#maggey

[matheronics]

Moggy: “Wenn ich bei Zombey mitfahren würde, wisst ihr, wo sich meine Hand befinden würde?“

Mave UND Zombey gleichzeitig: „Auf [Zombeys] Knie?“

Ex-ca-use me?!?! Buben doing Buben things, I guess

[probsgod]

Thanks for babysitting me when i am unable to manage myself

[drivojunior]

I decided to redraw this sketch from 2013 with my new style applied to my characters, I do like alot how they came out :D

[abbeymaggeyfebruarynanowrim-blog]

day 14: maggey

Day 14

           After lunch, the rest of the day didn’t go well. Well, that was an understatement. The temporary excitement I’d felt after making plans with Harrison to find the second Polaroid location was extinguished. I returned to Bert’s room after lunch, letting myself feel a bit more optimistic than usual.

           “Come on, Bert. I don’t care if you don’t want me to read to you. If I don’t, I’ll get fired,” I said. I pulled the cart into the room. He laid back in his bead, on top of the covers, which Heather had told me was part of their plan to make him feel motivated to get out more. Make his bed in the morning and he would be forced to get dressed in normal clothes, venture to the living room or rec hall, and maybe eat in the dining hall with others. Nope. Instead, he sat on top of the covers in his satin PJ’s. They were so ratty I saw right through the satin. His wrinkly nipple stared at anyone who talked to him. It was mortifying for everyone involved.

           I didn’t bother pulling my chair up to his bed. I knew better now. I rifled through the book selections, cringing. Nicholas Sparks and Janet Evanovich? How was that going to make anyone feel better? At the bottom of the pile, I found a copy of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Diary by Sherman Alexie. How in the world did a banned book get in this box? I looked over at Bert, who had his lips pursed and head pointed at the ceiling defiantly with his eyes sealed shut. Well, I’d been wanting to read it. Whether an old white dude wanted to read about Native Americans on a reservation, I didn’t care to know, honestly.

           I sat in the uncomfortable stuffy chair by the window. Sitting, I watched Bert whip his head towards the door, in the opposite direction of where I sat. I rolled my eyes. The white clock almost blended into the stark white walls. Why did they have to make guest rooms feel like a damn sanatorium?

           I opened the first page and cleared my voice. I shivered, and pulled my cardigan around my shoulders tighter. Poor window insulation. Another fantastic note to make about the room.

           “I was born with water on the brain,” I said, starting to read. I didn’t pay any attention to Bert. Three weeks of complete silence and ignorance had pretty much solidified in my mind that he didn’t care about me being in the room at all. I’d been in here for 2 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 3 weeks, reading, because I didn’t know what else to do. My only instructions were to entertain him and keep watch over things. In other words, make sure he wasn’t trying to come up with a death device to off himself or damage any of the luxuriously designed room.

           I read through the first two chapters easily, laughing out loud at Sherman Alexie’s hilariously morbid language. The protagonist was a Native American kid who was born with just about every bad hand a person could be dealt. Ugly glasses. Awkward body. Poor. Minority. Scattered with different cartoons drawn by this protagonist, who uses humor and cartoons to cope with his less than fortune life, the writing was as dark as it was funny. I choked back flashes of anger as I read the second chapter, about the protagonist begging his parents to take their dog named Oscar to the vet. But it would cost thousands of dollars, and his dad ends up taking out a rifle and shooting the dog himself. It was horrible. It was every kind of honest, the kind that made you uncomfortable and you felt like you shouldn’t be reading, but the kind of honest that felt necessary to become a better more empathetic person.

           Just then, as I was starting to enjoy my afternoon, I heard a noise to my right and felt something on my head. I put the book down and reached up to my hair. My fingers touched something wet, cold, and smooth. I looked back down at my pointer finger and saw brown mush. I looked up at Bert, who still wasn’t looking in my direction, but frowned. Possibly more angst looking than before. I looked at his food tray next to his bed.

           Walking over to his side of his bed, I stepped toward him slowly. It felt like trying not to wake up a dragon. When I reached his food tray, I saw the opened cup of chocolate pudding. And next to it, a spoon with pudding residue on it. Bert’s arms were crossed; he didn’t even try to look the least bit innocent. I rolled my eyes and walked back to my spot.

           “Good try, Bert.”

           I returned back to my book. Picking up with chapter 3. As I read further, I felt like I was reading something I knew for certain had to have been slipped in by mistake. Or, even better, was intentionally put there to piss off the Senior Solutions staff to give these old dudes some good literature. I commended that person, if it was the case.

