Always You Part 1
New to the blog? Don’t worry, this is the first installment!
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Act 1: The World According to Henry Collins
1.
“This is Miranda Cove, everybody. Miranda Cove,” the cheap intercom vomited out to the bus cabin. Actually, the disgusting sound quality might not have been the intercom’s fault. The bus driver was about fifty years too old and a hundred IQ-points short of being an optimal worker.
I hadn’t slept well, but that was to be expected. After all, my parents didn’t love me.
Technically.
I know that doesn’t make much sense, but believe me, that’s at least partially true. Why else did they break the delicate rules that go along with having a child in college? The rules aren’t rocket science.
It’s easy. When your first-born leaves for college, you drive him up along the coast to UC Eagle Hill, move him in, and drive back home. You get used to his absence, but all the while wish he were at home every night. Then at the much-awaited end of the year, you drive back up, move his things back into the car, and drive him home for a summer of family fun and excitement before doing the whole thing over again in three months.
My parents gave me a hundred dollars to spread across a storage locker and bus fare. Oh, and they also said ‘good luck’.
In their defense, it would run my dad a good five hundred dollars in gasoline and hotel money to drive up the coast and back. He was already spending a quite literal sixty times that much in college tuition per year; to ask for more cash just felt wrong.
So, I shook off the I-just-slept-on-a-bus exhaustion and sat upright. The myth goes that sleeping across two bus seats is magically more amazing than just the one. That’s like saying that having Sarah Palin for president is better than having both a Palin presidency and the dark lord Voldemort for her VP: neither one is particularly good, and both make you want to punch a midget in the face.
Welcome to Miranda Cove, all right.
I ran a hand through my longer-than-the-Vietnam-war hair and peered out the window. The bus windows were advertised as “panoramic”; this was pleasantly accurate and appropriately majestic. One of those windows would do wonders in my house. I could be that angry guy who stares out at children and shakes a fist at them.
Outside, the cobalt waves of Miranda’s Cove slammed against the shore in their simultaneously chaotic and repetitive fashion, and within minutes the bus crawled through a downtown so decadent that I didn’t know the meaning of the word until I saw it on a commercial for downtown. Gorgeous skies gave way to streets damn near paved with gold, and gold-haired floozies with bags upon bags of expensive clothes to match. BMWs, Priuses, and Mercedes’ on all sides, and I’m back home in a damn bus. I looked around the road and felt embarrassed.
Then again, I usually did. It’s something you’ll get to know about me.
Anyway, another thing to note: Miranda Cove didn’t have a bus terminal. I mean, sure, we could afford so many terminals that we could kill Superman if you take my meaning (get it? ‘Terminal’ as in ‘terminal illness’? You get it), but it wouldn’t happen. No, Miranda Cove has one lonely bench with a Greyhound sign hanging above it, casually situated in a dark alley on the far side of downtown, almost entirely for the purpose of being ignored.
The bus pulled to a stop in the alley and the doors opened with an exhausted swoosh. I stretched my arms as wide as humanly possible and stand up, stopping inches away from clocking myself on the lowered ceiling with air conditioning and lights. Those buttons don’t work, by the way. Figuring that out came under my list of ‘worst moments in so-hot-I’m-suffocating situations ever’, right alongside ‘ate KFC ten minutes beforehand’ and ‘watching Click with Adam Sandler’.
I didn’t pack much for the summer. Up in school, you find yourself wearing the same jeans for a week when you thought you’d be changing wardrobes daily. Things like printers, Internet cables, and loads-and-loads-and-loads of textbooks had no place in my three months of hell reprieve. No, I had packed only the essentials. I carefully took my black duffel down from the carry-on rack, making sure that I didn’t nick the Gamecube inside on anything.
I held onto the railing and walked down the plastic spiral steps of the bus and took my first step onto a familiar world. The disturbingly fresh, cold air of nearby water, as well as the general aroma of money, knocked me off guard for a second. Miranda Cove had changed about as much in the last year as I had in the last ten minutes.
I waited until after I had crossed the pristinely-paved street to call mom. She hadn’t appreciated that first month in college when she thought I’d died because I never called home. It’s not like I didn’t want to call home, but it just didn’t come to mind. Granted, this made her even angrier with me, but still.
