Brightside (19 page)

Plus, I needed an alibi. I wanted everyone to see me out on a date. My weird late night jogs were causing people to talk. Some thought I was overcompensating, trying not to lose it. Others thought I already had.

Rachel was waiting for me on the bench under the flapping American flag, just like Night 38, only this time she wasn’t in her fancy green dress. She wore a long skirt, a big puffy
coat. When she saw me she wished she’d worn something nicer. I was in the only suit I had in Brightside.

“You look nice,” Rachel said.

“You too.”

Rachel fidgeted in her coat, looked down at her big, ugly snow boots.

“Come on, let’s eat,” I said.

I hadn’t meant to take her hand, but there it was. Rachel blushed, she had hope we might actually work out. I hummed in my head to keep out the truth.

“What song is that?” she asked.

“Just something my dad used to sing.”

Rachel heard what I wanted to do to him for turning me in, but she didn’t say anything, just rubbed my arm as we walked through the Square. It felt good.

We sat in the back, even though the hostess wanted us up front to make it seem not so empty.

“I’ve never seen it like this,” Rachel said.

The hostess told us that they’d been bringing in so many new people everyone’s wages had been cut. I worked on commission so I hadn’t thought about it before. But it made sense. There was only so much money to be made on a mountaintop.

Rachel looked over the menu, but I knew what she was going to ask before she even said it.

She wanted to sound normal, not broken inside, the girl trapped in The Cabin, swallowing pills to sedate her mind. “Tell me about Sara.”

“She’s Danny’s sister. She came here to be with him. Actually turned herself—”

“You like her.”

“We’re just friends.”

Rachel studied me, her eyes peering over the menu.

“Nothing happened.”

Rachel ducked down behind her menu. “I know.”

How easy it was to remember all the reasons Rachel and I should never have been together in the first place.

She took a drink, steeled herself. “Okay, I just want you to listen.”

I pulled on my sleeves, wished I’d worn something more comfortable. “Alright.”

“I need to apologize,” she said. “For what happened. For us.”

“No, I’m the one who—”

“I said listen. Just…listen.”

“Yeah, okay. Sorry.”

“I thought about you a lot. I mean, when I could think. And I understand that I have way too much stuff going on inside. And I know you didn’t always find me attractive.”

“Rachel…”

“And it’s okay. I’m not perfect. And I didn’t want to accept that. It’s why I did a lot of the stuff in the past.”

The list of men spinning in my head like a Rolodex.

“And…you have a lot of stuff, too, which is okay. We have this thing, whatever it is, and it makes life so much more complicated. Sometimes we feel hurt because we know what other people are thinking. Other times we feel superior because no one can ever lie to us.”

The cave flashed in my mind before I could catch it.

“Joe, what’s going on?”

“Nothing. Keep going.”
I thought loud and clear,
I want to hear about The Cabin.

She focused and said, “It was really hard at first. Like you were strapped to something, only you didn’t really care. But it taught me things. To be accepting. Open. To realize that Brightside offers us a place to be with our own kind. In the real world, relationships are always one-sided with us. Here, for the first time, we’re on equal footing.”

Sharon’s words spewing out of her mouth. I focused on the fork, the starting lineup for the Cleveland Indians. It was teenage sex. Thinking of anything to push it back, delay.

“Joe, I need you to hear me.”

Jim
Thome
on first base.

JOE!

“I’m here.”

“We rushed things and that’s my fault. We really don’t know each other, but I’d like to try. I mean, we have all the time in the world.”

Time. In five hours I was supposed to be tying the rope.

Rachel’s first thought was I was going to hang myself.

“I’ve been drawing,” I blurted. “Like a lot. For Danny. And I think I’m, uh, getting pretty good. Even faces, which are impossible.”

Rachel thought about my first drawing, the one of her under the tree. Her nose so Jewish.

The waitress arrived and I took a breath, happy to have something new to focus on. But when the waitress left, the thoughts started coming in waves. I ate breadsticks. Savored every bite. Focused on the crunch, the crumbs melting on my tongue. I’d never taken such pleasure in a breadstick, never focused my entire being on a bite.

Suddenly, Rachel’s foot was rubbing against mine. She’d taken it out of the boot. I felt her stockings sliding up my pant leg. Nylon on flesh.

Rachel slowly took a bite of her breadstick, like she was going to make it explode in her mouth. It was weird and a little sexy. Sexy was just fine. Meant I didn’t have to think about the cave, my escape. I put my hand on her foot, brought it up between my legs.

The waitress came back, pretended like she forgot something and left. Her thoughts calling out:
Why do the perverts always sit in my section?

At some point during dinner it started to sleet, and by the time we hit the sidewalk, we could barely keep our balance, the wind howling in the night. I wasn’t drunk, but I’d had a glass of wine at Rachel’s insistence. I figured it’d give me courage for the long night ahead. But with the ground covered in ice, my escape would have to wait. Climbing down a dry rope was treacherous enough.

“Joe, what are you thinking?”

Shit.
“We should get inside.”

“Yeah.”

The wind was so loud I couldn’t hear Rachel’s thoughts. Prayed she hadn’t heard mine.

The sex was odd. First, we’re tearing off each other’s clothes, the next, I’m underneath her and Sara pops into my head.

Rachel touched my cheek.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about. It’s natural. Let’s just focus on us.”

The Cabin had broken the old Rachel, left this kind-hearted creature behind. I wondered if some time in The Cabin was just what I needed.

