Work Text:
Come back,
I'll show you the roses
That brush off the snow
And open their petals
Again and again...
Maybe I'm just
the horizon you run to when
She has left you there...
And Spring brings fresh
Little puddles
That makes it all clear...
Hey, do you know?
Do you know
What this is doing to me?
- Tori Amos
"Here In My Head"
I. Relief
She was gone long before he awoke. Kevin rolled over onto the right side of the bed, into nothing but covers that were still made and coolness from sheets that had been left alone all night.
Emotional devastation aside, it was kind of neat that he slept so soundly that he barely even messed up his side of the bed.
Usually the bed looked like a disaster area, and one of his pillows was on the floor, and somehow, he always managed to get a pair of cold feet going up his leg.
He laid in bed until two in the afternoon and missing her cold feet. He slept on and off, and didn't even bother to turn on the TV.
There were messages from his coworkers, wishing him well on finding him a new job, on the answer phone, but he didn't get up to get them.
He didn't get dressed until after dark.
He hopped from pub to pub, not wanting to sit anywhere too long. He needed to do something. Scream. Run in circles. Get shot. Anything to break the stifling stillness of the world. Nothing was happening. No big world disaster on the news. Nothing to distract him.
Everything tasted a little different pub to pub. Kevin decide that was his project for the night. Until finally he was too tired – maybe too drunk – to think of another pub.
So he held his keys in his hand and tried to walk back to his flat. He got sicker and sicker as he walked. His sweat froze in the cold air and he collapsed forward against the edge of a building and threw up.
He heaved and choked until there was nothing left. He stumbled into a building that looked like his flat and up four flights of stairs and reached in his pocket for his keys. Only, they weren't there. Neither was his wallet.
Kevin pressed his face into the crack between the frame and the door and slammed his hand into the door.
He screamed loud and sank down to the ground. He used his arms on his knees as a pillow and drifted into something like sleep. His eyes slid closed and Kevin could hear the other tenants that were still awake somewhere in the peripheral of his mind. Voices faded in and out like a stereo with a constantly changing volume.
Then he saw steps and felt something catch his foot and he went flying forward.
He even heard himself scream and felt himself jerk before he teleported.
The sea gave him a full body slap and sloshed around him. He was disconcerted as he tried to find something to kick off against. Then he leaned forward and started to dog paddle. He paddled and kicked towards the shore for a long time and was ashamed when he found that he was paddling in a foot of water.
He stood up and trudged to shore. He collapsed onto the hot sand and stared at Adam's tent, contemplating the distance as though it were wider than the Sahara. Then he looked up to the damnably bright noon sun and decided it was worth it to avoid getting sunburned.
Ignoring the gritty irritation of sand in his shoes and stuck to one side of his body, Kevin laid down inside of Adam's tent and watched the ocean for a long time.
He could actually feel the spaceship in his mind, the faint but bright buzz of it, always humming somewhere around the edges of perception. It kept getting louder, but Kevin wasn't in the mood to heed it's call.
In fact, as soon as he felt sober enough, he was teleporting away and hopefully nobody would know.
Kevin stripped of his soaking wet sweater and laid it out across the sand in front of the tent. He let the warm winds blow through the tent and across his skin. He closed his eyes and dozed off.
He woke up with someone's shadow blocking the light over him. With the sun behind them, Kevin couldn't immediately identify them.
"Kevin?" they said.
It was Adam. Another face behind him blocked the sun.
"Lisa?"
"Are you okay?" she asked him.
He supposed he wasn't going home after all.
II. Contentment
Lisa smoothed over the quilt that was on top of the fold out bed that once was the couch. Kevin sat on the bed and stared at his feet.
"You could have stayed with Adam, you can get sober just as easily in Australia," Lisa reminded him, sitting on the opposite side of the bed, with her back to him.
"Is it a problem to stay here?" he asked, looking at the lighter colored impression his foot made in the carpet.
"No, you're always welcome with me," Lisa told him, "But it seems strange that you wouldn't stay with Adam or Megabyte."
"You left, too," Kevin said in a very empty voice. "Adam didn't."
"It doesn't mean he holds it against you," she chided, softly, holding the pillow over her lap.
"Left," Kevin contemplated with a breath. He smoothed out the foot shaped impression and then made another one right beside it. "Sounds like there was some club or something. I didn't really go anywhere. Was there anything – really – to leave, in the first place? I was still a Tomorrow Person. I just wasn't a Tomorrow Person with anyone else. So maybe I never really left anything at all."
"Just because it doesn't have a name doesn't mean it isn't real."
Kevin leaned forward and held his head in his hands. "I was lost, Lisa. I kept thinking that everyone was just out to get me, and then she made me take a chance. I even stopped reading her mind after a while, because I thought I'd never need to. For a while, I thought I wasn't lost. Or maybe I just didn't care when I was around her."
Lisa frowned and turned toward him. Kevin was fairly certain she had no idea what he was talking about. But the way that she sat close and start rubbing out the impressions of his foot in the carpet made him think that maybe she did.
"When's the last time you ate?" she asked, nudging his foot over.
