River: A Novel (4 page)

 “Dan—” My
mouth and throat were full of glue. I had burrowed my face into his chest, making
my voice inaudible. Still able to hear his name vibrating inside my ears, I
looked up at him. The surprise on his face brought me back to this strange
reality. 

..................

Yes, it was
really him. I studied his features briefly: big puppy-dog eyes, impossibly
long, dark lashes, straight nose, and his full lips half open in uncertainty. He
even had his usual five o’ clock shadow covering the mole on his right cheek. The
only decipherable differences were the lack of ear buds and an abnormal
definition of muscle, which I could feel even under his clothing. Danny never
worked out. His idea of exercise was picking up food instead of having it
delivered. My elation faltered. It
was
him, wasn’t it? He looked as
though he’d never seen me before.  Doubt made the potential tears forming in my
eyes dry up.

 ”Wha—” I
was abruptly silenced by his mouth on mine. Dan kissed me feverishly; my
eyelids stayed wide open in shock for what felt like an eternity. Finally, he
slowed and opened his eyes, his mouth almost on mine. Before I could pull away to
inquire if he had lost his mind, he was kissing me again. This time neither of
us closed our eyes, and I squinted at him as analytically as I could. Again,
the kiss slowed as his nose skimmed mine. At the same time, he shook his head
back and forth. I was just beginning to clear my throat to voice concern of his
sanity, but my confusion must have been obvious because he laid three fingers
on my mouth, thankfully instead of his baffling lips. He stared at me with a
deadly serious expression. 

 My delusion
of normalcy shattered again. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed people had
formed in a loose circle around us, mostly smiling. To my astonishment, Danny
turned to the onlookers and
took a bow.
I felt a nudge at my elbow. He
was signaling that it was my turn.  Feeling idiotic, I went with my instinct to
trust Dan and curtsied. To my intense humiliation, the crowd began to clap.
For
what?
I thought, astonishment coloring my cheeks.
Stumbling on a curb,
almost
wiping out, and
then awkwardly making out in public?

 
Hesitantly, I smiled and curtsied
again. Everyone continued to applaud, the only exception being a dark haired man
in the back with a hard look on his face. Dan then made a complicated swish
with his hands before capturing my arm and leading me swiftly through the
crowd, into the building before us.

 We walked
through glass doors and past a ticket booth where an usher smiled. Following
suit, we did the same, though my plastered smile was wooden, and my eyes hadn’t
blinked since the bizarre kissing scene. Then there were mirrors, maze-like and
dizzying with white lights reflecting off them. We were entering a theater, it
seemed. I didn’t speak as he led me through more doors, until we were in what
looked like a room full of electronic equipment and instruments. He locked the
door after we had gone through.

 Dan gestured
at me with the same swirling motions and an ardent look in his wide eyes. Having
calmed down a little now that we were alone, I needed to find out what his
problem was. 

 “So, what
the hell is going on? And what was
that
little show about?” When thumbing
toward the direction of outside, my calm demeanor shifted.

 He looked taken
aback. My voice was hoarse, but I thought I’d been understandable enough. Had
he blown out his ear drums again? Attempting to clear my throat, I winced at
the painful dryness. “Can you understand me?” I asked more slowly and enunciated
in case he had to read my lips. This had happened before; I would never understand
his thing for death metal. It was all right in small doses, but the weekend
long festivals he went to were overkill in my opinion. 

 I tried
again to induce a response, pointing to my own ears. “Danny, can you hear me?” Seriously,
he could still nod, couldn’t he? He proved he could and gestured at me again. “Why
do you keep doing that?” I pointed to his hands. It looked like sign language. I
had taken a semester in high school, but was not very good at it. What Danny
was doing wasn’t anything I recognized. He walked slowly across the room, his
eyes never leaving my face. When his long fingers wrapped around my upper arm,
I froze. He let go before tapping against my skin.

