Not So Super -- Chapter 11.
I turned the television off. The phone had pretty much taken up all of my attention, anyway. Mom was sleeping on the futon next to me. It was 9am on a Saturday, but there had been no walk.
“Today is the day after Christmas, for crying out loud!” Mom had declared. “Next week, after New Year’s, we will resolve upon our longest walk ever. But, today, we shall wallow in our fatty-fat-fattness.”
She was out within a minute. I had popped “It’s a Wonderful Life” into the DVD player and settled down with some popcorn. I knew every line by heart and my mind was soon drifting.
Channy had sent me her usual DM last night, her dreams failing to mention today's failure to walk. I reached out to Channy as soon as I thought she was up and we had been talking ever since.
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**Rick Smith
@LittleTwerp
Merry Christmas! How was last night?
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
In the end, it was just the three of us.
Uncle canceled at the last minute.
That’s what I really needed, just a chance to be alone with my parents.
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Channy’s mom wasn’t doing well. Not in a terminal illness kind of way. In a long-term bad thing kind of way. She had caught pneumonia in early December. I was amazed that Channy had never mentioned this. While she was home, I learnd many new things about her. For example, Channy’s parents had moved to the US when she was young.
When Channy revealed this, I was utterly shocked. I couldn’t believe that English wasn’t her first language. How was I failing to learn all of these fundamental things about her? She was willing to answer any question I asked. I was failing to ask the right questions.
In the face of her mom’s sickness, her family had rallied around. Some had even come from overseas. The house had felt full since Channy arrived. Too full, for Channy’s taste. I smiled inwardly to hear her thinly veiled complaint. Although she didn’t say it, I sensed that she longed for solitude. She needed a sanctuary, but she found it being invaded by guests on their way to visit her mother.
Throughout our DMs, I had always been struck by how seldom she mentioned friends. When asked, she insisted that she had them. She described studying in groups and dining with others. But I always got the sense that socializing was something Channy did, but didn’t enjoy. In Detroit, she was painting me a picture of introversion. It made me feel an odd, protective fondness for her.
Their holiday had culminated with a Christmas’ Eve dinner, made for them by their neighbors. The family was left alone on the 25th. During one of our “ask me anything” sessions, she admitted to reading two whole science fiction books while hiding in her room. The rubik’s cube had also played a role in protecting her.
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
It’s usually just for airports.
A solo girl needs a trick for dissuading unwanted attention.
Apparently, it has a similar effect in our living room.
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I smiled, curled around Mom, and leaned back in the futon. I tried to put a name to my relationship to Channy. Were we dating? Engaged? Friends? Maybe we were just a tiny little support group of people who were different. But whatever I’d call it, it all changed last Sunday.
At some level, I’d always known that Channy was right. I needed to talk. I needed someone else who understood what it was like to be different. How could I have survived that moment without her? I had been unwillingly saddled with the knowledge of a murder. If there had been no Channy, I would have been forced to keep that inside me. It would have burned and rotted and dragged me down. Her presence had been life-saving because she could believe me. When I saw her face, I knew that we’d lived that moment together. And I knew that she’d be there for me, when I needed someone more than ever.
I remembered every second of that day, from when I first saw Channy until I brought her back to her dorm. It was emblazoned on my brain as surely as if I dreamt it every night. Once I’d recorded those conversations, I’d ushered us out the door. Channy, unclear on what I’d heard, was sluggish and confused. Placing my hand firmly on the small of her back, I got her moving. All of Channy’s attention was on me. Every time I looked down at her, I saw her wide, anxious eyes looking back. She instinctively knew that I had something to say. She seemed hesitant to speak. She just watched me, waiting for me to take the lead.
I managed to speed us out of the cafe. We turned left on Memorial Drive and headed towards campus. The road, a busy, four-lane thoroughfare, felt oddly quiet. It was as if the murder had scared off all of the cars.
By the end of the block, we were practically running. As we were crossing the “he couldn't possibly have” street I grabbed Channy by the elbow and pulled her behind a dumpster. I looked around nervously. For what? I don't know. Seeing her mimic my jerky movements magnified how clueless I felt.
“What did you hear?” she asked breathlessly.
I hated to tell her, but I knew that I had to. I laid it out, as simply as I could. I repeated the words and tried to describe the voice. I explained what I’d been trying to do, recording them and hoping to recognize the voice. As I told her, tears finally came out. They had been hovering so close to the surface all morning. Her eyes turned red, crying for some girl neither of us would ever have known nor never know. She buried her face in my chest and shuddered quietly. I felt foolish, standing there while she leaned on me. Awkwardly, I reached one hand around and laid it on her shoulder blades.
