Some Faraway Place

by Lauren Shippen

  “I had never done it before until a few weeks ago,” I said. “So there’s still hope for you.” The quirk of her mouth bloomed into a full smile and my heart melted.

  The whole dinner had been like that. Emily was vibrant and charming and easy with her smiles while I felt stiff and nervous. But every few minutes I would say something that would make her eyes light up, making my stomach swoop in turn.

  “I know exactly what I would do,” she said, all her teeth showing, perfect in their slight crookedness.

  “What’s that?” I leaned forward, putting my elbows on the table.

  “Fly,” she breathed, her eyes going wide, and I giggled. I am historically not a giggler.

  “That’s what all the forums say!” I laughed, too embarrassed to admit that’s also what I would do if I could.

  “What forums?”

  “I’ve been checking out some lucid dreaming communities on Readit, trying to figure out how to … how to control it, I guess.”

  “Well, that’s the whole point, right?”

  “Yeah, seems to be.” I nodded. “Everyone’s got a different way of approaching it as far as I can tell, but apparently you can actually train yourself to start lucid dreaming.”

  “What, really?” She laughed. “That’s nuts!”

  “I know!” I laughed too. “Here I am just trying to figure out how to fly in the first place—which is a lot of people’s go-tos and seems completely inaccessible to me—and some people are full-on going into meditative trances to learn how to control every second of their dreams.”

  “Okay, that sounds exhausting. Sleep is for resting, not … whatever that is.”

  “Ugh, it’s true.” I groaned. “I really do feel like I haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep since this whole thing started.”

  “Are you sure the lack of good sleep isn’t because you’ve been sleeping in a cast? Because that’s definitely been my issue.”

  “You know…” I said, “my whole lucid dreaming thing did start after I sprained my wrist. So if you start lucid dreaming too, maybe there’s something going on at that urgent care.”

  “Ooh, like we both touched the same radioactive pens while filling out our intake forms and now we have powers.” Her eyes were wide again as she fanned out her hands in mock drama, made even more endearing by the limited mobility of the hand in the cast, but instead of being able to fully revel in her goofiness, I felt a pit in my stomach at the mention of powers.

  I took that moment to stuff a rice cake (crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside, I have to figure out how to do that) into my mouth and attempt a giggle around it.

  Emily seemed to sense some degree of awkwardness—I get the impression she’s one of those people who is good at social cues—and politely changed the subject.

  “So Readit, huh?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” I shrugged one shoulder. “I haven’t spent a lot of time on there or anything, but where else do you go for weird experiences?”

  “Very fair,” she said. “I’m more of a Mumblr and AO3 girl myself.”

  “Oh my god, please don’t hate me, but I have no idea what that is,” I said lightly, even though I totally meant it. Emily, with her casual tank top and jeans that still somehow looked so put together and cool, and her undercut, and her wing-tipped eyeliner that I’ve never in a million years been able to figure out, was way out of my league and I was convinced that the tiniest thing—the food I ordered, not liking her favorite websites—would be the nail in the coffin of my chance with her.

  “Are you serious?” She laughed.

  “Well, no, I know Mumblr,” I rushed to explain. “I was on there for a hot second before getting more into Instagram.”

  “Ohhh, okay, so you were the cool photo art blog side of Mumblr.”

  “Photos, yes, but definitely not cool ones. Just recipes and stuff.”

  “Sounds pretty cool to me,” Emily said and, again, that smile, like she had a secret I didn’t mind her keeping.

  “But, I will admit to never having heard of the other one,” I said, feeling hot under her gaze.

  “AO3?”

  I nodded.

  “It stands for Archive of Our Own. It’s a fanfic site.”

  “You write fanfic?” I asked.

  “Yeah…” She winced. “Is that the dorkiest thing you’ve ever heard?”

  “No, not at all!” I blurted. “I think that’s really cool!”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah!” I nodded enthusiastically, as if it would convince her more. “I mean, I don’t know anything about it—I’ve never read any fanfic before—but you want to be a writer, right?”

  “Yeah…” Her face softened, her smile turning into one I hadn’t seen so far, one that felt like waking up naturally with the sunlight. “I do. You remembered that?”

  “Of course,” I said, and the wattage went up in her smile.

  We just sat there for a second, smiling like total goofballs, both of us leaning closer and closer to stare at each other across the table. When I couldn’t stand staring directly into the sunlight of her smile for a moment longer, I cleared my throat.

  “Can fanfic be poetry?” I asked. “That’s what you want to be, right? A poet?”

  “I mean, yeah, that’s the big dream.” She rolled her eyes at herself. “But it’s kind of a hard career path.”

  “Right … not a lot of professional, full-time poets these days, huh?”

  “Not really.” She laughed. “But fic is a good way to stretch my wings. I study mostly poetry and nonfiction prose in school, so it’s nice to dip my toes into fiction from time to time. And yeah, sometimes poetry and fanfic overlap, but mostly I’m writing narratives.”

  “What do you write it for?” I asked. And then, realizing I had no idea what I was talking about: “Wait, that’s how it works, right? You write for something? A fandom?”

