The United States of Us

by Kate Sundara

  A dark shape catches the corner of her eye, her attention drawn to the edge of the room, to that giant canvas Zak bought to paint her Endless Blue Tranquillity. The art materials he purchased in his mad rush have sat untouched all this time and now that canvas is all shocking black, with slashes of paint and chaos ripping in every direction. She wants to shiver, but she stops herself.

  ‘I’m not going to smoke so much pot. I know you hate it, that it makes me crazy.’

  ‘Okay… okay,’ she says supportively.

  ‘I don’t know what you see in me.’ There’s despair in his voice, but she tries not to hear it, the same way she tries to ignore those confused comments on his essay, the disturbing painting in the corner of the room and her stomach tying itself in knots.

  I’m fit for the job… she knows she said that, but is she?

  ‘I try with all the projects… to make it all stop. I get ideas shooting out at every angle and there’s never enough time. I try to drown them out with the weed, but it’s no use. It all comes back bigger, and I get so tired. I’m no good, I’m no good at anything,’ he burbles. ‘I was deluded, so stupid… what was I thinking?’

  ‘Zak, you’re great. You’re amazing!’

  He doesn’t buy it. Tears well in his eyes – weed or sadness, pupils dilated with drugs or love. Love is a drug. He pulls her towards him, he’s soft and warm. ‘You’re all that’s real. I’ll make it up to you,’ he mumbles into her body, his voice cracking with lament, exhaustion. She thinks her heart might burst with love for him, and I get why she comes back here.

  ‘Shh, shh, everything’s going to be alright…’

  Mia’s supposed steadiness seems to be paying off, but though Zak’s slowly opening up to her, she’s secretly absorbing his insecurity. As she looks into his warm deep ocean eyes a salt tear rolls down his cheek. She catches it on her fingertip, looks at the tear-drop, then at Zak, and in the brightness of his eyes she sees the memory of light.

  A little later, Zak’s looking chipper, his face like a child’s smile after tears, like sunshine after rain. ‘Let’s do something fun together,’ he suggests. ‘There’s a party.’

  ‘A party?’

  ‘Tonight. It should be a good one. Ask April along too.’

  ‘Great,’ smiles Mia, heartened by his idea of doing something together outside the Ivory Tower. Something that didn’t involve that magnetic futon which seemed to adjust the compositions of their souls. In all her visits to his house their zigzag of mornings and evenings in his bed are the only points they feel close, a line ruling out whole days at a time. It’s dawn or dusk with distance in between. But now tenderness and love radiate from Zak’s being and she can feel that he wants to be near her.

  ‘What are you doing the rest of the day?’ he asks. Mia celebrates a little breakthrough inside, that at last he’s actually taking an interest. Maybe this is the beginning of their better communication and he’ll finally tell her what Wil couldn’t.

  ‘I’m going over to Ruth’s to watch a film before our shift at the shelter.’

  ‘A film, you say?’ mocks Zak in his charming British accent.

  She laughs. ‘A movie.’

  ‘Do you know where she lives?’

  Mia’s rejoicing stops. Perhaps he’s not paying as much attention as she hoped. ‘Yeah… I stayed at Ruth’s house the night of your concert, remember? That’s where I slept before…’ she tails off – before she walked into his trashed apartment.

  ‘You’ve made a good friend there,’ remarks Zak.

  She nods, glad he at least realises she’s making her own friends, that there’s no chance she can be accused of being clingy. Not like Neve. ‘We work the same shifts, have gotten to know each other through that.’

  Despite staying with April, Mia prefers Ruth’s company, sensing an authenticity that isn’t apparent in April. She can’t say that to Zak, of course, not with them being step-siblings. Even if they don’t see eye-to-eye.

  ‘So bring her to the party afterwards.’

  ‘Thanks but Ruth’s family are arriving early in the morning. She said she’ll head home after the shelter.’ Mia smiles, accepting the address he gives her for the party tonight, along with a parting kiss.

  ‘See you tonight,’ he tells her.

  ‘See you tonight.’

  As Mia leaves the Ivory Tower a man crosses her on Zak’s front lawn. Lifting a sack of garbage into the bin, the stooped man looks up at Mia for only a second, morning sunlight hitting his eyes, striking her with an unusual gold she’s never seen before.

