Shantallow Page 2

  Every time it was the same thing. Terror pinching at the girl’s face, carving into her cheekbones and glowing in her eyes. I was scared too, my eyelids pulsing with it. The clock was running down for us, and we had to run. We’d been running before we’d reached the clearing and we had to run again, faster than we ever had and with no fixed end in sight. Something was coming for us. It was behind us in the woods, and it was quicker than we were and never got tired.

  We were losing hope, overwhelmed like in the dreams where your legs won’t obey you and instead feel like lead. This girl and I, we were doomed and we knew it. That was how the dream went. Chased by something I never saw, only sensed.

  Each time I woke up as we started moving again, hurling ourselves in between the gnarled trees ahead. A dream with no end and no beginning. No purpose that I could make out.

  Standing with one foot on the Ghims’ walkway and the other on the grass, I drew my hand across my brow and then my chin, clearing the sweat from my face as I took in the real-life girl. South Asian. Approximately my age and height, long black hair framing high cheekbones and arresting brown eyes that might have made me stare even if I hadn’t seen her before. A cellphone was kissing one of her ears, and she was in bare feet, layered tank tops — one purple and the other white — and butt-hugging drawstring fleece shorts. I watched her toes claw at the grass, disappearing between the long blades while she frowned heavily at whoever was on the other end of the phone.

  It was then that she glanced up and caught me looking. She held the phone away from her ear, bitterness flaring in her eyes as she called out, “Why don’t you go hump someone else with your eyes. I’m trying to have a private conversation.”

  My jaw dropped to the ground with a cartoon thud. I turned into the mute caveman I’d been acting like, body and gaze shifting instantly away from her. Keeping my eyes straight ahead, I marched stiffly down the driveway to retrieve a bottle of water from the truck, cursing myself for being so obvious. By the time I’d worked up the courage to face her again, the girl was gone.

  But I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I stole glances at the neighbor’s house on and off all day, waiting for her to reappear as I continually recalled her image from my dream and measured it against the real thing. What did it mean to dream of someone you’d never met and then stumble across her in waking life? Had I seen the girl somewhere in Tealing before without realizing it and swept her into my subconscious? She didn’t go to Abbey Hill High School. If I’d spotted her there I would’ve remembered it.

  It’s not like I could’ve cross-examined her about where I might have known her from after what had gone down between us. Not like I could’ve confessed I’d seen her in my dreams, either. Confronting her seemed like a bad idea, destined to provoke more hostility. And yet, near the end of the workday, while we were all clearing up and returning tools to the truck, I hopped over the invisible division between the Ghims’ yard and their neighbor’s property.

  I trekked up the circular paving stones leading to the neighbor’s front door, my head down and my cheekbones sucked in like I was ready to eat humble pie. My middle finger gently tapped the doorbell, my weight shifting anxiously from my right foot to my left.

  A black woman in her forties opened the door, a toddler clasping a hunk of circular cheese standing behind her leg, peeking out at me. “Yes?” the woman said semi-patiently.

  “I … uh.” The girl had definitely been South Asian. How did the woman at the door and her kid fit into the picture? “Are you a resident of this household?”

  The woman’s head tilted irritably. “Yes, I am. But I’m not interested in buying anything.” She scanned the lettering on my shirt. “We don’t need someone to do our landscaping, thanks.”

  “Right. Okay. Sorry for bothering you.” Confused, I turned to go. Needling curiosity swung me around at the last second, the door nearly shut. “Wait. Is there a girl here?” My hand chopped sideways through the air next to my head. “My height. Long dark hair. Wearing shorts and tank tops.”

  The door ajar by a mere foot, I watched the corners of the woman’s eyes crinkle, one side of her mouth jerking up before she forced it back down. Really? her expression seemed to say. You’re using your landscaping job to creep on girls?

  “I owe her an apology,” I added quickly. “I think she wanted quiet while she was on the phone … and privacy.”

  “Mmm.” The woman’s lips drew together. “Well, she’s not here now. She’s not a resident of this household.” The woman cracked a smile as she echoed my ridiculous terminology, the door clicking firmly shut before I had the opportunity to say anything else.

