All of a sudden I felt movement. I opened my eyes to a pair of sneakers next to my head. I shaded the sun with my hand and kept my eyes going up. There were strong muscled calves covered with soft golden hairs, surfer shorts, and arms folded across his crisp white T-shirt. He was backlit, so I couldn’t quite see his face, but I could tell he had short hair, slicked back. I thought it must take a lot of effort to get hair so smooth like that.
He moved to one side, out of the sun. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place how. He grinned down at me with perfectly straight teeth and waved. Now I recognized him. It was Jake, the towheaded rich boy who lived in the fancy McMansion at the end of the street. His hair had darkened into copper, and I swear he was at least a foot taller than the last time I saw him. He was hardly a boy anymore. Can someone grow that much in such a short time? He’d only left for prep school last fall.
His mouth moved in the shape of words. I pulled out an earbud. Tinny music filled the air.
“What’re you doing?” he asked.
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“It looks like you’re lying in the middle of the lawn. I thought maybe you were dead. I came over to check.” His smile grew, so I figured he was kidding.
“Oh,” I said. Suddenly I was nervous; I wanted to say the right thing, but I wasn’t sure what that was.
“Guess you’re not dead,” he said.
I smiled meekly and shook my head. “Guess not.”
When we were little all the kids hung out at Jake’s house. Mainly because he had a swimming pool and his parents didn’t pay attention. I went but he never noticed me. Until one day out of the blue, he handed me a bouquet of dandelions and asked me to marry him. We were eight.
The dandelions were bright yellow—they didn’t seem like weeds at all. When I said yes, he hit me with his swim noodle and said he was just kidding. He swam back to his friends, who laughed and started singing the kissing song. I heard them all the way down the street as I ran home.
I cried to my mother. She said that’s what boys do and that I should avoid being alone with them from now on. I tried to resurrect the soaked dandelions in a vase, but they were too limp. My mother threw them out.
After that I stopped going over there. Eventually everyone split into cliques and I wasn’t in his, or any, for that matter. Jake became the leader of the cool kids, and I became nothing. Then last year his parents sent him away to prep school. He’d looked exactly the same when he left as he did when he was eight—a goofy, skinny, blond boy.
But there he was standing over me, all grown up. He’d filled out with muscles and goldenness. He even had facial hair groomed into a goatee.
“They must’ve put something in your food,” I said.
“Huh?” he said.
“You’ve grown. Must be the nutrition at that school.”
“Yeah, something like that.” He was still grinning ear to ear. “You’ve grown, too,” he said.
Yeah, I thought to myself, but I’d gotten wider, not taller. Chubbed right out, as my mother constantly reminded me. I knew I could stand to lose a few, but I liked junk food way too much to bother.
“Of course it’s hard to tell when you’re horizontal.” He offered me a hand, but I ignored it and got myself up. I wiped away some loose grass that had stuck to the back of my sweaty legs. I was embarrassed in the ratty gym shorts and dirty T-shirt I’d thrown on. My hair was unwashed, and my whole body was drenched in sweat.
“Lucky I came along and got you out of your stupor,” he said. “You were about to become fried egg.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I was going to the store, just connecting with nature first.”
“I’m not sure I’d call the lawn nature. Or headphones stuck in your ears, either.” Even his voice was different. It had deepened into something much more soothing and gentle. He was the same Jake, and yet he was entirely different.
“You have to listen to nature,” he said. He swept his arm around as if presenting a show.
I pulled out the other earbud and turned the music off.
We listened together. Every sound was enhanced: A robin twittered, gulls squawked, a car drove by, a sprinkler went on next door. In the distance we heard the soft roar of the ocean’s surf as it met the town beach. We turned our heads up at the same time to the one puff of cloud. The cloud seemed to sigh, heavy with its burden of heat. Jake sighed, too. I glanced at him and he glanced back. The air between us zapped electrical currents back and forth. I felt as though something, maybe everything, was going to change.
