Kings of B'more, page 23
“We were . . . We . . .” Harrison could not figure out a way to explain himself, and he also could not figure out why his father wasn’t asking him to explain himself. Harrison’s mind raced as he tried to determine how to get information out of his father without revealing that he was very much not where he was supposed to be and nobody knew it. Well, nobody except Corrine and his father. He looked back at the food table to make sure that his mother hadn’t been the one scooping the ice cream. Okay, no, that was actually a stranger. “Did you talk to Corrine?” Harrison asked.
“Not since this morning, why?” Obed said.
“No reason. It’s okay that I’m here?”
“I’m not on app duty today, so I just didn’t know. But if you’ve worked it out, fine with me.”
“Well, this has been a treat,” Harrison said. “I am loving the music. The vibe. The water. Everything you’re doing here. It’s great. Anyway, I gotta jet. It was great seeing you, and I look forward to seeing you at home.”
“Love you, boy-o. Be careful in the pool. I’ll try to keep an eye out.”
Harrison turned and walked away as quickly as he could without arousing suspicion.
“Harrison! Wait a minute!”
Whatever spell he’d accidentally cast was broken. This was it. This was the end. He turned slowly.
“Yes?”
Obed cocked his head. “Whose shorts are you wearing?!”
“Um. Mine?”
His father clearly did not believe this, and yet it was the truth, finally.
* * *
Harrison nervously shoveled ice cream into his mouth as he wound his way through packs of kids running along the pool deck long enough to be told to stop running. They needed to pack it up and get out of there. Or did they? As long as his dad thought that everything had been worked out, they could actually stay as long as they wanted. Then again, the minute his father figured out that Harrison hadn’t told anyone in advance that he was going there, or, worse, that they’d been using Aparna as a decoy, everything would come tumbling down. The best solution was to finish up and leave, but that would also mean saying goodbye. And the desire to keep that moment at bay, to cement their friendship enough that maybe he could somehow keep it from happening altogether, was what made him to do all this in the first place. It was the thing that made him break all the rules he’d already broken, from calling Mondale in Arizona at 10 p.m. to leaving the state, without a care for what it would cost him down the road. He would pay any price. His parents wouldn’t understand it, but in his heart he knew it was all worth it. And he’d already been caught by two-thirds of his family (perhaps a life of crime was not in the cards)—what did he have to lose? He was wild; he was out of control. This must have been how Elphaba felt! Ferris Day wasn’t over, and he wasn’t going home until he had squeezed every last drop of goodness and joy from his final moments with Linus. And if anyone else in his family cared to find him, they could look to the Western sky!
Or, actually, just the western side of the pool, where Phil had moved everyone’s stuff so she could keep an eye on it while she swam more laps. But after that, maybe the sky!
Harrison pressed his toes into the pebbly concrete at the edge of the pool and watched Phil swim. He was struck by how much power she was harnessing. Each loop of her arm was tactical, each kick another jolt of force. She really did have sea legs. She hit the wall and pulled herself up for air. She slicked back her hair and spotted Harrison above her. She blew some stray water from her mouth and smiled.
“Wanna race?” she said.
“I’m not that great a swimmer.”
“Well, then you’ll lose,” she said simply. “Someone has to.”
Harrison chuckled at this, and then, a new thought: It was like Phil’s voice echoed in his head, Someone has to lose, and then inside himself a voice replied, Not me. Not today.
He sat down on the edge of the pool and plopped into the water in the lane next to her.
“Now we’re talking!” Phil said. Harrison hooked an arm onto the side and pressed his feet against the wall to keep himself up. “What do you think? Up and back? Simple,” she said.
“Okay. What kind of stroke?”
“Who has time for all kinds of acrobatics? I do a forward crawl, one hand over the other. You do whatever you want.” She flipped around to face the lane. “Ready?”
