Chapter 67 - You Can Callie On Me

The smirk passed to Natalie, who tried to laugh but her lips just wobbled around till she found the words, “I need…to get to class.”

Without prompting, Lea wrapped her arms around Natalie’s shoulders and said, “Have a good one. We’ll talk more in Chemistry.”

Slowly, Nats receded through the long grass and back around the nearest stretch of buildings. Of course, the warning bell blasted moments later.

Lea flattened her hair against her head and turned to ask me, “News?”

“They mentioned something vague about the school. Dangers and stuff.”

Shrugging her backpack higher, Lea responded, “Gotcha.” She emphasized it by wrapping her arms around me.

We wished each other a good first period but with no promises of meeting up between first and second. I didn’t bother to ask if Lea still intended to break up with Nats.

I entered the girl’s lockers alone despite the swarms of other girls pressing through with me. I changed clothes listlessly as I focused on an echo of the begging hope for the best for Lea. I even spared a selfish thought for better things for Natalie.

Outside, I claimed my cold, isolated square on the blacktop with my legs and arms folded.

To myself, I muttered, “What do I do now?"

Callie

Hovering over the square on the blacktop marked with a faded, white twenty-eight, Callie reacted, "Sit here and wait, obviously."

I let a single eyebrow rise in Callie's direction. She appeared mature for our grade. Her hair was always the right amount of slick and glossy. I focused on the greenish streaks in her flowing, jet-black locks.

Folding my arms and clutching my forehead, I expressed, "Beyond that. I can do gym. I think. But...today is not starting out well. Yet it's also going better...I guess..."

Taking time, I relayed my morning from the rude awakening to mom grinding down my spirit. Then both apparitions, of Wes and Nats, and my fears.

Callie arched her black-accented lashes. Like Egyptian makeup from a book on my shelf. It heightened the brilliant, jade tone within. After fanning her eyes, she resolved, "My suggestion stands. Sit here, wait, and chill. What do you gain by worrying?"

But I just couldn't escape that cycle. There were so many tangible, looming things to worry about and even more intangible, lurking things. Clearing her long hair from the collar of her gray gym top, Callie continued, "Imagine it like this...think back on all the bad things that have ever happened. How long have they each really lasted?"

To be perfectly honest, it was hard to come up with a full list of unrelentingly-bad things that happened to me. They fell into lumps of arguments, setbacks like our flat tire on vacation, and times I got sick. Arguments were flash fires either out of my control or not worth turning the hot spots over to inspect. Setbacks had been long since overcome and getting sick outside of English in freshman year led (in a roundabout way) to new friendships.

Callie had a point, but I threaded between concession and persistence, "Not that long but...some keep happening and stuff will happen in the future. And, in the moment of not knowing how it might go, it's stressful..."

She crossed her legs and punctuated, "Stress you're heaping on in addition. Life is gonna go and heap these loads on its own. Why help it? Help yourself."

I stared at her easy, vibrant eyes. I marveled at how, even with a loose cotton top, she gave Rebecca's figure a challenge. I pressed my teeth together and cradled a tender spot on my head. "It's not that I want it and that I don't want to help myself, but it's a cycle which just goes. Telling myself to stop is like telling someone's depression to just quit or a cut in your flesh to not be cut."

Showing clear exasperation, Callie fanned her hands and presented, "Alright. So, you're stuck stressing about things you can't do anything about right now. But you can do something. You did something all those other times until those times were over. Do that."

Seemed feeble, but it was something. Those times I cried, I focused on how upset I was. I thought bad and wild things. I imagined this or that. I escaped to my stuffed animals. I dreamed of escaping even more. Mostly, I just distracted myself.

After the enumeration, Callie leaned closer with a Cheshire grin and emphasized, "Do you feel a little distracted right now?"

More so until she pointed it out, but she had a point. I wasn't in the active cycle of stressing out about who might've alerted the news, what might be happening to Lea (if she even was Lea), and why waking shadows followed me. It was still there, but I was able to think of other stuff too. I could cope, and I had to concede her point.

Smugly, but without too much gloating in her voice, she proclaimed, "You're welcome. And you'll find plenty of other pointless distractions along the way."

Coach soon took roll and ushered us inside. I kept a fair distance from any of the boys. Other girls fluttered away from me into their own, usual clusters. I didn't notice the girls who’d called me out last week but no one approached me.

Callie stretched out and asked, "Tell me your best story right now."

I wasn't exactly prepared, and I wasn't a good teller of stories. More an idle muser of stories that floundered, wobbled, and cut out as fast as they cut in. A regurgitator of concepts and half-considered daydreams. But a story?

Finding the least uncomfortable perch on the gym bleachers a safe distance from anyone else, I swept my mental static for Callie's story.

"A mysterious signal from another world is found. When translated, it's in English with the names of seven people around the world. The only problem is that six of the seven have died in the last few days in seemingly random events."

And I stopped there. Callie's gaze begged me to say more. "Okay. Well, ummm. Oh, okay. So, the signal seems to have been going for some time and isn't stopping. A special squad of people are recruited to investigate the mystery and track down the last remaining person, because they vanished around the time of the translation."

Callie kept the same stare with a little flutter of her eyebrows, which looked more like marks from a calligraphy pen than arches of hair. What did she want? I was telling a story.

I admitted, "I don't have much. That's as far as it is."

Plopping her hands on her knees, Callie noted, "You have a setup and a setting but not a story. How about this...Sasha Holland, a recently-laid off astronomer, is caught up in an international mystery when an unknown signal from space is translated with her missing father's name in it. And the rest still applies. But look at it like that."

Callie held her hands out. "Yes, we have a mystery. Yes, we have the world changing, but we also have a character's entire world changing too. We have the conflict of suspicion where people wonder why. Maybe…some people think the names are sleeper agent aliens called to action. But Sasha is how to tell that story."

She had a point there. Mine read perhaps more like a newspaper editorial. I'd made a few speculative ones for fun last year in Mr. Van Zand's class. Hers was more like something I might read.

I had to press though, "Wouldn't it seem too coincidental to go that way. I mean, an astronomer...maybe one disgraced or something...just happens to have her dad disappear and then his name shows up in a signal from space?"

"Life is full of mysteries and mysteries are the foundation of stories. Stories about people, about their frustrations and joys, both mundane and miraculous. If it feels like a coincidence then maybe there's something more to it. Maybe the names have purpose. Maybe it all does...."

Art by Alexis Rillera/Anirhapsodist