Chapter II

The Girl in the Red Raincoat

[Part I]

[R E A L I T Y]

  Ka-chunk. 

   Sound stirred the glimmers of life into the air—they died as fast as they arrived. 

  Oddball let his hand linger against the cold metal for the briefest of moments before letting it fall from the handle to his side. The door offered no welcoming creaks as it guided itself open. With the blinds drawn, the room was murky and the gloomy-gray rectangle of light from the doorway was stifled before it could bathe away the shadows of the far wall. Oddball stepped in, and delivered the killing blow to the light with the door’s sharp click. 

  His eyes didn’t take long to acclimate. The dorm room was all at once sizable and claustrophobic—a collection of normal household spaces crammed together into a space much larger than a prison cell but much smaller than a home. The walls were made of cinder block and poorly concealed under a layer of thick vanilla paint. The paint was peeled away in some places by the curious and absent-minded with wandering fingernails. In other places, mostly corners, graphite and ink inscriptions of names and curse-words clung to the soft coating, giving the cold room some warmth of character about it—in the sense that someone before him had lived in it, if nothing else. The floor was mostly coarse, forest-green carpeting that did little to hide the concrete beneath. The leftmost portion of the room was a kitchenette, cordoned off by an invisible barrier only indicated by a change in the floor: stained, yellowish laminate-tile. The rest of the room was a collection of furniture much-too-large crammed into a space much-too-small. A television shoved into the corner, unused since the start of Summer Break; a sofa suffocating the TV stand; a small table meant to seat 2 was crammed against the wall with one of its chairs missing. Vacant of wallhangings, even the spaces meant for living on a college campus couldn’t escape the callousness of a classroom. At the back of the room, two doors were crammed side-by-side, opening into vacant bedrooms with attached bathrooms. 

  Well, mostly-vacant. 

  Oddball entered his room, gingerly setting his camera to rest on his desk before tugging off his hoodie and lifting the mask from his face. He threw the hoodie over the back of the chair he’d retrieved it from and entered the bathroom to return the mask to its box—undoing morning’s rituals. He threw himself down on the bed, making ancient springs squeal in shock. He lazily draped an arm over his eyes as his breathing slowed with a sigh. 

  He saw a girl in a red raincoat, hood pulled back to let her milk-chocolate hair ride the invisible currents of sea-breeze while she talked in cheery tones through smiles and radiating glee. They were back at the coast again, talking about more than he could think of while watching airborne globs of ocean froth try to tag the skewed lighthouse. 

  “Why do you wear the mask,” she would ask, and Oddball would reach up and touch his featureless, plastic face. Why did he wear the mask? His tongue was a dam to a lake of feelings and emotions, and plucking the answer therein was like trying to pick out one specific drop. So perhaps it would be best to let it all spill forth and wait for the answer to come with it, so that perhaps he could know it too. 

  “Hey,” he’d say, “this might sound strange, but you’re the first person I’ve really talked to in a long time.” And she’d look at him sidelong, but understanding, having forgotten her question from moments earlier. “And I’d kind of like it if we could talk again.” And there’d be a buzz. 

  A buzz? Wait. No. That wasn’t right—

  The image began to fade, the girl lost clarity until she wasn’t more than a red and brown blur stained into his consciousness, alongside a name. Another muted buzz brought Oddball out of the daydream. His phone was vibrating in the pocket of his hoodie. 

  Stupid… he cursed himself, trying to scrub away the last traces of the daydream. You don’t even know her name anyways, he thought as he buried every memory of the girl named Ashley into a shallow subconscious grave. He sat up and preoccupied himself with the phone, retrieving it. A couple missed messages dominated the screen, one of which he cleared away without even bothering to read. The remaining ones were from “Samantha”. 

  The first read: “Hey! How’s summer break going?”  

  Then there was a missed call. The phone vibrated in his hand, and a new bubble appeared. 

  “I swear to god, don’t make me drive down there and kick in your door.” 

  Oddball’s heart leapt and he quickly dialed her back. She answered almost immediately. 

  “The hermit comes out of hiding, and I didn’t even have to drag him out,” Sam cheerily chastised. Oddball wanted to think she was joking, but the jingle of keys in the background told him otherwise. He winced. She wouldn’t actually…would she? 

  “Hi Sis…” he said. 

  “Gee, you could at least try to sound like you’ve missed me, grump,” Sam prodded, “How’s Summer break? Change your mind about staying on campus yet?” 

  “It’s fine,” Oddball said, “I kinda like it here.” 

  “And you sure sound like it, too,” she said, “Dark rooms, cheap junk food and Vitamin D deficiency certainly suit you well.” 

  “Come on, I go outside sometimes.” Sometimes.  

  “Oh, really?!” Sam’s voice grew distant for a moment, as if she’d walked away from her phone. “You hear that, Mom? Henry goes outside sometimes now.” 

