You first, p.15
You First, page 15
“I don’t think they’d know what to do with it,” I point out.
“Of course, a person like you would think that.”
Help, I whisper to the alligator. He makes a soft hiss, possibly in response, but my brain refuses to unscramble it. It’s hard to translate alligator when your boyfriend’s ex has planted himself between you and your boyfriend and is helping himself to your honey-mustard pretzels.
“So,” Alex says to Jay. “Aren’t you going to ask me?”
“Ask you what?” says Jay.
“Where my superband is?”
Jay sighs. “Where’s your superband, Alex?”
“Oh, I’m off the grid now.” He waves his hand, holding a pretzel stick like a cigarette between his first two fingers. “I was never comfortable with the whole ‘being monitored’ arrangement. I don’t expect you two to understand; you were always such obedient vassals. Both eyes on the greater good, eh.” He delivers an elbow to my ribs. “It’s a risk, of course, but it’s been exceedingly liberating. Now I can use my powers…” His tone pleads for follow-up questions. “…however I see fit.”
Please eat him, I mumble to the alligator.
“What’s that mean?” Jay says to Alex—voice tight, as if he hates himself for asking. “What’ve you been doing?”
“You know.” He chuckles. “A little light villaining, as they say.”
“God, Alex. Like what?”
“Oh, nothing you’ve heard of. A couple wildfires. Burned down a summer home in the Hamptons, that was quite a pleasure. Torched a fire hall back in April, just for irony.” He sticks his paw in our potato chip bag. “I’d have gotten more done, but I have a cracking nemesis. She’s foiled me fairly reliably. It’s been a fascinating relationship. Exhausting, but fascinating.”
“Well, good for you guys,” says Jay.
“Do you have a nemesis yet?”
“Nope. I stay away from that whole scene. Too much drama.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” Alex rolls his bulgy eyes. “She’s tiring of me, anyway. She’ll want to move on, I’m sure of it. Which means…” His voice goes oily. “I’ll have an…opening.”
Propositions! Double entendres! Right in front of me! Can you believe this shit? I murmur to the gator, but he sinks into the pond and blows nostril bubbles at me.
“I don’t want to be your nemesis, Alex,” says Jay. “I’m really busy.”
“Well, if you change your mind…”
“I won’t.”
“We were always a good team. Weren’t we?”
“Sure. Yeah.”
“I’ve got a following now. Quite a large one. Heroism may have its allures, but people still love a bad boy.”
“That’s awesome,” says Jay. “I want to get back to my book, okay?”
“Oh please, love.” Alex rises to his feet with hauteur and brushes chip crumbs off his pants. “You can’t possibly be happy with your library books and your store-brand potato chips and this frightful lump of a—”
“I am.”
“We’ll see.”
“I’ll call you if anything changes, okay?”
“I’ll try to act surprised when you do.” He winks and slings his trench coat over his shoulder. “Excuse me, chaps. I have a prior commitment.”
He saunters off, peeking back when he reaches the emu fence to see if we’re watching him go. I’m annoyed when I realize that both of us are.
“I’m so sorry.” Jay puts a hand on my arm. “He distracted you.”
“It’s fine.”
“Did you make any breakthroughs? I heard you muttering something.”
“No breakthroughs yet.”
“No? Maybe if you tried talking to him louder. Or maybe—”
“Why were you even polite to him?” I snap, surprising myself.
“Who, Alex?”
“Who else?”
“I thought I froze him out.”
“‘I’ll call you if anything changes’?”
“Like I would!”
“He doesn’t know that. He’s a narcissist. He probably thinks you just low-key proposed to him.”
“Are you seriously mad?” Jay shakes his head. “Why are you picking a fight with me?”
It’s too hard to unpack it all. “I don’t know,” I tell him. “Forget I said anything.” I yank a fistful of grass from the ground beside me.
“Do we need to…?” he says.
“What?” I say.
“I don’t know. Have a conversation?” Jay fans himself with the library book. “It feels like there’s all this stuff we’re not saying.”
I shrug. “Not everything should be said.”