           Only thirty seconds later, I felt something hit me square in the back of the head. I whipped my head back around to look at Bert, who was staring just past me now out the window. His mouth was open and he frowned. I looked down on the ground, where the dirty spoon now lay. I felt the back of my head, feeling the spot where the spoon had hit me.

           Now- I know I should have gone straight to Heather, like she’d asked. If it had been any other day, maybe I would have. But something simmered inside me then. A month of Missoula anxiety shook me up. A month of dealing with his antics, spitting on me when I got too close, throwing things at me, and never once saying a word. Done. I picked up the spoon and marched over to Bert. I held it one inch in front of his face and pointed it at the spot on the floor where some chocolate pudding was. Then, I grabbed the spoon and jabbed it inside the pudding, getting a nice sized bite. I held it in front of his lips.

           “If you are going to act like a child, I’m going to treat you like one,” I said, not caring whether I sounded like a soccer mom in that moment.

           He shook his head then quickly, with the same stern frown on his face. He didn’t make eye contact with me, and I took it as a challenge. I grabbed his chin and yanked his head down as hard as I could feel comfortable doing without feeling like I was going to break his fragile bones.

           “Trust me, the feeling is mutual. But guess what? I get paid for putting up with you,” I said. I snatched the pudding from him and I started eating his pudding myself, not bothering to think about the fact that the door was open or that I was essentially eating from something that had touched the ground and Bert’s own mouth.

           I was standing there in front of him, moaning with every bite, when Heather walked in. And it was only when I had finished the whole cup of pudding and Bert was red in the face that I saw Bert glance behind me with a smirk on his face. I turned around to see Heather shaking her head and Harrison behind her, who stood with his hands on his hips looking at his shoes.

           “Emilie, can I speak to you in the hallway?” Heather said.

           I gulped. I nodded and walked over to the window. Heather had moved over to Bert, wiping his cheek free of any pudding. I quickly closed my book shut and stuffed it behind another book on Bert’s windowsill shelf. Then, I saw Harrison, who was smiling at me, but differently than usual. His eyelids drooped and his smile wasn’t wide enough to see his double chin or dimples. Rather, he looked almost sad for me.

           Great.

[abbeymaggeyfebruarynanowrim-blog]

day 12: maggey

I don’t want to say I’m slowing down.... but it’s getting harder. I’m not even halfway there. It’s getting so hard every day now to sit down and churn something else out. I want to get it over with every day, not get there and enjoy it.

Crap.

           He wasn’t happy with me. But he wouldn’t say it outright. Instead, he circled around it, continuously. I had learned quickly that while he could be extremely blunt, when he actually wanted me to know something, he wouldn’t tell me. He wanted me to guess whatever he was thinking. Harrison loved punishing me for not knowing something he thought I should. I hated it.

           “Did you want me to invite you in? Is that why you’re mad?”

           Harrison stared at me. His hair was frizzy today, more so than usual. His almost-dreads sagged against his head at the crown and poofed at the bottom, making a triangle. It was enough that I almost couldn’t take him seriously.

           “I didn’t know we were there yet,” I said. Where we were? Mentally, I slapped myself.

           He shook his head and smirked just a bit. He practically jumped out of the car then, accepting that he finally got his invite. It shouldn’t have been weird that Harrison was about to walk into Grandma’s house or that he was hanging out with me at all. We’d been hanging out for a few weeks now, after all. He’d helped me find two of mom’s pictures.

           What was weird that he always seemed two steps ahead of where I thought we were. Maybe while I wasted my time overthinking things, and I knew this was the truth, he was busy just doing what he wanted to do. Which meant today that he was coming over after work to hang out. There was hanging out after work, and then there was hanging out after work at my house, which felt like something different entirely. But in the Harrison way, he didn’t think anything of it. He made it simple. And because he kept it simple, I tried to do the same in my own head.

           “Wait,” I said, as he was mid-hop up the front porch.

           “What?” He smiled warmly, the dimples on his cheeks extra deep.

           “My Grandma is probably home,” I said. I crossed my arms over my chest and blew a loose piece of hair off my forehead. A sprinkler in the neighbor’s yard made a long hissing noise then and suddenly a parabola of water rained down on both Harrison and I. The evening was warm, but not unbearable. The air felt hazy, but the sky was totally clear. The sun hadn’t gone down yet, but it hid beyond the mountain so that everything shimmered like a pre-sunset. Not quite orange or yellow, but a warmer blue.

           “Shoot, you’re right. We better go. I’m a vulture around old people,” he said. He stepped off the porch entirely and walked up to me, only inches away. I looked down at our feet, his Vans across from my Converse. Ugh, it was disgusting sometimes how much we resembled a Tumblr photo post.

