Sparks

by S. J. Adams

I raced through the mall at top speed. The dim beams of the emergency lights lit my way back to the theater, where the first waves of people had already started walking out into the lobby. Every few seconds there was a flash of light coming through the glass doors that opened to the parking lot. Lightning.

  I strained my eyes and spotted Lisa, walking hand in hand with Norman out of the theater, past the box office. Seeing them touching hurt—especially now that I knew she was probably planning to let him touch a lot more than her hands—but at least they were there, not just sitting in the now-empty theater, taking advantage of the dark.

  My knees were shaking. My shirt was damp against my skin and still had snot and yogurt stains on it. The sweater I had on over it smelled like incense and mold. My forehead was wet, and I wasn’t sure if it was because my hair was still wet from the rain, or if it was just sweat. Coming out to Lisa wasn’t such a huge deal, really, but saying how I felt about her was something else entirely.

  “Lisa!” I shouted.

  She turned toward me and looked surprised for a second, then smiled that beautiful smile I’d been living to see for the last five years.

  “Can you come here for a second, please?” I asked.

  She let go of Norman’s hand, told him she’d be right back, and walked over to me. Norman gave me a weird look, but I ignored him and led Lisa away from the crowd and over to the wall.

  And for one second, the only thing I could think of was the Full House episode where Joey takes Stephanie to the dentist, holds a mirror up to her mouth, and tells her that her uvula is her Courage Hangy-Ball. The part of her body that gave her courage.

  I gulped as Lisa got closer to me. But not because I was nervous. I was making sure my Courage Hangy-Ball was still there.

  “I got your message,” she said. “Your keys were in my front seat. I was going to call you after the movie.”

  She pulled them from her purse and handed them

  to me.

  “Thanks,” I said. “You know what a klutz I am!”

  “Totally,” she said.

  I almost started counting to twenty-five, but then I stopped myself. There was no time, and no reason to keep covering my thoughts.

  “Listen,” I said. “I need to talk with you.”

  “What’s up?” Lisa asked. “Are you okay? Angela said you were really upset about something earlier.”

  I stared at her for a second and gulped again. I felt like I should open with a joke or something, but I couldn’t think of one.

  “Well, I have a confession to make,” I said.

  “Can it wait til tomorrow?” she asked. “This kind of seems like a weird place for something like that, don’t you think?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “It has to be now. Because you’re going to find out pretty soon anyway. And I want you to hear it from me, not, like, from Norman.”

  I took a deep breath. I’d always sort of hoped that one day she’d make the first move. But that was incredibly stupid of me.

  And now I had to do it in public. I doubted anyone was actually looking, but I felt like everyone in the mall was. I couldn’t remember any of the song from Uncle Jesse’s wedding anymore. I just forced myself to open my mouth.

  “I like girls,” I said, very softly. I looked down at the floor, afraid to see the look on her face. “You, mostly.”

  And then, just as I said that, there was this lightning flash. It might have been my imagination, but I could have sworn it was blue, not white or yellow like most lightning.

  In that moment, it occurred to me that I didn’t want to go to ACTs again.

  And I didn’t want to miss out on finding weird places to put stolen Neighborhood Watch signs. Or on planting pressed hams at the governor’s mansion. I’d even press one myself, if the windows were low enough to the ground.

  In a weird way, I almost wanted her to turn me down.

  This hit me in a split second, and I think I had the fastest panic attack in history in the time it took to take one sharp breath. I was panicking that she might get freaked out, and afraid that she might say she loved me, too.

  But she didn’t do either of those.

  She acted like I’d told her I liked ice cream.

  “I know you do,” she said.

  My breath went back to normal, and I felt something going on inside me, but I couldn’t tell whether I was blushing, or wetting myself, or about to barf, or what. It was just … something. Too much at once.

  I looked back up at her. She didn’t look shocked or appalled at all. “What?” I asked.

  “I’ve known that since, like, seventh grade.”

  “What?” I said again.

  “I mean, honestly,” said Lisa with a laugh. “I change into my swimsuit behind a towel around you!”

  “What?” I said, yet again. It’s like every other word had been punched out of my brain.

  “And I can never talk about sex with you, because I’m afraid it would be, like, teasing you or something.”

  I took a second to let my vocabulary pick itself off the floor and crawl back into me. It came back slowly, a couple of words at a time.

  “Uh, sorry,” I said finally.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “We had to have this talk sooner or later! But you like guys too, right?”

  I kind of shrugged and stood there looking like a damp idiot.

  “Norman told me you and Aaron really hit it off today. Want me to fix it up?”

  I couldn’t think of what to say. I just said, “Uh …

  yeah.”

  Lisa reached over and hugged me. “It’s going to be okay,” she said.

  Norman made his way up to us and put his arm around Lisa’s waist, but I was too dazed to react very much.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  “No,” said Lisa, moving up against him. “Nothing’s wrong. Right, Deb?”

  “Uh … right,” I said.

