Middle Ground

by Katie Kacvinsky

  “People actually walk around here,” he said. “They come outside during the day.”

  “That debunks my theory,” I told him.

  “What’s that?”

  “That people have all mutated into vampires and that’s why we stay inside all day. It’s a lot more glamorous than the idea that we’re all sitting around staring at screens.”

  He smiled at me. We passed restaurants with outdoor seating and old-fashioned handwritten menus hung in their windows.

  “At least these neighborhoods still exist,” I said.

  “Barely,” Justin said. “Most of these places are going out of business. Even Eden is struggling. Its population is shrinking every year.”

  He stepped under a yellow awning and opened the entrance for me and a bell chimed when it banged against the door. It made me jump, of course. I sucked in a breath and reminded myself to relax. I had to clasp my hands together to keep myself from grabbing Justin’s arm again. Contain your inner freak show, Maddie, I told myself.

  The floor inside was covered in black and white checkered tiles. A few people sat at tables, mostly staring into their flipscreens. We walked up to the counter and Justin ordered us coffee and sandwiches to go. The barista, a young girl with auburn hair tied back in a low ponytail, turned his money card away when he took it out.

  “You know your money is no good here.” She flashed him a smile and I raised my eyebrows. “Think of it as a donation to fighting DS.” He thanked her and offered her a smile, which made her gush over the counter like he’d handed her a bouquet of flowers.

  She looked over at me. “Looks like you had a rough night,” she said, and glanced at Justin. “Is this your latest interception?”

  “Actually, this is my girlfriend. Maddie Freeman. You might have heard of her.”

  The barista’s mouth dropped open. “As in Kevin Freeman’s daughter?” she asked.

  I smiled. “That’s right.” I couldn’t tell what surprised her the most: my scruffy appearance, my bloodline, or Justin’s she’s-my-girlfriend announcement, which had shocked me as well.

  “Are you two insane?” she asked. “Warring families? Haven’t you ever heard of Romeo and Juliet?” Another worker handed us our coffee and sandwiches.

  “Yeah, but there’s one big difference,” Justin said.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Romeo was a pussy. Thanks for the coffee,” he said, and we turned to leave. I followed Justin out the front door and we sat down on a bench tucked between pots blooming with yellow tulips. He handed me my coffee.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I should have warned you Chrissy’s a little outspoken.”

  “I can’t believe you disrespected the Bard,” I told him. “Did you see her face when you told her I was your girlfriend? I think you filled her gossip quota for the next century.”

  He smiled and leaned in and kissed me. I leaned in and kissed him back, and then we forgot about our coffee for about ten minutes.

  We took our time heading back up the hill, sipping our drinks. I pointed out everything we passed, like we were walking through an art museum. It was the intimate details of life I’d missed the last six months. I savored the sun warming the back of my neck, this rare morning alone with Justin, the good coffee, the worn-in jeans and flip-flops, and a world around me with no walls, spread out like life was intended to be. I absorbed the sounds of the city—the sighs and breaths of trains. I noticed the leaves hanging from trees like mobiles, the smell of dust and concrete in the air, the way grass grew up through sidewalk cracks like it was trying to win back its territory. I watched an older couple walking in front of us. The man rested his hand on the woman’s shoulder and then leaned down close to listen to what she was saying. That small gesture said so much.

  I pointed out another man, walking slow with his shoulders hunched, as if his thoughts were heavy. He took his phone out of his pocket, hesitated, and put it back. Then he took it out again. He dragged his feet. I wondered why he was hesitating and who he wanted to call. I wanted to tell him to make the call. Life’s short, don’t hesitate. Just make the call.

  We stopped at Justin’s apartment to grab our bags and then walked around the side of the house to the garage. He opened the door and a red sports car was waiting inside.

  “Of course you don’t want to use the train,” I noted.

  “Of course you are currently a fugitive, so that’s not possible,” he said.

  I groaned at the reminder. It seemed my destiny. “Do you think I’ll ever have a normal life?” I wondered out loud.

  “No,” he answered easily and opened the passenger door for me. “That would mean you’d suddenly become obedient. Again, not possible. And boring.”

  He got in the car next to me, and he smiled and I smiled and our eyes caught and he was kissing me again. He broke away after a couple minutes.

  “Guess when the first time I almost kissed you was,” he said.

  I thought about it. “During my dance of seduction?” I asked.

  “No—well, yeah, but it was before that.”

  “Before that?”

  “It was the night we drove out to the coast, when I showed you an interception.”

  “That was a good night,” I said.

  He nodded. “I almost kissed you that night, on the bed in that house, in the car when I dropped you off . . .”

  “So that’s when you started liking me?” I asked.

  “More like loathing you,” he corrected.

  We backed down a steep driveway onto the winding road and he flipped on a dashboard screen to see a list of calls waiting for him. I was a little resentful. So many people needed pieces of him, all the time; I wondered how he could handle always stretching himself so thin. I pulled the seat belt across my chest and looked at the screen.

  “Shouldn’t we stay here while we figure out plans for next week?” I asked.

  “I need to talk to my dad,” he said, “and I’d feel better putting some distance between you and the DC right now.” He looked at me. “Do you really want to stay here?”