In between licks on my chest, Rachel said, “You. Really. Don’t.”

Afterwards we stretched out, caught our breath. Then Rachel got up to pee. Two steps later she cried out. “What the hell’s all over the floor?”

Rachel navigated through the jagged pieces of broken gifts I hadn’t fully swept. The pieces to Dad’s puzzle. I thought Rachel was out of range, but when she came back, her body haloed by the bathroom light, she said, “I want to see it.”

“Rachel, I don’t think—”

“Yes, you do. You want to show me.”

Fucking telepaths.

I got up, threw on some underwear because my dick had shriveled like a snail, and there’s something not right about holding a shotgun buck naked. I stepped into the closet, reached
up to the top shelf, where it was hidden behind a bunch of Dad’s boxes.

All shiny and ready for action.

“Can I hold it?”

I knew there weren’t any cameras in my room. The Boots would have come the night I’d assembled it.

“Be careful.”

“It’s heavy.” Rachel pretended like she was going to drop it, but caught it and laughed.

“Don’t mess around.”

“Why? Scared?”

Rachel pointed the gun at my chest. I couldn’t remember if I’d taken out the shells.

“That’s not funny.”

“
Kinda
is.” She aimed at my dick.

So kind-hearted, so fucking crazy.

“Just give it to me,” I said.

Rachel backed me up and I fell onto the bed. She grinned like a child who’d found her Christmas presents. “Tell me about the mine,” she said.

Rachel, shut up.

Tell me about the cave.

Rachel knew I wasn’t going to say shit, not with her pointing the shotgun at me, so she handed it over. I thought about hitting her with it like a baseball bat.

In this little girl voice, she said, “Please don’t hit me, Mister.”

The tension broke into laughter.

Truth was I wanted to tell her. Sara was the only person who knew and she thought it was the dumbest thing that had ever clanged around my head. So I silently told Rachel everything. How I’d found it, traveled down the shaft in the dark, seen the drop-off, covered it back up with rocks. We both figured the Boots and the Council never knew it was even there, it’d probably been covered up before we arrived.

Rachel sat next to me, and I realized I wanted her to come along. Didn’t want to do it alone. I needed someone to help me down the two hundred feet and Rachel used to rock climb. Before I could even ask, Rachel said:

“Yes.”

Our accelerated relationship took off again. Rachel and I were already gone in our heads, already free, lying on some beach, our sweat glistening in the sun. But she had to meet with Sharon every day. Had a daily check-in to make sure she was still on the mend. I worried Rachel would slip, our plans landing right in Sharon’s head. We’d both end up in The Cabin, this time forever.

“You don’t have to worry,” Rachel said. “Listen.” She closed her eyes. “What am I thinking?”

I zeroed in, but heard nothing. No mantra, no hum, just silence, like Danny.

“You’re too far,” I said.

Rachel pressed herself against me. I listened. Still nothing.

She stepped back, curtseyed. “I learned it in The Cabin. That’s why they let me out. Nothing but a blank slate.”

“How?”

“Something about the pills. I can just shut it off now.”

I thought back to the howling wind outside Oscar’s, how I couldn’t hear her thoughts, but it wasn’t the noise. She just wasn’t letting me in.

I asked if she could get me some of the pills to see if they might work for me. She said she’d try, but it probably wouldn’t happen. The medicine was locked up in The Cabin. Always a guard posted.

We focused on the plan, focused on training. Rachel said if I was going to do this I had to get more comfortable with heights. We started with a few thirty-foot drops near the pond. Then we moved on to her building, had me lean out her window on the fifth floor. When a
Brightsider
passed underneath, I sprayed Windex on the window, pretended to clean. All of it made my heart feel like it was going to pop. My lungs closed. Everything tunneled. But I had to keep pressing, pushing myself higher.

By Day 99, I was ready for a rooftop. My office stood seven stories high. The final test before our escape.

I woke early, already sweating, picturing the fall, my face splattering. Rachel asked if I was afraid of falling or landing.

“What’s the difference?”

Rachel said, “Landing means you don’t want to die. Falling means you’re a pussy.”

I didn’t answer, but we both knew which category I fit into.

Rachel asked if I wanted her to go up there with me for moral support. I told her no, this was something I had to do alone. Plus, rooftops were completely off-limits to anyone not in maintenance, which was why after Rachel left for her meeting with Sharon, I had to see Danny, even though Sara warned me if I ever came around, she’d turn me in, tell Sharon, the Council, anyone who would listen. She’d tell them I’d found a way out.

Danny was technically a janitor, but all the maintenance men wore the same uniform. I watched from down below, hiding behind a tree, hiding from the rain, as Sara handed Danny his lunch. He’d done the buttons wrong again on his coveralls and Sara quickly fixed them. They came out of their building. Danny waved that pencil-clenched fist at her and headed to work.

I cut him off.

“Joe!”

“Hey, Danny.”

“Where you been, Joe?”

“Sorry, I’ve been busy. But I brought you something.” I pulled out another drawing. Billy Bass, Danny, and Sara singing.

“Joe!”

Seeing how excited Danny was almost made me smile. “You like it?”

Danny sounded like he was going to burst. “Best one.”

“Good, that’s good,” I said. “Now, I was wondering if I could ask you a favor?”

“Anything, Joe.”

“I need one of your uniforms.”

“You’re too big.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s for a…game.”

“Can I play?”

“Eventually, but I’m still working out the rules.”

Danny’s eyes got all wide and weird. I was trying to control my thoughts, but something slipped.