Oh! This was happening right now. Harrison, in his solo practices at school, had grown accustomed to doing the arms from the breaststroke—reaching out and splitting the water in two—but kicking as he would in a forward crawl. He briefly wondered if Phil or anyone else who was watching—no one else was watching—would find it weird, but then he remembered what she had just said. Do whatever you want. He raised his feet to the wall to kick himself off.
“Do you want to take off your shirt?” Phil said.
Did she mean in general or in this moment? Because the answer was no either way.
“I’m good,” Harrison said.
“All right. Count of three,” Phil said. She counted to three and then shoved off from the wall in a burst of limbs and water and noise. Harrison pushed off right behind her. He liked this part the best, the beginning. He liked the power that was hiding itself in his legs, waiting to send him sailing through the water. He lifted his arms up from his sides, then pitched them forward. He couldn’t see Phil. His field of vision was all bubbles. He kicked his legs, trying to keep his feet underwater, as he’d been taught. He pulled his arms back down and then up the length of his body and then out. He felt air bubbles racing up the sides of his shirt. He reached the other end just before Phil. She flipped underwater and shot in the opposite direction, sending a blast of bubbles toward him. The flipping was always the hard part for him. He hit the wall with his hands, turned around, and launched himself off again with his feet. Phil was so far ahead of him. His hands kept getting caught on his shirt. He was aware of every part of his body as he moved through the water. His legs, his skin, his stomach, his breath, his heart pounding in his chest. He tried to concentrate on just moving his body, just being in the water, but his thoughts drifted. He heard the sound of blood pumping in his ears and thought how weird it was that people talked about their hearts when they talked about love. “My heart is so full, it’s bursting,” they’d declare in a musical before breaking into song. He never thought about his actual heart, the thing that pressed against his rib cage, that sent blood racing through his veins, that vibrated inside him. This was the thing that was keeping him going, losing the race at this rate. What did it have to do with love? With a feeling that wasn’t physical or maybe wasn’t anything at all? The heart, he thought as he hit the wall and pulled himself up, gasping, is a lumpy loaf sitting in our chests, minding its own business. It does not have an opinion on love.
Phil was already bobbing in the water when Harrison crested. “Nice job,” she said. “You’re fast.”
He pulled himself up to sit on the side. Water poured out of his shirt and dribbled into the pool. He tried to catch his breath.
“Thanks,” he said. “Can I ask—why are you planning to live on a boat after high school?”
Phil looked puzzled. “Oh, sorry! I thought it was obvious. I want to be free.”
Harrison twisted the end of his shirt to wring out the water. He felt so heavy with it soaked. It was dragging him down.
“You want to race again?” he said.
“Sure!” Phil said. “I could do this all day.” She set herself up and waited for him.
Harrison pulled at the bottom edge of his shirt. He looked around the pool area again. No one was watching this very exciting race between two high schoolers. No one was just standing around waiting to offer their thoughts on his body, on what he should eat, on when he’d grow into it, on strategies for building muscle or burning fat or whatever, on whether somebody he didn’t even know yet would like it or wouldn’t like it. Nobody was noticing them at all, and this state of being was usually a comfort to Harrison, though he knew that he sometimes used it as a cavern to crawl inside and make himself smaller. He didn’t want to do that. Not here. Not now. He’d spent the entire day trying to prove to Linus how much he meant to him; he thought he’d succeed. He wasn’t sure. But if he had, it hadn’t been by making himself less.
Harrison raised his shirt up and lifted it over his head. Because it was wet, it clung to him at various spots. A needy shirt. The air felt great on his skin. He dropped the shirt onto a pile on the cement. He was still just a person wearing person clothes, albeit fewer, in a pool full of people in person clothes, with bodies and lumpy loaves pumping blood in their chests, and, Harrison hoped, love bursting out of some strange and mysterious place.
He got back into the pool. “Ready?”
Harrison and Phil took off again. He didn’t know if he was moving any faster, but the way that the water skimmed the contours of his body was new and electrifying. He felt the waves race from the tips of his fingers along his arms, his sides, his legs, kicking madly. He felt bubbles spinning wildly all around. He felt his own power.