  “No. I just don’t want to be a burden anymore,” I said, and rested my head back against the seat.

  “I need you to understand something, Maddie,” he said as we got on a freeway ramp. “You will never, ever be a burden to me. You’re the most important thing in my life. That’s why I’m here. It’s an honor to be with you, not a burden. Never think that again. Got it?”

  My mind lingered on the word honor and I sipped my coffee and nodded casually to try to downplay the best compliment he’d ever given me.

  ***

  We followed the coastline back to Eden, the same highway I drove six months ago in the opposite direction. Sometimes your life comes full circle. Sometimes you set off only to end up where you started because the places you belong always pull you back. That’s when you know you’re home.

  We pulled into Elaine and Thomas’s driveway just before dusk. Justin’s parents dedicated their careers to fighting for human rights, and after their last protest nearly cost them their lives, they’d retired on the coast with a community that preferred to live unplugged.

  People were sitting outside on the porch. A group of kids played in the front yard. Bikes and soccer balls and Frisbees littered the lawn. It looked like a family reunion but it was just the normal chaos of their house. I realized why Justin wanted me here. He wanted to pump life back into me, to remind me of the life I was fighting for before we tried to take on the world.

  March 18, 2061

  For months I’ve been slowly dying. So today I made it my mission to walk around and focus on things that are living. I want to learn their secrets, not think about how to change them or multiply them or use them for myself, just study them as they are and appreciate the fact that they exist. Maybe that’s how I want people to see me.

  Thomas and Elaine have a chicken coop in their backyard. I’ve seen the coop before, but I never stopped to study it until now. I�
�ve never been so enamored with life. I took it for granted before.

  I watched a dozen chickens, white and tan and chocolate brown, plump and feathery. Their curious beady eyes stared up at me. They walked with brash steps, jabbing their heads and clucking to no one in particular. Their life is simple—the way they build small coves inside the hay, the way they huddle close together, chatting in the shade or pecking in the sun. They don’t look stressed or anxious or displeased with anything. They look more content than almost any human I have ever seen.

  It made me want more of nothing. Less of things, more of air and freedom and space and quiet and sunshine.

  But how do you ask for nothing? How do you empty yourself so you can make room for what’s most important? People aren’t trained to want less. We own until we overflow. We’re the only animals that willingly drown ourselves with things.

  I stared into the coop and couldn’t believe I was jealous of a dozen chickens. Their tiny brains understood how to live life better than our complex ones.

  I walked around the side of the house and studied the wraparound porch where hanging baskets overflowed with tendrils of vines and flowers. The colors that burst around me inspired me to open myself up to the elements. My whole life I’ve been taught to curl in on myself, to close myself off, because if you expose too much, you’re vulnerable. But these flowers expose everything. It’s remarkable how much beauty is wrapped inside a single bud. What if plants were like people? What if they were too afraid to open themselves up to the elements? Imagine all the colors we would lose.

  Maybe people can learn more from nature than they realize.

  I continued to walk around the yard and through Elaine’s flower garden. The rosebushes were beginning to bud with delicate green and red leaves. Pink blossoms on rhododendron bushes peeked through green cocoons. Everything is reborn. It reminds me pieces of myself have to wither once in a while. Some parts need to die in order for new sprouts to open up. You need to trim off dead branches so new ones can grow.

  The house is bordered with sharp leaves of tulips reaching for the sun and daffodils bowing their yellow heads. So much life surrounds me here.

  I strolled inside and stared at the display of guitars in the living room and mandolins and banjos and an old wooden piano with the cabinet missing, exposing its keys and strings like ribs. The keys are chipped from so much use.

  Baskets hang in the kitchen stuffed with papayas, mangoes, and bananas. Others are stocked with potatoes, onions, garlic, and avocados. Food that grows. Food that’s alive. I noticed a picture frame made out of tree branches. A photograph mobile made out of twigs and sticks hangs in the hallway.

  I walked out to the back porch, where I saw the ocean flip and roll in the distance. I realized my dream had come true. A wave did come and sweep my old life away. And it was cleansing. But it took more than water. It took a mixture of people and love and friends, and those elements, when combined, are the strongest force of all.

  At night we play games. Elaine’s house is full of them. Word games, board games, card games. Thomas taught me how to play cribbage, and Elaine taught me how to play chess. We read stories out loud by candlelight. Some people make up their own stories. There’s no television to turn on. We get more out of the night because we make our own authentic performances.

  Tonight we sat out on the front porch and stared at the sky. Science can answer most of my questions—which stars are in which constellation and how far away they are, why they light up, why some shine brighter, why they fade. But I prefer not to know all the specifics. I like to make up my own theories.

  I see light everywhere around me tonight. It starts in the sky and ends in the town lights at the bottom of the hill. It’s all starting to connect.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Without telling me I needed this time to unwind, Justin showed me. The next few days I learned how to clear my head. I learned how to enjoy time again. I didn’t need medication to do it; I didn’t need a counter-drug to keep me going. I just needed the right perspective.