  Oddball winced, and the automatic response was already sliding off his tongue before he could catch it. “I told you not to call me that…”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Sam said, “is there someone listening nearby? Did I just expose your super-secret identity to the world?” Oddball withered a little, the emptiness of the space becoming apparent again. “Honestly, I’d think that being your sister would earn me the right to call you whatever I feel like. There’s worse things I could say, like that one time in 5th grade where you came home crying because Tyler Ros—”

  Some long-buried image began to crawl up in his memory, and Oddball frantically cut in to keep it buried. “Christ, okay, you’ve made your point. Stop bringing that up.”

  “Good.” He could practically see Sam’s smug grin. Her tone softened a little, losing the playful sting of sarcasm. “What’s up with you today, anyways? You seem mopier than usual. Something on your mind?”

  “Not really, I’m fine.” 

  Sam sighed heavily. “Y’know, every time you ever said you were ‘fine’, it’d usually be with tears in your eyes. You’re terrible at hiding things, you know that?” 

  Oddball rolled his eyes. Why do you bother asking if you’re just gonna press me to talk about it? 

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say it sounds like you’re having problems with a friend or something,” Sam said, before adding: Then again, you don’t really have friends, so it must be something else.” Oddball recoiled from the accusation. 

  “Look,” he bit, “did you just call me to annoy me, or did you want something? And in my defense, I did talk to someone today.” Talk is a strong word for it…

  “Oh did you, now? Who?” Sam’s voice had taken on a sudden, smothered glow. She probably had him right where she wanted—it was infuriatingly impossible to hide anything from an older sibling. 

  “A girl.” 

  “‘A girl’, he says,” Sam said. “I understand everything now. Thanks for clarifying.” 

  “Look, I don’t know! Some girl named ‘Ashley’ came up to me. We didn’t talk long,” Oddball said. “Does it really matter? I’m just stressed, that’s all. Drop it.”

  Sam interjected in a low voice. “You didn’t wear the mask like some creep-o, did you?”

  “Of course not…” Oddball muttered, glancing to the floor like an ashamed child being interrogated for breaking a vase. There was a pause.

  “...you make me regret making that thing for you, you know that?” The lie hadn't stuck. 

  “Look, it doesn’t matter, okay?! It’s not like I’m gonna ever see her again. Can we please talk about something else now?”

  “Are you telling me that,” Sam said, “or yourself?”

  “What are you on about now?”

  “I mean, you don’t sound very certain of not seeing her again.” 

  Oddball scowled as visions of the red raincoat taunted him. “She offered to meet again tomorrow and talk more. But it doesn’t matter, okay? I’m not going.” 

  “Why not? Seems to me you enjoyed talking to her,” she said. 

  “What? No! Hell no,” Oddball protested. 

  “You’re telling me you didn’t enjoy it, at least a tiny bit?” 

  “No,” he said. “She was annoying. Almost made me drop my camera, kept laughing even though nothing was funny. Obnoxiously happy too. Why would I talk to her again?” 

  “Right,” she said, “why would you? I’m sure it has nothing to do with why you’re sitting here brooding over it.” 

  Oddball gritted his teeth; he couldn’t escape the feeling of being cornered. Oh shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about…

  “Look, I can’t make you do anything, but I think you should go,” Sam said. “I think you’ll regret it if you don’t. I mean, you don’t exactly give yourself a lot of chances to make new friends, and this self-imposed isolation act you’ve got going for yourself isn’t healthy.” 

  “I’ll think about it.” He started looking around the room. He needed something to busy himself with, some excuse to end this call as soon as possible. 

  “Don’t give me that,” Sam scolded. “We both know what that crap really means. You better go, or else I don’t wanna hear any more broodiness outta you over this, got it? Don’t make me come down there and drag you out.” 

  “Fine.” His eyes landed on his camera and a stack of small sketchbooks on his desk. That would do. “Anyways,” he said absently, “I need to go. Got work to do.” 

  “Sure you do,” his sister sighed. He winced a little at the tone of her voice, like she was sad and trying to hide it. Something in the shape of regret: a feeling like an iron hand tightening around his heart and pulling it around, ate at him. 

  I’m sorry… He was already apologizing over and over again, holding his tongue between his teeth to keep one from slipping free. I’m sorry, okay? I’m just not in the mood right now…

  “Look, promise me you’ll at least actually consider it. Please?”

  He shut his eyes. Somewhere far away, the ocean air brushed a red raincoat into a slow, swaying dance. “Sure.”

  “Not good enough. I want to hear you say it.” Come on, would she just leave him alone already? 

  “I promise.”

  “Thank you,” Sam said, “and while you’re at it, please text Mom and Dad back.” 

  “Will do,” he dismissed. “Bye.” 

  “Talk to you later, Henr—” Oddball hung up before she could finish, tossing the phone aside and flopping back onto the bed. The room became a tomb again—still and silent. 

  It’s not worth thinking about anymore, he thought to himself. Though in his head, the girl in the red raincoat kept swaying with the sea-breeze, talking with the boy in the black mask.