Spirited

Riley keeps half an eye on the speedometer, trying to keep it at exactly five over the speed limit. Because she has places to be, but she knows being stopped for speeding is only going to slow her down more.

She has a full day. When is it not? Between working on her law degree, with the maximum classes each semester, working full-time at a law firm—nothing glamorous, but she’s making connections, and two of the three lawyers have already said they’re keeping an eye on her—and volunteering through a program where law students can provide assistance to low income members of the community, she’s lucky if she gets to her apartment for long enough to crash for a few hours before getting up and doing it all over again.

The auburn-haired young woman sighs at the red light she’s currently stopped at, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel. She’s not late. But every minute she’s sitting here in traffic is a minute she could be actually doing something.

She's examining her pant suit, which she already knows is impeccable, when something catches her eye. A guy going through the garbage. Probably homeless. She rolls her eyes at him. People need to get a job. She’s working up to twenty hours a day, he can flip burgers or work a cash register and get off the street.

Then she turns the car around and goes back.

“Sam?” she asks in disbelief. It can’t be. Sam has parents who love him, who would never–but how would she know? They all probably said the same of his friends, too, and look where they all are now.

That’s different, she thinks. He’s–he’s fine.

Sam looks at her suddenly. He’d been smiling contentedly, but now, that flickers as his brown eyes looks away. He should be smiling to see her, but he seemed happier left alone. He twists his hands and rocks on his feet as he greets her, and while he’s smiling, there’s a nervous franticness to it that she doesn’t understand and doesn’t like seeing on him. His shaggy brown hair is unkempt, his clothes don't match, and the backpack he's wearing has a broken zipper and at least one visible tear.

“It’s…been awhile,” she says awkwardly, after a long moment. “How are you doing?”

He looks past her, and she wonders if he’s hearing something, and she wants to leave. Say, well, good to see you, and tell herself that he’s fine.

But it’s that look he’s giving her, like he’s…scared of her.

“Shhshhshh,” he says, putting his hands to his ears. “Noooo…”

“Are you okay? Do you want a ride home?”

“No!” he says abruptly, taking a step back from her. “Home’s not home, so I don’t–no.”

“Did you have a fight with your parents? I do all the time–”

He turns quickly, grabbing something from the garbage and starting to walk away. “I’m home!” he calls out, she’s not sure if it’s to her or not.

He’s leaving, she should–

She runs after him, grabbing his arm. He flinches at the contact and doesn’t look at her. “Do you want to come to my place, then?” she asks.

“I’m home,” he says again, insistently.

“Just to hang out. Okay? It’s been awhile since we hung out.”

He’s looking at what he’s holding, a broken desk lamp. “I can stay with my friends,” he says. “I like my friends.”

“Okay. Then can I give you a ride to their house?”

“No houses. I don’t like houses.”

She starts to speak, then takes in his disheveled appearance. How she didn’t recognize him at first. “What about cars? We could just sit in my car. Or go to the park.”

He finally looks at her. “No houses?”

“Not if you don’t want them.”

He bites his lip, considering. “No meds and no hospitals.”

“Nope. None of that,” she promises. “Just two friends hanging out at the park or car.”

At her car, he walks around it, tracing his hand over it. He looks at her uncertainly. “Not yet,” he says, and she starts to reply when he keeps walking. Maybe not talking to her, then. “I guess. But…” He looks at her again, then at his lamp. He holds it out to her. “What do you think?”

“Is it yours?”

He nods. “My friend,” he says with a small but genuine smile, and her heart aches. “People throw things out, and I find them and listen to them.”

“That’s…very kind of you.”

His smile grows. Clearly she said the right thing. “We’re talking about ideas, but I need more, it’s not ready yet.”

“I can’t wait to see your ideas.”

“My parents don’t.” He pulls it close again, almost cradling it.

“Come on to my car,” she says, and she reaches to take his hand. She’s a little surprised that it still feels the same. He’s dirty and rough, but his hands are the same.

In the car, he rocks in his seat, a little anxious. “No meds, no hospital, no house,” he says, then repeats it.

“No meds, no hospital, no house,” she tells him, and he looks at her and exhales deeply. “Your parents don’t like your ideas?” she asks, and he frowns.

“They threw them away,” he says quietly, and he squeezes his eyes shut. “They threw away my friends and I couldn’t make or talk or hear except for the cuts.”

“I’m sorry. Did they…can you go home?”

