What is Real

by Karen Rivers

  “Haven’t you been listening?” Kate says. She hates me so much. And I have been listening, but I also don’t know what she’s talking about. It’s like I listen and nothing sticks. The words are oil and I’m water and they float somewhere above me. And I don’t give a fuck. I dive into the lake, and when I come out, Tanis says, “We decided.”

  I say, “What?”

  And she says, “Live.”

  “What are you talking about?” I say.

  “Our motto,” she says. “Our word. Like a code, right?”

  “Okay,” I say. I shrug. I lie down again on the blanket and the sun instantly evaporates the water and I am my own steam room, lying there in the heat, and they are talking but I am not listening.

  “Live,” I say out loud, now in the kitchen, and in my head, my hand reaches out and traces the tattoo on Tanis’s back. The knot, the goddamn knot. My phone beeps, and I pick it up and on the screen, all caps: LIVE.

  From Kate. Who doesn’t text me.

  Then another, from Tanis.

  Then T-dot.

  The air in the room is gone and I am breathing molten metal, and I am trying to remember something that is gone again, fleeting as the rainbow reflecting on the wall behind me, the sun hitting the glass at just a certain angle for only a second.

  “Better take a picture,” Dad says, jolting me out of my reverie. “I guess it didn’t break after all.” He nods at my phone on the floor. The battery casing has fallen off but it seems to be working.

  I pick it up in slow motion. Snap the cover back in place.

  I point the phone’s camera lens out the window and take a picture. Something inside me knots and unknots. I wish I had my real camera. I want to film something. I need to film myself seeing this and remembering, but I am not high enough. I need to be high. Not being high is a mistake.

  My brain has the pieces of a puzzle and refuses to stick them back together. And I can’t think about anything but going upstairs for a puff. Because. Because. Because.

  When I’m smoking, I understand things. There is something here I need to understand.

  “Our Joe,” my dad says. “What a crazy fucker, he is. Who does this? He’s probably going to somehow turn this into a sideshow. I’m calling him.”

  “He didn’t do it,” I say, but Dad can’t hear me because he’s already gone.

  He wheels himself back down the hall and picks up the old-fashioned dial phone. I hear the numbers whirring by slowly, as if they are a million miles away. I turn and go upstairs. The view is better from there.

  Live.

  Live?

  “That’s just all there is,” Tanis said that day at the lake. “It’s like…enough. LIVE. That’s all I want. I just want to live. I’m going to live my life, you’re going to live your life and we ’re going to live, in spite of…you know. You know, Dex, I know you know. It’s just enough. For us. To just live. Our way. Don’t you see?”

  I nodded. I rolled over onto her and her skin was so hot from the sun and mine was so cold, I swear to God, it fucking sizzled. And then…

  Well.

  I was in the cornfield, and then it was bright and I wasn’t. And my knee was fucked up and now it isn’t. And…

  And.

  I stare at the flattened corn. The curves look like they’ve been cut into the ground with a laser. What kind of aliens would copy my girlfriend’s tattoo?

  No aliens.

  Because there are no aliens.

  There is only me. And Tanis. T-dot. And Kate.

  I can hear my dad shouting something into the phone or at me, I can’t tell which.

  “I’m coming,” I yell.

  I take one last look out the window before I go back down the stairs. I feel something like pride. Or maybe it’s panic.

  I lie down on my bed and smoke and smoke. I smoke until the haze in my room looks yellow and the light changes and Dad has stopped calling me and I have missed Math! And Bio! And Everything Else! And maybe I fall asleep and wake up and fall asleep and dream that giant Transformers are moving slowly through the cornfield, stomp, stomp, a robot army, and in their massive footprints I find flocks of dead birds, squashed into the dirt, and I wake up feeling sick and upside down and like I’m drowning. I get up. The spit in my mouth is paste-thick and I spit into the laundry basket. There are voices downstairs. Gary, I guess. Dad. Someone else.

  I go down. I go downstairs and there they are in the kitchen, Dad and Gary and Our Joe, all looking out the window like they are waiting for something to happen. I croak a greeting, grab a glass of water and gulp it down. Then another.

