Ask the Passengers (21 page)

I walk home by myself and I think about stopping at Kristina’s house, but I see her dad’s car in the driveway and I don’t want to make things more complicated for her. I always kinda wished Mom was more like Mrs. Houck—easygoing, not so obsessed with work, not so concerned with what people say about her. But I guess I was wrong. Maybe perfect people care more than us
unique
people do.

When I walk in the front door at home, the first thing I notice is the silence. Then, as I walk up the stairs to my room, I hear muffled talking. I walk past Mom’s office, and it’s empty and all the lights are off. The red message light is blinking on her answering machine.

The muffled talking is Mom and Ellis in Mom’s room. I don’t want to hear what they’re saying, so I go into my room and close the door. I bring up Dee’s number on my phone, and then I look at the text.
Stay away from my daughter.

Can I just say
what the hell?
Only two days ago, we were in Atlantis being so free and open and in love, and everything was perfect.
Perfect. Abracadabra
was on the horizon. I was sure of everything—not to say I’m not sure now, but how am I supposed to feel about
stay away from my daughter
? I feel scared. I feel as though it’s ruined. I feel like this was the final straw in a line of fails. The universe might be telling us we are not supposed to be together or something.

I try to write her a letter, but I start three of them and then crumple them up and stick them in my backpack in case Mom reads my trash while I’m at school. In the end, I decide I’ll call her… tomorrow. I open a book and start doing homework.

Only when I cross paths with Dad on my way to the bathroom do I see into their bedroom as he closes the door behind him and realize that Mom is still in bed.

I’m shocked. I’ve seen Mom with pneumonia hacking up lungs while bent over that drawing table. Even that one time with that weird vertigo, she worked. She didn’t wear heels, but she worked.

So maybe perfect people and
unique
people react similarly when their daughters get busted at a gay club.

Ellis has gone to a friend’s house for dinner, which is about as weird as Mom still being in bed. Dad has brought home lukewarm Chinese food. I can tell he still likes me after Saturday night because he’s bought me crab Rangoon. Kinda soggy and cool crab Rangoon, but still. The thought counts. Mom and Ellis haven’t really talked to me in two days now, so having someone give a shit around here is good.

While he changes out of his office clothes and into his Dude clothes, I crank the oven and put our Chinese food in to warm it a bit. I see Mom has ordered General Tso’s chicken. I decide that she should have hers lukewarm, and I do not add it to the oven tray. He takes it to her on the wooden tray Ellis and I use for Mother’s Day breakfast in bed.

When he sits down at the kitchen table and starts attacking his chow mein, I say, “Don’t they feed you at work?”

“I skipped lunch.”

“Me too,” I say. “Thanks for the Rangoon.”

“Sure, Strid.” He hasn’t called me Strid since I was in middle school.

“You have a good day at the office?”

“As good as can be expected. Still no stapler. You?”

“No comment.”

“Yeah. I heard.”

I assume he means from Mom, who heard from Ellis and whoever else said whatever made her stay in bed today. I nod.

I point to the ceiling. “Is she sick?”

He shakes his head.

“She’ll back to her normal General Tso self tomorrow?”

“Maybe,” he says.

“Huh.”

“We don’t like that you’re lying to us.”

I don’t answer.

“We only want to know you’re okay, and if you’re lying to us, then we don’t know where you are.” He takes a bite of his chow mein and adds, mouth full and noodle hanging out one side, “Both geographically and metaphysically, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“Where are you, Strid?”

Two uses of my childhood pet name. Crab Rangoon. The two of us sitting here eating dinner together. Ellis at a friend’s. Mom in bed. Only one explanation: He’s been sent by the General to interrogate me.

“Geographically, I am at the dinner table, Dad. And metaphysically, I’m just fine. You know—just a rough day at school thanks to small-town living.”

“It’s safe to tell us stuff, okay?”

This means it’s not safe to tell them anything.

