V. H. King's Ink

A quick preface to this week’s story: If you haven’t read The Color of Forever, you probably haven’t met Yana and Jessie yet. Their connection has stuck with me, so here they are again! I have a feeling there will be more to this story, but I can’t say when or what that will be.

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Sometimes Jessie can have conversations with his mother.  Other times he hears her talking at him but doesn’t really pay attention.  Asking for things—asking anything—is a different story.  He shouldn’t be nervous about it, because usually he just blurts it out and gets it over with, but he’s been running this through his head over and over again. 

“I want to do something nice.”

“I’m not stopping you.”

“I mean for Yana,” Jessie said.  “And his mom.”

His own mother raises an eyebrow, as if to reiterate what she just said.  That was one of their vocabulary words this week.  Not that it mattered.  His mother didn’t look impressed.  Not that he was trying impress her.  She didn’t look interested. 

“Don’t do anything irresponsible,” she says, refilling her fruit water and nudging the fridge closed.  “You know the rest.”

Jessie focuses on chewing his broccoli, even though it was cold and salty.  When he looks up again, his mother had teleported back to her office.  He didn’t know exactly what she did for work, except that it was sort of like real estate.  Other than her computer and the yoga mat and the hand-weights, he couldn’t imagine what in there was so interesting.  Don’t forget the rubber band jump ropes.  The thought comes through in Yana’s voice, and it makes him smile. 

His feet itch, and he curls his toes into the rungs of the wooden chair.  If he goes anywhere before finishing his food and rinsing the dishes, his mother will teleport to wherever he is, just to drag him back to the kitchen.  You know the rules.  There weren’t many of them, and he wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse.  Talking to Yana always made things better, so he forced himself through the rest of the slimy stir-fry and his evening chores. 

His computer automatically locked at nine o clock, and the internet on his phone stopped working after ten, but there was just enough time for a search or two.  Everything took too much supplies, was too complicated, or was something romantic.  When the computer gave him his five-minute warning, he closed out of everything and shut the lid with a huff.

“If you have to steal it from the internet, it’s not thoughtful.”

She doesn’t usually check on him before bed.  Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything at dinner, but it was too late now.  Jessie slid off his bed and put the computer back on his desk. 

“Just because I didn’t think of it doesn’t mean—” He stops himself before he sounds even more stupid.  “Doesn’t mean it’s not a nice thing to do.”

“Why do you think you have to do nice things?”

Shouldn’t everyone want to do nice things?  If he says that, she will laugh at him for sure.  She already has that half-wrinkle in the middle of her forehead.  The one that makes people think she’s confused, so they keep talking or trying to explain something.  And she just lets them, before her laughter finally interrupts.

Jessie shrugs instead, and gets his pajamas off the dresser.  Dad did nice things.  He would rather be like his father, but not while living with his mother.  Not for the first time, he wished he could live with Yana.  But he knows the rules, so he doesn’t ask. 

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“You know it’s better this way.  He’s sucking out my brain cells.  By the time he starts school I won’t know how to tie my own shoes, much less his.”

“Candace, what are you—”

“We’ll have the money for good daycare, all his supplies, vacations so he doesn’t feel left out after summer or spring break.” 

“Is that supposed to be his consolation prize?”

“He won’t miss me, Eric.  He doesn’t even know me.”

“How could he not know you?  You’re his mother—he literally grew inside of you!”

“Let me do this or I’m doing it anyway.”

That was the line that made his father sigh and his shoulders sag.  And then his mother would walk away, as if the matter had been settled, but clearly his father still had a lot on his mind.  Jessie doesn’t know how he remembers all of this.  He’s not even sure if it’s his memory or just something he made up. 

Some things are clear—like being curled against his father’s flabby stomach, thinking he was much more comfortable than his mother.  The smell of ink scrawled across a stack of yellow pages.  His father had laughed, the first time Jessie had called it that. 

“A long time ago, that was a phone book.”

“Why did they put phones in books?”

“Not phones, Jus—just the numbers.”  His father stuck his tongue out and tapped Jessie’s forehead, which always made them both laugh.  “It was like a big dictionary of people’s names and addresses, so they could get ahold of you.” 

“Even strangers?” Jessie asked, eyes widened.

“Especially strangers.”

He had cowered in his father’s lap, and for a long time afterward, had been afraid of being kidnapped.  Most things, he tries not to think about at all.  Like the nightmare from a few days ago.  Other things, he’s afraid to try to remember—because what if he finds out that he can’t? 

“What’s your strangest nightmare?”

