Shya Scanlon - Forecast, Chapter 12

Forecast is being serialized semiweekly across 42 web sites. For a full list of participants and links to live chapters, please visit www.shyascanlon.com/forecast

Chapter 11 is at Joe Sullivan.  Chapter 13 is at Matt Briggs.

 

 

12

 

Asseem didn’t change young Zara’s direction so much as quicken her pace.  It was clear to anyone watching that she’d been looking for a way out, that she was bored.  She was bored of her parents, their obsessive and vicarious focus on her own transgressive acts, bored of her absurd teacher and his split personality, and bored of her peers.  But it was a lazy boredom, comfortable, and lead to behavior which, unlike that of Asseem, broke boundaries in a kind of off-hand, easy-going manner, upsetting and in the same movement reestablishing balance, a cat burglar in the house of social norms.  It amounted, in her mind, to little more than ultimate compliance.  For all the ferocity, the reputation for a quick-lipped licentiousness that inspired anxiety in those around her, her attitude was not born of a desire to threaten, intimidate, or harass.  It came naturally, unforced.  It moved through her body like blood.  It radiated from her like the soft exhalations of a sleeping child: effortless. 

Even her frustration at this disposition gushed from her in attitudinally appropriate amounts, and her emotional spasms were a clock by which the adolescent development in others could be gauged for some sign of aberrance.  The Doc called her flawless.  I’ve always used slightly different criteria for my assessment, but I’d been inclined to agree.

So it was not difficult to see why she felt drawn to Asseem.  He shared her fire and determination, walked down the halls of their school without a glance to either direction, but did so without the grace that, paradoxically, seemed to cause Zara the most grief.  She was like a ballerina jealous of a break-dancer’s slouch. 

Not that anyone but the most careful observer could see the ballerina.  This is in her head, I'm talking.  The ballerina was hidden behind Zara's brusque manner, or rather, was this very manner, so in tune with her environment, a symbiosis of complementary forms.  This fact, however, only made the idea easier for people to accept.  "Two rugged outsiders drawn together by the world that wouldn’t let them in," etc.  It was the tag line from a movie she'd hate.  It wasn’t quite as easy as that.  Though Zara confessed her interest rather quickly, both to Asseem and herself, the boy openly fought it for a while, and even after public capitulation arguably never truly faced the extent of his feelings until the day she left him.  Not that Zara minded.  It was part of what she loved him for.

It belonged to his sense of intense entitlement, which she found equally provocative.

Asseem’s deep brown eyes smiled at her as he chewed the apple.  Her savior, the fool.  Juice dripped down the canals formed by his full cheeks as she studied his expression.  She steadied her nerves, glanced at the de-dogged doorway, and punched him moderately hard in the gut, taking the apple back.  She loved his sense of entitlement, but she wasn’t going to stand for it.

He wheezed, doubling over.

“Thanks for saving my ass, but the apple’s not for you,” she said, and bit into it herself. 

She’d swallowed the first bite and taken another by the time Asseem had recovered.  “Damn, girl, that shit ain’t right,” he managed.

“It isn’t right to take what doesn’t belong to you,” she returned, smiling to herself.

“Yeah well I shoulda juss waited to grab it rollin down tha street once ‘at dog’d took yo’ ass down.”

Zara considered.  “Okay," she said, handing him the apple, “but spare me the ebonics, fresh, I heard you in class today.  You’re not fooling anyone.”

This pissed him off.  He stood back, looked her up and down, and made the "tse" sound she'd soon learn to love.  "Shit, girl," he said with a lip-curling disdain, "I ain't even tryin' ta hear dat."  And with that he pushed past her and headed out, slamming into the blinding lights of 5^th Avenue like a slap in the face.  Zara watched him go, slightly amused, and took another bite of her apple before following him out of the building.  Back under the heat lamps.  She broke through a crowd of people gathered just outside the door, thought for a moment that they'd come to witness the commotion she'd caused, and turned to see she'd just exited a movie theatre.  Hmm.  Still scanning to find her target, she experienced a small let down at the idea that Asseem, this beautifully stormy brown boy, would be spending his time watching inane, uplifting feature films.  A voice inside her tried to excuse him, reasoned he could have been getting a hand-job, something redeemable, but Zara rooted the voice out as her mother's, and pressed the issue out of her head.  She just needed to find him.  She'd talk to him.  She'd see for herself.  She listened to her mother's fading cry, cliff-fall-crashing against the craggy shore of her daughter's subconscious.

Temporarily free.