  ‘Hi,’ says Mia, finally encountering the neighbour from the downstairs apartment, but he ignores her and, with his head hung low, goes inside and shuts the door.

  ‘Rude…’ she mutters under her breath. ‘No wonder Zak has nothing to do with him.’

  Nevertheless, it’s a sunshiny day. She’s happy to be back outside. She walks back to April’s with a spring in her stride. Troubles though there may be, at least she knows she loves and is loved. She hasn’t felt the animal in her since she ran to Zak in the night. Maybe her lone wolf had served its purpose in bringing her back to him, maybe she wouldn’t remain always alone.

  Kids shriek excitedly, running barefoot across lawns, chased by zany garden-sprinklers, switching this way, then that. The pavement’s coloured with childish etchings, broken chalks. Rite wot you want, it reads. Mia’s tempted to express what’s in her heart: Depression, anxiety and panic attacks are not a sign of weakness; they’re signs of having tried to remain strong for way too long – she had read it somewhere. And she should know. Due to me, she’s suffered the lot.

  Now she stands over the doodles in the long street that divides her temporary home at April’s from where she’ll live again one day, when she and Zak have adjusted to being in each other’s lives and she understands what he’s battling. Spring is soon to turn to summer and, just as she can’t rush the seasons, she’s starting to appreciate the importance of taking things slowly. As she sees it, she and Zak have just blossomed too soon. It’s all rectifiable, she’s convinced, she won’t run away from this, as she’s run away in the past. The girl is changing.

  Mia saunters down White Willow Lane in the light of the mid-morning sun, filled with hope, faith and brightness of all the good things to come. Starting with that party tonight.

  * * *

  ‘Hello?’ April calls down to the basement as the girls descend the concrete steps. Far from the friendly Dale house party Mia enjoyed with Ruth, the shindig in an unlit cul-de-sac off Main Street is a less embracing non-event. Hard trance pounds from speakers, April and Mia peek into empty bedrooms dimly lit with red and blue. A bunch of guys are sat in the corner, drinking beer, smoking pot. No-one takes any notice of them entering.

  ‘Wanna beer, Mia?’ asks April as they go back upstairs. She puts down the bottle of wine they brought and cracks open two beers they find in the empty kitchen. April shrugs as she glugs from the can. ‘If those guys didn’t notice the both of us dressed up to the nines, they won’t miss a couple beers.’

  ‘I like your dress,’ Mia compliments April.

  ‘Thanks. And yours… I guess that sorta thing’s fashionable in England right?’ She smiles. Another candy-coated insult. If she were feeling playful rather than anxious Mia might make a joke of it.

  ‘I’m sure this is the place,’ says Mia, switching the subject. She takes the map from her bag, checks the address Zak jotted down. She recalls his certainty, his earnest look in the light of day. ‘Guess not everyone’s here yet. Maybe he’s been and gone already, it’s not even late.’

  ‘You didn’t mix up the address with that party you went to the other night?’

  ‘No. No, that one was in Dale Drive.’

  ‘The Dale house – Jake, Eric and Brent’s house?’

  ‘Yeah – and Wil – that’s the one!’

  ‘Why would you party with those losers?’

  ‘Sorry?’ Losers? They’d all been so warm and welcomi
ng. Maybe Brent too welcoming, but still…

  Muffled laughter coming from a room they haven’t checked; the girls look to its source. As they venture down a corridor Mia becomes all too aware that, though she’s focused on April’s bright side, there’s no denying it: the sunshine girl has a sting in her tail. She starts to wonder if that beer April spilt down her the other night really was just an accident. I don’t think it was.

  Noise and smoke waft over them as they push open the door, students sat on shabby furniture, people playing poker around a table of overflowing ashtrays. Ducking under Christmas decorations, stepping over Halloween streamers, Mia recognises a couple of faces from around, but can’t see Zak anywhere. Ryan emerges through the smoke, looking pissed-off and worn out. He possesses all the charm of an aggrieved Alsatian. Twisted attraction. Maybe April likes the bad-boy thing. She lights up when she sees him, and Mia feels marginally less awkward about inviting her to the rubbish party. She still feels silly – dressed-up, stood-up…

  ‘Seen Zak?’ April asks Ryan.

