Provex City

by Michael Pierce

  “I’m just saying,” Eli patted me on the back and left to find Desiree.

  I stayed and looked at the strange shirts in the clearance section. I still had no idea what I was going to do. What kind of costume would make a good statement?

  Then the curtain flew open. Anna emerged from the dressing room with the corset flung over her shoulder. She headed for the front of the store without noticing me.

  When I rejoined the group, I found Desiree in a purple velvet hooded cape.

  “That’s the one I was talking about,” Anna said as she hung the corset with the others. “Would that look good with the corset and leather pants, or a skirt, perhaps?”

  “You need to find a skirt shorter than the cape. That would be hot!” Desiree said, removing the cape and placing it on Anna’s shoulders to envision her idea. “Yes, definitely. I love it when I’m right!”

  “That would be pretty hot,” I burst out.

  Everyone stopped and stared at me like it was the first time I’d ever spoken. Eli approved, Desiree giggled, and Anna gave a shy smile. I felt my cheeks burn.

  “This is a good start,” Anna said.

  “Are you gonna get it?” Desiree asked.

  “Not yet. I want to look around some more.” Anna removed the cape and hung it back on the wall. “How about this for you?” Anna asked, pointing at a frilly blue and red dress.

  Desiree took a closer look at the tag and saw it was the Alice dress from the new Alice in Wonderland movie coming out just before Halloween. She removed the dress from the rack and placed it in front of her.

  “That is so you,” Anna marveled. “You can look up some movie stills online and see how she does her hair and makeup.”

  “I could get the boots!” Desiree shouted.

  “It could work.”

  “I love it! I’m gonna get it,” Desiree said and impulsively marched up to the register and bought the dress. She walked back with a huge grin on her face, swinging her black bag and said, “I’ll check some pictures before getting the boots.”

  “Nice job, babe,” Eli said and put his arm around her.

  “You didn’t even try it on,” Anna commented.

  “It’ll fit, I’m sure,” Desiree assured her. She may be impulsive, but she knew what she wanted. There was no doubt about that.

  “That works for me. One down. I want to find some more corsets,” Anna said, and we left the store.

  We ventured down the main corridor of the mall as an unstoppable gang. Families veered out of our way, children feared us, and other groups of teens silently judged us from the sidelines. We walked by the center kiosks without getting hounded by salesmen. We were powerful.

  Anna led the pack and turned toward the escalator. We followed her up to the second level. Once at the summit of the mall, we turned and backtracked. Anna seemed to know where she was going. I didn’t see another gothic looking store—but then she turned—and led us into a lingerie store. I was uncomfortable immediately.

  After passing a wide variety of casual to sexually explicit lingerie, we stopped at their collection of corsets. Instead of leather and velvet, these corsets were skimpy and lacy.

  “Do you see any that could work?” Anna asked as she and Desiree thumbed through the corsets.

  “That could work or that would be appropriate?” Desiree asked.

  “Either/or,” Anna said as she searched. “These are a little too revealing, a little too much lingerie, aren’t they?”

  “Unless you want to be a vampire stripper.”

  Anna had a twinkle in her eye as if Desiree’s idea wasn’t half bad, but then dismissed it. “You’re right, it’s too much. Is there anything else you want to look at?”

  “I may need a new bra for this dress,” Desiree said, leading us to look at more bras.

  I remained quiet. Eli looked over at me a few times, with no real expression, probably just keeping tabs on my focus. Desiree and Anna scrutinized and compared sizes, styles, and colors of countless bras. I tried to act natural. I didn’t want to look at any one place for too long. I watched the girls as they shopped. I looked around to see what other women were shopping for. I looked at the mannequins modeling the most alluring lingerie in the store. And I glanced at the posters of titillating models adorning the walls. It was an awkward heaven.

  “Do you want to get out of here?” Anna whispered in my ear, startling me back to reality.

  “Yes, please,” I said immediately. I felt like I was sweating, but didn’t want to draw any attention to it by wiping my forehead.

  Anna subtly grabbed my hand and led me out of the store, leaving Desiree and Eli behind.

  “You look pale. Are you okay?” Anna asked as we returned to the open corridor and let go of my hand.

  “Never better. Where are we going?”

  “I just wanted to get out of there.” Anna walked over to an empty bench by the railing and sat down. She crossed her legs and placed her purse in her lap.

  “Think I’ll look good as a vampire?” she asked me after a moment’s silence.

  “Absolutely,” I said, not being able to look her in the eyes, so I fixated on her body. I quickly realized that was even worse, so I darted my gaze outward.

  “Good. I’m glad,” she said softly. She opened up her purse, and I thought she was going to offer me another piece of gum, which I had spit out long ago when no one was looking. But she didn’t. Instead she said, “Look at this,” and reached into her purse and pulled out a black bra. “There were a few without tags, so I found my size and swiped one.” She handed it to me to look at, and I stealthily glanced at the size: 32B. She abruptly grabbed the bra and stuffed it back in her purse.

  “You stole it?”

  “It’s no big deal. It’s not like I took a whole bundle. It’s just one bra.”

