58.
I have to get this. I have to get this. I have to get this.
The school day was almost through. It took all of Freya’s willpower to stay focused on Mr. Manzinni, if she let her attention slip for even an instant her mind would gallop ahead to seeing Dan after school. Mr. Manzinni was studiously avoiding eye contact with Freya, but everyone else’s eyes seemed to linger on her. They were all waiting for her to fall apart again.
I won’t, Freya thought, her brow creasing with determination. I’m getting better. I can do this. Her hand dipped into her pocket for the Starball, all day it had been merely warm. She wondered if it had overtaxed itself last night. Her mind wandered down the line of inquiry until she realized she was daydreaming. When she refocused on class, she found she had no clue what Mr. Manzzini was saying.
I have to get this.
Freya bit down on her lower lip, trying to concentrate.
“Conjugates are radical expressions such as radical A plus radical B or radical A minus radical B…” Mr. Manzinni droned. “Like radicals are radical expressions that have the same index and the same radicand.”
Freya was utterly lost. Words streamed past her, meaningless as the burbling of a river. As she glanced around, Freya could see she wasn’t the only one: pens were chewed, faces scrunched with incomprehension, heads lowered in defeat.
Freya longed for Mrs. Jean, her Algebra 1 teacher. It had been such a different class. Mrs. Jean’s method was to give the class a practical problem and let them try to work it out themselves. Afterward she would swoop in with a formula that made everything easier, the experience of having tried first made the lessons seem much more significant.
Freya had loved the feeling of things clicking into place, the sudden burst of understanding. She never felt that way in Mr. Manzinni’s class. Even when she finally grasped a lesson, she still felt like she was way behind, just clinging on for survival.
That was another thing, there was nothing in Mr. Manzinni’s class Freya could touch. Mrs. Jean’s classroom had been full of wooden blocks and plastic polygons, she was always talking about “tactile learning.” Betty hadn’t liked it, she’d joked they were back in kindergarten, but Freya found the props very helpful. It was so much easier to pick up an idea if she could put her hands on it. Sometimes during a test she could shut her eyes and remember handling the blocks, the associations would snap together and she would have the answer.
There was nothing to hold onto in Mr. Manzinni’s classroom, just the whiteboard and his terrible handwriting. Everyone seemed listless and drowsy, the classroom was always a few degrees too warm. Freya drifted into thoughts of Dan, of getting her hands on him. Before she knew it the class was ending and everyone was packing up to go.
Freya blinked, wondering how much she’d missed. She had to stop zoning out, she was definitely going to fail if she couldn’t get it together. She packed everything up and the zipper of her bookbag got caught on a fringe of fabric, as she tried to get it free she noticed her fingers were trembling.
Freya had been dying to see Dan all day and she was growing more nervous by the minute. She’d rehearsed the things she wanted to say, trying to think of the questions he would ask, all the places he might get upset. Now it felt like all that preparation was wasted. There was no way Dan could understand. What if he freaked out? What if he never wanted to see her again? What if he told someone and they both wound up in a mental hospital?
Imagine the best possible outcome.
Freya was upset enough to try Dr. Garbuglio’s advice. She shut her eyes and envisioned things turning out OK. Dan understanding everything, not being mad about the Starball. Trigonometry suddenly making sense. Malcolm Lewis getting run over by an eighteen wheeler. She took a deep breath through her nose and exhaled slowly, then worked the zipper free.
Mr. Manzinni smiled at her and waved as she left, she managed an awkward wave back. She was doomed when the test came. If only Betty were taking this class with her, if only she had someone to help her figure this out. But Betty was a thousand miles away, she still hadn’t replied to Freya’s last email. There was no one for her but the orb. Freya shook her head and dropped her books in her locker and headed for the parking lot.
* * *
A gauntlet of staring eyes awaited Freya outside of Grayson. It wasn’t only the other students, she felt like the parents in the pick up lane were gawking at her too. Freya wanted to pull up the hood of her jacket and disappear beneath it. Instead she drew in air through her teeth and held her head up, meeting the stares. She wanted everyone to know she wasn’t afraid of Malcolm Lewis or anyone else.
