Be in the Real

by Denise Mathew

  CHAPTER 29

  Kaila opened her eyes. She discovered that she was back in the bed where she had woken up prior. No fairy was present. The curtains were drawn, and the room was gloomy and overheated. Her hair and clothes were soaked with sweat and she felt flushed and slightly nauseated. There was a wobbly feeling in her body and her head was floaty when she sat up. She threw her legs to the side of the flimsy mattress. Kaila wrinkled her nose at the smell of oniony sweat and dirty hair. She was disgusted when she realized that it was her that smelled that way.

  She spotted her bag beside the bed on the floor; her laptop was resting against the wall just behind it. Relieved that her meager belongings were close at hand, she decided to explore and discover what had been happening while she had been out. Kaila stood up, moved to the window and tugged the curtain to the side so she could gauge what time of the day it was. It was still light outside. She noted that there were much fewer people than before. Her watch said 7:00 o’clock. Kaila was vaguely aware that Trillian had been in control for quite some time, but she was unsure why. It wasn’t the first time she had been lost and Trillian had stepped forward, but this wasn’t the same because she wasn’t in the White Room, or the Next Room, or anywhere else that she didn’t want to be. She had wanted to see the world outside, be a part of all the life that sprouted and entwined; yet Trillian had snatched that away from her. Kaila didn’t want to be frustrated by it all, but she was. Her long running lack of concern about time had shifted, now it was the only thing that mattered because Pauline needed to be saved. Determined to find out what was going on, she snatched her bag and laptop from the floor and swung the door to the room open.

  The air that greeted her was less stuffy and smelled of fried food and dampness. She noticed halfway down the hall that she was wearing her runners. They were smeared with black and had tiny bits of mud clinging to the sides. The mud was fresh enough to conclude that it was something she had acquired recently.

  She banged down the stairs, the squeaks of the aged wood were masked by the sound of her heavy footfalls. The room below was much the same as it had been before except Derrick was nowhere to be found. She moved from room to room. Most of them were completely empty save for the same kind of black folding chairs that were stacked in the main room. She continued searching for a sign of life. Every space that she found bare, made fear claw at her insides, because she was certain that they had abandoned her, and now she was alone. If that was true then she had no idea what she would do.

  She raced to the kitchen, the only room she hadn’t checked, which despite smelling of recent cooking was devoid of people. In keeping with the rest of the house, the furnishings were sparse and ancient there. The gas stove was basic and white in color. The counters were wood topped with shoddily painted red cabinets. The whitewashed table with twirling wooden legs had at least two dozen papers spread across the surface. Eight mismatched chairs, that didn’t even come close to blending together, were pushed under the table. There were no wall hangings or much of anything on the ripped and curling green and gold flower-printed wallpaper.

  After hitting another dead end, she decided to search for clues to explain the exodus. The printed sheets of text were marked and highlighted with red and neon yellow. Someone had obviously felt that the underlined passages were of value. They intrigued Kaila. She prepared to hunker down and read the text when she heard Derrick’s voice nearby.

  Kaila sprang up from the chair where she had been sitting. She moved purposefully in the direction that Derrick’s voice was coming from. For some reason she needed to see him, know that he was there and that all that was happening and had happened was real.

  “I don’t want to give her any more drugs. She needs a break…”

  “Derrick,” Kaila yelled as soon as she laid eyes on him.

  He had changed since she had last seen him and had even gotten a haircut. Now his hair was sharp and precisely styled, just as it had been on the first day she had met him. His dark eyes registered shock at her presence, but just for a flash, then the lines in his forehead smoothed and his expression went slack. A stiff grin formed on his lips.

  “Kaila.”

  As if the mention of her name was adequate enough to end his conversation, Derrick tapped the end button on his phone. He tucked it into the pocket of his slim-legged sea blue jeans. When he turned fully to face her, Kaila noticed that his jade green t-shirt had an image of Einstein, the scientist’s white hair was frizzy and wild with rainbows of colors shooting out of it.

  “Nice shirt,” Kaila said.

