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rainbowfic2015-07-02 05:22 am
starphotographs) wrote in rainbowfic2015-07-02 05:22 am
Milk Bottle 13, Skyblue Pink with Striped Polka Dots 4, Baby Pink 3
Name: starphotographs
Story: Corwin and Friends
Supplies and Styles: Graffiti (Milk Bottle, Summer Carnival), Canvas
Characters: Mischa (POV), Spenser, others that aren’t in focus.
Colors: Milk Bottle 13 (Drop Tower), Skyblue Pink with Striped Polka Dots 4 (“Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them.”), Baby Pink 3 (You're like a hero! And you're cute!)
Word Count: 3,712
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Choose not to warn.
Summary: A story about the power of love and the love of power. (The latter isn’t what you’d think!)
Note: I’ve mentioned Mischa before, and I figured it was time for a proper flashback. They’re about 14 here. (All comments welcome as always!) Oh, and if you want some tunes while you read, might I suggest some Hazel?
Crown of Love
Life is easy when you don’t have anyone watching after you.
I mean, you’re too hot or too cold most of the year, and figuring out food is kind of a drag, and when you get in trouble, the only people who have your back are just as silly and shiftless as you, but it’s easy anyway. Freedom is easy. All you have to do is say yes to yourself, and you can do whatever your heart desires. And my heart desires a lot of things. That’s why I ended up living with a bunch of other kids, in a storage locker that feels like a drafty box in winter and a hot metal oven in summer. It’s why I ended up living on fast food and stolen candy. But, my heart doesn’t really desire groceries or climate control. I have a good jacket packed up in a box, and I just made some cutoffs the other week. And I like candy, both eating and stealing it. No, I want to scream at people who piss me off without getting locked in detention for an entire afternoon. I want to sit in the park and drink orange soda at one o’clock PM, or AM, for that matter, on a Tuesday if I want to. I want to exist in the world without people feeling the need to say they thought I was a boy, as if I wasn’t living fucking proof that some people who look and act like me are girls. Get over it.
…Okay, the last thing never stopped, because that shit is everywhere. But, the rest holds up. Without what certain assholes think is guidance, I get to be who I am, right or wrong. If I want to fight, the only consequence is fighting, and I can figure that out for myself. If I yell at someone, no one tells me to quiet down. I can walk into a store and abscond with whatever food I want and eat it on a rooftop in the morning sun; and never have to go to school again. I, as they say, am a free woman. Well, maybe not a woman just yet. That’ll have to wait. But, I’m free. We all are. Freedom is why we live like we do.
Well, really, we all have different reasons:
Dylan is here because his father took up target shooting. He’s always calling himself a pacifist and decided living under the same roof as a gun would go against his principles.
Ella is actually here because she wants to go to school. Well, one particular school. Just because it’s the one with that history teacher she likes staring at. She came to live here after her parents moved, and I’m not sure if she’s actually enrolled there anymore, or if she just walks in the door and counts on her student ID still being good for another year and everyone having seen her around before. I think she might have fabricated an aunt or something, but I try not to ask her much because the logistics of it give me a headache.
Tara is here because she’s Ella’s best friend. Actually, the way she floats around all over the place, she’s probably just here because she’ll end up everywhere, eventually.
I think Rodney is here because he’s too stupid to be accepted into society and too stupid to survive in the wild.
Spenser only came to live with us last fall, and I’m not sure why he’s here yet. Mostly, he just seems like someone who doesn’t quite fit in anywhere, and since you can’t actually end up nowhere, he drifted down to the next closest place and settled.
Actually, I’m starting to think he might be like me.
His heart desires a lot of things, too. I want to find out what they are.
*****
We’re actually all pretty normal for our age, in that it seems like, right now, we love risky behavior more than anything else. Of course, we’re also different, because we actually get to do all the dumb things that sound kind of neat when you first think of them, which eventually leads to some escalation. We play on the train tracks and swim in the polluted river. We hang around construction sites and pose for stupid pictures on the trucks. We eat day-old, and perfectly good, bakery cookies out of dumpsters. We dare each other to chew the gum we find under tables. Those are just a few of the dangerous, or at least regrettable, things we get up to. And since people always need something to do, the list is growing all the time. But, few of the things we come up with are quite as entertaining as what we call “Going to the Pylon.”
