Authors: Heidi Ayarbe
I close my eyes.
Go away
.
I need the numbers.
But malnourished Mera’s head is blocking the fucking clock.
Christ.
I’ve got to get grounded.
Kasey.
What would she say about Mera?
Inhale.
Crackers.
What would she say about me if she knew who I
really
was?
I brush the thought off and think Baked Whole-Grain Wheat Rosemary and Olive Oil. Kasey helps. She always helps.
Thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty, forty-one.
Exhale.
The bell rings; five minutes to get to class.
Late.
Seven tardies. Now eight.
Tick-tock, tick-tock.
I can feel people moving away and open my eyes. The courtyard empties. The spiders crawl from my brain back to the top of my spine. It’s gonna be hell to keep them there. They’ve come awake twice now.
Mera stares at me like I’m some kind of zoo animal.
I lean on my knees, feeling weak, wiping the sweat from my forehead, pushing my hair back behind my ears. Dad’s one allowance—long hair.
Mera’s still staring. She’s quiet. But a loud, cacophonous kind of silent that rattles in my mind. It’s like all those words she never said to me and Luc have settled inside her and seep through her pores.
I’ll just not look her way. I’ve done it since we were twelve, I can do it until I get through the weekend. She reminds me of things. Too many things. I need to sort through the webs.
The second bell rings.
Rushed footsteps echo in the huge courtyard as the last students rush to their classes, disappearing in the adjoining hallways. The smells dissipate and I breathe in the stale school air, tapping the column with both hands before heading to my locker.
I’m late.
Fuck them.
It’s A schedule. I can be late. Mr. Adams won’t count it. I shake the confetti from my hair, and it drifts to the floor. When I stand up, my head pounds and I feel woozy, so I work my way to the water fountain and gulp down the icy liquid. It dribbles down my chin. I drink, counting to forty-one.
I pull my watch out and slip it back on my wrist. Just for today.
I can be late.
I’m Magic Martin.
I’m the star center midfielder of Carson High School. Our state championship game is this Saturday, November 5, against Bishop Gorman High School.
And we can’t lose.
We have the magic.
Thursday, 8:00 a.m.
Eight o’clock. Eight. Shit number.
My palms feel clammy.
I knock on the door three times with each hand and peek in.
“Nice of you to show up, Mr. Martin,” Mr. Adams says over his glasses. “You now have ten minutes fewer than your classmates to finish the quiz.”
Some girls giggle in the back of the class. I catch Tanya’s eye and wonder if she’s told anybody about yesterday—about the french fries and greasing up the vinyl booth with a gallon of sweat. I half smile, trying to act like everything’s normal. I should be used to acting normal by now.
And even though Tanya reminds me of a yappy rat dog, I feel the blood draining from my heart and heading south. She’s wearing an extra-extra-small Carson Senators shirt that creeps up when she reaches up to sharpen her pencil. Individually tattooed dandelion fluffs settle on her lower back, leading my eyes to the Never-Never-but-Maybe-If-I’m-a-Lucky-Bastard Land.
Christ. That’s all I need. Get a boner in AP history. I wonder which shade of red my face is about now. Red. At least it’s a primary color.
Think of something. Stop the flow.
Christ.
Mr. Adams clears his throat and thrusts a paper at me with rough hands and gnawed-on hangnails. “Now you have eleven minutes fewer.”
I go limp. Pop quiz’ll do it.
I look at the clock.
8:01
Eight-oh-one. Eight minus one is seven. OK. Eight plus one is nine plus eight is seventeen. OK.
I grab the paper and get to my desk, turning away from the clock, breezing through the quiz about inventions and resource development. Nine questions. Two extra credit. Eleven. I finish all eleven questions in nineteen minutes.
8:20
Eight plus two is ten minus eight is two. OK. Eight divided by two is four times eight is thirty-two minus eight is twenty-four minus eight is sixteen minus eight is eight minus two is six.
The numbers spin in my head.
“Eight twenty-one, people. Time’s up.” We pass our papers forward.
8:21
Eight plus two is ten plus one is eleven. OK.
I watch the clock until it’s 8:21 and 59 seconds, then turn my back to it.
Tick-tock.
