’s not like she lied to me or led me on. There was no flirting or anything even close. Any sexual tension had been entirely in my imagination. I seriously hope I didn’t give off any signals. I tell myself I didn’t but I’m not entirely sure. No, I’m not mad, I realize. Just embarrassed.

  I give up on the idea of sleeping for now and take the Fender out of its case. I run a few quiet riffs. I’m not plugged in so it isn’t like I’m bothering Lauren. I strum a few chords. I keep expecting another flash but no flashes come from the guitar tonight. I almost wish one did so I wasn’t alone with my thoughts, since I know I should call my parents back. At the same time, I also know it’s not concern for my well-being that’s compelled them to call and text at least twenty times. It’s anger. Confusion. Disappointment. Which to some degree or another is how they always feel about me. It’s the same scale. We’ve just escalated the reading. After all, they must know I didn’t leave alone. I didn’t drown or go missing in the woods. I took off. And why do people take off? Well, typically that’s because they’re really unhappy.

  Maybe I don’t exactly get a flash but I definitely get a strong feeling. What kind of parents send their son someplace every summer that they totally know he hates? You don’t have to be psychic to figure that one out.

  ~~~

  Hours later, I just know somehow and wake up. Sure enough, there he stands in the middle of the room. He looks the same as before, tall and thin with long hair. Again, the glowing light around him and through him. Like he’s both there and not at the same time—as if he’s being projected from somewhere else as he keeps flickering and fading.

  This time, I don’t freak out or try to convince myself it’s a dream. Maybe I’m less afraid because Lauren is in the room. Even if she’s sleeping, at least someone else is there with me. Besides, she gets along with ghosts. I guess I might as well try doing the same. But I’m not sure what to say. “How do you like being dead?” seems a bad opener. “Why do ghosts wear clothes?” is something that’s crossed my mind before. After all, why would their clothes get trapped in some sort of afterlife? But that seems kind of personal. I close my eyes, then open them again to be sure. He’s still there.

  “I can see you,” is all I can think of, which seems both stupid and obvious. After all, doesn’t that kind of go without saying if you’re facing each other?

  Nothing happens.

  Suddenly, I think back to my conversation with Lauren earlier. “Is it maybe something left unresolved?”

  The ghost reacts, or at least it seems that way. For an instant, he becomes less a glowing figure and more visible. More defined, more solid. I see his eyes looking into mine. I wait, thinking he might even say something but a moment later he’s already fading. Within seconds, he’s gone. I sit there in the dark, staring at where he just was, both relieved and partly hoping he’ll reappear. But the only light now comes from a streetlight outside, just a sliver cast through a gap in the thick motel room curtain.

  Across the room, Lauren keeps sleeping. I know this because, yes, she’s snoring. I’m not sure which part I want to tell her about first in the morning.

  ~~~

  “I don’t snore!” Lauren says, as we drive back toward Charlotte.

  “Yeah, you totally do.”

  “Not true.”

  “Absolutely true. Like a bulldog.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Because I took video.” I pull my phone from my pocket and hold it up.

  “You did not take freaking video!”

  “Posting it to YouTube first chance I get.”

  Lauren reaches for my phone and the van swerves. I have no doubt she’d whip my phone out the window.

  “Okay, kidding. I didn’t take video.”

  “Better not have.”

  “But you totally snore.”

  “Liar.”

  “Don’t worry, it wasn’t all that loud. It’s kind of a light snoring thing you’ve got going on.”

  “What do you mean, like you could hear me breathing?”

  “Yeah, kind of like that. But through your nose, sort of raspy. Like a really old man.”

  Lauren smiles. “Give me a break. That’s allergies, not snoring. That’s like checking someone’s pulse after they climb a hill and telling them they’re having a heart attack.”

  “Look, I get it. You’re defensive about your snoring. Who wouldn’t be? For the record, it wasn’t like it woke me up. I was already awake.”

  “So, you were up just sitting there listening to me breathe? Creep.”

  “Okay, here’s the deal—the ghost came by again last night. I think he was trying to figure out what the noise was. Maybe he thought someone left a power saw running.”

  Lauren fights the urge, but laughs. “Allergies! God, you’re like a nose stalker too. Now cut the crap about my totally-not-true snoring and tell me about the ghost. What happened?”

  Through the windshield, I see the city skyline again. In another few minutes we’ll be taking one of the downtown exits. “I tried talking to him again.”

  “Pretty gutsy how you keep talking to a ghost. I’m proud of you. Did he hear you?”

  It hadn’t occurred to me until she said it, but talking to a ghost does take a certain amount of nerve. I can’t help feeling proud of myself too. “Wait, wouldn’t he hear me this time if he heard me before?”

  Lauren shrugs. “It’s not like I wrote the ghost manual. Anyway, what happened?”

  “Yeah, he heard me. At least, I think he did. He kind of got more solid. Just for a second, he seemed like a normal person.”

  Lauren doesn’t say anything and at first and I wonder if she believes me. Then she says, “You mean he changed physically? I’ve heard about that happening.”

  I take a second to process that. “Never happened for you?”

  “Nope.”

