by Lila Felix
I reached through the shelved and with both hands knocked an entire shelf of paperbacks onto the perpetrator.
“Ow, damn it.” I heard them whisper and then laugh.
I stomped to the other side to give them a piece of my mind but when I saw him, my mind shut down.
“Cal?” It was weird to say his name out loud, like I knew him well enough to just call out his name all nonchalant, like I’d done it for years.
He started picking up the books and nodded at me. I got on my knees in front of him and handed him books while he placed them on the shelves. He smiled down at me and extended his hand for me to get up. I took it with an eye roll. Certainly there weren’t still guys like that. But then again, what I’ve seen of the male species? Yeah, I’d rather roll in sewage run-off than to think about that.
“Thanks. Didn’t your mother teach you that books are for reading, not for throwing?”
“She did. But she said all rules are null and void when there’s a cute girl around.”
“Well, where is she? Let’s chunk some encyclopedias at her if that’s the case.” Real nice way to take a compliment Havok.
He gave me a look that said he would let that one pass. “So, you like science fiction?”
“Yeah, ever since I had to read the Tripod Trilogy in fifth grade I’ve loved sci-fi. What about you? Or do you just come to pick up chicks?”
“Nah, I’m a Stephen King fan. Plus, there’s the chicks.”
“Stephen King? That’s kinda disturbing.” I circumvented the ‘scoping out chicks’ thing. Who cares Havok, he can’t ever be that for you.
He crinkled up his nose and looked to the side. “Too soon?”
“Yeah, a little bit.”
“So you here alone?” He said while straightening an already straightened book.
“Um, no, you can’t tell me about your Stephen King fandomness and then ask me if I’m here alone,” I dramatically shuddered for effect.
“Oh, I just meant are you here with a boyfriend or something.”
“No, I’m here with my friend who has a cowboy smut book obsession but she has to keep it hidden because her parents are church going people and I doubt they would approve of her reading books about cowboys and cowgirls and the things they do in barns. In fact, I’d bet good money that they’d kill her, especially on the Sabbath and all.” Diarrhea of the mouth much?
His shoulders shook with laughter. Ali often told me that I was funny. But I didn’t think I was funny at all. I was mostly just annoyed and a smart ass.
“So, I was wondering—maybe I can take you out sometime, get to know you better.”
I squirmed, like a hitman evading witnesses I looked for a way out. “Um, can we just hang out as friends?”
The tip tops of his ears flushed red. “Oh, you have a boyfriend? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”
“No, I don’t. I just—I don’t really date.” From my peripheral vision I could see Ali putting a book in the shelves and stroll out into the library in search of me. She hadn’t been reading for long, but I knew she skimmed to the sex parts and then moved to the next book. Ali couldn’t know about him. She would spill her guts and my life story within a flat second. So, I needed to wrap this up and tie the ribbon on it before she found me. I could see his wheels turning, so I bit the dust and made the plan.
“How about the museum, later tonight?” Half of his face emulated a smile and then reigned it in.
“Yeah, the Arts and Sciences museum by the bridge?”
“You’ve been there?” Everyone has been there Havok, jeez.
“Sure, dozens of times. What time?” He looked at his watch.
“Um—five?” I’d have to make up some excuse to leave Ali’s house but I just felt like I needed this. I needed someone to know and to know me, the me without all the crap.
“Yeah, that’s fine. I’ll see you there, Havok no last name.”
“It’s Havok Daniels. And you are Cal…”
“Nichols, Cal Nichols.”
“Ok, I gotta go. I’ll see you at five?”
He nodded and I moved away from him towards Ali. I could see her scouring the computer desks for me.
I went around to the front of the library where she could see me and put my hands on my hips. She spotted me and rolled her eyes.
“Dude, I’ve been looking for you,” She said.
“I know. I’ve been watching you look for me. It was kinda funny.”
“Shut up and let’s go.”