  “Yeah, that’s how it works.” She chuckled. “I write for the MCU—the Marvel Cinematic Universe.”

  “Oh yeah, my brother loves those movies!” I said. “I’ve seen bits and pieces of it before with him. It’s fun!”

  She laughed a big laugh.

  “You don’t have to say you like it, it’s okay—”

  “No, really! I’m more of a fantasy over superheroes person, but all the actors seemed good.”

  “Have you seen the Captain America movies?” she asked.

  “I think so? Maybe the first one,” I said, vaguely remembering Chris Evans in a WWII costume. “Is that the one about the two guys who are, like, childhood friends in love with each other and then one of them dies?”

  “Yes, exactly!” Emily’s entire body lit up, her hands coming in front of her to animate and punctuate every word. “That’s exactly who I write about! Steve and Bucky. They are so in love.”

  “Wait, really? That’s what your fic is about?”

  “Yeah! Steve is Captain America, obviously, and Bucky is his best-friend-slash-soldier-slash-eventual-assassin—it’s a long story. But it’s, like, the most epic love story ever put to film. The angst of this normal person who’s given all these powers and it makes him so different from the person who knows him best and then that person goes through the same thing but they’re torn apart … ugh, the pining of it all!” She laughed big again and then collapsed back into her chair, shaking her head. “I can’t believe you got that they were in love from one movie. That’s how strong their chemistry is.”

  “And that’s me,” I joked. “I’m terrible at picking up signals.”

  Her mouth quirked again.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” she said softly. A shiver rushed up and down my spine and I could feel the blush that I’d had on my face more or less since the moment we sat down growing. That was flirting, right? Even now, recounting it, it feels too good to be true.

  “So how’d you get into the Readit thing?” she asked after a moment, when the air between us had become so thick with tension we were both feeling light-he
aded.

  “Oh, uh…” I tried to clear the bright, shiny light that was blocking everything else out from my head. I’d never experienced that before—being so overwhelmed by someone’s beauty, their … them-ness that concentrating on anything else felt impossible.

  “I wouldn’t say I’m into it,” I answered finally, when my brain had come back online enough to register her question. “I’ve really only looked into the lucid dreams communities and even that because I wasn’t sure where else to look.”

  “It would never have occurred to me to check Readit for something,” she said, shaking her head. “Somehow I don’t feel like I would be welcome there.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked, taking a sip of my tea.

  “I’m a pansexual Latina who spends her time writing slash fic and poetry.” She laughed. “I’m not exactly Readit’s main demo.”

  “Okay, fair, fair.” I laughed, narrowly avoiding choking on my drink. “That’s exactly what I thought too, if I’m honest. But my brother has met some good friends on there and yeah, he’s a straight, cis guy, but I feel like the internet famously doesn’t love Jewish people either, so…”

  “That’s a good point,” she said. “Does your brother lucid dream too?”

  “Uh … He’s really into tech stuff,” I said, soothed by the fact that I wasn’t technically lying to Emily on our very first date. “Like, coding and all that.”

  “Ooh, very cool,” she said. “Are you two close?”

  “In age,” I answered, my voice feeling more barbed coming out of my throat than I meant it to.

  “Gotcha.” She nodded sagely and I knew she was reading something in my tone that I hadn’t fully intended to be there.

  “Do you have siblings?” I asked, trying to change the subject and mostly failing.

  “Two sisters,” she said. “They’re both older, already off in the real world.” Her oldest sister, Maria, works in humanitarian aid and it was clear that Emily has been looking up at her with stars in her eyes since they were kids. The middle sister, Chelsea, was in law school and sounded sharp and funny. I found myself laughing more and more as Emily talked, imagining her as a young girl, getting into and out of trouble with two other girls with her smile.

  The way Emily talked about them made me feel warm all over, and just slightly cold inside, as I looked at something that I felt close to having but couldn’t quite grasp. When we found out what Aaron could do, what Atypical ability he’d gotten in the dice roll of genetics, there was a brief, tiny moment, when I liked the idea of Aaron being able to read my mind. It ended up being a lot weirder than I expected, but for one second, I thought that maybe if he could hear everything I was thinking, we could be effortlessly close like some other siblings seem.

  But instead, when I got home from my date to find my family in some kind of weird argument, I couldn’t look at Aaron and roll my eyes in a moment of sibling solidarity like I would if we lived in a TV show. I just stood in the doorway between the front hall and the living room, wondering what the hell was going on.

  “I’m telling you, I left it right here,” my dad said, pointing to the arm of the couch. “Are you sure you didn’t move it?”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” Aaron said. “I haven’t even been in here all day.”

  “We really should talk about that,” my mom said. “I don’t think it’s good for you to be staring at that screen all day.”

  “Mom,” Aaron said, “literally everyone stares at a screen all day. It’s 2016.”

  “Can we focus please?” my dad said, sounding more exasperated than I’d heard him in a long time.

  “… what’s going on?” I asked, practically tiptoeing into the room. I’d planned to tell my dad about the date right then (the end of which was very good) but the weird frustration rolling off of him in waves had squashed that plan.

