Sparks

by S. J. Adams

  “Hurry!” he shouted.

  He’d opened the back door, so I dove in and landed right on a pile of laundry. I didn’t even have time to buckle my seat belt before the car started rolling out of the Triangle.

  Seventeen

  I was a criminal now, for sure. I’d run out on the check at a bowling alley, broken into a locked building, witnessed an illicit sex act, assaulted someone with Coca Cola, and run away after breaking something expensive.

  Also, it’s illegal to ride in a car without a seat belt.

  If I wanted to start hanging out with the wannabe gangsters, they’d probably have to let me in now.

  Take that, Full House kids.

  “Head back to Cedar Avenue,” Tim directed. “Once we get there, they’ll never track us down.”

  “Most of those people wouldn’t even go there,” said Emma.

  She sped like a lunatic all the way up 72nd Street, past De Gama Park and the school, until we were lost amid the traffic and lights and strip malls of Cedar Avenue.

  It all went by in a sort of blur—I was still in a daze from the carving, and still woozy from everything else, too. I didn’t snap back to my senses until Tim turned around to talk to me.

  “Well,” he said, “you’ve just had your first crash and dash.”

  “Is that a Bluish ritual, too?” I asked.

  “No,” said Emma, “not really. Because it’s technically stealing, you know. And we already did some of that at the bowling alley.”

  “Well, there’s nothing in our commandments about not stealing,” said Tim.

  “Of course not,” said Emma. “Because not lying, stealing, or killing is just common sense.”

  “So, did we just sin, or what?” I asked.

  “I guess so,” said Emma. “I also ran out with about thirty cents’ worth of incense.”

  “Between that and the coffee we never paid for at the bowling alley, we’ve got almost five dollars worth of karma to work off, in addition to whatever that crystal ball costs,” said Tim. “You think we should, like, plant a tree or something?”

  Emma shrugged, and Tim lit one of the incense sticks we’d stolen and set it up on the dashboard.

  “We did complete the goal of breaking something, though,” said Tim, as he took the goal list out of the glove compartment.

  “Debbie completed the goal,” said Emma. “She’s done both of them tonight. She broke an expensive thing and saw the naked people.”

  “Yeah,” said Tim, as he crossed Break something expensive off of the list. “Way to go, Debbie!”

  “I don’t want to alarm anyone,” I said, “but we didn’t get my keys, or any money, so we’re still screwed.”

  “It’s okay,” said Emma. “I think we can at least get out to Southhaven on what we’ve got, and hope that Blue will get us a ride home.”

  “You know how lucky we are that we got as far as we did without spending anything?” I asked. “If we hadn’t gotten all that food for free, we wouldn’t have anywhere near enough gas to get to Southhaven.”

  “Blue works in mysterious ways,” said Emma. “And sometimes it’s just doing the best it can under the circumstances. We’ll find a way home. Maybe we can panhandle for gas money.”

  I could just imagine pouring my heart out to Lisa, then asking her if I could borrow five bucks.

  “We can always turn in some of these empty pop cans,” said Tim. “That’d get us some gas money.”

  “Shit!” said Emma. “I didn’t think of that! We’re sitting on a fortune in here.”

  If you ever look on a pop can and see five cent deposit in IA, VT, MA, CT or whatever on it, it means that every time you buy a can of pop here in Iowa (or in those other states), you pay an extra nickel on top of the price to make you return it to a grocery store instead of trashing it or throwing it beside the road—if you want the nickel back, that is. And Emma must have had a hundred empties in her car—five whole bucks worth, easy.

  “That’s perfect,” I said. “Isn’t there a Hy-Vee by Southhaven?”

  “Yeah,” said Emma. “We can turn the cans in there. We should be able to make it if we take every shortcut.”

  “That’s a commandment, anyway,” said Tim. “Detours will bring you closer to Blue.”

  I kept focusing on breathing, which got a lot easier now that I knew we weren’t going to end up stranded on the East Side, whatever happened. At worst, we’d just have to lug the cans to the nearest grocery store. I smiled and looked out the window, enjoying the way the town looked to me now.

  I remembered what Lisa and her ACTs friends said about getting saved, and how the whole world changed for you when you did. I didn’t think I’d been “saved” by the Church of Blue, but having my blank slate filled in, even a little bit, did make everything seem different.

  The nervousness was almost gone. I felt confident, suddenly, that everything would go okay that night with Lisa. I mean, even if she went nuts and got all pissed off at me and said she never wanted to see me again, I would probably survive. I wouldn’t even have to move away. Blue would provide.

  “Does all art hit you like that carving hit me, when you’re a Bluist?”

  “Not all of it,” said Emma. “But when you start thinking about art as an expression of some divine spark, it does change things, you know.”

  “I’ve noticed that,” said Tim. “It’s like it opens a door. It makes music sound better.”

  “Just like turning out the lights,” Emma agreed.

  Everywhere I looked out the window, there was something that seemed different. The lights seemed brighter. The billboards seemed shinier to me. It was like the whole world had been asleep before, and now everything was awake. As though everything—every piece of art, every building, street, person, and insect had always had this blue light inside them, but it was just the spiritual equivalent of a bunch of blue glass with some wires inside. And now the lights were all turned on, all over the streets of Cornersville Trace.

