Ten & Levan

29. Twenty Nine

"So, where to from here?" asks Levan, clutching on the steering wheel.

"I don't know," I tell him, jutting my bottom lip out as I go through my pockets.

"What?" he asks, furrowing his brows a little less intensly than he usually would. "I thought you said you had a plan," he reminds me.

I wince and nod simultaneously, a weird move that not most people would pull off. I lift my butt up and balance myself on my feet, with my head pressed back against the seat; I go through my back pockets. A weird stance as well, that I almost pull off.

"Well, yeah–I did say that. I do have plan...and I kind of don't," I tell him, struggling as I scramble for a penny.

"What does that even mean?" he says, alarmingly, "you said to stop here, out of the town, in the middle of nowhere and now you say you have a plan but you kind of don't," Levan tenses, "are you planning a picnic right here?"

"No, silly!" I laugh or groan. I'm not sure which, but I do one of those, and ruffle Levan's pale blonde mane. He watches me with eyes so weirded out I bet he's thinking I'm crazy. But at least, he's weirded and awake and not small and lost, which is an achievement for the both of us.

A medal of honor to Tenerife Cohen for bring peace to Levanland, and a hundred thousand peonies.

Thank you.

"What?" he mutters when I finally take my hands out of his hair.

"Nothing," I tell him in the dreamiest way I could. I believe this is how girls in perfect stories react when they ruffle a boy's hair.

Wait, do they ruffle the hair at all? Perhaps not.

"Do you have a penny?" I ask him, pulling my hands back into my lap.

"Yes, but why?" he asks.

"Ugh, thank god, I thought my plan was going down the toilet!" I chuckle, "Give me it," I say, putting my hand out for him. He searches his front pockets and struggles just like me before he places a penny in my hand.

"Okay, now what?" he says, sighing.

"We drive straight ahead and each time we face a choice of turns, we flip it," I tell him, "heads for right and tails for left. We arrive at our unknown destination after ten flips. Got it?" I ask him and he nods. Kind of.

His frown deepens but only with a tinge of crazy in his eyes. Yep, that's my crazy transferring into Levan. I just witnessed it transfer like an STD. Wait, crazy doesn't transfer sexually. What sorcery does my crazy use? Bluetooth?

I snicker at that thought as Levan starts to drive.

"But then again, what's the plan?" he asks.

"The plan remains the same number Eleven, only places change,"

***

After somewhere near ten flips, Levan decided that he's driven enough. Since we'd taken the road less travelled by, there were barely any turns. Add to it that I lost count somewhere near six or seven and there you have it, a plan as well cooked as mashed potatoes.

It took us exactly seventy-five minutes of driving but the maybe-tenth turn brought us far, far away from the city and under open skies. I expected the land away from the city to be browner, duller and sadder but if anything, it was greener, merrier, and freer.

All the no trees, only green makes me feel more excited than I already do. I'm internally screaming with joy as I drop my backpack onto the thick grass. Because one, these penny drives have never led me to a place this clear and yet exciting and two, this clear a place make me want to fly.

"I'm sure we won't get back home before it gets dark," says Levan. I scoff.

"Who even wants to?" I comment, turning back to him and then noticing his rarely expressive face, "oh you want to," I realize.

"Maybe," he says, pressing his lips into a thin line, "It depends on Ava...she can't stay at Gillie's forever," he tells me.

"How long do we have?" I ask him, kneeling down to my bag and unwrapping the picnic.

"Until Ava decides to call and give me the signal..." he says, scrutinizing my movements as if trying hard to contain his amusement, which is of course, because he knows what's going to pop out of my bag.

I spread a blanket over the long spikes of green, green grass before taking off my shoes off and sliding onto it. I then take out a bottle of soda pop, a pen and several pages of long lost poetry. I hand all the pages to Levan as he sits down next to me.

I guess we're progressing because I didn't have to do the usual pat-pat to make him sit next to me. But even if we are progressing, where the hell, pray, might we be going?

"These are all bits and pieces of angry teen Ten," I tell him, "one who didn't know if she was supposed to stay in a temperature controlled, pollen free, dust free, sealed up tomb for the rest of her life." Levan looks at me with a wild glare in his eyes as he skims through these pages.

"There's pretty intense stuff in it," he says, almost laughing. He places his index finger on his grinny mouth as he reads.

"You can call it my emo diary, I used to write a lot of these when I had nothing to do," I say, fishing another set of pages from the bag.

"I hate Dr. Kelli, how dare she allow the goldfish in my crappy ass room to swim and not me?! Fuck her and her fucking profession! How can mom let her command me?! I will wish to all the gods of this fucking planet that she-" reads Levan, overdramatically before I interrupt him. He says it like a bratty version of me would. Do I sound like a bratty version of myself to other people?

"But that's not the point, stop!" I say, snatching the pages from him and trading them for new ones, the ones I wrote for the play. Levan bursts into a small laughter, one he never lets out. But he just did that. Wait, am I flipping out? "I'm saying that Emo Ten inspired Lucille's finale song, and here's it, and it's all you should be reading!" I tell him when the both of us stop laughing.

"Ah, sure, you want me to approve it," he says, doing the finger across his lips thing again. He looks all serious and dense. It's as if Levan's ready to dive into this piece of paper, as if he's okay with the idea of being more than this small dark cloud he is.

"You got it," I say, rubbing my belly as I lay down and leave him be.

And so Levan disappears into thin air and I lie here alone, watching the sky turn purple, running through clouds. It's thrilling to even imagine it, but here's the thing, I have a weird feeling building inside of me. I know that when I blink, all of this will disappear; the purple sky, the silver clouds, the bronze breeze and the mystery that is Levan, blue, deep blue Levan.

"It's amazing..." says Levan, making me blink. Here goes everything, but Levan...Levan remains.

"You think so?" I ask him. He nods, swallowing the lump in his throat. I take my pages back and shove them back into my bag.

For the next several moments, I try to feel my heart beat, my veins swell with blood and my lungs function like normal, non-ass lungs. And maybe it's just that silence has never been my friend, but I know I'm about to say words that I could regret. But in that moment, it's the only thing I need him to know. It takes all of me but I let it flow...

"I know why you were on the cliff that day."