Beast(14)

Snacks in my lap, I make my way to the front of the hospital. I sit under the wide awning and wait. There’s not a great deal to look at. To my left, there’s an off-ramp from a highway. To my right, there’s a bus stop. Nothing special, just a boring clear and metal box with some posters and a bench and a schedule on a pole. One of the posters tugs at my eye. It looks like an advertisement for my favorite podcast about stuff you missed in history class. It’s literally called Stuff You Missed in History Class. I listen while I do homework because I like it when my brain bounces around, the colliding information zinging between hemispheres. Graphing the derivative of f while learning about an eighteenth-century vampire panic in New England must be what smoking a whole bong feels like.

I wheel over to the bus stop. The poster turns out to be a regular old band poster. An upcoming show. One band is called Stuff (original) and the other is called Missed History. I clench my fist and shake at it, old-man style. Curse you, poster. Making me wheel over here under false pretenses—get off my lawn. I’m about to wheel back when I slam on the brakes.

In the far corner under the giant plexiglass dome, huddled in a tiny little ball of boots and legs and skirt, kneels Jamie.





SIX


“Jamie?” I say, and she snaps up to her feet.

“What are you doing here?”

My gaze darts to the left before landing back on her. “I was looking at a poster. What are you doing here?”

She looks at the camera cradled in her hands. “I was taking pictures.”

“Of what?”

Jamie shrugs lightning fast, a tightly coiled spring. “There’s some, um, rust, you know, in the corner over there,” she says. “It’s red. The pole is blue. Looks cool.”

“Rust.” I back up my wheels, and her shoulders instantly soften and relax. My back teeth press together. We were just talking like twenty minutes ago. What happened to our five questions? She’s acting like I’m about to murder her or something. “Okay. I’ll let you get back to it.”

I reverse in a three-point turn out of the bus stop when the back wheel skips off the sidewalk and into a small ditch of dirt next to some newly planted seasonal mums. My right leg stupidly sticks out, awash in signatures of mediocre intent, and I glare at it while trying to push off. Mom will be here any minute, and I’m not ready for her slaughter of questions. I pivot and push but go nowhere.

Swiveling around in my seat, I look below. That one lump blocks me from going forward. I’m stuck. “Come on.” I give my wheels a shove forward, throwing my chest out for momentum.

“I’ll help you.” Jamie comes up behind.

“Don’t. I can do it.”

She steps away from me, hands up, as I grunt my way back onto the sidewalk. “All good?” she asks.

I don’t say anything. Maybe this is one of the rules of therapy; how should I know? Gripping the wheels, I turn them toward the hospital. Mom will freak if I’m not there.

“Hey,” Jamie calls out.

I pause.

“Can I take a picture of you in your wheelchair?”

“No.”

She dashes in front of me. “No?”

“No,” I say again, head down and staring at my lap. Those happy knees of hers are standing in front of my chair. I can’t go off-roading, that’s been proven. My only option is the sidewalk, and she’s starting to look like a very attractive speed bump.

“I can’t take one shot? Just one?” she asks.

“No way,” I say. “I don’t even let my mom take pictures of me.”

“Really? Why?”

I look up at her. “What the hell do you care?”

Her mouth drops open. “You don’t have to be rude.”

“Hold on. You’re the one acting like I was going to slit your throat in the bus stop, and now you’re all, sit still and pose for a picture?”

“You caught me off guard.”

“It’s a public space.”

“Well, maybe I get nervous in public spaces.”

“Well, maybe you’re crazy.”

She smooths her skirt. “Maybe you don’t know what it’s like to be a girl.”

A giant red stop sign shoots up inside my head. Cease and desist. JP always says when girls start whining about how hard it is to be a girl, smile and nod and move on as soon as possible. “You make a fair point.”

“Thank you. So can I take your picture?”

“No!”

“Dylan…”

“What?”

“Look.” Jamie comes near, stoops down, and shows me the screen of her camera. “I really am a photographer. See?” She flips from one frame to the next. Shadows behind a door, a pencil with a broken tip, an empty syringe surrounded by needles, someone’s bare back, a twist of yarn, uneaten food, empty prescription bottles, a half-pulled-back curtain, a close-up of her eye, and then finally the rust.

“You have no idea what you’re doing,” I say.

“What!” she explodes.

“I mean, not like you don’t know how to use a camera, but what are you taking pictures of?”

“Life, you *,” she snaps. “Because we’re human beings who should care about being alive, not about the glory of sitting next to some jamoke at a lunch table.”