  It was an odd comment even to her own ears, but she loved Einstein and his mind enough to express it. Derrick seemed as mystified as she was at her impromptu comment. He stared down at the front of his shirt, as if to remind himself of what he was wearing.

  He nodded. “Yeah, thanks.”

  Kaila was about to launch her next question about where she had been for the past day but hesitated. She realized that if she had asked him about the day, he would have probably figured out that Trillian had been in the drivers seat not Kaila.

  Kaila had been programed long ago not to reveal Trillian’s presence, and couldn’t help but remember all the warnings that Trillian had given her. Trillian had told Kaila that if people, doctors and nurses mainly, discovered the truth then Kaila might well be locked away in a place that Trillian called the Lunatic Place. She had told Kaila that it was a place that people who could no longer sort truth from fallacy and fact from fantasy went. Kaila wasn’t sure if this was the truth or not, but she didn’t want to risk being thrown away like Trillian had said most people who lived there were, so she had kept quiet. And since they were far away from Wildwind, in a place where people denied being crazy, the rules had added weight.

  “When are we going to see Pauline?” Kaila said, after a few minutes of contemplation.

  “Later,” Derrick said evasively.

  “I want to go now,” Kaila retorted.

  Ignoring her comment, Derrick moved past her to the counter where a modern coffeemaker with a stack of white Styrofoam cups, stir sticks and Coffeemate whitener sat. He opened the cupboard above it and retrieved a tin of Folgers coffee, then went about placing a filter in the machine and adding just the right amount of coffee granules. After he had turned the coffeemaker to the on position, he flipped around to face her. Kaila congratulated herself on the patience that she was exhibiting while Derrick did menial tasks. Even so, her resolve was wearing thin. Derrick’s deflection of any and all questions pertaining to the very reason that they had escaped Wildwind was infuriating. It was beginning to make her wonder if he had an ulterior agenda.

  She opened her mouth to voice that exact sentiment when Derrick spotted something and sprang forward. Before she could react he had gathered all the papers from the table into a messy pile and had left the kitchen. Kaila thought that she had spotted passages from Trillian’s Musings of the Universe on one of the papers he had bundled, but she couldn’t be certain. Kaila, who was growing more miffed with each passing second, bounded after Derrick.

  “I want to see Pauline,” she hollered to his retreating backside.

  He ducked into a room and by the time she had reached him, he had tucked all the papers away into a locked cupboard that was mounted on the wall. He was still in the process of turning the key in the lock by the time she had closed the distance between them.

  “Did you hear me? I want to see Pauline,” Kaila said between gritted teeth.

  Her fingers tingled with need, fists clenching and unclenching. The urge to make Derrick understand that she wasn’t fooling around was almost palpable. She didn’t much like being cooped up in a place that wasn’t Wildwind. Kaila was so frustrated that she might have been willing to go back to where she belonged, that was if Pauline hadn’t needed to be saved.

  Derrick faced her. As always happened with him, he showed no indication of being even remotely unnerved by her. This lackadaisical attitude only heightened her fury t
hat had been elevated to volcanic.

  “We’ll go see Pauline after you meet with Franco again,” Derrick said, rubbing the fine stubble on his chin with the back of his hand.

  It took Kaila a few seconds to process his words and understand their meaning.

  “What do you mean see Franco again?” she asked, “I went to sleep and woke up and it was another day…but…”

  She paused, skewering Derrick with her stare.

  “Was Trill…”

  She pressed her lips together just in time. Sudden realization of the truth swept through her. Her unshowered state of being, the lost time, the flashes of unfamiliar people and places. All of it made perfect sense now. Not only had Trillian decided to step in, but she had gone to places and done things without Kaila’s permission. It unnerved Kaila that Trillian had been so devious, but she also understood why Trillian had done it. This wasn’t just a learning experience for Kaila, Trillian was involved too. Kaila had been a fool to think that Trillian would follow the rules when they were in the real. Knowing that Trillian had already met this Franco person made Kaila want to do the same.