  Justin and his dad worked on plans for the detention center, and Justin worked with Gabe by video calls to design a virtual display of every floor in the dormitory. They reconstructed the layout of the grounds, the courtyard, and the electric fence. They labored over the subway lines, like doctors looking over a patient, trying to analyze which arteries led to which organs.

  He wouldn’t let me work more than a few hours a day, maybe because re-creating the detention center forced me back there, and he wanted me to heal. I had only physically escaped; he helped me to mentally leave.

  After three days, I’d nearly forgotten my six-month sentence. It felt like a life removed. It’s easy to forget your problems when you can run away from them. It’s easy to forget other people are suffering when your own life is secure and comfortable and perfect. It’s tempting to stay contained in that safe bubble forever.

  It was a sunny afternoon and I grabbed a box of chalk and a few poetry books from Elaine’s bookshelf in the living room. Elaine was planting tulips along the sidewalk at the edge of the yard. I joined her and set the books on the grass. I crossed my legs and skimmed through passages and dog-eared my favorite pages.

  I looked up and noticed Elaine studying me from under the brim of her straw hat.

  “You’re getting color back in your face,” she told me.

  I nodded. “I’m feeling better,” I said. “I’m still trying to get the crazy out of my system.”

  “Oh, don’t do that,” she said, and patted soil around a green stem. “Crazy isn’t your problem. One in three people is crazy. And the other two are liars.”

  I laughed and told her it was probably true. “You seem pretty grounded,” I said.

  She shook her head. “Your only normal friends are the ones you don’t know very well,” she said. “But I always tell Justin, I’d rather be off my rocker than in one.” She smiled, Justin’s smile, wide with dimples. “You just need to unwind, that’s all,” she said.

  I lay on my stomach in the grass and started to write poetry on the sidewalk, just like I imagined doing when I was in the DC. Elaine helped me. We dug through poems by Frost, Wordsworth, Rumi, and Shakespeare. We pointed out our favorite passages. We wrote words on the sidewalk with red, yellow, and green chalk until our fingers were as stained as paintbrushes. I didn’t notice Justin walk up to us until he cleared his throat. I blinked up at him and squinted through the sunlight.

  “Here’s your birthday present,” he informed me. “Sorry it’s a little late, but I couldn’t really bring it to the DC.” His hand was wrapped around a plant standing next to him. It was almost as tall as him, and its roots were wrapped tightly in a burlap bag.

  I picked myself up and examined my gift. The trunk was thin enough for me to curl my fingers around. It looked scraggly and weak. It was real, that much I could tell from the thin texture of the tiny leaves and the earthy scent of the roots.

  I looked from him to the plant and back. “This is for me?” I asked.

  He watched me with amusement and nodded.

  “Um, thanks,” I said, and tried to take it from him, but its shape made it too awkward to lift. I scratched my head. “Should we put it inside?” I asked.

  Elaine snorted.

  “It’s a tree,” Justin informed me. “I thought you could plant it,” he said. “Leave your mark.”

  I nodded slowly and walked around it. “What’s wrong with it?” I asked. “It looks like it’s dying.”

  “Dying?” he asked.

  “It’s so small and skinny. Is it sick?”

  Justin tried to fight a smile.

  “Hey, I didn’t take botany in high school,” I reminded him. “Not much use for it these days.”

  “It’s a sapling,” he said. “This is what they look like.”

  “Wow.” I tugged on one of the branches. “No wonder people run out of patience planting them. They must take a lifetime to grow.”

  He r
an his hand through his hair and Elaine snorted again.

  “Believe it or not, they begin as seeds,” Elaine said.

  Justin grabbed the gangly trunk. “This is how they’re supposed to look—not like the full-grown God-awful plastic monstrosities people get shipped to their homes and then tack into the ground like chintzy lawn ornaments,” he said.

  “Well, it’s a good thing you’re not bitter about it,” I said.

  I studied the tan, smooth trunk and the thin branches spilling over the top speckled with small mauve-colored leaves. The longer I observed it, the more I felt a connection to this tree, like we were both waiting to be planted, to land somewhere solid and let our roots unwind.

  “Can we plant it right now?” I asked. Justin nodded and picked the tree up by the base.

  “Pick a spot,” he told me. He followed me back to the house and I examined the lawn like a critic evaluating a painting, looking for textures and depths and shades. I walked around the entire yard before I made a decision. I tried to imagine the best place for it to grow, an area where it would thrive. I chose a spot east of the house, a sunny space where the ground rose slightly and the ocean was visible down the slope of the hill. You could still see the road and observe who was coming and going from downtown. You could people-watch or stare at the stars. If I had to plant roots anywhere in the world, this is where I would choose to be.

  “Here,” I said, and pointed with my foot.

  Justin set the tree down and jogged to the garage, coming back with a shovel and some work gloves. He stood next to me and talked me through it, but he made me do all the work. I pierced the ground with the shovel, and the grass gave way to thick brown soil, the texture of clay. I had to stand on the shovel in order to dig through the stubborn ground. Justin was patient (since my muscle strength was lacking these days) and explained how deep to make it. Once I was done digging, he showed me how to score the sides of the hole by making grooves in the dirt with the edge of the shovel. He told me it would give the roots a place to expand.