  Even Emma and Tim looked different to me now. The people we passed in the streets looked different. The dark clouds, which were now really dark, and so low to the ground that I felt like we could practically touch them if we had a decent trampoline, looked beautiful.

  “Do a lot of people just suddenly look at a carving and then feel like the whole world has changed?” I asked.

  “Not that I know of,” said Emma.

  “Because ever since I saw that sandstone thing … it’s like I totally understand what you’re talking about. Everything in town looks different.”

  “Magic,” said Tim.

  “Or maybe it’s because you fucked the whole metro area back in that parking lot,” said Emma. “Things always look different after you fuck them. They don’t always look better, but they look different.”

  Emma had gone in another circle around the town, and now we were right back into the old part of town. In fact, now we were in the really old part, south of Venture, cruising past the graveyard on Bartleby Way.

  “Here’s a shortcut,” said Emma. “If we cut through the cemetery, we can skip that traffic light on Bartleby.”

  I started to hold my breath as she pulled through the open gates—I’d never quite outgrown that old superstition. But I didn’t last long. Emma steered so slowly down the narrow path between graves that I didn’t feel like it was really much of a shortcut. It was getting awfully hard to see, too. There was almost no light left, other than a pale gray streak between the tree line and the clouds, and the streetlights on the main road barely shed any light beyond the cemetery gates.

  The cemetery seemed different now too, just like everything else in town.

  “Do Bluists have any burial customs or anything?” I asked, as we passed a tall obelisk for someone named Olmsted.

  “Well
, no Bluist has ever died,” said Tim. “So, for all we know, being a Bluist will make you live forever.”

  “Well, realistically,” said Emma, “maybe we should write up a section on that. Come up with some symbols to put on the graves of Bluists or something.”

  “You should have it be a tradition to have a Blue tombstone,” I said.

  Emma nodded. “Good idea. It’d make it easier for your relatives to find your grave, too.”

  “We don’t even have a solid afterlife concept,” said Tim. “Unless you count that whole thing about Nebraska being hell.”

  “Well, shit,” said Emma. “Don’t ask me what happens when you die. I’m not going to go around telling people that I’ve got that all figured out.”

  “I just hope I don’t show up in vast green fields someplace,” said Tim. “I mean, that beats fire and brimstone, but green fields are boring, if you ask me.”

  “I’ll take Paris,” said Emma. “That’d be a good place to settle down for an afterlife.”

  I thought for just a second about what heaven ought to be like for me. Maybe it looked like Oak Meadow Mills. I imagined I would be in one of those big, spacious houses, in a bed with Lisa, all relaxed, looking into her brown eyes and seeing her looking back. Having her total attention. She’d brush the hair out of my face, put her hand on my hip, and then …

  BAM!

  For a second I thought the BAM I’d heard was just a vivid thing that I’d imagined, but then Emma shouted out the F-word and the car stopped moving. It had been a real sound.

  “What just happened?” I asked.

  “My tire blew out,” said Emma. “Of all the places to get a flat tire! Right in the middle of the fucking graveyard!” She turned back to me. “This is part of why we stopped saying Blue was my car. No point in worshipping something that breaks every other day.”

  “Can they even get a tow truck out here?” said Tim. “This is a one-way road, and the truck would probably knock some of the gravestones over.”

  “We don’t need a tow truck,” said Emma. “Just a tire change. And I have a spare in the trunk.”

  “Great,” said Tim. “We’ll need a team of archaeologists to find it in there. Probably some dynamite, too.”

  “I can find it,” Emma insisted. “But I don’t have a jack. Or any of those tools that you use for changing tires.”

  “Can you call Triple A or something?” I asked. “Like, really, really fast? We only have, like, half an hour, tops, before we need to be back on the road!”

  Emma shook her head. “Triple A would take at least an hour. Probably longer by now. You guys know anyone we can call who knows how to change a tire?”

  “Don’t look at me,” said Tim. “I don’t have any other friends.”

  “Mother of shit,” I said.

  “Your public swearing is certainly coming along,” said Tim.

  “We should really have Learn basic auto mechanics and get some tools as one of the goals on the next list,” said Emma.

  I started sifting through my bag to see if anything would give me any ideas. But my chemistry book was certainly no help.

  Then I reached into my pocket and pulled out Hairy Nate’s phone number.

  “Okay,” I said. “You think Nate from the Burger Box can change a tire?”

  Emma looked at me. “You really want to ask that guy for help?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “But I really want to get to the movie theater in time to talk to Lisa before Norman outs me to her! So if I have to ask Hairy Nate for a favor, then that’s what I’ll do. What time is it?”

  “Just about seven,” said Tim.

  “Perfect,” I said. “He’ll just be getting off work.” I pulled out my phone and dialed his number.

  Nate said he had the stuff to change a tire in his car, and he’d be at the cemetery in ten or fifteen minutes.

  “He’ll be here in a few,” I said as I hung up.