  “Dry in here,” Gary says sarcastically, and I glower at him.

  “Dex,” says Our Joe. He nods at me like I have something to say, which I don’t.

  I grunt.

  Dad says, “A mystery.”

  “I don’t care what it is,” says Our Joe. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s a gift from God.”

  He has the big red nose of a chronic alcoholic, but he doesn’t drink. He says he’s allergic to corn and maybe that’s true. He sniffs exuberantly and rubs his hands together.

  “God,” he says. “THANK YOU. Time to cash out and retire.”

  “I don’t think God had much to do with it,” I say. My heart is pounding in my ears and I still can’t figure out why I’m scared. Not really. Our Joe is tiny. I never noticed before how short he was. He always seemed so much larger than life. I can see wax in his ear. Smell the stale stink of his armpits.

  “Son,” he says, “I don’t care who did it, I’m just thrilled as peach pie to see it.”

  “Aliens,” I say and take another swallow of water, which tastes like chemicals. I cough. Cough and cough.

  “God gave us the aliens then,” says Our Joe. “God just gave Our Joe a big ol’ paycheck, that’s for damn sure.” He smashes me hard on the back, like he’s saving me from choking, but I wasn’t choking. I want to punch him back, and I almost do, but then I stop. I think, You’ll get what’s coming to you. Or maybe I say it. I say, “You’ll get what’s coming to you.” And Dad says, “Dex,” a warning in his voice like a dog’s growl or maybe Glob is growling. And I shrug and pretend I don’t care or I don’t know, and all the sounds are coming from the wrong sources, echoing in the room.

  “Gotta get goin’,” Gary says, like anyone cares.

  “See ya,” I say. I can’t help but notice that Dad doesn’t say anything, and Gary stomps out, heavily, like a kid having a tantrum. I drink another glass of water. How much water can I drink? I need more, but Dad is staring and I’m suddenly self-conscious. I put the glass on the counter, too hard. It cracks.

  “Did you do it, Joe?” Dad asks.

  “I didn’t,” says Our Joe. “I would have if I could have, but I sure didn’t. Oh good, here they are.”

  And I can see a small group of cars, coming down the driveway. Channel 6 News. I swallow. Something is starting and I can’t help but feel like I got this ball rolling, but I have no idea how or why. And I’m so tired. I’m really tired. I just want to go to sleep and maybe save those poor fucking birds.

  I go upstairs and lie down, but I can’t sleep. My legs are restless, and Tanis and T-dot keep calling and I don’t answer. I lie on my bed. I stare at my ceiling and the old posters and listen to Dad rolling around downstairs and Glob’s claws on the wood floors and noise drifting in through the window.

  By nightfall, helicopters are circling overhead and thc rolls through my body and smoothes everything out and leaves me feeling empty and full and light and meaningless and slow and fuck it, who cares?

  Not me.

  I turn on the TV just to have something else to look at, and CBC Newsworld is showing a constant streaming video of the field. Our field. Experts are weighing in, their voices like mosquitoes buzzing in my ear. There are experts in this? There are experts in everything. Somewhere in the world is an expert on me, and I hope someone calls him in soon and asks him, “What went wrong?”

  “Crop
circles and Celtic knots are different patterns,” one is saying. “Not authentic.”

  And I think, You fucking idiot. What’s an authentic crop circle? That’s like an authentic alien abduction. Then I think, Wait. I stand up and go to my window. I have binoculars. I don’t know why I have them. With the binoculars, I can see who is who. I can see lots of kids from school. I see Tanis’s dad. I see that Our Joe has set up what looks like a T-shirt booth and he’s selling something. How did he get T-shirts ready so quickly? I see my dad.

  My dad is at the end of the ramp, watching. Glob gets up every few minutes and barks.

  Where am I in all this?

  “Live,” I say out loud.

  My phone beeps. Tanis again. Am coming to CU, it says.

  I stand up and look at myself in the mirror. I look bad: bedhead and yesterday’s dirt. I smell worse.

