Some Faraway Place

by Lauren Shippen

  We didn’t get a chance to discuss theories because I threw down my napkin on the table and bolted out of there. And now I’m here, hiding in my room, trying to figure out why I was having an anxiety attack ten minutes ago.

  I’m not sure that this whole dream journal thing is really helping the … the whatever that’s going on, but it does seem to be calming me down a little. There’s something hypnotically soothing about writing out everything that just happened. Like dreams, the act of forcing it into an understandable shape feels like some kind of physical processing, helping me uncover the root of what’s freaking me out about this whole thing.

  I’m scared they’re right. Growing up with a psychic mother and telekinetic father, I couldn’t wait for the day that my power would appear. It was like waiting for Gandalf to show up in the Shire, knowing that you have a glorious destiny and amazing adventures ahead and all you have to do is get to that day when it all kicks off. It was one of the things that Aaron and I bonded over most. We’d spend hours playing make-believe, assigning each other abilities and acting them out like the great heroes we assumed they’d make us into. Him, pretending to be a pyrokinetic, a electropath—something big and bombastic like him. Me, wishing that I could fly. Up, up, and away from everything.

  But then I grew up and both my imagination and Aaron both felt like distant childhood friends. I went through high school, and puberty, all the while devouring every fantasy novel and movie that I could, and slowly realized that maybe I was wrong. Maybe there were no exciting quests or Chosen One status waiting for me or for Aaron.

  And then Aaron did get chosen and I was so jealous, the envy chewing up my insides, driving my obsession for cooking to new heights, making me so focused on trying to be exceptional at something even if it meant I didn’t belong anywhere. But watching Aaron go through the realities of being a mind reader … how hard it is, how grating, how lonely … it made it harder to be jealous.

  My parents are scared. They don’t want me to be Atypical. They don’t want me to be special.

  The thing that I always wanted finally happened and I can’t be excited. I can’t even be relieved that maybe, finally, I got chosen.

  All I feel is dread.

  SEPTEMBER 4TH, 2016

  “Don’t take an umbrella today.”

  Those were the first words that my mom spoke to me this morning. No “Hello” or “Good morning” or “How are you feeling, do you think you have an Atypical ability yet?” Just … “Don’t take an umbrella.”

  I looked at the sky, gray and heavy and definitely a sign that rain was on its way, but I left my umbrella in the front hall closet. Without argument, I heeded my mother’s vision, hoping at least this one wouldn’t lead to another injury, and tried not to let the annoyance show on my face as I nodded at my mom and left for the restaurant.

  The weather matched my mood as I made my way to Milton. It rumbled, dark and oppressive above me, the heavy feeling of an impending storm hanging in the air. And, sure enough, the moment I got off the bus—the stop several blocks away from the restaurant—the sky opened and unleashed holy hell on me.

  “Yep, that feels right.” I laughed humorlessly to no one, taking the opportunity of an empty sidewalk to let out a guttural moan of frustration that I would love to aim at my mom if I had any kind of spine.

  “Hey Rose!” Madison said, her bright white teeth nearly blinding me as I stepped out of the horrible rain and into the restaurant. I’ve never understood how Madison keeps up her relentlessly cheery expression, but I guess that’s why she’s front of house and I’m not.

  “Hey, Madison. Sorry, back door is jammed again,” I said. Kitchen staff aren’t really supposed to come through the front, especially kitchen staff who are as soaked to the bone as I was, but our door is a tricky bastard that no amount of WD-40 seems able to fix. Given that the place wasn’t even open yet, I figured I was safe to dry off in the front so Chef wouldn’t yell at me for dragging dirty water through her kitchen.

  I shook out my hair like a shaggy dog, wiggled my legs to get the excess water off my shoes, and then instantly regretted both of those decisions when I looked up through the tangled strands of my wet hair and saw that Madison wasn’t alone.

  “Oh my god,” I whispered, an involuntary reaction that felt punched from my gut.

  “Uh, hey, wow, it’s you.”

