Authors: Heidi Ayarbe
“Okay. Tell me about your day.”
It has to be done this way. We do this. Every evening. And if she’s not home, I call her.
She pauses, then seems to forget about me squandering all of our food money on a burger joint, animatedly telling me about the freshman talent show. But I can tell she’s holding back. I close my eyes and lean my head against my bed. My teeth chatter. Goddamn it’s cold.
Kase leaves and comes out with some cash. “Here. This should cover it. And keep what’s left for this weekend.”
“Where’d you get this?” I ask.
She shrugs.
I shake my head and shove the bills back into her hand. “No. This is for you and the theater classes you want to take at the Brewery Arts Center this summer. I’ll get a job after soccer. I’ll take care of it.”
“Then pay me back,” she says.
“No.” Because I know I won’t. I never get around to paying anybody back, which does not bode well for a degree in business or economics—the two top careers that came up when we had our career-day meetings with Counselor Lafer and some other college counselors. My third choice, though, turned out to be water-treatment worker.
Go figure.
Kasey peels off half the bills and gives them to me. “You’ll pay me back. This time you will.” I so appreciate Kasey’s eternal faith that I’ll change into somebody worth something. But it only reminds me of the fact that it’s my job to make the world right for her—easier—not the other way around.
“Thanks, though, K,” I say. “I owe you one.”
“Um, no. You owe me fifty.”
“Yeah, Miss Literal. Got it.”
“
And
a favor.”
“What kind of favor?”
“It shouldn’t matter.”
“Well, it does. Like are we talking digging-shallow-
graves-in-the-backyard kind of favor or cover-for-you-when-you-want-to-go-hang-out-with-friends kind of favor?”
“Can’t you just say you owe me one?”
“I owe you one.” I close my eyes again, welcoming the silence.
“You know how much work this takes?”
“Huh?” I open my eyes.
“Maintenance, Jake. High maintenance to keep the edge—to keep with the right crowd.”
“Aren’t you the leader of the right crowd?” I ask. Kasey always has a following.
“Today. But it doesn’t come for free. My popularity is inherited, you know.”
“Inherited?”
“Look at me.”
I look.
“Look real hard.”
“Yeah. So?”
“Let’s be real. Mousy brown hair—a bit frizzy. Skinny. No talent.”
“Kase—”
“Aunt Marian.” Kasey does a Vanna White hand flourish, head to toe, then slumps back against the bed.
“Aunt Marian?” Aunt Marian is Mom’s sister who wears wooden clogs and pilly sweaters that smell like a weird mix of mall animal store, Vicks VapoRub, mothballs, and vinegar. She wears her frizzy hair tied back in a loose ponytail and raises ostriches in central Nevada. “Now that you mention it—”
“Ohmygod!” The tears well up in Kasey’s eyes. I forget that Kasey’s prepubescence is gone, hidden under this power-hungry popularity shell.
“Just kidding, K. C’mon.” I try to get her to settle down. “It was a really bad joke.”
She chokes out the words, “Never. Been. Kissed.”
I squirm. “Well, I sure as hell don’t want to hear about it if you have.”
“That’s not the point. Everything about me is average. Except for you.” She wipes her hand across her nose.
I hand her a Kleenex and try to focus on her, not the line of glistening snot in her arm hair.
Kase throws back her shoulders and says, “Maintenance, Jake. If I want to stay at the top, I’ve got to start
doing
things to show I deserve to be at the top. You leave this year, and then I’ll be left to swim the social waters on my own. I’m just saying it’s all about keeping it together, being with the right people at the right time.”
“Wouldn’t it just be a lot easier to have friends you like?”
“
Nobody
has friends she likes in high school.
C’mon.
”
And I think about it, about my friends. Friend. Luc. Sometimes I don’t know if we’re friends because we’re friends or because we’ve known each other so long now, we have to be. Because there’s too much shit there—too much history. We’d probably get our asses kicked if anybody knew that Luc and I used to swipe his mom’s tights to play superheroes. I was always the Green Lantern and Luc was Aquaman. You see, nobody calls the real superheroes flaming when they wear tights. But the day Luc’s dad found us playing, I seriously thought that thick vein on his forehead was going to explode and spurt blood all over us major manga style.
