July 14th, 2024

“… because you have to,” said the familiar man as his face faded away and the sound of the alarm on my phone cut the dream into colorful shreds that dissipated and blew away, leaving behind an ordinary bedroom and the feeling that I'd lost something I couldn't remember ever having had. I groaned and turned over so that I could hit the snooze button on my phone. I looked at the time: 5:15. I’d already snoozed the alarm clock twice. Fuck, I thought. An extra ten minutes isn’t going to do shit for me. Although I would have liked to sink back into that dream, which had been brilliant and weird and surreal and exciting in the way that all the best dreams are, it really was time to get up. Besides, in my experience it’s impossible to will yourself back into exactly the same dream you were just having, and anyway, the details of it were evaporating from my mind so quickly that I was forgetting what I’d liked so much about it in the first place. I groaned again, rolled over again, and gained my feet.

I went out into the hallway and tiptoed around the cat who liked to sleep in a bundle outside the door to my room. I would have let her sleep in my room, but if I let her in, she’d just spend the whole night lying against the inside of the door and meowing to be let back out into the hall. She always wanted to be wherever she wasn’t—a sentiment that I could relate to—but at least if she was out in the hall, her meowing wasn’t keeping anyone up but her.

I smiled down at her peaceful sleeping form and couldn't shake the feeling that I hadn't seen her in years. I looked around and smiled at everything in my house. I felt an inexplicable nostalgia for this place and these things that I'd never been without.

I rapped lightly on my sister’s door, which was slightly ajar. I heard her moan from within. “Five more minutes?” she pleaded, but even as she said it, I could hear her getting up.

As I’d done many weekday mornings since I’d been back home to work for the summer, I would drive her to her swim practice, grab breakfast, and then get to work making pizza dough for tomorrow’s pies. One of my parents would pick her up on their way to work and drop her off at a friend’s house on the way to the city. She’d walk or get a bus home from there. I never gave that much thought to her day after she was out of my car and out of my way, and my coworker Christine was often chastising me for it. “You can’t possibly think it’s safe for a thirteen year old girl to navigate her way home on her own, can you?” The truth was, Angie was fine on her own, was adept at Taekwondo, and was better at navigating public transit than I was, but I never argued the point. Christine had her reasons for being protective of young girls, particularly sisters, and I would never bicker with her about it. Not if I valued her friendship.

On our way to the sports complex where Angie’s swim team practiced, I saw her looking out the window with a pained look on her face. I was never quite sure how to handle situations like that. It was like, I could tell from her look that she wanted me to ask what was wrong, but if it turned out to be something I couldn’t help with, then what was the point? Still, I had made a promise to myself that I was going to make an effort to be a better brother this summer. Our age difference had ensured that we had never been that close, but this seemed as good a time as any to start.

“Something on your mind, kid?” I asked, immediately questioning my choice of words. Do I sound too grown up? I wondered. Too lame?

“No … well actually, yes. There’s this boy who comes to watch our swim meets—Sarah’s brother, and—”

“Say no more,” I said, feeling at once pleased that she would come to me for boy advice, and also terrified at the prospect of actually giving her any. I faked a coughing fit to give myself time to think.

“So … you like this boy?”

“What? No. It isn’t like that. Like really not like that,” she replied.

Oh. Well now I have no idea where this is going.

“Okay … so then what is it?”

“I think he’s doing something bad.”

“Oh my God, Angie,” I said, my heartbeat picking up and my skin prickling, “If you suspect he’s … he’s …” I couldn’t even finish the thought.

“I think he’s hurting himself,” she said. “Like cutting,” she added.

“Oh,” I said, relieved. I realized it was callous to be relieved that the boy was merely cutting himself, but compared to where my thoughts had originally gone regarding the older brother of a young girl who came to all her swim meets and was doing something ‘bad’, it seemed like the lesser of two evils.

I was struck by a sudden flash of déjà vu. The name … Sarah. Sarah's brother. Didn't Sarah's brother die? I thought. Immediately I shook off the feeling, stamped out the thoughts. Where had they come from?

“What makes you think that?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady, pulling my mind back into the moment.

“I see the marks on his arms and legs sometimes. He always wears long pants and shirts when I see him, but … Sometimes I can’t help but notice when he stands up or sits down or scratches his chin and the sleeve or the pant leg moves. I know it’s none of my business, but …” She let the sentence hang, probably hoping I’d interject with some great idea. I failed to do so. “Do you think we should tell someone? His parents? The swim coach?”

