The Twilight Swimmer (11 page)

Brandi, Candace and Lacy sat at their usual table, beneath the imperiled fishermen. They’d decided the previous year that the captain was handsome, in a paternal sort of way, with his floppy yellow hat, bushy moustache and intense green eyes. You could tell just by looking at him that he would die to protect his crew and, by extension, the families the girls planned to have with him. They’d gone so far, at one point, as to draw straws for his imaginary affections. Brandi won, and had kept the straw in her locker ever since.

Candace was in the middle of a very long monologue, her mozzarella sticks long since forgotten and disgustingly room temperature. “I heard it was some kind of cult meeting, like Satanists or something. They all find each other on the Internet, because real Satanists are hard to find, even in a big city. Lots of fakers, lots of posers, but most of them won’t do anything really Satanic when it comes down to it.”

“What does ‘really Satanic’ mean,” asked Lacy with a shiver. “If it has to do with babies, hurting babies, I don’t want to hear about it.”

“No, not babies,” Candace assured her with a mischievous grin.

“Or animals!” Lacy added with a start.

Lacy’s lower lip was actually quivering at the thought of an innocent animal being harmed for any reason, but particularly for something as ludicrous as a covert religious ceremony. She absentmindedly reached for Candace’s cold mozzarella sticks and began to gnaw on one, as if taking a medication to calm her nerves. Candace watched her friend eat, transfixed by Lacy’s behavior and by a crumb affixed to her quivering lip that seemed to defy all laws of physics.

“I don’t think they hurt anything living,” Candace went on, at last. “Maybe themselves. Sometimes those people prick their thumbs and drip blood into petri dishes, or onto crucifixes or old photos or other objects of religious importance.”

“Petri dishes are an object of religious importance?” asked Brandi, trying hard to keep the sarcasm she felt out of her voice.

“No, that’s for purity,” Candace explained, surprised that Brandi didn’t already know about the importance of purity in blood rituals. “You can’t drip pure blood onto cardboard or something, because then it would mix with, I guess, cardboard particles. On a microscopic level. And that would ruin the, you know, purity. If the blood isn’t pure, what’s the point?”

Brandi nodded enthusiastically, feigning agreement. Her eyes were drifting to the mural of the tumultuous sea whipped up by a tempest. The captain’s green eyes suddenly looked gray. Intensely gray. “Back up a minute. Why are we assuming the warehouse fire was caused by Satanists?”

“We’re not
assuming
. It’s like, deductive reasoning.” Candace turned to Lacy for verbal affirmation, but Lacy was still mourning the imaginary suffering of imaginary animals. “Who else would burn down a historic landmark? The only attendee we’re certain about is that girl Kelly. Kelly with the weird clothes and the weird hair and the weird everything else. So if she was there, and if she was so passed out when the fire guys got there that they had to totally rescue her, then she probably wasn’t alone. Right? So, like, detectivate the facts. The fire was started by some kind of organized weirdo organization, obviously.”

“Maybe it was an accident,” said Brandi, a hint of annoyance creeping into her tone.

Lacy returned to the conversation, the crumb still sticking to her lip. “Are you serious? An accident? I heard they could see the smoke from Boston, which is like, a thousand miles away.”

“Boston is not even close to a thousand miles away, and of course they couldn’t see it from Boston. How could they see it from Boston when you probably couldn’t even see it from your house?” Brandi raised one eyebrow and waited for a glimmer of recognition to appear in Lacy’s eye. It didn’t appear.

“My window faces the wrong way,” said Lacy with a victorious smile. “But I could totally smell it. Couldn’t you smell it, Candace?”

Candace nodded, then reached for a napkin and dropped it over her lunch tray to cover up the remaining morsels Lacy hadn’t commandeered.

Lacy gestured from Candace to Brandi, as if delivering the evidence of Candace’s nod. “You could smell it too, I bet. Why are you defending weirdoes and cultists?” she asked.

Brandi shook her head, getting frustrated. “I’m not defending anybody. I’m just saying that you weren’t there, so you don’t know. You’re both jumping to conclusions, making major assumptions, guessing for no good reason, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. How many ways do I have to say it before I don’t have to say it anymore?”