 The sinking
feeling I’d had about the dots and dashes outside resembling Morse code was now
full blown confusion. Why Morse code instead of words? Nothing was making any
sense, and I felt my face fall. Of course, in this non-sense present I was glad
I knew the code, but how did everyone else?

 My love for
all things spy-related had helped me come up with ideas for a history project
in the tenth grade. I’d had a great teacher who had always done the coolest
assignments, especially during a portion of the semester focusing on spies
during World War II. I’d chosen a solo project, of course, and had created a
scavenger hunt completely made up of Morse code clues. It was comforting to
know that I could fall back on the secret-agent profession if the waitressing
gig didn’t pan out.

 I shook my
head, stunned, and then paid attention to the tapping. Danny was remarkably better
at it than he used to be. I had taught Dan some Morse code for when he dragged
me to heavy metal shows. This way I could tell him when I’d had enough without
screaming or removing my ear plugs.  

 “Whoa, can
you slow down a bit? I’m not a computer—one letter at a time.” 

 I had the
impression he was messing with me. Dan’s eyes narrowed with his hand suspended in
mid-air, as if hitting a pause button, before starting again. Too exhausted to figure
out why he wasn’t talking; I was not exactly in the mood to endure his bad trip
along with my own.

 He tapped
gently and precisely. 

 
L-O-D-I-E
 

 An air of
indifference settled in his eyes as he studied me. I nodded and looked at him
the way I did when he was acting stranger than usual. Our eyebrows
rose simultaneously.

 “Dan,” I
replied with a touch of sarcasm. Why wasn’t he laughing at me yet for not
getting his joke? With his MIT brain, he often did and said things that flew
leagues over my head. He hadn’t moved a muscle other than his hand, which was now
cutting off circulation in my arm. I pointed my chin at it before he comprehended
and loosened his grip. The tapping began again, so I concentrated to get it
all.   

  
H-O-W 
A-R-E  Y-O-U  S-P-E-A-K
-
I-N-G

 He waited
for an answer, and I waited for the punch line.

“What do you
mean?” I whispered. Any humor of the situation wilted away. Dan still stared at
me as though I was a stranger, but his eyes looked clear, not high. He was
silent. I clarified, “I don’t know what you mean.” My throat was scratchy, mixing
with the stress-glue, and I became a little dizzy. I tried to convince myself
this was one of his stunts, as his prime objective some days had been to mess with
me, but this felt different. Danny was… serious. He took a breath, mashed his
lips together, and began again. 

  
I  C-A
-
N-N-O-T  S-P-E-A-K

 
He paused with eyes slightly narrowed.

 A-N-D  N-E-I-T-H-E-R  C-A-N  Y-O-U

 Even as I
was falling over, I really didn’t think I was going to pass out. I had smirked
at him in a
Yeah how stupid do
you think I am
sort of way, and
then registered his completely sober expression just before the room spun. Danny
was constantly pulling practical jokes on me—always the most gullible one in
the room. He gleefully took full advantage of this particular trait, or flaw,
of mine. I tended to believe what people told me. 

 “
There’s
a good chance this couple will adopt you.”
  I had always fallen for that
one.

 “
You
probably won’t be accepted to The Studio, due to your lack of formal dance training.”
 I hadn’t believed I’d
really gotten in to the dance company for a week. It had taken the head of the
whole place to knock on my door one day to convince me. 

 I woke sluggishly
from my brief break in consciousness, wishing I would’ve stayed knocked out; oblivious
to the place I had been unceremoniously dumped. My head throbbed. The tempo
mimicked the recent tapping I was trying to forget.

 After finally
forcing my eyes to open, I blurrily registered that Dan appeared stressed. Waiting
for my vision to clear, I stared at him for a long moment before he offered me
a water bottle and a tiny smile. He was always a gentleman when he wasn’t
pulling my leg. I smiled back, thankful for the water to clear the sand and
paste out of my throat. “How long was I out?” I whispered after a long
drink. He held up a finger
.

 Wary of
this vague communication, I frowned. “Just a minute?” He pointed up, behind me.
A clock with no numbers was almost to seven o’clock. I leveled my eyes to his. Having
been light out when we’d arrived, it had been dark for at least an hour. 

