by Kara Storti
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I spend the next hour learning how to harvest indigo, per Orah’s instructions. She reiterates how gentle I have to be, but my hands are big and clumsy, my feet unsteady. Bull in a china shop? More like a T. rex. It’s safe to say that I’m not a natural. Because of my ineptitude and overall shakiness, I do wonder if I’m suffering mild withdrawal from H, from coke, from the pills I’ve been taking. When I run through all the drugs I’ve done within the past weeks to keep my energy up, to bring my anxiety down, it’s a long-ass list that no one should be proud of, unless you want to win an accolade for recklessness.
“No, Phineas, you aren’t doing it right,” she says, holding up a ziplock bag. “Bring the bag as close as possible to the flower, then give the petals a gentle touch so they disintegrate right into the bag. Use delicacy.”
I pay special attention to her movements, not wanting to waste one mote of indigo to the stale air. It’s crazy hard. It takes a lot of practice to capture just one of the flowers in a bag, and I’m starting to get frustrated and annoyed she’s so good at it. Her technique is expert, her fingers are deft. It could be the nurse in her. Or it could be the addict.
I’m calculating how much all this indigo is worth. I’ve been selling grams for fifty dollars a pop, easy. So far, the indigo I’ve harvested in my hands right now would be worth hundreds, hell yeah, and Orah’s bag is probably worth thousands. Cha-ching. This whole crypt is a legit gold mine, I’m talking hundreds of thousands of dollars, I’m talking I could be a millionaire by the time I turn eighteen. There’s only one way to celebrate this, yet I’ve left all my feel-good paraphernalia at home, save for my pack of cigarettes.
After a while, she takes a break to wipe her hands on her black pants, leaving streaks of blue powder, to roll her shoulders back. My muscles are sore from all the concentrated movements, all the focus in general. I haven’t wanted to use throughout this whole visit, but now I do. My body is screaming for it. If I don’t get out of this place soon, man, I’m going to be hurting.
I consider dipping my finger into one of the quart-sized bags I’ve filled, taking a taste, maybe I’d have a good memory again, but the risk is too much. You’d have to put a gun to my head before I relive the worst memory of my life. My sister on the floor bleeding, sharp plastic lodged in her eye, my father sobbing . . .
“Are you okay, Phineas?” Orah asks.
“I’m fine. Just getting claustrophobic, I guess.”
She looks at me doubtfully. “We should leave now,” she says. “It’s not healthy for us to stay in here for very long . . . the drug is in the air, eventually it will absorb into your skin, and you’ll be hallucinating before you know it.”
I nod, relieved, fishing through my pockets for my cigarettes and a lighter. But when I pull out the lighter, Orah slaps it from my hands.
I throw her a look of outrage. “Hey, lay off,” I say, scrambling to pick up the lighter, which she kicks to the front of the tomb with her black sneaker before I can grab it. She clamps her hand down on my shoulder.
“I failed to mention that indigo is incredibly flammable,” she says fiercely. “If you light up in here, you’ll blow up this whole ledge. You can’t even smoke it.”
“Really?” I say, turning my attitude down a notch. “Sorry.” I’m going to have to spread around the black box warning. It would really hurt business if someone got hurt.
We leave the crypt and Orah locks up, and aren’t we a sight, hair, face, clothes all coated with fine, blue-ish powder that glistens impressively in the sun. Indigo in her purse, indigo under my sweatshirt. On the trek back we’re quiet, the dust slowly disappears, we’re us again. When we arrive at her minivan, I open the door for her, she settles in.
“Hey listen,” I say, arm over the door. “Thanks. For this opportunity, you know?”
Orah places her hand on my forearm. Her palm is soft and her fingers are strong. She smiles warmly, like she actually cares about me. “You’re a good boy,” she says.
“Oh.” I let out a nervous laugh. “Sure. Okay.”
