Nothing But Blue (2 page)

Then out of the blackness comes a vision of smoldering rubble, crumpled piles of wood, brick, rock—it looks like a war zone. The insanity of fire trucks, police, ambulance, neighbors screaming. That stench of smoke fills my nostrils again and dries my throat, as though the ash has crawled deep inside.

I hear words. This time they are not a chant but clear single words, one at a time:
Explosion . . . Leak . . . Inside . . . Dead . . . Impossible . . . No, possible.

I see these images, I hear these words, but when I open my eyes all I see is the black pavement, the brick wall; everything else is just night. The street lamp hums and flickers on again, blazing the letters of the restaurant sign in red flashes. Firefly. Firefly. Moths hover around the sudden light and ding into it. The moon emerges from behind the clouds. A few stars blink. The nightmare images have nothing to do with me; my mind is playing tricks.

This is what is real: I'm freezing. I'm starving. I'm tired. I'm in pain. There is no way I can sleep like this. I need something to lie on and something to cover me.

Still shaking, I get up and go over to the recycle dumpster. I take out some of the larger boxes. I arrange them along the wall of the restaurant. I line the ground with the flat pieces, then make walls and a roof. I crawl inside and prop another piece against the opening, leaving a tiny crack.

It's dark and musty, but I'm somewhat proud of my cave—like the pillow tents I made when I was little. No one could find me under a mound of pillows.

This time when I lie down it's on a cardboard mat. At least it's better than the pavement. I shut my eyes again and try to shut my mind at the same time. I breathe in through my mouth and out through my nose like they tell you in yoga. Or is it in the nose and out the mouth? I never can remember.

Breathe in. Count to ten. Breathe out. In. Count. Out. In. Count. Out.

Now all I smell is damp cardboard. All I hear are a few raindrops pittering on the roof. The rest drifts away. I am shut tight in this box, safe for the moment.

But not for long. Suddenly the quiet is interrupted by a scratching sound on the outside of my shelter, like fingernails. Immediately I think,
Police—they found me.
Didn't that man in the truck say people are looking for me?

A police officer would probably take me back. But back where? I can't go back to nothing. I brace myself and prepare for an intruder. But the sound has stopped and all is still and quiet again. Did I imagine it, like everything else?

What would I tell a cop? I'm supposed to start my senior year. These are supposed to be the best years of my life, but I know they are not. The only things I remember clearly are from long ago, like where I was born, the sound of gulls in the morning, and the smell of the ocean coming through the window. I remember being a little girl. I remember painting a mural of trees on my bedroom wall. I remember my mother and father. They want what's best for me, but how do they know what is best for me when I don't have a clue?

And then I remember Jake. He gave me a bracelet. I look at my wrist. I am still wearing it—it's an embroidery rope of all different colors. I run my finger along the silklike braid. Jake was real. Jake meant something.

But how did I get from there to here? I'm not anywhere near the ocean—there are forests and fields all around; nothing is familiar.

There is the scritching sound again, followed by a whimper. It's some kind of animal—could be a raccoon or a skunk. I've heard raccoons can be vicious, and I don't relish the idea of skunk spray, so I stay very still.

Then, thumping on the side of the box and a shiny black nose pokes through the opening. The nose belongs to a dog. A damp, dirty, smelly dog.

“Shoo,” I say. It doesn't come any closer, but its tail goes wild,
whomp, whomp, whomp
ing against the heavy cardboard. “Go on, get out of here.” I try to wave it away.

But the dog doesn't listen. It noses in the rest of the way and sniffs. It has dark-gray mottled fur and flecks of white on its long, skinny tail. Its ears are alarmingly tall and point straight up. Its whole body wags like crazy. He is small enough to fit in the box with me but too big to be a lap dog.

I can tell by the way he lifts his head toward me that he wants me to touch him. His fur is matted and he needs a bath. I am afraid he might have fleas and who knows what else. I hold my hands away.

“Don't come any closer,” I say.