How different this was. He didn’t know if he’d changed or if the world had shifted around him to make more space for the fact of his being. He thought of how unyielding the water had seemed the time he’d almost drowned, how it was like the water had arms that held him and a will of its own. He thought of the swimming lessons that had taught him new things about his body but how even it had resisted him for a while. He thought of the solitary practices, the days when he just wanted to be alone, to be submerged, to be floating free.
He hit the wall and turned around, popping his head up to take in air before plunging back down. He thought of the smell of chlorine that singed his nose at school. He thought of the raining fountains at the Smithsonian in the Contemplative Court. He thought of his soul in the center of that water. Protected, encased, at peace. He reached, he kicked, his muscles drove him forward. It was like meeting his body anew for the first time, piece by piece. He thought of his grandfather’s arm resting on his good hip; he thought of Corrine’s hand reaching up to grab her hair. He thought of the way the sun delighted in Linus’s skin. He thought of the waves flowing out from him as he moved, and the waves he made. He thought of the waves returning.
He thought of Linus again, his arms wrapped around Harrison’s middle, his laugh, his silent communication. His fingers snapping into a V-shape at a graveyard. His eyes closed as he listened to his MP3 player. He thought of the version of Linus that existed away from him. The Linus in the future, the Linus before they met, even the Linus that was represented by the dot on a map made by a phone carried around by Aparna Aiyar.
They had done everything together. The only thing left to do then was to say goodbye and to say it well. He reached the wall and put a hand up to steady himself but didn’t come up for air. Not yet. He let the water still around him and focused on the form to his left—black hair slicked back by movement, pale arms outstretched like an arrow, a blue sports bra, white shorts—it was Phil. She was coming down her lane, and she was just behind him. She hit the wall and burst through the surface, sending water spraying down. Little droplets hit the surface above him, breaking up the waves in her wake. Harrison raised himself up to the air and took a deep breath.
“Congratulations,” Phil said, heaving. She reached out and gave him a high five.
“I didn’t know I could do that,” he wheezed. He flipped himself around to the edge of the pool and slapped his arms on the concrete. His heart was pounding; he’d pushed himself so hard that it actually hurt a little. But at least it worked. He drew in another breath and wiped the water from his eyes. He placed an arm back on the edge, and that’s when he saw them: two black flats standing at his lane. He looked up at the legs they were attached to and discovered Aparna. She waved apologetically.
“Did you get my texts?” she said. “And hi.”
“What? No. What’s going on? What happened?”
“I may have had a small adventure.”
4:15 p.m.
Harrison and Phil hoisted themselves out of the pool.
“So where are the phones now?” Harrison asked Aparna, panic creeping into his voice.
“The thing is that I don’t have tracking on them,” Aparna said. “But the last time Aparna texted back, she was in the county. She said she ‘needed to nosh’ and then she could come back down.”
“I thought you were Aparna,” Phil said.
“She is Aparna,” Harrison said. “She’s talking about Cool—”
“I’m talking about Aparna R. One of our classmates.”
“Got it,” Phil said. She picked up the pile of blankets and totes and books and the iPad with a bunch of unread messages and shoved it all into Harrison’s arms. “Let’s walk and talk,” she said.
They moved toward the exit.
“The way I see it, this is fine,” Aparna said. “I’ve thought about it from a lot of angles, and it’s not convenient, but it’s not a disaster.”
Phil signaled to Fab, who started saying her goodbyes to the group she was hanging with.
“What if someone has been texting us and we haven’t been responding?” Harrison said.
“That’s the only unknown, unfortunately. But the good news is no one texted you all day before this.”
Phil whistled to get the attention of Linus and Mazz, who were walking back down the hill. She gestured to them to wait right there, and they paused.
“All we need to do,” Aparna said, “is get you home and wait for Aparna R. to swing by with the phones. You might want to do something that lets everyone know you’re home and you’ve been home.”