  I rub my T-shirt over my pits, spray on some shit body spray and put on a fresh shirt. I look in the mirror. “You reflect poorly,” I say. “On me.” My eyes are red. I laugh without smiling. I am a robot. I am a Transformer. I am crushing small brown birds as I walk around my room.

  My room moves around me like an amoeba and sucks me in. I grab hold of the bed.

  Who are you anyway?

  “Stop,” I tell myself. I change my ear stretcher so I’m forced to focus on something small. When the stretcher itself is out, my ear hole gapes like a toothless woman yawning.

  I go downstairs. The stairs creak. My feet are balloons and they aren’t properly attached to my body and I am floating. In the air, the dust mites are multicolored miniature rainbows. When I push the screen door open and gulp in some cooling fresh air, I’m shocked to see a woman sitting in the mouse chair, which is this disgusting, old, rotten, purple-velvet monstrosity that we never bothered to move off the porch. She looks surprised to see me, too, but she gathers herself and hoists herself up. It’s the kind of chair you can get stuck in. I don’t reach out and help. The woman has a funny look in her eye, like she knows something. She has TV hair. No one in real life has hair like that.

  “Can I help you?” I say.

  “Yes,” she says. “Are you Dexter Pratt?”

  “Dex,” I correct her. Her hand is outstretched, so I take it and let go, like a hand clench instead of a shake. Her skin is as smooth as wax. She looks like one of those Japanese blow-up dolls. Immediately she is naked and my mouth is on…

  Wait. Cut. Fuck it. What am I doing? I wish hard that I had my camera pointed at her, giving me distance. But this is real, not an imagining.

  “Sorry,” I say, even though she can’t know what I’m talking about. She looks puzzled, shrugs.

  I’m blushing. Stop it, I tell myself. Stop it.

  Just then, a guy pops up from behind the rhododendron. He has a huge camera, with a dazzling light on a pole. Everything is phallic and hilarious, and I giggle. I try to stop but it keeps coming. I swallow hard. My brain provides the word smiley, and right away I smile too big.

  “I’m Christy O’Leary, Channel Four News,” she says brightly into the lens. “Here today with Dex Pratt, who lives in the house on the site of the largest crop circle ever seen, and the first to feature a word. Dex,” she says, turning to me, “what do you have to say about all this?”

  “Uh,” I say because I’m a fucking genius with words. “Um.”

  “Do you think, like experts are saying, that this is an elaborate hoax?” She laughs throatily. “And where were YOU last night?”

  “I…,” I go. “I don’t know. It’s pretty big to be a hoax.”

  “So you’re voting for the aliens!” She laughs gaily. “Score one for the green guys!”

  The light abruptly goes off and before I can say anything, Christy O’Leary is gone, sweeping down the ramp like she’s walking the catwalk on tv, her heels sinking into the stinking ground.

  I slump down into the chair.

  I close my eyes. My lungs are wings that are trying to lift me up. I breathe in and in and they flap and spread.

  “Fly,” I say.

  When I open my eyes, Tanis is standing in front of me, arms crossed, tapping her toe. She’s wearing pink sneakers covered with skulls, and jeans so tight it looks like she’s just dipped her legs in blue paint.

  “Well?” she says. “This is great. I mean, it’s working.” She leans into me and then onto me, and she’s too heavy. I can’t breathe. “It’s scary but it isn’t. Right?”

  I push her off. “Why are you so happy?” I say. “I thought your back was messed up.”

  “It is,” she says. “But it feels better. Anyway, I’m happy. Because it’s perfect,” she says. “Pro. Por. Tion.” She enunciates. “Perfect. It’s so beautiful.” She smiles. There are freckles of light on her pupils. She sparks. I blink. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a photo that she’s rolled up into a tube. She’s almost reverential as she unrolls it. “Perfect,” she says. “No one would ever believe that humans did that.”

  “Maybe they didn’t,” I say.

  She laughs. Cocks her head to the side. “Dex,” she says. She stops laughing. “Dex,” she says, “don’t you…?”

  “What?” I say.

  She keeps talking. She has the accent of a small town. Sloping vowels. An “eh” she can’t drop. But either I can’t hear her or she’s speaking in code. A blur hovers in the air between us. There is a starburst of white light behind her head, like the corn itself is sparking, reflecting what she is saying.