“Hey, mom,” I yawned into my gray brick of a cell phone. I’d had it since high school. So it didn’t have a touch screen, had no online capability, and text messaging was a labor of pain and patience. What did that matter? We had history.
“Henry!” She sounded a little too surprised. “Where are you? Did you get on the bus safely? Are you hungry?”
“I’m totally fine, mom. I’m walking home now.”
“All by yourself? I don’t like it when you do that, Henry. It’s dangerous.”
I brushed past two egghead-looking guys in business suits, and before I could attempt to apologize, they turned back and glared at me as though I’m the plague. Mom’s comment gets a deserving smirk. “I said I’m fine,” I replied simply and sweetly. “I’ll be home in a few minutes.”
“Okay. Be safe! Seriously, don’t do anything dangerous.”
What, did she think I was planning to get hit by a truck? My arm yanked the phone away from my ear in the stylized ‘phone-closed-and-shoved-into-pocket’ motion that I’d adapted from who knew how many television shows. Probably Thomas Dekker or Chace Crawford. They must get all kinds of girls.
…Well, if there’s more than one kind of girl, then she might want to get herself checked out. It might be a good idea. You never know.
“Oh, Henry!” Mom’s voice called out. I put the phone back in place, making the entire motion a complete waste, “One of your friends called for you earlier!”
Narrowly dodging another suit’s attempt to run me over, I put the duffel bag down and leaned against a disturbingly clean wall. “That’s great, ma,” I said, “Who was it?”
“She sounded urgent. Something about an…animal? Or something?”
And I hadn’t been in town for a full five minutes.
“That is one of your friends, right?” Mom asked seriously. After a mix-up last year that left our house in less-than-pristine condition, she liked to be on guard. I didn’t blame her. It was relaxing to know she could handle herself, actually. “If it’s not one of your friends, I’ll call back and make something up. You know I will.”
I knew she would, too. The last time someone called the house asking for Henry Collins and had less-than-amiable intentions, she called back saying that she thought they wanted Henry-the-attractive-gardener-who-she-happened-to-be-having-an-affair-with.
“Yeah,” I started slowly, “That sounds like someone I know. What did they want?” I made a mental note to repent for using ‘they’ as a singular-person noun later.
It turns out my mystery caller knew that I’d be getting home from Eagle Hill today, and knew exactly what part of town I’d be in. It looked like I either had a secret admirer or a stalker, depending on the context. An invitation to the Lucia’s Café two blocks away from the alley and a half an hour after the bus is scheduled to arrive sounded more stalkerish to me.
Thankfully, my bag was about as heavy as the content in a Stephanie Meyer novel. The walk was easy enough.
Getting the nads to actually walk into Lucia’s was another matter altogether.
One does not simply walk into Lucia’s. That’s like simply walking into a World War I trench, or simply walking into a Firefly marathon. You’ll think you’re done after a bit, but mysteriously, you want to go back and watch Kaylee Frye be adorable.
I took a deep breath—okay, a few deep breaths—and walked through the wood door and into straight nostalgia. The smell of hamburgers and French fries and smoothies blasted me back to a past where teenagers blew what little allowance they had on thousands of calories. Wait; wouldn’t that be the equivalent of one Calorie, or something like that? Or was one Calorie just one hundred calories?
I don’t know what I’m majoring in at UCEH yet, but I can tell you right now, I’m not a science guy.
I spied the bright red booths around the windowpane, as well as the bar area with its matching red stools and marble counter, and made my way to the booth in the far corner. I walked by the occupied tables and smiled at the lack of change: one had a couple sharing a smoothie and smiling like a pair of idiots, another with a couple awkwardly eating and avoiding eye contact (yeesh), one with four middle-school kids all in ironed shirts and wearing styled haircuts, and one older man with a hat and probably a dead wife. Universal constants.
I carefully placed the duffel on the floor and slid it under my table before sitting down.
“Henry Collins,” an unfamiliar voice behind me. “I didn’t think you would actually come. You must have gotten stupid up in real college.”
I waited for my guest to get into his seat before looking at him. One glance at the messy-is-a-style jet-black hair and corduroy blazer, and I knew who—technically what—I was dealing with. An inch taller than me and supposedly better than me at virtually everything, but excelling at nothing: the ominously-and-appropriately-named Jack of All Trades.