  He shrugs apathetically. ‘I don’t know where he’s at tonight.’ He puts his arm across April’s shoulders with a bored, arrogant sneer, his hot cigarette ash dropping all over her feet.

  April laughs. ‘Oh yah, he’s probably –’ Sensing April’s scorpion telson lift to sting again, Mia walks away. April pulls her back. ‘Hey Mia, we’re gonna drive back to the van. Wanna come with?’

  The answer’s obvious. Besides, more unsettling than April’s venomous stings or the prospect of playing spare tyre to her and Ryan, Mia wants to know what happened to Zak tonight. It’s all adding to the strangeness and mystery.

  She hops out of Ryan’s car, slams the door behind her.

  ‘Want us to wait?’ asks April out of the passenger window. The engine’s running, Ryan looks eager to go.

  ‘No, I’m fine. Have a good night. Thanks for the ride.’

  April blows her a bunch of happy kisses, Mia runs across the lawn in the headlights.

  Just the thought of seeing Zak gives her a billion butterflies; perhaps it’s the uncertainty that keeps things alive. She takes off her shoes and walks barefoot up his stairs, hears music blaring from his apartment – he must be home. It makes her angrier about his no-show.

  Don’t take anything too personally, Mia. Don’t take too much to heart. Wil’s words coming back to her. Right. Zak can’t help it.

  Climbing the stairs to his apartment, she feels like a child from The Magic Faraway Tree, the kids in that story always climbing that tree never knowing who they’ll meet at the top… Mr Change-About who could turn himself into anything: kindly fat man, tall scrawny rogue, the tiniest mouse. And now Mia acknowledges, for the first real time, that along with the buzz of seeing Zak comes a genuine fear of his changeability.

  Palms sweating, she enters the code on his door again. Probably her nerves make her muddle the digits; she tries the metal handle, nothing budges. It can’t be the drink, she’s only had a beer. He’s changed the locks? She stands in disbelief, ethereal rock music blasting. Zak never goes anywhere leaving anything on (except the computer – his lifeline). He said the place might burn down.

  She knocks and waits, half expecting the door to fly open and for poor Zak to give some flustered account of a security incident, followed by a heartfelt apology for thus not meeting her at the party. ‘If only you had a cell-phone, Mia…’ That’s the first thing she’ll sort in the morning.

  She knocks again, louder. He can’t hear her. Or maybe he’s not in. Maybe the music is a deterrent against intruders, but if so, who’d tried to break in? And if Zak isn’t home then where is he? She knocks again, calls his name, bends to peek through the old disused keyhole. All she can see is a slice of sofa cast in the glow of fairy-lights. She knocks the last of her hope against that stubborn door and then it dawns on her: What if the reason he changed the code is me? What about their closeness this morning? What’s happened since? Where’s the line between perceptiveness and paranoia? Where’s the border between intuition and insecurity? She should’ve accepted April’s offer to wait. Now the car’s scooted off into night and she stands alone between two nothings. She looks out of the stairwell window, but the night’s too mean, too absorbed in its own darkness to lend the slightest comfort. Just to test it, she creeps back downstairs and out the front door.

  An eerie quiet spreads itself across the lawn, around the shimmering trees and down moonlit streets. Everywhere is deserted and unnaturally still, something sinister hangs in the air. She can’t run back to April’s van – she and Ryan have the promise of a night alone, them driving her here their guarantee. And even if she could go back (she’s run these dark streets before), her previous sprint was fuelled by hope, by the deep down knowing she was wanted – was she wrong? Those assailant rumours prowl through her imagination in the form of a faceless man. He looms in the shape of every shifting moon-shadow, in the rising mist, in the dark recesses of trees. Tonight she’s a loose particle in River Valley and that makes her more prone to danger than before. Hidden eyes watch her from the dark. Spooked, she slips back inside the house, the only certain thing that, this time, she can’t brave the dark. She can’t find the wolf in her tonight.

  The floor of the landing carpet is scratchy against her face. It’s that cheap, bristly material they lay on classroom floors that makes the barelegged kids shuffle at story-time. Mia unzips her thin Red Riding Hood top and folds it into a pillow; it’ll be hard to sleep with the lights on, but the switch is inside Zak’s apartment. She has no clothing left to cover her eyes, nor ears from that relentless music. She lies on her back because the floor’s too hard for her front or side, punishing her for her breasts, her hipbones and all other parts of her body that aren’t entirely flat.