There was a silence, broken only by Channy’s sniffles. It occurred to me belatedly, that I was thinking of her as the adult. For a brief second I regretted the absence of that woman. But I rejected the thought and returned to the girl in front of me. I needed to take charge. I needed to be the leader.
“What should we do?” I erupted.
“I never dreamed this! Ricky, please believe me, I never dreamed this!” she said, her eyes wide behind their lenses. I was taken aback by the vehemence in her voice. There was something wildly familiar yet unfamiliar in her eyes. I remembered that she had said something similar on line, but that only made this protestation that much more jarring.
“I believe you, Channy. I do,” I stammered out.
She broke eye contact and squirmed backwards. I let her go. I hadn’t realized that I was still holding her.
“We have to do something for her,” I said.
“She’s dead!” Channy gasped. “There’s nothing we can do!”
“We have to bring that guy to justice,” I said firmly.
Channy stepped back and looked up, as if hoping for guidance from above. She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. In total, it looked like she was summoning up some form of inner resolve. I wished like anything that I could hear this moment. This bizarre ritual was mystifying and beyond my ability to understand.
“Yes,” she declared finally. “We’ll bring him to justice. Even if we have to chase him through the fiery pits of hell.”
In retrospect, that was an odd choice of words.
The rest of the walk was somber. We walked in silence, holding hands. More accurately, she gripped my hand and I clenched my teeth, to dampen the pain. I was worried what would happen when we hit campus. Wouldn't she be embarrassed to be seen with me? Would she find some alcove to thank me and send me away? Even if she had no friends on campus, as I was beginning to suspect, weren't there classmates to avoid?
But if I made her feel self-conscious, she didn’t show it. We hit the front door of her dorm and turned to face each other. She let out a little sigh, causing me to release my own.
“You’ve got to catch your plane tonight,” I said, grasping at anything to say.
“Yeah. It will be good for me to be home. Good for me to be away from that man. That moment.”
“I’ll miss you,” I said.
“I’ll be there for you. Reach out anytime,” she said, giving my hand a squeeze. I hadn't realized that she still had it.
“Have a good flight.”
She nodded with a look of grim determination, and went inside. There was no kiss to end the date. There was nothing to bear witness, except for the marks on my hand. Slowly, I pulled myself away from the dorm and walked back to our apartment in Cambridgeport.
I had accepted her offer and reached out to her often. I hadn't known how to let her be there for me. It felt like she should have been the one in greater need of comfort. But if she was struggling, she didn’t say so.
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**Rick Smith
@LittleTwerp
What are the doctors saying?
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
They expect Mother to make a full recovery.
They’re worried about how slow this has been.
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They expected, but Channy knew. I wondered what she knew. I started to ask, but deleted the DM. I couldn’t bring myself to intrude on this intimate piece of Channy’s future.
Mom mumbled in her sleep, fruitlessly seeking to make a full bed out of her half of the futon.
Once she arrived at Logan Airport, Channy’s DMs had already regained their sunny, serene tone. I had come to think of their author as ChannyOne. This was the girl who’d intimidated me that first time, at Starbucks. This was the girl who overwhelmed me with her sophisticated competence and generous openness.
I much preferred ChannyTwo. This was the girl hiding inside, the one who would come out if I asked the right questions. She was someone who quietly doubted herself and the pleasant future of her dreams. She was a girl I could relate to. I often missed her when talking to ChannyOne.
But there was another girl in there, and it was ChannyThree that intrigued and scared me the most. This was the girl who only existed for the ninety minutes from when we entered that cafe until I dropped her off at MIT. No DM would return her to me, no matter how much I longed to have her back. It was the longing that frightened me. I feared that ChannyThree was a girl I could love.
In ChannyThree's absence, it was those brief glimpses of ChannyTwo that carried me. I pushed myself through classes, bouyed by those moments of connection.
It became a challenge of utmost importance. I had to figure out what question would knock the veneer of serenity off, allowing ChannyTwo to escape.
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**Rick Smith
@LittleTwerp
Do you ever wonder what it would be like to be normal?
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
It's a wonder I ever to think about anything else...
I look at my fellow students, who know so much less about their future and seem so much happier for it.