On the car ride home, Orah’s sage advice on happiness is needling me. Maybe it really can’t be attained. Maybe I’m going to be running around in circles for the rest of my life trying to find satisfaction, my fill, when there is none with permanence to be found. But whatever, I can’t deny the thrill of a new beginning coursing through me, on high voltage. The possibilities. All that indigo waiting to be turned into money, more money than I’ve ever had. Indigo. The new drug of the century, and my empire to rule.
Tuesday, May 7
Chapter Twenty-seven
My customer base skyrockets after I visit the crypt with Orah. I’ve got kids I’ve never seen before buying from me at a Taco Bell downtown, in the parking lot of Walmart; Jesus, I did a drop in front of a toy store with a life-sized teddy bear in the window. People are coming out of the cracks in droves.
The money I’m making is out of this world, and the space underneath the floor panels is starting to fill up. If I keep going at this rate, I’m going to need another hiding spot.
One thing is for sure. Magic is going down. I pretty much have all of D-Town High indigo’d up and loving life. Everyone at school is brighter, happier, and energized, even looking better. Eyes are sparkling, voices are less confrontational. The quietest student starts participating in class, and the wiseass sitting in the back stops harassing the girls in the front. Teachers see the transformation and wonder if their lessons are finally changing lives. Too bad they don’t know that it’s me. Me. I’m making the world go round, and people won’t stop raving about how indigo makes them feel.
Check this out:
A girl in third period English says to me, “I’m seeing for the first time. Really seeing. Like I’m leaving Plato’s cave, into the light I go. I know you know what I’m talking about, Finn. I haven’t forgotten about that speech of yours on Socrates. Well, here’s to your brain on Socrates and indigo. Hand in hand, my friend.”
“Man, I feel like I just rode a rainbow, made out with a supermodel, and won an Olympic gold medal. And I haven’t even left my couch today,” says some stoner guy who thinks he’s friends with me, but I can never remember his name.
This one from the shyest girl in my grade shatters my heart a little: “I’ve stopped cutting myself. I was a little girl again in my memory, and it made me want to go back to that innocence. I want to. I really do. And now I can.”
It’s a flood of appreciation washing over me, and it feels good. I’m helping them. All these kids who used to be depressed and withdrawn are now coming alive, and everyone’s living the best version of themselves. The guys are congratulating me like I’ve been elected governor of New York, and the girls are coming on to me so much, I feel full, full with their big eyes and low-cut shirts, gluttonous from their soft hungry voices and soft shiny hair.
But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. I’ve got Faith and Stacey giving me the cold shoulder like it’s their full-time job. I can’t tell if they know what I’m up to, how deep I am in dealing indigo, or if they’re choosing to ignore it. Whatever they’re thinking, I’ll show them I know what I’m doing.
After school I end up in the library for a deal with some freshman who is desperate for indigo. I pass him a book on World War II with a gram tucked between its pages and give him a wink. That should tide him over for a while. As I make my way back through the maze of book stacks, I come upon my sister and Stacey at one of the circular tables by a window overlooking the back fields of our school. It’s probably the prettiest spot in D-Town High, and the two prettiest girls are monopolizing it. I consider taking another way out of the library to bypass them; I don’t want them to question my presence here, since the library isn’t really my joint. I’m no bibliophobe, but the forced quiet of the library spooks me. On second thought, though, Stacey’s looking too good to pass up, in a purple dress with puffy sleeves, and maybe I can work on softening my sister.
I strut over ther
e after choosing a book on tropical birds I don’t already have. It doesn’t bother me that Faith and Stacey will see me with it. Maybe the nerdiness factor will help.
Faith’s got her head buried in Jane Eyre, and Stacey’s writing notes from a Western Civilization textbook in a college-ruled notebook. The closer I get, I see doodles of flowers in the margins of the page. It’s so girly and wonderful.
My sister looks up first. “What are you doing here?” she asks with a hard expression on her face. Her hair is curly today; her face paler than usual. She hasn’t spoken to me about her anxiety lately, but I sense it close—she’s jumpy and tense.
How could I think approaching them is a good idea, especially with how my date ended with Stacey? And Faith won’t even tell me if she’s taken back her acceptance to Harvard.