  “Okay, lets go meet Franco,” Kaila said.

  She took a few steps closer to Derrick as if to leave, then realized that she needed to clean up before she did. Kaila’s personal hygiene was near obsessive, very unlike Trillian who was quite a bit more lax with the mundane routines.

  “I need to wash,” Kaila said, spinning on her heel.

  She left Derrick abruptly.

  “We can meet him later today,” Derrick yelled after her but Kaila had already moved on to her next task.

  Showered and dressed in fresh clothes, Kaila returned to the downstairs. She had decided to keep her bag and laptop close at hand in case she somehow woke up in another place without her things, something that seemed to be happening frequently in the real. She discovered that once again Derrick had vanished. Another person had taken his place. This girl was completely unlike the fairy. She was tall and gangly and wore a turquoise flared skirt that showed off her knobby knees and spindly legs. Like Kaila, this girl had red hair, only hers was thick and coarse and tugged back into a ponytail. The color was reminiscent of tarnished metal not the bright copper of Kaila’s mane.

  She smiled at Kaila’s approach; her widely spaced teeth seemed to barely fit inside her mouth.

  “Hi, I’m Sugar,” the girl said with a nod of her head.

  Kaila squinted at her with her mismatched proportions. It seemed everything didn’t quite go together on her. Her eyes were excessively big beneath thick rectangular shaped glasses; her upturned nose was huge in comparison to her lips that seemed to have disappeared into her face. Her features gave her a caricature like appearance.

  “Sugar isn’t a name its something you sprinkle on strawberries or cereal,” Kaila said.

  Sugar blushed a brilliant shade of pink. “It’s more of a nickname that kind of stuck since I was a kid. My real name is Samantha but I haven’t been called that in years.”

  Kaila nodded, accepting the explanation.

  “Where’s Derrick,” Kaila asked.

  Derrick’s frequent disappearing act was becoming tiresome. His carefree behavior made Kaila question more and more if he indeed cared about Pauline at all. He had an opportunity to save a life yet didn’t seem to feel it was a priority. Another unpleasant thought wedged into her brain and left Kaila chilled in its wake. She mused if Derrick might have tried and failed to save someone before Pauline. If that was true, Kaila wondered if Pauline’s fate was written in stone and couldn’t be shifted into something else.

  Panic seeped into her like a snake slithering up her back. Now that she had the thought lodged in her mind it was all that she could focus on. The concept that Pauline was destined to die no matter what they did made Kaila all the more adamant to find her. If nothing else could be done at least Kaila could spend some time with Pauline before she died.

  “Is something wrong?” Sugar said, drawing Kaila back to the moment.

  Kaila was too distracted to respond. Getting to Pauline had moved from desire to need. There was nothing and no one who would stop that from happening. Kaila clutched her laptop to her chest and barreled toward the door.

  “Hey wait. Derrick said to wait and…”

  Sugar’s voice was shrill and stressed. It did nothing to halt Kaila’s progress. Her bag bounced against her side as she bounded forward. The door to the outside was unlocked. In one swift move she threw it wide.

  It hit her like a tidal wave, the unfamiliar sounds, smells and all that encompassed life in the real world. What she had witnessed through a pane of glass was heightened to incomprehensible proportions. The reality left Kaila literally gasping for breath. Horns honked, people laughed, the wind blew her damp hair away from her face. Everything was alive, pulsing with energy and life like nothing she had ever seen before. She moved down the steps of the brownstone, barely feeling the stone beneath her feet. She wanted to touch it all and see that it was real.

  Kaila had once believed as Trillian did, that virtual was the same as the real, that in fact if you studied and searched for long enough you could hook onto it all, be there in your mind and it would be the same. But it wasn’t, not even a little.

  Kaila moved down the sidewalk, skirting around people as she did. She concentrated on the aroma of sausages, hot dogs, soft dough pretzels and freshly popped corn, on the food carts that she passed along the way. They had served hot dogs in Wildwind but they had never smelled like these did, meaty and spicy. The meat aroma mingled with the scent of mustard and ketchup and pungent sauerkraut and onions. She had never liked anything but ketchup on her hot dogs, but now wanted to taste everything that was offered.