He keeps sniffing around like he's looking for something. His eyes rest on the Styrofoam container I'd tossed in the corner. Of course, he's attracted to the smell of the rotten, leftover spaghetti.

“Is this what you want?” I hand him the box. “Go ahead, I'm not eating this crap.” As I say it my stomach growls. The dog hesitates a second, then takes the container in his mouth and slowly backs out the way he nosed in.

I thought romance would never happen to me, that somehow I had whatever it was that made me totally unnoticeable to anyone. I had pretty much given up on the idea of love. But then something happened.

It was a white-hot afternoon—unheard of, even for July. There was nothing to do, so I figured I'd buy an ice cream cone and go to the town beach. I made it halfway down the driveway before turning into a torrent of sweat. I had to lie down on the grass and close my eyes. The sun seared through my lids. The music pulsed through my headphones.

All of a sudden I felt movement. I opened my eyes to a pair of sneakers next to my head. I shaded the sun with my hand and kept my eyes going up. There were strong muscled calves covered with soft golden hairs, surfer shorts, and arms folded across his crisp white T-shirt. He was backlit, so I couldn't quite see his face, but I could tell he had short hair, slicked back. I thought it must take a lot of effort to get hair so smooth like that.

He moved to one side, out of the sun. He looked familiar, but I couldn't quite place how. He grinned down at me with perfectly straight teeth and waved. Now I recognized him. It was Jake, the towheaded rich boy who lived in the fancy McMansion at the end of the street. His hair had darkened into copper, and I swear he was at least a foot taller than the last time I saw him. He was hardly a boy anymore. Can someone grow that much in such a short time? He'd only left for prep school last fall.

His mouth moved in the shape of words. I pulled out an earbud. Tinny music filled the air.

“What're you doing?” he asked.

“What does it look like I'm doing?”

“It looks like you're lying in the middle of the lawn. I thought maybe you were dead. I came over to check.” His smile grew, so I figured he was kidding.

“Oh,” I said. Suddenly I was nervous; I wanted to say the right thing, but I wasn't sure what that was.

“Guess you're not dead,” he said.

I smiled meekly and shook my head. “Guess not.”

When we were little all the kids hung out at Jake's house. Mainly because he had a swimming pool and his parents didn't pay attention. I went but he never noticed me. Until one day out of the blue, he handed me a bouquet of dandelions and asked me to marry him. We were eight.

The dandelions were bright yellow—they didn't seem like weeds at all. When I said yes, he hit me with his swim noodle and said he was just kidding. He swam back to his friends, who laughed and started singing the kissing song. I heard them all the way down the street as I ran home.

I cried to my mother. She said that's what boys do and that I should avoid being alone with them from now on. I tried to resurrect the soaked dandelions in a vase, but they were too limp. My mother threw them out.

After that I stopped going over there. Eventually everyone split into cliques and I wasn't in his, or any, for that matter. Jake became the leader of the cool kids, and I became nothing. Then last year his parents sent him away to prep school. He'd looked exactly the same when he left as he did when he was eight—a goofy, skinny, blond boy.

But there he was standing over me, all grown up. He'd filled out with muscles and goldenness. He even had facial hair groomed into a goatee.

“They must've put something in your food,” I said.

“Huh?” he said.

“You've grown. Must be the nutrition at that school.”

“Yeah, something like that.” He was still grinning ear to ear. “You've grown, too,” he said.

Yeah, I thought to myself, but I'd gotten wider, not taller. Chubbed right out, as my mother constantly reminded me. I knew I could stand to lose a few, but I liked junk food way too much to bother.

“Of course it's hard to tell when you're horizontal.” He offered me a hand, but I ignored it and got myself up. I wiped away some loose grass that had stuck to the back of my sweaty legs. I was embarrassed in the ratty gym shorts and dirty T-shirt I'd thrown on. My hair was unwashed, and my whole body was drenched in sweat.

“Lucky I came along and got you out of your stupor,” he said. “You were about to become fried egg.”

“I'm fine,” I said. “I was going to the store, just connecting with nature first.”

