“You know, Fi,” said Mom, “I read online that Redwood Cove High School has a coding club for girls. Maybe—”
“No,” I interrupted.
“Fi,” said Mom.
“No thank you,” I said, trying not to feel angry at my mother for assuming she knew what was best for me when she had no clue what my life was like anymore—no clue!—and feeling angry anyway.
“You’re so wonderful, Fi. But if you don’t make an effort this year, people aren’t going to chase you down and beg to get to know you. High school is an opportunity for you to make new—”
“Could you please remind me of my birthday?”
“March 11,” she said.
“The year! The year,” I said. “I forgot the year, for some reason.”
Mom stopped speaking, stopped moving. She stopped breathing, practically.
The parental petrification would last about seventeen minutes. More this year, I assumed. This was the first time I’d poked the black hole beast since my most recent timeship malfunction. Anyway, it’d last long enough for me to leave the house without being interrogated, like if I didn’t make a friend soon, my rightful fate was to become a loner sociopath who lived her whole life in her parents’ attic. Believe me, I was aware of the possibility.
And also, yes: I was evil.
Totally.
* * *
—
I was sitting at my lab table before third period, waiting for Serrafin, when a girl with a blond shag walked into the classroom carrying a pair of roller skates over her shoulder. She was giraffe levels of tall, and she was wearing a hoodie, like me. When she saw me looking, she smiled. I felt like I’d been smacked by a sunbeam. She walked directly to the empty seat at my lab table. My jaw locked. My fists clenched. When she looked at me again, her eyes popped open wider. Her eyes were the color of the sky. Not the actual sky, which on the coast is mostly gray and moody. The blue sky in picture books about bumblebees and chirpy baby chicks.
“Were you saving this seat?” she asked. “I can switch….”
I shook my head.
“Rad. I’m Airika. We just moved here from Sausalito.”
The girl with the roller skates looked at me like I was supposed to say something. But this was my tenth freshman year. I knew better than to fall for her trap. I didn’t think she was setting a trap on purpose; the roller skater seemed really nice. Everyone seems really nice when they’re trying to make friends. I unzipped my heavy backpack and dug around in it like I was searching for something.
“Quiet, all,” said Serrafin. “We have an enormous amount of territory to cover this year. Let’s get started.”
After class, I felt the roller skater trying to catch my eye. I pretended to be absorbed in a book called Quantum Computing: A Quiet Revolution until she left. When the room was empty, I went to Serrafin’s desk.
“Mrs. Saint Johnabelle, do you have lunch plans?”
Serrafin was shuffling through drawers, gathering keys, putting on her trench coat, exchanging her eyeglasses for sunglasses.
“What I mean is—well, it would be nice to get to know you better—”
“Run along to the cafeteria, dear,” said Serrafin, coughing.
“Could I—have lunch with you?”
“How kind of you, Nephele. Unfortunately, that’s not possible today, as I have an appointment.”
I didn’t move. Mrs. Saint Johnabelle nodded at my lab table, at my ten-ton backpack, and asked, “Are you forgetting something?”
I collected it and followed her out of the classroom feeling deflated. Then Serrafin locked the door, gave me a polite smile and left without looking back.
I eyed the cafeteria.
If you go halfway to somewhere, then halfway again, then halfway again, and again and again, you never arrive. I decided it was worth a try, but quickly discovered that it was difficult to cross smaller and smaller distances with feet the size of container ships.
As soon as I was over the cafeteria threshold, I headed for an empty table where I could eat my burrito and pretend to be invisible. On my way, I passed the late kid, who was surrounded by a crowd.
“Can’t tell you how it’s done. Magicians’ code of honor,” he said. He was wearing ripped jeans, an orange suit jacket and a checkered fedora. Like a nightclub singer. But not a fancy nightclub singer. One who lived in a repurposed school bus with velvet curtains and a bare-boobed mermaid painted on its door (a housing situation that isn’t unheard of here on the California coast).
“Dude, was that magic or science?” asked a boy with a wide face, cool khaki skin and a tie-dyed bandana that was knotted at the back of his head. He was wearing baggy shorts with black long underwear underneath them.
The blond roller skater was standing next to him. “Rex is right,” she said. “That magic trick looked like a science experiment.”
“True, Airika,” said the late kid in a carnival-y way. “Where does science end and magic begin? The miracle of life itself is a great science experiment. Or is it a great magic trick? We’ve never quite figured it out. We only know it works.”
I took a seat and unwrapped my burrito. So Jeremiah Jackson Shipreck fancied himself a scientist. I sniffed.
“Do another trick!” somebody yelled.
The late kid yelled back, “That is precisely my intention.”
He asked a volunteer for an object. The roller skater handed him her phone. He whipped off his fedora with a dramatic wrist-flip and used it to cover the phone. Then he whistled a funny tune, something between happy and sad, and said, “Airika, please remove the hat.” When she did, everybody screamed. In the palm of his hand, there was a flame. I squinted. It was a colored flame. A flame that was changing colors. Red. Green. Blue.
Jazz Shipreck looked around like he was searching for someone. When our eyes locked, he extended his flaming hand like he was giving it to me. Then he raised one eyebrow and bowed.