The Pylon is one of those things you see holding up power lines in big empty places. So, you know, a pylon. Except Spenser says it’s actually called a transmission tower, and since he even knows to call it something like that, I’d guess he probably knows better than we do. More than any of us, and even more than a lot of adults I’ve met, he always knows the right words for things, and I don’t know where he learns them. He’s probably really smart, even if he’s always doing even stupider things than the rest of us. For our third date, he took us both to the library, but they shushed him so many times he got frustrated and left.
Well, whatever it’s actually called, the point of the Pylon is that it’s like a jungle gym you’ll never get too big for. When we first discovered it, it felt like being welcomed home. At least, it felt that way for me. The world had finally gotten back to the way it is when you’re little, and everything seems huge and fun and a little scary. Back when the fun could always make you forget about your fear. Less oblivious to danger and more just apathetic, we climb and swing and balance and watch-this and check-me-out. We hang by our knees, and sometimes end up clutching the backs of our heads because we smacked them on a beam. We topple to the ground and get skinned knees and elbows that need kisses and dinosaur band-aids. We play.
Spenser plays the hardest of all. The rest of us, unless we get caught up in the moment, are at least a little bit careful, always trying to hold on and avoid a spill if at all possible. Spenser, over and over again, climbs up to the lower beams and flings himself off. It’s kind of a spectacle, so everyone watches. Some cheer, most of us laugh. It’s not skillful at all. He never lands right, because he’s so fucking clumsy, and sometimes you can tell when he stands back up that the impact actually really hurt. But, he always readjusts his glasses, dusts himself off, and does it again. I don’t think anyone else is all that impressed. They just watch because they think it’s funny that he’s acting like such a goon. And, I guess he is acting like a goon. He might be some kind of genius, and he comes off as mixed-up and angry a lot of the time, but he really is a silly person.
Silly as he is, I’m always impressed. It’s not like I think falling to the ground like a sack of crap is a talent. What impresses me is that he’s doing it in the first place. That he’s willing to do something so stupid and painful for so little reason. And it’s only made more special by the fact that he does shit like that all the time. I remember once, we were playing frisbee in some scraggly grass lot, and I accidentally tossed the disc over the fence. Now, what that fence surrounded, I’m not sure, but it wasn’t your normal white-picket fence. It was chain-link and razor wire; twice as tall as we were. Behind it was a steep gravel ditch. Maybe whoever owned the ditch wanted to keep people from falling into it and breaking all their arms and legs or something. But, what was behind the fence doesn’t matter. What matters is that Spenser, without even taking the time to think about it, scaled it and vaulted over to the other side. His flannel shirt got tangled in the razor wire, he tried to pull it down, and ended up going down with it, skidding all the way to the bottom of the ditch, landing next to the neon pink frisbee. He grabbed it, staggered to his feet, then turned around called out to me, waving the pink disc triumphantly above his head.
“Well, that was easy!”
Then he clawed his way, one-handed, up the gravelly slope, hopped the fence again, and stood before me, dirty and bleeding, huge sections of his scraped-up arms and bleach-splattered old t-shirt showing through the shredded flannel. Grinning ear to ear, even though every stage of that whole incident must have really, really hurt. He presented me with my frisbee. I thought he looked beautiful. And brave, and wonderfully care-free. I was just so moved by everything about him. There wasn’t any question about what to do next.
And that was how we had our first kiss.
He bled a little on my white shirt, but I didn’t care. Because he reminded me so much of those superheroes who throw themselves through skylights and brick walls. Except, he wasn’t a superhero. He was just a human. It was like no one ever told him how easily he could break.
*****
Today, at the Pylon, there wasn’t anything of mine, or any of ours, that needed fetching. He was just throwing himself around for the fun of it. And even that was affecting, in a way. Spenser just doesn’t care. Eventually, everyone got tired of his act, and tired of the whole Pylon business. I could tell just looking at them that they were done playing. I wanted to scream at them that they were fools. Didn’t they know they’d eventually be done playing for good? That they needed to get in as much as they could now, while they were still allowed? Of course, none of them understood this. At least not yet. Tara had already hopped down to the ground.
“Hey Mish, you coming?”
“I’ll catch up!”
And then they all clomped back to the storage units, with not a single idea that this was where they really belonged. Well, all of them except Spenser. He was still recovering from the last dive at the ground, rubbing his back, cleaning his glasses, bleeding from one knee, wincing. Then he pushed his hair out of his eyes, stood up, and climbed back up the Pylon like a squirrel. Only this time, he didn’t fling himself off again. He just climbed higher, until he was sitting on the beam next to me, smiling like he always did. I smiled right back.
