Just Plain Weird

by Tom Upton

  “Why, what happened?”

  “Ah, my father’s talking about moving, again,” she said. “I’m so tired of moving-- you have no idea. With Doc and me, it’s never just moving; it’s running away. Either so much time passes, and then it’s time to run away. Or something happens, and then it’s time to run away. But it’s always running. I hate running.” She didn’t say anything for a long time, and just sat there looking at nothing as if she were trying to figure out the answer to a complex math problem. My eyes drifted to the floor of the car, where her foot rested near the gas pedal. She was wearing beat-up white deck shoes and no socks, and for the first time I noticed, there was a gold chain around her bony ankle. The chain had little charms on it-- teddy bears and hearts-- and I wondered whether her father had bought it for her. Was that even the kind of thing a father buys his daughter?-- I wasn’t sure. “What I did back there,” she was now saying. “I did it because I needed to know I can trust you.”

  “Well, sure you can--” I started to say.

  “No, no, no,” she said, stubborn. “You don’t understand. It’s more important than that-- much more. Your saying it isn’t good enough.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “How could you?” she said, and then assured, “You will, though-- I hope.” She paused, and bit her lower lip thoughtfully. Her eyes started to sparkle with amusement. She wagged her head, then, and managed a weak laugh. “I just don’t believe it. I have to ask you this. What kind of person goes to somebody’s house and counts the tiles on the floor?”

  “Hunh?” was about all I could say, I was so stunned. How could she have possibly known?

  “I’m sorry, Travis-- I really am-- but this is absolutely necessary.”

  Before I knew what was happening, her hand darted out, she started the engine, shifted into drive, and jammed on the accelerator. The car roared across the clearing toward the drop.

  Ohmigod, flashed through my mind. I started to reach over to try to turn off the engine, but she stopped me with two words: “Seat belt.” She said it in a creepy, calm way, as she looked forward, determined, two hands gripping the wheel tightly.

  There wasn’t enough time to stop her. There was barely enough time to sit back in my seat and lock the seat belt.