Dan’s pale blue Toyota was close to the front of the pick-up line, his was the only face that lit up for her.
“Hey Freya!”
Dan smiled like nothing strange had passed between them and they were just two kids about to go on a drive.
“Hey Dan,” she smiled back, forgetting to be nervous for a moment.
“Any progress on the Malcolm thing?” Dan asked, motioning towards the bike rack.
“Nope. They sent a car out to his mother’s house this morning, but they can’t find him. I’m a little worried Lassa will get to him before the police do.”
“Woah. For real?”
“Yeah, she’s friends with Radomir’s dad. Dad-omir was a paratrooper. I could kinda see the two of them hunting him down.”
“Jesus,” Dan muttered.
“I mean, they probably won’t,” Freya added, picking up on Dan’s discomfort. He hadn’t even cracked a grin at ‘Dad-omir’.
“Anyhow, he doesn’t matter. Do you want to go somewhere and talk?”
“How heavy is this going to be?” Dan asked.
“Pretty heavy,” Freya admitted.
“Can we go for a run first? I didn’t get out this morning. It usually helps me calm down.” There was something a little frantic behind the words, a sense Dan was barely holding it together. His left hand was in a tight grip on the steering wheel, Freya realized Dan was just as nervous as she was.
“We can do that,” she agreed.
As they drove to Nading Hill Park she talked with Dan about his day. He’d spent the morning taking the ASVAB. The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery was the test everyone had to take to get into the military. As she listened to Dan describe the test, Freya found herself wanting to take it as well, just to see how she would do. Lassa would be thrilled.
“I don’t really want to join,” Dan admitted. “This recruiter calls me every week, I guess he can smell blood. If my scholarships don’t work out that’s pretty much my fallback plan. I don’t want to take out a bunch of crazy loans to go to college.”
“Would the military let you in?” Freya asked and then instantly felt regret.
For a second Dan didn’t understand what she meant, and he winced when he figured it out.
“Sorry,” she said quickly.
“No, it’s ok. The hospital recorded the Valium thing as an accidental overdose instead of an attempt. I’d told them I was just trying to get high.”
Freya noticed Dan carefully avoided saying the word ‘suicide.’ His mouth was a flat line of tension as his eyes fixed forward on the road. Maybe there was something kind of military about him, the driven part he was always trying to cover up with jokes.
“I’d need a wavier to get in but the recruiter says it’s doable as long as I don’t want to be special forces or anything. Which I don’t, I don’t even want to be regular forces. I just may not have any other option. I don’t even know what I would major in if I could get a scholarship. I really need to figure it all out soon.”
Listening to the conflict in Dan’s voice, Freya was reminded that she would never have to worry about money for college. She didn’t have to work at a diner to pay for gas and Krav Maga. She had two more years to decide what she wanted to study, and if she wanted to wanderjhar in Europe for a year before deciding, Lassa would be on board. Freya’s life was so easy compared to Dan’s, and it was still more than she could stand.
They arrived at the park. The road to Nading Hill Park was lined with black willow trees. The parking lot was empty, no one really came here after dark.
“What would you do in the military?” Freya asked.
“Medic, if I score high enough. I don’t want to kill anybody, but I’m not afraid to die either.” Dan pulled the Toyota into a space and threw the car into park. Freya reached over and put her hand over his on the gearshift, meeting his eyes.
“Wait ’til after the run to croak please,” she said. Dan broke out laughing, he’d expected her to be serious. He rolled his eyes up and stuck out his tongue, and she shoved his shoulder and climbed out of the car. She was stretching when he joined her on the track. When they were warmed up they jogged a lap to get each other’s measure. Then they began to run.
At first Freya was worried Dan would clown around or talk with her during the run and she wouldn’t be able to keep up with him. But he wasn’t the type of runner to waste breath on chatting. She found she could keep his pace without strain.
Five laps in, Freya realized this was exactly what they needed. With every lap her mind grew clearer. The endless tumbling of her thoughts slowed, she was gaining distance. As the laps fell away, she looked over at Dan less and less, focusing on the ground in front of her. The sound of soles hitting the track created the baseline for the chorus of their breathing. The stars were out and the wind sighed around them, the night air was cold and pure.
