"I just want to be normal for a day. To walk around like a normal person, for a day. Marshall can do that, you can do that. Why can't I do that? Why did I get screwed like this?" he asked angrily.
    "Everybody wonders that, in their own particular way." I certainly do. "If you could get out of here, would you?" I asked after a moment, figuring that if I was going to bother with this I'd better make sure of how he felt about things first. "Get a job somewhere, what would you want to be doing?"
    "I don't know. I don't know what I'm good at."
    "They said you're good with your hands, good at fixing stuff."
    "It's just something that you have to do here because the place is about to fall apart," he dismissed. "If I were to leave, it's gone."
    "They can hire somebody if they have to. It doesn't look like Lisa's hurting for petty cash."
    "So they don't need me." It sounded almost like an accusation.
    "I'm saying that you should stay if you want to, but not if you feel like you have to."
    "Okay. If I don't want to, where do I go?" he asked; his tone said he expected nothing.
    "Well, that's a good question. But you want to? That's the important thing. Don't think about anything else," I urged him. Let's take things one step at a time, kid.
    A long moment of quiet. "Yeah, if I could find somewhere perfect, where I wasn't going to get treated like a freak, then yeah. 'Cause I wake up and I find myself hating them." His voice shook a little bit, almost as if he was on the verge of tears. "They haven't done anything, they're just there."
    I considered telling him that every teenager feels like this at some point, "freak" or not, but it didn't seem that it would go over well. "Okay. Well, it's a start."
    He laughed without humor. "And if in this mythical utopia I could get a date, too, that would be nice. You know something I don't understand? It all comes down to the same thing. Why did this happen to me, and Phoenix Talon has that beautiful Asian girl hanging on him all the time?"
    It took me a minute to figure out he was talking about Dawn; after their return from Japan, she had certainly been dressing the part, and they'd been in a lot of photos around then.
    "They're not going out," I informed him hastily. "Just so you know."
    "What?" He looked taken aback.
    "It's a long story, but they're not... involved." What a weird thought. "I don't know if there's anything I can do, but I can try. Boston's a big place, they're certainly a little more open-minded down there."
    "And it's on the coast," he commented sardonically. "Hoo-rah."
    I shrugged. "Well, I like it."
    "Better than having a saline tank, traveling around the country."
    "You could do that."
    "I've done that, that's okay. That's fine."
    "You sound bitter," I observed.
    "All right," he said after a moment. "If it didn't happen, I'd be dead. But it did happen, and it stole my life." Pause. "My parents didn't do that because they were looking for a place where they think I'd fit in, they were doing it because they didn't want to have to work at their jobs any more. And as soon as I could leave, I left. They didn't even take me to see anyone. Oh congratulations, here you go. I couldn't be out of the tank for more than twenty minutes at a time until I was eighteen. Like John Travolta in that stupid movie, except I was in a tank rather than a bubble," he spat. "They didn't care. Congratulations son, you have powers."
    "I understand why you feel that way," I said after a moment.
    "And then I can't even explain... what it looks like down there. I've tried writing, I can't. I can't even talk to people."
    "These things take practice. How old are you?"
    "Twenty-one."
    "You're young."
    "Yeah," he rolled his eyes.
    I sighed. "I don't know, I guess what I'm trying to say is it's a little early in the game to give up."
    "I haven't given up," he said quietly. "If I wanted to give up, all I have to do is get on a plane."
    I gave him a somewhat shocked look. I can't say the thought has never crossed my mind, these past couple months, but it would never occur to me to do it in such a way that it would involve so many other people.
    "Well, I'm glad you haven't given up. Like I said, if there's anything I can do."
    "Yeah, if you can find me something out of here...."
    "What's going on with this Mariner thing?" I recalled the dinner conversation, his obvious enthusiasm for whatever they were up to.
    "They're the Windjammers," he said. "J.T. Leonard, the Mariner...."
    That faint bell, just out of hearing again. "Did I miss something?"
    "1950s, after all the variants vanished, he was a-a hero. He and the Windjammers, they were his 'henchmen,' kind of, started this company. They do underwater oceanographic archaeology."
    "Oh. Sounds like an interesting field."
    "They were really good at it."
    "So?"
    "What?"
    "Sounds like a natural for you." And he was clearly interested in what they were doing. I wanted to see if he was willing to articulate what it was he wanted out of life. If he's going to get out, he needs something to shoot for, not just "anything but this."
    "You need a degree."
    "You can work on that," I stated. Being part of a traveling carnival probably hadn't given him much of a formal education, but if you can't get one of those in Boston I don't know where you can. And Lucky's working with those kids downtown, she probably knows who to talk to about a GED program.
    "Yeah, maybe I can." There was that sarcasm again. "But... I just can't. I mean, they're—don't roll your eyes, I mean they're—you ever meet someone, the best in the world at what they do, and you want to be doing what they do? And how you feel like a complete idiot?"
    "I know the feeling, yeah."
    "That's what it's like. I can't even talk to them."
    "You have to start somewhere."
    "I can't start there," he said firmly. "Besides they're all normal. They pride themselves, all of them, on being normal. You know, the whole point? All of us were gone. They stepped into the breach, saved the world." A quiet moment followed, but then he said, "All right. If you can find me something... anything, I'll try it." It sounded like a promise.
    "Sounds fair. I'll see what I can do," I promised in turn.

| Top |