Kevin smiled blankly and looked at his watch – the one that Chelsea had given him for his birthday. The time read 8:16, but Kevin kept thinking about how they'd actually gotten into a wrestling match on the floor – with Chelsea giggling madly and trying to hold the box just out of his grasp.
He didn't realize how hard he was rubbing his foot into the carpet until it started to burn.
"A while," he answered, too tired to do all the mental math to keep the time zones straight.
"Good. Because there's a 24 hour Chinese place," Lisa said to him. She stood up and threw the pillow onto the bed behind Kevin.
Kevin contemplated Chinese and wasn't sure he was in the mood for it.
"You sure?" he asked, with an uncertain frown on his face.
Lisa rolled her eyes and smiled. She took his arm and pulled him up to his feet. "Come on, Kevin."
For a moment Kevin back on the beach, eleven years ago, with impatient, teenage Lisa tugging on his arm, pulling him towards destiny even when he tried to dig his heels into sand that kept giving way underneath him.
The Chinese restaurant was empty and Kevin stayed behind Lisa and let her order for them. They sat at a table, and he tried to figure out which animal was his Chinese zodiac sign.
"Oh, hey, that one's Adam," said Lisa, pointing towards a zodiac sign. They both stared at it and snickered.
"That would be his sign," Kevin said, resigning as he laughed.
A Chinese girl with a messy apron laid food in front of them. Kevin immediately went for the egg-drop soup and forgot that he wasn't in the mood for Chinese food. He was surprised that he liked it so much.
It was richer than he expected, and floating ghosts of egg whites slid past his tongue in a way that was a lot more pleasant than he thought it would be.
He almost spit it out when he remember that he didn't have any money.
"I don't have any money," said Kevin, alarmed.
Lisa smiled at him. "You've obviously had a girlfriend too long, Kevin. Don't worry, I've got money."
Kevin calmed down and went back to his soup with a sheepish smile.
"Thanks," he said to her, "This is just like old times. God, I don't think Megabyte or I paid for our own meals for a year."
Lisa smiled wider. "We're natural mooches. It's part of our evolutionary defense mechanisms. We may not be able to kill you, but we can make you pay for lunch."
They laughed louder than either one of them meant to.
Kevin drank hot, sweet tea and told himself to remember the name of the restaurant. He liked it a lot.
He slept that night, in Lisa's house and woke up when the smell of some kind of cooking meat woke him up. He laid on his belly and looked out of the window. The grass was frosted over and the sun was soft but bright across the entire lawn. The winter grass was white and gold in the morning.
"I hope you like sausage," Lisa called, from the kitchen.
Kevin didn't, but he found himself willing to be surprised at least once.
III. Elation
Jade smiled at him from underneath her wide brimmed hat. The sun was intense, but it was actually rather chilly.
The desert being this cold just boggled Kevin.
Jade climbed out of the pit where the team of archaelogists were digging and sat next to Kevin on the ledge
"Tutankhamen couldn't have been the first," Jade told him, laying a pot shard in his lap.
"No of course not, and I've got the broken pot to prove it," he replied, picking up the rough, hastily etched-on piece of pottery. It was dark brown and there was a name scrawled on the inside, where it was a smoother texture.
"This writing on the inside means bright," said Jade, "The Greeks in 4th century Athens and even before that did this quite frequently. They'd hold these strange types of elections where they wrote the name of the person who they were most afraid of on a piece of broken pottery. And the person with the most votes was ostracized, or exiled out of the city for ten years."
"I know I'd be afraid of someone named Bright, too," said Kevin.
"You actually might, if you were a superstitious semi-nomadic. Now, everyone assumes that the Greeks invented this process of ostracizing, but we're finding evidence here that this was actually the practice of a Semetic tribe, long before the Babylonian Captivity and the Jewish Diaspora."
Kevin blinked at her and considered the piece of pottery. "Okay, so it says 'bright'. That's a lot of characters for just one idea."
Jade took the piece of pottery from Kevin's hand. "It doesn't just say bright. In fact, I'm not at all sure that 'bright' is even the name of the person. It may well be a reason why they exiled whoever the unfortunate son of Shakasta was."
"They exiled someone for being bright?" Kevin asked her and took the piece of pottery back.
"Careful!" Jade chided. She took off her hat to smooth her hair into a more organized ponytail.
"I don't get why you got me here," Kevin answered, "Not that sitting in the middle of the desert, alternately sunburning and freezing my arse off isn't what I wanted to do with my week off."
Jade snorted. "I can see Megabyte's influence started at an early age."
"But the student has become the master."
"Just as long as Adam doesn't come out in a black cape and proclaim to be your father."
Kevin snorted. "I don't know, Jade. He was a rather randy six-year-old. You never know where he might have sewn those wild oats of his. Talk around the sandbox says he had all of the girls."
Jade put a hand over her face and giggled loudly. "That was quite possibly the worst thing I've heard all week."
"But it's not the worst thing I've said all week," Kevin replied and smiled at her with a grin so big she could've given him a dental exam at twenty paces.
"When you've finished waxing wiseass, I'll tell you why you're here."
"I'm finished for the day, scout's honor."
"Right. The reason you're here is that I think the word bright refers to a teleport. These people were exiling teleporters. I've found a settlement about half a mile west of here, and I think that's where the exiles were living. I got a funny feeling when I went over there last Wednesday, and I'm hoping you can confirm that it isn't just me."