The pain it took to move forward lost significance, the present eclipsed the past, and the future was a glittering gem that raced effortlessly ahead of them, never to be caught. Freya felt like she could run forever. Twenty laps had been over long ago, but she wasn’t tired and Dan wasn’t either.
As their feet drummed against the ground, that perception rose to the forefront of her mind.
Dan wasn’t either.
Dan’s feet struck the ground at the same moment Freya’s did. He breathed in unison with her, even their hearts were beating in time. There was warmth burning against her thigh, and the doubling sensation became more and more apparent. The strange feeling had come on slow and subtle as they were preoccupied with the run, and it felt deeper than the night before. Two sets of eyes and ears saw and heard as one, racing against the night.
Dan’s thoughts flickered with alarm and Freya pushed back, she didn’t want the feeling to end. It was a trained response she’d picked up from playing guitar. You didn’t stop playing when the other person was flowing.
Dan’s steps faltered, and Freya ran a few steps past him. She wanted to keep going, the disconnect between their desires was like a tug of war. She skidded to a stop and turned around to make sure Dan was all right.
Dan’s breath came in great heaving pulls that desynchronized them, and he was teetering on the edge of throwing up. His nausea triggered her own and they each shut their eyes tightly, trying to hold on.
Am I high?
It was a thought, Dan hadn’t spoken but she heard the subvocalization as clearly as if he’d shouted it. A cascade of thoughts followed, he was afraid he was making a fool of himself, he was suspicious that Freya had drugged him somehow. Freya could see all the anxieties forever churning beneath his facade, and he could see hers. They felt naked.
No, everything is ok, Freya thought back, but he saw through the attempt, she was trying to convince herself as well. Undeterred, Freya reached out and set her hand on Dan’s arm. They felt the double sensation of touching and being touched, their eyes met and they shivered together. It was more than they could stand, the feeling of being watched, amplified to the point of distortion.
It was just like the dream, where they had shared a single body. Now they stood facing each other on the track, reeling with that same strange synchronicity. Dan wanted it to end. Freya could feel he wanted to shut his eyes and cover his ears with his hands, he wanted to scream at the intrusion. She let go of his arm flinched away from him, stung by the rejection. When Dan saw what he’d done, his stomach plunged, he stepped forward, holding out his hand. She could feel his fear that he’d screwed everything up.
It’s not you, I’m afraid.
The thought seemed to originate from both of them at once. They took a step closer, their hands met and they stood palm to palm, staring into each other’s eyes. Their overlapping perceptions sent the world into a spiral of mise en abyme, and they felt a kind of invertigo, as if they were lifting off their feet.
Unity.
It was a feeling they had been searching for their whole lives without knowing. The perfect moment thrummed between them. Freya and Dan stood together on the dark running track beneath the stars, closer than any human beings had ever been before.
They struggled to arrive on a definition of what was happening, there were no words for this yet. Each mind was seeking a way to describe the novel emotion, but nothing quite fit.
Unity was something completely new.
As they marveled at themselves, Freya and Dan began to feel the strain of maintaining this new state. Unity was too vast for either of them to contain, it demanded expansion beyond what they were capable of.
It’s like trying to lift weights that are too heavy, Dan thought, and at once he felt his description was inadequate, it didn’t capture the feeling.
It’s like we’ve overeaten, Freya thought, feeling the same sense of falling short. Or like we’re straining on the toilet… Oh god.
Freya couldn’t believe her mind had gone there, her embarrassment was sudden and staggering, a full body cringe like she’d been sheared in half. She tried to retreat, burying her face in her hands and screwing her eyes shut. But both gestures were useless, Dan was still behind her eyes, there was no hiding from him. She out peered at him through her fingers, burning with shame.
Dan had a seasick expression on his face, she could feel him fighting to hold back his own associations. They were caught in an involuntary cycle of gross thoughts, and the the harder they tried to push the images away the stronger they became. Freya was panicking, Dan reached out and gripped her hand, so insistent it bordered on painful.