  “I…,” I start to say. “I have a goddamn migraine or something.”

  She puts her lips against mine. “Be okay,” she says. “Dex…”

  “Forget it,” I say. I push her away.

  I get up and sprint down the ramp so fast I know she can’t keep up. Then I am running for real. I run into the sea of flashbulbs. It’s like diving underwater, dazzling and suffocating, both. I run through them. I am swimming. I am holding my breath so I don’t drown.

  My whole life, I’ve always been so fucking afraid of drowning.

  chapter 24

  september 28, this year.

  There’s a TV show on in the middle of the morning, on one of those public channels with no ads. It’s a kids’ show about art. There’s a British host who is a bit too sure of himself. He has a British way of lilting that grates. I lie on my bed, which is still soaking wet from the sweat of my bad dreams, and watch him. He makes art from a piece of plastic wrap. He paints things. The product at the end looks impossible. He paints shadows with black and some kind of tea.

  At the end of the episode, he grabs a bag of vegetables and sports equipment. He starts laying them down on the ground in an empty parking lot. He tosses cabbages here, a tennis net there, a handful of badminton birdies and three ears of corn.

  The camera pans further and further out. It’s a dragon. The dragon is pouring fire from his mouth. A knight is aiming a sword at his heart.

  It’s a pile of cabbage and corn.

  Outside, the sounds of people are like the buzz of insects in my ears, and suddenly something falls into place and makes sense and I gasp.

  I want to call my mom.

  I call my mom. I watch my fingers dialing her number in Vancouver, the drag of my finger past the one. The six. The zero. The four.

  I hang up.

  Whatever I was thinking slips away, leaving me feeling confused. I go outside. I want a goddamn hot chocolate. I want a T-shirt. I grab some money and make my way to Our Joe. I give him my money. The chocolate tastes like chalk on my tongue. The T-shirt smells like warehouse dust. When did he get these printed up? I wonder. When did he have time?

  I’m missing something. It’s like I have all the facts but nothing fits.

  I don’t have all the facts.

  I had the facts, but I lost them.

  The facts are fish and they are silver and tiny and they are swimming back up into the sky like a reverse rain.

  I go closer and closer to the crowd. What is a crowd? There are maybe fifty pe
ople here. It seems like a lot. There is some kind of platform. I don’t know where that came from. Raised up, so the crowd is all in one place, staring down at our field, and I think about the dirt and how it feels when you press your face into it, damp and real.

  I go closer and closer. I am looking for someone. And you know exactly who I’m looking for if you’ve been following along. Because I haven’t seen her for days and the orange stone is still in my pocket and I don’t know why.

  I look and look, as if looking for her will put her there in the scene where she isn’t. And then she is.

  So it worked.

  A flash of Olivia’s hair, and then I see her jacket. I see her hand gesturing. I see her step down from the platform. I see her turn to look at me, directly at me. I see her disappear into the corn. I want to follow her. I dump my hot chocolate on the ground and jam the T-shirt on inside out. I want to follow her, but I don’t.

  I can’t.

  The people on the platform are staring at me.

  I go back to the house.

  I wish I didn’t feel so strange.

  I sit in the mouse chair and smoke another spliff. Just one more. Just one more before.

  chapter 25

  EXT.—CORNFIELD—NIGHT TIME

  And…

  SCENE:

  It’s dark and the stars are out. Pan the sky slowly, showing the stars. The sky is big here. Somehow demonstrate how the sky is bigger here than in other places. Show the sky in Vancouver for contrast. There are no stars. The stars are there, but you cannot see them.

  There is a difference between something being absent and something being invisible. Take note of that. It could make a difference.

  Show how the corn makes shadows in the dark.

  Let the silence play. No soundtrack. Then the sound of breathing and shuffling feet. Then giggling.

  Definitely giggling.

  Pull the camera out far and then farther and then farther still. Use some kind of a crane. Get so far up you can see the house at the end with the lights glowing. From far away, you can’t see the cracked windows and moss on the roof.

  Zoom in to show that.