“I needed a new book on birds,” I say as proudly as I can, but it comes off sounding smug if anything. Stacey hasn’t given me one glance.
“Bully for you,” Faith says. They go back to their school work, and I’m left standing around like an idiot.
Stacey finally looks up. “You made quite the impression on Mimi when you came over.”
I’m startled by this. Is Orah talking about me? Is she breaking her own rule and blowing our cover for whatever reason?
“He tends to have that effect on people,” Faith says irritably.
Stacey isn’t discouraged by my sister’s instant bad mood. “Mimi and I were talking last night, and she mentioned you. The young man in the morning room.”
This thrills me to no end, because I don’t sense any contempt in her voice. Orah hasn’t mentioned the indigo. I should have more faith in the old lady. This chat is going better than I thought it would. That disaster of a date seems years away now, even though it was just weeks. Maybe it wasn’t even as bad as I remember.
“That’s got a nice ring to it,” I say. The young man in the morning room. “I’ve been told before that the air changes when I walk into a room. I mean, doesn’t the library feel different to you right now? Like more awesome?”
Faith’s annoyance doubles; she knows I’m acting like I’m the shit because I’m nervous. “Don’t get all cocky, her Mimi brought you up in conversation because you like Audubon and so does she.”
“It’s amazing what one common factor can do,” Stacey says.
Faith muses on Stacey’s comment and says suddenly, without bitterness, “Phineas has always liked Audubon, ever since he learned about him in elementary school. One of the teachers showed a few of his prints as part of a lesson on animals, reptiles, and birds. She gave him photocopies because he was so jazzed about it. Which ones were they again?”
Talking about me and Audubon loosens her up. At one point when we were kids, Faith looked at the photocopies just as much as me. She liked the postures of the birds and would try to mimic them—an impossible task—to make me laugh. And would she ever.
“The great blue heron, the wild turkey, the roseate spoonbill, and the cardinal,” I say. There were more, but those are the most famous ones the teacher shared with us. I remember my excitement turning quickly into passion. The more pictures I saw, the more devout I became.
“Of course the cardinal. Male and female,” Faith says.
I shake my head, almost in reverence. The Audubon cardinals demand respect. Whenever I look at them, even if it’s on the computer, a hush settles around me, a quiet cool. The assuredness of the male is shown in his upturned beak; the emotional intelligence of the female is in her graceful yet relaxed stance.
“The pictures were all in black and white. Imagine if they had been in color,” I say, aware that the tropical bird book under my arm is sticking to my skin. I hope they don’t notice how sweaty I am.
“I’ve only seen you excited like that a few times.”
“What were the other times?” Stacey asks, clearly into it.
Faith and I lock eyes, and it seems important. It’s the first time in a while that we’re actually seeing each other, remembering how things used to be between us. I know we’re simultaneously scanning our past, so connected, finding the bright spots, as Orah called them.
“Whenever he rants and raves about facts he knows,” Faith says.
“Like your oration on frogs?” Stacey asks. “You should be a teacher.”
Generally I get nasty when people tell me what I should do. But this time, it’s different because it’s coming out of Stacey’s mouth, and because I don’t necessarily hate the idea.
“What can I say? I’m a font of worthless knowledge.”
Stacey smiles, and I know I’m ahead of where I was before this conversation began. So before this goes sour, and because I know at some point it will, I announce my exit. Plus, I have more people who are after indigo today. “Things to do, people to see,” I say. Faith makes a noise in the back of her throat and returns to her reading.
“Enjoy the book,” Stacey says, waving good-bye.
A teacher, huh? I think to myself. Like the world would really trust me with our future generation.
Saturday, May 11
Chapter Twenty-eight
I head back out to the cemetery on Saturday morning, at the designated ungodly hour Orah and I planned over the phone. The calls for indigo are nonstop, and I don’t want to be running low any time soon. This is all I’m hearing lately: Can I get a gram for the party tonight? Man, I’m so hungover I need a bump. I’ll meet you in front of the D-Town Diner. You better be holding. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I say to them, slow your roll, you’ll get it when you get it. I’m probably popping too many pills to stay calm throughout my increasingly hectic days.
