He was sixteen when he met her, and she was twenty.
She had an apartment on the top story of a ten-story apartment building, with two roommates. A third person visited enough to practically live there, and that person was her boyfriend. Albert only brought this up once, and she silenced him.
He wouldn’t have guessed she had a boyfriend from the way she acted around him.
She let Albert stay on the couch like so many had before her. He couldn’t tell which kind of person she was, the kind that wanted to help too much or the kind who wanted to use him. He found he didn’t care so long as she wanted him at all.
He’d choked on his own tongue when she told him her name was Locust.
He thought, surely there was no way. She wasn’t the right age and she looked nothing like the girl who’d held his heart so long ago. She didn’t have the same odd and specific hobbies or rituals, she didn’t carry herself with the same effortless power. She didn’t make him feel the same sense of being the center of a universe only they could see. She clearly wasn’t the same girl but…what were the odds? It wasn’t long before he found out her name was Locust Adams, and while he didn’t remember his Locust’s last name, he knew that wasn’t it.
They spent the night together. He’d never spent the night with a girl before, but he understood the need for company. She wasn’t available in any sense of the word, but her partner wasn’t someone who seemed to care what she did when he wasn’t around. She still demanded Albert’s company. Even though Albert had doubts about such a situation, he was lonely and lost in a world much bigger than he could possibly imagine, and he needed company. Even though his life was already spoken for and his search for his Locust wasn’t over, it stood still for the company. He’d found that being useful was rewarding and she never ran out of uses for him. If he was useful company in her bed then that’s where he’d be. He’d thought he knew best many times in his life only to be crushed by those around him, and he’d learned over and over not to challenge people. Not to ask questions.
She wasn’t the same, but she was familiar in a way. Maybe it was just the name, but there was a familiarity in the way that, even though he lived on his own just as much as she did, she seemed so much more independent than him. There was a familiarity in the way her attention and acknowledgment made his whole body react and crave more. There was a familiarity in the way she made him feel so small and so see-through and yet so impossibly at home.
She comforted him, more than a memory could.
He got used to having somewhere to return to every night. Though the long elevator ride made him queasy, it was nice having somewhere that wasn’t going to turn him over to the state for running away. Somewhere that let him rest long enough to get some semblance of an adult life together.
He got emancipated, It wasn’t hard to prove his mom was unfit since he hadn’t seen her in years.
It was her roommate Sam’s idea. She wasn’t the mean one, so Albert found talking to her to be tolerable and often interesting. She had unwanted opinions about his arrangement in the house, but she was polite for the most part. Albert had always liked people, and it was easy for people to like him, but Sam was easy to like in return.
“You haven’t seen her since you were eleven?”
Of course, he told Sam about his Locust, he’d tell anyone who would listen.
“My mom moved us to Nevada, I don’t know how I slept through a forty-hour trip.” He shrugged. Sam’s eyes widened and Albert could see it. She had an idea, an opinion she could express but was too polite. Albert didn’t push her, he knew better than to ask questions.
He still got angry, it sat behind his eyes and threatened to blind him, but it never fully came forward. He could feel its presence in instances that made sense. When the skater girl's meaner roommate, Alison, would make unsubtle remarks about him. His ragged appearance, young age, or lack of proper education. He didn't let rage consume him, but he took liberty with whose stuff was whose when it came to selling backpack paraphernalia. A girl's underwear could fetch nice prices if you found the right market, and it's not like Alison needed to know. She gave him permission to take her things when she told him he was nothing because he owned nothing.
He felt it in less appropriate instances when her boyfriend would talk to her harshly, however harmlessly, and in ways that made Albert wonder if the man actually knew what unspoken agreement he assumed there was when he wasn’t around. He didn't get angry, but he found ways to leave clues. A stray text he sent to the wrong number. Some lipstick he left unwashed at the wrong time. He wasn't bragging, but it did feel strangely good. To watch them grow distant with suspicion. Her boyfriend was mean to her when he was suspicious but maybe it was what she needed to realize she could have done better. Albert didn't try to imply he was better.
He didn’t defend her, he knew better than to pick fights he wouldn’t remember losing.
He couldn’t get a formal job, but he worked the unskilled work that would pay him in cash and promises. He sold things and moved things and cleaned things, and contributed to the place he lived for the first time in his life. He helped with rent a little and bought food here and there. He’d been the one to install the air conditioner in the window when the upper floors in the summer had grown too hot for them to bear. It was fulfilling in a way, but more importantly, it was stable. It was his. He’d earned and purchased his place in the apartment, even if he was young and ragged, even if it was just a couch. It was stability such that he could actually save a bit of money over the months. He saved for six months until he got the one thing he wanted most out of all he could possibly pay for.
He got his very own car.
It wasn’t a good car, but he’d bought it off Sam for just shy of $3000, and it was the best thing he’d ever done.
His car was a slate gray, 2001 Jeep Wrangler that could hardly be driven on the road. It was broken and overused for its off-road capabilities such that it sounded like an old man, winded and wheezing his way up the stairs, whenever Albert could get the engine to start.
It was his new ship in his voyage and together they’d see the world.