  “Don’t worry, honey. We’ll fix you up with Aaron this week, and he’ll make you’ll forget all about … the other person you like.”

  I nodded a bit and tried to get my eyes to focus again. For a second I thought I heard a train coming right through the mall to run me over, but it was just a roll of thunder.

  How much of Lisa’s uptightness all those years had been an act, just for my sake? Maybe she really was like that when she was eleven, and over the years she’d gotten more open-minded on premarital sex and stuff, but still acted like she wasn’t so I wouldn’t get all gay on her.

  That’s what I should have been thinking. But I wasn’t. My brain was so mixed up that all I could think about at the moment was that Lisa was right: Norman really did dress like he was going fishing for trout.

  “We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?” said Lisa.

  I nodded.

  The instant she turned around, the lights in the mall came back on.

  The tinny speakers in the ceiling buzzed, then started playing a Beach Boys song—“Help Me, Rhonda.”

  My knees got so weak that I had to sit down on the ground. My whole body shook. But then there was this huge crash of thunder and I just felt numb, even though I had just been rejected in front of a live studio audience. I thought I was crying, but I couldn’t tell.

  “Debbie!” someone called.

  It was Emma. She and Tim ran up to me.

  “What happened?” Tim said.

  I looked up at them, hovering above me like I was a patient on a gurney. I didn’t feel like the juice was coming out of my heart anymore. I felt like I was sort of floating outside of myself.

  “She said she knew I liked her the whole time,” I said. “And then she said she’d hook me up with Aaron Riley and I’d forget all about her. Then they just left.”

  �
�How rude,” said Emma.

  And that’s when I started to giggle. I don’t know if Emma had intended to use the ultimate Full House catchphrase, but she had. And at just the right time.

  I looked up to see Lisa and Norman’s backs as they left the building. Something about the picture of the two of them eating plain oatmeal together when Norman woke up early for a trout-fishing adventure suddenly struck me as incredibly funny. My giggles turned to actual laughs.

  I was definitely crying now, but I was laughing, too.

  “You okay?” asked Tim.

  “She’s laughing,” said Emma. “Blue is mysterious.”

  I was back inside myself. I had floated out just far enough to find the humor in the situation, and come back.

  Then I forgot about myself for a second and noticed that Emma and Tim were holding hands.

  “See?” I asked. “He didn’t ditch you!”

  “Of course I didn’t,” said Tim. “Thanks, Debbie.”

  “It was a holy quest,” I said. “Matter of the heart. Commandment number one.”

  “I’m still scared,” Emma said. “I still feel like you’d dump me as soon as you meet someone less psychotic.”

  “Never gonna happen,” said Tim.

  “I’m really high maintenance.”

  “I am, too. And we’re good at maintaining each other.”

  Twin high-maintenance machines.

  “Are you guys official now?” I asked.

  “We’ll see,” said Emma. “We haven’t really had time to talk about it.”

  I scanned around the mall to see if Heather was coming up behind us or something. There was no sign of her.

  “What happened to Quinn?” I asked.

  “She swore she’d get revenge,” said Emma. “She actually raised a fist and said, ‘He will be mine!’ ”

  I laughed.

  “She can dream on,” said Tim.

  “She’ll find someone who compliments her better,” I said. “That was a matter of the heart, too. Letting her find out that she needs to get over her crush.”

  For a second, we all just stood there—or sat there, in my case. I sat there and laughed, even though I was also crying, and thought about how funny it was to be, well … to be anything, really. Blue, or whatever it was that ran the universe, definitely had a weird sense of humor.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Emma asked. “After the whole thing with Lisa?”

  “Actually,” I said, “I’m almost relieved. But I think I need a quick favor.”

  “Sure,” said Emma.

  I hoisted myself up. “Follow me for a second.”

  I grabbed her by her free hand and took her all the way back to the record store. Tim followed.

  There was something I had to do.

  In the store, I looked along the wall of CDs that were hooked up to pairs of headphones, and found a pair connected to something called Jazz for a Relaxing Afternoon. I turned it on, put the volume as high as it would go, and set the headphones on the stand so that we could hear the music playing faintly out of them.

  “Okay,” I said. “Give me a talk.”

  “A talk?” asked Emma.

  “This is how Full House episodes always end,” I said. “Someone gives someone else a talk, there’s soft music in the background, and then they all hug and everything’s okay. I put the music on, now give me the talk, and we’ll hug.”

  “What should I talk about?” asked Emma.

  “Whatever,” I said. “Just teach me a valuable lesson.”

  I sat down on the floor and looked up at her.

  Emma, for once, looked sort of like she was at a loss for words.

  “Ummm, you know, Debbie,” she said. “John Lennon said that life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans. But some things don’t really work out the way you planned for them to. And that’s life.”

  “Keep going,” I said. “Something about being yourself.”

  “You see, Debbie,” she said, sounding more confident and using something like a “parent” voice, “you shouldn’t try to change yourself just to get someone to like you. If a person doesn’t like you for who you are, they aren’t worth liking. When you find the right girl, it will be that much more special.”