Why isn’t Orah asking me for any of the profits? I still can’t believe she just wants to spend time with me and that’s payment enough.
Bryce has pretty much dropped out of the dealing scene because he’s afraid of getting arrested again. Peter, though at first eager to make money, is now backing away from the business venture. He says he’s trying to get clean for his first semester of college, but I don’t doubt Faith has something to do with it and how he wants to sober up for her, even though they’re not together. That’s all to say the burden of selling indigo is on me now, because I don’t trust any of the others to do this kind of volume of work. But that also means more money for Faith.
Orah and I shuffle around the crypt, harvesting indigo, the battery-operated lamp illuminating the tombs of the dead. There is Horvath E. Klaski, who died at sea, and Lily P. Klaski, who passed away during childbirth at age nineteen. Orah and I talk to them, asking them how they’re holding up and if they’re taking care of our indigo. Saying things like, how are your old bones today? Cranky, satisfied, somber?
“You’re losing weight,” Orah says with her back turned to me. She harvests indigo fast and effortlessly, as I still struggle to collect the fine powder into a bag. “Your face looks hawkish. You’re high right now, aren’t you?”
I stop plucking flowers. “Why would you think that?”
“Your eyes are red, and you’re being clumsy.”
In truth, I am high, but she doesn’t need to know that. I snorted a line before I headed over because my energy level was waning. A quick fix is what I needed.
“It’s been a long week. And it’s probably allergies. Springtime? Come on. The pollen’s out of control. Been having to take Claritin, you know?”
Her hands are on her hips, face tilted up to the ceiling of the crypt. “Why do addicts make up elaborate lies?”
“I don’t know, you tell me. At least I’m not addicted to this stuff,” I say, holding up my bag of indigo. Then I realize it’s probably not a smart idea to antagonize my supplier. “Anyway, did you know that the color indigo means certain things?” I say quickly to change the subject. I’m not discouraged that she doesn’t respond to my question. “Indigo, on the positive side of the spectrum, means perception, intuition, and the higher mind. The color stimulates right-brain activity and creative thinking and helps with spatial skills.”
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“Where are you getting this information?”
“The Internet is a glorious thing. On the more negative side of the spectrum, the color indigo means addiction. Can you believe that? Addiction.”
Orah purses her lips. “I know exactly what you’re doing, Phineas, you and your tactics of distraction.”
I place one of the backpacks to the side. Don’t want either of us tripping on it and making a mess. Precious cargo we have here, and next to the dead no less.
“What do you want from me, Orah?”
She sighs. “Why do you do it, Phineas?”
“Do what?”
“Marijuana, cocaine, whatever else you do.”
The dirt scratches against the soles of my sneakers when I shift my weight. Nobody has ever really asked me why. This is the last thing I feel like going into right now, but with Orah, I guess it’s okay, she’s judging me, and that makes her a hypocrite. And strangely enough, her being a hypocrite is a relief. Young people, midlife people, old people—can never really figure out their shit.
“I don’t know, I just do. It feels good. I want to feel good. Who doesn’t? You do indigo, it’s the same thing.” I consider telling her that the reason why I’m not addicted to it is because I’m the only person on the entire planet who had a bad trip from it. I haven’t heard about anyone else suffering. It still seems so unfair, but at least it’s benefitting me in other ways.
Her eyes narrow; down, down go the corners of her mouth. “That’s why you’re helping me to get rid of it. Don’t you see? Stacey and her father moved in with me, and now life is different. I want it to be different. I want to prove to them I’m different. I didn’t think an old lady like me could turn over a new leaf, but here I am.”
“And here I am,” I say.
“Indeed you are. My Billy left a while ago. Stacey’s father claims he doesn’t know where he went. Stacey won’t tell me anything either. I know it’s drug related. I know he’s an addict too. He was tempted by indigo because of catching me doing it. It probably is what opened him up to other drugs.”