“Being kidnapped by phone books.”  It’s weird how easily it comes out.  “Hands down, top of the list.” 

Yana eyes him over the turkey and swiss sandwich Jessie had given him, a flicker of interest in his eyes.  Jessie looks at the rest of his lunch—plain peanuts, a tiny carton of raisins, sea-salt popcorn—feeling weird in the way that Yana always makes him feel weird.  Shivery.  Yana always knew how to get him to talk about things, but Jessie didn’t mind because he can get Yana to talk more than anyone else. 

“Sometimes there were just two or three copies of them—or just a few pages torn out—towering above me, telling me they were going to take me away because strangers wanted to keep me.” He mixes the nuts and raisins into the plastic baggie of popcorn, talking too fast—as if an army of yellow pages are going to burst into the cafeteria at any minute.  “Other times, phones came out of the books and their cords wrapped around my wrists and ankles and neck.”

“You have the same dream a lot?”

Jessie shrugs.  There was the one where he was in some sort of pit, and the pages kept piling on top of him.  At first he could shove them aside, but time kept jumping and the pages kept coming and soon they were at his knees, then his waist, his stomach, his arms, his throat.  Sometimes it ends there.  Which is better than when he wakes up from papercuts in his eyes, seeing his own face covered in blood.

There are certain sections of the library he avoids.  He hates the color yellow, unless it’s on a dandelion or it’s a food.  Papercuts still trigger minor panic responses.  Yana knows this about him already, but maybe he doesn’t know that it has to do with the yellow pages. 

“What about you?” Jessie asked. 

“Floating,” Yana said.  “Echoes I can’t make out.”

“In water or mid-air?”

Yana shook his head, as if it didn’t matter which.  Jessie tried to picture it.  Deep underwater, blind in the blue, with something tickling your ear.  A sound you weren’t sure you if were supposed to recognize.  Or being in the middle of the sky, clouds all around, the wind bringing strange whispers. 

Yana’s fingers squeezed his own, although he didn’t remember reaching for his hand.  Their hands were warm.  Jessie lets their palms rest against one another, even if it’s in the middle of a crowded cafeteria.  No one was looking at them.  No one cared.  Sometimes, he wonders if he and Yana exist in a different world.    

“What are you going to do for your career report?”

“It’s weird that we always have to talk about what we want to do when we grow up.”  Yana munches on the pickle spear that he always brings.  “Adults don’t really do anything interesting.”

“School isn’t that interesting either.” 

“They have to make us do boring stuff while they do their boring stuff to make themselves feel better.”

“What if we did something not boring?”

Yana raises an eyebrow at the same time that a little bit of pickle-juice runs down his chin. Jessie feels his stomach coil.  You know what a bad influence is, don’t you? his mother had asked him once.  Not that he’d ever thought Yana was one, but understood how some people might make the assumption.  And it wasn’t even Yana’s fault; it was his mother they talked about more than anything.  Yana was smart, quiet, kind. 

“Did you have any ideas?”

“I’m going to do mine on acting,” Jessie said.  “So I might go to a theater or something, and see a play.”

He could do it on the weekend, but it would be busier—and more expensive.  Besides, if he could manage to get to the theater in the middle of the day, maybe he could ask questions.  What was it like to be an actor full-time?  How hard was it to do a performance when it’s not just parents and teachers in the audience?  Is it safer to pretend to be someone else so you can still be yourself?

“I could find something to write about in a theater,” Yana said.

“Now we just have to figure out a way to get out of school.”

“Your mom has that conference thing next week, doesn’t she?”

They were supposed to walk to the bus stop, Tuesday and Wednesday.  Yana used to ride the bus all the time—not the school bus, but the city bus.  Jessie taps his fingers on the table.  There are tons of bus routes, and he has enough spare change, and they could walk some too.

“You don’t think the bus driver will notice if we don’t get on?”

“It’ll be just like any other day.”

Good point.  And adults didn’t pay much attention anyway, unless something wasn’t normal.  His mother would be too busy at her conference to take a phone call from the school.  Then again…

“You think your mom would cover for us?  Write a note or make up an excuse, if they call her?”

For a moment, Yana thinks it over.  Then his face spreads into that dazzling supernova grin, and Jessie can’t hear anything but vague lunch room noise.  The plastic chair isn’t as uncomfortable as usual.  He doesn’t feel it at all, because even after Yana’s expression returns to normal, it feels like gravity doesn’t exist like it used to.  A question, a thought, loops between his ears, but he can’t ask it. 

What if we don’t come back?