Jay thunks the book down. He looks like he wants to say something else, but before he can do it, a distant scream pierces the air. Gray smoke billows at the top of the hill behind the snack shack. Orange flames lick at a wood-shingled roof we can just make out from here.
We tease out the truth in two seconds. Alex—that two-bit pretzel-smoker, that discount desperado—has set the reptile house on fire.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Jay jumps to his feet. “I’ll be back.”
“Whoa, whoa—what are you going to do?”
“I dunno! Something. Use the pond water to—”
“You’re not the fire department.”
“So what, I do nothing until they get here?”
“He baited you!”
“Who cares why he did it? He did it!” He yanks away from me. “This is my life now, Lee. I can’t sit back and let other people do the dirty work. God.”
Glass shatters in the distance. Jay leaps into the air and flies off. I take off after him, images of death and mayhem whirling in my head. His shirt catching fire. Shards of window slicing his skin. A car whips past me on the dirt path, nearly knocking me over: a black sedan that has to be a henchman’s getaway car. Alex darts from behind the flaming reptile house, dives into the backseat, and peels away. The vanity plate says FYRED-UP, because of course it does.
I stumble to a stop, winded from the short run. Jay’s in action already, pulling water from the petting zoo pond and the Silver Rock stream and training twin ribbons onto the flames with precision. It’s beautiful to watch. A small crowd’s formed and people are taking videos, exchanging murmurs—that’s the one, Jay Jantzen, from the Riverside flood. I shiver in the heat. I know some supers get local followings, but it’s still so strange: his name in the mouths of strangers, the face I love framed by a dozen zoomed-in iPhone screens.
A tire screech cuts through the din. Through the trees to the right, I see a beat-up pink Beetle careen into the parking lot. A dark-haired young woman in a purple dress bursts out of the car, slams the door, and stalks toward the reptile house on high glittery heels. Her skin is light brown and her sleek hair swings beside her cheeks like blades. Her dress has little daisies on it.
“Where is he?” she snarls at me. “The guy who did this. Did you see him?”
“He’s gone already.”
“Goddammit!” She flicks both her hands and the puddle to our left sprays everywhere. A blue Lev-B band is on her wrist.
“It’s fine, it’s fine!” Jay glides down beside us. “The fire’s out. I took care of it.”
“Thanks. I’m so sorry, I’m supposed to stop him but I was at my friend’s shower and I didn’t hear my sensor, and—”
“No worries.” Jay holds out his hand. “Jay Jantzen.”
“Audrey Avila.”
“Your folks did the alliteration thing, too.”
She rolls her eyes. “Such a dumb tradition.”
“This is my partner, Levon.”
“Hey.” We shake hands.
“He’s an animal talker,” Jay says.
“Oh, cool! You can help round up the lost ones, then.”
Audrey nods at a Silver Rock employee chasing after an iguana, who is an even more awkward runner than I am (think a hybrid waddle-gallop). Beside us, a gecko darts under a wooden bench.
“Theoretically.” My mouth goes dry.
“It’s good practice!” Jay says brightly, joggling my shoulder. “You do that while we move some of this water back. Audrey, want to help?”
“It’d be a pleasure, sir,” she deadpans.
They stand near the bench and set to work clearing out the bigger puddles, funneling water up and away in tandem like they’ve rehearsed it for days. I crouch down in front of the bench and check out the gecko, who is spotted like a leopard and really very cute.
I can do this, I tell myself. Geckos always seem friendly, with their old-man smiles and humanoid hands. How hard could it be?
How are you? I whisper.
The gecko pauses, because honestly that was a thoughtless question. He makes a few soft chirps and clicks in a wary tone I deserve. It’s hard to decipher any words, though, because Audrey and Jay are talking so loud.
“So? What did old Pyro Paws say about me?” she asks him.
“Oh, not much.”
“Bullshit. You can tell me.”
“Uh…that you were getting tired of him and maybe wanted to move on?”
“He is so full of crap. Dude’s been my nemesis for ten years. Since I was sixteen. What, he thinks I’m just gonna walk away from that?”