“…Well, hi!”
“Hi Mischa!”
He said it in a particular way, drawing out the vowels cutely. I would have smiled at him again, but I already was, so I just kept it up..
“Hi again yourself!”
He leaned forward on one of the beams, his arms draped over it lazily.
“…I like your earrings! And your hair!”
I felt myself starting to blush, then ran my hand along the still-tender outer rim of my ear, and through what was left of my hair. Sometimes, when I got pissed off, instead of starting a fight, I’d go pierce my ears with a safety pin, or hack at my hair with scissors until I got bored of it. Something about looking a little different always cheered me right up.
“Thanks, Spense.”
“…The fuck you thankin’ me for? You’re the one who’s all cool and pretty and crap!”
It was the most inarticulate compliment I’d ever heard, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t as if I sounded much better.
“So, like…?”
“Yeah?”
“What’s with you and jumpin’ offa shit?”
“…I dunno! I just like it. Y’know how people go on roller coasters, and there’s like, the wind in your hair, and your guts kinda flip? Well, I’m too poor to go to an amusement park, and jumpin’ off stuff feels the same way, ‘cept it doesn’t last as long and you gotta do it over and over again. Shit like that’s just fun, I guess.”
“That makes sense, yeah. I like roller coasters a lot. Anyway, how’s your tattoo healing?”
A week ago, we drank a bottle of cheap wine together at midnight in the park. I had a safety pin and a ballpoint pen on my person for no particular reason but that they both came in handy. Spenser begged me to tattoo him. And I thought, what the hell? I tried to do a smiley face, and the outline came out okay because I was tracing the wine cap, but I really messed up the mouth. I couldn’t get it to curve, so the face wasn’t exactly smiling. Of course, Spenser still loved it anyway, so much that he named the thing.
“Mr. Apathy is doin’ great! …Well, actually, so-so. ‘Cause he’s Mr. Apathy and all. But, the tattoo itself is all healed, see?”
He pulled up his sleeve, to show me the soft white inside of what passed for a bicep. Mr. Apathy stared out blankly at me from his skin.
“Looks good! Um… Sorry I fucked up the mouth.”
“You kiddin’ me!? He has more personality this way! If it was just like, a lame ol’ regular smiley face, I don’t think I would’a still been this, like, into it. I mean, I’d think it’s fuckin’ cool, but the way I could think anything is fuckin’ cool, y’know?”
“If you say so, I guess, but-”
Suddenly, he put his hand up to my face, cutting me off.
“…Shh!”
He was staring up at the wires, but I wasn’t sure why.
“What…?”
Turning away from the sky, he looked back at me, sort of whispering and laughing at the same time.
“…You can hear the power!”
We both looked back up to the top of the tower. I tried to quiet my breathing. And then I heard it. A buzzy sound, like bees, or an air conditioner.
“Oh. Wow.”
Spenser had what I now knew as the Bad Idea Look. Basically, he looked truly happy in a way that you couldn’t keep from rubbing off.
“Let’s climb up so we can hear it better!”
Before I could answer, there he went, hoisting himself from beam to beam. I knew he was being stupid, and that no good end could come of me getting as stupid as he was, but I wanted to keep sitting with him, so I scurried up after him. Sometimes, when I seemed unsure of my footing, he’d grab me by the hand and hoist me up himself. Spenser has arms like twigs, so this was mostly just a gesture, but at least it was a nice gesture. I always took his hand, even when I didn’t think it would help. And before too long, we’d made it up. He found the perfect spot, where the energy crackled and hissed around us as it rushed along on miles of wire, heading for everyone’s televisions. If there’s one thing I missed about House Life, it was television. We were sitting between those wires, high above everything, watching the sun set over the edge of town. For once, Spenser looked relaxed. Or maybe just satisfied.
“Told you this would be cool!”
He sat swinging his feet, in their two-sizes-too-big sneakers. The white rubber gleamed, and the red canvas reminded me of stop signs. They were obnoxiously clean, because they were new. Whenever we hear about a unit getting repossessed, we try to sneak in before the auctioneers can get at all the good stuff. Last time, Spenser found these shoes, and made off with them because he thought they were great, even if they didn’t really fit. Like how he thought his tattoo was great even though it didn’t have the right expression. I watched his huge red feet and listened to the spitting wires.
“Yeah… I never knew it made a sound before. I mean, unless it’s a bug zapper or something.”
