Not so super -- Chapter 16. 

 

A month had passed.  Our relationship would never be the same.  I liked it this way.  It wasn't that the new relationship was better in every way.  But it was better.  And more real.

 

Given the disparity in our statuses, I was surprised that we could even have a fight.  Channy was competent and collected, brimming with confidence.  I was just some geeky kid, with no merit other than that which reflected off of her.  How could I justify criticizing her?  But I did.  During our fight my emotions had been so strong that they frightened me.

 

Channy had once warned me that we would fight.  When she’d told me, it had seemed like some distant future.  I doubted that even she’d foreseen the night of Zeta.  But I was more troubled by her behavior. I struggled with the knowledge that Channy could be callous.  When pressed, she admitted that callousness had become a part of her, like a pimple on her back that she almost never saw.  She had grown so accustomed to staying on script that she took all of our adherence for granted.

 

I also struggled with the knowledge that my anger could run so deep.  I struggled with the knowledge that I could get that angry, period.  I had lived a pretty rough life.  If the poverty and cheating father weren’t enough, I also had the daily bombardment of voices.  I’d never had that kind of anger inside of me until that night.  Mom kept telling me that it was alright.  In order to get angry you had to care and in order to care you had to have a heart.  I wasn’t so sure about the “being alright” part.

 

It was early, even for us, on that Saturday.  Mom and I were the first into Starbucks.  The weather had been getting warmer but dropped to eight degrees overnight.  Between the cold and the ice, we’d cut our walk short.  We arrived as our Starbucks was opening.  Mom waited by the counter, while they started up their routines.  I was at the table, with my coat still on.

 

=================================

**Rick Smith

@LittleTwerp

 

How was the flight?

=================================

 

Her mother had taken a turn for the worse.  She’d flown back to Detroit, late last night.

 

=================================

**Channing

@MyFakeWife

 

Lovely.  Boring. 

I thought that I was going to read my book, but I ended up on the cube the whole time.

=================================

 

She had treated herself to a new ten-by-ten Rubik’s cube.  I could only marvel at having the cash to buy myself a $50 toy.  By now, I’d seen enough pictures of her dorm room to get a sense of her possessions.  It wasn’t that she had a lot.  It was a small room and it was fairly sparse.  But she spent money on luxuries I couldn’t fathom, like makeup, shoes and a pot for the tea she was constantly drinking.  

 

I tried to put all of that out of my mind.  I asked her if the new cube was harder than the nine-by-nine.  She admitted that it wasn’t.  I decided that this was a part of her life I did not need to share.  But I had learned the importance of sharing.

 

=================================

**Rick Smith

@LittleTwerp

 

So, which book?  Heinlein?  Asimov?

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If I’d learned anything from Zeta, it was how important books could be.  I’d been put off by Zeta wanting me to read her book, but that was really because I didn’t want the attention from Zeta.  I’d vowed to avoid that mistake with Channy.  I’d started taking her books out of the library and finding time to read them.  I wasn’t much of a reader, but with each book, I felt like I understood her better.  I felt a little closer to her.  As an incredible introvert, reading was a big part of her life.  I didn’t need prophetic dreams to know that I would never catch up to her in my lifetime.  But I was learning more about her through her authors.  The wonderful worlds created by her favorite books gave me a vision into what made her happy.  I enjoyed sharing that.

 

=================================

**Channing

@MyFakeWife

 

Anthony.  I’m re-reading Xanth.

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I could not, for the life of me, understand why she liked Piers Anthony.  That series left me feeling farther from her.  It seemed like a series written for sixteen year-old boys.  The more I enjoyed it, the less I understood Channy.  Like she was a sixteen year-old boy trapped inside the body of a nineteen year-old girl.  Although that would explain why she wasted time talking to me.

 

=================================

**Channing

@MyFakeWife

 

How was your walk?