The gecko edges backward into the shadows. How about you come out, I say to him sweetly. And I’ll make sure you get back home.
“I mean, yeah, it’s been bad for my relationships, and yeah, it sucks that I’m always on call. But like, he’s my job. Where’s the loyalty? Where’s the—hang on. Give it a rest, guys! He’s not even here!” I turn my head. She’s yelling at three girls with homemade superbands and t-shirts that say ALDREY ARMY. “Alex’s super-groupies follow us around,” Audrey tells Jay. “They ship us.”
“Go find him!” one girl shouts.
“Y’all are predestined,” another one says.
“It’s not gonna happen! He’s not a good guy! And he doesn’t even like girls!” Audrey goes arrrgh and turns back to Jay. “I mean, he’s not completely repulsive, physically? But why would they wish that on me? Can you imagine him in a relationship?”
“Unfortunately, yeah. He’s my ex.”
“Seriously?” Audrey cracks up. “My god, what was that like?”
“He wasn’t as bad in college.”
“Did he have the fake English accent then?”
“Is that what he was doing? It sounded Australian.”
I roll my eyes and turn back to the gecko, who’s taken a tentative step toward me. Then another. Do you want to go home? I prompt. He makes more click-chirps and this time I think I get it:
Where is home? Home is gone. My home is—
“Wait a second!” Audrey cries. “You’re that guy!”
My focus snaps. The gecko spooks and retreats.
“You’re the guy who stopped that flood…god, you’re like the talk of my superboard.”
“Really?” says Jay.
“Yeah! Is it true you went from mid-D to high B in a year?”
“Ah—well. Nine months of training. But a whole bunch of practice before that. So…”
“Oh man, you’re a local legend! What the hell are you still doing around here?”
“Uh, I…might not be here much longer. I might get this job in Florida. With SuperCommand.”
“No way. Ugh, I’m jealous. Can I get a selfie with you? So I can prove I met you?”
I turn away from the gecko and study my boyfriend’s back. Jay sounds different when he says Florida to a stranger. The care and restraint is gone. He says the word the way little Jay might have said Super Soaker as he shared his Christmas wish on Santa’s lap.
Audrey snaps the photo. I sneeze in tandem with her phone’s camera sound. The gecko startles and darts out, swerving right through my legs and scuttling toward Audrey.
“Oh ho! Where you going, little man?” Audrey squats down and scoops the lizard up with one quick hand. Just like that. “Aww, he’s so cute. I love geckos. I have like five of them.”
“See? She’s an expert,” Jay says gently, putting a hand on my shoulder.
“You’ve had some excitement, mister. Yes, you have.” Audrey strokes his spotted head. “You’re gonna get a new house now, aren’t you?” I swear the goddamn lizard nods at her.
“You tired him out for her,” Jay assures me.
“Oh, sorry!” Audrey says. “Didn’t mean to step on your toes.”
I shake my head. “I have no toes to step on.”
She pauses. “Do you literally have no toes?”
“No, I mean…” I pray for a sinkhole to swallow me. “Doesn’t matter. Excuse me.”
I flee down the rocky dirt path. On the way to our blanket, I replay it over and over: the way Audrey scooped up that gecko, like it was nothing. It brings it all back. The day I want to forget, the day at the lake. The way Jay cleaved the water as if he were slicing an apple. The burning in my lungs, the ache in my chest, the cold creeping certainty that nothing would ever be the same.
Jay follows beside me, doing that annoying thing where he’s half-walking, half-flying. My legs are longer than his, so it’s the only way he can keep up with me when I’m determined to get somewhere fast.
“What a weird day, huh.” He laughs flatly.
“Yep.”
“Audrey’s cool, isn’t she?”
“Uh-huh.”
“She reminds me of Jenna a little. Personality-wise. Did you think that, too?”
“Sure.”
“Hey, you want to try your luck with the gator again? She’s up on land now.”
“No. I want to go.”
“For real?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you upset about the gecko?”