I took my time in answering. I was reminded of an eerily similar situation that had happened to me around her age. I had suspected that my friend Darren was being abused at home because I saw bruises on his arms and legs sometimes. I had felt like it was my duty to report it to my teacher. Darren had ended up getting taken out of his home for months while an investigation was conducted, and in the end they’d determined that Darren—as he’d insisted from the start—just liked to rough house with his older siblings, and his parents had never laid a hand on him—as they’d insisted from the start. But despite the results of the investigation being favorable to them, a seed of suspicion and doubt had been planted in people’s minds. Darren’s parents were suddenly treated differently by their coworkers and members of the community, school staff treated them with distrust, their friends became distant. For Darren and his siblings’ part, the whole ordeal had left them changed. The stress of being taken away from their home had left them emotionally vulnerable and untethered. Institutions they had learned to put their faith in were suddenly no longer trustworthy. They learned not to depend on anything. Eventually Darren’s dad lost his job, and Darren dropped out of school in the tenth grade. I hadn’t heard from him since. Now maybe it wasn’t fair to place the entire burden of guilt for that unhappy affair on myself, but that didn’t stop me. And while I had largely gotten over it, and didn’t dwell much on it anymore, the notion that interfering in someone else’s life was a good idea—even if it seemed like it was to help them—had largely abandoned me.

And here was the crux of my hesitation to give advice to my little sister. My instinct in almost all situations since then was to do nothing, to not get involved. Maybe her natural development would take her in a different direction—and perhaps a better one—if not for my influence. On the other hand, any advice I gave her really would be what I thought was best. But then how could I possibly know what was best? Finally I went with my gut.

“Well, Ange … It doesn’t really sound like you have that much to go on … Listen, I know you’re just trying to look out for your friend and her brother, and that’s great, but unless you know something for sure, maybe it’s best to just leave it alone? Wait until you really know what’s going on? You wouldn’t want someone to accuse you of doing something you weren’t doing, right? Just because they thought they saw some marks on your arms. I mean, did you really get a good look?”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Well … I guess not. I only see them for a second every once in a while.”

“And they could be something else, right? Like … like I don’t know, cat scratches or something? You know how the marks from Patty can look pretty severe when she hasn’t had her nails trimmed in a while …”

“They could be, I guess …” she said, looking at me incredulously.

“Then that’s probably all it is,” I said, sounding more confident than I felt. “Anyway, if you’re still worried about it then just keep an eye out. See if you can’t get a closer look and if you get any better evidence, then you can decide what to do from there. You never want to act on incomplete information, right?” I asked, pulling up in front of the doors to the sports complex.

“No. I get it. You’re probably right,” she said, although she still sounded unsure. She took off her seatbelt and opened the door.

“Hey, have a good day, kid. See you at dinner time. Love you,” I said.

“Yeah, yeah,” she said, “Smell ya later.” She laughed as she walked away, but I sensed that there was still tension in her laugh. As I almost always did after I made a decision or helped someone else with one, I wondered if I had done the right thing. I decided I probably hadn’t.

I put it out of my mind.

———————

“Cartright, you ready to sling some pies?” laughed Harper as I came into the kitchen.

“What the hell are you doing here so early?” I asked. “Don’t you work lunch shift today?”

“Steve M. quit,” she said. “I’m covering.”

“No shit?” I asked. “Well maybe now’s the time to get your brother to apply here finally.”

“Lincoln?” she asked. “Not a fucking chance. You know him, he’s too busy using his computer to save the world. Or hack the U.S. government. Or program an A.I. girlfriend to replace Shan once and for all. I honestly have no idea what he does on that thing, but he’s on it all day. I guess you wouldn’t know that, though, because you never come over anymore.” Her tone was accusatory, but she must have known that the impetus was on her brother to begin the process of rebuilding our friendship. Any overtures I’d made had been routinely rebuffed.

“‘Sup, dickheads?” asked Christine, walking in.

“Late again, Chris?” I asked. “Not a great look. Not when the kid is showing you up, coming in three hours early to cover for Steve M. and you can’t even manage to get your lazy ass here on time to start your own shift.”

She gave me the finger and got to work cleaning her station.

Harper, who had been animated and congenial before Christine had come in, was now sticking to her station and being merely polite. Part of it was perhaps the aura of intimidation that was intrinsic to Christine’s character, which was definitely something that took some getting used to. But there was something else there, too. Something I hadn’t been able to identify, but it was like Harper held some sort of weird grudge against Christine over some perceived slight, even though as far as I knew they didn’t know each other except through work and they had never been anything less than polite with one another. In fact, when Harper had started and Chris was training her, I had often walked in on the two of them laughing at some secret, shared joke that they were never eager to share with me. But at some point that had changed, and despite the fact that Chris was just as friendly toward Harper as ever, the response she got was terse and testy.

I sometimes imagined them coming to blows. Not as something I wanted to happen, but these sort of mindless hypothetical speculations are what often filled my mind during the boring tedium and monotony of the work day. On the one hand, it seemed like it would be no contest: Harper—although three years younger than Chris—was nearly four inches taller, and wiry. She was athletic, like my sister, and she was at a competitive level in track and gymnastics. She was quick, agile, and sharp. By contrast, Chris was short and petite, without much visible muscle. She was pretty, but that wouldn’t do her much good in a fight. And almost all of her passion ran toward academics rather than physical endeavors.