=================================

 

This had to be the biggest change in the last month.  She’d started asking questions in her DMs.  They’d always had a rote feeling.  She only asked questions because she knew that I wanted them.  They were welcome all the same.  It was kind of like an artificial way to get ChannyTwo out into the open.  I’d never talked to her about my image of her split personality.  I wondered whether I’d told her in the future.

 

Mom handed me my drink with look of resignation.  She tilted her head, brushed aside her short bangs, and glanced at my phone.

 

“I have to tell you, I’ve about had it up to here with Mystery Girl,” said Mom.  “But since she’s joined us this morning, how is she doing?”

 

“How do you know I was talking to a girl?” I said, feigning innocence.  “I could be talking to my friends.”

 

She slid her phone across the table.  It held a picture of a boy with a big, goofy smile on his pimple-laden face.  I couldn’t believe that I’d ever looked like that.  It was not an expression one typically associated with describing black ice.  Mom was right.  The photo bore undeniable evidence.

 

“So, when do I get to meet her?” Mom pressed.

 

I deflated into my chair.  The thought of introducing Channy to Mom defeated me entirely.  Whenever it happened, it was going to be a disaster.  I could only imagine Mom looking at this girl, practically a woman, sitting next to me.  She’d be horrified.  I stared at my hands and searched for any words that would both be acceptable and true.

 

“I’ll introduce you if we ever start dating,” I mumbled.

 

“Start dating?” Mom was incredulous.  “She makes you smile, she makes you cry, she makes you mad and you haven’t even gone on a date?  Honey, I’m beginning to worry that she’s got a hostage instead of a boyfriend.”

 

“It’s not like that,” I protested.  “It’s just not what either of us want right now.”  That might have been true.

 

“What do you want right now?” Mom asked, her eyes piercing me deeply.

 

What a great question.  What did I want?  I wanted to be normal.  I wanted to find the killer.  I wanted to be three years older.  I wanted Channy’s mom to get better.  I wanted to go to MIT.  I wanted to win the math championship.  I wanted to get good grades.  I wanted Zeta to talk to me.  I wanted Jenny to be okay.  I wanted Kenneth to pass his driving test.  I wanted Mom to be happy.  I wanted to live in a real house.  I wanted a puppy.  And I did want a girlfriend, one who could go with me to the movies.  I guess I lied about that, too.

 

But, just at that moment, I didn’t want to lie to Mom.  I just didn’t know how to tell the whole truth.

 

“I want to grow up, already,” I admitted.  “I’m tired of being young.”

 

Mom smiled, leaned over, and squeezed my arm.

 

“I remember feeling like that, too,” she said kindly.  “Try and enjoy your youth.  You’ll miss it.”

 

She let out a long sigh and picked up her phone.  I went back to mine.  I felt that goofy smile return, as I typed up a description of the painful windchill.

 

We finished our drinks and made the arduous journey home, braving the perilous black ice.  We held each other non-stop and laughed the whole way.  It may have been our best walk yet.

 

When we got home, I crumpled into bed for a nap while Mom hit the shower.  By the time I woke up, she was long gone.  I shot Channy a quick note and rolled out of bed.  After a shower I finished last night's dishes and got out my homework.  Mom had left me a note, listing my chores.  I wasn’t ready to think about those.

 

I pulled my calculus book out of my bag.  I decided to go through old homework assignments, to get ready for the next test.  My phone buzzed.

 

=================================

**Channing

@MyFakeWife

 

Hey, what's going on?

=================================

 

I smiled, just to see the question mark.  I DM’d her back, looking forward to speaking with ChannyTwo.

 

=================================

**Rick Smith

@LittleTwerp

 

Not much.  Mom’s at work.

Just studying and doing chores.

=================================

 

Suddenly, the brick in my hand rang.  I couldn't remember the last person who had actually called me on the phone.  It was an unfamiliar number, with a 313 area code.  I was pretty sure I knew who it was.

 

“Hello?” I asked.

 

“Hey,” she said, her voice full of warmth, mystery and something I couldn't identify.

 

“I… I don't remember giving you my number.”