“No, I…This was a bad idea.” I trip on the curled-up edge of our blanket. “Who the hell believes in supernatural dream-signs from a deer?” I toss our half-empty snack bags in the picnic basket. “Besides. It’s about to rain.”
“Okay, then. Geez.”
He grabs You Talk Too Much. I throw the blanket over my shoulder. Before we leave he dogears the last page he read, like an actual monster, and snaps the book shut.
***
He speeds us down Rashwood Road as dark clouds roll in. We sit in silence, listening to Gram and Emmylou sing about how love hurts. Jay lets beads of rain build up on the windshield until their assault on our vision is nearly complete, and then the wiper blade swings in to save the day. My lips hold back unkind words. TURN THE WIPERS UP, YOU PREPOSTEROUS NINNY. DO YOU WANT TO GET US KILLED.
He sighs.
I sigh.
“We could’ve stayed longer,” he says.
“I know.”
“As long as you needed.”
“I know.”
I glare at the windshield. A fresh onslaught of raindrops blurs the road ahead.
In high school I dated this girl Samantha, a cheerful nerd who liked overalls and show tunes. She was a weather super—one of six other supers in our school besides me—and she always knew when a heavy rainstorm was approaching. “A real toad-strangler’s coming,” she’d say, wincing from the full-body storm-aches that always got her out of gym class. (She’s a meteorologist now like most weather supers; on Christmas she sends cards from Chicago, her two perfect curly-haired children smiling in Santa hats in front of her marble fireplace.)
I know when I’m going to have a blowup with Jay the way Samantha knew storms. I can feel one brewing, and I know it’s going to be bad, much worse than our usual sun-showers and cloudbursts. Because the truth is, it’s been building for months, ever since the day at Lake Wallingdare when I—along with Jay’s entire family—saw exactly what my boyfriend was capable of.
then
Joe and Sandy Jantzen don’t do anything small, so the day Sandy turned the big six-oh, the whole family converged on a rented yacht for a “Sassy Sixties” birthday bash. Sixties-themed costumes were required, as was checking your dignity at the boarding ramp.
Jay and I paused at the on-ramp’s fairy-lit entrance, huddled together for warmth and strength. It was April and our thrift-store Skipper-and-Gilligan costumes were no match for Lake Wallingdare’s bitter spring chill.
“I will have to get very, very drunk,” I told Jay, picking lint off his long-sleeved red polo.
“For you that’s what? Two hard lemonades?” Jay tugged at the brim of my cap so it rested at a jaunty angle. “That’s better, Skipper.”
“Thanks, little buddy.”
“We stay two hours max. Then I feign a migraine.”
“Have I told you how much I love you?” I kissed his nose. “And how weirdly hot you are in a white bucket hat?”
“C’mon.” He smiled, threading his arm through mine. “We’re in this mess together.”
Surviving a dreaded social event is always easier when there’s a hard stop in sight. Jay and I dove in together, resolved to make the best of it. We ate tie-dyed deviled eggs and accepted giggly compliments on our costumes. We boogied obligingly to Van Morrison and The Monkees and Sly & the Family Stone. We made small talk with Jay’s aunts and uncles, who were all dressed as hippies in costume-shop wigs (“Hippies, as you know, loved to hang out on yachts,” I murmured to Jay, making him choke on his Mai Tai). For an hour everything felt easy, light, surprisingly survivable. I whirled with Jay in a sprinkle of disco-ball stars, let go of the fears and doubts that had chewed at the back of my mind lately.
And then it happened: through a series of musical chairs, we found ourselves at a table with Sandy and Jenna and Julia and Jeremiah. Where the conversation turned—as it usually did when Sandy has had more than one peach martini—to the Inadequacy of Us.
“I mean, it’s such a shame you can’t talk to dolphins, Levon,” Sandy was saying, birthday tiara askew on her go-go girl wig. “You and Jay-Jay could be a real team then. You could do one of those…you know. Aquatic shows?”
“Mom!” said Jenna. “Those are cruel.”
“Oh, not anymore,” scoffed Sandy. “The dolphins aren’t captured like olden times. These days they volunteer.”