  “Cool,” said Emma. “Just relax, smell the incense, and try to get your courage up for tonight. I’ll dig out the tire.”

  She got out and started rooting around in her trunk, and I breathed deeply, but not too deeply. The incense smelled good, but I could still smell laundry and fast food leftovers and stuff underneath it.

  I looked out of the window at the cemetery, and at the old abandoned house at the back of it that every kid in town said was haunted.

  “Found it!” Emma called.

  Just then there was another BAM, like the one when the tire blew out. But this time, it was thunder.

  A single drop of water hit the windshield. A second later, the clouds let out every bit of rain they’d been saving up onto us.

  The storm was here.

  Eighteen

  All of a sudden, the rain was coming down so hard I

  could hardly read the names on the gravestones. The water leaked right in through some holes in the roof of Emma’s car, and before anyone could even say anything, we were all starting to get soaked.

  “Shit!” Tim said.

  “Oh, God,” I said. “I’m going to be drenched when I see Lisa!”

  I knew that this didn’t really matter—Lisa knew what I looked like both wet and dry. But looking as good as I could when I saw her that night was pretty much the only thing I could control about the whole situation.

  “Come on,” said Tim. “Follow me.”

  He jumped out of the car and we both started running, with Emma close behind us, through the graveyard. The ground was already getting soft from the hard rain, and I kept imagining that I’d step too hard and find myself sinking into some grave. But I kept running, all the way through the cemetery to the house at the back of it, where there was a covered porch to keep us dry.

  Every kid in town knew about The House Behind the Cemetery. I guess every town has a house like it, one that every kid thinks is haunted. I was always hearing stories about jilted lovers hanging themselves there back in the days of the Revolutionary War. I’m pretty sure no one (well, except the Meskwaki Indians) lived here back then, and I didn’t believe in ghosts, but I’d never imagined I’d ever run up to the porch.

  I sat down and leaned back against the side of the porch while I caught my breath.

  “Wow,” said Tim, leaning against the house. “I don’t know anyone else who ever actually came up to this house before. We should have made it a holy quest.”

  “I heard about some kids who did, once,” said Emma. “They snuck in and found a skeleton in a wedding dress in some room upstairs.”

  “Bullshit,” said Tim. “I always heard it was some gang’s hideout. There’s supposed to be a big-screen TV and a bunch of porno mags from the ’80s in there.”

  Emma chuckled. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m sure there are lots of gangs fighting for control of Cornersville Trace, Iowa.”

  “Well, who do you think is running the meth trade?” asked Tim.

  “I’ve always heard it was really just the caretaker’s house,” I said. “But why would the caretaker need to live on site, anyway?”

  “Actually,” said Emma, “this is the oldest house in town. I did a whole report on it in ninth grade when we studied Iowa history.”

  “This is a part of Iowa history?” I asked.

  Emma shrugged. “Well, it’s old. But I didn’t want to do another report on the Spirit Lake Massacre.”

  “How old is it, then?” asked Tim.

  “Not that old, but it was built back before any other house in the old part of town was standing. Originally, the cemetery started further away from it, but then it kept expanding until it came right up to the house. No one’s lived here in years.”

  “I still think it’s haunted,” said Tim. “I swear I’ve seen lights on inside.”

  “Me too,” I said. Or,
anyway, I was pretty sure I had.

  Emma got up and took a look into the window, which was blocked by a dusty-looking curtain.

  “I can’t see much through the curtain,” she said, “but it looks empty.”

  “Does the Church of Blue believe in ghosts?” I asked.

  Emma shrugged. “I don’t see why not,” she said, “but that would be getting into the whole afterlife thing, so anything I say will just be talking out of my ass.”

  “As opposed to everything else you say,” said Tim.

  “Hey, there’s a difference between making things up as you go along and just plain talking out of your ass,” Emma said. “In fact, that should be the next commandment. Thou Shalt Speaketh Not From Out of Thine Ass.”

  “Great,” said Tim. “So I’m sinning every time I fart?”

  Emma snickered. “I’m sure that special dispensations can be arranged.”

  The rain was getting even harder now; you could see it splashing around on the tops of the graves. There was thunder and lightning. I guess I should have been really scared—I mean, what’s scarier than hanging around outside a supposedly haunted house in a cemetery during a thunderstorm?

  But I wasn’t scared. I felt … calm. Of course it was raining! Why wouldn’t it be raining? And of course there was a storm! You can’t have a holy quest that routes through a cemetery without a good, crashing thunderstorm for atmosphere!

  Out in front of us, in the cemetery, I saw a gravestone that looked like it said Woodlawn on it. For a second I wondered if maybe it was my grave, and that I’d died in the bathroom earlier that day of a broken heart and now I was living through one of those ghost stories where the ghost doesn’t realize that she’s dead. And that Emma and Tim had died, like, thirty years earlier and appeared to ease all the newly dead kids into the afterlife gradually, and at least give them some sort of made-up religion to get them out of limbo, or show them the correct religion in a way that would make sense to them so they knew all the answers to the questions they’d have to answer when they got to the gates.