Read Online Close Encounters by Jen Michalski - Free Book Online Page B

a frazzled, sunglassed woman craned her neck at each intersection while the young black kids would nudge each other and laugh, having witnessed the legend of the looney bird firsthand.
    I discovered crack on those afternoons, too. I bought some from this kid on Fairmount, when I couldn’t find any pot, and we smoked it behind City Springs Elementary. Wow, that was all I could say. I knew this was the drug that would lead me closer to Tara. I shot into a hyper-realistic, dream-like state in which the algorithm became crystal clear. I knew then that I needed to ascend the reality that was placed on the neighborhood, the grid of distraction, to find the wormhole that would lead me to the plane underneath, on which Tara lived. She sent me signs repeatedly; a yellow streamer would blow up Patterson Park Avenue, beckoning me to where she was held captive; a crumpled red-and-yellow McDonald’s bag would tumble down an alley and land at the house in which I needed to infiltrate.
    â€œJust what the hell do you think you’re doing?” My father slapped me the night I was checked into detox. “We are always here for you—you know that. And what do you do? You smoke fucking crack!”
    â€œBullshit. You’re never here for me.” I answered back. “You’re never even there for each other.”
    â€œThat’s not true.” My mother folded her arms, which I knew, from living in the presence of psychiatrists all my life, was a defensive, closed gesture. “You can talk to us about anything, honey. All those nights I looked for you…I wasn’t doing it for my health!”
    â€œIf things are so great, then why did I hear you and Dad talking about separating?”
    That night, my parents packed me into the Volvo for the drive to Greenspring Hospital. This was not the way Tara would have wanted it, I knew. Nothing seemed more real—school, my parents, my friends—than the space in which Tara and I had been interacting, the dreamlike world of symbols and patterns and hope. At the traffic light, I jumped out of the car and ran as fast as I could toward the abandoned house on St. Paul, zigzagging through yards and alleys until the sound of my dad’s voice tapered off. I knew I could sneak through the back window and sleep in the old dining room. Over the months when I was still hanging out with him, Joshua and I had stashed his old sleeping bags and a kerosene lamp there. That night, among the dirt and broken glass, I dreamt that Tara visited me. She touched my face, looked into my eyes. Hers were as red as burning coals.
    All that was three years ago, I think. Sometimes I pick up the City Paper to see what the date is or to use it for toilet paper. Every now and again, I see the yellow Volvo make its passage through Orleans Street, Fayette, Patterson Park Avenue, but I don’t recognize that woman inside. She is too old, I think, to be my mother. Sometimes I wish she would get out of the car so I can see what color shoes she’s wearing, or maybe if she wore sunglasses instead of those bifocals I would know for sure.
    It’s hard to believe three years have gone by, that I grew out of my shoes and clothes like the Hulk, that the face I see in the bathroom mirror of Popeye’s is angular and long and that my voice, when it’s used, is deeper, coarser from smoking, its opinions more jaded. But I’ve learned to survive here. When you’re living day to day, one has to stick with a plan, and the plan that’s easiest for me to follow is to find food, find money, find drugs and, hopefully, find Tara. There’s no time for reflection, for choices, what could have been. It’s just you and a Hail Mary pass every day.
    I live in the abandoned houses mostly, but sometimes a man who’s picked me up feels sorry for me and lets me spend the night. After I give him a blow job, he makes me something to eat, and I stuff candy or snack-size potato