“Breathe.” Dan exhorted her, the word rang clear in the frigid air.
Freya was the discontinuity, her whirl of shame threatened to capsize Unity. Dan wanted to reassure her, but she could read the web of impulses before every word formed.
The wind had picked up and begun to howl around them, Freya fought to calm herself. Unity was faltering, if they lost it forever it would be her fault for playing off key.
There was a twist of frustration pulling at Dan’s temples, he wanted so badly to explain and he couldn’t do it. Dan drew in a deep breath through his nose, and then she felt the sudden thrust of concentration. He was trying to project his thoughts.
At first it was like trying to force something in sideways, there was no give and they each felt pangs heralding a bad headache. But then there was a flash of comprehension, he stopped subvocalizing and his fumbling words became brilliant images that burned away everything else.
Freya was dazed by the intensity of Dan’s thoughts. They’d been whispering in a dark audience before and now the house lights were up, the stage of his mind was fully illuminated.
Freya clenched his hand, afraid of being overwhelmed. She could feel Dan sensing her panic and fighting to modulate his projection. It was as if he’d just learned to speak and he could only scream.
He was trying to give her his memory of the dream. Dan could remember every detail of what had been like to be Freya, the strange feeling of sharing a single body. She saw his intent, to tell her that they were the same, that they were both human and she didn’t need to be ashamed.
But the contrast between the way they thought was stark. It was as if their conversations before had been Dan been fumbling along in a foreign language and now he’d swapped to his native tongue.
Dan could remember the exact layout of her room as if he were reading a blueprint, with sharp lines and actual perspective. His memory Yggdrasil had texture and individual leaves, hers was just a faint line of a trunk fading into a haze of green. His thoughts had a dimensionality that was almost otherworldly to Freya, when she tried to remember the layout of his room it was looking at a flat photograph through fog.
There was so much more to him than she’d thought.
All the times where Dan had struggled with something she’d said or where she’d arrived at his conclusion midway through his sentence, Freya had suspected she was just smarter than him.
She had never expected a depth like this, something wholly beyond her. For a moment she was ashamed, but then she felt Dan caught in the same axis between shame and awe.
For all their intensity and precision, Dan’s constructs stopped at the surface. She remembered the sensations of being in his body, the width of his frame, the tension in his shoulders, the heat of his arousal, a thousand tiny sensations and impulses he couldn’t recall. As he delved into her, Dan was amazed by the way her memories were organized, interwoven in a web of emotion. Her recollections were like a tranquil library with everything perfectly shelved, his were a jangled bedlam. There was a basic, organizing principle in Freya that Dan had never known he lacked, and now its absence cut into him.
The sound of an engine jolted Freya and Dan from their introspection. A yellow arc swept across the field, the headlights gleamed in Dan’s eyes first, then Freya’s. Their bodies tensed simultaneously, primed to bolt.
The car circled the lot, slowing down to a stop as its lights illuminated Dan’s Toyota. Freya and Dan remained frozen, wondering if it was the police. The park was closed, they weren’t supposed to be here. But there was no siren whoop, no cherry and berry flash. It was too dark to make out anything. Finally the car began to move again, it completed its orbit of the lot and then gunned its engine as it shot out of the park and onto River Road.
Freya was fixated on the roar of the engine, trying to remember where she’d heard it before. She couldn’t place it, Dan was grappling to help but his memory for sounds was far weaker than hers.
They were probably just looking for a place to get high or make out, Dan supposed, though she could feel the nervousness jangling in his neck. He felt embarrassed that he was so ready to run away, a sense that he was supposed to be braver.
We’re wasting this, Freya thought, jarring Dan out of the eddy of shame. They were learning that Unity flowed better if they kept pulling one another up.
Tell me more about you, she wished at Dan.
He summoned memories of his childhood, and they spilled into her being like ink. Dan’s recollection triggered her own, they would bloom in him, blending with his experiences until it was difficult to tell what had happened to who, or if the distinction was even important. They were fascinated with themselves, wheeling deeper and deeper inward.