Kevin stood up and brushed the sand off of his pants. He held on to the shard of pottery.
"So, where's the car?" he asked, looking around the dig site.
"We're not going to drive over there," said Jade, "We're walking. My dig is strictly off the books. The only other people that know about it are Dr. Rayner and Dr. Bliss."
Jade and Kevin walked beside each other, against the wind. Kevin had to blink sand out of his eyes every few seconds, but Jade seemed completely unphased by it.
"Don't take this the wrong way, Jade, but I thought that this would have been more Ami's speed," he said when they finally saw the smaller dig site.
"Ami's interested in it, but she doesn't have nearly the patience for it," Jade said, with no smile on her face to soften the statement.
"Well, aren't we up front today?" Kevin asked, still trying to reconcile the brutality of her honesty with the good-natured, insatiable, babbling Jade he'd come to know in the last few days.
"Ami wouldn't deny it," Jade answered, "If it seems harsh, well, Ami knows I don't have nearly the subtlety or talent for what she does."
"Acting takes patience, doesn't it?" he asked.
"Somewhat," Jade replied, "Acting doesn't take the minutiae that archaeology does. They both require a lot of work, but with acting, everything is progress. You don't get up lots of useless dirt, rocks, bones, and broken pottery proclaiming that the daughter of Aristus was a whore and other ancient graffiti. Sometimes you dig for years, and you get nothing important. Sometimes you dig for a day and find a lifetime's worth of new knowledge."
Kevin nodded and took his baseball hat out of his back pocket and put it on, hoping it would keep some of the sand out of his eyes.
Jade greeted Dr. Bliss at the edge of where the digging started. She picked up some brushes and very small tools and handed them to Kevin.
"Just stay near me," she instructed him.
Kevin found it strange how time could go so fast and so slow at the same time. It seemed like every time he looked up from being hunched over some small square of land, the sun was getting closer to the land and he had only looked up minutes ago.
"So tell me about this girl, how'd you meet her?" Jade asked, turning herself sideways to get a better view at something she was carefully brushing off.
"I met her at work," Kevin said, concentrating on his own assignment of brushing off things Jade handed to him and putting them in a basket. "We hated each other at first, and then she punched me in the eye. After that, we were inseparable."
"We just can't have normal relationships, can we?" Jade commented, laughing strangely because she was turned and twisted in a strange position.
"She made me take chances. I actually went rock climbing because of her. And skydiving. She was trying to convince me that taking a trip over to America for white water rafting would be a good idea. Chelsea could never pass up the chance to raise my blood pressure. Her philosophy in life was 'ooh, maybe this will kill me'."
Jade giggled.
"We've only got about three hours," said Dr. Bliss, turning to Jade and Kevin. "I'm out of here."
They said goodbye to Dr. Bliss and kept working.
Kevin turned and something caught his eye in a distant square. It was white and just barely sticking out of the ground. He grabbed the brush Jade was using.
"I know this is probably terrible archaeological practice, but I think there's something more important over there," he said, walking while he was crouched over to the square. He started to brush off the artifact a little. Jade took the brush from him and started to slowly pull the dirt away from the white object.
Jade was racing against the tireless sun to uncover the object before dark.
Just as the light began to turn pink, she finally had it uncovered enough to remove from the ground.
"Dear God, this is marble," she said. Kevin looked at her, confused.
"What's so significant about that?"
"We're in the middle of north Iran, Kevin, where the hell would an ancient tribe get marble from in Iran? They had to be trading for it," she said, her voice picking up speed and volume as she brushed the broken slab of marble off.
"What does it say?" he asked.
"God, this is written both in their language and Linear A. My god, this is Linear A, nobody's been able to read Linear A yet, but this -- Kevin do you know that this means?"
Jade was looking up at Kevin with wide eyes and the beginnings of a smile on her lips. He looked down at the marble slab in her hands. She was trembling as she carefully put the tablet into Kevin's hands.
"Jade, are you okay?"
"Kevin, this is it. This is everything. This is Grecian marble. They got this marble from Greece, and we haven't found any evidence of marble from the other tribe and we most certainly haven't found any signs that they were trading. There's no animals remains, no camels or domesticated horses."
"So?"
"They were teleporting to Greece and trading, Kevin!" she exclaimed. She took his face in both hands. "Do you get it? We're looking at a community of exiled teleporters! This is the oldest evidence of teleporters that we've found!"
Jade's face broke into a giant smile and her laughter was like an explosion. She pulled Kevin close and gave him a huge, frantic kiss.
Kevin laughed too and gripped the tablet tighter. They laughed like mad hyenas and the sheer joy was like electricity. It made goosebumps go up Kevin's spine in the best possible way.
Thousands of years ago, there were teleporters and they'd been exiled. They survived anyway, and made a life. A life that hadn't been lost, despite the best attempts of those who exiled them and the elements that covered them in sand.
Suddenly, Kevin didn't need to read the tablet to understand what it meant.
IV. Satisfaction
"I thought you said this place was doomed," Kevin asked, following behind Adam as he put papers on individual desks.