“Whoa, relax.” said Candace. “You’re getting, like, condescending.”

“Totally condescending,” Lacy confirmed.

Brandi shrugged, and buried her mouth in the crook of her arm to hide a yawn.

“Wait a second,” said Candace, her eyes going wide. “You were there, weren’t you?!”

Lacy gasped. “Oh my god! Brandi! Were you there? With the cult?” She turned to Candace, mouth agape. “No wonder she’s been acting so bizarre-o.”

Brandi glared at Lacy, who absentmindedly reached for Candace’s covered food and extracted another partially eaten mozzarella stick. She jammed it in her mouth and began chewing, without ever taking her eyes off Brandi.

Candace shook her head, slow and deliberate, smirking and scandalized. “Kelly’s been babbling about some tall man who rescued her from the fire. Total drug talk, everyone thinks. It was the paramedic firemen guys who dragged her out of there all sooty and raving. Or so everyone thinks. But if you were there, and you
so
were, let’s hear it. Was there some tall, male hero, wearing a lot less clothing than a lot of clothing, who saved the day?”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Brandi, averting her eyes.

Candace and Lacy both started laughing, convinced even more that Brandi was there the night of the fire. Their assuredness was obnoxious, and Brandi was readying herself for a quick departure. But before she could push her chair back, she felt hands take hold of its back and give it a gentle shake. Candace and Lacy looked behind her, above her head.

Way above her head.

“Ladies, sorry to interrupt. I have business with this girl.” Spider looked down at Brandi’s upturned face, and flashed her the same mischievous smile he had been wearing the day they met. “Greetings, Ms. Vine.”

“You’re looming, Spider.”

“I am, aren’t I? My bad.” Spider pulled out the chair next to Brandi’s and plopped down. “Still sort of looming, but there’s not much I can do about it. Genetics and what not. I’d hunch, but my mother made me promise not to, even when she’s not looking. Says it causes scoliosis, turns your spine into a question mark. I can’t argue with science, even junk science, when it comes from the mouth of the matriarch. She’s got this way of making absolute nonsense sound like a moral imperative. Am I rambling?”

Candace and Lacy both nodded, neither one quite able to muster words.

“I am a rambler. True story. Mom could probably point to some particular failure in my posture, during my formative years, that resulted in this particular verbal affliction. It’s more likely dietary, wouldn’t you think? What are the chances that slouching causes run-on sentences? Or, to be more accurate, sentences paired with sentences, creating paragraphs which, when spoken, are more like monographs. Monologues, I mean. Monographs are when your initials are on towels, or handkerchiefs. Who even has those anymore? God, I’m still rambling, aren’t I?”

Candace and Lacy nodded again, this time glancing over at Brandi, wondering when she would intervene.

“Spider,” said Brandi, “I have to go to class.”

“You’ve got five minutes, same as the rest of us,” blurted Candace.

“Thank you, yes, she does!” Spider reached across the table to high five Candace. Candace returned the high five awkwardly, nearly missing his palm, because she was distracted by the daggers Brandi was firing her way with narrow eyes.

“So, now, business.” Spider looked down at himself, and wagged both thumbs at his tee shirt. “Looks thick, doesn’t it. Like it’s not a normal tee shirt. Well it is normal, but check this out.” Spider grabbed the bottom of the tee shirt and lifted, dragging it up his long torso and pulling it over his head. It clung to his arms, and he had to wrestle with the fabric to pull it off completely. Underneath, he wore another tee shirt with letters carelessly stenciled on the chest.

“It says, ‘Brandi, I’m sorry’,” said Spider.

“Yes, I can read,” said Brandi.

With an amused shake of his head, Spider reached down and found the bottom of the new tee shirt. Once again he lifted, and once again he removed the shirt to expose another underneath. And now Brandi realized, he was wearing numerous tee shirts. This might take a while.

The next tee shirt read, “I’m kind of a jerk”. Spider frowned melodramatically and gave Brandi enough time to read the shirt before reaching down to peel it off. Before he could remove it, Brandi grabbed his wrist.