I swallowed, suddenly parched. “I see what you mean,” I said. I had to get away from the intensity of the moment. I pointed to my house. “I need some water,” I said.
“Weren’t you going somewhere?” he asked.
“Too hot,” I said as I turned.
“Wait.” He reached to touch my hair. He untangled a twig and handed it to me. “I’m around all summer. Let’s hang out sometime.”
NOW
“Knock, knock. Who’s there?” a voice asks. There is tapping on the side of my cardboard home.
I open my eyes. Sunlight streams through the cracks, making the whole inside glow orange.
“Come on out—no loitering on the property,” the voice says.
This is it. I’m a goner.
I lift up the top of my box and see a tubby, middle-aged man standing there. He’s wearing a bright blue T-shirt that has the words FIREFLY RESTAURANT in the same red lettering as the sign. If he’s surprised to see a barefoot, teenage girl sleeping in a box, he doesn’t show it.
“I don’t care if you’re here at night, but during the day, it looks bad,” he says. “We’re about to open, and I don’t want the customers startled.” The man leans a little closer and studies me. “You look familiar.” He pauses, scratches his head in concentration. “You look a little like that girl from the news this morning.” He shakes his head and makes a clucking sound. “What a tragedy … the house … and everything …”
I want to flee, but my legs are frozen. I get a flashing vision of a house. The taste of ash fills my mouth, the awful images start to appear, and the all dead chant starts up again, good and loud.
An ugly, modern house in an ugly neighborhood, but that house … that house has nothing to do with me. I suck in air and try to push the images out and replace them with the house I know—the pale yellow two-story Victorian with green shutters. Where I was born. By the sea.
“Are you okay?” the man asks.
My stomach surges. I concentrate on my house. I imagine opening the front door, walking up the curved stairs with the polished wood banister I used to slide down. At the top is my bedroom. This is my house. I don’t know any other. This man doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I swallow. I stammer to get words out. “I’m not … I’m not her.”
The man looks me straight in the eye. “Yeah, that girl looked way preppy. My mistake.” The man glances down at my feet. “What happened to your shoes? Are you a runaway? Do I need to call someone?”
I shake my head and try to breathe. From out of nowhere the dog from last night appears at my side. He stares at me with his black eyes and rotates his pointed ears. He leans into my leg. His weight presses against me and holds me steady. Surprisingly, my nausea subsides. The ash taste is gone.
“Is that your dog?” the man asks. “He was hanging around yesterday, looking for something, but he wouldn’t let me come close. I thought he was feral.”
The dog puts all his weight onto me. I wiggle my leg to push him away. He moves over an inch and sits.
“What’s your name?” I’m not sure if the man is asking me or the dog. He asks again.
I open my mouth. I’m sure I know my name, but I can’t say it. I can’t tell him. That name is no longer me. That name belongs to some other me. Someone like me, but not me.
I stare at the man’s T-shirt. It’s the same color as the ocean on a perfect, calm day. I speak and the word tha
t comes out is “Blue.”
The man tilts his head in a question. “Blue?”
“Blue,” I repeat, nodding.
“Well, Blue,” the man says, glancing at my feet again. “Wait here.” He goes inside the restaurant.
This is my chance. I’m about to make a break for it, but the dog starts running circles around my legs so I can’t leave, and before I know it the man is back and the dog is still again.
The man holds a pair of red Converse sneakers in one hand. “These are my daughter’s. You look like you could be the same size.” He dangles the shoes in the air like a treat.
Another warning every child knows: Never take candy from strangers.
“Go on. She left them in the restaurant. She has so many shoes she’ll never notice.”
The dog takes one of the sneakers in his mouth and drops it at my feet. I take the other. I slide them on. Red is not my color and they are a little big but beggars can’t be choosers.
In the other hand the man has a wax-paper bag with a brown muffin in it. “Take this, too. But you have to go. I really can’t have loitering.”
I take the bag without hesitating, just like candy, and the man goes back inside to open up.