We walked to her house, taking a tangent by the apartment. I peeked in but Mom wasn’t there and the place was an absolute wreck. I knew I shouldn’t go back there. I knew it. But my anger at her had turned to pity a long time ago. She spiraled in a tornado of her own making but couldn’t get out. And honestly sometimes I knew that I blurred the line between helping and enabling. But she was my mom.
And as weird and twisted as it sounds, I think she needs me just as much as I felt compelled to stay. We have a kind of odd symbiotic relationship. I am just as unhealthily co-dependent on her as she is on me.
By the time we got back to her house she noticed my metamorphosis of mood, “She wasn’t even there. What are you upset about? Don’t you hate her?”
I stopped in my tracks and she walked a few more steps before she noticed I no longer kept pace. “What?”
She had no clue. I loved my mother. That was the sickest part of this whole thing. She had a perfect family and I loved her and them. But she would never be able to understand, even if she would give it a chance.
“Nothing, Ali, just nothing.” She shrugged her shoulders and kept walking. I rolled my eyes and continued after her. When we got back to her house she went to her room and plugged in to both her laptop and music. She didn’t even notice when I packed up my stuff and left. I would just go home. Living with someone who was pissed at you was ten times better than living with someone who pitied you.
Mom still wasn’t home when I got there. I took the opportunity to clean up and shower before she came back. If it was clean, she’d probably let me stay. Then again, Sundays were her days off so who knew if she’d be home or not. Either way I’d have to clean it up. I looked at the time and it was a little past four. I decided to get a head start and headed towards the museum. I would make this friendship mine—something no one could take from me.
Everything I planned as I saw her through the stacks of books at the library dissipated when she rounded the corner. I had plans to ask her out, get her phone number, and ask her how old she was. I was twenty four and she looked to be eighteen or nineteen but girls look older than they are and orange jumpsuits didn’t really bring out my eyes.
But instead what did I do? I gurgled some nonsense about Stephen King, managed to sound like a serial killer, yet somehow came out meeting her at the museum in a few hours. Itsit certainly wasn’t the first thing on my mind when I thought about seeing her again, but she was obviously skiddish about me—or dating in general, which one I couldn’t tell. She said she just didn’t date. And wasn’t that just a damned shame? Because a girl like that—some lucky bastard was clearly being deprived at even a shot at dating her.
I walked home after seeing her leave with her friend. I should’ve gone to see my mom and my sister and—him. But I just didn’t want to. I loved my mom and she has always been supportive. But my step-dad makes these little snide remarks about leaving college, not becoming anything but a DJ. It’s just annoying and it’s not as if I don’t come down hard enough on myself without adding his load to the mix.
I got home and showered and changed because I didn’t care if it was a date or not, I was gonna smell good. I didn’t bother with shaving, I usually didn’t anyway. Who cares about a five o’clock shadow when it’s midnight.
But in that confession of hers, she had also taken all of the pressure off. She wasn’t looking for a relationship and after the whack jobs I had dated including my latest disaster, Beth, I could use something normal. And it was obv
ious she wanted to keep me a secret. Which was fine by me. It was certainly better than wanting to parade me around and whisper to her in my radio voice.
I walked towards the museum. But even without the prospect of us being anything more than friends I couldn’t wait to see her.
Sundays were free at the museum so I didn’t get to do the gentleman thing and pay for her ticket, which was strangely disappointing. I looked inside the arched entrance and saw her, engrossed in a painting of a lady who was clearly looking for business—and we weren’t talking car insurance. Havok’s hands were seated in her back pockets, thumbs out drumming some unknown beat. I continued to try to tell her age from her physical appearance, from her mannerisms, from her speech but it was like she was the perfect mixture of innocence and broken glass. And it told me nothing about whether or not I was befriending jail bait.
“You’re overthinking it.” I said in her direction as I approached her.
She turned, startled, and smiled at me, “Nah, I’m not overthinking, I just like the colors. I like red but I made sure not to wear it.” I noticed the tips of her ears redden as she spoke and I wondered what that signaled.