“How many tee shirts are you wearing? This is embarrassing,” said Brandi in a loud whisper.

“Deal with it. It took me hours to make these.”

She looked around the cafeteria and saw that some of the other students had taken notice of Spider’s routine. The usual buzz of the room and picked up a notch as news of his performance spread from person to person, from table to table. Before long, all eyes were on Spider. And on Brandi, the victim of his total lack of normal human inhibitions.

He pulled off his tee shirt, revealing the next. It read, “I made tee shirts to apologize…” He turned around to reveal the back of the shirt, which read, “…but that’s obvious.”

Candace and Lacy huddled together on the other side of the table, in shock. They had both pulled out cell phones and were recording video. Lacy leaned over to her left to make sure both Brandi and Spider were in the shot.

“Spider, I’m asking you to stop,” said Brandi. “I’m
telling
you to stop.”

Spider shook his head ‘no’ and peeled off another shirt. The next one read, “I’m begging forgiveness.”

Girls from a nearby table sighed in unison. Guys from another table nodded their respect for the sigh Spider had managed to elicit, silently taking notes.

Spider took off another shirt. The next read, “But that’s not all.” He waited for a long moment, perhaps seconds, staring at Brandi and letting the tension build. He didn’t look at anyone else, seemingly unaware that he and Brandi were not alone. She could hear her heart thudding in her chest, could feel it sliding up into her throat and lodging there. She was so mortified she hoped she would choke on it.

Then Spider climbed up on the hard plastic chair. His injured ankle made the ascent difficult, and he wobbled a bit as he stood upright. The crowd gasped, the suspense palpable. But Spider managed to keep his feet, and relieved sighs were audible all around. He was so tall, the extra foot and a half turned him into a giant, almost frightening. This is looming, thought Brandi. But only she seemed to see it that way. The other kids were looking on with bated breath, leaning forward with anticipation. Even a few teachers and lunchroom workers were now watching. They didn’t seem to have a problem with a student climbing on school property, to Brandi’s dismay.

He was only wearing two tee shirts now. And with all the students looking on, he peeled off the topmost garment to reveal the final shirt.

“Prom?” He asked the question aloud, in the exact moment that Brandi and the others read the single word, in big block letters, emblazoned on his chest like the insignia of a superhero.

A small cheer went up a few tables over. It was Jory, from the warehouse party. Randy and Sam were with him, and quickly joined the cheer. Other students echoed the sentiment, and in no time at all the whole room was chanting the word like a chorus. Like a mantra.

Prom! Prom! Prom!

“Well,” asked Spider, his mischievous grin in full effect. “No pressure, or anything.”

“I’m not happy about this,” said Brandi just loud enough for him to hear.

“That’s not a ‘no’, Ms. Vine.”

“Just get down! Please get down!” Brandi reached up and grabbed his hand, tried to pull him down. He resisted the tug, and found himself once again wobbling precariously on the chair. The crowd left off chanting ‘prom’ long enough to taunt Brandi playfully, urging her not to leave Spider figuratively, and literally, high and dry.

“Say yes!” someone shouted.

“Yes,” she muttered. “Okay? I’m saying yes. Yes.”

“Yes?” Spider asked, still wobbling.

“Yes! Now get down!” Brandi gave Spider a final tug, and this time he allowed his knees to buckle. With a graceful hop – still catlike, despite his injured ankle – he landed on the cafeteria floor. His good ankle took his weight with no problem, but his foot slipped on the pile of discarded tee shirts beneath his chair. With a whoop he dropped down onto his chair, landing hard on his slender rear end. He never stopped smiling, and the crowd loved it.

“You’ve got yourself a very public date, Brandi,” said Spider, congratulating himself for his coup.

“You’ve got yourself a date with a very cold fish,” answered Brandi. Her jaw clenched, her shoulders thrown back defiantly, she grabbed her lunch tray and marched through the crowd. As she exited through the cafeteria doors, the other students were all gathering around Spider to congratulate him. He was the only one who watched her go, his smile now melancholy.