Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

by Anthology

I fumbled for my phone with fingers made fat by adrenaline and dialed 911, worrying the whole time about the light from the screen leaking through the door. I kept my finger hovering over the send icon and put one ginger foot in front of the other to peek out and see what I could see.

  The living room was aglow with candlelight. Not so much a burglar’s M.O.

  The hinges on my bedroom door squealed their way open. The candles lit up a mosaic of rose petals trailing off toward the living room and ending in a puddle on my coffee table. There was a little velvet box with a diamond-and-sapphire ring, poised in the middle of this mess of floral confetti. As I stared at this tableau in muzzy incomprehension, Benji stepped out of the kitchen. He held a mismatched pair of coffee mugs and a bottle of champagne. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Marry me?”

  My guts were still a roiling disaster of anxiety and rejection and anger. My mind tried to formulate the biggest telling-off I had ever performed in all my life. But while my brain was blankly trying to find a few words to fit together, my mouth sprang right into action. “Yes,” it said.

  So that’s how me and Benji the Internet Star got engaged.

  Chapter 2

  Joes’ Buzz was one of those eclectic mom-and-pop coffee shops you keep hearing don’t exist anymore (or in this case, a pop-and-pop shop). They’d hung up a shingle with that craftily placed apostrophe sometime in the early ’90s and decked the place out like a tropical paradise. The walls were covered with jungle-inspired sweeps of green, blending in with clusters of potted palms and umbrella plants. Tiki masks scowled and beamed at the customers at artful intervals. The regulars were mostly brogrammers and not-so-starving artists, though there’d been a recent spike in urban moms wielding over-engineered strollers.

  I shambled in the morning after my unexpected engagement very much not on time for my shift. (It would have been even later, but my mother called and woke me up about an hour after I’d turned off my alarm instead of snoozing it.) My hair was in an unwashed pony tail—the kind where your hair is so filthy you can still kind of see the strands it separated into when you pulled it back with your fingers—and I wore a Ramones T-shirt that couldn’t even remember a time it hadn’t been wrinkled. At least with the Ramones that’s pretty much expected.

  All of this could have been overlooked, and probably would have been, but my eyes were still puffy and red from all of the emoting I’d done the night before. Or a couple of hours before, to get technical. No amount of hastily applied ice had been able to fix it.

  Joey was the one who caught me; Joseph liked to sleep in. The wind chimes hanging from the door jangled in Hawaiian-themed harmony, and everybody turned to get a look. Joey didn’t frown at me, exactly, so much as he didn’t smile. His eyebrows did that thing where they crawl up to where his hairline used to be in order to make room for all of the questions he was planning on asking.

  Fortunately the morning rush was on, so I could hustle behind Joey to drop my bag in the back room and get an apron on. Then I jumped headlong into the dance of steam and caffeine.

  Joey may be a gossip, but he’s never in his life let anything get between him and a paying customer, aging hippie or no. So he didn’t begin the inquiry into my timeliness and poor personal grooming right away. He settled for shooting me the odd meaningful glance instead. I kept my focus on the orders—well, as much as circumstances permitted—and if I prolonged one or two conversations a little more than you could have strictly called professional, well, what of it? It’s not like it was the first time. And being friendly does keep ’em coming back.

  But the morning rush doesn’t last forever, and eventually it was me and Joey alone behind the counter. Never before in my life had I so diligently polished the espresso machine or restocked the beans, and if I say the baked goods in the display case achieved an arrangement of near-mathematical perfection, I promise I’m not just bragging.

  Joey didn’t buy it, though. “Late night?”

  I put down the rag and slumped against the counter. “Kind of,” I said. “Sorry I was so late. I just have a lot going on.”

  He chucked me under the chin. “You feeling OK, Mira-deara?”

  “Oh, you know…it’s nothing.”

  “…Something.”

  “No, I swear, it’s just…”

  “Is that boy of yours treating you right? Do I need to go buy a shotgun to wave at him?”

  Dammit. I hadn’t quite worked out for myself what had happened, and didn’t know how to tell anybody else. But sometimes the best way to distill whatever’s going on in your head is to talk it over. So I opened my mouth and let the words fall out, listening intently to see if any of it would explain my life to me.