“Well, most things make sounds. Pretty much anything that can move, makes a sound. Actually, that’s all sound is, stuff movin’ against other stuff. Anyway, what we‘re hearin‘ now, called mains hum. Which is pretty fuckin’ dumb, because it’s a word for, like, completely different things. If you hear it by a telephone pole, it’s usually little magnetic fields ratting tiny shit around in the transformers. But these are high-voltage lines, so you‘re hearin‘ corona discharge.”
I wasn’t sure what that was, but it at least sounded pretty, even though I only knew enough to imagine a king’s crown.
“Wow.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty fuckin’ cool…”
He pulled himself to his feet, standing on the beam. I wanted to tell him to sit back down, or at least hold on with both hands. But, I kept quiet, watching him point toward the sky, gesturing at the wires above us. It was like no one ever told him how easily he could break.
“…What happens is, they can’t keep all the power in the lines. That’d be, like, impossible. So little electric fields form around the insulators… Which, yeah, really aren‘t doing their job here… And if they get big enough, they, um, completely change the air around them. I mean, it isn’t even air then, it’s plasma, which is actually a pretty good conductor in itself, so if you come here at night… Aw, man, we should come here at night! The corona can actually glow, but we can’t see it now ‘cause it’s too bright…”
Honestly, I thought that sounded like the stupidest idea I’d ever heard. Climbing this thing is hard enough when you can see what you’re doing. But, he at least made it sound exciting. I didn’t know why power lines, of all things, made him so happy, but I was glad they did, just so I could watch and listen to him. He was so smart. He saw so much in everything. The bright orange sun was shining through his hair and glinting off his glasses. Swaying precariously in the breeze, he went on with his explanation.
“…You can smell it, too! The extra electrons knock the oxygen molecules apart, and sometimes, they go back together with a third atom. The normal molecules are dioxygen, and I’m not sure if they smell like anything, but then again, I guess I’m used to ‘em, so the fuck would I know? Anyway, the three-atom oxygen is ozone. It smells good! Smell it!”
Closing my eyes so I could concentrate better, I sniffed until I caught something that smelled like thunderstorms and pool water.
“Is it supposed to smell like… Summer? And, um… Wet?”
Spenser also had his eyes closed, and was sniffing at the air contentedly. I was about to tell him to either open his eyes or sit the fuck down, but he opened them again on his own.
“That’s how a lot of people describe it! But I always think it smells like itself and bleach. Or like a nice old copy machine, but those also make ozone, so again, like itself… Anyway, since it’s pretty much just oxygen plus one, it also oxidizes things more quickly, so it can actually do damage to the… Whoa!”
His feet slipped off the beam. I felt my heart leap into my mouth, like I could have spat it out and given it to him, if I wanted. Instead, I caught his free hand and pulled him back up, but not before his glasses slipped off and clattered to the ground. Somehow, this also made him laugh. I guess he was just glad to be alive, even if it meant being stone blind.
“…Shit, man. That would have been bad.”
“Spenser, you need to be more careful!”
He tried to look down and take in how far he might have fallen, but I knew damn well that, without his glasses, he couldn’t see five inches in front of his face. The true danger would always be lost on him. Just like always. His nerves are as nearsighted as he is.
“…Yeah, maybe.”
“I thought you were gonna, like, splat!”
“Well, I didn’t… Anyway, I’m going to need some help down. Think you can do that?”
Not really, but it’s not like you can live up here.
“…Sure.”
Certain that I’d just killed us both by agreeing, I took his hand, and started easing my way down. I made sure we were both careful. Careful enough to get to the bottom in one piece. When we were finally on solid ground, I sat Spenser down in the dirt and told him to stay there while I looked for his glasses. When I finally found them, it was nearly dusk, and there was a huge gouge in the right lens, like they’d landed on a rock or something.
“Um… Here you go. They’re kinda messed up.”
He put them on and glanced around for a while.
“Eh. Lookin’ through a crack is better than, like, not lookin’ at all. I can deal… Hey, wow! Mish, check it out!”
Spenser had his head tilted all the way back, and was staring at something in awe. It took me a while to find what he was looking at, but eventually, I noticed it: the insulators were glowing. Faint, barely noticeable, blue on blue. But I saw what he saw.
“That’s…”
“…The corona!”
He smiled, and stumbled to his feet. One of his eyes was obscured by the ruined lens, and his elbows and knees were still bruised and bloody from flying from the tower. I threw my arms around his narrow shoulders. I just couldn’t help myself. There was something about him right then that reassured me:
No matter how old he got, Spenser would never be done playing.
