by A. S. King
Then a voice inside my head starts talking to me.
It’s her.
The other me.
She is panicking. She says, What are you doing? How can you take off with so much extra weight? Why aren’t you staying? Why did you leave? What if you crash? What if when you come back the school really blows up? What if when you come back the tests all come back as zeroes? What if when you come back, Gustav doesn’t love you? What if when you come back, no one likes you anymore? What if they think your lab coat is weird? What if they think you should do more to your hair? What if you’re not Stanzi? What if you’re not Stanzi? What if you’re not Stanzi?
Stanzi—Friday Afternoon—430
IN THE PLACE OF ARRIVALS
When we’re alone, I say, “I don’t understand why we came at all. Why did we come?”
“We came to get Patricia.”
“I didn’t know this,” I say.
“Neither did I,” Gustav says. He looks at his watch, then whispers, “It’s four thirty now. Do you want to go check if you can see the helicopter?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t care if I can see it. I trust you.”
I’m about to whisper to him about fuel, but he says in my head, The fuel is in the tank. Patricia took care of it. We’re ready to go. I just have to get some things in the house.
I whisper, “But we can’t take anything with us. The load will be too heavy.”
He smiles. “I only need the map. I don’t care about anything else.”
“I have the map,” I say. “The bush man told me to keep it safe, so I stored it in my underwear all this time.” I pat my backside.
Patricia meets us in the house. She looks nervous. She’s wearing a thin dress with short sleeves and has goose bumps on her arms. She says to me, inside my head, Do you have the map? I nod. Gustav notes that we are communicating and looks dejected.
Patricia says, “Don’t worry, Gustav. We won’t talk about you behind your back.” At this, Gustav excuses himself to go to the bathroom.
She says in my head, He loves you. Have you talked about that?
I think, Not really. It’s been a strange day.
She thinks, It will all work out once we’re home.
I think, I want to see Marvin one more time. I want to bring his cures home with us.
That’s not allowed, she thinks.
But it’s not fair, I answer.
“What’s fair?” she says.
Gustav flushes the toilet. Patricia says, inside my head, Gustav knows the plan. Just follow him when the dinner bell rings. I reach up and massage my guilt gland the way Marvin told me to, but it’s not guilt I feel, it’s anxiety. We all know this escape is dodgy. I sit down at the kitchen table and write a poem for China, so she might understand everything when I get home.
How to Tell If Your Alternate Universe Is Real
If you have kept a scratchy, dog-eared map
in your underpants for thirty-two hours.
If you have whispered so much that you can
hear other people’s thoughts in your own head
and you don’t think that makes you crazy
then your alternate universe is probably real.
If you have lost your faith in humanity by
looking at the people who consider themselves
better than humanity. If that makes you
want to throw up and scream out
This is the nature of human suffering!
Then your alternate universe is most likely real.
If you hunger for another trip
to an empty school, no matter if it means
another drill, a thousand ovals, no
matter if it means you will be in infinite danger,
then your alternate universe is unquestionably real.
The dinner bell rings.
Patricia heads to the dining hall looking peaked and I realize that she will probably play her Lansdale Cruise cramps card again. We pretend to follow for a minute, and then we turn back and head up the long, steep path to the field where the helicopter is. I try not to be nervous. Every time my other me, the one who thinks I’m not Stanzi, talks in my head, I tell her to shut up.
She says, You are not who you think you are! You are not as strong as you think you are! You can’t go on like this forever—wishing and hoping and pretending that frogs are important. Gustav is not a frog.
She says, as I jog through the thorny underbrush, I never had control over your nose or your hands. I never had control over anything. Stanzi has control. And you are not Stanzi. You are ____________. You must realize this or the helicopter will never fly.
“Shut up!” I yell. Gustav either doesn’t hear me or doesn’t care. Maybe he has a voice in his head, too. Maybe his voice tells him he is not Gustav. Maybe his voice tells him I love him. I hope so.
When we arrive at the field, I can’t see the helicopter.
I feel awful about it. My other says, You can’t see anything because you are not Stanzi.
Gustav gets into the cockpit and starts the motor and the rotor begins to revolve and the sound is there—a gentle thwap-thwap-thwap. I panic. Who else can hear it? Who else will come? Will they shoot us as we take off?
I say, “Can I help?”
He says, “We have to empty everything from the back so Patricia can fit.” We throw our things onto the field and when I stop and look at my dissection kit, Gustav looks sad for me. He produces a scale and asks me to step on it. In my jeans, shirt, shoes, and lab coat, I weigh 145 pounds. He weighs himself. In his jeans, shirt, and shoes, he weighs 155 pounds. He says, “You have to take off your shoes.”
When he says this, he strips down to his boxer shorts. There are tiny pictures of trucks on them. I don’t comment on this.
He weighs himself again. 149.
I take off my sweatshirt as well as my shoes. 140.
“What’s our maximum weight?” I ask. “Can we make it?”
