Would we care more?
Smiling at people put me in zone, like, 9. It was true what they said about it having a psychological effect on a person. I was happier because I smiled… not the other way around.
Ellie found me on my bench and sat down.
“I’ve stopped caring,” she said.
“About what?”
“About the transmissions.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I just want it to go away now.”
“Yeah. It will. Don’t worry.”
“Why do you sound so sure?”
“I don’t know.”
Silence.
“I’m sorry I’m self-centered,” she said.
“I’m sorry you are, too.”
“I thought about it and I guess I make a pretty bad friend.”
I didn’t want her to feel bad. We had enough going on. So I lied. “You’re not that bad,” I said.
“Let’s just go home.”
I agreed and we walked to the car.
“My mom is throwing another star party tomorrow night,” she said.
“That’s quick,” I said. “Two in one week?”
“Something about the planets,” she said, pretending to be disinterested in the planets.
I thought about what Jasmine’s parties might have been like back when Darla and Dad were probably doing psychedelic mushrooms and knew pornographers and stuff.
Not to say I cared what other people did with their time or their bodies. I couldn’t have cared less if Jasmine liked to swing naked by her hair from a tree while every one of the commune dwellers tossed live rodents at her.
What I did care about was how young Rick must have been when he started impregnating women on the commune. It made me wonder, if Rick was a girl, would we care more? Would there be a court-approved name for what women on the commune were doing with him? Would we shame him for teenage pregnancy? Could we? In a world that screamed Be Sexy or Just Die Now, could we really blame him?
“Did you hear me?” Ellie said.
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. I was thinking about something else.”
“That Peter guy, right?”
“Ew. No.”
“I didn’t mean he’s not hot. He’s hot. But he’s too old for me, you know?”
“I guess,” she said.
“So the party. I can’t make it tonight,” I said.
“It’s tomorrow night.”
Shit. “Oh.”
“Markus Glenn is coming. He’s going to pretend like he’s my boyfriend so Rick gets jealous,” she said.
“Markus Glenn the porn kid? How did you even see him?”
“He was running. Up our road. Saw me and we talked. That’s all.”
“You’d make a cute couple,” I said.
“Stop. That’s not why he’s coming. I told you.” She sighed. “I wish I could go back to last Saturday and not drink the bat,” she said. I found it strange that she chose to blame the bat. Sleeping with Rick was long before the bat.
“I thought you thought it was cool. I mean, a little, at least. Right? Clan of the petrified bat and all that?”
“Meh. I don’t want to even look at my parents anymore, you know?”
“I saw my dad’s ancestors eating a big fucking deer. It was weird.”
“Yeah. My mom mustn’t have been married to my dad yet. She was naked. I don’t want to talk about it.”
So we’d both seen Jasmine Blue naked. And neither of us wanted to talk about it. I reached for my door handle to get out and she said, “Glory?”
“Are you sure we’re gonna be okay?”
“Sure.”
“I mean you and me?”
Fact: I was sure we were not going to be friends a year from now. But I lied. “I think so. I don’t know.”
“The war you’re seeing. It scares me.”
“It’s in here,” I said, tapping myself on my skull. “How can we be scared of something if we’re not sure it’s really going to happen?” She nodded. “Plus, if it is true, you’re going to have kids and then get to be a grandmother. You need to forget all this war stuff. Just leave it to me.”
“I wonder if Nostradamus drank a petrified bat before he saw all that shit,” she said.
She came around to my side when she got out and hugged me like she needed a hug, but I couldn’t find the love to hug her back. I fake-hugged her. All I wanted to do was get to my darkroom.
My darkroom. Not Darla’s. Darla wrote Why People Take Pictures. I was writing The History of the Future. Darla took pictures of her dead tooth and tree stumps. I took pictures of things that were empty. We were a diptych. Mother-and-daughter diptych. She killed things, and I showed the hole that followed.
“See you later?” Ellie said. “After dinner?”
“I’m doing something with Dad tonight,” I said. “He felt bad for not taking me out for graduation.”
“Cool. Tomorrow, then. I’ll come over in the morning.” [Insert laugh track laughter.]
She crossed the road and walked toward the commune. I stood there and marveled at it—the farmhouse especially, with the thick limestone and the slate roof. I took a picture. I called the picture: Mine.
Then I turned the camera toward myself and took about five shots of me in my new bat glasses. I sneered. The caption would read: Glory O’Brien, Mad at the World.
Dad said he wanted us to go out for dinner to my favorite Mexican restaurant. I didn’t tell him I’d planned on spending the evening in the darkroom printing, reading and writing the history of the future. I wanted to tell him. Of all the people, he was the one who might understand it. He looked like a guy who’d done psychedelic mushrooms at least once.
I asked him at dinner.
“Did you ever do psychedelic mushrooms?”
He shook his head at first, the way people do when they want to say Geez, kid, that’s some question. Then he said, “Sure. A bunch of times. It was—”
“The nineties,” I answered. “Yeah. I know.”
“Have you?” he asked.
“Nah.”
We ordered three plates of food and ate like starving people.
“This is nice,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“For once you don’t look like you want to run out of here because of all the people.”
“Oh good. So I’m hiding it well?”
We laughed. I watched him and I thought about Peter. I had this strong feeling that they would meet one day. Or that could have been me hoping I was the girl of Peter’s dreams. Whatever it was, I wanted Dad to meet him. Maybe they could be friends. Peter didn’t talk about bullshit. I bet Dad would like him a lot.
Day one of knowing a handsome guy and I was daydreaming all this. I rolled my eyes at myself internally. Jesus. You’re as bad as Ellie.