"I say that every year when budget time rolls around," Adam reminded him, "And every year, somehow, I find a way to keep this place open."
Kevin finally decided to quit following Adam and sat down at his desk in front of the classroom. He felt strange, sitting a teacher's desk. It made him remember school, which had been the most terrible and most exciting time in his life.
He tried to picture Megabyte, sitting in a maroon blazer, looking bored as Adam lectured.
It wasn't that hard, oddly enough.
"You'd think the government would want to educate smart children," Kevin commented. He opened Adam's top drawer to the right and found a collection of plastic toys, fake vomit, and even some marbles.
"That's the boo-boo drawer," said Adam with a smile, "They may be gifted, but they're just like other children. Although, every once and a while, they manage to be really ingenious. I had a girl last term that actually built a very large contraption, you know, like one of those things you build in the game Mousetrap, all from things she found in the room. I saved it, actually. It's over there."
Adam pointed to a strange device made of paperclips, pencils, pens, rubber bands, and even notebook paper.
"Wow, that's – impressive. How old was she?"
"She was in one of my older groups – so maybe about eight. If you allow these kids to be what they really are, they'll do miracles. I've always had this little theory, in the back of my head, that they're a sort of in between stage, between them and us. That their intelligence is the immediate next step. After all, we don't need our bodies to change, so the next thing to evolve would have to be our brains."
"And I'm here because?"
"Because I need an extra set of eyes to watch while we're on our nature walk today. The teacher that usually helps me – Kate – isn't here today. She's out sick."
Kevin sensed something strange in Adam's mind when he said that.
"Why, Adam, is that a crush I sense?" Kevin asked, smiling.
"Well, it's nothing serious, really. We went to dinner once. But really, there's nothing."
Adam's denial only made Kevin believe more than there was something.
"Why, Adam, you've got a girl in every classroom, don't you?" Kevin teased, sitting back in Adam's rolling chair.
"Well, no. Just Kate, I suppose. I know what they say about fishing from the company pier," Adam replied.
He was still talking while Kevin suddenly remembered the fight that he and Chelsea had concerning work. She'd thrown a small lamp at him and he'd almost not dodged in time. It went through the window.
She laughed over the shards of broken glass while they looked out the window and saw a very confused old lady looking up. Kevin got even louder and angrier and Chelsea just laughed in his face. He stormed off to the bedroom, feeling like he'd just gone ten rounds with his mother again.
He'd laughed about it later, when he went down to the street to pick up the lamp.
Kevin was smiling, but he wasn't happy.
He snapped back into the present when Adam's voice stopped.
"Sorry about that," said Kevin, "I just. I got lost in my own thoughts."
"If I'd just lost my job and my girlfriend, I'd be lost in my own thoughts, too."
"I was just thinking that I was bad for her," Kevin told him. "She was such an alive person, and I just seemed to suck all the life out of everything. I think that's why I got fired, too. My boss said I needed to seek professional help. She tried to laugh at things, Adam, she tried to have this wonderful life and there I was, always one step behind her. Telling her why it was too risky, telling her why trust was such a bad thing. Makes me wonder if I'm safe around anyone."
Adam said nothing, and they were silent as the children started coming in.
There were fifteen of them and they came with backpacks and canteens. They giggled and squirmed in their seats. Adam smiled fondly and introduced Kevin as 'Mr. Wilson'.
"Good morning, Mr. Wilson," said the children, in unison. Kevin smiled and said hello to them.
"All right, divide into two groups. Half of you with me and half of you with Mr. Wilson," said Adam. The children got up from their desks and immediately, all but four of them crowded around him. Kevin smiled.
"Some of you have to go with me," Adam said, mock-weary and still smiling fondly.
Fifteen children and two chaperones climbed into an old van and drove out to the woods.
"Hold my hand, Mr. Wilson, so nothing will eat me in the bush," said a little Asian girl with a pink Hello Kitty hat on her head. She had a thoroughly Australian accent and scratched her nose before looking up at him.
[That's Mimi,] Adam telepathed, [She can do calculus. And she's got a lot of phobias. Her mum is completely paranoid about everything. She went to live with an aunt and she came here. We're still trying to get her to come out of her shell.]
Adam smiled at him as they went down a slope and saw three rabbits bound away. The children giggled and tried to chase after the rabbits, playing a strange game of hide and go seek while they looked for the plants and leaves that were on their photocopied worksheets.
"Don't get too far away!" Adam called after them, laughing and jogging ahead and leaving Kevin with the children that weren't chasing the rabbits.
"You don't want to chase the rabbits?" Kevin asked Mimi. She giggled and shook her head.
"No," said Mimi.
"But I'm not fuzzy," Kevin told her, smiling.
"But if you chase after rabbits, you get all dirty and you could get hurt. It's stupid to go chasing after rabbits, you can't catch them."
Kevin grinned. "Yes, but you might find something on your list along the way."
"You sure it's okay to go chasing after rabbits?" she asked.
Kevin was about to say something about it was okay, as long as she was careful and didn't run too fast and tried not to get dirty. But he didn't.
"Yes, it's perfectly okay to chase rabbits. Even if you never catch one."
Mimi giggled and let go of his hand. She started to run ahead and then stopped, looking back at Kevin.