Asseem was just turning the corner when Zara caught sight of him, mercifully moving away from the unpleasant street.  He was heading back east, she saw - possibly home.  She crunched another bite of her diminishing meal and took off after him.  Happy, film-bound faces swirled around her, heading in for their dose, ready to be blasted into unbecoming, and she frowned at them as she passed, trying for at least an unemotional middle-ground of basic comprehension.  Something pre-judgement.  Something true.  Something.

Asseem was partway down the block when she turned the corner, and Zara quickened her pace.  She called out to him but he didn’t stop.  Bastard, she smiled.  They moved through the relative dim, shadows stretching before them from the blast of light behind, and Zara watched as her head began to lick his heels.  It moved up the clopping calves as she pressed forward, over his ass, and when her outline was etched across his back she asked again: Asseem?

The boy stopped.

"Asseem look I'm sorry if-"

"Ain't no if," he interrupted.  He was still facing away.  Zara stood in place, wondering how angry he really was.  She wasn't used to facing such hostility.  She caused it, of course, but people didn't normally confront her with it.  It was held in, tied up, released when she was gone.  Maybe, she thought, he was being intentionally melodramatic.  She was quick.  Of course, people had different feelings about this, over time.  Some of my colleagues thought his behavior was largely affected.  Some thought it was exaggerated, but unintentionally, a prop thrown up automatically by a genuinely diminutive self-image.  Though I never liked the guy, I gave him the benefit of the doubt with this.  He was just another confused kid trying to make his way in the world.

"Well, okay," Zara began.  She was surprised to find herself actually using a tender voice.  She wondered vaguely where she'd gotten it, but was almost entirely wrapped up in the telling.  "I'm sorry that I offended you."  She paused.  "It wasn't my intention."

People pushed by them, mongers making their way to and from 5^th Avenue, carrying their wares or carrying cash.  The street crowded in around them, but not, Zara felt, threateningly.  The grime and gush of ill-maintained urban landscape was a comfort.  The creatures trudging through, its keepers.  She waited.

"Handpepper is a fool," he finally said.

Now they were getting somewhere.  Zara fought the urge to express her full excitement about this statement, not only the sentiment, but the plain way he pronounced the word "fool".  He was reaching out.

"I think you might be on to something," she said.

He turned around.  His eyes seemed to struggle past their sockets, staring from somewhere deep inside his head.  His face was round but not soft, and the early whispering of whiskers broke through the skin of his cheeks and chin.  “You’re a fool too.”

Okay, she thought.  I’ll give it to him.  Zara just smiled.  Only fools don’t admit their own foolishness.  She hadn’t dismissed everything her father had said, after all.

“You think you only get one tongue?”

Whoa.  Here it comes.  She was captive at Go.  Tongues?  Tongues were good.

“You think just because I can speak your language, everything else I say is somehow inauthentic?”

Inauthentic.  This was too good to be true.  She silently chastised herself for paying more attention to his form than his content.  “I…” she began.

“You don’t know shit.”

They stood looking at one another for a while in silence.  He’d challenged her, of course.  It was Zara’s turn to prove him wrong.  But she knew this could only be achieved over time.  She chose instead to redirect.

“Did you know that Handpepper is the bottom in a master/slave relationship he has with his wife?”

Asseem scowled.

“As in she ties him up and makes him eat off the floor and stuff.”

He made the “Tse” sound again and turned back around, began walking.  Zara hopped up beside him, which he didn’t seem to mind, and walked with him.  They walked through the busy corridors of commerce she’d passed through on the way down, but instead of heading up the main artery connecting her neighborhood to downtown, Asseem kept to side streets.  They walked. 

They walked.

They passed a fallen poster advertising an older 5^th Avenue film, and Zara was reminded of the theatre he’d dragged her into.  She was fairly certain by now that he’d have a good explanation for it, but the idea wouldn’t leave her alone and eventually leapt from her mouth after a sharp inhale.  She wasn’t quite ready for it herself, and hoped it wouldn’t upset things further. 

To her surprise, Asseem didn’t seem to notice the judgmental undertones of her question, and gave her a near-animated response.  “It’s my job,” he said, “I work those theatres.  All of them.”

“You work, what, at the ticket booth?”  Zara wasn’t sure how much better this was, but she was relieved that he wasn’t in there for the spectacle. 

“Hardly.  I’m a translator.”

She considered.  “A translator for what?”

“For the people who watch the movies.”

Zara wondered if he was being intentionally vague.  “Okay, so but what exactly do you translate?”

“You mean what language?”

“Sure.”

“Well, Zara, I happen to translate the fake language you take for some kind of lie I’m apparently telling the world,” he paused, “if not myself.”