  “What do you think it means?”

  Lauren doesn’t hesitate. “That this is personal. He knows you.”

  “He can’t possibly know me. That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “What part makes sense?” Lauren freaks me out by taking both hands off the steering wheel to make air quotes. Thankfully, she puts her hands on the wheel again. “None of it, right?”

  ~~~

  It turns out there really is a place in Charlotte called the Trolleyman. Actually, it’s the Trolleyman Brewery, on Tryon Street in what they apparently call the “uptown” area. We couldn’t be sure before if Victor might have been lying. We snag a parking space across the street and wait for the light at the crosswalk. It’s a nice part of town, actually, with tree-lined streets, clean wide sidewalks and bus stops topped with curved glass. An old, brick church with an ornate circle of stained glass sits on one corner, the Trolleyman on the other at the end of a row of shops and restaurants. Sunlight sparkles off skyscrapers not too far down the road, each architecturally unique.

  I guess Lauren must be thinking the same thing since, as we approach the front doors of the Trolleyman, she says, “Not exactly what I expected.”

  “Same here,” I say. “I was guessing seedy dive. Doesn’t look like the kind of place to sell drugs.”

  “True,” Lauren says. “Then again, it’s easier selling something to people with money.”

  Inside the Trolleyman, we find bright lights, gleaming wood and rows of widescreens silently showing sports stations. We stand at the front desk for less than a minute before a pretty, blonde girl maybe a few years older than us approaches smiling.

  “Hey, you two,” she says, with just a hint of a southern accent. “
Having lunch with us today?”

  “Is Susan working?” Lauren says. “We were wondering if we could sit at one of her tables.”

  The hostess thinks for a moment. “I don’t think we have anyone named Susan working here.”

  Crap. Of course, Lauren had already been pushing things with Victor by asking where Susan worked. She hadn’t asked him when she’d worked there.

  “Susan Walker?” I try.

  She shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know who that is.” At that moment, a guy comes out of the bar. Early thirties, crisply dressed in slacks, shirt and tie. Manager material, definitely. The hostess turns to him. “Mike, do you know anyone named Susan Walker?”

  He stops mid-stride and turns our way. An automatic smile appears, then fades. “Are you two friends of hers?”

  “You know her?” I say, pointlessly since obviously he does.

  He nods, eyes guarded. “She no longer works here.”

  The way he says it tells a story in itself. Not one that ended happily, I guess. “Did she work here recently?” I say.

  The manager shakes his head, a little impatiently as if we’re wasting his time. “It’s been a year or two.”

  “Do you know where she might work now?” Lauren says. “We’re trying to find her.”

  He straightens a stack of menus and tucks them under the front desk. “No idea. Susan didn’t exactly leave under the best circumstances.”

  In other words, she got fired. He doesn’t have to say why. It doesn’t matter. Susan Walker is long gone and not missed, obviously.

  “Can I get you two a table?” His meaning is clear. The conversation is over.

  Five minutes later we’re sitting back in the bus, sitting parked across from the Trolleyman. I stare down the street at those shiny buildings.

  “Shit. We just drove all the way here for nothing.”

  “Maybe,” Lauren says.

  I glance at her as she watches people pass by on the sidewalk. Two old ladies walking arm in arm, laughing about something. A middle-aged man talking on his phone.

  “Maybe?” I say.

  Lauren turns to face me. “Well, probably. I’ll give you that.”

  “It’s a total dead-end.”

  “It does seem that way.”

  I wonder if she’s just messing with me. “Do you maybe know something I don’t?”

  “Nope.”

  There’s the smile again, tugging at the corner of her lip and, despite the situation, I feel a smile coming too.

  “Okay, how can this be anything other than what it seems like?”

  Lauren shrugs. “Well, we both felt strongly that we should try to figure this whole deal out, right?”

  That much is true, definitely. “Okay, sure.”

  “Do you suppose we were wrong?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  Which is true, I don’t. Or at least I don’t want it to be true for several reasons. The first being I’ve just gotten myself into a shitload of trouble for no reason at all. The second being I really want to know why I experienced Richter Scale 7 magnitude flashes. The third being our trip, and hence our time together, will now already be over. Despite last night, boyfriend or not, I really like being around Lauren. A lot. And it’s not like she’s married. Things can still change. I’m nowhere near ready to have her pull up in front of my house and drop me off and say something like, “See you at school next year.”

  “Okay, I hope it’s not true,” I say.

  “I don’t think we were wrong,” Lauren says. “So, something has to come our way. Hopefully, that will happen. How about we go find someplace to eat.”

  I look across the street at the Trolleyman Brewery but Lauren reads my mind.

  “Not there,” she says. “The manager seemed like kind of a dipshit.”

  ~~~

  We decide to walk around, just to check things out while also looking to see if we spot someplace where we’d like to eat. It feels good to be out of the bus and not worried about getting somewhere. We’re just more people on the sidewalk, blending in like we live in Charlotte too. The day is getting hotter and more humid now that it’s almost noon but it doesn’t bother me. I look at the bright side—right now, I probably would have been herding a bunch of twelve-year-olds on a hike through the woods or hauling a cart full of dirty towels from the pool to the laundry. Every day is an adventure for a Leader in Training. Ten minutes ago, I felt totally depressed but now it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. Maybe Lauren is right and something will come up. And, if nothing does, we’re still together for now. That’s worth plenty in itself.