           “My Grandma and I aren’t close,” I said, shrugging.

           “And that’s a problem why?”

           “We, uh…” I said, questioning why I’d even brought this up. There was something comforting about knowing Harrison in Missoula but keeping him separate from my Grandma and Mom, except for the Polaroids. There was Mom’s Missoula, that encircled Grandma and everything screwed up here that was a tightly wound ball of questions, and there was Harrison’s Missoula at Senior Solutions. Where we talked about the parts I wanted to talk about.

           “We just don’t talk about my mom a lot, okay?”

           “Emilie, I’m not going to barge into your Grandma’s house and ask her what her theories are about why her daughter left her husband daughter,” he said, suddenly serious. He licked his lips and tilted his head to the side, the same way he did to guests at Senior Solutions when he was trying to explain something in the most tender way he knew how. Dang it. It really worked, too. I smiled and took the lead up the stairs.

           I heard the music before I saw the Tuba, or the Trumpet, or the Saxophone- or Grandma holding her Bassoon upright. Stepping through the front door, we were blasted with the noise of a herd of elephants. I looked through the screen door that looked out back onto the back porch and saw a dozen of Missoula’s most spirited elderly surrounded by empty PBR cans and cigars. A few of them wore sunglasses and looked stone cold serious as they squeezed notes out of their instruments.

           “We can leave,” I said, whipping around to face Harrison. Last week, when I’d attempted to stay in the house through Grandma’s Thursday Jazz Night, I could still hear the music through my noise cancelling headphones. Which said a lot.

           “What? Why?” Harrison said. He looked around me, and put his hand on my shoulder to peer into the backyard. He laughed and, like there was such a thing, pushed me nicely to the side. He pushed past me and waltzed through the screen door.

           Grandma saw Harrison first. Her eyes lit up and she smiled, embracing the stranger who just walked through her house. I don’t know how Harrison knew Grandma was my Grandma, but he walked right up to her and stuck his hand out, introducing himself. Grandma smiled and I watched her laugh from the entryway. The rest of the band nodded and hummed along, each seemingly lost in their own song or concentrating on their own tune. Grandma looked up then and found me at the screen door. She glanced back at Harrison, who was waving his hands in the air. She laughed out loud, clutching her chest when she did. They both motioned me over then. I sighed.

           “Oh, Emilie! You never told me you had a friend. I told him he’s welcome anytime you invite him over, no need to ask,” she said. I could swear she was blushing. Was it because he was a guy? Was it because of the extra chub that made him so loveable? In fifteen seconds, Grandma had laughed harder in front of Harrison than I’d seen her in my whole life.

           Harrison’s mouth smiled on one side. He raised his eyebrows at me, asking if I was fine with this. I nodded. The “M” rose above the trees behind the porch now and the music seemed like it was loud enough to fill the entire valley.

           “Do you want to watch the concert tonight?” Grandma asked. The few gaps in her teeth showed when she smiled as widely as she was now when she asked. Harrison looked at me.

           “Of course, Grandma,” I said. She clapped and took both of our hands in hers, leading us to a pair of folding camp chairs at the back of the porch.

           “Harrison, you sweet thing, we aren’t very good. You should have expected that, though. None of us are that spry anymore! But boy, have we got spirit,” she said. She rested her weight on her hand that clasped my chair, leaning close between Harrison and I.

           “Now- over there, that’s my dude. Harvey. He’s the one with the boobs,” she said. Harrison clapped his hands over his mouth to prevent his laughter from spilling out. I could see it in his eyes. They danced with amusement. I narrowed my eyes at him, and Grandma turned slightly behind her to look at Harrison. He smiled at her immediately and then wiggled his eyebrows at me three times. Amused, but I felt adoration as well. He ate this shit up.

           “And Gladys- oh, Gladys. Isn’t that the worst old name you’ve always heard of?” Harrison and I laughed in unison.

           “On trumpet, that’s Seth. Too scrawny to stand while he plays anymore. Uh, on tuba, that’s Kev. Mike on Sax… let’s see…” Grandma continued around the entire circle, adding a three-word description to every face. A few of them looked up when she pointed in their direction, but most of them smiled contently to themselves.

           “Just sit and enjoy yourselves, now,” Grandma said at last. She winked at me and flicked her head towards Harrison. I blushed, checking to see if he’d noticed. She patted me on the shoulder and sauntered to her spot at the bassoon.

           I sat with my hands under my legs, trying to look like I was paying attention to the music and commotion, but not really sure where to look, either. As everyone began setting up, the air suddenly shifted from relaxed to rigid. Eyes opened all around as people came back into the world, out of theirs. People suddenly seemed to notice they had guests, smiling at Harrison and I. He nudged my shoulder with his and I couldn’t help but smile in anticipation, either.