I hold the muffin to my nose and sniff. Food! Real food! The dog quirks his head like he’s expecting something.
“Are you crazy?” I say. “I gave you that spaghetti last night. This is mine.” It’s a carrot-raisin muffin. I hate carrots and I hate raisins, but suddenly they are the best food ever. I scarf the entire muffin in four bites.
The man peers out the window, so I lace up the shoes and start walking. Even though the shoes are too big, they make a huge difference.
The dog sticks to my heels.
I turn and say, “You can’t follow me.”
He stops.
I walk ahead, though I sense that I’m being watched. I look back and the dog is standing there with sad, confused eyes. Somehow his eyes lure me over. I kneel down to face him. From a distance they look black, but up close his eyes are all different colors: green, brown, yellow, red, purple. The colors swirl and flicker like a fortuneteller’s ball. For a second I am lost in them, swimming around in a warm, peaceful sea. I feel calm, as if I’m in another world.
Then, just as quickly, it’s over.
“Look,” I say, “you have to leave. I gave you that food last night only because I couldn’t eat it.”
He hangs his head as if he understands what I’m saying. He pulls his mouth back, opens it slightly. I back away, afraid he might bite me. But then the weirdest thing—his mouth turns up at the corners, and he is smiling. A real smile. He nods his head up and down before he turns and walks away. We go in opposite directions.
My mouth is dry. How long can a person go without water? Two days? Three? A week? A month? In school once we watched a film about Gandhi. He starved himself for something like three weeks. He did it for a cause, for peace. But I bet he had water. It’s water that you really can’t survive without. In the end it wasn’t starvation that killed Gandhi. He was shot.
My muscles are sore, and the weird thing is, they hurt even more when I stop. So I keep moving. It’s very rural around here, which is good, I guess. The fewer people the better. I pass an occasional farm or hay field dotted with cows and sheep. The cows chew their cuds and stare at me.
What are you doing out here? they seem to ask. What’s the hurry? Don’t you want to stop and rest awhile? They are so peaceful standing among the dandelions, but I walk on by without answering.
The day gets foggier and darker. The ground is wet and the road is full of puddles from a recent rain. I try to avoid muddying my sneakers, but I look no more than three yards ahead. Just get me through the next three yards. I can’t think beyond that. It’s too far in the future.
A car with a muffler missing and music blaring out the windows catches up to me. The bass is so loud that the whole car shakes. It swerves by extra fast through a puddle, spraying me with dirty water. It’s a car full of teens—boys and girls—laughing and bouncing like they’re on their way to a party. Two of them stick their heads out the window and yell. The music is so loud that I can’t make out the words, but it sounds like something unmentionable. One of them gives me the finger. They speed out of sight.
I am left on the side of the road with the echo of the bass ringing in my ears, soaking wet and thirsty. I want to cry, but it seems too stupid and wasteful. I want to remember things, but that seems stupid, too.
The time and the miles go by. I start to pass more buildings—I must be nearing a town of sorts. I walk by a house close to the road where a woman is tending her flower beds. Dare I ask for water? She waves and nods hello and I quicken my pace.
The businesses that I come across are quiet and closed—it must be after five already. There’s an RV sales lot, numerous garages with old rusted cars and trucks dotting the grounds, a Laundromat, a hunting and fishing store. The fog lifts and the late sun comes out extra hot. I consider lapping water from a puddle, but I push forward until I finally come to a gas station that is open. I scope it out.
There’s a cashier inside. A woman. A car pulls in for gas, and when the driver goes into the store, I slip inside after him. If I follow someone, I’ll stand out less.
I find the bathroom in the back. The sink is metal and there is toilet paper strewn about. There is a distinct odor of bodily functions I’d rather not think about. I turn the faucet on. The water comes out the color of rust. It occurs to me that it could be tainted with something carcinogenic. But on the other hand, I may not be around long enough to get cancer, so I lean under the faucet and let the water stream into my mouth. It is warm and tastes like tin. Tin water is better than no water. I take long, deep gulps until I’m quenched.