* * *
—
As I ate my burrito, I read a romance novel that I’d tucked inside a book about astrophysics. The Lascivious Life of Lili Lenore featured buoyant bosoms, beads of sweat, things that were soft, things that were hard, things that got whispered, tongues in places I wasn’t sure tongues should be. I was wondering how “lusciously savage thrashing” could take place on the narrow ledge of a miles-deep canyon without the two people involved being preoccupied about accidentally plummeting into that canyon, when I heard, “I’ve got a magic trick for you,” and I yelped.
The late kid glided into the seat beside me. How was it that this boy always appeared when I was reading about writhing and jiggling?
“Did I scare you?” he said. “My fault.”
To avoid getting locked into his eyes—did all magicians have mesmerizing eyes? It would help them trick people, probably—I looked toward the salad bar. “I’ve got no interest in your pseudoscience, Jeremiah Shipreck.”
“Pseudo?” he asked.
“Pseudo is a prefix that means fake,” I said.
“I know what pseudo means. I like that you just drop it into a convo. Wham. Greek prefix. Deal with it.”
Don’t look in his eyes, I thought. Don’t look in his eyes.
But I really wanted to look in his eyes.
Blue with purple swirls like your favorite marble. The shocking blue of the ocean on a bright October day. Locked! I was locked! My heartbeat pounded in my ears. My neck was hot.
“So you’re into science,” said Jazz.
“Into science,” I said. “You say that like science is some innocent hobby. Doing magic tricks for children.”
The late kid said, “Pick a number.”
I sniffed. “Do you want to be more specific?”
“Yes, Nephele Weather. I do want to be more specific. Pick your favorite number.”
So he knew my last name now. So what? I said, “Seventy.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it. “You—okay. Several questions. Uh…”
A familiar feeling was wriggling just beneath the surface of my skin. Like I’d done something wrong and didn’t know what it was. “What?” I said. “This is your trick, pal, not mine.”
The late kid looked at the ceiling and said, “Pal.”
I wrapped the remains of my burrito in foil and shoved my books into my backpack.
“No, hang on,” he said. “Wait. So you weren’t supposed to tell me the number….” I was about to interrupt him, but he was holding up his hand, like he saw that coming. “My fault. I didn’t tell you not to tell me. Far more urgent question: Why is seventy your favorite number?”
I stood. It took considerable muscle to swing my backpack over my shoulder. When I did, I said, “Because it’s the smallest weird number.”
The late kid made his lips into an O shape. His eyelids lowered like somebody yanked the shades. “What’s a weird number?”
I walked away without answering him. This was a brazen attempt to penetrate my force field. What nerve. How presumptuous. What else did people say in a British accent when they were indignant?
Incidentally, where was I going? I didn’t know, but when I got there, that’s where I’d be. And since lunch period wasn’t over yet, it was just gonna have to be the unisex bathroom.
* * *
—
I leaned against the pink tile wall facing the stalls. I was still hungry, but the thought of eating a burrito in a room full of toilets was somehow unappetizing. YOU SUCK was scrawled on the stall across from me. I couldn’t tell if the evidence of someone else’s bad mood made me feel better or worse.
I unzipped my backpack to find something to read, and pulled out Time Travel for Love & Profit. I hadn’t read it in forever and I didn’t miss it. But I did miss the excited feeling it had given me all those years ago, which is probably why I’d packed it. I wondered if it would be possible to feel that way about time travel ever again. I flipped to the index, to the Failure section.
Failure, advantages of: 23, 44–47, 70, 88–90, 127–131
Failure, bringing it on yourself: 1, 3, 5–8, 12, 25–34, 40, 66, 72–85, 87, 99, 101–111, 122–128, 131
Failure, coping with: 3, 12–13, 34–35, 66–67, 89, 100, 122–125
Failure, deciding to embrace: 5, 28, 77, 103–105
I shut the book. Who was I kidding? I’d memorized every single thing Oona Gold wrote about failure. Failure was inevitable. Failure was my greatest teacher. Failure was FUN!
I considered flushing my inspirational guide down the toilet.
Instead, I rested my head against the wall and thought about the late kid. Why was he talking to me? What was happening to my force field? Why was I thinking about him, anyway?
It didn’t matter. I wouldn’t let him fool me—him or anybody. This wasn’t my first face-plant. I knew how freshman year turned out.
For the next couple of days, Mrs. Saint Johnabelle was out sick. At lunch I skipped the cafeteria and went straight to the unisex bathroom, where I ate my burrito on the toilet. Even then, I knew I had reached a low point. On Friday, when Serrafin was out yet again, I skipped the toilet burrito and went home sick myself.
Our living room sofa is squishy and itchy, like a shaggy hot dog bun. That’s why it’s piled with extra-firm pillows you can wedge behind you for support and silky blankets to wrap around you for smoothness. If you get the balance right, it’s almost like being comfortable. Would buying a new sofa be easier? Perhaps. The easy way is often overrated.
Mom tucked a velvet quilt around my feet and kissed my forehead, her silver waves brushing against my cheeks. “You don’t seem sick,” she said.