  I was surprised and couldn’t tell if I was disappointed or excited. The danger was exciting, but the stealing is wrong mantra was deeply ingrained in me. I was starting to like her. I couldn’t help feeling ambivalent. Did she do this all the time? There’s so much about her I didn’t know. First the Ouija board, and now this? After seeing her in the corset earlier I couldn’t even remember the girl Desiree introduced me to only a month ago. She was so intriguing.

  “You’re not gonna tell on me, are you?” she asked innocently.

  I mimed ‘my lips are sealed.’

  “You’re so cute,” she said and gave me a sideways hug and pulled me up off the bench. “Let’s go check out some more stores.”

  We walked blissfully down the corridor side-by-side, but not hand-in-hand. She talked about her ideas for the party, and I sporadically flexed my hand, debating whether or not to reach out to her. She didn’t seem to notice, which was just as well.

  She spotted a discount shoe store and fervently ran in, deserting me out in the corridor. I followed her in and found her already taking a box of shoes from the shelf to try on. I was confident a box of shoes wouldn’t fit in her purse, so this was a safe place. She tried on three or four more pairs before leaving empty-handed.

  Continuing down the corridor, we were almost like a happy couple enjoying a Sunday afternoon.

  “You didn’t take any shoes, did you?” I said, reaching for her purse, pretending to investigate.

  “No!” She twisted and maneuvered around my reach.

  “Well, let me see then,” I insisted.

  “You can’t just go looking through a girl’s purse,” she laughed. “It’s rude!”

  “You’re not just a girl, you’re a suspect. I have probable cause!” I teased.

  “Very funny,” she said, snuck some fingers across my palm, and nestled her hand in mine.

  I glanced over at her, and she met my eyes and smiled. I was afraid that if I said anything, the moment might dissolve and reveal itself as the fantasy I feared it certainly was.

  When I awoke, my alarm clock was flashing 2:00 a.m. I wondered what time it was now. The curtained windows were still dark, so the only
light seeping into my room came from the nightlight in the bathroom. At least my door was still open. So many nights it would close on its own while I slept. Sometimes Frolics would still be in the room sleeping and sometimes he would have ventured off. I could hear him snoring, so I knew he was still lying on the floor beside my bed.

  It was then that I saw the shadowed figure sitting on the edge of the bed by my feet. I think he was looking at me, but it was hard to tell. The light from the hallway didn’t illuminate him at all.

  I didn’t panic, but I couldn’t move. I wanted to reach over and flip on the light switch.

  Am I awake? I feel awake.

  I felt adrenaline and fear pumping all through my body. I felt my feet tingling from being the closest appendages to the apparition. I slowly slid one foot to the edge of the bed, directly under where the figure was sitting, and felt nothing.

  The figure didn’t move; he sat in silent serenity. I couldn’t say the same for myself. My throat was dry and it was hard to take deep breaths. I couldn’t keep from shivering even though I felt like I was burning up.

  How long is he going to sit here? How long had he already been sitting here?

  I remembered all the times Jeremy scared me when I was a kid: The ghosts in the backyard, the ghosts in the attic, the ghosts in my closet. My mother used to leave the hallway light on for me because I couldn’t handle my room actually being dark. I learned there were no such things as ghosts and bogeymen, but here was this shadowed figure sitting before me, silently asking for his room back.

  TJ stood up and the bed creaked as if someone had actually been sitting there. He turned from me and walked to the closet door and slid it open.

  I didn’t know what to do. Stunned, delirious, scared, yet curious—I was consumed by emotion. I was so petrified to see him in the darkness, but didn’t want to let him leave. I didn’t know how to stop him. His visits were becoming more frequent and daring, and I needed to make contact. The only thing I could think to say was, “Wait!”

  TJ stepped into the closet, and I could barely see him. It was then that a spine-tingling low whisper came from the terrifying depths of the cavernous closet abyss. All I could make out was “Desiree.” The closet door slid shut and I was left staring at my reflection in the mirror.

  Frolics continued to snore.

  “A lot of good you are,” I said to him and the snoring stopped. “I sure am glad I had you here to protect me.”

  “Remember what I told you in our last session about the secret of successful people?” Mr. Gordon asked, sitting across from me in our appropriately named Room of Enlightenment. It was Tuesday afternoon, and Mr. Gordon had approached me before class to request the meeting.

  “Yeah, successful people focus on what they want,” I said with the unusual pride of knowing the right answer.

  “Good, and now we will go back to one of our first conversations, talking about the fight you had. Remember how I had said you indirectly caused the fight because you were on the same conscious plane as the boy you fought?”

  “Vaguely,” I said, racking my brain to remember the conversation.

  “Well, we had talked about everyone being on a specific plane of consciousness and the plane you’re on determining your experience. Things that happen to you and people you interact with will all be specific to your plane of consciousness. Similar behaviors breed similar results. If you want different results, you need to change your behaviors; in order to change your behaviors, you need to change your thought patterns.