  The disappointment tasted like sharp thirst and amputated grass. Santiago had explained the science behind the scent of newly cut lawn on my first day at work. It’s not the nice summer smell that you think it is; it’s a plant’s SOS signal. A release of airborne chemical compounds that mean it’s in trouble and could use some help.

  I could’ve used some help on the neighbor’s doorstep too. The girl’s name or some other clue. But like the lawn, I wasn’t getting any; I had no choice but to walk away empty-handed. Whoever the girl was, I must’ve been hard at work while she’d made her exit. When I climbed into the Golding Green Thumb truck that evening I wondered if I’d ever get that close to her again. I’d lived in Tealing for three years, and as far as I could recall I’d never seen her outside of the pictures in my head before. If she didn’t live next door to the Ghims I had no idea where to find her.

  The last thing I expected was that I’d spot her again any time soon. Tealing wasn’t a bustling metropolis, but with a population of 137,000 the majority of people who lived there were strangers to me and always would be. However, only fifty-three hours after leaving the Ghims’ place, the girl sped by me in a red sedan while I was out for one of last summer’s infrequent runs. She was curled up in the passenger seat of the car and I was jogging across Nelson Street, away from the lake. Rationally, I couldn’t be positive it was her; it was only a glance into a moving car at night.

  A couple of days later I was strolling Tealing’s Midnight Madness with Jeffrey Cope and Arjun Grewal, walking back and forth across Main Street while munching grilled corn on a stick and gravitating between stages featuring old-school cover bands and distinctly wholesome entertainment — little kids doing martial arts demonstrations or girls with ringlets in their hair performing Scottish dance routines. Despite the family atmosphere of Midnight Madness, most of Tealing’s teenage population stopped by for at least a couple of hours. It was a place to be out at night that no one’s parents could be suspicious of — most of them didn’t realize some kids liked to veer away from the crowded downtown Tealing streets and head down to the lake, only a few blocks away, where the minimal lighting offered a chance to hook up with someone or indulge in underage drinking between foot patrols by the police.

  An alternate version of me had already left Arjun and Jeffrey behind to swagger down to the lake and dive into trouble. Actually, that alternate version of me wouldn’t have been friends with Arjun and Jeffrey to start with. The friends I would’ve had in their place wouldn’t be on the honor roll; they’d be lucky if they ever graduated high school. They’d jeer at the cops who periodically herded teenagers away from the lake on Midnight Madness night and easily find somewhere else to party, somewhere the cops didn’t care about because it wasn’t frequented by the middle and upper classes. Those guys — my alternate version friends — would think of guys like me, Arjun, Jeffrey, and Justin Chen (who wasn’t with us that night because his grandparents were visiting from China) as pussies.

  My eyes rushed through the crowd, my pulse racing. Her. Off to the left near a bakery stall, tossing her long black hair over one shoulder. That day in the Ghims’ yard, I’d seen a mirror image from my dream when I’d first clapped eyes on her. On Main Street, it was the real girl my gaze tripped over — the real flesh and bloo
d girl who made my ribs ache and my mouth burn. I couldn’t keep my eyes pinned to her for more than a few seconds; the crowd was swelling forward and backward, people jostling their way through the fluctuating gaps in the thirty or so feet between us, stealing her away from me.

  I tripled my pace and started weaving my way toward her, Arjun and Jeffrey falling back. If I’d known her name, I would’ve shouted for her at the top of my lungs too. It felt like a final chance.

  Fast as I was, the Midnight Madness mob was swifter. They swallowed the girl whole and left me standing uselessly in front of the bakery stall alongside half a dozen strangers waiting to buy cupcakes and pastries. My hands wound around the back of my neck as I spun on my heels, scoping for her in all directions and not finding her.

  You can’t lose something you’ve never had. You can find something you’ve never had, but you can’t lose it. Only that’s exactly how it felt when the girl vanished from view, and when Arjun and Jeffrey joined me by the stall a minute later I couldn’t jettison the feeling and go back to being the person I’d been before. The girl was written all over me.

