What is Real (17 page)

She doesn't move. She can't move. She's dying.

Dad leans forward and slides out of his chair and onto the floor until he's lying on the dog. He doesn't look at me, he's muttering, murmuring, gentle in a way that he never was.

“Glob,” he says. “Glob.”

I step over them as carefully as I can, which is hard when you can really only use one knee, although this stiff bandaging helps a lot. I go downstairs.

The basement of our house is full of grow equipment and stinks in spite of the fans that are meant to pump the stink outside where no one can smell it but the corn. I don't know how we haven't been caught. We must be draining the grid, all the power this sucks up. But maybe it's hidden by Our Joe's own use of power, his bank of greenhouses where he grows corn in the shoulder season. Early and late. He uses hydroponics too.

The plants in this crop look terrible. Gary's crop. A good crop is full of buds, healthy leaves, green lushness. It makes me think of jungles. I'm always expecting to see insects. This crop looks like skeletons, like what is left after everything rots away.

I know what to do, so I set about doing it. If you overlook what it is, it's sort of satisfying. For a few minutes, while I hunker down there under all those hot lights, I know what my dad felt like with the tomatoes.

It's totally different. I know it. But still.

I can hear Glob's nails scratching the wood floor upstairs. My dad's quiet voice.

I stay downstairs for a long time, and when I go up, the dog is not dead. Dad is back in his chair. Maybe I imagined the whole thing. Glob wags her tail weakly and drags herself over to her mat in the corner.

“How's it look?” says Dad, like nothing is different. Like he wasn't just lying on Glob in the hallway where Glob lay dying.

“Bad,” I say. “But it's good stuff, it just doesn't
look
good. Looks aren't everything.”

“Huh,” says Dad. “I'd like to take a look.”

“I already did it all,” I tell him. “There's nothing to see. I gotta take a shower.” I raise my hands and show him the dirt.

“Want to watch tv?” says Dad.

“Nah,” I lie, “I have homework. And we have to eat too. I'll make something after I shower, okay?”

“Okay,” he says. “Thanks,” he adds. It's definitely an afterthought, but I'll take it.

“Sorry about your knee,” he says. “Hurts?”

“Yeah,” I say. “It's okay though.”

“Okay.” He nods. “Okay.”

“Okay,” I say.

And that's that.

In our old house, the family room was in a big open space, open to the kitchen. Here, everything is a tiny room, separate from everything else. I go into the tiny bathroom and blast the water, which comes out first icy cold and then boiling hot, there's nothing in between. I settle on cold and try to make the water wipe my brain clean so I don't have to think about anything at all.

I haven't done one bit of homework so far this year.

I want to rewind, start over, begin again.

Can you do that?

If I started over, I wonder if Olivia would exist.

chapter 20
september 26, this year.

I make it to school in plenty of time, and I sit on the steps and wait. I'm pretending that I'm just sitting here. I'm pretending that I'm not waiting for someone, but I am. I am waiting for Olivia. Because I'm crazy.

And high.

And I've forgotten if I want her to be real or not.

The first person I see is T-dot. I haven't seen him, not since the day of the knee. I don't know if he's been avoiding me or I've been avoiding him, but it doesn't really matter, does it?

“Hey,” I go. “Man, I'm sorry. I was such a dick to you. Why do you put up with me?” I am so high that my tongue is sticking to my teeth and I'm lisping. Too much. It's hard to tell sometimes, until it's too late, and there you are, stuck on all the
s
words.
Thwap, thwap
. I laugh.

“Yeah,” he says. He gives me a look. The look could say anything, but mostly it says, “Just say no to drugs.” I pretend I don't see it. He sits down next to me. He's wearing brand-new shoes, and they glow white against the gray stairs. Seriously glow. Those shoes have haloes. I reach out to touch them and stop myself. “I don't really know,” he says finally.

“Sorry,” I say. “I don't know what's wrong with me.” I shrug like it doesn't matter. His white shoes are in my peripheral vision, glowing.

“Something,” he says. “There's
something
wrong with you.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I know. Did you talk to Kate? Did she say anything about Tanis? She hasn't talked to me for, like, days. I don't know.” I squint up at the sun, like maybe it's written there, the number of days. Where are all the numbers? I'm losing track of time. It's sliding all around me like a slug's trail, sticking but slippery.

“She's pretty pissed,” says T-dot. “You could try to be nice, you know? It's like, who the fuck are you? I don't think you're the same Dex Pratt. It's like aliens took over your body, you know?”

“Yeah,” I go. “Well, they did.”

“What?” he says. His face looms close. Pock marks. A cut where he shaved.

“I'm kidding,” I say. I laugh. “I'm kidding. Fuck. You don't believe in that shit, do you?” I push him. I don't know why I do, but I do. Maybe I don't. But then I'm lying back on the stairs and they are biting into my back, and I look up and the sun blinds me and I think he's gone and all I can see is this rainbow of bright light around a face and it has to be him because it has his voice.

“Nah,” he says. “But I heard that the new girl does.”

“New girl?” I say, like I don't know exactly who he's talking about. I just want to hear him say her name. My heart speeds up. Faster, then faster. I hold my arm over my eyes to stop them from streaming. The light, you know.

“Olivia,” he says.