Maybe because the blue ones Luc wore had some lacy shit on them. I dunno.
“Anyway . . .” Kase keeps talking about how she needs to carve her niche in the social hierarchy of Carson City before I leave; how once I’m gone, she’s the only one left to keep this family looking half normal. “It’s like you have an aura about you—this cool, mysterious thing that attracts people to you. You get away with being weird. And next year you’re leaving. And I’ll be here. Stuck. With
them.
” She hisses
them
like we’re being raised by inbred Appalachian hillbillies. “It’s gonna be a nightmare without you. What if Mom has a freakout?” Kasey pauses. “Let me rephrase that. How long before Mom has another total freakout? And Dad just—”
“Does nothing?” Our family lives by Dad’s philosophy: If you can’t see blood, it doesn’t hurt. So how can you fix a make-believe problem?
“Exactly,” Kasey says.
My head really hurts, and all I want to do is get organized—bring order back to the day. “I’m not weird,” I say.
“Jake, weird can be good, too. Your kind of weird. All I’m saying is that being your sister won’t cut it anymore. I need to act. Move forward. Maintenance. Remember that. You owe me one.”
“From the sound of it, you owe me.”
Kase scowls.
“Okay, okay. I’ll deliver. I promise. All good?”
“All good,” she says. “Night, Jake.”
I walk her to the hallway and watch as she eases her door shut. The soft sound of sweeping comes from the garage. Mom’s room is dark. I stand alone in the hallway, cloaked in gray; the only slit of light that slips through is the tear in the blackout blind covering the upstairs hallway window. It disperses unevenly, tentacles of light disappearing into the shadows, yellow turned to gray, blurring the lines, until everything’s distorted like an optical aberration.
It’s like we’re all suffocating in blackness.
There’s something not right about not being able to see the night sky, dawn, the light of the moon and stars and sun.
I retreat to my bedroom and exhale. The only room that’s soaked in starlight—the only room that makes sense. I open the closet feeling a rush of relief as I look up at the clocks on the top shelf. Forty-three, including a ten-hour clock Kasey found for me at an antique sale. I reach up to pull one down, then hesitate.
Not this week. I don’t need them.
My neck tenses, and I bite down to hold back the wave of pain.
Not this week
.
I run my fingers over the boxes and shut the door, turning to the clock on my nightstand, taking off my watch. I focus on the glowing numbers of the clock.
9:37
Nine thirty-seven. Nine plus three is twelve plus seven is nineteen. OK.
I stare at the time, watching the second hand on my clock with the Indiglo light, then turn away just as it’s about to be 9:38. The spiders retreat to wherever they came from. I can feel the webs dissolving in my brain.
I sleep.
Thursday, 5:06 a.m.
I open my left eye, count to three, and watch as the blurry numbers take form. Then I open my right eye. Too early. It’s still middle-of-the-night black outside. Coach shouldn’t have called this early-morning practice.
This isn’t right. It won’t work.
It breaks the routine.
It messes everything up.
My cell phone beeps. Luc.
DntBL8
I squeeze my eyes closed but feel the glowing numbers from the clock through my thin lids.
It’s no big deal.
But it’s dark. No light of dawn.
It doesn’t matter.
Everything matters.
My phone beeps again. Luc’s on a message frenzy this morning. I open my eyes and stare at the glowing numbers on the clock.
5:08
Five-oh-eight. Five plus eight equals thirteen. OK. Eight minus five equals three. OK. Three plus three equals six plus eight equals fourteen plus three equals seventeen. OK. Seventeen plus eight equals twenty-five minus five equals twenty plus eight equals twenty-eight. Fuck. Minus five equals twenty-three. OK.
Five-oh-eight and fifty-five—
I slip my left foot out from under the covers and count.
One, two, three.
Fifty-six, fifty-seven—
Right foot.
One, two, three.
Fifty-eight, fifty-nine.
It’ll be okay.
Up.
5:09
It’s black outside except for the soft glow of the corner streetlight. The light sputters for a second, and I hold my breath until the blinking stops, counting the seconds for it to steady.
That’s new.