  “I’m getting married,” I said. And then I smiled brightly, like a girl who knew exactly what she was doing would probably smile.

  Joey’s eyes flicked down to my belly. “Oh, honey—” he started.

  “No, it’s nothing like that,” I said quickly. My fingers tried tying themselves into knots while I waited for something else to pop out of my mouth, but nothing came.

  “Well, what is it like?” he asked.

  “Benji kind of broke up with me.” That…was not something I would’ve wanted to pop out, on second thought. Should’ve kept your mouth shut, Mira.

  “I thought you said you were engaged.” He crossed his arms and pursed his lips like a cranky old lady.

  “Look, I don’t even know what the hell it was about.” And then the blab got the best of me. “I’m sure we’re going to have some sort of stupid awkward talk about it later. He broke up with me, and then he came back a few hours later with this whole romantic candles setup, like something from a movie, and he asked me to marry him and I said yes.”

  “Talk about a change of heart,” Joey said. He turned his back on me to rearrange the already-immaculate racks of sugar and sugar substitutes, but his rigid spine put the lie to his casual gesture. “Why on earth would you agree to marry somebody who just dumped you?”

  My shoulders twisted. “I don’t know,” I said honestly. If there was a quaver in my voice, well look, if a night like that isn’t a good enough reason for a girl to be a little emotional, what is?

  There was another long silence as he turned this over for a while and tried to decide what to make of it. Levity won the day, apparently. “Did you at least get a ring? Never say yes without a ring.”

  I’d put Benji’s great-grandma’s diamonds-and-sapphires on a chain around my neck that morning, not my finger, telling myself I didn’t want to scratch the thing up at work, or coat it in milk foam and syrup. I pulled it from inside my shirt and showed him. It spun around and around, sparkling like a walnut-sized disco ball.

  “Mmm, boy comes from money, at least,” he said, nodding with pseudo-paternal satisfaction. He pulled one of the snickerdoodles from the case and handed it to me. The scent of cinnamon-sugar made my stomach acid roil in an alarming fashion. “Congratulations, darling,” he said gently. “If you need to talk about anything,” his eyes jumped back down to my stomach for just the barest second, “you know Uncle Joe-Joe is always here for you.”

  I nibbled at the cookie in a show of gratitude, even though I couldn’t bear the thought of food. Then I threw my arms around his squishy midsection and gave him a squeeze. “You’re a good man, Joey,” I said. “Thanks.”

  He let it drop with just one more searching look, like he wanted to grill me a little more but held back because he felt sorry for me.

  Did I mention how much I hate people feeling sorry for me?

  The snickerdoodle did help me feel a little better, though. So did the tab of ibuprofen I popped with it. Joey’s attention mostly stayed on the Times crossword after that. He always knew when to leave well enough alone.

  Leaving well enough alone wasn’t in the cards for me, though. I made it through the rest of the morning routine, pulling shots and slinging syrup, all the while trying to puzzle out what the hell had happened the night before. Was it all real?
Had I suffered some bizarre dream?

  The whole thing was too preposterous, too coincidental. Did Benji really break up with me and then propose all in a couple of hours? It wasn’t because I changed his page on Verity. Couldn’t be. But it was hard not to give in to completely irrational, magical thinking, that it was true because I made it true somehow.

  The gem-studded nugget of a ring hung heavy on that chain around my neck, and my eyes were still so puffy and red that even my indistinct reflection in the stainless mini-fridge under the counter had clearly had a rotten night.

  “Joey?” I asked abruptly.

  “Hm?” He looked up from his crossword, startled.

  “Do you make wishes?”

  “What, like…wishing on a star?” He scratched at his beard as he thought. “I guess I used to, but not so much anymore.”

  “Did you ever make a wish and it came true?”

  He tugged on my pony tail and grinned. “I’ll say. Look around you, kiddo.”