He waved her on and said, "Go on, before the rabbits get away!"
She turned around and shouted, "I'm going to get a rabbit!"
About an hour later, Mimi came running towards him, holding a bright flower in her hand. It was brilliant golden-yellow.
"Look what I found!" she shouted, showing it to Kevin for his inspection.
Mimi was the only one who found a flower like that the entire day and when they got in the van, Mimi handed her prized golden flower to Kevin.
"You can have my flower," said Mimi, climbing onto one of the seats, "Flowers will make you happy."
Kevin was about to object when Adam telepathed, [Let her give you a flower, Kevin. It'll make her happy, too. It's okay to let people be generous to you.]
So Kevin rode in the front seat, carrying a bright yellow flower while the children sang silly songs and talked about they'd found.
Kevin smiled at the flower.
V. Relish
Kevin had given up on the search for a job for the day, and decided that all things being equal, he might as well waste the day playing a computer game as wandering around and feeling sorry for himself. Sure, he was feeling sorry for himself in front of the computer, but occasionally he'd have those moments where he forgot about it.
When Ami teleported into his flat, Kevin saw the reflection of it in his darkened monitor. He acted as though he hadn't and proceeded to move the joystick left and right.
Ami sat on the side of the desk where Chelsea's things used to be. For a moment, Kevin was blank enough to make the quiet observation that Ami looked a lot better than Chelsea's never ending mess of papers, cd's, and candy wrappers.
For a long time Ami just sat there, her legs crossed neatly. She even let her high heels falls off and she fidgeted with a pearl earring, leaning forward. Kevin glanced over and wondered why women wore pantyhose underneath their pants. Or why they wore pantyhose at all.
"I need to get some decorations for my office, since we're moving into the new building and I won't be living in a cubicle anymore," Ami answered. She stripped off her linen leaving only the soft, pale pink silk, sleeveless blouse underneath and her slacks.
"I'm not much of a decorator. I've been told the couch doesn't go with anything else in the flat," Kevin answered slowly, blank-eyed and distant.
"You really want to spend the rest of your day in front of a computer?" Ami asked.
"It seemed like a workable plan," Kevin answered.
"How long have you been sitting there already?" she asked, uncrossing and recrossing her legs. Kevin looked around and realized that the only clock in the flat had been Chelsea's and then he glanced down at a bare wrist.
And for a moment, Kevin felt like Chelsea was a con-man who'd just taken him for a ride and left him with nothing.
"I think that's all the answer I need," Ami told him, with a smile. She pressed the power button on his computer and smiled at him.
Kevin didn't have enough energy to get angry with her.
Plus, he was losing that level.
"So what are you looking for?" he asked, pushing the chair away from the desk. Ami slid off the desk as well, and slipped into her high heels.
"That's the beauty of it," she answered, "I don't know. But I'll know when I know."
Again, Kevin didn't have the energy to make a comment. So he got his coat and followed Ami to Italy.
Italy smelled like wet stones, and the drizzle was stifling. Ami walked fearlessly across streets, and Kevin ran to catch up with her, braving the relentless and headstrong Italian drivers of Rome to do so.
Ami finally slowed her busy walk at a group of canvas tents with tables inside. She walked inside with a kind of reverence. The tent was filled with knick knacks and it smelled, instead of wet stones, like wet bodies and unwashed hair.
Kevin followed Ami, not making any comment when she would hand things to him, saying "Feel!" or "Isn't it gorgeous!"
Each time, Kevin figured that Ami was picking something up because she wanted to buy it. And each time she handed it to him, then put it back on the table.
Either Ami was extremely fickle or there was something Kevin was missing.
Then Ami gasped when she saw a handsewn tapestry, Renaissance style, showing a young girl among flowers.
"Oh, Kevin, isn't is exquisite?" she said, very softly running her hands over the patterns of pale flowers and pale skin.
"It would look nice in your office," he said, hoping to give her a hint.
"Oh, I wouldn't put this in my office, but isn't it just wonderful," she told him. Kevin blinked.
"Yeah, beautiful," he said, hoping that if he appeased her, she might get on with it.
They left the tents and crossed the street again.
"You know what, I think I should have a Native American motif in my office. Silver and turquoise? American turquoise is so much cheaper than the Persian stuff, and much prettier, too," Ami rambled, taking Kevin's arm and practically slinging him into an abandoned alleyway.
They teleported into a scouring oven colored blue and sandy brown. A small, wooden building with a sign saying 'Craz-E Crow's Trading Post". Kevin sweated and his skin prickled underneath his shirt as they walked to the trading post.
Ami looked perfectly happy in her linen suit and high heels, walking through the sand and into the store.
Kevin took a seat on the bench that was just inside the door and got a funny look from the man at the register who had dark patches of sweat around his throat and armpits.
"You wearing a coat?" he asked, in a strange, rumbling Native American accent.
"I'm cold natured," Kevin replied, zipping up his coat just to see if it would amaze the man even more.
The man just smiled at him, shrugged, and readjusted the leather strap around his head.
Ami wandered through the store, and the man at the register seemed to stare at Kevin, wondering if he would eventually take off his coat.
