Be in the Real (23 page)

And there were so many people walking on the streets. No two beings were the same, they came in all matter of shapes and sizes. There were business men and women, dressed in crisp navy and black suits, pencil skirts and formal attire despite the oppressive heat. They clutched shiny leather brief cases or purses. Rosy-faced laughing couples held hands; love was written all over them. Teen girls in short-shorts and colorful tank tops held phones tight as they tapped furiously on the screens and mingled with boys on skateboards with hoodies and droopy boarder shorts. Mothers pushed bouncing babies who were all cheeks and eyes in strollers. The babies sat like kings and queens in their portable thrones. Miraculously the throngs of people parted to allow the strollers passage. There were indigent men and women, wearing too many clothes for the hot weather. They all shoved shopping carts that contained all their belongings down the sidewalk. And though all the people were so different, dark-skinned and light, and many in between, they all seemed to know the rules, the code, like an ant colony, organized by instinct.

Kaila raised her eyes up and over the highest trees where a few spaces were open in the lush canopy. She spotted the bluest sky that she had ever seen with not a hint of a cloud in sight. She staggered away from the window, because it was all so overwhelming. Her mind worked furiously to process all the real. She was no longer in the virtual world. Now just a thin pane of glass separated her from it all, she was in the real.

“Are you okay?”
 

Derrick was beside her, painfully close. Once again he seemed to move through space and time undetected.
 

“It’s all real, this is real. I want to go out. I want to smell it, taste it, I want…” Kaila’s gaze fell back to the street and a feeling of glee seemed to begin at the tips of her toes and travel up her spine until it had filled her entire body with bubbles of delight.
 

“I’m not sure Kaila, there are so many people out there now…why don’t we wait until it quiets down a little. Besides, it’s hotter than hell outside now.”

Kaila shook her head. She didn’t like Derrick’s idea at all. She longed to be out in the fracas, experiencing the world, the real world, a place that she hadn’t seen since she had been too young to care or appreciate it.
 

“I want to go now,” Kaila said petulantly.
 

Trillian wholeheartedly agreed, and in fact couldn’t wait to get outside amongst the crowd.
 

Derrick shook his head, but there was less conviction in his eyes now.

Kaila spun on her heel. She glanced down at her feet and realized that she still didn’t have her runners.

“I need my shoes,” she ordered.
 

Derrick sighed hugely then shrugged. Judging by his expression of resignation she had won the battle.

“Fine, we’ll go out, but you have to take the medication that I give you, otherwise we don’t go.”

Kaila stared at Derrick. In that moment he was a man not a man-boy, and for that reason she decided to listen to him. She nodded and opened her mouth just like she had before. Derrick hesitated for a minute, clearly he hadn’t expected for her to agree so easily. He dug into the pocket of his jeans, retrieving what looked very much like the pill that the fairy had tried to give her. Instead of putting it into her mouth, Derrick flattened his palm so she could pluck the pill from his hand. In a swift move she skimmed her fingers across his hand, snatched it then tossed it into her mouth. She swallowed it down before he could react.
 

“I’m not sure if it’s something you already take, but I hope it will take the edge off everything,” Derrick said.

“What happened to the fairy?” Kaila asked, cocking an eyebrow.

Derrick looked at her strangely.

“What happened to Clary?” Kaila amended.
 

She was surprised that he hadn’t recognized who she had been referring to.
 

Derrick tipped his chin forward at the name. “Yeah, she’s pretty shaken up and she has some bruising, but she’ll be okay.”
 

His statement was quite bland and emotionless, as if he didn’t much care what happened to the fairy.

“Why do you call her the fairy?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
 

A lock of his hair, longer than the rest, fell over his left eye. Up close and with no distractions, Kaila noticed that he was so much less suave than he had once been. It was that part of him, the less coifed him, that made him more man and less man-boy. She liked it, liked him, more than she should have.
 

Before now only Norm had awakened those strange emotions in her. Now Derrick was doing something similar, but not exactly the same. It wasn’t like she wanted to have sex with him, but more like she wanted to be near him, more than was typical for her. Derrick was somehow filling a slot that she hadn’t known required filling.