My hero.
starphotographsStory: Corwin and Friends
Supplies and Styles: Graffiti (Milk Bottle, Summer Carnival), Canvas
Characters: Mischa (POV), Spenser, others that aren’t in focus.
Colors: Milk Bottle 13 (Drop Tower), Skyblue Pink with Striped Polka Dots 4 (“Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them.”), Baby Pink 3 (You're like a hero! And you're cute!)
Word Count: 3,712
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Choose not to warn.
Summary: A story about the power of love and the love of power. (The latter isn’t what you’d think!)
Note: I’ve mentioned Mischa before, and I figured it was time for a proper flashback. They’re about 14 here. (All comments welcome as always!) Oh, and if you want some tunes while you read, might I suggest some Hazel?
Life is easy when you don’t have anyone watching after you.
I mean, you’re too hot or too cold most of the year, and figuring out food is kind of a drag, and when you get in trouble, the only people who have your back are just as silly and shiftless as you, but it’s easy anyway. Freedom is easy. All you have to do is say yes to yourself, and you can do whatever your heart desires. And my heart desires a lot of things. That’s why I ended up living with a bunch of other kids, in a storage locker that feels like a drafty box in winter and a hot metal oven in summer. It’s why I ended up living on fast food and stolen candy. But, my heart doesn’t really desire groceries or climate control. I have a good jacket packed up in a box, and I just made some cutoffs the other week. And I like candy, both eating and stealing it. No, I want to scream at people who piss me off without getting locked in detention for an entire afternoon. I want to sit in the park and drink orange soda at one o’clock PM, or AM, for that matter, on a Tuesday if I want to. I want to exist in the world without people feeling the need to say they thought I was a boy, as if I wasn’t living fucking proof that some people who look and act like me are girls. Get over it.
…Okay, the last thing never stopped, because that shit is everywhere. But, the rest holds up. Without what certain assholes think is guidance, I get to be who I am, right or wrong. If I want to fight, the only consequence is fighting, and I can figure that out for myself. If I yell at someone, no one tells me to quiet down. I can walk into a store and abscond with whatever food I want and eat it on a rooftop in the morning sun; and never have to go to school again. I, as they say, am a free woman. Well, maybe not a woman just yet. That’ll have to wait. But, I’m free. We all are. Freedom is why we live like we do.
Well, really, we all have different reasons:
Dylan is here because his father took up target shooting. He’s always calling himself a pacifist and decided living under the same roof as a gun would go against his principles.
Ella is actually here because she wants to go to school. Well, one particular school. Just because it’s the one with that history teacher she likes staring at. She came to live here after her parents moved, and I’m not sure if she’s actually enrolled there anymore, or if she just walks in the door and counts on her student ID still being good for another year and everyone having seen her around before. I think she might have fabricated an aunt or something, but I try not to ask her much because the logistics of it give me a headache.
Tara is here because she’s Ella’s best friend. Actually, the way she floats around all over the place, she’s probably just here because she’ll end up everywhere, eventually.
I think Rodney is here because he’s too stupid to be accepted into society and too stupid to survive in the wild.
Spenser only came to live with us last fall, and I’m not sure why he’s here yet. Mostly, he just seems like someone who doesn’t quite fit in anywhere, and since you can’t actually end up nowhere, he drifted down to the next closest place and settled.
Actually, I’m starting to think he might be like me.
His heart desires a lot of things, too. I want to find out what they are.
We’re actually all pretty normal for our age, in that it seems like, right now, we love risky behavior more than anything else. Of course, we’re also different, because we actually get to do all the dumb things that sound kind of neat when you first think of them, which eventually leads to some escalation. We play on the train tracks and swim in the polluted river. We hang around construction sites and pose for stupid pictures on the trucks. We eat day-old, and perfectly good, bakery cookies out of dumpsters. We dare each other to chew the gum we find under tables. Those are just a few of the dangerous, or at least regrettable, things we get up to. And since people always need something to do, the list is growing all the time. But, few of the things we come up with are quite as entertaining as what we call “Going to the Pylon.”
The Pylon is one of those things you see holding up power lines in big empty places. So, you know, a pylon. Except Spenser says it’s actually called a transmission tower, and since he even knows to call it something like that, I’d guess he probably knows better than we do. More than any of us, and even more than a lot of adults I’ve met, he always knows the right words for things, and I don’t know where he learns them. He’s probably really smart, even if he’s always doing even stupider things than the rest of us. For our third date, he took us both to the library, but they shushed him so many times he got frustrated and left.