“Oh, her.” I shrug. My heart is going to burst out of me and gambol down the stairs like a baby deer. I sit up and I've got all those sun spots in my eyes that are making it hard to see anything. I look down at my shoes. They used to be white. I can't remember how long ago. Now they're gray. Sun spots. I can't see my hand. I go back to the shoes. There's a hole in the sole of the left one, where the rubber flaps down. “I've seen her around.”

“She's hot, right?” he says. Or I think he does. “But she's totally cuckoo. Her dad's some kind of ufo expert or something, and she totally believes in it.”

“Well,” I say. “Well.” I'm grinning. I try to stop grinning.

He's humming. Or someone is. Maybe it's me. Theme from
Star Wars
or some thing like that.

And then he's gone, and I'm alone on the stairs, humming.

Tanis walks right by me.

“Idiot,” she hisses.

I grin. Nothing is terrible. Olivia is real and I am not crazy.

I want to shout it out loud. “Olivia is real and I am not crazy.” I don't. I do.

I will myself to not feel the pain in my knee and a new pain coming from a lump on my head which must have been from the stairs. My ears are ringing. I drag myself to English, trailing behind Tanis as fast as I can.

My balls are itchy. There's no getting around it, it's true. It has nothing to do with anything, but it's kind of top of mind because I can't exactly jam my hand down my pants in the middle of English class. Mrs. D is droning on about who-knows-what and no one is listening because no one ever listens to Mrs. D.

I wish my balls weren't itchy.

I wish Olivia, who is real, would turn around and look at me. I've only barely just thought it when she does. She turns around. She winks. It's a wink that's caught by everyone around me. Tanis on my left. T-dot on my right. I mean, it has to be. They can't have missed it. Unless… I keep my eyes straight ahead and then glance over at T.

He shoots me a look.

“What?” I say. “
What?
”

Tanis is texting furiously, and then Kate is turning around and glaring at me too. I give up. I scratch my crotch vigorously. Fuck it. Who cares? Kate makes a gagging gesture. “Keep your pants on,” she hisses. “God.”

“Final essay,” says Mrs. D, which makes me half listen because it's the second week of school and who is talking about final anything anyway? “Blah blah blah,” she says.

I stare out the window. My knee is throbbing like it has its own heart, and not only that but it's actually having a heart attack at that exact moment.
Boom, boom, boom
. The leaves have just got the memo that it's fall and are all turning at once. The oak tree looks like it's caught fire overnight. The leaves are orange and red and brown, and it's really kind of amazing, if you're into that. It's another sunny day; the blue behind it makes my eyes ache.

Or my eyes ache because my eyes always ache.

Or something.

It's not good to be this high while you're at school. Shit happens. You lose control. I lose control. This usually doesn't happen to me, but today I…

I tilt sideways in my desk and concentrate on sitting straighter. Then I look like a guy who is trying to sit straight to hide something, so I slump back down again. The chair is killing my ass. My knee, my fucking knee. My other foot is tapping. I need to get out of here. T-dot reaches across the aisle and whacks my tapping leg with his pen. It hurts like a sting.

“Fuck!” I say, too loud.

Olivia tilts her head to the side suddenly, and her blond hair sweeps down and catches my eye and my breath catches in my chest, so I pretend I'm coughing and yawning at the same time. T-dot drums another song on his desk, and the drumming is in my skull and my pulse is skipping in the beat he dictates and my ears buzz. No, my phone buzzes. I can tell that it's Tanis without looking by the way her body tilts slightly toward mine. I look at her face before I read the screen. She gives me a crooked smile.

I'm relieved.

I read the text.
Still mad
, it says. But then there is a smiley. I hate smileys. I am relieved to see her smiley. Smileys make me feel like everyone is stupid. Tanis isn't stupid, but smileys are. I can't think this much about smileys. Saying “smileys” over and over again, even in my head, is making me grin in a way that I can't control, too much teeth. Don't laugh, I say to myself. No giggling.

Giggling
is another one of those words.

I text back,
Okay, cool
. I text again,
U r pretty
. She smiles. A normal smile. Teeth managed. My lips are pulled back tight, too much gum showing. Stop thinking about smileys, I tell myself. Goddamn it. I bet Tanis flosses.

Tanis is wearing red cowboy boots. I watch her boots move around on the floor, and there is the sound of the hard soles on the linoleum that reminds me of dances. Tanis is good at things like dancing because she understands music from the inside out. She understands the beat. She says it's all the same: music and numbers and moving and standing still.

That isn't possible. I don't understand. How can moving be the same as standing still? The red boots tap an even rhythm, different from T-dot's drums, making them both as distracting as a dripping tap when you're trying to sleep, and I feel myself starting to jitter.

I'm not paying any attention at all to Mrs. D. I force myself to look up at her.

“Mr. Pratt,” says Mrs. D. “Phone to me, please.”

“What?” I say. “Why?”

“Because, Dexter, you were texting in class and, like I've just said six times while you've been staring at Miss Bowerman's feet, that is not allowed in my classroom.”

“Oh,” I say. “Shit. I mean, sorry.”

Everyone laughs, but I wasn't trying to be funny. I hold up my phone. She shakes her head. I stand up and walk up to the front, phone in hand. As I walk by Olivia, she sticks something in my pocket. It's so fast, I almost don't notice.