The strange car was nearly forgotten. They had been standing on the field with the wind blowing around them for a long time, all the heat from their run had dissipated. There were nagging feelings that they should get out of the cold, but neither was willing to stop and risk the moment.
Dan’s memories had an addictive quality for Freya. His upbringing was so different it felt almost as if he’d been raised on another planet. Freya was an only child, she’d grown up cocooned in Lassa’s neurotic desire for order. Her childhood was long stretches of inward-turning silence, friendless solitude punctuated by interactions with adults.
Dan had company from the day he was born. His twin sister was there for all of his adventures. Their neighborhood was full of children running wild with them in the cypress swamp behind their house. Freya was entranced at a memory of Dan and Angie proclaiming themselves prince and princess of their flooded domain from atop a rickety trellis that swayed beneath them with every step.
Their house was full of sound and clutter. There had been two cats, a dog and a parakeet joined by a rotating cast of aunts and uncles, an endless stream of cousins and grandparents. People were always around.
While young Freya despaired for for something to pierce the silence, Dan was yearning for it, desperate for a break from the chaos. Suddenly she understood why there was no music in his car, why he spent so much time running on his own.
Dan was just as interested in Freya. She tried to share pieces of herself with him but they were such meager offerings compared with the wealth of his memories. It wasn’t just that his recollection had more fidelity, it was the way he remembered, tying everything into his sense of smell.
Instead of discrete moments, he remembered things in eras, whole stretches of time where there was a predominant scent and an emotion he had associated with it. He could perfectly recall the faint scent of cumin suffusing everything indoors at his Grandma’s house on Sundays where the whole family would gather for dinner. Then the pine-needle and azalea scent of decline as Dan and his sister were banished into the yard to play during visits, so their mother could care for grandma. At last, the lysol-over-diaper stink of the nursing home that had been brief but terrible. There was nothing like that on Freya’s side. Randall’s parents were gone and Lassa’s were forsaken.
She wanted all of it, wanted to live inside of his skin, to forget about Freya entirely. The feeling alarmed Dan, and she felt miserably inadequate. She thought she could be a writer of songs? A poet? This whole time she hadn’t even been alive, she’d just been a specter tugging at the fringes.
“No, it’s not like that,” Dan was saying aloud, but behind it she could feel a swelling wave of his pity. She shut her eyes tightly and felt tears squeezing from them and running down her face. There was a surprising darkness, she didn’t see through Dan’s eyes any longer.
Then it was gone.
The last thing they felt together was the Starball’s heat in Freya’s pocket. The connection was severed.
“I’m sorry,” Freya said, her voice sounding strange as it echoed only in her own skull. “I fucked it up.”
Dan was aggrieved, his eyes shot around them, as if trying to find the thing they’d lost.
“No,” he breathed, it was almost a whimper. He looked at his own hands, opening and closing them and he looked to her, she didn’t mirror the movement.
“Oh my god no,” he began to cry, tears ran down his face in the moonlight. He slumped onto the field and then curled into a ball and cried. Freya sank to join him and together they wept on the cold ground, their sobs disappearing into the night. Neither of them could find the strength to go on.
Freya could feel the Starball at work, burning in her pocket when everything else was numb. It was trying to bring them back, trying to equalize their despair. If they didn’t get up and go somewhere warm soon, they were going to get hypothermia. They could literally die of sadness.
“Dan, get up,” Freya said, her voice seemed impossibly small against the enormity of the night. He didn’t respond.
“DAN!” she demanded, shaking him. He opened his eyes and they were distant, slow to focus. “Dan come on, we can’t stay here.”
He nodded and rose awkwardly onto the field, they could barely walk. Together they staggered across the field to his car, with numb hands he fumbled with his keys. The Toyota’s engine turned on the second try and he cranked the heat as high as it would go.
“It hurts,” was all he could manage, and she nodded in agreement. They had been whole but now they were shattered. She threw her arms around Dan and hugged him as hard as she could, but the gesture felt useless and insignificant. No embrace could repair this, compared to what they’d lost they were as distant and lonely as the stars.