  The car reached the edge of the clearing and flew out into nothingness. Everything seemed to move in slow motion, and the entire world was muted by an eerie hush. The car didn’t fall right away, but seemed to linger in space, like a cartoon character that has to realize there is no ground under him before he starts to fall. When it did start to drop, it seemed at first that it would go straight down and hit the water below flat on its bottom, but then the rear end of the car started to rise so that we were heading nose down toward the water. The car continued to flip over. We were upside, then, with the rear end starting to dip. Just before we hit the water, I could look straight out the front window and see the blue sky and the huddle of green trees looking down at us. The rear of the car hit the water with a thunderous roar, and water splashed high in all directions as the car dipped deep down. It bobbed back up, and the front of the car suddenly dropped, the underside of the car slapping down hard on the water. When that happened, we were both jerked violently forward against our seat belts. Just then, I caught a glimpse of Eliza, her head snapping forward. For some reason, her shoulder strap didn’t catch hold fast enough, and her head crashed against the steering wheel. When the car settled down, she flopped back in her seat, unconscious, a large gash across her forehead. The impact had blown out the back window, and water was rushing in over the back seat as the rear end of the car starting to dip underwater. I ripped off my seat belt, my mind racing in a thousand directions. I must have seen a hundred cable programs that explained what to do if your car is sinking in water, but I couldn’t think of a single helpful fact. There was something you had to do, something important, for you to survive. What was it? I just couldn’t remember. I reached over to unbuckle Eliza’s seat beat, but it wouldn’t unlock. I pressed the button in and pulled as hard as I could, but it was jammed. The water was rising up from the floor fast. Wait, that was it: the car had to fill with water, or else you couldn’t get the doors open to get out. Still the murky water would be impossible for me to see through so that I could get her out. I grabbed the keys out of the ignition, and unlocked the glove compartment, hoping to find some tools. I didn’t find much, but there was an old disposable box cutter-- the really cheap kind. I grabbed the cutter, and leaned over to try to cut through her belt. The water was already up to her chest, and I had to feel under the water for the belt. I held the belt in place with one hand, and with my other hand tried to use the cutter to cut through the heavy nylon. The blade was very dull, and I had to pull it across the belt again and again, hoping it hit the same spot enough times to cut her free. I managed to cut halfway across the belt, and then tried to cut the rest of the way through by hooking the blade in the slit I’d cut, and pulling it through the rest of the way. It took four or five times, but I finally cut through, and the belt loosened as the shoulder harness retracted back into its plastic holder next to the door. I turned her sideways, and hooked an arm under her arm and around her. I pulled her out from behind the wheel and toward the passenger seat. We were up to our necks in water now. I reached back with my free hand, felt for and found the door handle. When I pulled it, and pushed back, the door wouldn’t open. What was it now?-- the pressure had to be equalized. That was it. There was still too much air in the compartment. I held her close to me and made sure her head was tilted backward so that she could breathe. I rested while the water inched higher. The car must have been totally submerged by now. It must have been sinking deeper and deeper, though I couldn’t feel its downward movement. Okay, this is it, I told myself. I set my feet on the side of the seat, and pressed by back flat against the door. As I started to straighten my legs, the door opened a crack, and water gushed in to displace what little air there was left in the car. I clamped my free hand over Eliza’s mouth, and pinched her nose in the crook of my thumb. I pushed with my legs as hard as I could, and finally the door swung open, and the air that was left in the car escaped. I couldn’t see a thing in the murky water, but felt that we were floating upward. It was impossible to guess how deep we were. It seemed like I’d held my breath for hours by the time we broke the surface of the water. I gasped for air, and Eliza, too, though unconscious, took in a gulp. She coughed a bit, and moaned, and I thought she was coming to, but then her head lolled sideways, with her face pressed against my neck. I looked around, then, and I saw that we were right in the middle of the reservoir. Suddenly, as if for no reason at all, we began to sink. At first, I couldn’t understand what was happening; it was as though, in the excitement of the situation, I lost most of my memory. Finally, it came back to me: I DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO SWIM! I started to flail my free arm wildly, which made us dip underwater briefly. My mind started screaming at me, don’t panic-- don’t panic. That’s the worst thing you can do. Just kick your legs-- that’ll keep you afloat. And then pull the water toward you with your free hand-- that’ll move to the edge of the water. Sure enough, it worked. It wasn’t pretty or fast, but we crept to the edge of the water. I was doing something that was a sort of like a backstroke. When we reached the rocky side where the water ended, my feet felt some big stones underwater, and I used them like steps, climbing out of the water, with Eliza draped over my shoulder. There was a narrow path that led upward to level area where the trees began. I could barely move my legs as I labored up the path. I set Eliza on the ground, with her back resting against the trunk of one of the trees. I leaned over her and checked to make sure she was breathing all right. She actually sounded better than I did; I had a vague wheeze, and I never felt so exhausted in my life. When I stood straight up, I actually felt dizzy and terribly sick. I knelt on the ground next to her, and tried to catch my breath. Now that we were safe, my adrenalin had stopped flowing, and as it stopped, I began to feel worse
and worse. I had a sharp pain in my right side, I noticed then, and I looked down and saw where blood had soaked through my shirt. What?… I was confused at the sight of the red splotch. When I lifted my shirt, I saw the piece of metal; it was thin and silver and poked out a couple inches from a jagged wound. At first, it looked like part of an arrow, and then I recognized it for what it was: a piece of metal trim, probably from the car door. When I felt my lower back, I found the nub that was the other end of the trim. It had gone straight through, maybe when I was pushing against the door to open it underwater. I couldn’t imagine how it had happened-- it must have been a fluke. Whatever the case, I wondered how much blood I’d lost, and whether the metal went through any vital organs. For the first time in my life, I wished I’d paid more attention in biology class. I must have passed out then; the only other thing I remember was waking briefly, with my head resting on a rock, and looking at the green water and listening to the birds sing and thinking how Eliza had been right: this really was a pretty peaceful place, and that was the most important thing after all.