Well, whatever it’s actually called, the point of the Pylon is that it’s like a jungle gym you’ll never get too big for. When we first discovered it, it felt like being welcomed home. At least, it felt that way for me. The world had finally gotten back to the way it is when you’re little, and everything seems huge and fun and a little scary. Back when the fun could always make you forget about your fear. Less oblivious to danger and more just apathetic, we climb and swing and balance and watch-this and check-me-out. We hang by our knees, and sometimes end up clutching the backs of our heads because we smacked them on a beam. We topple to the ground and get skinned knees and elbows that need kisses and dinosaur band-aids. We play.
Spenser plays the hardest of all. The rest of us, unless we get caught up in the moment, are at least a little bit careful, always trying to hold on and avoid a spill if at all possible. Spenser, over and over again, climbs up to the lower beams and flings himself off. It’s kind of a spectacle, so everyone watches. Some cheer, most of us laugh. It’s not skillful at all. He never lands right, because he’s so fucking clumsy, and sometimes you can tell when he stands back up that the impact actually really hurt. But, he always readjusts his glasses, dusts himself off, and does it again. I don’t think anyone else is all that impressed. They just watch because they think it’s funny that he’s acting like such a goon. And, I guess he is acting like a goon. He might be some kind of genius, and he comes off as mixed-up and angry a lot of the time, but he really is a silly person.
Silly as he is, I’m always impressed. It’s not like I think falling to the ground like a sack of crap is a talent. What impresses me is that he’s doing it in the first place. That he’s willing to do something so stupid and painful for so little reason. And it’s only made more special by the fact that he does shit like that all the time. I remember once, we were playing frisbee in some scraggly grass lot, and I accidentally tossed the disc over the fence. Now, what that fence surrounded, I’m not sure, but it wasn’t your normal white-picket fence. It was chain-link and razor wire; twice as tall as we were. Behind it was a steep gravel ditch. Maybe whoever owned the ditch wanted to keep people from falling into it and breaking all their arms and legs or something. But, what was behind the fence doesn’t matter. What matters is that Spenser, without even taking the time to think about it, scaled it and vaulted over to the other side. His flannel shirt got tangled in the razor wire, he tried to pull it down, and ended up going down with it, skidding all the way to the bottom of the ditch, landing next to the neon pink frisbee. He grabbed it, staggered to his feet, then turned around called out to me, waving the pink disc triumphantly above his head.
“Well, that was easy!”
Then he clawed his way, one-handed, up the gravelly slope, hopped the fence again, and stood before me, dirty and bleeding, huge sections of his scraped-up arms and bleach-splattered old t-shirt showing through the shredded flannel. Grinning ear to ear, even though every stage of that whole incident must have really, really hurt. He presented me with my frisbee. I thought he looked beautiful. And brave, and wonderfully care-free. I was just so moved by everything about him. There wasn’t any question about what to do next.
And that was how we had our first kiss.
He bled a little on my white shirt, but I didn’t care. Because he reminded me so much of those superheroes who throw themselves through skylights and brick walls. Except, he wasn’t a superhero. He was just a human. It was like no one ever told him how easily he could break.
Today, at the Pylon, there wasn’t anything of mine, or any of ours, that needed fetching. He was just throwing himself around for the fun of it. And even that was affecting, in a way. Spenser just doesn’t care. Eventually, everyone got tired of his act, and tired of the whole Pylon business. I could tell just looking at them that they were done playing. I wanted to scream at them that they were fools. Didn’t they know they’d eventually be done playing for good? That they needed to get in as much as they could now, while they were still allowed? Of course, none of them understood this. At least not yet. Tara had already hopped down to the ground.
“Hey Mish, you coming?”
“I’ll catch up!”
And then they all clomped back to the storage units, with not a single idea that this was where they really belonged. Well, all of them except Spenser. He was still recovering from the last dive at the ground, rubbing his back, cleaning his glasses, bleeding from one knee, wincing. Then he pushed his hair out of his eyes, stood up, and climbed back up the Pylon like a squirrel. Only this time, he didn’t fling himself off again. He just climbed higher, until he was sitting on the beam next to me, smiling like he always did. I smiled right back.
“…Well, hi!”
“Hi Mischa!”