“Reds are aggressive and angry. Are you angry?” She huffed an acknowledgement and moved to the next painting.
“Maybe I am.”
“What are you pissed about?” I dug a little deeper. It couldn’t be helped. The shovel of curiosity couldn’t be stopped.
She looked at me, mentally judging my trustworthiness. “Who am I gonna tell?” I shrugged.
“My friend, she just said something that pissed me off.”
“Ahhh, but she’s your best friend right?” She turned with confused eyebrows, “How’d you know?”
“Because you wouldn’t be pissed at her if you didn’t care what she thought. But you obviously do.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s true. So what are you a psychiatrist or something?”
“Nah, I was in college once for social work but I quit to work in radio.”
“How old are you?” She asked me. And thank God it wasn’t me who had to start this conversation.
“I’m twenty four. How old are you?”
Please big man, let her be legal.
“I’ll be nineteen next month. I was held back in fifth grade.”
Whew! At least there’s that.
“Let’s go to the Egyptian room. Those mummies have always freaked me out.”
She laughed and made her way to the Egyptian room. After perusing the artifacts encased in plexi glass, we moved to a dark tunnel marked by a sign asking us to please not take any photographs. There were two mummies behind a wall of glass propped up so the world could view their cloth stuffed brains and painted sarcophaguses. And the creepiest part? There was a small digital thermometer in the front corner of the display. I wondered if the mummy got too hot, did he melt or come to life.
“These things always gave me the creeps when I was little. I would always hide behind the others on school field trips.” I shrugged as she looked at me crazily.
“They’re dead Cal.” A chill ruptured through me when she said ‘Cal’ and that wasn’t even my name.
I mean, it was my name, but no one called me that.
“Still, they are creepy.”
She rolled her eyes and we moved on. We talked about generic nonsense, nothing too specific about her but as usual I ran my mouth about myself, leaving no stone unturned—except the one about Fade. That sucker was concreted down.
Around seven o’clock we finished touring every room twice, not really paying attention to the art, just talking and getting to know each other. I turned to her to ask the most important question.
“Can I see you again?”
Can he see me again? Was he kidding me? This had been one of the best few hours of my life. He didn’t know who I was or what my backstory said about me. I could just be who I was without letting my situation carve out his opinion of me.
But still the idea of him wanting to see me again gave me chills.
Plus, I’d watched his every move, every mannerism the whole afternoon—he was smart, got all my sarcastic jokes, not to mention he was gorgeous. And being with him in some of the darkened rooms, the only light available were the ones perched underneath the paintings, it gave me ideas and for once I wished I didn’t dress like a boy.
“Yeah, but we need to decide now. I don’t have a phone or a cell phone.” I shrugged, hoping he wouldn’t think I’d just crawled out from under a rock.
“Ok, name the place and time and I’ll be there.”
I fidgeted with a thread on my jeans and answered,
“Well, I can’t really do anything on a school night except work.” I shrugged and hoped this wasn’t the end already.
“Well, I’m off on Sundays and Mondays. Maybe Sunday night?”
“Actually nights are really bad for me. How about Sunday at noon we meet at the bakery? The one I saw you at the other night? Then we can do whatever.”
He looked upset or disgruntled. I didn’t know which.
“Well, if that’s not ok with you, I guess…”
“No,” he interrupted, “Sunday is great. Bakery at noon, I’ll be there.”
“Ok, well, I’ll see you then.”
I walked away first, I had to. If I stood there one more minute, looking at his wheat colored eyes and pronounced chin, I would forget that I was in this for a friend, a friend only. I walked home with the girliest, giddiest grin ever seen until I rounded the corner close to my apartment.
I finally tromped up the stairs to the apartment and opened it slowly, not knowing what to expect.
“You cleaned up, that’s one way to buy yourself a place to stay.” She barked at me from the kitchen.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I just don’t like Dean.”
