JASON “The Nobody”
Lilith’s sigh drifts past Jason as he turns the corner toward the stairwell and Ally. He passes Mike at the elevators. The old man nods at him, coughing into a big white hankie.
“Have you seen—” Jason starts, but Mike cuts him off by pointing farther down the hall.
“She’s that way,” the old man wheezes.
Jason thanks him just as the doors to the elevator open. “Aren’t you getting on?” he asks Mike.
“I’ll wait for the next one.” Mike pushes his folded-up hankie into his back pocket. The elevator doors close and, once it begins moving to the next floor, Mike presses for it again.
“Are you waiting for Opal?” Jason guesses.
He just smiles. “She’ll be headed this way soon. Takes her a bit to get moving sometimes.”
Jason opens his mouth to say something—he doesn’t know what—but then he hears the quick smack of Ally’s sneakers on the stairs. Mike, coughing again, waves him away.
Jason trots down the hall, pushing his backpack up his shoulder. Slap, slap, slap. Ally’s sneakers hit the stairs in quick succession as she sprints up them. Jason squints, seeing just a flash of her purple sneakers two flights over his head. He lets the backpack slide down his arm onto the tiled floor and slumps next to it. Unzipping the bag, he grabs his sketchbook and flips to a fresh page. He pulls the pencil from behind his ear and breathes out as his hand takes over.
The scratch of his pencil against the thick creamy paper is the only soundtrack to the steady beat of Ally’s footsteps up and down the stairs. Jason’s bangs fall over his forehead as he leans forward, the pencil making swoops and shades. There’s a moment in drawing where his mind and his hand disconnect, where he can finally stop thinking before acting and just do. Just draw. His hand seems now to move on its own, the images pouring through the pencil onto the page. As easy as breathing.
If only speaking could be as simple. But Jason’s thoughts clog before they reach his lips. When he does speak, he seems to say the wrong words, to just blurt out the tip-of-his-iceberg thoughts. But when he draws, everything he’s feeling, everything he’s sorting out, just flows.
Jason bends over the sketch as a face emerges on the page. He pauses a half second to recognize it. He had thought he was sketching Ally, but Opal emerges instead. The figure is slightly altered from reality, with Ally’s darker eyebrow slashes over Opal’s cloudy eyes. Opal’s frizzy hair frames Ally’s straight-line mouth. The two couldn’t be more different in real life; how or why he was merging them didn’t make any sense. But Jason doesn’t pause to think about his reasons. He leans over the page, watching as if it were a movie, as his own ideas take shape. He’s so lost in his creation that he misses the sudden silence of Ally’s backbeat steps.
“What are you doing?” Ally’s sitting on the stair just behind him, peering down at the drawing.
“Nothing.” Jason whips shut the notebook, but Ally is faster. She nabs it from his hands and flips it back open to the page he had been drawing. “Is this…?”
“Yeah. It’s Opal.” Jason pushes his hair back, painting a charcoal pencil smudge across his forehead. “It’s not a big deal.”
Ally sinks back onto the stair, staring at the page. Her eyes are wide. Her leg drums up and down. As Ally scans the page, Jason closes his eyes and feels his face burning.
“This is amazing,” she says, and his eyes pop open. “Did you just do it?”
Jason shrugs. Again he grabs for the notebook, but Ally swerves to the side, clutching it in both hands. She shudders, then hands it back.
“What?” Jason asks. “I mean, it’s just a sketch. It’s not, like, ready for public consumption or anything.” Not that anything he does is ever meant to be public. Except for those two times, he thinks, and look how that turned out.
“Dude, it’s not the drawing that’s giving me shivers. The drawing is, well, it’s incredible,” she says.
Jason clamps down on his tongue, trapping it in his cheek to keep from smiling.
Ally glances at him, her hazel eyes locking with his. “It’s just, it’s so her. It’s like she’s right in front of me.”
“Opal?” Jason glances at the drawing. Opal’s face is as wrinkled as if someone had crinkled up the paper and tried to smooth it out. But the corner of her eyes tilt to prep for a smile.
“I mean”—Ally shudders again—“I can see her in front of me, her mouth open for more applesauce.”
Jason scratches at the back of his neck, as if coaxing the words to his throat. “She seems to like you. Seems to like you helping her, I mean.”
Ally’s leg drums against the step. She never stops moving, Jason thinks. An invisible energy vibrates through Ally at all times. He thinks about how fully he falls into drawing, where the pencil against the paper is the only sound, the only action, the only thought. Did Ally have anything like that? Or was she always moving in different directions? Her leg still popping up and down, she gathers her hair into a tighter ponytail on top of her head.
“Opal,” Jason starts, “she’s not so bad. I think—I think maybe she’s trying to tell you something.”
“What could she want to tell me?” Ally’s eyes narrow.
Words clog in Jason’s throat, but before he can cough any up, Ally’s back on her feet, ready to sprint the stairs again.
“What are you doing?” he manages to croak out.
Ally raises an eyebrow. “Getting my steps in,” she says in an isn’t-it-obvious voice.
“Why?”
Ally glances down at her wrist. She taps her watch, then twists her arm to show Jason. “I’m at sixteen thousand steps. My goal is twenty. If I squeeze in a few flights, this day won’t affect my training much.”
“Isn’t it, like, a good thing to get ten thousand steps?”
Ally shoots a grin his way. “Yep. That’s why I double it.” She pushes past him.
“It’s one day,” Jason calls up the staircase after her. “Does it really matter if you skip it?”
“Every day counts,” her voice drifts toward him.
“We’re supposed to stick together,” he says toward her quickly retreating back. “Mr. Hardy’s going to know if we separate.” Why’d I say that? It’s not even true. Jason gently bangs the back of his head against the wall. While it isn’t technically true that he and Ally were supposed to stick together, he knew Mr. Hardy wouldn’t be cool with all of them scattered around the nursing home when they were supposed to be on a bathroom break.
“One more flight!” Ally huffs as she heads back down.
He crosses his arms and legs as he waits. For a moment, his eyes snag on a sign detailing the different levels of the building. First floor is for residents, meeting rooms, and the cafeteria. Second floor is for intensive care. Third is for hospice and long-term medical care. Fourth is for evaluations and rehabilitation.
As Ally reaches the end of the stairway, Wes turns around the corner. When he sees them, he throws up his hands. “Hey! Where’ve you guys been?”
Jason shrugs. Ally checks her watch again. She grins at the number reflecting on her wrist. Looking up, she asks, “Is Hardy back and looking for us already?”
“No, but what are you guys doing?” Wes’s eyes slide back and forth between the pair. The longer he looks, the more bored Ally seems and the hotter Jason’s cheeks burn. Wes’s mouth tucks back in a half grin, flashing his dimple. “Huh,” he says.
“What?” If Jason had been drawing his own face, flames would’ve burst from his cheekbones at Wes’s appraising look.
Ally crosses her arms. “What’s up? You looked like you are in a hurry.”
The smile drops from Wes’s face. He nods, suddenly serious. “I am. We need your help.”
“Who’s we?” Ally asks.
“Me and Rex.”
“With what?” Jason grabs his backpack, shoving his notebook inside.
“Follow me.” Wes turns the corner. Ally glances at Jason, one eyebrow cocked. He shrugs and gestures toward Wes and, for just a second, Ally smiles.