Aha.  “You translate…”

“Ebonics, as you call it.  Though my people never use that word.  Black english.  Jive.”  He trailed off.  They stood a street corner, and Asseem looked at her, then took a deliberate turn.

Zara had only seen a few segments of these films, in-class screenings, and was trying to picture how the whole thing might work.  She saw an auditorium, many tiered, but couldn’t stop seeing them all sitting at desks.  She saw Asseem sitting beside some old, rich movie-goer, watched him passing notes to the man, crinkled up paper scrawled with whatever the black character on screen was saying, rapping away in barely understandable babble.

“Basically I sit next to old rich white folk and whisper in their ear when anyone speaks something even remotely unfamiliar.” He smiled.  A first.  “It doesn’t really matter what they’re saying.  I make it something I think the bastards want to hear, and the tips are healthy.”

This, thought Zara, was a great idea.  “What a great scam!” she exclaimed, excited by Asseem’s candor.  But when she looked over at him she saw a worried look.  His eyes scanned the street before them, and he craned his neck to look behind.  They were alone on this particular stretch, in between busier streets.  He came to a stop then, and she knew she’d crossed another line.

“Look,” he began, “first of all, can you try to contain yourself?  This doesn’t have to be a public discussion.”  He was annoyed.  “Maybe you’re used to just telling your secrets to anyone who’ll listen, and that’s fine.  You do that.  But do it somewhere else.  I obviously made a mistake telling you about my job, and I’m willing to accept those consequences, but-”

“Wait a minute,” Zara interjected, “never mind that no one’s around to hear what we’re talking about, but I, I…”  She trailed off.  His response seemed so out of line that she didn’t even know where to begin.  How could she communicate anything reasonable at this point?  They’d been together fifteen minutes and she already felt like an oaf.  The inner ballerina was all clumsy missteps.  She halted production, regained her balance, continued.  “Please, Asseem, just bear with me.  Obviously I’m a babe in the woods here.”

The boy kicked at the street, hands in his pockets.  He liked her.  He liked this crazy girl who punched him in the gut.  The Zarabarbarian.  His father would kill him if he knew he’d been with her.  He smiled.  He frowned.

“Well, it’s not a scam,” he said, low volume. 

Oh.  Insulted pride?  Partially, but there was something else in it.  Zara tried to piece it together.  This tough and delicate diamond, speaking from under an emotional shadow, source unknown.  She was falling hard.  The wind picked up and she watched Asseem’s top-mop curl into the air.  Cans blew across the street, scraping metal echoes into the awkward silence.

“The weather’s been going crazy,” she said.  A peace offering.  Asseem looked around, nodded.  He started walking, slowly, then turned back toward Zara.  He shrugged.

“You coming?”

Zara let a barely noticeable smile murmur across her mouth.  She shrugged back, and caught up with him.  The wind pushed them down the block, and although it was warm, Zara wrapped her arms around her waist.  Asseem kept looking around, always vigilant.  They walked in silence for a while, watching the wane of activity around them, the darkened streets interrupted by city-lit burning drums, and Zara wondered if she’d made the cut. 

“I didn’t mean it wasn’t important work,” she finally said.

“Yeah, well, I have plans.”

“I believe it.”

Zara realized that she was still holding her mostly eaten apple, and after seeing that it was all browned and dry from the windswept dust, she tossed it into the overgrown lot of an old Safeway.  A pang of hunger pulsed in her stomach, and she thought about home, then glanced at a street sign, trying to place herself.  She wasn’t more than a few blocks away from her house, but they were going in the wrong direction. 

“Are you coming back to class?” she asked, trying to hide her hopefulness.

He looked at her, quizzically.  “Of course I’m coming back to class,” he said.  “What made you think I wouldn’t?”

“I was just, you know… I mean you and Handpepper…”

“That’ll blow over.  He got what he wanted.”  Asseem said this was a convincing tone of certainty.

Zara thought about it, and realized it was true.  Handpepper had got what he wanted.  She pictured his smug mug as he’d stood in the doorway earlier.  She smiled. 

“I guess you’re right,” she said, and turned abruptly to the left.  “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

Asseem stopped and watched her walk away.  He shook his head, rubbed his stomach, and continued on his pathway home.  He had to think of a good story to tell his father.

Comments

[Richard Thomas]

Great chapter. I think this may be the best one so far. So funny, and intense. Layered work that has so much going on.

Really enjoying this Shya.

Peace,
Richard

[Lindsay Oberst]

Absolutely love this line:

"She was like a ballerina jealous of a break-dancer’s slouch."

I love metaphoric descriptions.

[Anna]

I just bhougt this one for my Nook and I cant wait to crack it open. Nice to hear that its a good read. Great review!