  I told my friends the parts of the story that made sense: the girl on the lawn who thought I was an asshole; the girl I couldn’t stop thinking about and who’d popped up at Midnight Madness only to fade from view. Arjun and Jeffrey must’ve sensed there was no use in talking me out of her; we spent the rest of the night hunting her down, my friends pointing out every teenage South Asian girl they saw. We scoured the crowds gathered at each of the stages, examined the lines for every food stall, and carefully combed through the relentless stream of families making their way back and forth across Main Street. We even trooped down to the lake, where the cops must’ve recently patrolled because, aside from a young couple making out by the playground swings and rival gangs of bloodthirsty mosquitoes swooping around our necks, it was deserted.

  I stayed out on Main Street after Arjun and Jeffrey left. I stayed so late that I saw the cleanup crew begin to disassemble the various stages and wheel away garbage carts, and the vendors pack up their temporary stalls.

  She wasn’t in my dreams when I fell asleep later, either. The following day was Saturday, and my shift at Central Foodmart didn’t start until two, but I was awake by nine that morning, lying in bed with the A/C unit in my window going full blast and restlessness jogging through my veins. It wasn’t a good feeling; it was too insistent for that. Like trying to sleep through the noise of a leaky faucet — the angry ping of the water pelting the sink.

  I didn’t fall back asleep. My head was starting to pound and my throat was scratchy, like second-hand vinyl. Getting up didn’t help. I couldn’t click into gear and took so long in the shower that the water ran cold. Then I parked myself in front of English Premier League soccer with a plate of waffles I couldn’t finish and fell into a daze that lasted hours.

  Last summer my ten-year-old Camry had still belonged to some-one else, a friend my mother had made on her bus route, and my transportation choices were limited: the bus, my bike, or my mom, when she was around. But my mother had left for her own shift hours earlier, and I hadn’t heaved myself off the couch in time to catch the bus. Out of options, I pulled my bike out of the garage and pedaled to the supermarket, the adrenalin surge from the ride carrying me through my first couple of hours behind the cash register. The third hour I guzzled fluids and stopped smiling at the customers, and the fourth I grumbled to Desiree — who was manning the checkout lane next to mine — that I’d picked up Lyme disease.

  It was after eight when the assistant manager on duty cashed me out, nearly two hours before the scheduled end of my shift. I walked out of the place bleary-eyed and fuzzy-headed, joints aching and my flesh unnaturally heavy on my frame. The nearest bike rack was across from the Foodmart’s parking lot, directly outside the larger of Tealing’s two movie theater complexes, and my mind was a black hole as I stumbled toward it.

  The combination lock clicked open in my hand, my gaze roaming idly toward the wide set of stairs that led customers to the theater box office. The girl was sitting near the bottom of the stairway in navy overalls that fell just below her knee, a striped T-shirt under them and slip-on canvas shoes on her feet. Her head was in her hands and her expression was downcast, not unlike when I’d seen her on the lawn. My mind stalled, my hand taking over for it by clicking the lock closed again.

  I lumbered in the girl’s direction, too sick to be nervous, the excitement that would’ve had me reeling on any other day dialed down to medium-low. “Are you okay?” I asked from the bottom of the stairs.

  Her gaze shot up to mine, tender flecks of red criss-crossing the whites of her eyes. She was pretty in a way that stuck in the middle of your throat, with eyes deep enough to drown in. Those things would’ve been obvious in my dreams, too, if I’d been able to feel anything but fear. “What are you going to do about it?” she retorted.

  Nightmare memories sprang back with a start as I stood in front of the theater staring down at the hurt in her eyes. Us in the dark clearing in the woods, her lip swollen on the left side and her eyes frantic, her forehead scratched and bleeding. “No,” she protested firmly, digging her fingernails into my arm. “That doesn’t make any sense — you know you’re faster. You have to be the one.”

  That was what she’d said to me, at least once in my dreams. We’d argued in the clearing, her using a voice no different from the one she’d answered me with on the stairs.