 

Channy laughed.  It sounded even more like a cascade of bells over the phone. 

 

“I memorized it years ago,” she explained.

 

“Wow,” I mumbled, a little stunned.

 

“And I thought, well, you're alone.  With mother asleep I'm practically alone.  Why not try this?”

 

And then I identified the missing ingredient.  Her voice was timid and uncertain.  The vulnerable ChannyThree had dared to call me.  

 

The terrible cell network cut out all of her lower resonance, making her sound younger and anxious.  I’d only heard her speak three times before.  I still felt the shock of hearing her barely recognizable voice.  There was something wonderful about the call.   My favorite Channy had broken free and found her way to me.

 

“I'm thrilled that you called.  This is awesome,” I said.

 

There was a slight pause before she continued.

 

“You don't, you know, hear things over the phone, do you,” she said, not quite managing to produce a question.  She said it hesitantly, like it was something she’d always known but couldn't quite believe.  It took me a second to even figure out what she meant, but I got it.

 

“No.  I need to be physically near someone to hear them.  And you know I don't do it on purpose.  Why do you ask?” I said, feeling confused.

 

“A girl should be allowed a little privacy, don't you think?” she said, punctuating her remark with a nervous, bell-free laugh.  I thought she sounded relieved.  I couldn’t imagine why.

 

So we talked.  I asked about her mom.  I asked about her books.  I even asked about her Rubik’s cube.  She answered everything, and asked nothing.  Painfully, I realized that I had lured ChannyOne back into the conversation.

 

I started talking more about me and things going on in Cambridge.  She started to crawl out of her shell, but that hesitant girl was nowhere to be found.  Still I was surprised at the ease with which we spoke.  Thirty minutes into the conversation, her utterances became terse.  Two was heading back to One.  I sensed that something was up.  I wondered whether there was something specific she feared that I’d overhear.

 

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

 

“Yeah…” she said, her voice trailing off.  “I was just wondering…  Would you like to hear a little about the future?”

 

I was still of a mind to be surprised by any question, but that one shocked me.  She knew that I didn’t want to know the future.  So if she was asking, I guessed that she needed to share.

 

“Honestly, I’m afraid to hear about it.  But do you need to talk about it?”

 

She did.  Transformed in a second, she burst forth in a silly, uninhibited sing-song.

 

“We ate ice cream -- chocolate with sprinkles -- and he was such a gentleman and told me I was pretty.  He told me I could have a new shirt and I was ever so happy.  He reminded me about the girl who had died and the man we had caught and that made me sad.  I cried.  When I woke up I was still sad.  Mommy says that I cannot have the pink shirt.  I cannot wait until Rick marries me.”

 

I listened in stunned silence.

 

“Woah.  Did you dream that last night?” I asked.  Her answer sounded oddly fidgety.

 

“No.  I forget what I dreamed last night.  I forgot before I even had a chance to write it down.”

 

“Weird,” I offered.

 

“Yeah.  That's never happened before.”

 

That didn't sound right.  I had a strange sensation of deja vu.  

 

“So when was this from?”

 

“I wrote it when I was eleven!” she said with unusual enthusiastic lightness.  I laughed to realize I had been listening to Channy’s imitation of her younger self.

 

She had scanned all of her dream journals, as she had planned.  She’d taken many of them back to Detroit on this trip, to hide them in her bedroom.  After scanning them in, she’d uploaded the text and was performing text searches on her entries.  While doing so, she had uncovered this dream.

 

Suddenly, the implication dawned on me.

 

“We did it.  We won,” I said hesitantly.

 

“Yeah.  We will win,” she said, without much enthusiasm.  When talking to Channy, I never really knew where I stood on tenses.

 

We sat there in silence for several seconds.  I happened to look up and see the time.

 

“Wow!  I had no idea it was so late.  I have to go meet Kenneth and Dro. You remember Kenneth and Dro.”

 

“Of course I do,” she boasted, shyly.  “I understand if you have to go.”