Kevin sweated and the sweat evaporated into the all-consuming dryness of the air. Still, he didn't take the coat off. He did, however, watch Ami intently – in between casual glances at the register man – to see how close she was to being done.
Ami took her time through the store, examining jewelry, posters, art, and finally she got to the very back of the store where she saw a giant dreamcatcher. She reached high up on her tiptoes but couldn't reach it.
The man at the register helped her get it down and they left.
Kevin still had his coat on and smiled at the register man.
"You might want to bundle up, I hear it's going to get down to ninety tomorrow!" the register man shouted after him.
Kevin stripped off his coat as soon as they were out of sight.
"You could have warned me!" he said, wiping sweat wholesale off of his forehead. It evaporated before he could shake his hand.
Ami just smiled. "Well, I've got one thing. There's this great place in New York. And don't worry, it's plenty cold there."
Kevin followed Ami to New York, to a large sale on the sidewalk. Apparently, the store was going out of business. Ami almost squealed at some lamp she saw and Kevin decided to park himself on a gently used couch.
The sweat from the desert was now chilling him and Kevin put his coat back on. He leaned against the arm of the sofa and wondered when Ami would be finished. He got excited when he saw her having several things put into large bags.
"Come on," Ami said, standing over him, "You haven't lived until you've eaten from this one deli. They have the best reuben sandwiches I have ever eaten."
Kevin followed her a few city blocks to a small, crowded deli. They ordered and sat at the first available table and Kevin leaned against the wall.
"You know, the point of this was for you to enjoy it," Ami said, cocking her head at him, "I didn't have to drag you along. I could have done this on my own, but I thought it might be some fun. Get you out of the house. A quick tour of the world."
Kevin nodded. "Guess I wasn't in the mood."
"That's complete shite," Ami said, surprising Kevin with her frankness. "Everything thinks that they're in the mood for something or they aren't. You're either open or you aren't. And if you're open, you can *get* in the mood. I'm not going to pretend like you haven't just gone through some things, and I'm certainly not going to pretend like shopping Italy makes it all go away, either. But you can't expect anyone or anything to instantly solve anything. You want to feel better? You've got to make the effort."
"Make the effort?" Kevin questioned, looking over, more to get away from Ami's gaze than to check to see if their number was up.
"Look at me, Kevin," Ami said, in a way that demanded Kevin obey, even when he didn't want to and couldn't. "This wasn't your fault. Fault doesn't even enter into it. But don't be blinded and don't just roll over. Life is very big and very long. I promise that this goes away, and I promise that if you try, you do get through it. And the best way is not to dwell on it or feel sorry for yourself."
Kevin snorted and said, in a quiet, firm voice, "So says the woman with a cushy job and a steady relationship. Oh, don't feel sorry for yourself. I bet if it was you that you wouldn't sit there, doling out advice. It's not so easy when it's your life. When you didn't even see it coming. What was I supposed to do, Ami? I let her move into my flat. I slept next to her every night and I didn't ask about work. I took her to see my bloody parents. I didn't even read her mind, not even when I suspected something. And she wants to know if I trusted her? What else was there to do? What else could I have possibly done to prove it to her? She always said I was holding something back. Well, I'm bloody well not going to sell out my friends just because she feels insecure about our relationship!"
Kevin sat back and angrily wiped the tears from his eyes with the back of his sleeve. He took a sharp breath and then stopped when Ami put a cool hand over his arm.
"This wasn't your fault. You weren't ready to tell. Trust is something you earn, not prove. One day you'll be ready to tell, but you're not obligated to tell anyone a second before you're absolutely ready. You've got a right to your secrets, to your privacy, even in a relationship. If none of that proved to her that you trusted her, then nothing ever will. And this will be okay, somehow."
"How?"
"I don't know, but you'll know when it is," Ami replied.
"It feels like the world is completely different. She made me take chances, she made me fun."
"You can do that all on your own."
Kevin was going to say something, but their order was called out. They got their sandwiches and sat back down.
"Tell you what," Ami said, "Why don't you pick where we go next?"
"I have no idea where we should go," Kevin admitted. He picked up the sandwich and bit into it.
Then he paused. Ami stopped and stared at him, mid-bite.
The sharp of the cabbage and the salty meat and the tang of the cheese all mixed and it was soft and thick in his mouth. He chewed slowly.
"Wow, this is the best reuben I've ever eaten," Kevin said, with his mouth full.
Ami giggled and so did he. They laughed with full mouths and smiled at each other.
"Oh, oh, you've got to smell this. Close your eyes, and tell me what you think of it," Ami said, reaching down into one of her bags.
Kevin closed his eyes and sensed, with his mind, that Ami had something held up to his face. He heard the creak of old hinges and suddenly a smell flooded over him that was warm and spicy, sharp and sweet in how it lingered.
Kevin's eyes popped open fast and he was looking into an old, carved mahogany cigar box with velvet lining.
The taste of reuben lingered thickly in his mouth and over the top of the box, Kevin saw Ami's eyes, beautiful and big enough to take in an entire world.
He closed his eyes and took a bigger breath this time.
VI. Rapture
The eyes were blue, and for a moment, while his mind was still waking up like a half-dead light flickering to life in the cold, Kevin had no idea who was grinning and standing over him.