           With a singular nod among the group, no other cue needed, suddenly the music started. I perked up in my seat, aware that the music wasn’t actually awful at all. Had what I’d heard last week been a fluke? Missing people? The sound was full, wrapping itself around me. Harrison, too, seemed like he was also in it. I decided to go with it.

           A few measures in, I opened my eyes wide. I recognized this. I knew what song they were playing, except my brain wasn’t allowing me to connect with where I’d heard it. I felt like I’d heard it hundreds of times. It was so obvious. Harrison’s eyes were closed as she swayed with the music, smiling at the same time, taking his hair triangle with him in every movement.

           I saw Grandma with her lips pursed around the Bassoon, her fingers delicately but confidently pressing each key. Her cheeks flapped with every breath. She seemed different in front of her bassoon, more serious but also more focused. She had purpose within the group and knew her contribution.

           “Still figuring it out?” Harrison said. I opened my eyes and without moving my head, felt Harrison’s forehead barely touch mine. I nodded. And gulped, but I hoped he didn’t catch that.

           “Give you a hint,” he said, whispering so quietly I had to lean closer to his breath to make out what he was saying, “Johnny. Depp.”

           I gasped so loud that across from me, someone’s eyes darted open. They blinked rapidly. I mouthed, sorry. I looked at Harrison now, who was smiling so big, his jaw seemed like it was disconnected from his head. He was laughing, letting out a soft, satisfied chuckle every few seconds.

           I looked at Grandma again, poised and serious. And then, I lost it. It wasn’t even that funny. The music was pretty good, considering. It was the principle of the thing. I was laughing so hard silently I had to hold my stomach so I didn’t shake with laughter. My Grandma. Her band. Her mod-podge of old people in a band every Thursday without fail.

           It was Pirates of the Carribean.

[abbeymaggeyfebruarynanowrim-blog]

day 11: maggey

Day 11

           I smiled, and rested in the brief few seconds that followed where we felt like Harrison and Emilie again. Harrison and Emily at Senior Solutions. He seemed to relax, too, because once his shoes were off, he plopped down in the middle of his too tiny twin bed. His mismatched socks sagged at the toes and I looked up at him. He wasn’t smiling, per say, but he had a barely noticeable smirk that was at least inviting. Harrison patted the bed then and I sat up anxiously. My heart was pounding but I tried to keep my breath even. With him in the very center of the bed, it didn’t leave much room on either side. On his left, was less than two feet of space and the corner of his wall. I chose the side on his right, where there was at least a few feet of space to the door.

           I sat down carefully, smoothing out the blanket under me and kept a few inches between us, hoping he wouldn’t notice the precision in which I chose my spot. Harrison was running his fingers through his hair, which he seemed to fight to control. Every movement only seemed to piss it off more until he finally gave up and looked me directly in the eye.

           “So?” he said, like everything, the last twenty minutes was a question waiting to be answered. Like the last two months of knowing him had been a question waiting to be answered. And now, he was cracking open just enough to let the answers rise to the surface.

           He watched me intently and I cleared my throat. I was frozen, but eager. The room seemed huge with possibility. Once the truth was out there, there was no going back. I looked at the chipped paint on his walls, partially covered in posters he’d taped up. I didn’t want to know the answer, why Harrison lived in this shack that seemed like it shouldn’t be habitable whatsoever, or why it was late at night and he was the only one home. Why he hadn’t expected anyone to. I started to wonder if he lived here alone, but the further I let my mind wander, the closer I seemed to unlocking the puzzle. Now that I was about to know, I wanted to run as far away as I could. I wanted to see Harrison the same way I’d always seen him.

           “So…” I said, starting with the simplest question I could think of with the shortest answer, “this is your room?”

           He nodded.

           “And… you live here?” I said. My chest tightened. I breathed deeply.

           “Yes,” he said, seemingly unsure himself of how to proceed or how much to give. I felt like he felt what I did, too, that this room would change everything that happened afterwards. “I do…”

           “Okay,” I said, nodding, as if it all made sense and it was all fine.

           “I guess, what I should have said is that I live here. But only sometimes,” he said. His voice was even and he kept his hands moving at all times. He kept his eyes pointed in the direction of his feet, acknowledging me with a nod of his head or by leaning my direction with his shoulder when I spoke.

           “And where do you go when you’re not here?” I said.

           He shifted on the bed, sinking lower. He grabbed a pillow quickly and tucked it underneath his back so that his head was a full foot below mine. I sat up even straighter.