“Patricia is forty-three years old,” he says. “My guess is that she is ten pounds heavier than she looks. Probably a hundred and fifty.”
“She’s only five foot five!”
“Trust me.”
“So? Will it fly?”
“Four thirty.”
“What?” I ask.
“Four thirty. That’s the maximum weight.”
Patricia appears at the edge of the clearing. She is only in her near-transparent dress. Now I understand why she was dressed so poorly for the weather. She’s as light as she can be.
But when she weighs herself, she is 149.
We are eight pounds overweight.
I remove my lab coat and take off my jeans, shirt, underwear, and bra while Gustav looks over the map and removes a small piece of the helicopter’s body. I replace my lab coat. 138.
Patricia removes her dress and sandals. 146.
Three pounds. We are three pounds short.
Gustav tells us to get into the helicopter. Patricia curls up in back where our box of things once was and she shivers in her small pair of underwear. Gustav also looks cold. I will not remove my lab coat.
Gustav puts his headpiece on and tries to take off, but the helicopter will not fly.
Patricia says, “Hurry up! They’re coming! They know!”
Gustav tries again and the helicopter lifts slightly off the ground, but we set down again with a small thud. He looks at me. Then he takes off his boxer shorts and Patricia takes off her panties and I’m the only person not naked in our helicopter and I can hear Patricia inside my head saying Take off your coat! Take off your coat! And I can hear the other me saying You are not Stanzi! You are not Stanzi!
Gustav has already thrown my headset out onto the grass. He tries to lift off again and I can hear the motor trying, but he will not push it.
I hear him thinking.
Stanzi, you have to take off your coat.
Don’t worry.
We will all be naked.
But this is the only way out.
“Hurry!” Patricia yells again.
I jump out of the helicopter and take off my lab coat and leave it in the field. Gustav helps me back into the passenger’s seat and presses the lift lever and we rise. And we rise. And we rise.
Only five minutes after our escape do I hear Patricia crying.
I ask, “Why are you crying?”
She says, “Because we’re all naked as babies.”
Gustav says, “We’re babies being born.”
I say, “I have some things I need to talk about.”
China Knowles—Friday Evening—Tommy
I am China—the girl you saw passed out and naked on Facebook. I stand three gates away staring at Shane, but he is turned into the man’s chest. Not too close, but close enough. They’re at gate #26 waiting to board a bus to New Jersey.
I walk toward him and say, “Shane?”
He looks up and his eyes are the color of saffron. He is a lizard. His long, sticky tongue snaps out and says, “Who are you?”
The man seems amused. He is wearing a suit that cost a lot of money. I don’t understand why he is taking a NJ Transit bus and not a limousine in that suit.
I stare into Shane’s reptile eyes.
Nowhere in them do I see recognition. He doesn’t know who I am even though we’re soul mates. He’s become something else now. In a short week, he has turned himself inside out and we can see his lizard.
“Sorry,” I say. “I thought you were my friend Shane.”
“His name isn’t Shane,” the man in the nice suit says.
Shane stares.
I hold up my bus ticket. I say, “Shane?”
“You have the wrong boy,” the man says.
You have the wrong boy.
I back away from them both. Shane is a lizard. I’m a digestive system. One of us is right side in and the other one is right side out. The man is grinning about something and I don’t know what it is. He seems to not know Shane. This isn’t his father or his caseworker or his uncle or…
There is a gate call for their bus.
My bus doesn’t leave for another fifteen minutes.
I stand frozen, Shane’s yellow eyes blinking vertically at me, blinking in code.
He doesn’t want to go to New Jersey with this man. That’s what the code says. The man met him on the Internet. On the site where we met—our safe place.
I swallow myself right there in the lower level of Port Authority.
It’s a taste like nothing else. It hits all the taste buds. Bitter. Sour. Sweet. Salty.
I’m a pulsating stomach staring at a lizard boy.
This is when he recognizes me. His lizard eyes blink more code.
Help me. That’s what he says. He says, Help me.
He has a small suitcase at his feet. Not his. It’s expensive and it has wheels. As he and the man in the suit start to move forward with their tickets, I follow them and Shane keeps eye contact as he panics, his vertical lids snapping open and closed so much I can’t keep up with what he’s saying. Help me. Help me. Help me.
As the man in the suit takes care that his luggage is stored under the bus in the right bin, I move.
I grab Shane by the arm and we run back into Port Authority. I don’t look back and I head for the stairs. We hear the man yelling “Tommy! Tommy!” behind us.
My Screen Name Has More Self-Esteem Than I Do
I chose Olivia
not for any reason
except that it was
late at night and
I wanted to feel normal.
You chose Tommy
because you said it
sounded masculine
and childish
at the same time.
We can hear him from where we are huddled in the handicapped stall in the Port Authority women’s bathroom.
“Tommy! Tommy!” the suit man yells. He says something about how the bus is waiting. Something else about taking back all the things he’d given him. Something else about the night before.