The light from the streetlamp hasn’t had problems before.
It bothers me.
I stare at it while holding my breath. Thirty-seven seconds. It’s cheating, holding out longer on thirty-seven, but I’ll make up for it.
My eyes are heavy and I rub them to wake up. I can’t mess around this morning, can’t be late.
Frost frames the window in perfect symmetry.
I pull on the blue sweats with parallel stripes down the sides. Then my left sock, right sock, left shoe, right shoe. My shirt slips over my arms at the same time, perched on top of my head. I tug the shirt over my face, the soft fabric easing down and settling on my shoulders.
The glowing numbers on the clock change to 5:10, then 5:11. Magic. Digital clocks—no ticks but they still know when to pass from one minute to the next. They were invented in 1956. Good number. Good year.
One plus nine is ten minus five is five plus six is eleven. OK.
Good year.
I take one PowerBar Gel with a few sips of water. Vanilla.
Ack.
Dad got a pack at Costco, and I’ve been ingesting vanilla-flavored gel for the past month and a half.
5:13
Fuck
.
I missed when the time changed. Totally zoned out. I don’t know how many seconds have passed. I’ll wait. I watch as it changes from 5:13 to 5:14 and rush downstairs, skipping steps eight and four—creaky. Unlucky. Then I tap the grandfather clock three times with each hand and use both hands to open the front door, stepping out into the morning.
Jesus
.
It’s the freaking arctic.
I look at the thermometer but can’t see through the frosted glass. When I inhale, it feels like a film of ice enters and covers my lungs, moving on to freeze every organ in my body.
I can see the streetlight start to sputter again, so I turn away from it, pretending I don’t notice the erratic blinking.
Fuck
. I stop for a second and consider waiting, holding my breath, counting the seconds, but I look at my wristwatch. Five seventeen already.
I can’t be late.
Coach will kill me.
5:17
Good number, though.
Five minus one is four plus seven is eleven.
I’m tempted to wait until 5:23. 5:23. Three primes that make one big prime. Absolutely perfect. I pause. But I don’t have time and I’d be way late. Luc is cool about shit, but I don’t think anybody, no matter how cool he is, would get that I have to hold out for primes. Hard to explain that kind of stuff, even to the guy who used to tie string to his mom’s wooden fork, pretending it was Aquaman’s harpoon left hand, while wearing colorful tights.
Maybe he
would
get it.
Nah.
That was kid stuff, the stuff that’s easy to blow off. This is
different
. It’s weird that the people we spend the most time with know the least about us. Maybe Luc has some fucked-up shit he hides.
Nah.
Too weird.
It’s okay. Another time. I force my feet to move down the steps, keeping my back to the streetlight.
One, two, three.
One, two, three.
My shoes slap against the damp concrete as I jog to practice, the pungent smell of damp sagebrush tickling my nose. The parking lot is dotted with cars, a clump of them at the gate of the field. I fall into step behind the guys while we work our way to the track.
When we get to the field, the blades of grass are frosty damp—like miniature ice sculptures that crunch underfoot. I pull off my running shoes and put on my cleats. Then we begin conditioning, breaking the glassy silence with pounding feet and heavy breathing—all moving together in a Gregorian chant–like trance.
We’re all on the same time, a synchronized
tick-tock, tick-tock
. We watch Coach and follow his signals, keeping an easy pace. Too much is riding on Saturday for any of us to get hurt.
We begin drills. The ball soars across the field in a blur. Its grooved surface molds to my cleats, and the field opens up before me, everything else murky and gray. Crisp, focused, I become the creator on the field—finding the hole, the open man. Everything comes together; no webs; no spiders; no numbers; just me and the ball. The ball curves past Diaz into the goal. We begin another half-field scrimmage. I scoop it over Kalleres; Grundy back-passes to Keller, who drills it, Diaz skidding across the wet grass, grasping it in his gloved hands.
We play. I score. We win.
Because of the magic.
“Jesus, man,” Diaz says after our last drill, “I swear we all just get in your way out there. Fuck, what you got in those shoes,
gabacho locochón
?” He wipes sweat from his brow; white puffs of breath come out and dissolve in the cold morning air.