"Megabyte," Kevin sighed, relieved and not, especially when he looked at the alarm clock and saw what time it was. "What are you doing here?"
"The sun's coming up on the island!" Megabyte told him, grinning madly. "Get up. Get your swim trunks."
"Are you going to leave me alone if I don't?" Kevin asked.
Megabyte smiled even wider when he shook his head.
So Kevin rolled out of his bed and ambled towards his dressers. He turned around to Megabyte.
"I'll meet you at the island," he said, wiping his eyes.
"Eh, I'll wait," Megabyte replied, sitting on the edge of Kevin's bed, "You don't have anything I don't have more of."
Kevin rolled his eyes.
"What is so bloody important about the sun coming up on the island?" Kevin asked, tossing his pajamas on the bed.
Megabyte just smiled.
Kevin dug out a pair of sandals from under his bed, and with Megabyte's reassurances that they had towels aplenty at the island, followed him.
Megabyte, apparently, had lied. Because the island sky was a dark grey and the water was black glass stretching out into the horizon.
What Kevin saw were two surfboards, resting near the water.
"Strange how I don't see a sunset," Kevin said.
Megabyte still said nothing and jogged over to the surfboard and stood it upright.
"I even waxed it for you," Megabyte said.
"I don't know how to surf. I don't even swim that well," Kevin reminded Megabyte.
Megabyte leaned the board towards Kevin and gave him no choice to catch it before it hit the ground.
So Kevin stood in the pre-dawn darkness, on an island with nothing to offer but a lot of sand and a crashed alien spaceship, holding a surfboard and looking at the water as though he wasn't sure what came next.
For a moment, Kevin not only didn't understand the situation, he didn't understand his entire life. He didn't understand the world. Even the tides that brushed the sand were speaking in a foreign tongue.
"It's not a quantum physicals here, Kevin," Megabyte sighed.
"Yeah, 'cause we don't have any doctors with electron microscopes hanging about," Kevin shot back, with a sharp, slight smile. He was long past letting Megabyte get away with saying stupid things when he really was smarter than that.
"Exactly. This doesn't. You just take the board into the water, you walk 'til you can't touch the bottom, you swim 'til you get far enough, and you do it," said Megabyte, taking his board under his arm and jogging into the water until he was up to his waist and he slammed his board down. He turned around to Kevin, who was still standing on the shore, holding up the surfboard so it wouldn't fall. "Come on!"
Kevin looked around, and since nobody was looking, and he was reasonably sure he had nothing else to do, he started a very determined never-say-die type march towards the water.
Kevin pushed the board with one hand and dog paddled with two legs and his other arm. Megabyte laughed and turned his head as he was laying on his surfboard. Kevin looked from Megabyte to his own surfboard before he realized that Megabyte was trying to show him how to do it.
Of course, explaining it in small words would have beyond Megabyte, and probably would have ruined whatever insane plan he had going on. Megabyte's mind worked much in the way a horribly overcomplicated mousetrap with levers, pulleys, and weights would have worked.
Although, Kevin had to admit, dog paddling while belly down on a surfboard, it was fun to watch.
Watch being the operative word, however.
Still, he paddled and kicked towards Megabyte. He was very proud that he was able to get himself to sit upright on the surfboard, the same Megabyte was.
Megabyte was looking over his shoulder while he held out his arm with a finger raised, as if asking Kevin to wait just a moment while he chewed his food.
"Here comes one, here it comes! Just watch what I do!" said Megabyte, laying down on his surfboard again.
Kevin did the same and watched over his shoulder, trying to figure out what Megabyte was looking for.
"What are we waiting for?" Kevin asked, seeing nothing but the dark blue water and the almost blue sky behind them.
"The *wave*, Kevin, the *wave*," Megabyte replied, probably meaning to be a smartass, but too happy to have any real sting. "Here it comes. Start swimming and when you feel a lift, try to stand on your board!"
Kevin paddled, trying to keep his eyes on Megabyte, and he was watching Megabyte and didn't pay attention to the wave. Just as he thought he could stand on the surfboard, the water rushed past him and flipped him and the surfboard over. Kevin's world was darkness and motion, kicking and turning without a sense of up or down, only the inevitable force of the water.
Finally Kevin found the surface and the ever growing light of the surface. His surfboard floated a little ahead of him and Kevin walked towards it.
"I still don't get this point of this," Kevin said collecting the surfboard and standing in the water while he eyed the shore, "Why do this now, especially when I'm not good and I'm just going to end up nearly drowning in the sea again in five minutes?"
Megabyte shook his head and was laughing, "*That* is the point. The wipe out is the best part. You think you surf just to get back to the shore? It's fun because you can't predict it or control. You just ride the wave, and hey, if you do it perfect, great. If you don't, it doesn't matter. Just ride the wave, Kev. It'll take you where you're going anyway. It's not about doing it right. I mean, come on. We're surfing at sunrise. Who cares if it's a good idea?"
Somehow, despite the laughter, it sounded like a plea. Although Kevin still couldn't understand what it was Megabyte needed him to understand.