“Because she looks like a fairy of course.”
 

He took a minute to absorb her comment then nodded.

“I guess that makes sense,” he said.
 

He brought his gaze to the window, staring at the activity below, much as Kaila had just done.

“What do you see that I can’t? What makes you so eager to get out there in that mess of bodies?”
 

He didn’t turn to look at her. His face was so close to the window that a fog from his breath appeared on the glass.

“Everything and nothing, beauty in the mundane, the world in snapshots and all of it equating life,” Trillian said through Kaila’s mouth.

CHAPTER 28

The pill made Kaila forget about the outside world and all the treasures it held. It locked her in its pharmaceutical arms like a prisoner. Only when it had worked through her system and away, did she awaken again. And in the haze that came with the medication, the world was foggy and colorless, the scents of life less intense, as if a blanket of grey had been pulled over her eyes. Yet Trillian thrived, met with people, ate, drank, and saw things that Kaila had only dreamed of. Kaila was too lost to be found. When all was said and done, a full day had passed, leaving one less to save Pauline.

CHAPTER 29

Kaila opened her eyes. She discovered that she was back in the bed where she had woken up prior. No fairy was present. The curtains were drawn, and the room was gloomy and overheated. Her hair and clothes were soaked with sweat and she felt flushed and slightly nauseated. There was a wobbly feeling in her body and her head was floaty when she sat up. She threw her legs to the side of the flimsy mattress. Kaila wrinkled her nose at the smell of oniony sweat and dirty hair. She was disgusted when she realized that it was her that smelled that way.

She spotted her bag beside the bed on the floor; her laptop was resting against the wall just behind it. Relieved that her meager belongings were close at hand, she decided to explore and discover what had been happening while she had been out. Kaila stood up, moved to the window and tugged the curtain to the side so she could gauge what time of the day it was. It was still light outside. She noted that there were much fewer people than before. Her watch said 7:00 o’clock. Kaila was vaguely aware that Trillian had been in control for quite some time, but she was unsure why. It wasn’t the first time she had been lost and Trillian had stepped forward, but this wasn’t the same because she wasn’t in the White Room, or the Next Room, or anywhere else that she didn’t want to be. She had wanted to see the world outside, be a part of all the life that sprouted and entwined; yet Trillian had snatched that away from her. Kaila didn’t want to be frustrated by it all, but she was. Her long running lack of concern about time had shifted, now it was the only thing that mattered because Pauline needed to be saved. Determined to find out what was going on, she snatched her bag and laptop from the floor and swung the door to the room open.

The air that greeted her was less stuffy and smelled of fried food and dampness. She noticed halfway down the hall that she was wearing her runners. They were smeared with black and had tiny bits of mud clinging to the sides. The mud was fresh enough to conclude that it was something she had acquired recently.

She banged down the stairs, the squeaks of the aged wood were masked by the sound of her heavy footfalls. The room below was much the same as it had been before except Derrick was nowhere to be found. She moved from room to room. Most of them were completely empty save for the same kind of black folding chairs that were stacked in the main room. She continued searching for a sign of life. Every space that she found bare, made fear claw at her insides, because she was certain that they had abandoned her, and now she was alone. If that was true then she had no idea what she would do.
 

She raced to the kitchen, the only room she hadn’t checked, which despite smelling of recent cooking was devoid of people. In keeping with the rest of the house, the furnishings were sparse and ancient there. The gas stove was basic and white in color. The counters were wood topped with shoddily painted red cabinets. The whitewashed table with twirling wooden legs had at least two dozen papers spread across the surface. Eight mismatched chairs, that didn’t even come close to blending together, were pushed under the table. There were no wall hangings or much of anything on the ripped and curling green and gold flower-printed wallpaper.
 

After hitting another dead end, she decided to search for clues to explain the exodus. The printed sheets of text were marked and highlighted with red and neon yellow. Someone had obviously felt that the underlined passages were of value. They intrigued Kaila. She prepared to hunker down and read the text when she heard Derrick’s voice nearby.
 