  II THE ARTIFACT

  1

  It felt as though I were floating. It was a warm, pleasant feeling. I opened my eyes briefly, but they were bleary and I couldn’t make out much, except that was I lying down in a dimly lighted room. I had a hard time keeping my eyes open, and I kept drifting back into sleep. I had no sense of time, and I couldn’t tell how many minutes or hours passed while I was asleep. As far as I knew, years could have been going by, but the way I felt, I hardly cared. Then I woke once, and I heard something. It sounded like a mumbling of somebody talking far away. I tried to make out the words, but couldn’t; it sounded like some foreign language, the whispered words running together, impossible to understand. I kept my eyes shut, and listened as hard as I could. After a while, the words started to get louder and more distinct, and I could recognize a word here and there.

  “…I … thought… needed… for once….”

  Slowly more words became clear, and a dialogue formed.

  “…it’s utterly incredible. I simply cannot believe you could be capable to doing something so irresponsible. Exactly what was going through your mind? Can you tell me that, at least?”

  “I had to be absolutely sure.”

  “Oh, so sure you had to deactivate the air bags. No, I shouldn’t even mention that. I don’t want to give you the idea that I would think the entire thing is any less insane if you’d left the air bags alone. And before you conceived this master plan of yours, did you ever consider what would happen if you got hurt and he just left you?”

  “I never for a second thought he would.”

  “Well, if you were that sure, you hardly needed to test him. And what if he’d been the one to get knocked out? What then? How would you have felt if he drowned?”

  “I just had to prove out fate.”

  “Fate? Fate had nothing to do with it. You were lucky, plain and simple.”

  “Luck had nothing to do with it. Some things you just know.”

  “So, you’re sure, then?”

  “Yeah, he’s the one. He’s perfect.”

  There was a heavy sigh. “All right, what makes him so perfect?”

  “Comes out of a weak family structure. Doesn’t feel he fits in with his family. Still has a suspicion he may be adopted, probably. Doesn’t have any friends-- not in the normal sense of the word. Has an inferiority complex when it comes to intelligence. But he has a flexible, open mind. Strong as a moose. Capable of great loyalty.”

  “Hah! He’d have to be…. What about his actual intelligence?”

  “I’d have to estimate him at about 120.”

  “Hmmm. Smarter than he realizes, hunh?”

  “See what I mean?”

  “You know how important this is. What if you end up being wrong?”

  “I’m not.”

  “But what if…”

  “ ‘What if’ doesn’t apply here.”

  “You’re that certain.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Look, you knew this day would come sooner or later.”

  “Yeah, but I thought it would be later.”

  “What are our options, really? He’s here now. We pass him up, and hope to run into somebody later on who is just as perfect? What are the chances of that? Besides…

  “Besides, what?”

  “Well, if we pass on him now, that means moving again, right away…. I’m really getting tired of moving.”

  “As am I.”

  The conversation continued, but I was growing too groggy to follow it. What I had heard sounded as hollow as words spoken in a dream, their meaning half lost and the reasoning behind them veiled in fog.

  The next time I woke, I could have sworn it had all been a dream. That was the way I remembered it all. Even my memory of Eliza driving me out to the country lacked any sense of reality. The last thing I remembered that seemed real was she and I sitting on her front porch and talking after I’d helped her with the lawn.

  I found myself lying on the sofa in her living room. I felt pretty good, but disoriented. I sat up and checked out my shirt and side; there was no blood on my shirt, and my side was not injured at all. If it all had been a dream, then what had actually happened? Had I had heatstroke and passed out, or what? Ohmigod, I fainted in front of her! How embarrassing. But wait-- I had never fainted in my life. I had scarcely ever been sick; I recalled once, when I’d been in first grade, having a cold for a couple days, but that was about all. So what had happened?

