Signal to Noise(74)

Meche answered at the fifth ring.

“Yes?”

“Meche, be downstairs.”

“You’re coming over? Now? It’s nearly midnight.”

“Be there.”

He hung up and by the time he parked his bike across the street from her building, Meche was standing outside, arms crossed and wearing a large grey sweater. She looked annoyed, but as he walked closer her expression changed.

“What happened to you?” she asked. “Did you have an accident?”

“Constantino and his friends beat me up.”

“Why?”

“Because I went out with Isadora tonight.”

“What the hell? What are you going to do?”

He knew what he wanted. No trouble coming up with a picture. It was black on white, very simple.

“Get on the bike. We’re going.”

“My mom’s not going to let me go for a ride at this time of the night, I—”

“No, I mean go as in go.”

“What?”

“Run away with me.”





MECHE TRIED TO process the four words properly, but they were too daunting. Run away with me.

“Let’s go to Europe together,” he said. “Let’s see the Arctic circle.”

“Okay, unless you have a super-duper motorcycle that can float all the way to...”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“What do you mean? You’re freaking me out.”

Sebastian leaned down, grabbing her hands between his and pulling her up, so she had to stand on her tiptoes to look at his face.

“I hate this place. I hate this neighbourhood. I hate the kids here. I hate the school. I hate the view from my apartment window. You hate it too. What are we waiting for? Let’s run away together.”

Meche had never seriously considered running away. That’s the kind of stuff people did in the movies, like joining the circus. It didn’t happen in real life. Meche didn’t want to go. She didn’t like high school much but there was her dad, mom, grandma. The records and the computer sitting in the living room. Daniela. Her room with the posters of several bands and the narrow bed. She feared abandoning all that.

“Sebastian, that’s silly,” she whispered.

“Meche, you said you’d never leave me.”

“Come on.”

His hands clutched her own together and he pulled her forward, her knuckles brushing his chest.

“Come with me.”

Meche wondered what was his plan was. Would they just get off in some other city when they ran out of gas? Then, what? What were two teenagers supposed to do to survive? Beg for a coin, wash car windows at the stoplight, sell bubble gum to the drivers? Meche had seen street kids. She didn’t hold any wild dreams that somehow they’d make it to Paris whole, get a garret with a view of the Seine and Sebastian could be a bohemian writer while Meche coded some awesome bit of software which made them millionaires. That was the kind of shit to be found in one of Daniela’s novels. Shit which never happens because when teenagers run away they end up living in some abandoned hovel which smells of piss, prostituting themselves to make ends meet.

“We can cast a spell. We can get the money. We can do it.”

Meche opened her mouth. His face had the kind of need she had never seen in another human being and there was a hunger there she did not understand.

She was fifteen. The intensity of him, of this moment, caught her unprepared. She felt that if she went with Sebastian he’d steal a deep part of her. She would change and she feared this. She feared him, feared what it might mean.

“I am—”

“No,” she said jumping back. “No way.”

Sebastian didn’t believe her. For a long minute he smiled, confident, believing she was just joking. She would laugh soon and tell him of course she was going. His smile died as she backed away, towards the entrance of the building.

He walked back to his motorcycle and jumped on it before turning to look at her.

The look he gave her turned Meche to stone. His face was splintered with pain. He looked ahead and Meche raised her hands, thinking of stopping him, thinking—

Too late. The motorcycle sped away and she walked back into her building.





SEBASTIAN STOOD OUTSIDE his apartment building, counting the beats of his heart.

How stupid of him. Idiotic. To think he would do something as silly, and Meche, that she might—

He leaned over the motorcycle, thinking he was about to cry.

“Sebastian?”

He looked up and saw Isadora stepping out of a car, pressing her hands against her mouth. Her driver gave him an indifferent glance, as though he were a stain on the ground.

“I’m so sorry about what happened,” she said.

“What are you doing here?” he muttered.

“I was very worried.”

“I’m alright.”

Isadora walked to his side, squeezing his arm. “He’s a brute,” she whispered. “Oh, I truly am sorry.”

“No broken bones,” he said, wincing. “Just bruises.”

“I should get you to a doctor.”

“I’m fine. Really. I just need some sleep.”

They were both quiet.