Stanzi—Friday Afternoon—430

IN THE PLACE OF ARRIVALS

When we’re alone, I say, “I don’t understand why we came at all. Why did we come?”

“We came to get Patricia.”

“I didn’t know this,” I say.

“Neither did I,” Gustav says. He looks at his watch, then whispers, “It’s four thirty now. Do you want to go check if you can see the helicopter?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t care if I can see it. I trust you.”

I’m about to whisper to him about fuel, but he says in my head, The fuel is in the tank. Patricia took care of it. We’re ready to go. I just have to get some things in the house.

I whisper, “But we can’t take anything with us. The load will be too heavy.”

He smiles. “I only need the map. I don’t care about anything else.”

“I have the map,” I say. “The bush man told me to keep it safe, so I stored it in my underwear all this time.” I pat my backside.

Patricia meets us in the house. She looks nervous. She’s wearing a thin dress with short sleeves and has goose bumps on her arms. She says to me, inside my head, Do you have the map? I nod. Gustav notes that we are communicating and looks dejected.

Patricia says, “Don’t worry, Gustav. We won’t talk about you behind your back.” At this, Gustav excuses himself to go to the bathroom.

She says in my head, He loves you. Have you talked about that?

I think, Not really. It’s been a strange day.

She thinks, It will all work out once we’re home.

I think, I want to see Marvin one more time. I want to bring his cures home with us.

That’s not allowed, she thinks.

But it’s not fair, I answer.

“What’s fair?” she says.

Gustav flushes the toilet. Patricia says, inside my head, Gustav knows the plan. Just follow him when the dinner bell rings. I reach up and massage my guilt gland the way Marvin told me to, but it’s not guilt I feel, it’s anxiety. We all know this escape is dodgy. I sit down at the kitchen table and write a poem for China, so she might understand everything when I get home.

How to Tell If Your Alternate Universe Is Real

If you have kept a scratchy, dog-eared map

in your underpants for thirty-two hours.

If you have whispered so much that you can

hear other people’s thoughts in your own head

and you don’t think that makes you crazy

then your alternate universe is probably real.

If you have lost your faith in humanity by

looking at the people who consider themselves

better than humanity. If that makes you

want to throw up and scream out

This is the nature of human suffering!

Then your alternate universe is most likely real.

If you hunger for another trip

to an empty school, no matter if it means

another drill, a thousand ovals, no

matter if it means you will be in infinite danger,

then your alternate universe is unquestionably real.

The dinner bell rings.

Patricia heads to the dining hall looking peaked and I realize that she will probably play her Lansdale Cruise cramps card again. We pretend to follow for a minute, and then we turn back and head up the long, steep path to the field where the helicopter is. I try not to be nervous. Every time my other me, the one who thinks I’m not Stanzi, talks in my head, I tell her to shut up.

She says, You are not who you think you are! You are not as strong as you think you are! You can’t go on like this forever—wishing and hoping and pretending that frogs are important. Gustav is not a frog.

She says, as I jog through the thorny underbrush, I never had control over your nose or your hands. I never had control over anything. Stanzi has control. And you are not Stanzi. You are ____________. You must realize this or the helicopter will never fly.

“Shut up!” I yell. Gustav either doesn’t hear me or doesn’t care. Maybe he has a voice in his head, too. Maybe his voice tells him he is not Gustav. Maybe his voice tells him I love him. I hope so.

When we arrive at the field, I can’t see the helicopter.

I feel awful about it. My other says, You can’t see anything because you are not Stanzi.

Gustav gets into the cockpit and starts the motor and the rotor begins to revolve and the sound is there—a gentle thwap-thwap-thwap. I panic. Who else can hear it? Who else will come? Will they shoot us as we take off?

I say, “Can I help?”

He says, “We have to empty everything from the back so Patricia can fit.” We throw our things onto the field and when I stop and look at my dissection kit, Gustav looks sad for me. He produces a scale and asks me to step on it. In my jeans, shirt, shoes, and lab coat, I weigh 145 pounds. He weighs himself. In his jeans, shirt, and shoes, he weighs 155 pounds. He says, “You have to take off your shoes.”

When he says this, he strips down to his boxer shorts. There are tiny pictures of trucks on them. I don’t comment on this.

He weighs himself again. 149.

I take off my sweatshirt as well as my shoes. 140.

“What’s our maximum weight?” I ask. “Can we make it?”

“Patricia is forty-three years old,” he says. “My guess is that she is ten pounds heavier than she looks. Probably a hundred and fifty.”

“She’s only five foot five!”

“Trust me.”

“So? Will it fly?”

“Four thirty.”

“What?” I ask.

“Four thirty. That’s the maximum weight.”

Patricia appears at the edge of the clearing. She is only in her near-transparent dress. Now I understand why she was dressed so poorly for the weather. She’s as light as she can be.

But when she weighs herself, she is 149.

We are eight pounds overweight.

I remove my lab coat and take off my jeans, shirt, underwear, and bra while Gustav looks over the map and removes a small piece of the helicopter’s body. I replace my lab coat. 138.

Patricia removes her dress and sandals. 146.

Three pounds. We are three pounds short.

Gustav tells us to get into the helicopter. Patricia curls up in back where our box of things once was and she shivers in her small pair of underwear. Gustav also looks cold. I will not remove my lab coat.

Gustav puts his headpiece on and tries to take off, but the helicopter will not fly.

Patricia says, “Hurry up! They’re coming! They know!”

Gustav tries again and the helicopter lifts slightly off the ground, but we set down again with a small thud. He looks at me. Then he takes off his boxer shorts and Patricia takes off her panties and I’m the only person not naked in our helicopter and I can hear Patricia inside my head saying Take off your coat! Take off your coat! And I can hear the other me saying You are not Stanzi! You are not Stanzi!

Gustav has already thrown my headset out onto the grass. He tries to lift off again and I can hear the motor trying, but he will not push it.

I hear him thinking.

Stanzi, you have to take off your coat.

Don’t worry.

We will all be naked.

But this is the only way out.

“Hurry!” Patricia yells again.

I jump out of the helicopter and take off my lab coat and leave it in the field. Gustav helps me back into the passenger’s seat and presses the lift lever and we rise. And we rise. And we rise.

Only five minutes after our escape do I hear Patricia crying.

I ask, “Why are you crying?”

She says, “Because we’re all naked as babies.”

Gustav says, “We’re babies being born.”

I say, “I have some things I need to talk about.”