  That’s right. It’s me. Soaking wet Rose Atkinson. Unbelievably uncool. Staring right into the gorgeous face of BROKEN WRIST GIRL.

  “Rose, this is Emily,” Madison said, completely oblivious to the desperate lesbian going through the most embarrassing moment of her entire life. “Emily, Rose.”

  Emily. EmilyEmilyEmilyEmily—have you ever heard such a perfect name?

  09-04-2016, morningwaffles, text post

  OKAY BEFORE YOU YELL AT ME, an update to somewhere a place for us is coming tomorrow, I promise. I know some of you beautiful nutbars have new posts by me pushed to your notifications so I’m sorry for those of you who were hoping to read some good, good pining. But, I might have something even better: pining irl.

  That’s right, kids, cute urgent care diary-writing sprained-wrist fell-unconscious girl is back.

  Here’s what went down. One of my roommates at that college I go to that I’m not going to tell you the name of has a best friend … Jefferson (not her real name, obvi) who works at this super nice, old-school restaurant downtown. She’s been really down lately—my roommate, not Jefferson—and she apparently loves the soup from this place so I thought I’d go down there and see if Jefferson would be willing to slip a girl some, you know?

  And guess who was there? Guess who works there? In the kitchen? Making food? Like some sort of beautiful cooking angel??

  Well, I’m not going to tell you her real name, of course. But I’ll call her Daisy.

  le sigh.

  Daisy.

  (I’m saying her real name in my head)

  The mystery is solved!! And yes, she is as cute as I remembered. It was raining cats and dogs today and she came into the restaurant totally soaked. Which sucks—I hate when that happens, walking around in wet jeans is the w o r s t—but she just stood there right inside the doorway and did this full-body shake to get the water off and it was truly the most endearing thing I’ve ever seen. Especially when she noticed I was there and got totally red faced and stutter-y and stuck out her dripping hand when Jefferson introduced us.

  We shook hands—her arm still in a brace and mine in a hard cast and ohmygod, it was a total 2005-P&P-meaningful-hand-touch kind of handshake. She was so gentle and wide-eyed—I’ve never had anyone treat me like that. Like I’m delicate, like I’m some kind of rare and beautiful creature that needs to be approached with reverence for fear of ruining something so perfect.

  Okay, I realize I sound e x t r e m e l y up on myself, but I’m telling you, that’s how she was looking at me. I laughed and made some quip about my cast and missing skateboarding and she blushed, for some reason, impossibly more, and then we were just kind of awkwardly grinning at each other, hearts in our eyes, like I live in the sappiest K-Drama ever. Jefferson legit cleared her throat. That’s how obvious we were.

  I know you all are on absolute tenterhooks now, wondering what’s going to happen next, but I have to be across campus in ten minutes for my creative writing seminar, so I’m going to leave you hanging. Which, if you read my fic, you know is my modus operandi.

  Laterz.

  SEPTEMBER 5TH, 2016

  Okay, so as I was writing the last entry, I fell asleep. Again. Which is now the second time I’ve quite literally swooned just thinking about how cute Emily is.

  That’s right, I actually know her name now! Her full name, which feels like a huge leap in the right direction.

  “Emily Rodriguez,” she said, smiling, and I almost started to feel dizzy again just at that. We’d just been standing there, kind of staring at each other, before Madison legit cleared her throat like a bad romcom sidekick and thr
ew us back into actual human being “we should probably introduce ourselves” mode.

  Look, meeting new people, getting to know them … it’s not what I’d call my strong suit. Unless they rollerblade or have strong opinions about sous-vide-ing, I usually don’t have much to say to other people. And other people my age? Terrifying. The only reason I feel remotely secure in talking to Madison is because I’ve known her for six months and also she’s the Energizer Bunny of good feelings and smiles, so she makes it pretty easy.

  But standing there in front of Emily, seeing her cheeks dimple as she smiled, her brown eyes lighting up, I went a bit jelly-legged. So I opted for the safe choice: ignoring Emily completely and talking only to Madison like an asshat.