  “I know,” I said. “I understand.”

  “So, are you going to be okay?” she asked.

  I nodded and stood back up.

  “Now we hug,” I said. “And Tim, you go ‘Awwww.’ ”

  Emma opened up her arms and we hugged in the middle of the aisle, while soft music played and the Apostle Tim went “Awwww.”

  Then Tim joined in on the hug, so we were all having one big group hug and saying “Awwww.”

  It was the end of a very special multi-part episode of The Wonderful World of Lisa. The conclusion of a plot line the writers had dragged out for five years.

  During those five years, I didn’t really know how to be myself. I’d spent so much time trying to be the person I thought would have the best chance with Lisa that I had no clear idea who “myself” was anymore.

  It was like in the song. Only God knew who I’d be without Lisa. Or maybe Blue only knew. Or maybe only some naked angel racing above my head on a tricycle of fire knew.

  Anyway, I didn’t know.

  But I was ready to find out.

  Twenty-two

  So, Blue didn’t answer my prayer when I asked to be brought together with Lisa. Neither did any of the other deities I’d dropped a line to. Maybe they were all offended that I wasn’t being exclusive with them.

  Or, actually, maybe one of them had answered me. The answer just happened to be “no.”

  There’s an old Garth Brooks song Lisa used to like—and that I always thought was pretty good, myself—about how sometimes God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.

  The way I’d been clinging to her, and trying to be like her, was like trying to sell my soul to get into heaven.

  After leaving the mall, Tim, Emma, and I turned in enough empty pop cans at the nearest Hy-Vee to buy the gas to get us home, then went over to my house to switch to my car. From there, we headed down to Urbandale to the house where Angela was babysitting and told her the whole story of the night.

  It turned out that Angela’s first kiss was in a graveyard, too—the little one on Meredith Street. I didn’t ask what the hell she was doing in that one, which didn’t have any haunted houses or graves that were supposed to be enchanted or anything, in the first place. I just knew—she and some guy must have been drawn there by the same weird energy that made people declare it consecrated ground to start with.

  Once it began to sink in that it was really over between Lisa and me, I started getting a little depressed—regardless of anything else, I was still basically losing the girl who had been my best friend for years.

  But it wasn’t an “I’ll never be happy again” depression, or even an “I need to move to Minneapolis and get away from all this” depression. It was the kind you get after you watch the brilliant series finale of your favorite TV show. Even though the last episode was done perfectly, it sucked to know there’d never be another one, unless they did a reunion show something years later. But the feeling would pass. There would be other shows. The show had gone downhill in the last couple of seasons, anyway. It was time for it to end before it got any worse and made me less interested in buying the Complete Series set, which would probably come in a neat box.

  We hung around at the house until after midnight. Tim and Emma held hands the whole time, and even dared to kiss a couple more times. They were approaching being a couple cautiously. Emma kept looking like she expected him to change his mind any second.

  “This isn’t a requirement,” she told him. “There’s no rule about Blui
sts having to date other Bluists.”

  “Well, I know that most modern Bluists date outside their faith,” said Tim. “But I’m Orthodox.”

  And he kissed her again.

  I got home after midnight (for the first time in my life) and collapsed into a dreamless sleep.

  By the end of Saturday morning, I’d decided that I was officially joining the Church of Blue. Or, anyway, I’d decided to start pretending that I was a member of a pretend religion called Bluedaism.

  I was going to miss seeing my mom looking uncomfortable but trying to act like she was cool with me going to ACTs. And I didn’t agree with everything Emma had made up, like the idea that everyone has a single “Spark of Blue” inside them. Why just one? I’ll bet everyone is full of a thousand different kinds of sparks.

  But Bluedaism was a good thing to hold on to while I tried to figure the rest of the world out. It had worked out pretty well so far. And I was sure, now, that there was some sort of force in the universe that was capable of helping people create great works of art, of turning out the lights at exactly the right second, of putting the right music on the radio, and of delivering me from Aaron Riley.

  I asked Emma how one goes about formally converting, and she said that, since it was a made-up religion, I could make up my own conversion ritual.

  So three days later, on Monday, the first official day of spring break, Emma, Tim, and I were in my bathroom and my head was in the sink. I was dying a bright blue highlight into my hair.

  If I’d told Lisa I was going to do that, she probably would have tried to talk me out of it.

  But this wasn’t her life, or her hair. It was mine.

  “All right,” said Emma. “I think it’s all rinsed off. Now get in the shower, shampoo your hair, and keep rinsing til the water’s clear, not blue. Then we’ll get it dry.”

  I shooed Emma and Tim out the door, took my clothes off, and climbed into the shower. Every time I’d bathed or gotten wet or changed cloths or anything in the past couple of days, it had felt like another baptism. A washing away of what had been there before.

  In a way, I had already been Bluish when I left the girls’ room on Friday afternoon. Symbolically flushing myself down the toilet to start my new life had been a perfect idea for a Bluish ritual.