He’d told the new Locust about his Locust. He’d told her about his personal mission to find her again and his determination to let nothing stop or distract him. The new Locust wasn’t incredibly invested in his tragic backstory, but she didn’t dissuade him. Why would she? Though they spent their nights together in secrecy and forgotten company, she didn’t consider Albert to be hers. She didn’t consider Albert to be anything other than company. Useful.
That didn’t bother him, he was used to it.
Still, she taught him many things. She taught him useful and fascinating things about relationships, connection, women… She was unpredictable. Sometimes she needed his company for hours or even days at a time. Sometimes she couldn’t stand the sight of him. She would tell him the sweetest compliments and words and give him the softest casual touches that made him weak after so long alone. Some nights she would tell him things so personal he’d feel like he was the only one in the world who knew her so well. She’d get close to him and make him feel like he was the only thing holding her together, and just as easily act like he didn’t exist in front of her roommates, in front of her boyfriend.
She was terrifying.
The way she’d taken him into her hands, so slowly that he didn’t notice it was happening until she had him hostage. He could feel it as his fragile, healing sense of emotional awareness was folded between her palms like bread dough. Leaving only the promise that she could mold him into something better if he could endure.
He wasn’t so lost as to believe he liked it, he knew he didn’t, but it felt so much better than nothing.
He never once pretended she was his Locust, no matter how he sometimes wished it were true. He wouldn't put that on her, she wasn't beholden to his delusions. Though on the nights when he wasn't on the couch he rented, the ones he spent in her bed, keeping her company, he would lie awake. He would hold her like she wanted, he wanted, but sometimes he would just lie there and stare at nothing, not touching her. He would wrap his arms around himself so tightly and long for something he'd never had, wish for someone he'd never see again. Sometimes he could picture his Locust so clearly beside him it would hurt. In the daytime, he could forget her and drown himself in substitute company and the new satisfaction of contributing to a home, but at night she was still the realest thing he knew how to care about, to feel something for. At night it always felt different. Sometimes he would convince himself he'd lost something even if he’d never had it to begin with. He wouldn't pretend she was his Locust, she wasn't responsible for his delusions.
There was beauty in the world, even the sad parts. Though he was longing and distant he still could see her in the sunlight that reflected off the chrome of his car and blinded him. He could still feel the call of the trees in the park like the endless deer trail that led to the other side of the world. There was hope in Albert, and it never faded, no matter what changed.
He’d gotten his license, not in his own car since it could never possibly pass inspection, but he’d gotten it nonetheless. He had just finished driving it the length of the city, doubling back and winding through several times. Partially to feel the freedom and excitement of his own independence, and partially to replace the air conditioner that broke after two weeks, but mostly so he’d get enough miles on it for the check engine light to finally shut off.
He thought of Locust as he drove, his Locust. He told her about his car and his new life in the apartment and his plans to continue his mission to find her. Eventually. He hummed that song she used to sing, working out more words he could remember the more he tried.
“In the valley rest your head, and tally up the count of the dead, who lie beyond the mountains stead…”
He tried to imagine what Locust would say about his life now, but her distinct personality felt harder to pin down. Her image faded with time and her voice was all but forgotten. It seemed the more of the song he remembered, the less he could picture her. He’d seen so many faces and met so many strangers that the first one to ever captivate him looked unfamiliar to him. He wasn’t entirely sure he remembered her face at all.
He would see her again and remember, it wasn’t a choice.
He’d arrived back at the apartment to the sound of sirens.
The police, the ambulance…
They parked outside his apartment building like a blockade to the life he’d built. The small semblance of structure he’d been able to establish in the big terrible world. There weren't words for the feeling that washed over his skin at the sight, where he parked the car up the road and gripped the wheel so, so tightly. He stepped out of his car, not feeling the shock consciously as a brown blur of a rat sped out from under his car and into the weeds. It was the feeling of plummeting into a freezing creek at the end of reality, shocking and cold and unearned punishment for being too excited, too zealous.
The story wasn’t obvious, even after he’d spoken to the police and paramedics. He didn’t get it out of Sam who was too shocked to speak. He didn’t get it out of Alison who was at work when it happened. He didn’t get the story from her boyfriend who was nowhere to be found. He didn’t get it out of her, as she was splayed across the sidewalk like paint thrown hazardously at a canvas. He put the story together himself, as much as he could, but he’d probably never find the closure of knowing what had actually happened.
She’d fallen, or been pushed, or been thrown. It didn’t really matter from the sight. She’d landed on the sidewalk from the open window of the apartment.
Ten stories up.
He didn’t know why it had happened, or if something could’ve stopped it. He tortured himself at first, with thoughts like that. What if the stupid air conditioner had still been in the window? What if he’d taken less time on his drive? What if he’d said something to her boyfriend when he got the chance?
Picked a fight he knew he wouldn’t remember losing.
He didn’t get to know what happened to her, and he didn’t get to remember what he did to get kicked out of that apartment. Exhausted, he’d gone up after the paramedics and police left. He went up because what else was he supposed to do? He lived there.
He remembered the elevator ride that always made him a little queasy. He remembered the empty rooms that had been so crowded with five people living there. No one had the nerve to return like he had just yet. He remembered the discarded hot pocket on the coffee table with the bite taken out of it, the episode of NCIS that still played on the television, and the open window with no screen where the air conditioner had sat just hours prior.
It wasn’t Albert’s first time saying goodbye.
Comments (0)
See all