 

Her tone was pretty flat.  I hated to leave on this note.

 

“It will be, like ten minutes for me to walk over.  Why don’t you stay on the phone with me?” I asked.

 

“Okay,” she said, still sounding pretty down.

 

So I carried the conversation for a while, with Channy adding in monosyllabic responses here and there.  But she perked up halfway through the walk.

 

“I’m having such trouble studying for these tests.  I’m never going to get into MIT,” I complained.

 

“Why would you want to go to MIT?” she asked. 

 

“To be with you,” I explained, barely able to force the words out.  How could she not know that I wanted to go to MIT?

 

“Oh.  Well don’t worry about that,” she said carelessly.  “I’ll have graduated by then.”

 

“But you’re only three years older than me,” I said, trying to piece this together.

 

So I made a new entry in my very real ‘things I should have asked Channy’ list.  Apparently she was already a junior.  When she was younger, her parents worried about her inability to make friends.  Sensing that she was bright, they banked on the problem being how immature her classmates were.  They pressed the school to allow her to skip a grade and the school gave in.  To everyone’s relief, Channy continued to do well in school.  But she never managed to forge deeper ties with her classmates.  Her friends thought of those dreams as stories.  Channy closed herself off.

 

On top of the grade she had skipped, Channy had pushed herself hard at MIT and would be graduating after seven semesters.  She planned to spend the last semester in Cambridge, working to create a nest egg.  For us.  I didn't even know how to imagine that.  I couldn't imagine anything other than living month to month.

 

In addition to the financial implications of Channy’s plan, I wrestled with something deeper.  She was so faithful to the conviction of her dreams that she was leaving school early.  She didn't worry that it would be years before I could contribute to this relationship.  She simply followed her dreams.

 

I shook my head to clear those thoughts out.  They didn't seem healthy when I was still stuck in my little bedroom space.  I turned to thinking about the implications of her school-free semester in Cambridge.  Would I see more of her?  Was I ready for that?  While I was daydreaming, she interrupted my thoughts.

 

“So you should go wherever you want.  I’ll meet you there, once you make your decision.”

 

“What will you do?”

 

“I don’t know.  Teach physics, I guess.”

 

I cringed.  Of course she knew what she’d do.  That wasn’t a guess, it was a dream she would live out.  I shouldn't have asked if I didn't want to know.

 

"Well, I’m coming up on the store.  Do you want me to say ‘hi’ to Dro and Kenneth?”

 

“If you think that’s a good idea,” she said, slightly amused.

 

I didn’t.

 

I walked into the music store.  Guitars, drums, keyboards and wind instruments were everywhere.  But Kenneth only had eyes for the electric bass.  He was in the corner staring at them reverently.  Linda, by contrast, was standing behind him, looking bored and glum.  I searched for Dro and finally found him doing a dance with a tambourine.  It looked like something he had seen on YouTube, but never actually tried.   Most other customers had gathered around to watch.  Two staff members were looking on, deciding whether they had to intervene.

 

=================================

**Rick Smith

@LittleTwerp

 

Boy, I wonder what Dro is thinking.

Do you ever wish you could control your dreams?

=================================

 

“Ya know, ya making me look bad.”

 

I looked up into Linda’s frowning face.  I wondered how much she had seen on my phone, which I put away clumsily.

 

“I'm supposed to be supporting Kenneth, and I couldn't care less about his instrument.   You're sitting there making romance to your little girlfriend.”

 

“Oh, she's not my…” but the look in Linda’s face cut off my words quickly.

 

“Well, the least you could do is help him be happy.”

 

Something buzzed in my pocket.

 

“After you respond to that distant acquaintance of yours.”

 

I read the message as I walked over to join Kenneth.

 

=================================

**Channing

@MyFakeWife

 

I know!  I'd love to get an early peek at my differential equations final :-)

=================================

 

Followed quickly by

 

=================================

**Channing

@MyFakeWife

 

I took a serious shot at it once.

=================================

 

Now that was interesting.