           “It depends- a friend’s house when I’m lucky, but usually the yard or my car,” he said.

           The yard. The yard. Surely, he didn’t mean the warehouse train yard. Not the place I’d joked looked like a scene from a horror film. Not the place I had been scared to drive through at night, let alone imagine someone sleeping.

           “You mean….” I said, feeling my voice tighten. The light was off in his room, but outside through his small window that was one-foot-wide and one foot long, the moonlight lit up the room enough that it didn’t feel totally dark. And I didn’t feel exposed, either.

           “Yes,” he said. Harrison’s voice cracked just a bit now, and I bit my lip. In that brief second when his voice cracked, I felt for the first time in the hours we’d spent together at work or hanging out, like holding him- any part of him. His hand rested loosely on his knee. It was still- and so silent.

           “Where?” I said. I clenched my fist, still keeping my eye on his silent one.

           “I have a buddy who graduated a few years ahead of us. He works there. Lets me sleep in his shop every now and then,” he said. Harrison looked at me then, for a flicker of a second. He smiled with half of his mouth before staring back at the ground. His hand started drumming his knee.

           “How often?” I said. I leaned forward, just a bit, and recoiled when my face fell into the sliver of moonlight streaming through the window.

           “A few times a week, sometimes more. It really depends, like I said,” he said. His voice was louder now, sharper. The realization started as just a simple statement but as I processed this fact, it grew and grew until it felt like there was no air in the whole room. I shivered.

           “And where, or, why are your parents not here?”

           “My mom works nights at the gas station. Cashier,” he said. Again, I nodded. I didn’t know what else to do with this information. I wanted to scream, but it seemed like if I reacted, if I so much as leaned forward and touched his hand, he would break. Harrison, Old Man Whisper and Grilled Cheese Master, was so much more fragile than I wanted to believe he would be when we pulled up to his house. I realized a few seconds later he hadn’t mentioned his dad.

           “So you stay at the yard when your mom is around? I’m sorry,” I said.

           “No- well. My mom is fine,” he said, confirming what I thought.

           I reached across the bed, the only thing I could think to do, and grabbed the blue folded blanket at the foot of the bed. I unwrapped it and covered my legs entirely with it. It was fleece and just barely think enough to feel much warmth. The gas station attendant thing didn’t explain everything. Living in a crappy shed? Maybe. But this dingy of a shed? Sleeping here when his mom apparently worked but when she was home, he slept at the yard? Yet, his mom and him were fine. I landed on the only other possibility. But I didn’t want to be the one to bring it up as I imagined a dozen other theories.

           “It’s fine. I’m barely here anyways. They work us like dogs at Senior Solutions,” he said. He nodded as he spoke the words out loud, like they made sense to him and he was the one who needed to agree with it.

           “Jerry, Bert, Louise, Mick… Wheel of Fortune. I mean, you know. They need me over there at the home. I don’t mind it,” he continued. I nodded. There was no doubt how hard he worked or how good he was at his job. It seemed like he could run the place alone and it would still get packed with middle-aged lawyers dropping their decrepit parents off at Senior Solutions for a fortune. He was invaluable, maybe. But the thing that bothered me enough that I wrapped the blanket around myself even tighter, was that they needed him. I mean, I worked there, too, right? I got the same job done, even if I did it differently. Or stupidly.

            On that note, what kind of parent let their kid work themselves over 30 hours a week at a job while also being a full time high school student? Or, more obvious than that, what kind of parent let them sleep somewhere else for half the week?

           “Harrison… Just because you’re really good at your job and the home needs your help, that really doesn’t mean you should have to be there so much. You shouldn’t,” I said, biting my lip now, feeling like I was getting dangerously close to something, “you shouldn’t be forced to. You’re 17.”

           His head dropped lower into his chest so I couldn’t see any of it at all, just his mop of hair. The moonlight glistened across his dark hair. I could also see his feet, sticking out into the moonlight just right so they seemed like the focal point of the entire room. Illuminated by the moon.

           “I know that,” he said bitterly.

           I took a huge breath and before I really thought about it or knew what I was doing, I reached for his hand, still resting on his knee. I lowered myself, too, so that I still wasn’t eye-level with him exactly. I placed it on top of his and it was like being slapped with a flyswatter- his skin burned under my cold hand and everything felt like it had stopped completely. The world outside, the house beyond Harrison’s door, my car sitting in the driveway waiting for me, it all seemed so far away in his room.

           “You’re kind of wonderful, Harrison,” I said. I almost chuckled when I said it to ease the tension and the fact that I’d never said something so nice to him before, but I held my focus, feeling him soften almost instantly.