  ***

  Joseph sauntered in early in the afternoon. Where Joey could have been the second coming of Jerry Garcia, Joseph looked like a Korean Ben Franklin, though I don’t think anybody would have been brave enough to say it right to his face. He had an adorable round belly, a balding pate with a little ponytail holding his graying hair back, and a tiny pair of half-moon reading glasses perched at the bottom of his nose.

  “Our Mira’s getting married,” Joey called to him, right across the whole room.

  “Is she pregnant?” Joseph called back. I must have turned about five different shades of crimson. I could tell from the heat of all that blood rushing to my face at once.

  The couple of regulars in the place looked at each other and then studiously focused on their phones and lattes. You could practically see their ears grow three sizes, though. Sigh.

  “She says no,” Joey said. “But I don’t know if we believe her.”

  “I’m not pregnant,” I said.

  Joseph strolled up and carefully inspected my reddened eyes, my sallow complexion, my filthy hair. “You look terrible,” he said. “I bet it’s going to be a girl.”

  “I. Am. Not. Pregnant.” My molars might as well have been mortared together.

  Joseph shrugged. “Whatever you say, sweetie.”

  His lips twitched a little as he tried to pick just one follow-up question when he clearly had a whole collection of them. I steeled myself for a fresh inquisition. But instead he said, “I just saw your boy on the corner with some other girl.”

  “What?” I rushed to the window and ducked under the bamboo blinds to look. Joseph was right, of course. I even recognized the woman Benji was with. Dark hair, blue streaks, dressed all in black. She was the one who had spilled her drink on Benji the day he asked me out. I’d seen her a few times after that, either meeting Benji in the shop or at parties we’d gone to, but we’d never been properly introduced. I did know that she was involved in Verity. Today she looked pissed as hell, and was to all appearances giving him the reaming of a lifetime.

  Benji held up his hands, placating, but she steamed on. She pointed one finger at the shop, right toward me, and I jumped away from the window. I went back to my post, hoping she hadn’t noticed me watching.

  “Trouble in paradise already?” Joey asked.

  “No, he’s just talking to a girl from work,” I said. I wondered if their argument had anything to do with me, or if it was just about Verity. Worse—could it be both? Was it anything to do with what had happened last night?

  “So,” Joseph said. He tied his apron behind his back, formulating his line of attack. “This Benjamin. How long have you been seeing him, again?”

  I winced. The answer was not quite five months, which didn’t seem like an appropriately long time for wedding talk, now that Joseph brought it up. But the Hawaiian wind chimes on the door sparkled again and my hero—or whatever you want to call him—came in before I could possibly be required to answer.

  Unlike me, Benji had enjoyed a solid several hours of sleep and a shower. But that didn’t mean he looked entirely respectable. His hair was tousled, but only by artful design, and his jeans were no doubt freshly laundered, but skillfully crafted to look like somebody had dragged them behind a tractor for a few weeks. He wore a white Oxford half-tucked in, charmingly undone a button or two. I was gratified to see that he had dark circles under his eyes, at least. I tried to fluff my stringy ponytail and wished I’d gone through the bother of putting on a little lip gloss.

  Joey tugged on Joseph’s arm and the two of them scuttled into the break room. I couldn’t decide which was the better bet: Would they loiter out of sight but still close enough to eavesdrop, or would they have a hushed catch-up chat about me and my oh-good-lord-who-knew-she-had-it-in-her personal life? Anyone’s guess, really.

  Benji gave me that trademark lopsided smile of his, dimpled just on the one side. He put his elbows on the counter and leaned in toward me. “Hey, M,” he said. “About last night…”

  My eyes started to prickle as I guessed what was coming: All a horrible mistake, forget about it, I need my space, it’s not you it’s me. I bit my tongue and pressed my nails into my palms; it wouldn’t do to lose my composure, not here in front of the Joes and the customers. Not here in front of Benji.

  But that smile lingered on his face, and the next thing he said was, “I guess we have a lot of planning to do, don’t we?” He took one of my hands between his and stroked the back of mine with his thumbs.

  All of the breath left me at once. “Plans,” I said. Maybe this wasn’t about to be Dumping Mira 2: This Time, It’s For Keeps.