At that, Shane starts to cry. He’s sitting on the toilet and I’m standing by the door in case anyone trusts the man in the suit more than us.
They always do.
They always trust the man in the suit.
Shane’s head is in his hands and his tears start to drip down onto the old red tile. The man in the suit asks a woman to check the stalls for him. The woman says, “Get out of the women’s bathroom!”
I want to call security. I want to call 911. I want to call anyone, but there’s no one to call. Just like last time. No one to call. So I rub Shane’s scaly lizard back and tell him it’s okay. And he rubs my duodenum and tells me it’s okay.
And we sit there for an hour.
When we leave, he’s afraid the man will be waiting for him. I tell him we should turn right side out again and he tries, but can’t do it, so I stay digestive and buy two new tickets back to Pennsylvania.
Next bus is in ten minutes.
“Why did you come?” Shane asks me.
“I was going home. I gave up. You never answered my calls. I figured… you know.”
“I’m a lizard,” Shane says.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’m a stomach.”
“I’m damaged,” he says.
“Not beyond repair.”
“I’m not sure,” he answers.
“Trust me,” I say.
We walk toward the stairs back down to the gates, each of us looking for the man in the suit.
“He’s not here,” I say.
Shane says, “He probably wants his money back.”
I don’t ask Shane what the man in the suit paid him for. I know enough about Shane to guess.
“I’d like to hear him argue that in a court,” I say.
“Where will we go?” Shane asks.
“I’m taking you home.”
He sighs. “I’ve never lasted at home. Not mine. Not anybody’s.”
“Then you tell me and we’ll leave the minute you can’t last anymore.”
We get into line for the bus and Shane turns toward the wall. The line starts to move. We get onto the bus. I have my backpack. Shane only has his phone and the clothes he’s wearing.
“Can we go shopping when we get there? I need some clothes.”
“Sure. Until then, I’ll borrow some clothing from Gustav. You’ll like him.”
“Is he damaged?”
I say, “We’re all damaged.”
“Oh.”
I say, “You’ll fit in nicely.”
Stanzi—Friday Evening—Twenty Questions
We are flying through blue skies and there is nothing I can see but my naked body because I cannot look up.
There is a scar on my right leg. It’s fourteen inches long and nearly an inch wide. It’s dark, like the color of my deepest gums.
I stare at it.
If I said, “When I look at the scar, it all comes back to me,” then I would be lying.
It never went away, so it can’t come back.
Not for any of us.
Gustav is first to speak. We are half an hour away from the Place of Arrivals. We are departing. The map clearly indicates that THERE ARE NO DEPARTURES. I don’t know how to read a helicopter map, but if I did, I would be able to tell you that Gustav is not following the same route as when we arrived.
Gustav says, “I’m sorry it’s so cold.”
Patricia says, “It’s not your fault it’s cold.”
Gustav says, “I think I meant I’m sorry we’re naked.”
“Naked isn’t bad,” Patricia says. “We’re like babies.”
“I guess it could be symbolic,” Gustav says.
I can feel them both waiting for me to talk, but I’m looking at my scar. It’s easy to avoid when showering. If I don’t look down, then it’s not there.
“I don’t think birth is this cold,” I say.
“True,” Gustav says.
�
��I don’t even think death is this cold,” I say. “My sister was six years old. Last time I held her, she was warm.”
No one says anything.
I say, “Right before then, we were playing Twenty Questions. It was my turn. I was eight. I chose wombat because I knew she didn’t know what a wombat was.”
No one says anything.
It’s just me and my scar.
My scar has a mouth.
It says, “I just kept saying It was wombat! It was wombat! as we lay in the back of the mangled car waiting for someone to help us. Wombat. I don’t think I’ve said wombat since that day. Not one time. Not even in biology. Wombat.”
I slap it. I slap the scar for saying it. I slap the scar for saying anything.
“Stanzi?” Patricia says. “Stanzi?”
“I am not Stanzi. I am ____________. I have always been ____________.”
I slap my scar again. It doesn’t feel anything. My legs are numb from the atmosphere. I’m numb from the atmosphere. I have always been numb from the atmosphere.
The scar speaks through my slapping. “I watched as she tried to breathe. I felt her die. She had peanut butter and jelly saltine crackers stuck to her arm. They were her favorite. She never knew what a wombat was and I was trying to trick her because she was so impatient all the time. Six-year-olds are supposed to be that way, though. That’s what Mama and Pop always told me.”
“Oh, Stanzi,” Gustav says.
“Wombat wombat wombat. We used to play with my microscope together,” I say. “We used to play State Tag—a game we made up to remember the states. She always pronounced Tennessee wrong.”
“Oh, Stanzi,” Patricia says.
“I never let her cross the road by herself. I never let her eat too much candy. I muted the commercials on children’s TV so she wouldn’t get brainwashed. I told her nobody could ever actually look like Barbie. I told her she was smart all the time. I taught her how to make her own cheese sandwich once.