  “Now, let’s take this to the next level. Let’s establish that everything in the universe is made up of energy, and all energy has a frequency. You may have learned in your elementary sciences that energy is a constant in that it cannot be created nor destroyed, but that it just changes form. So given that everything is energy, and all energy has a frequency—everything in the universe has a frequency. So what can you do with this information? How can you use it?

  “It’s annoyingly simple and nearly impossible at the same time. It comes back to what you know. When you know how to apply this information, it is incredibly easy and feels absolutely natural, like swimming, or riding a bike, or proficiently playing a musical instrument. But when you don’t know how to apply this information, it seems like an insurmountable obstacle.

  “We use this information by identifying the frequencies of everything around us. And here we come back to the plane of consciousness idea. Everything has and emits a frequency. The frequency that you emit attracts you to similar frequencies. Your thoughts are emitting a frequency right now. Your thoughts are not an abstract idea. Your thoughts are actual things. You may not be able to see them or touch them, but they’re there. They are energy, just like everything else, and they are emitting frequencies, too.

  “So putting it together—everything is energy, everything emits a frequency, and when you identify the frequency of what you want, it becomes yours. Simple, isn’t it?” Mr. Gordon said and paused, not knowing how much of the information I was absorbing. “What questions do you have so far?”

  “Show me an example,” I said, needing a little more than theory.

  “Very well, doubting Thomas. The healings I performed were perfect examples. Most people would look at them as miracles, like I was someone with extraordinary powers, but they really were the miracle of nature returning to a state of perfection and harmony. I identified the opposite frequency of the wounds and used it to nullify and heal the wound. But here’s another example for you.”

  Mr. Gordon closed his eyes and concentrated. He remained in a peaceful, meditative state for a minute, and I kept my eyes glued to him. Something was about to happen and I didn’t want to miss it. As calmly as he had closed his eyes, he opened them again.

  “Take a look around,” he said softly.

  I looked around the room and saw that I had indeed missed it. The walls were miraculously decorated in paintings. I looked back at him, and he sat tall with an accomplished smile. I scooted my chair away from the table and carefully got up, my head swimming. I was afraid of fainting. Walking up to the wall closest to me, I stood in front of the painting. I had seen the painting before; it was shown in art class. Picasso’s The Guitarist. I slid my hand down the edge of the frame, at first not believing it was real. The paintings had materialized out of thin air, just as the door leading from Mr. Gordon’s classroom to our clandestine Room of Enlightenment.

  “How did you…I mean…how did you do that?” I asked in amazement.

  Mr. Gordon came and stood beside me. “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”

  “Extremely—amazing.”

  “And this one,” he said, leading me by the shoulder to an adjacent wall. “I believe this one is yours.”

  And it was! Hanging between these masterpieces was my Halloween picture, in a black paper frame, just like in class. To the left of my picture was the Mona Lisa, and to the right the Self Portrait of Vincent van Gogh.

  Mr. Gordon stood beside me, examining my picture. “You have some talent. You’re a good artist—overshadowed in present company—but good, nonetheless.”

  “How did you do this?” I asked again.

  “By applying what I have just been speaking about. I identified the frequencies of what I wanted and manipulated the energy to take the form I intended—and voila—the paintings I wanted manifested. Nothing was created, nor destroyed. Energy merely changed form.”

  “Was it hard?”

  “When you know what you’re doing, it’s effortless.”

  “They’re such good copies...”

  “As good as the originals, because in a sense they are. They are and they are not the originals, and they are and they are not copies.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I didn’t make the originals disappear, but if these pictures were scientifically examined, they would appear—to all the world—to be authentic.”

  “How will I be able to do this?”

  “Prac
tice. It may seem impossible now, but when you successfully eliminate the doubt, these new realms of possibility will emerge. I’m sorry about the doubting Thomas comment earlier. I understand that seeing is believing. Seeing will more quickly change your beliefs, which will more quickly convert those beliefs into knowing what’s possible, which will more quickly allow you to transform your perception of reality. But I implore you not to believe everything your eyes see, because your sight is limited, it can play tricks on you, and there is far more going on than you currently realize.

  “Concentrate, clear your mind to a singular purpose, and know what you want. Know that what you want is attainable and picture it as already yours, sitting before you, reunited with you, and will it into being. I know you can do it, and next time we’ll test your progress.”

  “No pressure,” I said sarcastically.

  “No pressure because it’s that simple.”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the walls, in the presence of all these masterpieces. Many looked familiar, but I didn’t know their names. But I knew how priceless they were. Except for mine.

  “It’s time to get going.”

  I reluctantly agreed. I could have stayed in this room forever. It was peaceful down here. All my troubles felt a million miles away, and as I ascended the spiral staircase I felt them creeping back.

  “Don’t forget your backpack,” Mr. Gordon said, halfway up the staircase.

  “Oh, I left it up in your classroom,” I said, a few steps ahead of him. The florescent light from the classroom was blinding compared to the illuminated orbs in the room below. I stepped up and through the doorway, and to my surprise—

  9

  It Wasn’t a Date!

  “Desiree!” I said as I stepped into the classroom. “What are you doing here?”

  Mr. Gordon stepped in behind me and was just as surprised to see her sitting in his classroom. “Good afternoon, Miss Behring.”