When I exit, the customer is gone. The cashier looks up, surprised to see me. She’s a girl close to my age. “Hey,” she says. “Where’d you come from?”
I mumble a few words telling her it’s okay, I’m leaving, but I doubt she understands. Luckily I get out without her asking anything else. I can sense her watching me, wondering maybe, but that’s all. At least I got water, and I feel a thousand times better.
There’s a fire-orange sunset. Everything blazes up and then starts to turn a deep purple. It’s hard to see when all of a sudden a dark animal ambles across the road a few yards ahead. At first, I think it’s that dog, but it’s way too small, more the size of a heavy cat. It’s a little more than halfway across when a car comes barreling toward it.
“Run,” I shout. Instead the animal sits up on its hind haunches and stares in my direction as if trying to figure out who is yelling. The car headlights glare and I can see its masked face. A raccoon. “Run!” I shout again, but it is frozen. I turn and wave my arms toward the car frantically to get it to slow down, but it doesn’t. There’s not much of a curb, so I quickly jump into the bushes to avoid being hit.
The raccoon is not so lucky. There’s a heavy ca-thunk. The car brakes for a second and idles. I see two people inside talking to each other. The driver looks back and then pulls away just as fast. The road is quiet and empty again, except for the lump of fur and bones left in the middle.
I don’t know if the raccoon is dead or not. I walk up to it cautiously. It lies on its side. I crouch to see if it’s breathing. I don’t think it is. Its eyes bug out a little and there’s blood and something else oozing out of its middle.
I’m afraid to touch it, but I can’t leave it there in the middle of the road. I find a big stick and push it into the woods. It’s heavy. It’s getting dark, so I try to move quickly. I dig an indentation big enough to roll the raccoon into it.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. I cover the raccoon with dirt and leaves and leave the stick in the ground like a headstone. It all happened so fast. One second the raccoon was alive and now it’s not. They’re all dead! A voice screams inside me.
I stop at the next building—a place that sells tombstones. How fitting. I huddle i
n the back against the wall and hug myself for warmth.
The second I close my eyes I see the exploding images. I must be hallucinating. Maybe the lack of food and the cold are making me see things like a drug trip. I’ve heard of that. Before dying you see all sorts of crazy things. When I open my eyes the hallucination is gone.
I twist my hands up inside the sleeves of my sweatshirt and wrap my arms together. The tin water has left a funny taste in my mouth. My tongue is dry and thick. I lie on my side but keep my eyes open.
I watch a shadow move in the distance. Some kind of animal is walking across the road toward me. It is not a raccoon—that I can tell. It looks like a wolf. It’s probably another hallucination. There can’t be wolves out here. I blink. It’s still there. As it gets closer I see it’s a dog with something in its mouth.
The dog comes right up to me and sits by my head. It looks exactly like the dog from the restaurant. Could it be? The thing in its mouth is a plastic water bottle. I try to shoo the dog away, but my arm is stuck in my sleeve. He drops the bottle onto the ground, then backs up a few feet. If I could just take my arm out of my sleeve, I could pick up the bottle. I imagine doing it first, and then I actually am doing it.
The bottle is three-quarters full. It must have been someone else’s water, but I don’t care. I don’t care if there are germs. I don’t care if someone spit in it. I don’t care if the dog lunges after me and bites my hand. I glance at him. He sits, watching me. It is definitely the same dog. He has the same tall ears and gray, mangy fur. I look into his black eyes and see the swirling flecks of color. I manage to half sit up, unscrew the cap, and raise the bottle to my mouth.
The water slides down my insides. I never knew how good real water could taste. It trickles through my body, giving me life. So much better than gas station tin water.
I cough, then take another sip, more slowly this time. I sit up fully. Amazing how something as simple as water can make me feel so much better.
The dog gives out one short bark. I close my eyes and take another drink. I think I can sleep now.
Nothing But Blue Page 2