It’s like the tree-in-the-forest thing. If I can convince myself the clock isn’t there, then I don’t have to look at it. I don’t have to think about the numbers. Then my mind can rest.
Math class can be a fucking nightmare.
I don’t turn around for the rest of the period, even when somebody throws a balled-up paper at me. It ricochets off my desk onto the floor behind me. I hear giggles and Tanya’s soft voice. “Pick it up,” she purrs.
I feel a familiar stirring and concentrate on Ramón the Chihuahua and blue-painted claws. It’s easier to imagine that when I look at her. But she has one of those husky voices that chicks usually have on the Spice Channel. And that’s hot. Really hot.
Chihuahua Ramón. Chihuahua Ramón
.
I don’t pick up the note. I don’t have time to turn around and get stuck on the clock. Plus it’s about the most archaic way of sending notes ever. Can’t she just text me?
I sigh and rub my temples, trying to semiconcentrate on Mr. Adams’s lecture about American industrial economy blah blah blah.
During nutrition, I dodge the courtyard frenzy and hide out near my locker, gulping down Mom’s turkey sandwich, skimming through our assigned chapter in
East of Eden
. Mera walks down the hall toward me, hugging her violin case to her chest. I shove my nose into the book.
I look for the words to—what’s the word?
Transpire
. Yeah. Transpire through her skin and fill the hallway. I bang on the side of my head. Christ.
“Hey, Mera,” I say, not looking up.
“Crazy morning.”
“Yep.” Don’t look. Don’t look. Bad luck.
I can feel her standing over me. Goddamnit. What did I say? What if she knows about me? I clear my throat. “Do you wanna at least sit down? You’re hovering.”
“You’re in front of my locker.” Her voice is flat, detached.
“Oh. Yeah. Um, sorry.” I move over and she takes out some books, pulling out
East of Eden
, reading aloud. Steinbeck’s words bounce off the lockers.
I sigh. Relieved.
“You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. You see what is, where most people see what they expect,” she says. Then she repeats it, saying it just a little louder.
I look up and regret it instantly, because I can’t stop staring into her eyes. Hazel with flecks of gold. But like one of those store mannequins. Because her hair is so pale, it looks like she has no lashes, like Kasey’s dolls when she was a baby. Kasey used to pluck the lashes.
I’m not usually into the makeup thing, but I think Mera should use mascara.
“Huh?” I finally say, pulling my eyes away, staring at the floor and its zigzag design. Blue pentagons. White tiles. The hallway is a perfect geometrical symmetry of color and shapes. I like this hallway the most. It makes the most sense. I stare until the lines of color blur, then get sharp again. Seventeen times.
“Page one hundred sixty-one. I like that line.” Mera’s voice cuts through my thoughts.
“Sure,” I say. “Maybe.”
One sixty-one. Six plus one is seven minus one is six. No. Six times one is six plus one is seven. OK.
I skip to page 161 and find the line:
You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. You see what is, where most people see what they expect.
“What is,” I mutter, and think about Mera playing violin or running seven hours straight. That’s real, right?
And the magic that sweeps away the sticky webs that cover my frontal lobe? The magic. Is that real?
I shrug it off and take another bite of my sandwich and try to chew quiet. Hearing people eat sends Mom over the edge, so we’ve become masters at great silences at the table. No chips. And no pudding. She hates that
squish, squish
sound.
One, two . . . seven,
swallow. And again. Left side, right side. Balance. There’s time. Always.
“You, um, want to sit down?” I ask.
She moves to sit down, then stops. “What? The Great Jake lowers himself to my level? Does
Magic Martin
,
the M&M,
want to be seen sitting next to UNICEF?”
“Ouch,” I say. “I don’t figure your orchestra-slash-band-slash-ultramarathon friends are too into my soccer accomplishments. So any reputation ruining will be bilateral.”
“Touché,” she says, and laughs. She sits down—her stick-figure arms and legs collapsing at my side. She smells like gingerbread cookies. My stomach growls. “It’s a good book,” she says. She has a nice voice. I offer her half my sandwich and she pushes it away. “Vegetarian,” she says. “Not a pesca vegetarian or vegan. More lacto-no-ovo vegetarian.”