“How would you know?” I mumbled.
“Excuse me, Your Highness,” she said. “I’ll leave you in peace after lunch.”
My mother was leaving? Abandoning me? “Sorry, Mom; I’m sorry. I’m just, you know, sick. Where are you going?”
“There’s a reading tonight,” she said. “Gotta dig out the folding chairs, hose ’em down.”
Of course. The Big Blue Wave hosted readings on the first Friday of every month. The fall season kicked off with the school year.
I asked, “Who’s reading?”
“Well, tonight it’ll be more of a slide show,” said Mom. “One of those old black-and-white photographers your father goes gaga over is passing through town from Chicago.”
I perked up. Harry Callahan, who had made Chicago, 1955, was dead. But he used to live in Chicago. If this photographer was old, maybe they’d known each other.
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“Clyde Watkins,” she said.
“I’ll be there. If I was feeling better, I mean, I’d be there.” I coughed.
Mom squeezed my toes through the quilt. “You’ll be okay without me?”
I nodded. But I’d had the same question for years now—a question about Chicago. And Clyde Watkins might have an opinion if I could get up the nerve to ask.
My question was: Could a photograph maybe, possibly, have a soul?
The answer would be as irrelevant to time travel as it had always been, but I’d never stopped being curious about it. If an object could have a soul. Or what a soul was, even, exactly. And Serrafin had taught me to take my questions seriously, so until she came back to school and we got back to work on Dirk Angus, I’d just have to research this one.
Funny. Even during the Week of the Toilet Burrito, I could still get excited about a question. I may have been an evil, friendless failure, but apparently, that part of me was indestructible. It wasn’t much, I supposed, but it was something.
* * *
—
If Mom found my miraculous recovery in time for the Clyde Watkins reading surprising, she didn’t show it. Of course, me begging to go to a social event on a Friday evening instead of staying cooped up in my bedroom having “screen time” probably didn’t exactly break her heart.
“Feeling better, Fi?” called Dad as I walked inside. Near the counter, he was setting up his type of screen—the big white one he used to show slides.
“Kinda,” I said, forcing a sniffle. I stretched out on the ratty yellow couch, facing the window to Main Street, and was silently rehearsing my question for Clyde Watkins when a blur on roller skates whizzed by, caught my eye and tipped high on her toes to stop.
Before I could flee, Airika was rolling into the Big Blue Wave. “What a coincidence, Fi!” she said, out of breath.
“What did you call me?”
“Jazzy told us your nickname. He heard your mom yelling from the car when she picked you up today. And me and Rex were like, yeah. Fi! That fits her. How are you feeling?”
“Hey, Fi!” shouted Dad. “Tell your friend to stay for the reading tonight.”
“That sounds rad, sir!” shouted Airika, waving her entire arm.
Dad waved back. “We’ve got cookies!”
I sighed. Dad was obviously drunk with glee at the sight of me talking to one of my peers.
Airika pointed out the window. “Hey! It’s Jazzy with his monster bike! Did you know he builds bicycles out of stuff he finds in dumpsters? He’s teaching Rex. It’s so rad.”
When Airika skated out of the shop, every cell in my body relaxed. I felt like a dog after an intruder has passed.
So the late kid builds bikes out of trash, I thought as I clomped upstairs to hide. Of course he does. Something I’ve never heard of anyone doing that instantly sounds like the most interesting thing anyone has ever done.
Well, the roller skater and the dumpster diver would make an adorable couple. Although it seemed like she was already going out with that dude who wore the bandana and never smiled—Rex. At scho
ol, they were always together. Airika probably had multiple boyfriends. She was the type of girl everybody fell in love with. Confident and smiley and all that. It was only a matter of time until she realized I was aggressively weird and didn’t want to be associated with me. I grabbed a mug and a packet of tea. “Ask me if I care, Chicago.”
“Obviously,” she said, “you don’t.”
* * *
—
The slide projector was one of those outdated machines Dad loved. As it shot light through each slide and transferred its image to the screen, it wheezed like it was on its deathbed.
Most of Clyde Watkins’s photographs were of people. A man with sagging eyes, holding a briefcase that looked ready to burst. A child with a dirty face, peering in a shop window. A woman with a broken heel, frowning at the moon.
The view from upstairs was better than I would’ve expected. I had to stay up there to avoid Jazz and Airika, who were sitting together in the front row.
Clyde Watkins was sitting in a wheelchair facing the audience. He was stocky with a white mustache, and he wore a scarf and a vest with many pockets. He spoke in a buoyant voice that made me think of a tugboat floating on choppy waves. He didn’t sound nearly as old as he looked.
“They called us street photographers. We snapped pictures of life as it was in that moment. People who weren’t posing. People in a world lit by the sun. Getting on the subway to go to work. On their way to celebrations, coming home from ugly days. In the city. In the weather. We loved shadows. We loved light. But most of all we loved people. I suppose I’m old enough to speak in the past tense and say ‘we’ instead of ‘I’—especially considering that the fellow photographers to whom I’m referring are mostly dead. What are they gonna do about it?”
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