  “I’m just here to pick up my paycheck,” I said, looking over Emily’s shoulder at Madison’s bright, blond-haired head.

  “Oh, right,” she said, her eyes darting between me and Emily. I could feel a blush rising on my cheeks and everything in my body was screaming for it to stop. I don’t usually blush in front of girls, I am not, in my nature, a blusher, but there’s something about Emily. Something about how warm her smile is, how she asked me what I was writing, the small giggle she gave when we locked eyes and gestured to our shared wrist injuries. It drew me in in a way that no one ever has. For once, I actually want to listen to my irritating mother and turn my focus onto a person, not one of my obsessive hobbies.

  “I’ll just go back and grab it for you,” Madison chirped. “I’ve got to grab Emily’s soup anyway.”

  “Oh no, you really don’t—” I started, but it was too late. Her long, blond hair whipping behind her, Madison zipped through the dining room and disappeared through the kitchen doors, leaving me staring at the back of her head, the only sound the steady drip-drip-drip of water falling off the edge of my raincoat.

  Don’t take an umbrella. My mother’s visions have a sick sense of humor. There had to have been a way to get the same result without me being soaking wet the entire time.

  “Rose, was it?” Emily’s lilting voice, like music to my ears, broke the awkward tension and I refocused on her face. It was almost too much to look at at first. Her skin is a deep, warm brown like her eyes, and she was smiling enough to show that she has two perfect dimples in her cheeks.

  “Uh yeah,” I said, my voice gravelly and hollow, like I had just spent hours shouting. I made a jerky motion with my body before stopping still completely, once I realized that I’d been going to shake her hand. Again.

  “This is a pretty weird coincidence, right?” She laughed, but it sounded more nervous than I would have expected. I finally blinked, the fact that I’d been staring blankly at her for the past forty seconds dawning at me, and saw a new tightness in her smile.

  “I’m not following you or anything,” I rushed to say, because apparently my brain and my mouth are no longer talking to one another.

  “What?” Emily’s eyes widened.

  “I just mean,” I said, my voice gaining back its usual strength much slower than I would have liked, “this really is just a coincidence. I know the odds of this are, like, really small, but I promise, I’m not following you or anything. I work here. So, maybe, you’re the one who’s following me. Yeah, I mean, that would be more likely, why else would you be here picking up soup?”

  Oh my GOD, just writing this stuff down is mind-numbingly embarrassing. I think I embarrassed Emily too, because she started to blush furiously. I wish I had had more of my wits about me to fully appreciate how hot she looked when she was flustered.

  But don’t worry! There were even MORE opportunities for things to be awkward, because Madison came back with both our things, which means we left at the same time, which means we both were trying to navigate opening the door with casts and, in Emily’s case, an armful of soup for her friend because she’s a perfect person.

  “Here—” I said, moving into her space. I was close enough now to see the light freckles dotted along the bridge of her nose and to discover that she smells like vanilla. She stepped back, taking her enticing freckles and cupcake scent with her and giving me room to open the door for her.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I guess … I’ll see you.”

  Her foot stepped forward onto the sidewalk and under the awning that hangs in front of Milton’s front door. Doing her best to maneuver around the cast and the soup in her arm, she extended her umbrella in front of her and I watched her grimace as she braced herself to step into the torrential rain.

  And that was when it clicked. Don’t take an umbrella.

  “Wait!” I called, stepping outside after her. The door swung closed behind me as she turned around, confusion written all over her face.

  “Um,” I said, raising my voice a little to be heard over the rain. “I don’t have an umbrella. Obviously,” I added, gesturing to my still-soaked form. “Any chance you could walk me to the bus stop?” I tried to put on my best rakish smile, the one that Aaron’s used on so many girls that I’m hoping is genetic but that I’ve never figured out how to deploy.

  The confusion on Emily’s face transformed into something like curiosity and soon a small smile was mirroring my own.

  “Sure,” she said after what felt like a thousand years. I could feel my smile grow bigger as she extended her arm, just slightly, in a silent invitation.