 

“Hey, Kenneth, what looks good?” I asked, trying to secretly respond to Channy.

 

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**Rick Smith

@LittleTwerp

 

Really?  What happened?

=================================

 

I got the story over the next few minutes, while Kenneth and I scrutinized each model.  When she was fifteen, she noticed that there was a certain feeling that pervaded all of the truly prognostic dreams.  She studied meditation and biofeedback in an attempt to recreate the feeling as she was getting ready for sleep.

 

She was never able to direct her dreams, but she could, reliably, cause migraines.

 

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**Rick Smith

@LittleTwerp

 

Migraines, as in headaches?

=================================

 

=================================

**Channing

@MyFakeWife

 

Actually, migraines, as in projectile vomiting.

=================================

 

“Awesome!”

 

I staggered backwards, disoriented.  It took me a second to realize that Kenneth was referring to the bass and not Channy’s self-induced nausea.  Drawn by Kenneth’s exclamation, Linda wandered over and kissed his back.

 

“Find what you were looking for, honey?”

 

“Hell, yeah!  I have to try this mother out!”

 

As Kenneth sat down, cradling the bass in his lap, Linda walked off to talk to Dro.

 

“Must be nice to have someone call you honey,” I said, with a jealous smile.

 

“She doesn't call you honey?”

 

“Who, Linda?” I prevaricated.

 

“No, your sisters and your cousins and your aunts,” he said, with an easy smile.

 

=================================

**Channing

@MyFakeWife

 

After I ruined two nighties, my mother tried to find a cure.

 

=================================

 

“No,” I sighed, “that they do not.”

 

=================================

**Channing

@MyFakeWife

 

As I *did* *not* *want* to any more crazy herbs, 

my self-inflicted nausea magically cleared up!

=================================

 

Trying to clear that image out of my head, I focused on Kenneth.  He held the bass gently, more lovingly than I'd ever seen him touch Linda.  He twanged a few unplugged notes.  Giving me a wicked smile, he launched into some hard-rocking Red Hot Chili Peppers riff.  He stopped and looked down at his “hell is my phone?” feet.

 

Without thinking, I pointed silently behind him.  He looked surprised for a second, then retrieved the phone that had fallen out of his pocket.

 

“That is just creepy, man.  Do I move my lips when I think?”

 

“Yeah,” I stammered, “let's go with that.”

 

“I swear, you got the Jedi Mind Trick!”

 

I winced at how loudly he said it.  Dro, over trying to play a harmonica with his nose, nodded in agreement.

 

Kenneth started plucking slow notes, tunelessly and absentmindedly. The music evolved into a soulful walking bass.

 

“I'm taking my driving test again, next month.  You should come with me,” he said as he played.

 

“What?  Why?” I asked.

 

“You know… You do the whole ESP thing and warn me before I make mistakes.”

 

“You know I don't have ESP…” I whined.

 

“I don't care how you do it, but I got to have wheels, man.  Linda needs to get around…”

 

He was practically pleading.  As much as I hated the feeling I was being outed, I hated even more the risk that I'd let him down.  I couldn't hear people at will.  And I wasn't willing to risk migraines to try.  As much as I wanted to help, there was nothing I could do.  It certainly wasn't worth the risk to me.  I turned to Kenneth to decline as gently as I could.

 

“Sure.  I'll come.  But it won't help.”

 

Kenneth’s smile lit up his face.  He clasped his hand on my shoulder as he rose to his full height.  Silently, we took the bass to the front to make the purchase.  As I dragged myself in his wake, my only consolation was that I had followed Linda’s order.  Kenneth was as happy as I'd ever seen him.

 

While we waited, Kenneth turned to me.

 

“So, do you use that Jedi Mind Trick on them?”

 

“Them?” I asked, truly confused.

 

“You know.  Your sisters and your cousins and your aunts?”

 

“Oh.  No.  They do it to me.”

 

“I thought so,” Kenneth smirked.  “You're a lucky man, Honey.”