For a moment, Kevin had a flash of a skinny kid with red hair, shooting a water gun out of a bus window, running down the street, hiding from bullies and trying to escape a vicious attack gun. And then he thought about Megabyte smashing the machines to save Lisa, and Megabyte being the last person he saw when he got bitten, and the first person he saw when he woke up.
He laid down on the surfboard and swam to meet Megabyte, who was already waiting for a wave. He sat up, with his surfboard next to Megabyte's.
"So what happened?" asked Megabyte.
"When?" Kevin asked back, not certain, but reasonably sure Megabyte was talking about Chelsea and his job as opposed to why he fell off the surfboard. Although Kevin was reasonably sure he wanted to keep talking about surfing.
"With you, you know. And your girl?" Megabyte clarified.
Kevin sat in silence behind Megabyte, on a cursedly calm ocean, and wished for a tsunami.
"Chelsea and I met at work. And I used to think that she knew what I was, the way she'd look at me sometimes. I read her mind a lot. She always thought these amazingly clear thoughts, like she knew exactly what she wanted to think. They were like polished stones. Just bright and clear. No confusion. Chelsea knew herself. Knew what she wanted. She just *knew*. And one day she knew she wanted to ask me out. And she knew it was time to move in together. And she knew I wasn't telling her something about my life. And then she knew I was getting fired, because I'd screwed up a huge account. She actually came home and we made love on the couch that night, before I got fired. Then after I got fired, she moved out. It all happened in three days. Just like that."
"Wow, that's – I mean, it's just –" Megabyte struggled for some appropriate estimation of what Kevin had gone through "It really sucks. Fired *and* she broke up with you. It's like a really cheesy country western song, only you know, it's really your life, which isn't good. Because not that I think it's a good thing. Because it's not. It sucks. And your girlfriend sucks. And somebody please make me shut up because *I'm* startin' suck here."
Kevin laughed so loud he couldn't even hear the ocean for a moment. Megabyte just stared at him.
"It's just the way you say it, Megabyte," Kevin answered the question he hadn't asked, "God I'm sitting in the middle of the ocean listening to you tell *yourself* to shut up. It's bloody hilarious."
Megabyte started to laugh, too. Hard.
They laughed so hard that they didn't notice the wave coming until it was really close. They both started swimming, still laughing as they kicked and paddled and watched the wave come closer.
Megabyte let out a searing roar of joy that got cut off when the wave caught Kevin and tossed him. He pitched and rolled in a cocoon of crystal blue, loose like badly sewn-on button. He body twirled and twisted and he was surprised by the way the top of the water was so thin when he came up, and how quickly he'd gotten used to the endless, moving substance of the wave.
Kevin burst out of the water, certifiably and insanely happy. He let out a scream when he finally took in a breath and was staring into the burning gold of a sun that colored the sky and the water pink, purple, and blue like an artist had washed off a paintbrush in a fresh cup of water.
He turned around to look for his surfboard, impatient for the next wave, for the next chance to roll and ride in the waves. The world, suddenly, was all too still and silent for Kevin's liking.
VII. The Sweetest Things
Megabyte threw sand in the fire just because he could, just to see it flare up for a moment.
"Hey, remember that TV show where they used to do that?" Megabyte said, laughing and staring into. Kevin wondered if he wished that he could make the fire do that again and again, without the risk of smothering the fire.
Everyone stared at Megabyte as though they were all about to draw lots for who had to put the white coat on him.
"So anyone do anything interesting this week?" asked Lisa, handing a stick to Jade with a totem pole of marshmallows on the end of it.
"Mimi's aunt finally got custody of her," said Adam, and Kevin guessed that he was the only one who hadn't heard the entire story about Mimi.
"Hey, that's great," Ami replied. "I moved into my new office. I got new furniture and everything. And the dreamcatcher looks really nice above my desk. People have been asking me about it all week."
Ami winked at Kevin across the fire, and even though he couldn't see it that well with his eyes, he knew she'd done it.
"My mom got one of those new ovens. You know – the kind with the digital timers? She has now baked her weight in brownies, so everyone take some before you leave," Lisa told them, handing around a large tupperware container of brownies.
"Dr. Bliss and Dr. Rayner said that I was right about what I found. And we're finding more of it everyday. There's also evidence that they were trading with other settlements of Tomorrow People. And who knows, maybe there are still settlements of TP out there, in some rural area, that we don't know about yet," Jade told them and she gingerly plucked on of the marshmallows off of the end of her stick.
"You know what goes great with marshmallows? Brownies!" Lisa suggested, being not so subtle when suggesting the brownies.
"My dad got to meet some important guy from Parliament during some security conference thingy. And I surfed at sunrise," Megabyte told them with his mouth full of brownie.
Kevin stared over the rim of his hot cocoa and listened to the waves behind them as they sat in silence, just staring at the fire. There seemed to be a communal mental silence, as though they were all finally quiet take over for a moment.
Still, Kevin felt he had something to say. He'd been there when these things happened to them, and even after twelve years, he still fit in with them, had some kind of a place – even if it had no name or definition. He felt like something had been set right, when he sat among them like this. He couldn't figure out what it was that he felt -- it was as formless as the ocean, but just as powerful.
"It's been a good week," Kevin said, when he finally found words that sounded right.
The others nodded and agreed with him.
- END -