  Benji looked into my eyes intensely as all of this tween-girl anxiety bubbled in my stomach. “Did I tell you that you look great?” And then, after a pause just a hair too short, a question rushed out of him: “Did you ever think when we first met that we’d wind up like this?”

  “Like…this?”

  “You know,” he said, and his mouth squirmed, unable to quite make the shape of the word he needed. “Engaged.”

  “Not ever,” I said.

  “It’s almost like something you’d…read, isn’t it?” His eyes burned like he was waiting for me to say something in particular; like he thought he knew what I was about to say.

  My hands shook a little. Was he asking me about his bio on Verity, about that change? Was he accusing me of something?

  “I’m not sure I’d call it a storybook romance, exactly,” I said carefully. “But we’re definitely great together.” I touched my free fingertips to the diamonds-and-sapphires hanging from my neck. “We should be celebrating. Right?”

  His face warmed and made my insides flutter. “Yeah, we should! Come on over once you’re off shift. We’ll hit Villa Rosalita, get a bottle and some fettuccine,” he said. “And we can start thinking about what we want the rest of our lives to look like.”

  “Sounds great,” I said, too fast. I never was good at playing it cool.

  “Great,” he repeated, patting my hand one last time. And then he stood up straight and glanced at the specials board. “Oh hey, get me an Americano? Good girl.”

  Chapter 3

  By the end of my shift, I was kind of disgusted with myself, and not just because of how badly I needed a shower. Once Benji left, I could deflect the curious eyes with nothing but moxie and caffeine, but I couldn’t escape from my own head. I started to second-guess myself. How could I just keep smiling and nodding and going along with whatever Benji said? Why hadn’t I asked him about why he’d broken up with me, or about that argument outside with Miss Blue Streaks, or even about Verity? I wasn’t That Girl, was I? The one who needed a man in her life to make everything work out OK?

  On the other hand, how do you say “Honey, I was just wondering if your website changes reality,” without coming off like a total loon?

  To show myself I didn’t need Benji—that I was a strong, independent woman who could take care of herself on her own terms and called all her own
shots—I rebelled and didn’t go straight to his place right after my shift. No, I went home first and finally got cleaned up and put on miles of eyeliner and in general transformed myself into a pretty, pretty princess for him. That would teach him a lesson, right? And then I went on over as fast as my kitten heels could get me back to the subway.

  All the way there, I stared at the strangers on the subway and wondered how they navigated the rapids of their lives. There was a boy bopping along to acid green earbuds with the Dominican flag blazoned on his jacket. Did he care whether his moves were the hottest? That woman with the clear vinyl kerchief on her head and the deep creases beside her mouth, the one reading the Cyrillic newspaper, was she married? The couple making out at the end of the car, were they in love? Was it going anywhere? Did they know, and did they care? If they could see the fork in the road at their feet, would they change their destination, or were they happy with where they were headed?

  On the way out of the station, I brushed by an exhausted-looking Indian woman wearing a too-heavy Air Force surplus coat and a deep purple broomstick skirt. A little pin glittered from her lapel, at odds with the rest of her ensemble. It was worked from diodes and upcycled circuit boards, probably from somebody’s learn-to-solder class at a hackerspace. The woman stood motionless at the top of the stairs, studying the skyline. Her hair was in a single braid that fell to her waist, but a nebula of frizz had escaped. The skin on her hands was ashy, and her eyes were bloodshot.

  Homeless, I thought, and avoided any uncomfortable eye contact. There was someone who would change her life if she could. As I passed her, her chin came down, and she looked at me with hard eyes. They widened for a moment, as though she recognized me, and then quickly narrowed into a seething blend of pity and contempt. I wondered who she thought I was, but walked on, eyes straight ahead, avoiding the chance for awkward interaction.

  You can’t save the world, right? You can only save yourself. And that only if you’re lucky.

  ***

  I rapped lightly on Benji’s door, then let myself in when there was no answer. His apartment was a sunny place, all honeyed parquet floors, vaulted ceilings, and windows nine feet tall, but he’d packed it to the rafters with whirring electronic things. Shame that such a gracious space had been infested with all of those nests of cables. A new thought struck: Maybe when we were married, I could clear some of it away.