He grabs the door, and she grabs him. “No,” she says quickly, “I’m not–I was just asking. Do your parents let you stay? Or…”

“I can’t! It’s too full of cuts and hurts!”

“Okay, okay. We’ll have to talk more. But I won’t make you go home, don’t worry. See? Car’s not even started. We’re not going anywhere.”

He stares out the window. “What if it moves?” he asks, but then seems to answer himself, “Walking. Just like walking. I like walking.”

“Yeah? Where do you walk?”

“Around,” he says. “I find things, and I walk around for my friends. Mostly I just like not being in houses. I want to go find things,” he adds suddenly, lifting his lamp.

She hesitates, then takes out her phone and sends an email to work, requesting the day off. She hasn’t taken a day off since she’s gotten the job. If anything, she works extra hours, paid or unpaid. Even now, she hesitates, thinking of all the reasons she doesn’t have to do this. But it’s been years. Does she still consider him a friend? Then an hour here, an hour there, over the course of a year, she owes him a day.

“Let’s go for a walk, then,” she says.

He looks hesitant, but finally nods.

“You know that lamp’s broken, right? It probably won’t even work.”

He clutches it even tighter. “It will work. I just have to help it.” He nods definitively.

“Okay….”

“It has ideas.” He holds it up close to the side of his face, listening intently. “Yes, okay,” he says, but she doesn’t think he’s talking to her.

She checks the time out of habit before remembering that she doesn’t have anywhere to be today. She wonders if that was a mistake. “So what have you been up to?”

“Up. And down.” He suddenly veers off to another dumpster, tucking the lamp awkwardly under his arm.

She looks around, hanging back, not wanting to go near the garbage, and to wanting to be seen with him. Like he’s garbage, too, she thinks, and she feels embarrassed about the thought. She remembers him when they were younger, always smiling and bright, and she forces herself to walk after him.

“You could get in trouble doing that, you know,” she says.

His head snaps up, looking around worriedly. “I’m not doing anything!” he says loudly. “Not going!”

“Whoa, I mean, as long as you finish before anyone sees you…”

He takes a step back, looking at the dumpster worriedly. He hums, one hand holding the lamp and one tapping his fingers together, clearly torn.

“There’s probably nothing good there, anyway,” she offers.

He shakes his head but doesn’t reply, still looking at the dumpster and tapping his fingers. Finally, he looks at her, then back at the dumpster, then walks forward and puts a hand on it. “I’ll come back,” he says. “We have to make sure the guards are strong first. No bad places. No bad places.”

“No bad places,” she agrees, though she doesn’t think he’s talking to her again. She should be annoyed that he seems to be talking to garbage more than her. But she’s also starting to think that he’s maybe a little crazy. She remembers him acting weird in high school. They’d been friends forever, her and him and a couple others, but in high school, he was just…weird. Not in his usual way, either. She wonders if he actually is certifiable now, but wonders if there’s actually a good way to ask that.

“Why don’t you want to go home?” she asks again as they start walking.

He strokes the damn lamp that he’s still carrying. “Lots of cuts,” he says. “Walking through a field of swords.” He frowns and speaks so seriously, she wants to take it seriously, too.

“What happened? I thought you had a good relationship with your parents.”

“The world exploded.”

“…oh.” She wonders if it would be weird to try to call them later, try to get some real answers.

They walk around the block in silence, and then she can see her car again. She looks at Sam, and she knows that if she gets in the car and drives away, she can still make most of her work day. They probably won’t even care that she came in after she took the day off. She’s seen others come in on vacation days and when sick, just to check on things or grab paperwork or make an important meeting.

But then Sam would probably go back to what he was doing, and she just thinks about her first reaction when she saw him. And she doesn’t want anyone to think of him like that.

“You wanted to—do you have a place to put your…lamp?” she asks. “You can keep it at my apartment until you’re ready to pick it up.”

He smiles, seeming much calmer after the walk, though there’s still a nervous edge to it, and gets in her car easily enough.

“You need to close the door,” she tells him.

He shakes his head. “I don’t like closed doors. I don’t like walls.”

“Cars can’t go if the door’s open. You’d get hurt, and we’d probably get in trouble.”

He doesn’t seem inclined to obey until she mentions trouble, and he ducks his head and looks scared. She wonders what trouble he’s been in. What’s he done? He was always such a nice kid, she can’t imagine him doing anything worth that look.