“Like what?” Harrison said.
“Make focaccia,” Phil said. “It’s gotta rise. That takes time. Can’t fake it.” She handed Fab a towel. Okay, so they would make focaccia, whatever that was. Harrison dug into his bag and pulled on his Bayard Rustin shirt. This wasn’t as bad as it seemed. His dad had seen him, after all, and it hadn’t caused a problem. They’d go home, they’d make fiyero or whatever . . . they’d keep doing Ferris Day. Somehow.
The group turned up the hill and linked up with Mazz and Linus.
“Harrison!” He knew that voice. Where did he know that voice from? Harrison turned. Oh. His father was rushing across the deck, his phone in his hands. “Is Linus with you?”
What was the right answer here? “Yes?”
“That’s what I thought,” Obed said. “Why is Wally texting me, telling me he’s out in Baltimore County?”
“Oh! His phone is. It got left in Aparna’s car.”
Harrison’s dad turned to Aparna Aiyar. “Where is your car now?”
She froze. Harrison knew that she did not like lying to parents, not her parents and certainly not someone else’s parents, but he silently prayed that she’d decide that it wasn’t lying, per se, in a manner speaking, if you looked at it in a certain light. “On an errand,” Aparna blurted. “But the phones are being brought back to your house soon.”
“All right,” Obed said. “Oh, and hello, Aparna.” He flicked his eyes up to Phil and Fab. “Hello, everyone.”
Obed motioned for Harrison to step away and lowered his voice. “Harrison, did Linus’s dad know that you all were coming to the pool?”
“I . . . I don’t think so.”
“Did we know you were coming to the pool?”
“Um . . .”
Obed sighed. “See, this is what messes me up. I explicitly asked you about this earlier. This is what I get for assuming, but . . . man! We don’t ask you guys to keep us in the loop just to make your lives hard. We do it to make your lives better.”
“Is Linus in trouble?” Harrison asked.
“Linus? You worried about Linus? You need to be worried about yourself.” But Harrison wasn’t worried about himself. Harrison spent every moment of every day worrying about himself. He had made worrying about himself into an art. He was expecting a special Tony for Anxiety to come from Ms. Antoinette Perry any day now. He was only sixteen years old, but he deserved a lifetime achievement award for worrying. And what had it got him? It certainly hadn’t stopped his fear about losing Linus from coming true. So, no offense to his dad, but Harrison was quite certain that he didn’t need to be worrying about himself. All he knew in that moment was what he did need to do. He needed to make sure that Linus didn’t end this day with a lecture from his father, who was always stressed and always concerned and was taking them to Charleston in the morning. He needed to make sure that he wasn’t making tomorrow a nightmare for Linus because of what they’d done today. Ferris Day had become about being daring and braver in the present, but it wasn’t about making the future worse.
“It’s my fault,” Harrison said. “Not Linus’s. Linus shouldn’t be in trouble. I surprised him with the pool.”
“You know how Wally—” Obed started, but Harrison was working himself up and kept talking.
“And you were here. Which I didn’t know, but it turned out to be okay anyway. But I just wanted to have one day with him before he left. And nothing even went wrong! We’re sixteen years old! We have jobs! We don’t do anything without you all saying so! But everybody talks to us about how we’re supposed to be setting ourselves up for the future. If we can’t be trusted to go to a pool together on a hot day without, like, destroying the world, then how are we supposed to be ready for the future?”
All those inside thoughts had just come tumbling out, and now he looked at them, sitting all around his feet on the pool deck, soaking up water in the sun.
“Well, you’ve been holding that in for a while, haven’t you?” his dad said. “We can talk about this later, but you don’t need to be upset.” Harrison wondered if he should speak up more. Eh, best not to push it, he thought. One monologue a year, tops, like a beloved character actress. His dad continued, “Lemme—I gotta get back to work. Let me call Wally real quick. I’ll tell him that I’ve been watching you all and that you’re going to be at the house. Because you are going to be at the house, right?”