On the surface, the outcome seemed like a given, but every time I decided that Harper would have a physical altercation with Christine in the bag, something held me back from complete certainty. Part of it was my feelings for Chris, probably, but there was also a certain tenacity in her; an unwillingness to lose, a fighting spirit that was almost scary sometimes. And, if I was being honest, she possessed within her a rage that she kept well hidden, but that I knew the cause of. If she tapped into that, there was no telling what she might do.

One thing was for certain: if the tension between them ever did boil over into something physical, I’d want to be miles away from the destruction.

I found myself still running through various combat scenarios in my head hours later when the lunch crew started pouring in, signaling that I was only an hour and a half from the end of my shift. Jaleel Abdullahi was giving me the characteristic look that told me he was trying to figure out what I was thinking about.

“What’s going on up there today, boss?” he asked me, putting on his apron and hat.

“Let me ask you something, Jaleel. Who’ve you got in a fight between Harper and Christine?”

“Oh man!” he said, grinning. “I don’t know if I even want to answer that one. If I say Harper and Christine overhears, you think she’d kick my ass?”

“It’s a distinct possibility.”

“In that case, my lips are sealed.”

Jaleel was, unlike Christine, strictly a work friend. Although Chris and I had met through working at Slice of Heaven when we were both still in high school, we had become closer over the years and had hung out outside of work many times. Never doing anything I'd consider a date, much as I might like to, but still … We’d gone off to different colleges, and any romantic spark that might have been ready to catch at one time had gone out—for her at least—but every summer break when we came back home we’d both ended up back here, and we’d kept our friendship up.

Conversely, I’d only met Jaleel this summer as his family had just moved here from Michigan, and although we got along well enough at work, I couldn’t imagine we’d have enough in common to sustain a friendship in the outside world. For one thing, I was incredibly humbled by his presence: he was taller than me, dark skinned, handsome, funny, and above all else, probably the smartest guy I’d ever met, with the possible exception of my best friend from high school and Harper’s older brother, Lincoln. A part of me I didn’t want to acknowledge burned with a small and secret jealousy any time I was talking to Christine and he entered the room. Although he’d never shown anything resembling romantic interest in her, I couldn’t help but feel threatened by him.

The one thing he lacked was approachability, and I knew he came off as arrogant to anyone who didn’t know him well. This was something else he shared with Lincoln, except with Lincoln the arrogance was real, and not just an air. For Jaleel, I got the impression from offhand remarks he’d made that his aloofness was the result of constantly feeling like he had to prove himself and work hard to be better than his peers back in Michigan. It hadn’t been easy for him, he’d confessed to me during a marathon dishwashing session, being the son of a Nigerian father and a Pakistani mother, growing up in rural America where the next most dark skinned person was your slightly tanned Germanic neighbor who had just gotten back from vacation in Punta Cana. For Jaleel, being smart had never been enough. He’d had to be the best.

Once you cracked his shell, though, he was warm, funny, and truly genuine. But again, he was better than me in almost every measurable respect, and my ego wouldn’t allow me to get too close to him.

“Man, are you going to get those toppings prepped, Adam, or are you just going to stand there?”

That was Chris, drawing me out of my reverie.

“Why can’t you do it?” I teased.

“Because my hands are covered in tomato sauce. And because it’s your job. So to sum up, you have to because you have to.”

Because you have to, I thought in a voice that wasn't mine. I went dreamy-eyed again. My eyes drifted to a stainless steel bowl sitting upside down in the sink and I became fixated on it. It was polished to an impressive shine and it was hard to pull my eyes or thoughts away from it. It reminded me of something. Orb. The word came unbidden to my mind. It meant nothing. Or it meant something very important that I couldn't remember.

“Oh my God, Adam. Are you seriously just going to stand there all shift? Because fine, I’ll do all your work for you, but at least have the courtesy to stand out of the way.”

“I’m sorry. Just something you said reminded me about a weird dream I had last night.”

“Ooooh, a weird dream, huh? Was I in it?”

I turned my eyes down to my station and hoped my reddening face was hidden.

“Oh my God, I was in it, wasn’t I?” Chris asked, clearly hoping for a stronger reaction.

“You were, actually. You died.” I hadn't really remembered that part of the dream until she'd asked. I concentrated and a few more random details of the dream surfaced. I mourned you, I thought. That part hadn’t felt like a dream. I felt sick. Something of this must have shown on my face, because her humor evaporated in an instant.

“Oh shit. I don’t know if you’re joking or not, man, but I was just messing with you. You don’t have to tell me about your crazy dream, or whatever.”

“No, no,” I said, recovering my composure. “It’s just that I was really wishing that part of the dream had been real. The part where you died, I mean.”

“Wow. Dick,” she laughed.

The rest of the day passed unremarkably, except that I spent it in a distracted state, trying in vain to recover more of the dream that kept slipping just out of reach. Like all good dreams, it felt important to remember. And like all good dreams,

I was having trouble convincing myself that it didn’t mean anything.