“Huh?”
“I eat dairy, no eggs though. Not into scrambled pre-embryos.”
“Thanks for the visual,” I say.
“Call it culinary consciousness.”
“Sure. Whatever.” I swallow another bite of turkey sandwich, kind of relieved I’m not that socially, or food, conscious. “So that’s what the Stormtrooper getup was all about this morning?”
She nods.
“Wow. What do your parents think about the vegetarian thing?” On top of owning Hartman Meats on Carson Street, Mera’s dad is one of those champion big-game hunters, and half their house is decorated with stuffed animal heads. One of them is even an African antelope. She has four big brothers who smell like flanks of steak. Major carnivores.
“Well, at first I tried to hide it. But you know how hard it is to hide something like that?”
I clear my throat. “I can imagine.” I think for a bit. “So when’d you tell them? I mean, how?” If she told her big secret, maybe I could tell mine. But what do I have to tell? It’s not like anything’s
really
wrong with me.
“When our dog, Max, choked on a chicken bone I fed to him during dinner and died, I told them.”
“Uff,”
I say, and try to stifle a laugh. “Sorry. Don’t mean to laugh. That’s, um, so sad.”
“The irony is not lost on me,” she says. “It was a long time ago, anyway. Nobody can keep a secret that big for long. It’s bound to leak out.”
“How do you still work at your dad’s? Isn’t that against some kind of lacto-no-ovo vegetarian principle?”
“Yep. But my dad feels like I need a reminder of where my clothes, violin, and everything else he does for us financially comes from, so every now and again, I get to work in the shop. This morning was one of those days I needed that valuable reminder. So to answer your question: They think I’m weird.”
“That sucks.”
She laughs. “What about you?”
I look at her. “What about me what?”
“Do you think I’m weird?”
“A little.” I nod.
“Thanks.”
I shrug. “Well, you asked.”
“I did.”
“You still watch the Home Shopping Network when you can’t sleep?” I ask.
She cocks her head to the side. “Good memory.”
I blush. “Yeah. I guess.”
“Nah. Now it’s the Travel Channel. Or I play violin.” Dark rings circle her eyes.
The notes from her violin music form in my head—her latest work. I wish I knew the name of it, that she’d play it here in the hallway. Now.
I wonder if she knows how good she is. I almost tell her.
“There’s gotta be more than Carson City, you know?” she says.
I shrug. I’m not one of those get-out-of-Carson City types, and next year I’ll be sent away to some fucking college, probably end up rooming with the biggest slob on the planet who doesn’t keep his clock wound. My stomach burns, and I shake the thought away.
What if I can do college correspondence?
What if I could do my whole life correspondence?
I’m seriously wacko
.
“Out of Carson?” I say. “Half the time I don’t even want to leave my room. But Anthony Bourdain’s show is good.” I can’t believe I admitted that to her, and I hold my breath.
She raises her eyebrows. “Oh yeah, traveling and eating with a cynical bastard.”
Exhale.
“Two o’clock a.m.,” we both say. She smiles. She looks pretty when she smiles. Real pretty.
“You still don’t sleep either?” she asks.
“Good memory,” I say, and shrug. “Just lots on my mind, I guess.” Fucking numbers.
“I guess.”
She pulls out a sandwich. Sprouts and mushy white things stick out of the sides. It smells like onions and old socks. She takes a big bite. “Want some?” she asks between gulps.
“Not a chance.”
She laughs. We’re quiet. And I feel okay. Like her silence isn’t bursting with ugly words. Like we can just be, and having Mera sit next to me is a good thing.
My mind is still.
When we were little, Mera, Luc, and I built a fort in Luc’s backyard. And we’d all hang out there on Saturday mornings just doing kid shit. Like nothing in the world mattered. Mera would bring her violin and we’d invent songs. Luc would be lead ’cause he’s a really good singer. I’d write most of the lyrics with Mera and sing backup. He’d
shit
if anybody knew about the singing part.
It all seemed easier back then. I guess when we’re little pretending is okay. But when we grow up, pretending is more like lying. I don’t know.
“Remember the song game?” I ask.
She looks up from the book and nods. “Yeah. I haven’t thought about that for a while.”