  “Hello,” I called out, but no one answered. My voice echoed through the barely furnished house.

  I stood and walked to the front window. When I pulled back the draperies, I saw that it was still light out, though the sun was very low in the west and the world was slipping into twilight. The beat-up old station wagon wasn’t parked in front of my house, which meant my mother had already left for her Wednesday night out bowling with her friends. Later I would be sure to find a note on the kitchen table telling me my dinner, whatever it was, was in the fridge and needed only be put in the microwave for a minute or two. She would not return until the wee hours of the morning, when, if I happened to wake, I would be able to hear her, a little tipsy, tripping over furniture downstairs until she found the lounge chair, sat down, smoked a couple cigarettes, and finally fell asleep. This was a typical Wednesday night for her, whenever my father was on a sales trip, which was most of the time.

  I let the draperies slip shut. When I turned round, I saw Eliza standing there, in the middle of the living room. Either she hadn’t made a sound as she entered the room, or I’d been too absorbed to hear her as I wondered whether my life was even close to being normal.

  “You slept a long time,” she said. “Someone will be looking for you?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  I walked across the tiled floor, and stopped in front of her. She remained quiet as I studied her a moment. Her hands were clasped behind her back. When her eyes met mine, they were free of distrust and deception. She just stood there and looked at me almost as if inviting me to examine her and convince myself that she was harmless.

  I reached up to her face, and brushed aside her bangs, which were long and reached down to her eyebrows. The skin of her forehead was pale and smooth and showed no signs of ever having been cut or gashed.

  “Uh-huh,” I murmured. “I guess we’re at the part when you tell me it was all a bad dream. Of course, I’ll refuse to believe it, and then you’ll take me outside to show me your car is parked in the driveway, and there won’t be a scratch on it.”

  She managed a weak smile. “I didn’t go through all this to end up lying to you, Travis,” she said. “You won’t understand this, but you’re very important to my father and me. Of course you’re doubly important to me.”

  “You have a strange way of showing it,” I said.

  “That? Well, all that was just a test.”

  “A test?” />
  “I had to be sure I could trust you.”

  “So you drove me off a cliff?” I asked dryly.

  “It was the only thing I could think of, given there wasn’t much time. Besides, I was with you all the way. It wasn’t like I left you or anything.”

  “And what if something went wrong?”

  “It didn’t, though, did it?”

  “That’s not the point,” I said.

  “Sure, it is. The fact that everything ended up all right… well, there’s the proof that it wasn’t necessarily a bad idea.”

  I studied her a minute. She seemed perfectly clear-headed, which made it frustrating that she seemed to me to be making so little sense.

  “You know, I don’t know how to swim,” I said.

  “No, I didn’t realize that,” she admitted. “But, you see, despite the fact you don’t know how to swim, it still turned out all right, and I learned what I needed to learn.”

  “Which was what?” I asked.

  “That I could trust you with my life,” she said solemnly. “Once I knew that, I knew I could trust you with anything.”

  “Well, what’s the point of it all?” I asked, trying hard not to lose my patience.

  “What do you think the point is?”

  I mulled it over, and then said, “You know, I really don’t have a clue.”

  “Well, we’re not aliens,” Eliza said. “So you don’t have to worry about all that foolishness your friend put in your head. If you don’t believe me, you can pull on my face to see if it’s a rubber mask,” she added, contorting her face playfully.

  I was taken aback that she’d mentioned a rubber mask; it was exactly what I’d said to Raffles yesterday-- how could she have possibly known?

  As if reading my mind, or the look on my face, she said, “Look, maybe I’m a little better at spying on people than you are.”

  “You mean…?”

  “I knew you were spying on the house?”