           “It doesn’t mean anything, though,” he said. “It doesn’t change my family or how hard my mom works at a horrible job. It doesn’t change where I live or sleep. In fact, it’s not about me at all.”

           I squeezed his hand. I knew, of course, how true it was. That no matter how hard you tried sometimes, it wasn’t enough to change your circumstances. To change the fact that you’re stuck raising a daughter alone when you didn’t want one to begin with.

           “It doesn’t change my dad, either. He doesn’t care. I think about leaving, but not really, because then it would just be my mom. And I have to get her out of here somehow,” he said.

           I laid my head on top of his, sideways. There were just so many things bigger than us. Adult problems children shouldn’t have to deal with, but they were reality. I knew better than to correct him or say it would get better. What made me sadder than anything was that I wasn’t alone in being completely and royally screwed up. Somehow, I had hoped against my better intuition that Harrison was one of the lucky ones.

[abbeymaggeyfebruarynanowrim-blog]

day 10: maggey

A momentary pause in writing. I was burnt out on day 10, sure, but then day 11 happened and I spent the past couple days in the hospital with my grandma. No time to write. Totally out of my head.

I got to return to my desk and I can’t lie, it felt like coming home, a bit. Back to my routine. The past few days felt off without writing and I realized I actually missed my characters. I think that’s a good sign.

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                 “You can drop me here,” Harrison said.

Immediately, his smile vanished. It was amazing how quickly a person could change. Confused, I looked at him longingly, searching for more. When he was kidding, it was always obvious. It was our game. He always kept me guessing and I kept guessing. But right now, moments after he had made me laugh so hard I almost didn’t stop at a 4-way stop, he wasn’t keeping me guessing. I recognized immediately that he was shutting me down.

“Harrison, we’re no where, what do you mean?” I said.

He kept his head low and I watched him pull his hood over his eyes swiftly, almost like it was no big deal at all. It was almost too practiced. Too rehearsed. Had he done this before?

“I’m in the middle of what looks like a warehouse graveyard. I’m pretty sure this is the part of the horror movie where I make the stupid decision to let you off right here and find out in the morning you’ve been brutally murder,” I said, attempting to keep things light. I even forced a chuckle at the end- even though I knew Harrison could see right through that.

“It’s cool- look, I’ll see you tomorrow, Em,” he said. I sat there, frozen, wondering whether this was the moment I keep pushing further or the moment I let Harrison be Harrison. This was the moment I’d felt so many times and the moment I let it be.

“Harrison!” I said, biting my lip. My keys jangled in my hands as I played with them, trying to find anything I could grab to feel grounded to. In unknown territory, the keys felt solid in my hands, as if I could stay anchored to my spot in the driver’s seat, no matter where we went.

He ducked his head back into the car, with one hand on the front of the car door and the other holding his backpack that had been resting at his feet. His freckles almost sparkled in the muddy orange light of the overhead lamp of the car. A few stray hairs fell out of his hood like they had a life of their own. Harrison’s lips curved upwards, almost like a smile, but it wasn’t the Harrison smile I knew. If he knew I was faking a laugh, I most definitely knew when he wasn’t truly smiling.

“Where are you going? There’s nothing out here,” I said. And seriously, as I looked around at the dark metal siding of the warehouse just in front of us, the faded train tracks in front of us, and the miscellaneous scrap piled around us, I felt like the answer was staring me in the face but I couldn’t find it.

“Let me take you home. You don’t have to be embarrassed,” I said quietly. I thought of the trailer park we’d passed on the way here and I flushed, thinking then of Grandma and her cottage smack dab in the middle of the nicest houses in Missoula.

He didn’t say anything, but his eyes started blankly into mine, flickering every few seconds with thought. What was he trying to decide to tell me? What was he trying to decide not to tell me? I’d always felt like his eyes were the color of cinnamon, but now I thought that had just been a reflection of the moment, of the times I’d seen him with guests at Senior Solutions running Wheel of Fortune. Now, they felt more like mahogany. They were darker in color, but glossy at the same time, reflecting more of me than showing what was inside him.

“I’m taking you home,” I said. This time it wasn’t a question. Before he could say anything, I took my opportunity. I started the engine and flashed my car lights. With the car ready, I simply looked at him expectantly. He glanced behind him once more- at who? Or what? And slid back into his seat. I smiled. This was it, the moment I had finally won.