She inhaled another puff of cigarette smoke and blew it out of the open window over the sink, because we were so high class around here that she couldn’t smoke in the apartment.
“You’re a pretty girl under all those man clothes. You could make lots of money, save up, and in a few years, then you could go to college. You don’t want to be bogged down with those student loans do you?”
My mother’s A game was mentioning impending debt. Her A game was weak. I would rather pay a loan payment once a month for the rest of my life than to shake my ass while whirring around a pole.
“Ok, Mom, I understand. Can all of this just wait until I’ve graduated?”
She shrugged her shoulders and said she was going out, which was more than fine by me.
“The bathroom needs cleaning,” she said as she exited the front door. At least Cinderella had the birds to sing her a happy song once in a while.
I scrubbed the bathroom down. It looked more like we lived in a frat house in one of those American whatever movies than an apartment. I checked out my closet and found it unscathed, thank goodness. I cleaned up the rest of the apartment, including vacuuming and changing the sheets. I started to get hungry again, since I hadn’t eaten since breakfast at Ali’s house. Just when I decided to go out and get something to eat, my mom came in with pizza and a two liter Coke. I rolled my eyes at myself and went to the bedroom to get my backpack. She was obviously expecting someone and I knew I’d have to make myself scarce.
I went through the living room and opened the front door. My stomach rumbled as the smell of cheese, tomatoes, and pepperoni filtered through my nose.
“I bought all this and you’re not gonna eat?”
I halted and seriously considered laughing at the ridiculousness of my mother buying me food but decided not to push my luck, luck never has favored me. Luck kicked my ass eighteen years ago and I’m still rubbing the spot, trying to make the mark go away.
“Um—sure, I’ll eat,” I mumbled as I walked back towards the kitchen. She opened the pizza and I hesitantly got a plate from the cabinet and jerked a piece out of the box before she could cut my hand off. I bit into it and let the gooey cheese give my s
tomach some rest from its constant churning. Even Mom ate, only one slice, but she ate. It had been a long time since I saw her eat. A ‘dancer’ has to keep their figure after all.
After my second slice she closed the box and put the rest in the fridge. I could’ve eaten the whole thing. She made some mention of going somewhere else and before I knew it she was gone. Mom was going to get her fix. I knew it and she knew I knew it. I washed my plate and looked around but there was not much to do. She didn’t work on Sundays or Mondays, well, not officially, and my paper route didn’t start until ten. I wished I had gotten some books from the library.
I decided it was worth the boredom that night because I got to see Cal. There was no mention of mothers, fathers, or what they did for a living—not to mention how she snorted most of her paycheck away. He did talk a lot about himself, and seemed to be apologetic about it, but it was good to hear about a subject other than myself. Ali always harped on my problems.
I replaced the batteries in my Walkman and turned on the radio. I listened to the re-run show and laughed at the people and their so-called problems. I wished the only thing I had to cry about was why my boyfriend wouldn’t hold hands with me or what kind of dress I should wear to the prom. Prom was next Saturday. There wasn’t even a glimpse of wonder about whether or not I would be attending—the answer was no. About nine thirty I walked to the corner where Mr. Randy picked me up and we settled into our normal routine of paper delivery. I looked for Cal when we delivered papers in front of the bakery but he was nowhere in sight. He probably changed his mind about me and in turn, his route to work.
I went back to an empty apartment, and found an equally empty pizza box in the refrigerator. I fell asleep in my closet, headphones firmly in place.
*****
Mondays suck.
Mondays and Wednesdays we had afternoon block classes only which meant no Ali days. It also meant a whole day of A.P. classes—totally didn’t think that through. I met Ali at my locker and then I wouldn’t see her until lunch. I walked into homeroom like a ninja and sat next to the obsolete chalkboard. Homeroom was such a waste of time. You couldn’t eat, you couldn’t sleep, no one was supposed to talk. I’d once tried to read a book and was told that you could only read school books. And who in the Hell wants to read school books that early in the morning? That’s right, nobody.