He said it in a particular way, drawing out the vowels cutely. I would have smiled at him again, but I already was, so I just kept it up..
“Hi again yourself!”
He leaned forward on one of the beams, his arms draped over it lazily.
“…I like your earrings! And your hair!”
I felt myself starting to blush, then ran my hand along the still-tender outer rim of my ear, and through what was left of my hair. Sometimes, when I got pissed off, instead of starting a fight, I’d go pierce my ears with a safety pin, or hack at my hair with scissors until I got bored of it. Something about looking a little different always cheered me right up.
“Thanks, Spense.”
“…The fuck you thankin’ me for? You’re the one who’s all cool and pretty and crap!”
It was the most inarticulate compliment I’d ever heard, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t as if I sounded much better.
“So, like…?”
“Yeah?”
“What’s with you and jumpin’ offa shit?”
“…I dunno! I just like it. Y’know how people go on roller coasters, and there’s like, the wind in your hair, and your guts kinda flip? Well, I’m too poor to go to an amusement park, and jumpin’ off stuff feels the same way, ‘cept it doesn’t last as long and you gotta do it over and over again. Shit like that’s just fun, I guess.”
“That makes sense, yeah. I like roller coasters a lot. Anyway, how’s your tattoo healing?”
A week ago, we drank a bottle of cheap wine together at midnight in the park. I had a safety pin and a ballpoint pen on my person for no particular reason but that they both came in handy. Spenser begged me to tattoo him. And I thought, what the hell? I tried to do a smiley face, and the outline came out okay because I was tracing the wine cap, but I really messed up the mouth. I couldn’t get it to curve, so the face wasn’t exactly smiling. Of course, Spenser still loved it anyway, so much that he named the thing.
“Mr. Apathy is doin’ great! …Well, actually, so-so. ‘Cause he’s Mr. Apathy and all. But, the tattoo itself is all healed, see?”
He pulled up his sleeve, to show me the soft white inside of what passed for a bicep. Mr. Apathy stared out blankly at me from his skin.
“Looks good! Um… Sorry I fucked up the mouth.”
“You kiddin’ me!? He has more personality this way! If it was just like, a lame ol’ regular smiley face, I don’t think I would’a still been this, like, into it. I mean, I’d think it’s fuckin’ cool, but the way I could think anything is fuckin’ cool, y’know?”
“If you say so, I guess, but-”
Suddenly, he put his hand up to my face, cutting me off.
“…Shh!”
He was staring up at the wires, but I wasn’t sure why.
“What…?”
Turning away from the sky, he looked back at me, sort of whispering and laughing at the same time.
“…You can hear the power!”
We both looked back up to the top of the tower. I tried to quiet my breathing. And then I heard it. A buzzy sound, like bees, or an air conditioner.
“Oh. Wow.”
Spenser had what I now knew as the Bad Idea Look. Basically, he looked truly happy in a way that you couldn’t keep from rubbing off.
“Let’s climb up so we can hear it better!”
Before I could answer, there he went, hoisting himself from beam to beam. I knew he was being stupid, and that no good end could come of me getting as stupid as he was, but I wanted to keep sitting with him, so I scurried up after him. Sometimes, when I seemed unsure of my footing, he’d grab me by the hand and hoist me up himself. Spenser has arms like twigs, so this was mostly just a gesture, but at least it was a nice gesture. I always took his hand, even when I didn’t think it would help. And before too long, we’d made it up. He found the perfect spot, where the energy crackled and hissed around us as it rushed along on miles of wire, heading for everyone’s televisions. If there’s one thing I missed about House Life, it was television. We were sitting between those wires, high above everything, watching the sun set over the edge of town. For once, Spenser looked relaxed. Or maybe just satisfied.
“Told you this would be cool!”
He sat swinging his feet, in their two-sizes-too-big sneakers. The white rubber gleamed, and the red canvas reminded me of stop signs. They were obnoxiously clean, because they were new. Whenever we hear about a unit getting repossessed, we try to sneak in before the auctioneers can get at all the good stuff. Last time, Spenser found these shoes, and made off with them because he thought they were great, even if they didn’t really fit. Like how he thought his tattoo was great even though it didn’t have the right expression. I watched his huge red feet and listened to the spitting wires.
“Yeah… I never knew it made a sound before. I mean, unless it’s a bug zapper or something.”