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I added that to the growing list of things I should have asked her. She could be smug. She could be serene. But neither meant that she was happy. As I’d come to learn, every dream she lived was a chance to make mistakes, to create ripples. They were chances to accidentally fall off script, losing all the promises of the dreams that followed. When I’d first heard her describing walking on water, I’d been troubled by the godlike power she believed herself to have, as if prophecy wasn't enough. ChannyTwo shed a new light on the image. Imagine being required to do the impossible, and knowing that your future happiness depended on it.
The first time Channy had encountered her dreams, the little four year old had screamed. The angst had only grown as did she. For Channy, happiness was a thing to dream, not to experience.
This image of an unhappy Channy stuck with me throughout our dialog. I envisioned the tearful Channy, the one I had nearly held in my arms, waiting for my DM. It was the smiling Channy, the one who’d met me outside of the cafe, after she received my DM.
Much of what we discussed, during break, was the video. I sent her a copy and we watched it dozens of times. I thought that I’d plumbed the depths of the video. It was amazing to see how much more she got out of it. It was almost like being given a window into her dream world.
A series of carefully phrased DMs helped me understand how Channy lived her dreams. She always spent fifteen minutes capturing her dreams before getting out of bed. She planned her morning around those fifteen minutes. I was amazed by her capacity to start so quickly. I guessed it was like waking up each day to remember that today was the big test.
Like me, Channy had started on paper. She used spiral bound notebooks, provided happily by her parents. They thought these were typical journals and marveled about how quickly Channy filled them. They never pressed her for details.
Channy started journaling when she was very young. She had struggled to learn to write early. She knew that she needed to capture her dreams. Early on she simply wrote down narrative. But as she came to understand the nature of her dreams, her notes became more sophisticated. She started keeping two colors of pens beside her bed -- purple for narrative and red for details. At the end of each session she colored her memory with every detail she had retained.
When she recognized repeated dreams, she would reopen her journals after school. From there, she would cross reference and add new entries, in turquoise. She would particularly highlight the differences from dream to dream. Some differences were caused by imperfect reporting. Some by actual changes in the future. All were of interest to Channy.
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**Rick Smith
@LittleTwerp
How much do you write?
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
Tons! Usually, I bang out three or four pages before I decide to head down for breakfast.
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**Rick Smith
@LittleTwerp
Usually?
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
This morning was weird. I only got out three sentences before I had completely forgotten everything.
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**Rick Smith
@LittleTwerp
That happens to me all the time. I almost never remember what I dream.
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
Well that's never happened to me before! I hope that it never happens again… I felt foolish, sitting in front of my laptop, doing nothing.
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Like me, Channy had embraced technology. When she got her first computer, she instantly recognized the value of searching and editing. When she got her first smartphone, she converted again, migrating her dreams into the cloud. She often spent quiet moments, in buses or between classes, scrolling through her older entries.
Over time, she became more capable during those dreams she revisited. She learned to pick up cues about when and where the events took place. She became adept at noticing watches worn by others, dates on newspapers and other subtleties. I was amazed to watch those skills on display.
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**Rick Smith
@LittleTwerp
Suspect #2 looks weirdly familiar.
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
He's probably an adjunct professor at
MIT or Boston University.
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**Rick Smith
@LittleTwerp
How could you possibly know that?
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Nothing escaped her attention. It was spooky. At 0:18 of the video, he was packing up. He'd be gone by the next time I panned. In the video, he was in the act of putting papers back in a briefcase. We couldn't read them, but Channy picked up on the pattern of red, gray and black on the page. The black was laser printed, the gray was pencil and the red was ink. Like end of term quizzes, already graded.
And adjunct? He dressed sharply but inexpensively. Like one who wants to look the part of a professor, without the salary.
And MIT or BU? We were an easy walk from MIT, closer than I’d thought. But BU, right over the bridge, was even closer. And why would an adjunct have come from farther away? Channy mentioned that adjuncts had photos online. She searched the schools’ websites for matches, but came up empty.
I was deflated by her failure. I’d gotten so used to the confidence Channy exuded, I couldn't imagine any outcome but success. And if I was deflated, Channy was crushed. It put a dampener on our project.
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**Rick Smith
@LittleTwerp
What's that thing in his hand at 0:24?
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
Don't look at 0:24. I’m hideous.
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So of course I looked. Honestly, she did look a little weird without her glasses. And she was kind of slouching in her seat, which was totally at odds with my image of her. And her mouth was still in that weird little O. But she was cute. Way too cute to be hanging around with a geek like me.