“Sure, Dad,” I say as I take my plate to the sink.

After dinner, I go out and lie on the table and send my
love to the sky. I can’t see any planes, but I can hear them up there behind the clouds.

Exhaustion sets in as I lie here. I think about school tomorrow. I think about staying in bed like Mom. Or running away like Justin and Chad and Kristina and Mr. Houck. But I really don’t feel like it. Plus tomorrow is the day I call Dee, and maybe everything will be all right.

I hear another jet above the clouds, and I whisper to it. “I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.” My eyelids get heavy, and I feel an instant urge to make today disappear by falling asleep until it’s tomorrow. But I can’t move.

I am strapped to the table. My table. I am strapped with warm bungee cords—like octopus tentacles. Like rubber. Around my ankles, my forearms, my hips and my forehead. The needle plunges into my belly button and sucks something out. I can see it coming out through the translucent tube. They are storing part of me in a space jar—like a test tube. It is labeled, but I can’t read the label.

The big one says, “You sent for us.” I can’t say anything because I am entirely bungeed. Even my tongue. “How did you know we were there?”

The little one says, “You are the only one who has ever found us.”

The big one answers, “We love you too.”

The back door slams as Dad makes his way to the garage. I lie here and ask myself,
Just how many things do I have to invent in my head to survive this?

I make Frank S. appear on his favorite bench by the back door. He answers, “As many as it takes.”

I reach down to my belly button and make sure there’s no wound, even though I know that there’s no wound. “What are they extracting from me?” I ask, because even though these are my imaginary alien people, I have no idea what they are extracting.

“I don’t know,” Frank answers. “Maybe they’re extracting the truth and saving it for later. Like you.”

ABOUT FIFTY-FOUR SECONDS
before first period on Tuesday, I walk straight into Jeff Garnet and drop the books I’m carrying. He stops and looks at me, and his face is full of hurt and anger. Then he keeps walking, which makes me feel ten million times worse for everything I did to the kid. One of the people he’s walking with kicks my copy of
The Republic
way down the hall, where Mr. Trig picks it up and hands it back to me.

“We miss you in trig,” he says.

Which no doubt is weird but is meant as something positive, so I’ll take it. It almost makes me want to draw a pink triangle and then measure the angles and sides and figure out the functions.

In humanities class, Ms. Steck concentrates on our previous discussion about Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. She asks, “What do you think Plato meant to say when he talked about the freed people returning to the cave? Did he think they couldn’t handle the outside world? Did he feel they needed to be controlled? What does that compare to in our society? Do we have places like the cave?” She glances at me when she asks this, but she doesn’t call on me, and I send love to her for it.
Ms. Steck, I know you sat in that faculty room and heard every stupid rumor. I love you because this discussion is exactly what I needed.

I will not be like Kristina and go back into the cave.

During the final five minutes of humanities, she says, “Only one week until Socrates week! Are you all ready?”

Clay shouts, “Hell yeah!” like he’s at some basketball game or something, and it makes us all laugh.

“I want all paradoxes on my desk by Friday,” Ms. Steck says. “If you want to change it, you’ll have until project day to do that. But I want something from all of you by Friday. Got it?”

We all say, “Got it.”

During fourth-period study hall, I sit in the back corner of the auditorium, as far away from the Koch twins as I can, and when the teacher calls roll, I say, “Here,” and no one makes me move. Students turn around and look at me. Some empathetically. Some meanly. Some just fly-catchingly, like codfish. I tell
myself that the majority of people in study hall are fine people. The Koch twins are just lame. Kristina was right. They’re probably jealous because of Jeff.

Speaking of Kristina, she’s not here today. Which means it’s just me against the world—all by myself.

Before American lit, I see a sign outside Ms. Steck’s door. It reads:
MS. STECK
’S PUSSY
. Is it wrong for me to want to at least correct the misplaced apostrophe before I rip it off the wall and stuff it in my backpack?