Mayne Attraction: In The Spotlight (3 page)

My earliest recollections of the game
involved nursery rhymes.

Game version:

Scintillate, scintillate, celestial body
minific;

Feign do I fathom your nature specific.

Loftily perched in ether capacious;

A reasonable facsimile of a gem
carbonaceous.

Scintillate, scintillate, celestial body
minific;

Feign do I fathom your nature specific.

Mainstream version:

Twinkle, twinkle, little star;

How I wonder what you are.

Up above the world so high;

Like a diamond in the sky.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star;

How I wonder what you are.

I loved it that the game version rhymed as
nicely as the mainstream version, though admittedly, it did not
sing as well.

Another game, Scrabble, was also a favorite
pastime and one where I quickly eclipsed my mother’s excellent
skills, much to her conflicting maternal satisfaction and
competitive chagrin.

When I was a very young child, my mother
took great pride in my impressively good diction, which surpassed
that of many adults. Although living in Kentucky as we did, the
triumph of such a thing was somewhat diminished. In defense of my
own kind, I’ll assert that we Kentuckians have numerous admirable
traits and talents, but as a group, speaking with grammatical
correctness isn’t at the top of the list—at least for those whose
jobs aren’t specifically tied to it.

One of my elementary school teachers
actually thought that I had a speech impediment because I spoke
very clearly yet unintelligibly on occasion. I couldn’t help it if
I was smarter than she was…none of us knew.

Though, ‘smarter’ was not a fair or even
accurate description. I was just a logophile (a word lover) with
vast stores of minutia in the form of words and their definitions
that couldn’t be used in normal conversations with people other
than my mother. Though she disapproved, now that I was older, and
more self-conscious, I tried to tone the impressive diction thing
down around normal people so that I would sound more normal and
less like a robot or an alien infiltrator. Sometimes, though, I
would catch myself using that ‘alien’ vernacular of mine and feel
obligated to throw in extra words to elucidate (explain
myself).

One of my favorite tangents of our game had
to do with phobias. There are over five hundred named phobias and
making up a new one is as simple as determining the Greek word for
it and adding the suffix ‘phobia’, which is an entirely separate
and enjoyable game in itself. A side benefit was the addition of
numerous Greek nouns and verbs to my minutia collection.

Incidentally, I never used the word ‘lame’
lightly. The definition I preferred was ‘something boring,
old-fashioned, weak or unsatisfactory’. I’d always been a lover of
multi-purpose words, and ‘lame’ worked well much of the time,
particularly in relation to my life, but especially because other
teenagers understood my meaning when I used it…and that made it
indispensible, well it would be if I ever ended up with any
friends. Of course, once they discovered the real me, they would
probably think I was…lame.

Chapter 4
–
Scopophobia

Since my grandpa had died, I’d been fighting
with melancholy. I missed him terribly. And that was the issue to
which people who knew me attributed my blues. I was so glad that no
one knew the other half of my problem: heartbreak over someone
other than my grandpa. Even I knew it was stupid. How could someone
who wasn’t my love break my heart? It wasn’t like we had broken up.
And that was the key. We had never really been together. Together
like the way I had daydreamed (and night-dreamed) about over and
over. Yet, we had spent a considerable amount of time in each
other’s company—the best time of my short life—where I worked every
minute trying to understand his moods, his comments and the looks
he gave me. The signals were always mixed.

If it were possible for me to be objective,
though, I’d have to admit that, overall, Gray had treated me more
like a little sister than anything else. Still, in softer moments
between his bipolar bouts of incessant teasing and stern lecturing
he had also managed to work in holding my hand, hugging me tight
and staring into my eyes. There was never any kissing—much to my
strangely simultaneous disappointment and relief—but those more
tender moments had still felt very romantic. Of course I had no
experience to draw upon; perhaps being hit over the head with a
stick by a handsome guy also felt very romantic.

I could definitely understand his initial
irritation with me. His internship in Iceland had been turned into
a glorified babysitting job, all at the insistence of my own
grandfather. I was mortified! But in the end he didn’t change any
of his plans—he just pulled me along for the ride—quite literally
in some cases. To my surprise and his credit, however, he took the
time and considerable effort necessary to draw me out as we moved
through each of our excursions, and in consequence I talked to him
more than I could ever remember talking to anyone, even my grandpa.
He eventually broke down my barriers so that I felt comfortable
enough to let my sense of humor loose. That had never happened to
me before and it felt absolutely, singularly amazing.

My sense of humor was my most secret and
precious possession. And as though it was a baby bird, I guarded it
fiercely, so that no one could step on it—accidentally or on
purpose. It was tied up with who I really was, and I had always
been terrified to expose it or damage it in any way. In the past
when I had revealed it, very often it had offended my mother, and
was generally totally lost on Hoyt or Grandpa. My dad had nurtured
it, but it was still in very early bud when he died. I had no other
close associates with which to exercise it, so it had been locked
deeply away for safe keeping until I met Gray.

Although he seemed to take great pleasure in
teasing me, he also seemed to intuitively understand the need to be
very careful with that particularly vulnerable soft spot of mine:
my humorous sensibilities. When he laughed at my jokes, it didn’t
feel like I was being humored. It just felt like he understood and
appreciated my brand of humor as borne out by his reactions and
responses. It was a kind of emotional intimacy I never expected to
have with anybody, let alone someone like him: intelligent,
handsome and amazing.

Eventually I came to an understanding about
why my feelings for Gray and the loss of my grandpa seemed to be so
strangely connected. The loss was connected. Losing my grandpa
meant losing my connection with Gray.