“Well, most things make sounds. Pretty much anything that can move, makes a sound. Actually, that’s all sound is, stuff movin’ against other stuff. Anyway, what we‘re hearin‘ now, called mains hum. Which is pretty fuckin’ dumb, because it’s a word for, like, completely different things. If you hear it by a telephone pole, it’s usually little magnetic fields ratting tiny shit around in the transformers. But these are high-voltage lines, so you‘re hearin‘ corona discharge.”
I wasn’t sure what that was, but it at least sounded pretty, even though I only knew enough to imagine a king’s crown.
“Wow.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty fuckin’ cool…”
He pulled himself to his feet, standing on the beam. I wanted to tell him to sit back down, or at least hold on with both hands. But, I kept quiet, watching him point toward the sky, gesturing at the wires above us. It was like no one ever told him how easily he could break.
“…What happens is, they can’t keep all the power in the lines. That’d be, like, impossible. So little electric fields form around the insulators… Which, yeah, really aren‘t doing their job here… And if they get big enough, they, um, completely change the air around them. I mean, it isn’t even air then, it’s plasma, which is actually a pretty good conductor in itself, so if you come here at night… Aw, man, we should come here at night! The corona can actually glow, but we can’t see it now ‘cause it’s too bright…”
Honestly, I thought that sounded like the stupidest idea I’d ever heard. Climbing this thing is hard enough when you can see what you’re doing. But, he at least made it sound exciting. I didn’t know why power lines, of all things, made him so happy, but I was glad they did, just so I could watch and listen to him. He was so smart. He saw so much in everything. The bright orange sun was shining through his hair and glinting off his glasses. Swaying precariously in the breeze, he went on with his explanation.
“…You can smell it, too! The extra electrons knock the oxygen molecules apart, and sometimes, they go back together with a third atom. The normal molecules are dioxygen, and I’m not sure if they smell like anything, but then again, I guess I’m used to ‘em, so the fuck would I know? Anyway, the three-atom oxygen is ozone. It smells good! Smell it!”
Closing my eyes so I could concentrate better, I sniffed until I caught something that smelled like thunderstorms and pool water.
“Is it supposed to smell like… Summer? And, um… Wet?”
Spenser also had his eyes closed, and was sniffing at the air contentedly. I was about to tell him to either open his eyes or sit the fuck down, but he opened them again on his own.
“That’s how a lot of people describe it! But I always think it smells like itself and bleach. Or like a nice old copy machine, but those also make ozone, so again, like itself… Anyway, since it’s pretty much just oxygen plus one, it also oxidizes things more quickly, so it can actually do damage to the… Whoa!”
His feet slipped off the beam. I felt my heart leap into my mouth, like I could have spat it out and given it to him, if I wanted. Instead, I caught his free hand and pulled him back up, but not before his glasses slipped off and clattered to the ground. Somehow, this also made him laugh. I guess he was just glad to be alive, even if it meant being stone blind.
“…Shit, man. That would have been bad.”
“Spenser, you need to be more careful!”
He tried to look down and take in how far he might have fallen, but I knew damn well that, without his glasses, he couldn’t see five inches in front of his face. The true danger would always be lost on him. Just like always. His nerves are as nearsighted as he is.
“…Yeah, maybe.”
“I thought you were gonna, like, splat!”
“Well, I didn’t… Anyway, I’m going to need some help down. Think you can do that?”
Not really, but it’s not like you can live up here.
“…Sure.”
Certain that I’d just killed us both by agreeing, I took his hand, and started easing my way down. I made sure we were both careful. Careful enough to get to the bottom in one piece. When we were finally on solid ground, I sat Spenser down in the dirt and told him to stay there while I looked for his glasses. When I finally found them, it was nearly dusk, and there was a huge gouge in the right lens, like they’d landed on a rock or something.
“Um… Here you go. They’re kinda messed up.”
He put them on and glanced around for a while.
“Eh. Lookin’ through a crack is better than, like, not lookin’ at all. I can deal… Hey, wow! Mish, check it out!”
Spenser had his head tilted all the way back, and was staring at something in awe. It took me a while to find what he was looking at, but eventually, I noticed it: the insulators were glowing. Faint, barely noticeable, blue on blue. But I saw what he saw.
“That’s…”
“…The corona!”
He smiled, and stumbled to his feet. One of his eyes was obscured by the ruined lens, and his elbows and knees were still bruised and bloody from flying from the tower. I threw my arms around his narrow shoulders. I just couldn’t help myself. There was something about him right then that reassured me:
No matter how old he got, Spenser would never be done playing.
My hero.
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