I turned the radio back on and switched the station within the first notes of a Selena Gomez song. Landing on The Trail, I hummed along with Josh Ritter. I careened between the creepy warehouses until we were back on normal paved road again. My body relaxed and my fingers loosened around the wheels. I took a deep breath and glanced at Harrison, who was completely still. When we got to the first stop sign, I looked over at him across the front seats. Without looking back at me, he pointed to the left. I looked to our right, where the first trailer appeared out of the dark where I knew the park started. I eyed the road to the left carefully, noting empty land adjacent to the warehouse graveyard lot. I kept humming and kept the speedometer at a crisp 25mph, prepared to stop when he said so or to turn at any given moment.

We drove for another mile down the same road as it followed the train-tracks. This, now this, was the shitty part of Missoula. The part they didn’t show you on your college visit. The part you could almost ignore all together if you never went beyond Reserve Street. I laughed to myself, imagining taking Dad or Anna to Missoula and showing him this. Remembering Harrison, though, I felt my stomach flip a few times. As we crept down the road further, it seemed like he only disappeared further into himself, rather than the opposite. I looked at him every few seconds, noticing this, and felt my heart start to thump harder in my chest. My throat felt dry, too, and it was then that I realized what I’d assumed was only the surface of whatever wasn’t right. Was it because I hadn’t wanted to see more than I could handle?

“Right up here, you can stop,” he said.

“That’s what you said last time,” I said, realizing I had whispered this time despite the fact that his voice was the loudest I’d heard it in ten full minutes.

I pulled up to the shoulder of the road on the right and looked up to see a tattered shed made of metal. No windows, one small door, and rust covering the entirety of the shed. Harrison unbuckled his seatbelt swiftly and grabbed his backpack from the floor. I didn’t say a word and kept my eyes forward, back on the road, realizing I wasn’t sure anymore if I could get back to the main road.

“Follow me,” Harrison said. His voice surprised me. I’d expected mute Harrison. Closed Harrison.

I hesitated before turning off the car quickly and grabbed my purse, wrapping it around me like a security blanket. I held the cross-body strap tightly and walked around the car where Harrison was already walking towards the shed. As we got closer, I noticed it wasn’t so much as a shed but like half of a house put together with different pieces and chunks of different structures. The front side was all metal with nails sticking out by a cm. To the side, dark wood you saw on a Montana cabin that extended outwards further than I could see from the road. The roof was a mixture of things I couldn’t make out but most importantly, it was almost entirely flat and the house itself couldn’t have been more than 7 feet tall.

Harrison opened the door without knocking first and I followed him in. He didn’t yell out for anyone or look around the room as if expecting anyone to be there or hear us walk in. The room was lit entirely by just a few candles, but I saw a lamp on the floor in the corner that clearly belonged on a nightstand it was so tiny. I stepped onto carpet, but as I looked down, I saw it was actually a car mat and all over the living room were car mats. A floral couch stood in the center of the room, rather than against any of the walls. To the left, was a dark hallway, and straight in front of us, a door, which is where Harrison lead us. He waited until I’d walked fully into the tiny room, which was maybe 10feet wide by 10feet long at best, and closed the front door behind me, which hung loosely on the doorway. I could feel air coming through the top.

After closing the front door, he stepped back in front of me and lead me into a an even smaller room. I remembered thinking my room at Grandma’s was small. A twin bed was the first thing I bumped into, almost immediately after entering the room. There was about 5 feet of space between the bed at the edge of his room, which was rectangular and the length of his twin bed. A desk sat parallel to his twin bed leaving just inches between them and then I saw the clothes. His red sweatshirt I hadn’t seen him wear in a couple weeks, folded on top of a three foot high stack of other clothes.

It was always easy to observe what a person did do, but it was another to notice the things they didn’t. And like a bomb being dropped on us, I suddenly felt all the things he didn’t do hit me. It clicked all I could think was how stupid I was. The fact that he had a sleeping bag always laid out in his back seat, the huge stack of clothes in his storage locker, the reason he had been working since he was 14, and the mismatched clothes I suddenly realized had always looked slightly off. His pay-as-you go phone. His love and knowledge of where the best garage sales were and thrift shops. The way he always defended my dad and mom- God, I felt like such a jerk suddenly.

And even though I knew I shouldn’t, I felt like the vulnerable one. I was seeing this new part of him he’d kept concealed for almost 2 months, purposely and very intentionally hidden, and I felt like the one who wanted to hide. He took off his Vans with the hole in the toe I’d always bugged him about and neatly set them in front of his pile. There was only one thing I questioned, the first thing I’d ever noticed about him.

“But- what about all the grilled cheese?”

His head bolted upwards. He stared at me, all Harrison again, cinnamon eyes and everything, and smiled.

“I’ve made really good friends with the Senior Solutions cafeteria crew,” he said.

[abbeymaggeyfebruarynanowrim-blog]

day nine: maggey

today felt like a weak day. meh.