…Yeah, I know. I smirked at him too.
“What’s so funny?” He asked genuinely.
I gathered myself. “The Jack of All Trades, right? I thought you were a myth.” I thought he was a joke, honestly. His face cringed as I continued, “Do you have a real name, Jack?”
Jack’s mouth did a half-smile. It felt like he was coming on to me. “We need to talk,” he started. “There is a situation tonight, at the pier. I’m putting a team together—“
“Not interested,” I said in a kneejerk reaction. I reached for my bag.
“Welcome to Lucia’s,” a blond, fifteen-year-old waitress stood at the edge of the table, “What can I get you folks?”
I turned to her to avoid the Jack’s glare. “No, thank you,” I paused to read her name tag, “Becky, but we were just leaving.”
“We aren’t finished,” Jack sighed.
“My apologies. I was just leaving,” I said. I had a grasp on my bag, but a thin leg stopped it from moving anywhere.
Jack looked up at the waitress with a strikingly bright smile. “We’ll be another minute,” he said. She walked away with glossed eyes and nary a sound.
He looked at me like a hungry snake. “You’re not getting away before hearing me out.”
“This is insane—“
“You are Henry Collins, yes?”
“I am, but—“
“Well then, you have an obligation to hear my offer. The whole offer.”
“No, I don’t,” I started doing that angry whisper thing you do in public places, “Sorry, Jack, but I don’t have time for these games. Let me guess: you’ve got a problem with someone in school, or at work, and you want me to hurt him?”
Before he could interrupt me, I continued, “Tough luck. I’m not that guy anymore. I haven’t been for a year, and as far as I’m concerned, I never was.”
“And yet, you’re still probably the best among those in your place,” Jack said. “I’ve given a few other washed-up has-beens my offer, but they simply declined or accepted. You do this full-blown, clichéd ‘I’m not that guy anymore’ speech. I’m impressed.” He smiled, “You’re the Michael Corleone of Miranda Cove. But you already knew that.”
I facepalmed. You know, a facepalm: when you put your palm to your forehead, because some things are just too ridiculous for words? I groaned. There was only one way out of this.
“What do you want, Jack?”
He straightened his jacket and leaned forward. Fuck’s sake, I was dealing with a wanna-be Leonardo diCaprio. “There’s a new group in town. They call themselves the Alchemists.”
“What, they all turned their little brothers into—“
“Hardly,” he ended my Fullmetal Alchemist reference before it could achieve liftoff, “They’re a little more secretive than your little crew was. They asked for my help with something a while back, but I didn’t believe they were real.”
“Fancy that. A guy calling himself the Jack of All Trades thinks something’s too ridiculous.”
The Jack’s—The Jack? Just Jack?—patience started to wear thin. His eyebrows furrowed. “They took something from this town,” he pressed on, “I’m trying to get it back. I heard from a friend that you might be interested.”
“For starters, Jack, your friend is an idiot,” I spat. “Second, I’m not here for this espionage, Scooby-Gang-on-Crack stuff. I’m only here for the summer. Find someone else.”
Our eyes met and held for a good moment. His pitch-black eyes were almost judging me, gauging me.
His foot left my bag. A half-second later I was up and headed for the door.
“Henry, we both know for a fact that my friend’s not stupid. She even said you wouldn’t want to take the job.”
Before I could call him out on matching my cliché response with his own, I realized—‘she’? The look on my face said it all. I stood by the table and glared at him as he smiled slyly.
Jack reached into his pocket and removed a wallet in the same shade of brown as his coat. A folded white business card landed on the table with a charismatic wrist flick. I eyed it carefully.
“Take it,” Jack said as he stood up with obviously practiced finesse, “She’ll tell you where to meet me when you accept.”
He walked past me and out to downtown, leaving an air of sophistication and too much cologne. I fell back into the red booth and stared at the business card again.
You know that feeling where you already know what a document says before you open it? Like, you already know that you failed a test before you get the results back, or you already know that Rondell isn’t the father of your baby, LaQuisha?
You still have to see the results for yourself, though.
Carina Guerrin, Operator for Hire.
Well, that was just peachy.
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Read the next installment here.