  We walk past an old guy sitting on a milk crate playing an acoustic guitar—dark scalp ringed with gray-frizzled hair, eyes hidden behind black glasses—and we stop to listen. It surprises me that he’s tearing into a Pixies song, Dig for Fire, when I expect to hear some old blues or something. In fact, he’s totally owning it, putting his own spin on the song and it sounds really cool. I’ve been a Pixies fan for a while and I almost want to take it for some sort of sign. But I can’t see what the Pixies, or the old street musician, have to do with anything. All the same, when he’s done I drop a dollar into his open guitar case and he says, “Keep the faith, my man.”

  We walk for maybe another half-mile and spot a place called the Midnight Diner, a restaurant basically made out of chrome that dazzles my eyes in the bright sun.

  “Let’s check it out,” Lauren says.

  We go into the cool air, slide into a bright red booth and look at menus. Not surprisingly, they’re big on breakfast items since, evidently, the place stays open twenty-four hours. And, of course, there’s a big range of burger options plus the comfort food you’d expect to find.

  “Ooh, French Toast,” Lauren says.

  “I’m thinking Carolina Burger,” I say.

  As soon as we place our order, my phone starts buzzing against the table. I wish I’d left it in my pocket since it’s even harder to ignore with both of us aware of it.

  “Do you think maybe you should answer that?” Lauren says.

  I don’t have to look to know who’s calling. “I probably should,” I say, but I don’t. After a minute, my phone stops vibrating.

  The waitress drops off our drinks and Lauren sips her lemonade. “Have they been calling a lot?”

  I poke my straw at the ice in my Coke. “A number of times.”

  “Maybe you should just let them know you’re okay.”

  “And tell them what, that I bailed on camp and took off with you in search of whoever might have owned my guitar because a ghost keeps appearing next to my bed?”

  “You could. After all, it is the truth. I’m fine with it, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “What about you? Don’t you—”

  “Different situation,” Lauren says, sliding out of the booth. “If the waitress comes back, can you ask her for extra syrup? I mean, if it looks stingy.”

  I watch as she walks toward the restroom. Lauren wears a red skirt, a gray t-shirt and sneakers. With the vibrant streaks in her hair gone, at least for now, she doesn’t draw stares for standing out next to the other people in the diner. I wonder if she just dresses dark for school to put people off, almost playing into the scary thing, something she picked up as a defense mechanism along the way. If that’s been her intention, it’s worked nicely for her. People have long stopped making fun of her and keep their distance these days. I wonder if, deep down, she cares but I get the feeling she stopped caring about them years ago.

  The waitress drops off our food along with a large dispenser of maple syrup, so there’s no issue there. I can’t help it. I check my phone, hoping maybe it was Justin or Doug this time. It wasn’t. I set my phone down again, then pick it back up. Lauren’s right. I send my father a text.

  I’m fine. Not dead or anything.

  I wait, wondering if my phone will start buzzing. But he gets it—I’m not answering.

>   A moment later, he texts back. Where are you?

  I think about telling him but I don’t want to. It’s as simple as that. For good or bad, I want this experience to be mine. Telling him would ruin it. God only knows too—he might call the Charlotte police or something.

  Just not at camp.

  I sip my Coke and wait.

  You need to get back here.

  I will. Soon.

  I look at my burger, which looks good, but I’m not hungry anymore.

  Unless you plan on paying for college yourself, I’d suggest you do it now.

  And there it is. What can I say to that other than nothing? So, that’s exactly what I say. I stare at the screen, at that message, wishing I felt more than I do. I notice my battery is about to die. I put my phone in my pocket, deciding not to charge it for a while.

  I’m looking out the window when Lauren slides back in across from me. American flags flap outside in the breeze. Cars and busses roll past.

  After a moment, she says, “I guess you called them.”

  Maybe she noticed that my phone is no longer on the table. Or maybe it took me a moment too long to break off my gaze from things I was barely seeing. I look at her now. In her eyes, I see both concern and knowing. And something she hasn’t shared with me. At least, not yet.

  I nod. “I sent a text.”

  “What did they say?”

  “They said to take my time and do what I have to do.”

  Lauren pours maple syrup onto her French Toast. “Something like that,” she says. “Right?”

  “Exactly,” I say. “Something like that.”

  “Well, I still think it’s good that you let them know you’re okay.”

  And she’s right. Not for their sake but for mine. I know where I stand now and it’s way worse than I thought. I’ve never known my father to bluff. Why do I not care? Why do I really hope something comes along that keeps me from going back there? I want this to happen even if it makes no sense and everything comes crashing down. I get the feeling that, somehow, Lauren knows this. That she at least senses it.

  “I think so too,” I say.

  I reach for the ketchup and pour some out next to my fries, then dip one in. Suddenly, I’m hungry again and the burger is looking good.