________________________________________________________________________________________

I was getting desperate. It was already June 30th. All I’d done so far is go to Big Dipper and learn that I was mostly terrible at my job. In the field I wanted to someday spend my life around. Okay, so I wanted to be a pharmacist, but it was still the medical field and I had learned that bedside manner with old people was not my forte. The patient’s rooms made me uncomfortable and every time I saw someone walking around with an IV drip, I got squeamish. Probably not a great start to my career in the health field. More importantly, I still had mom’s album and most of her photos were still a mystery. Without signs in the photos, clear landmarks, or a label, it was impossible to understand where in Missoula Mom had been exactly. The only thing I knew so far was that Mom liked weird flavored ice cream. Truthfully, maybe I’d been a bit judgmental when it came to guessing how big Missoula actually was. Had I thought it would be easy to find the viewpoint Mom was standing in front of, when Missoula was virtually surrounded by dozens of different mountain peaks all around that all looked the same? Yep. I knew I was in trouble. And every night before bed, after another day at Senior Solutions, another day I hadn’t talked to Dad, I just felt more and more cornered. If I didn’t figure out who Mom was here, in the place she grew up and spent the happiest years of her life, I knew I’d probably never figure out why she died. Or why she left me. I took out the photo that puzzled me most and laid it flat across my palm so I could take it in. I flipped it onto its back but there was nothing there, and I knew it. Mom was smiling on the front, wearing the same Aviators she wore in the Big Dipper photo, and behind her were mountains. All around. And below her left shoulder, was a valley with buildings and shadows I could only assume were a town. Two mountain peaks stood immediately behind her, to her left, and to the right were gentle mountains cascading across the landscape. The valley continued down and to her right, exiting out of her armpit and extending to the edge of the photo. I had no idea where I was going to find this exact viewpoint. I’d spent hours that week Googling the best viewpoints in the Missoula area and compared the photo to pictures on the internet, but it honestly just all looked the same. I tucked the photo into the pocket of my work Polo and quickly headed out the door to grab my bike. A few, long hours later at lunch, I was holding the photo again in front of me while I ate the soup Grandma had made the night before. I trailed the spoon through the soup as I thought about the photo and about the woman in the photo I’d never know. “What’s that?” I looked up to see Harrison peeking over my shoulder directly behind me. He smiled and plopped his lunch box down directly next to me. I gulped. Although we weren’t friends, even after the Big Dipper thing, we still didn’t have lunch together side by side. If anything, we were friendly acquaintances. “Is that Blue Mountain?” I started to shake my head and then I dropped the picture entirely. He took it from me and peered over it. I was speechless. “Yep, sure is. See Mount Sentinel behind her? Unmistakable! Nice photo,” he said, and handed it back to me. I stared at him, refusing to believe what he was telling me. That a photo I’d stared at for years and had no idea where or how I’d know what it was, suddenly belonged somewhere. He took out his sandwich and laid it neatly on the table before grabbing the rest of his lunch items. Humming, he unwrapped his- yep, grilled cheese, and took a quick slurp of his water bottle, nosily gulping down a full cup, at least. I was still staring at him in awe. “What?” “You know where this is? You’re positive?” “Sure am. No question about it,” Harrison said. “Oh my god,” I said, although I wasn’t sure I meant to say that much out loud. “Isn’t this your photo? Who’s the chick?” I nodded and took a huge bite out of my salad, literally so I could digest this and take a moment to think about this. Two places where my Mom and Harrison had both been. Two places where their lives, and mine, had intersected. I’d spent 17 years hundreds of miles from Missoula wondering if I’d ever see the places my Mom had been, and here Harrison didn’t have to bat an eyelash it was so familiar to him. “It’s… my mom. I just didn’t know where this picture was taken, that’s all,” I said. “Ah, well, have you been there yet?” I shook my head, making no noise and swallowing the last bite of salad silently. The desperation seemed like it was so obvious to me that I did everything I could to keep it hidden. “Wanna go after work? Seriously, best view in Missoula and just a 45-minute drive,” he said. He picked up his water bottle and took a gulp while looking at me. He smiled with the water bottle still in his mouth. “I rode my bike,” I said, remembering my bike chained up outside. I thought back to this morning, when this picture seemed like an impossibility to me. Did I necessarily want to bridge the gap between friendly acquaintance and friends? No. I could already see it happening across Harrison’s face and he looked all too pleased with it. However, it was June 30th. It was now or maybe never. “Good, I was thinking we’d bike the 30 miles uphill,” he said. He got up from the table, his lunch completely gone, and punched my shoulder half heartedly with his fist. “I’ll see you after work then!”