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**Rick Smith
@LittleTwerp
You look beautiful. But scared.
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
I don't think I've been that frightened since my emergency appendectomy.
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I added that to the list, pausing to note that ChannyOne would never have volunteered that information.
While Suspect #2 seemed like someone we could track down, Suspect #1 was the one who captured our imagination. We saw him twice on the video, once at 0:09 and a second time at 0:37.
In the first instance he looked like a daydreamer, leaning back in his chair. He looked old. I would have guessed him to be in his late 50s. He wore hiking boots, blue jeans, and a leather jacket over a white t-shirt. I’m not sure that he even had a winter coat. On his head, there was a black fishing cap covering thick blond hair that almost reached his shoulders.
In 0:09, he was sitting there placidly, staring at his coffee. No phone, no computer. Not even a book or newspaper. Just staring.
By 0:37, his demeanor had totally changed. He was sitting straight up, looking right at the camera. I didn't remember that. I hadn't been making eye contact, but he was staring at my phone. It was kind of creepy, as if he hadn’t noticed me while I was filming, only later while I was watching the video.
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
Don’t be so melodramatic.
That’s how you would have looked if you had seen him recording you.
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In the grainy quality of the poorly shot video, his expression was as indecipherable as it was blurry. But his mouth seemed to be at an odd angle, as did his eyes and eyebrows. Channy and I had spent hours trying to learn what we could from that moment, because it was our last opportunity. By the next time the camera hit that part of the cafe, at 1:10, he had vanished.
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**Rick Smith
@LittleTwerp
It could have been someone outside.
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
You have difficulty hearing through walls when there's so much background noise.
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Well, that was interesting. I’d never noticed that subtlety before. Clearly, Channy had. Surely we would someday discuss that. Someday. She was telling me what I would later tell her. But something about Channy’s assertion didn't quite make sense.
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**Rick Smith
@LittleTwerp
I can hear my mom through the wall when she's got the shower on.
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
You can hear me in the shower, too ;-)
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I tried to respond but my fingers were frozen.
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
When I'm in the shower, I’m the one hearing the background noise. You’re on the outside, where it’s quiet.
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I paused to note my improved ability to imagine this crucial part of Channy’s life. After several minutes, I was able to get back to the main subject.
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**Rick Smith
@LittleTwerp
Was there really so much background noise in the cafe?
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
Well, for starters, I was talking to you >:-(
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Ouch.
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
But also, there were Christmas jingles being played.
If you turn the volume way up, you can hear them.
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Channy was definitely right about the music. She was probably right about the rest of it as well. I flipped through my journal app, looking for patterns. I couldn't find any hard evidence to support her theory, but the data seemed consistent. I often heard Mom through the walls in our quiet apartment. And I’d never heard anyone else through walls.
Yet.
So it was probably one of our two suspects.
I was distracted from my thoughts as Mom shifted around on the futon. She mumbled something incomprehensible, craning with eyes closed. After that, she tucked her head under the cushion and started snoring.
I looked up at the blank TV screen and reflected on the last week. It felt like walking through a world that was mostly black and white. I hungered for those sporadic moments when Channy would buzz into my life. Everything else, even my friends, faded into the colorless mass of “Not Channy.”
Kenneth had failed another driving test. I think that he was asking me for help, but I wasn't clear on what that even meant.
Zeta had asked me about some sort of intercession math course she was taking. I didn't really follow that conversation either. She might have been asking me to take the course with her.
And Dro? Oddly, Dro had taken to pulling me aside and asking questions about Channy.
“So, man, are you like, doing stuff? Are you, like out dancing?” “Is it the law man? Is she on the run?” “Okay, man, I'll give it a rest, but tell me one thing: Have you gotten laid, yet?”
I'm not sure what kind of look I had given him, but it had ended the conversation.
I shifted over to the left, to get out of the way of Mom's wandering foot. I needed a break from all of this talk about suspects. I needed a change of subject. I asked about her parents. Apparently, her father was an engineer at one of the big car companies. She described how his enthusiasm for engineering had drawn her to MIT.
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**Rick Smith
@LittleTwerp
I thought that I drew you to MIT...