  “Kaila, Kaila, Stop…”

  The voice was like a mosquito in her ear, irritating and unimportant, something to be forgotten. She paused beside a cart further up the street. Kaila watched the vendor, a short stalky man with a silver goatee and a shaved head, do his job. He fished out a foot long wiener and fit it into a steamed bun that was white and fluffy at the center and brown on the outside. When she stood still she could smell the bread too, and so much more. Chopped onions, diced tomatoes, hot pepper rings in red and green and every assortment of condiment that one could imagine. Her mouth watered with every inhalation. In that moment there was nothing she wanted more than to taste one of those hot dogs, pile it high with every single thing on the cart and eat every bit of it because this was real. It was all real.

  “Kaila.”

  Kaila felt cold fingers grip her arm. Even before she turned to face the owner, the spiders crept across her flesh as if they had been waiting for that exact moment the whole time. When her eyes met Sugar’s the other girl hastily released her hold on Kaila. It was just in time since the irritation of the skittering legs had pushed Kaila to very close to her melting point.

  “I want a hot dog,” she said.

  “I think we need to…” Sugar started to say.

  Her face was shiny with sweat and so pale that every freckle on her skin seemed to pop into view. A single coiling curl, made straight in her ponytail, had broken free and was resting on her right cheek. Much to Sugar’s surprise, Kaila flicked the piece of hair with her thumb and forefinger, sending it flying out to the side in an arc. Kaila laughed at the sight of if then did it again as soon as it had fallen back into place. Her laughter filled the air all around them. Sugar however, appeared to be annoyed by Kaila’s actions. She pursed her non-existent lips into a pout until they actually vanished from view.

  “You have chicken lips,” Kaila said with another flick of Sugar’s hair.

  “What? Chickens don’t have lips,” Sugar said. Her brow furrowed more with every swish of her hair.

  “Exactly,” Kaila said.

  She broke into even more vigorous giggles until her whole body was vibrating with mirth.

  “Is she okay?” the hot dog vendor said.

  Obviously he had been watching Kaila. Kai
la spun to face him, drawn to his accent that she recognized as Australian.

  “You’re from Australia,” she said with a wide grin. She had already been exhilarated by all the real around her, but now her pulsed quickened even more because she had a traveler from a foreign land right in front of her.

  “Have you petted a Koala bear? Have you sniffed a eucalyptus tree, do you know how many poisonous snakes live in Australia?” she asked in a steady stream of words.

  The vendor threw his hands up in front of his chest. Kaila studied the stains of ketchup, mustard and many other things on his chef’s apron. She wondered how long it had been since he had washed it. But before she could ask him that question she had moved back to her original thought.

  “I want a hot dog,” she said.

  The vendor stared at her. His beady eyes crinkled into a squint. Kaila turned back to glare at Sugar who had been speaking all along; Kaila hadn’t heard a thing she had said.

  “Give him the money so I can get a hot dog.”

  Sugar shook her head. Kaila stepped in closer, looming menacingly. It was something that she was very good at.

  “I’ve called Derrick and he’s coming.”

  Sugar shoved her cell phone toward Kaila as if to prove her point. Kaila ignored it; her focus was too keenly activated to be dissuaded by Sugar’s aggravation.

  “Now, I want it now.”

  Kaila’s voice carried through the air. Her tone straddled the edge of control. Sugar, who had obviously read the signs, dug into the tiny black leather purse that was slung across the front of her. She shoved money at the vendor without comment. He took the crumpled bills from her, counted out what he needed then passed Sugar the change. Kaila had her hot dog seconds later. She hiked the strap of her bag up the length of her forearm then shifted her laptop under her armpit a little, to secure its place. With everything stabilized she began the exciting task of loading every possible item that was offered on the cart. When the hot dog was fully laden to the point where condiments were literally falling to the ground at her feet, she took her first bite.