  “Your father has misplaced his book,” my mom said, lovingly rolling her eyes, a talent that she seems to have perfected.

  “Okay…” I said, confused. “Is this really a family summit situation?”

  “It wasn’t so much before you got here,” Aaron said. “I was just passing through.”

  “Focus, please,” my dad said again. “I put it right here”—he gestured sharply to the couch—“and now it’s gone.”

  “Darling, did you look on the nightstand?” my mom asked.

  “Of course I looked on the nightstand,” he said.

  “No you didn’t.” Aaron laughed, shaking his head.

  “Don’t go poking around in my head, Aaron,” he said, jokingly pointing his finger at Aaron. The frustration that had been there seconds ago seems to have dissipated, his voice light and more like him.

  “I’m not!” Aaron put up his hands in mock surrender. “It’s not my fault the truth jumped out.”

  My dad threw a pillow at Aaron’s head without lifting a finger and my mom snorted.

  “It’s not on the nightstand, I know it’s not,” my dad insisted, his tone taking a sharp turn back to annoyed.

  It went on like that for a few more minutes, my dad refusing to look anywhere in the house because he was so certain where he’d left it and convinced that someone must have moved it and my mom gently suggesting different locations until she gave up to go to bed, leaving with a sarcastic comment about looking for it in a vision. All the while, Aaron just squinted at our parents, his eyes and mouth tight, without saying a word.

  Writing it all out now, it doesn’t seem that weird or bad but … I don’t know, I just got such a vibe from everyone. Not a good vibe. Even with the moments of lightness, of my dad and Aaron goofing off like they always have, it felt charged.

  Maybe we’ve all been living together too long, now transitioning into something more like roommates than parents and kids. Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe I just don’t understand the various ways that three Atypical people communicate, the way they’re inherently connected. I know I’m inherently connected to them too, linked to them through blood and a lifetime of sharing a space, but it feels like I’m missing some fundamental part of what it means to be an Atkinson and nothing I do, no amount of Readit-searching or trashy-book-reading or future-worrying I do will ever be enough to bridge that gap.

  09-16-2016, morningwaffles, text post

  First off, thank you thank you thank you for all the wonderful comments y’all have been leaving on somewhere a place for us—your comments give me life, water my crops, et cetera, et cetera. I am THRILLED to tell you that I got a lot of writing done last weekend, so NO MORE DELAYS (she said, blindly confident despite the fact that midterms are looming on the horizon). So, for now at least, we’ll go back to our regular schedule of posting new chapters on Sunday and, hoo boy, I think you guys are really gonna like tomorrow’s installment. The angst of last week won’t be … resolved, per se, but it will be … well, you’ll see;)

  In non-angst news, my inbox is FULL of queries about the fair and lovely “Daisy.” And, I think I left you all hanging last time when I described our latest encounter and then in the next post was like “lol I have a date now” but the important thing is: the date happened. And Reader, it was good.

  She’s a lot quieter than I expected. Last time I saw her, I assumed her initial shyness was just because we caught each other off guard and she was soaked from the rain. Because when I walked her to the bus stop, she seemed pretty dry and confident—I mean, she asked me out! Like, in person! That’s a baller move.

  So I was a bit surprised to find that she’s a lot more reserved. Which is not a bad thing by any means, I’m just feeling a little self-conscious and nervous because I feel like I don’t have a mode that isn’t super talkative and giggly and overly enthusiastic. I seriously hope I didn’t scare her off.

  I don’t think I did because, after dinner, she took me to this cool bakery and then for a walk around this big park that’s in our city. And the way that it happened, it seemed like she planned it. SWOON. I can’t remember the last time I went on a date where I
felt … wooed. Maybe never. Okay, definitely never. And there was something about the walking that seemed to relax her, like not having to look at each other over a table weighed down with distracting food made it easier to talk.

  Because here’s the thing: Daisy loves food.

  “I’ve just always been obsessed with it,” she told me as we walked around a big pond in the middle of the park.

  “Eating it or making it?” I asked. “Or both?”

  “Definitely both.”

  She smiled. When she smiles, it’s this lovely, hesitant thing. Like she doesn’t really know if it’s okay. Like every time she wants to smile, she has to dust it off first before bringing it out.

  “There’s something about getting something right,” she said. “It’s addictive. Food isn’t something you can perfect all the way. You can master your technique, know all of the different ways of preparing something, learn every single dish but, at the end of the day, every time is going to be a little bit different. The ingredients will be just a little bit different than they were the last time because you’ve gotten them from a different grower, or the crop has changed in some minuscule way. Bringing out the flavors of an ingredient isn’t the same each time you do it. That’s what I love. You just keep doing something, over and over again, to try and get it right, knowing that each time you’re starting with just a couple of bits of things that came from the ground or the ocean or the sky and you get to transform it into something else.”

  I genuinely didn’t know what to say to that. Daisy hasn’t even been to culinary school yet—she’s saving up at the moment—but she thinks more about her craft and her work than 75 percent of the people I go to school with. It is … unbearably sexy. That level of dedication, of focus …

  I want to go out with her again and have her turn that focus fully on me.

  SEPTEMBER 18TH, 2016