Kaila sprang up from the chair where she had been sitting. She moved purposefully in the direction that Derrick’s voice was coming from. For some reason she needed to see him, know that he was there and that all that was happening and had happened was real.

“I don’t want to give her any more drugs. She needs a break…”

“Derrick,” Kaila yelled as soon as she laid eyes on him.
 

He had changed since she had last seen him and had even gotten a haircut. Now his hair was sharp and precisely styled, just as it had been on the first day she had met him. His dark eyes registered shock at her presence, but just for a flash, then the lines in his forehead smoothed and his expression went slack. A stiff grin formed on his lips.

“Kaila.”
 

As if the mention of her name was adequate enough to end his conversation, Derrick tapped the end button on his phone. He tucked it into the pocket of his slim-legged sea blue jeans. When he turned fully to face her, Kaila noticed that his jade green t-shirt had an image of Einstein, the scientist’s white hair was frizzy and wild with rainbows of colors shooting out of it.
 

“Nice shirt,” Kaila said.
 

It was an odd comment even to her own ears, but she loved Einstein and his mind enough to express it. Derrick seemed as mystified as she was at her impromptu comment. He stared down at the front of his shirt, as if to remind himself of what he was wearing.
 

He nodded. “Yeah, thanks.”
 

Kaila was about to launch her next question about where she had been for the past day but hesitated. She realized that if she had asked him about the day, he would have probably figured out that Trillian had been in the drivers seat not Kaila.

Kaila had been programed long ago not to reveal Trillian’s presence, and couldn’t help but remember all the warnings that Trillian had given her. Trillian had told Kaila that if people, doctors and nurses mainly, discovered the truth then Kaila might well be locked away in a place that Trillian called the Lunatic Place. She had told Kaila that it was a place that people who could no longer sort truth from fallacy and fact from fantasy went. Kaila wasn’t sure if this was the truth or not, but she didn’t want to risk being thrown away like Trillian had said most people who lived there were, so she had kept quiet. And since they were far away from Wildwind, in a place where people denied being crazy, the rules had added weight.

“When are we going to see Pauline?” Kaila said, after a few minutes of contemplation.

“Later,” Derrick said evasively.

“I want to go now,” Kaila retorted.

Ignoring her comment, Derrick moved past her to the counter where a modern coffeemaker with a stack of white Styrofoam cups, stir sticks and Coffeemate whitener sat. He opened the cupboard above it and retrieved a tin of Folgers coffee, then went about placing a filter in the machine and adding just the right amount of coffee granules. After he had turned the coffeemaker to the on position, he flipped around to face her. Kaila congratulated herself on the patience that she was exhibiting while Derrick did menial tasks. Even so, her resolve was wearing thin. Derrick’s deflection of any and all questions pertaining to the very reason that they had escaped Wildwind was infuriating. It was beginning to make her wonder if he had an ulterior agenda.

She opened her mouth to voice that exact sentiment when Derrick spotted something and sprang forward. Before she could react he had gathered all the papers from the table into a messy pile and had left the kitchen. Kaila thought that she had spotted passages from Trillian’s Musings of the Universe on one of the papers he had bundled, but she couldn’t be certain. Kaila, who was growing more miffed with each passing second, bounded after Derrick.

“I want to see Pauline,” she hollered to his retreating backside.
 

He ducked into a room and by the time she had reached him, he had tucked all the papers away into a locked cupboard that was mounted on the wall. He was still in the process of turning the key in the lock by the time she had closed the distance between them.

“Did you hear me? I want to see Pauline,” Kaila said between gritted teeth.
 

Her fingers tingled with need, fists clenching and unclenching. The urge to make Derrick understand that she wasn’t fooling around was almost palpable. She didn’t much like being cooped up in a place that wasn’t Wildwind. Kaila was so frustrated that she might have been willing to go back to where she belonged, that was if Pauline hadn’t needed to be saved.