“I'm not sure I'd call the lawn nature. Or headphones stuck in your ears, either.” Even his voice was different. It had deepened into something much more soothing and gentle. He was the same Jake, and yet he was entirely different.

“You have to listen to nature,” he said. He swept his arm around as if presenting a show.

I pulled out the other earbud and turned the music off.

We listened together. Every sound was enhanced: A robin twittered, gulls squawked, a car drove by, a sprinkler went on next door. In the distance we heard the soft roar of the ocean's surf as it met the town beach. We turned our heads up at the same time to the one puff of cloud. The cloud seemed to sigh, heavy with its burden of heat. Jake sighed, too. I glanced at him and he glanced back. The air between us zapped electrical currents back and forth. I felt as though something, maybe everything, was going to change.

I swallowed, suddenly parched. “I see what you mean,” I said. I had to get away from the intensity of the moment. I pointed to my house. “I need some water,” I said.

“Weren't you going somewhere?” he asked.

“Too hot,” I said as I turned.

“Wait.” He reached to touch my hair. He untangled a twig and handed it to me. “I'm around all summer. Let's hang out sometime.”

“Knock, knock. Who's there?” a voice asks. There is tapping on the side of my cardboard home.

I open my eyes. Sunlight streams through the cracks, making the whole inside glow orange.

“Come on out—no loitering on the property,” the voice says.

This is it. I'm a goner.

I lift up the top of my box and see a tubby, middle-aged man standing there. He's wearing a bright blue T-shirt that has the words
FIREFLY RESTAURANT
in the same red lettering as the sign. If he's surprised to see a barefoot, teenage girl sleeping in a box, he doesn't show it.

“I don't care if you're here at night, but during the day, it looks bad,” he says. “We're about to open, and I don't want the customers startled.” The man leans a little closer and studies me. “You look familiar.” He pauses, scratches his head in concentration. “You look a little like that girl from the news this morning.” He shakes his head and makes a clucking sound. “What a tragedy . . . the house . . . and everything . . .”

I want to flee, but my legs are frozen. I get a flashing vision of a house. The taste of ash fills my mouth, the awful images start to appear, and the
all dead
chant starts up again, good and loud.

An ugly, modern house in an ugly neighborhood, but that house . . . that house has nothing to do with me. I suck in air and try to push the images out and replace them with the house I know—the pale yellow two-story Victorian with green shutters. Where I was born. By the sea.

“Are you okay?” the man asks.

My stomach surges. I concentrate on my house. I imagine opening the front door, walking up the curved stairs with the polished wood banister I used to slide down. At the top is my bedroom. This is my house. I don't know any other. This man doesn't know what he's talking about. I swallow. I stammer to get words out. “I'm not . . . I'm not her.”

The man looks me straight in the eye. “Yeah, that girl looked way preppy. My mistake.” The man glances down at my feet. “What happened to your shoes? Are you a runaway? Do I need to call someone?”

I shake my head and try to breathe. From out of nowhere the dog from last night appears at my side. He stares at me with his black eyes and rotates his pointed ears. He leans into my leg. His weight presses against me and holds me steady. Surprisingly, my nausea subsides. The ash taste is gone.

“Is that your dog?” the man asks. “He was hanging around yesterday, looking for something, but he wouldn't let me come close. I thought he was feral.”

The dog puts all his weight onto me. I wiggle my leg to push him away. He moves over an inch and sits.

“What's your name?” I'm not sure if the man is asking me or the dog. He asks again.

I open my mouth. I'm sure I know my name, but I can't say it. I can't tell him. That name is no longer me. That name belongs to some other me. Someone like me, but not me.

I stare at the man's T-shirt. It's the same color as the ocean on a perfect, calm day. I speak and the word that comes out is “Blue.”

The man tilts his head in a question. “Blue?”

“Blue,” I repeat, nodding.

“Well, Blue,” the man says, glancing at my feet again. “Wait here.” He goes inside the restaurant.

This is my chance. I'm about to make a break for it, but the dog starts running circles around my legs so I can't leave, and before I know it the man is back and the dog is still again.