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
I could have gone to Harvard :-)
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Her mother had been a math teacher, but when they moved to America, she couldn’t get hired. She worked as a secretary, in the same building as Channy’s dad. She took a few years off to be a mom, and then returned to work. As Channy got older, her parents worried about her health. Her mom quit to look after Channy, full time. Channy felt terrible about that. She had never been unwell, just dreamy. At times, her dreams made her appear to be depressed, antisocial, even ill. Over the years, her parents never gave up finding a cure for her. But Channy always knew that there was no cure, nor did she want one.
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**Rick Smith
@LittleTwerp
I have to admit, I just can’t picture you as having a family.
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
I know! Are elves even allowed to have families?
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Elves.
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
Can I really freak you out??
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She was playful, asking questions. I was looking forward to being freaked out.
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
Tonight I'm going out with some friends!
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I laughed out loud, bothering Mom. Mercifully, she stayed asleep.
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**Rick Smith
@LittleTwerp
Elves don't have friends!
Can you imagine Dobby and the boys catching a football game?
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
Galadriel and the girls, painting their toenails and gossiping about boys??
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A ball of nerves formed in the place where my stomach should have been.
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**Rick Smith
@LittleTwerp
Are you going to gossip about me?
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There was an unexpectedly and agonizingly long wait until her next DM arrived.
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
No
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**Rick Smith
@LittleTwerp
Because you're embarrassed of me?
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She was. But she didn't say that. If I had been looking for a way to lure ChannyTwo out of her shell, I had hit the jackpot. She was going out with friends, yes, but friends from who she had drifted completely apart. These were girls who could never have accepted her as she really was. She had tried to tell them, many years ago, and they had shamed her by treating it as a joke. To them, this was nothing more than a childish game. They had stayed friends throughout high school, even while Channy was learning to need no friends. She knew that a true friend was someone who would believe her. And there was no way for them to accept me without accepting her dreams.
I’d never seen a picture of us together. We had seen each other only three pictureless times. The closest I came was seeing her in the video as I held the camera. The juxtaposition of her sophisticated appearance and my goofy voice made the disparity in our ages painfully obvious. I couldn't understand how she tolerated me. How could I ask her friends to accept us?
So she went out. She even sent me photos of her night out. There she was, dressed up with her smiling friends. I scrolled through the photos repeatedly. She wore blue jeans and a somber black top, both of which looked out of place on her. She was with three other girls, none of whom I’d ever seen before, nor did I know their names. She sent me photos from a restaurant, photos from a club and then photos from a living room.
It was bittersweet. It was as if she had stepped out of my life and sent me back postcards. But as I looked through the photos, I saw non-serene, non-smug faces looking back. I couldn’t help but think that she had stepped out of her own life as well. I feared that she had entered a better world than any I could offer.
She was home around 12:30 -- 1:30 in Boston. I was deeply asleep when my phone buzzed. Muscle memory powered my arm to reach out and retrieve it. I struggled to determine which Channy was at the other end. She was freely volunteering details of the evening, like ChannyTwo, but speaking in the flat, superficial tone of ChannyOne. I wondered whether she’d been drinking. I sent back some meager DMs, but she didn’t need my encouragement to continue. The more she wrote, the more lonely I felt. I fought down the fear that Channy had found happiness among her normal friends and was returning to say goodbye to my crazy part of the world.
I was about to toss the phone aside when she abruptly changed topics.
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
I know what to do next -- about our suspects!
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That caught my attention. In my brooding, I had all but forgotten them.
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
I've been reviewing my dream journals, looking for anything that helps us find him.
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Channy had started keeping those diaries as soon as she could write. From eight to fourteen, she had filled seventy notebooks of 120 pages each. With five years of her dreams now on her phone, she seldom looked back over those earlier journals. Undigitized, they were so much harder to navigate.
While in the cab home, she’d started running searches on her online dream descriptions. She had gotten enough out of it to make her want to search the earlier dreams.
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
I’ll take my old journals back to MIT, so I can scan them and use character recognition to upload them to my journal app.
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**Rick Smith
@LittleTwerp
I’ll help you scan them.
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
Huh.
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Just that one grunt. I couldn’t for the life of me guess what she meant.
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
Well now I’m embarrassed.
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That didn’t really help.
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
I guess that I can’t make fun of you for thinking of me as an elf.
I still think of you as a dwarf!
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**Rick Smith
@LittleTwerp
A dwarf? But I’m much taller than you!
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**Channing
@MyFakeWife
A dragon then -- my brave dragon who will rescue me from the fiery pits of hell.
But dragons don’t scan journals in the library.
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Always Channy, with the fiery pits of hell.