  We walked in an awkward three-legged-race kind of gait—moving side by side, drifting over the wet pavement under the same small umbrella, but still complete strangers, afraid to get too close, even if looping arms would have made it easier to stay in lockstep.

  I thought I should say something—say thank you again, ask her if she was taking the bus too or if she drove here, if she’s now going way out of her way to help me—but the smack-smack-smack of the rainfall on the tight vinyl above us gave me the perfect excuse to stay silent. I focused in on her cast instead. With how close I was, I could see that it was covered in doodles and signatures, the hallmark of a person with dozens of friends. While that’s a completely foreign experience to me—having people like you and seek out your company—I could understand why so many people gravitated toward Emily. Even standing shoulder to shoulder with her, I wanted to get closer, to lean in as much as I possibly could until her face was the only thing in my field of vision.

  “How’s, uh, college going?” I asked finally, wincing at the triteness of the question.

  “It’s going okay,” she said. “I’m just a sophomore so, you know, not too much crazy pressure yet.”

  “Oh right,” I said again and COME ON ROSE YOU HAVE OTHER WORDS IN YOUR VOCABULARY, SHE’S A WRITER AND YOU’RE SPEAKING IN MONOSYLLABLES god I’m such an idiot.

  Thankfully, I was saved from further humiliation by the fact that we arrived at the bus stop.

  “This is me,” I said, jerking my head to the stop. “Thanks for the escort.”

  “No problem.” She smiled and my legs turned to jelly. “It’s kind of weird, right?”

  “What do you mean?” My heart stopped in that moment. I knew I hadn’t made the best first—or second—impression, but it seemed unnecessarily harsh to call me weird.

  “Running into each other again,” she explained. “Of all the gin joints…”

  I gave her a blank look. What did gin have to do with this?

  “Casablanca?”

  “What?”

  “Oh my god, have you never seen Casablanca?” She laughed, like bells.

  “I’m not really much of a movie person,” I said, too embarrassed to add that the movies I do watch are exclusively ones with sword fights or magic.

  “Okay, I get that,” she said, smiling and nodding her head. My stomach swooped. “But Casablanca is a classic. You don’t have to be a movie person to get into Casablanca.”

  “All right, I trust you,” I teased, feeling on surer footing. It felt like the beginning of a volley—the kind of conversational fencing that is as close as I get to a comfort zone with other people.

  “So you’ll
watch it?” she asked, her eyes wide in hope. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my bus approaching the stop, hear the hiss of the doors opening. And in Emily’s eyes, I saw an opening, her hope maybe being about something more than just getting a random stranger to watch a movie you liked. I was running out of time but even I wasn’t too clueless to see the perfect opportunity that had been laid out in front of me.

  So in that moment, with rain pounding on the umbrella above us, I did something I have never, in my nineteen years of existing on this planet, done before.

  I asked someone out on a date.

  And against all odds—

  community/TheUnusuals post by n/thatsahumanperson

  Hey folks—so the situation with my sister has kind of escalated. We both still live with my parents (keep your comments about the computer nerd living in his parents’ basement, I’ve heard it all before and I should think that you guys, of all people, should understand that I’m not your standard college dropout) and we were having dinner the other night when she dropped kind of a weird bomb on us.

  Apparently she’s been having these fits where she falls asleep—doesn’t matter where or when, sometimes she’ll just drop unconscious. She’s claiming that it’s narcolepsy, which definitely makes a lot of sense if we were, you know, a normal family. I’ve mentioned this on this sub before, but everyone in my family is Atypical Unusual—well, at least my parents and I are. My younger sister is past the age where we’d expect her to get her ability. At least, so we thought.

  Anyway, this is just a long-winded way of saying that I think you were right, n/theneonthorn—I think my sister probably is Atypical Unusual. But has anyone heard anything about an ability that makes you lose consciousness? Or is it possible for her to actually have narcolepsy and have an ability? Any insight/informed guesses/thoughts you guys have would really ease my mind. I don’t know why, but I’ve got a really weird feeling about all of this.