“I’ll roll the windows down,” she offers, and he reluctantly shuts the door. She immediately rolls down the windows, and he immediately places his hand on the window as though to make sure she doesn’t change her mind.

“You probably don’t drive much,” she says as she starts the car.

“I like to walk.”

“What about the bus? Do you walk everywhere?”

“Except when I fly. But I like walking.”

“Okay.”

After a moment of silence, she asks if he likes music, already reaching to turn it on. He watches the radio intently as the music plays, but he takes his hand out of the window and places it on the radio. He doesn’t fiddle with it like she expects, just touches it. “You like music?” he asks, and she realizes it’s the first question he’s asked her, which seems like progress.

She shrugs. “It’s fine. Usually I do podcasts or audiobooks. I’m in college, so I try to cram as much as I can into each moment. Anything law-related, I put on and hope to get something from it.”

“Oh. That’s it.”

“That’s what?”

“It feels good. Helpful.” He smiles at the radio. “But wanting. You should play nice music sometimes. Just something you like.”

“I’ll take that under consideration.”

He laughs, and she relaxes a little.

He hums along to the music and looks out the window the rest of the way.

She doesn’t even think about her roommates until they get there. She hesitates before opening the door, but when she looks back to say something, he’s tense and hunched in and looks like he’s ready to run. That makes her smile reassuringly at him and open the door. She doesn’t know her roommates’ schedules—her own is pretty much ‘out except when she gets home to crash for a few hours before getting up and going again’—but they’re all students and it’s late morning, so they’re probably in class or working.

He stands at the door, looking down at the threshold.

“You can come in,” she tells him.

He shakes his head. “It doesn’t want me,” he says quietly.

“I want you,” she replies without thinking. “I mean—”

He sits down, just outside the door. “I’ll sit here. Can I?”

“I…I guess. But you can come in any time, really. Do you know what you’re going to do with that lamp? Do you want me to plug it in to see if it works?”

He looks at her with a confused frown. “It works. I need pictures, though. And glue.”

“What kind of pictures?”

“Here and here and here…” He points at various parts of the lampshade, so many, she gets the idea that he wants to do some kind of collage.

“We have some old magazines,” she offers. He doesn’t respond, so she heads to the living room to retrieve them. Some are her roommates, but they’re old, and she doesn’t really think they’ll care. Probably just too lazy or distracted to take them to the trash.

She doesn’t think he’ll like them—most are fashion, hardly his kind of thing—but he smiles when he sees them and takes them eagerly. He spends the next forty-five minutes flipping through and cutting out pictures, until she finally manages to get him inside. He’s barely talking to her now, but he seems happy with what he’s doing, so she gets out her textbooks and studies—might as well get some use out of the day. She still can’t believe she called off.

When she looks up an hour later, he’s covered the lampshade, sometimes multiple layers. It’s kind of cool. It’s all arranged in patterns and textures. He always was artistic. She never really cared about that kind of stuff, but he was happy with it, is happy with it.

They plug in the lamp, and she’s surprised it works, and more surprised at the way the light shines through, lighting up the images he’s done—the layers actually work around several images, making them appear brighter.

He smiles fondly at it, lightly touching one of the pictures, part of a red, flowing dress blowing in the wind, then he hands the lamp to her. “It’s for you.”

“Oh, no, I can’t—don’t you want to take it home?”

The happiness he’s been showing evaporates and his face falls. “No,” he says definitively. “It doesn’t belong in one home, and the other home is too—” He tips his head to the side, pressing his ear to his shoulder, and doesn’t finish the sentence.

“Okay. I’ll—I guess I can hang onto it for you, if you want.”

He gives her a long look. “Do you understand?” he asks quietly.

“It’s nice,” she says, not sure what he’s asking. “I’m…surprised. I think you’ll want to keep it, right? You found it, and made something cool with it.”

The answer seems satisfying enough, and he nods. “I helped it with its idea,” he says.

“It was a good idea.”

He smiles a little. “Don’t throw it away, though. It was very sad that that happened.”

“Well…then you found it. So it wasn’t so sad after all.”

“No. It was still sad.”

“Yeah. I guess so. Sorry. So, I’ll hold onto it for you for a little bit. And you’ll come back to get it sometime.” She pauses, considering, then decides to say it. She needs to say it. “It’s been a long time. We should hang out sometime.”

“Sometime,” he says softly, looking at the floor. "Sometime."