With Grandpa’s encouragement I had spent
nearly every day for over a month in Gray’s custody. In retrospect
it was clear that Grandpa wanted us to be together, and had
obviously maneuvered things to make that happen. Gray’s father was
like family to him and maybe he was hoping things would turn out to
make our connection to the Gregorys ‘truly’ family, as opposed to
just ‘like’ family. That had been a pleasant tangent to dwell upon
after Iceland, but it became unthinkable once it was clear my
regard was not returned by Gray.

I wasn’t going to be invited to join any
more survey expeditions because of what I could bring to the table.
Mr. Gregory had given me his business card and seemed sincere about
helping me pursue a career in geology. But his son said three words
to me at the funeral, which, incidentally, were not ‘I love you’,
and I never heard from him again.

I’d rather die than insinuate myself into
their circle again. The implication of rejection was far more
tolerable than its confirmation, though I had to admit, the effects
were identical.

So our association was over now. I was
grieving over his loss like a widow…except he wasn’t dead. I
suppose because no one had ever expressed a romantic interest in
me, not even Gray, for that matter, I was totally blindsided by the
new experience of unrequited love and had mistakenly assumed that
his ability to draw me out was connected with a purpose for doing
so. It was embarrassing to admit, even to myself, but I had
actually thought that I would be married to him some day. I even
had dreams where we talked about that...and did other things. So
even sleeping through my depression didn’t offer the kind of solace
from pain and disappointment that I dearly wished it would. In
addition, it felt petty and disloyal to my grandpa to split my
sadness over his loss with some guy I had known only briefly, but
misinterpreted so completely. Unfortunately, concentrating on that
didn’t stop it—it just added guilt to the other negative emotions I
was already dealing with.

The passing of time had started to make the
pain fade. It still flared once in a while, but I felt like I had
the psychosis issues mostly under control now. I had been working
up to this so that I would be able to face school again, which
would start before I knew it. Yet, there was still one strange,
negative feeling that constantly hounded me. It was weird because
it seemed like it had nothing to do with grieving, but over time it
had emerged as the dominant feeling, beating out the sadness and
emptiness that had been so overpowering at first. It was the
feeling that I was being watched; a strange and indefinable sixth
sense; the certainty of unseen eyes, observing me from somewhere
close by.

I had only a vague notion of the sensation
after the funeral, when it started. But as spring phased into
summer and I began to spend more time outside the house, sometimes
riding my bike, sometimes hanging out in the tiny tree house in our
back yard, it became impossible to ignore. I felt it on the back of
my neck constantly. Of course, I didn’t dare mention it to my mom.
She already wanted to have me committed. Telling her about this
would be like calling the paddy wagon to arrange the pick-up
myself. No, just like everything else, I had to find a way to deal
with it on my own and get past it.

One day early into the summer break
something happened and I realized that I was not a victim of
irrational scopophobia (the fear of being watched) after all.

It was a very warm and sunny day, late in
the week. Mom and Hoyt were gone for work. I had gotten up late,
like normal. I was hungry and in the mood for cereal. After pouring
myself a bowl full, I grabbed the nearly empty container of milk
from the door of the fridge.

I’ll be the first to admit that I have some
obsessive-compulsive behaviors, and one of them was to check the
expiration date on everything, even non-food items—go figure. Milk
was no exception. So before any milk was poured I examined the
blurry print on the front of the carton. This was a wasted notion,
though, since I didn’t actually know the day’s date. But a sniff of
the opened carton communicated very clearly the milk’s expiration.
It smelled like something had expired all right. I experienced a
brief moment of sadness as I considered that not so long ago I
would have just headed next door to Grandpa’s house in search of
drinkable milk. Now, if I wanted fresh milk, I was going to have to
ride my bike up to the new drugstore on the corner and purchase
it.

So I got dressed and rolled off. It was less
than a mile away, but the late morning sun was scorching. By the
time I got inside the store, I didn’t feel like drinking milk
anymore. I needed a bottle of water instead. How ironic, I thought.
If I’d just stayed home, I could have had all the free cold water I
could drink! To save face with myself, though, I purchased a small
bottle of milk along with a larger bottle of water…and a chocolate
bar too, since it was calling to me. The cashier offered me a
sample packet of a new kind of gum, which I certainly couldn’t
refuse. I accepted it gladly and tucked it in my pocket after
concluding my purchase.

Walking back out the door into the sun I was
slightly distracted with trying to open the water. The lid was on
unusually tight. I set my bag of milk and candy bar down on the
sidewalk once I reached the far side of the building where I had
parked my bike and tried again to loosen the cap. My feeling of
accomplishment at opening the bottle was cut short when a man came
straight up into my personal space holding a piece of stiff paper
out towards me. I didn’t get a good look at his face because he was
so fast, but I remember that he was swarthy and kind of hairy and
that he had a huge gold chain around his neck. He was smiling at me
but it didn’t feel like a friendly smile, it felt like something
else, and the danger alarm started to ring in my mind.

He spoke to me in an overly friendly tone
and said, “Hey, do you like perfume?”

That was weird. He didn’t look like he would
work behind a perfume counter.

I hesitated in my confusion and growing
panic. He had come from the van that I was now standing in front of
because another man, who could have been his twin, started to get
out of the passenger side and walk towards me as well. This must
have been by design. It drew my attention, just for a second, and
that was what he needed to rudely shove the paper with the
‘perfume’ sample under my nose.

“Smell this! I think you’ll like it,” he
said with an unpleasant sounding one-syllable laugh at the end.

“What? No…no thanks.”

But he had surprised me with his quick move
and I did get a whiff of whatever was on the card. And it did smell
nice. Just as I was thinking that, my knees buckled and I dropped
my water. It took a big bounce and splashed all over Mr. Perfume’s
mid section and down his legs while he cursed a blue streak in
response.

Whatever I had just smelled was obviously
more than perfume. It made gravity stronger and made everything
move in slow motion.