The First: Unbalanced

I’m going to Disney Land.  I don’t want to. No, I do.  

I’m a victim of peer pressure.  They spoke of parades and dazzling lights.  I thought that lights shouldn’t dazzle people so often, since they could always glow or shine or sparkle instead.  Maybe they should let something else dazzle once in a while, like rocks.  

I suppose gems could be considered dazzling.

They said I would enjoy it.  The lights would be many different colors, they said.  Maybe some would spin, or change colors in sync with other lights to form patterns.  I believed them.

The day before we were going to leave, they told me they couldn’t go with me. They couldn’t go, because of complications.  But I should still go, they said, because I would enjoy the dazzling light shows.  They had friends that would meet me there.  They had a bus schedule printed out in purple ink.

I’m sitting in a tunnel full of echoes.  The tunnel is there for cars to drive through, or at least busses, since that’s what dropped me off, but I’m alone.  I drag my shoe along the concrete, trying to scrape off the red gum I’ve stepped in.  

I’ve got a plastic bench to sit on, in the tunnel.  It’s got gray splotches on it where people had put stickers, and other more irritated people had peeled them off.  I think that there is probably a great metaphor or proverb for sitting in the center of a tunnel, but I don’t know what it is.

“Jack.”

The word jars me to my feet.  His chin is covered in patchy half-hearted stubble, and he’s smiling with only one side of his mouth.  His car is sitting smugly behind him.  They’ve snuck up on me, in a tunnel full of echoes.  I’m afraid I think too hard.

“And this is Karen.”

Karen is wearing a scarf, a jacket, thick pants and rubber boots.  She looks prepared to stomp off and explore a frozen swamp.

When I try to shake Jack’s hand he takes mine and kisses it.  When I ask him what the hell he is doing, he shrugs, “Sorry, old habits.”

“Don’t hassle the little dear,” says Karen.  Karen and Jack are both tall people, towering over me, but I’m irritated at her condescending tone.  I brush my hair out of my eyes.

“I’m fine. Besides, I thought only girls got their hands kissed like that.”

They react as if I had fired a gun, for a moment.  Then they try to pretend they are not surprised.

“Of course, honey,” says Karen.  They share the same look parents share when their child says “I want to be a garbage truck driver when I grow up!”

Jack holds the open the backseat door on his car for me.  His car still has the “New Car” smell.

“Keep your hands and arms inside the spaceship please. Actually I don’t care what you do so long as you buckle up.  If I get pulled over because someone isn’t “properly secured” I’m not paying the ticket,” Jack says, pulling out onto the road.

“Disneyland…” He’s watching me through the rear view mirror, “is a good place to bring your hookshot.”

My buckle clicks into place.

“You just shoot it up into the poles that stick out alongside the ride, and swing to the front of the line-“

“If anyone tries to stop you,” interrupts Karen, “Just stun them with your boomerang.  The blue one.”

“Right,” picks up Jack, “then use your power bracelet to pick up any boulders that might be in your way, and then…save the princess.”

The car stops.

“We’re here.  Leave your hookshot outside.  I’m pretty sure there are no devious traps in there that require a hookshot the navigate.”

The inside of the house is filled with piercing cold.  A woman introduced as Susan shuts off a huge TV.  Susan is a giant, even bigger than Jack and Karen.  My neck starts to burn when she drops to her knees to engulf me in a hug, like I’m her best friend just back from vacation.  It’s dizzying.  I nearly lose my balance, thrown off, when she rises to her feet. She gives me a cap to keep my ears warm.

Susan shows me the rest of the house. Jack and Karen’s room, my room.  Susan sleeps on the couch every night, even when I’m not here.  

I slide a sheet of frozen Hot Pockets into the oven.  I sit on my knees at the table and wait.  A combination alarm clock/radio sits on the counter, too close to the sink.  Guitars screech, and someone is screaming -

You’ve left a trail of silence
Blood on your hands
Do you remember where you’ve been?
I exist for my name!
I exist for my name!
I exist for my name!

“Where’ve you been?” asks Susan.  I relax my fist and point to the oven.  “How do you like your room?”  

My room has a boarded up window, but it’s clean, and has a full bookshelf.  I don’t know what to say.  I don’t know which fact is most relevant.  What should I point out to her?

“Quiet, huh?”  She asks, misinterpreting my silence.

I shrug.  Susan arms herself with two thick oven mitts before removing the Hot Pockets.  She balances the sheet on two potholders.  I reach to adjust the sheet, and burn my hand.  Still shaking my burnt hand in pain, I reach for a single hot pocket with my other, but it’s so hot it burns my fingers.  I reach again with the few fingers I haven’t burnt yet, but Susan intercepts me.  A single hand wraps around both of my wrists, pinning them together.  I pause, confused. My eyes trace their way up her arms, up to her face.  I feel dizzy again, looking up at her.

“What the hell are you doing?” Her voice cracks.  I look at her face, but not her eyes.  All the pain in my hands floods into me and I bite my tongue.  I can handle it, I tell myself.

Susan wraps up my hands in cloth with ice. “What the hell are you doing?” is a question she never asks me a second time, but I think up answers afterwards.  I wasn’t really thinking.  No, I was.  I just wasn’t thinking about Hot Pockets.

I try to read a book to distract myself from the pain, but my hair keeps getting in my eyes.  It’s pretty long, I realize.  It’s difficult to brush the hair out of my eyes with my hands wrapped in cloth.  Jack notices, leaning up against the fridge.  He whispers conspiratorially to me, “There’s hairclips in the bathroom.”

In the bathroom is the mirror.  There’s a woman in the mirror. She has deep black hair, nearly long enough to touch the ground, which makes her skin look ghostly white.  Her eyes are an intriguing muted gray color.  She’s a delicate thing, hands wrapped in cloth, much smaller than me.  I want to hold her.

She’s…She is…I wrap some of my hair around myself and press it to my chest, like her.  Like me.  I’m stronger than her. I’m not her.  She looks ready to cry.  I realize the mirror is too big.  This room is too big.  Dizziness drips down on me and I sit on the bathroom’s floor mat.

I’m almost crying because I thought I was someone else strong enough to handle a situation like this without crying. I’m crying because the girl in the mirror is crying. I’m crying because I’m crying. Is this ironic?

Susan enters the room, filling the background behind the girl in the mirror, too large to fit in the frame.

"Honey…Jack, why don’t you give her your cap? " Susan asks.

"What's she going to do with my cap?"

"WELL IT SHOULDN'T GO TO WASTE!" she yells.

He pulls a second cap down over the first one.  My ears burn.