  “Forget it,” the real-life girl told me, snapping me out of memory and back to the present. She laughed bitterly, her elbow pointed into her knee and her hand resting along the curve of her face. “It’s all right. Just walk away.”

  I sank my fingers into my pockets, ballooning the fabric out as I shrugged. “Where do you want me to go?” I joked, as though there was still some small hope I could cheer her up. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I never said I was. You look like shit, by the way.” She rubbed her eyes.

  “I feel like shit,” I confirmed. My brief remission was passing. “The flu, I guess. I couldn’t finish out my shift — I’m just about to head home. Listen.” I hesitated, looking away from her. “I’m sorry about the other day while you were on the phone.”

  “That was you?” She studied my face, blinking slowly as her mouth hid behind her palm.

  I smiled without meaning to. She hadn’t even known it was me. I’d been obsessing about her for days, and she’d haunted my dreams for weeks before that, but my existence had barely registered with her.

  “Figures,” she added leadenly. “Look, it’s been a bad day. And that was a bad day too.”

  I thought she was trying to say that she wanted to be left alone and that I’d have to walk away from her again without knowing her name, without knowing the slightest thing about her. My throat had gone from scratchy to raw, and the crisp pain at my temples was screaming at me that I needed to get home and collapse into bed, but the hunger coiled around my lungs wouldn’t loosen its grip. It wouldn’t let me leave.

  “Sorry,” I said, my voice hushed. “Sorry there have been a lot of shitty days lately.”

  “Yeah.” She sniffled and flung her hand away from her face. “Thanks.”

  At war with myself, I turned and made for the bike rack, the woolly sensation in my head nearly convincing me this was a dream too. I forced myself to take step after step, the losing side of me pummeling at my ribs and shouting that it wasn’t too late, that I could still turn back, even as I bent to unlock my bike.

  “Hold up,” she called from behind me. I swung around and watched her close the distance between us, her long black hair glossy in the dying sunlight. “Do you want a ride?”

  For the second time in sixty seconds I clicked my bike lock shut, straightening my spine and grinning wearily in relief. All I’d had to do to meet fate was stop chasing it. In the end, she had come after me.

  3
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br />   “WHERE AM I GOING?” she said as we pulled out of the plaza parking lot, the trunk of her Subaru tied down with the string she miraculously had on hand so that we could transport my bike.

  “Bridge Road and Norris Avenue,” I advised. “Take a left here.” The air conditioning was amped up to maximum and goosebumps broke out on my skin even as I felt my forehead flush. The sun was low in the sky, and a can of Fruitopia rattled in the cupholder between us, the sound more unsettling than it should have been.

  “What’s your name?” I asked, wrenching my eyes away from her to point them at the road.

  “Tanvi,” she said distractedly, braking lightly well in advance of the upcoming red light. “What’s yours?”

  “Misha.” My throat rasped, the flu or whatever bug I’d picked up reminding me that the two of us weren’t alone in the car. It was chaperoning us.

  “Misha what?” Tanvi’s brown eyes flashed in my direction. The bottom dropped out of my stomach and kept falling, the world spinning faster on its axis.

  The fever, I told myself. But no, it was entirely her. I’d climbed into the car with Tanvi only minutes earlier and I was already changing. The flu wasn’t a fraction as contagious as she was. She was doing something to me that I didn’t have words for; I could barely catch my breath whenever I looked at her.

  “Antall.” I forced out the syllables. Normally they were simple to say. “Thanks for the ride. I don’t think I would’ve made it on my bike.”

  “It’s okay,” Tanvi replied without looking at me.

  Modulating my voice, I meted out directions one step at a time, unsure whether she actually required them or not. “You barely look old enough for a driver’s license,” I said, fishing for information as we arrived at the set of lights nearest my house.

  “Technically, I’m not.” She adjusted her overalls strap, her eyes on the horizon when I wanted them back on me. “That’s why I’m being so cautious — I don’t want to get stopped. I have my learner’s permit, but I’m not insured to be driving unsupervised. If anything happened my parents would kill me.”