 “Sorry,” I
whispered, unsure what I was apologizing for, but his tense look made me think
I was inconveniencing him. “Really, I didn’t mean to go down like that… long day.”
Clearly an understatement, I didn’t know where to go from there. Again, I
followed my gut. 

“Something
is wrong, isn’t it?” I asked in a small, shaky voice. He nodded, and my breath
caught before reaching near-hyperventilation. Danny had always been perceptive,
at least when he was sober. He saw I was about to lose it again. Maybe never
wake up. I wasn’t sure I would have minded that, actually. 

 He
tentatively reached for my hand with a finger poised above my knuckle and
began:

 
I  W-I-L-L  T-E-L-L  T-H-E-M  

Y-O-U  A-R-E  S-I-C-K 

 Unwilling
to be left alone, I grabbed Dan’s shirt as he started to stand up.

 “Who?”

 After gesturing
with both hands for me to hold on, he patted the side of my face and touched my
lips with his fingers. He then indicated with his index finger that he would be
a minute, pointed to the door, and walked out with a sad, confused smile. His eyes
were remote before locking the heavy steel exit behind him.

 Okay
, I told myself,
things could be
worse
.
I could be naked
. Yes, that would have definitely made the
situation worse
. Instead of having my best friend with me, I could be alone
here in crazy-land
. Although I wasn’t convinced in the least that he was
really Danny under his skin; the silly, laughing jokester just wasn’t the same.
For one, the silly laughter was gone, and the fact that this wasn’t a joke was
becoming painfully evident. I desperately hoped he would burst back through the
door while cracking up and gloating at full volume. I could just hear him say:
My
eternally reliable victim—you fell for it again, Lodie!
And then rush through
fits of laughter to tell me that everyone outside, along with the ticket booth usher,
had been in on it. The longer he
was gone, the more I clung to other ways he was going to credit
himself for another triumphant gag.

 After about
fifteen minutes, my heart was racing, my palms sweaty, and I swore my throat
was closing together. Staring at the numberless clock, I was sure I had lost another
year of my life to the stress of not knowing where I was, if my best friend was
really in a pod somewhere, and to whom the Danny clone was informing that I was
sick.

 Obsessed
with checking the clock and the door, I’d barely noticed the room around me. To
distract myself from impending doom, I studied my surroundings—secret agent
style. There was silver around the room that gleamed from all angles and a supply
of electronic equipment, unusually neat and tidy. This was strange because it would
have been Dan’s area. Always playing deejay, he was borderline professional—though
I speculated he did this just to meet girls, which was how Petra and I had met
him. He had exuded every ounce of his worldly charms on Petra. Despite the fact
that she’d smiled at his jokes and then blown him off later, he’d just shrugged
at her rejection. Shortly after her dismissal, he and I had been discussing
music and poking fun as though we had grown up together.

 This Dan
was undeniably different. Maybe it was environmental. If he worked here, there
must’ve been a clean-up crew constantly following him around. It was way too
organized, and the floor was visible. I’d always suspected Dan’s head to be so
full of genius that the thought of vacuuming or tidying up was beyond him; as
if immune to clutter for he was on to the next scientific breakthrough, or the
next formula for whatever feeling struck his mood. This was where my recent
roommate skills had come in handy—I was always cleaning up. It was my thing,
other than dancing, formerly. I especially cleaned like crazy when too high and
in need of something to do, which was most of the time lately, I was ashamed to
admit.

 There was
nothing for me to do in here. There was no need to dust, nor piles of papers to
be organized, and nothing on the floor that needed to be picked up to avoid
bodily harm. It was spotless. This only made me nervous. The combination of
hunger, blinding silver everywhere, and screaming nerves was forming a migraine.
Danny was going to be slapping me awake from another fainting spell
momentarily, if he returned. To sideline that worry, I moved on to the bigger
one—Dan was not speaking. That just wasn’t possible.