  She gives up trying to sleep and watches insects gather around the bulb above. The light is stark but, shielded by plastic, not so bright that it blinds her to look at. Black gnats crawl across the disc, mayflies dance around it, a couple of regular dirty flies land on the ceiling then dart around before landing in the exact same spot again. A moth flutters frantically, its wings veiny-transparent, then dark and opaque as they dip in and out of the Mach band, that hazy halo Zak taught her about. Weird to think, lying alone outside his door, that a few days ago they were lying together on his futon, his face against hers as he drew imaginary circles around the ceiling bulb, ‘I’m the moth, Mia, you’re my light…’

  Right.

  Bored of the plastic disc, she switches to the insect’s shadows, spindly creeping legs, super-elongated by light, dominating the plaster like an army of aliens. Saturated in artificial brightness, something darker occurs to her: What if Zak isn’t in alone in there? Her eyes freeze on the ceiling; this is worse than she thought. How mortified she’d be if Zak – and whoever else – found her asleep here in the cold light of morning! How silly she’d look. Would they laugh? She crawls closer to the door, presses her ear to it again. No voices, no sounds either above or between the music.

  What if it’s Neve? she thinks, Might he take her back after all? Perhaps now Neve doesn’t seem so bad an option? No, surely not, Zak and Mia have too strong a connection – what about the island, their emails – how much they’d ‘clicked’ online and in person – their sweet talk only this morning? She starts to second-guess her recollection of events leading up to this point. She needs to crack this case, but how when he keeps locking her outside of his world? Now literally so. Has he realised she’s onto something? Is that why he’s pushing her away?

  A small annoying dog starts yapping close by. Mia wants to close the window to shut out the bark, the draught, but the latch is above the stairwell – too high – and the pole to reach it is in the apartment. The only thing to do is to not sleep, to be up and out at first light. It’s no hard task to keep awake, what with the stark light, amped up music and hyperactivity of insects, the ceaseless dog baying at the moon and the nauseating uncertainty in her gut. It’s a curdled mix that’s
never going to settle and a sure adversity to sleep.

  As her mind drifts, her focus keeps coming back to the light, even though it hurts her eyes. She wonders, does this say something about the human condition? Are we drawn to the light in the dark, the good in the bad? Is that why she’s camped out on a scratchy floor still hoping for a good excuse for being stood-up tonight?

  Hours pass slowly, painfully, gazing up at the same ceiling with its one compelling bulb.

  A few hours later and she’s sunk into a dark place inside herself. She welcomes sleep now, for release from this hideous inertia. At last, all the noises cease and she lets go of consciousness.

  I will her to wake, but it’s ineffective. I go to touch the strand of hair fallen across her sleeping face – gently, gently – but my fingers pass through. I can’t intervene, although I sometimes still try. The surge of energy it takes to reach into to the physical realm – even a breath – is exhausting. I’ve been practising, I’m getting better. I will her again, fine-tuning my focus, then, something amazing – the strength of love I feel for her too strong to let her face another humiliation – she stirs. Waking with the look she had as a child – scruffy hair, big innocent eyes – she looks right into me and for a moment I think she sees me…

  She looks away, alarmed by the pale sky, the outlines of trees, the clearer colours bursting through fragmenting night, the sneakiness of morning. The first birds are singing, the powdery purple sky soaking up the stars. She takes the little red top she used as a pillow, pulls it over her cold carpet-rash arms and slips away like a shadow, leaving no trace.

  She doesn’t steal across Zak’s lawn like last night – no way she’s risking being seen. Sliding around the back of the Ivory Tower, she scampers through morning twilight, gathering cobwebs on her ankles till she come out onto a parallel street. Her feet are wet and icy but, out of sight now, she squeezes them into her shoes, leaning against a wall, beside a burnt-out barbecue. Though hugging herself to ward off the cold as she walks, she practises looking carefree. Day-old make-up, slept-in clothes, her body tells a story she doesn’t want to have to. Thankfully, party season means most of her acquaintances will be sleeping off hangovers.