LEVAN
I'm starting to doubt myself.
I'm a completely different person when I'm outside; alone and together with Ten. I don't know the Levan who smiles or laughs, I don't even know the Levan that talks as much as I did yesterday. Who are all these extra versions of me? I wonder if I have some kind of multiple personality issue because I don't even know who I am anymore. Outside, I am unleashed, I bolder, like the sky could eat me up and I'd still be blown away; scattered like dry, crunchy leaves in a hurricane. Outside, I'm so far away from the Levan who lives in the dead house that I almost forget he exists.
I frown; unable to understand how stepping inside a house can make me feel so differently. Maybe it's because mom's sun doesn't shine here anymore. Maybe it's because dad's burnt-up, dark, dead sun is what rules the land now. Maybe that's why we're doomed; me and my other fellow selves. Maybe that's why there's no oxygen, no air, no light. There's no existence inside the Dead House.
But everything I'd felt yesterday at the park is back, and it hits me with the force of a tidal wave. I can feel the wind in my hair, the sun shining into my eyes, the sky trying to eat my small, small self. Outside never felt so...outside before. It's like I'm outside my damned body. What a mindfuck.
Even though I keep my lips sealed, Ten never stops chattering about how she really wants to learn to walk a tightrope. Maybe she doesn't care if I don't respond. Maybe she's okay with me letting my thoughts swallow me whole. Maybe she just wants to speak. And holy hell does she speak a lot. She's been going on and on and on.
Half an hour later, she is still singing a never-ending song about tightropes. On our drive to Bike Station, a store that lends bikes like a library lends books, she tells me how she once went to watch a magic show when she was seven and the magician made his assistant 'walk on air'. But as clever as seven year old Ten was, she knew the girl was walking a tightrope that blended with the background and she was fascinated anyway, and so she has always been looking for an opportunity to learn to walk a rope.
I listen to her endless blabber and wonder if this girl has a speaking disorder. Then I wonder if there even is such a disorder. What if I'm the one who has the disorder, a disorder for not speaking too much? Will I become mute if I don't speak for days and days? Will that give me any peace of mind? Will then, the silent noise just get tired and leave? Ten snaps her fingers in front of my eyes as she takes off her seatbelt.
"We're here," she chimes, opening her door and slipping out of the car. I do the same and follow her inside the store.
"Um, why are we lending bikes, again?" I ask her, letting go of my silence, as I catch up with her near the reception.
"Because, Number Eleven," she peers at me through her lashes, "we'll be biking up the cliff, into the woods, and then we'll use my little legs and your tall ones to roam around and explore!" she puts her plans forth with lots of gestures, a huge toothy smile iced with a wink. I shudder inwardly.
"Hello? Is anybody here?" she yells, leaning over the vacant counter and looking behind it. A man emerges from the door right beside the counter, Ten pays for lending two bikes for four hours and the man leads us to his garage where he has almost thirty bicycles parked up. Ten picks out an orange one for herself and an all-black for me. Thoughtful. We're also offered helmets but both of us refuse to wear them. I'd look like a freak in a helmet, I think immediately.
"I'd look like a freak in a helmet," she says, shrugging. I frown.
It's been a long time since I've been on bike, so I cycle in circles where we've parked Ten's car for a while, it's awkward. When I'm sure I'm not going to fall off and break my neck, we go into the unknown. No, seriously, I blindly follow Ten as we ride up the hill. She's merry happy, smiling wide while the sun melts us like ice cream. There's wind in her dark, dark hair and it flies everywhere. I'm sure I can hear it snarl.
As I paddle faster, it hits me again; the sense of freedom and how, at the moment, I'm almost lethal. I might just lose control. I might just burst into sweaty flames of my own. I stand on the paddles and race past Ten with a wide grin on my face. I hear her laugh with disbelief behind me, and then she starts to paddle faster to catch up.
"Number Eleven! Is this a challenge?" she asks when she's almost beside me.
"Maybe," I shrug, cycling past her again.
"Oh no, don't challenge me!" she says and then we're literally racing to the top. I feel the wind scraping against my face; it's about to tear through my skin, it's about to tear through me. The trees sprint past me, and I sprint by a few cars. Is this even real? I'm lost in the thrill of it. My heart is thudding, thrashing, tearing out. My throat is dry, my heart is frantic, my feet hurt, but I can't seem to stop. Lost, lost, lost, that's what I am. I'm so lost I want to laugh.
I snap out of it when I notice Ten pulling off the road from the side of my eye. I pull the brakes immediately, almost skidding. My feet touch the ground as I turn back to look at her. She's gulping water from her bottle just like she did on the field; like she can't get enough. I turn back around, I've left her behind. I ride down to where she's hunched over herself, hands on knees as she breathes deeply. What the hell? I drop my bike next to hers.
"Are you okay?" I ask her. She looks up, breathing heavily still, but then she smiles at me and straightens up. Ten takes a deep calming breath followed by another. The breathing exercise. She repeats it a good five times like a ritual before she's close to breathing normally again. Then she starts to sip from the bottle once more.
"Yup..." she tells me, picking up her bike. "Let's just go a bit slow." And just like that, she's up on the bike and ready to go.
"We're almost there, I think we can walk now," I suggest. She frowns.
"No we're not," she tells me, "we're going higher," she announces, then grins and motions for me to get on my bike too.
"Why higher?" I ask, getting up on my bike.
"I'll tell you when we get there." She winks at me. I shudder again, a little more visibly this time.
I follow Ten, slowly up to the second highest cliff, which unlike the cliff where we met, doesn't face the water, it's only a moderately dense forest. I wonder what Ten could possibly plan to do there. Does she plan on murdering and burying me? That would explain why she laughs so much; she must be a psychopath. She definitely is the murderer kind. She's a hidden reality. If I'm half, she's totality.
We park our bikes next to a tree. She ties both of them together by the back tires and then ties them further to the tree. I wonder why she doesn't just use the locks on the bikes.
"These bikes have weak ass locks that are quite easy to pick." I become alert, she's reading my mind. She does the rope into an intricate knot that I'm sure no one would be able to undo. I wonder if she was Girl Scout in junior school. I wonder where she got the rope. I wonder where she produced the bottle of water from. Then I notice she's carrying a knapsack with string straps that are quite unnoticeable. Invisible strings, hmm, interesting.
"What's the plan?" I ask her, shoving my hands in my pocket as we wander deeper into the forest. I hope we don't get lost. I hope we do.
"We're treasure-hunting," she tells me with a wide toothy smile. I squeeze my brows together.
"What kind of treasure?"
"Well, I was reading about space rocks on earth a few weeks ago, and that book claims a meteor fell close by, math suggests there can be debris from a meteor, right here..." she tells me, wide-eyed and serious. I halt in my tracks and narrow my eyes at her. She must be kidding. She turns back and observes my reaction then laughs. "What?" she says between her giggles, "I'm not even kidding!"
"We're hunting for a piece of...rock?" Just confirming.
"A piece of astral rock, yes, we are," she tells me, grinning ear to ear. "And we're going to capture the discovery." She produces a hand camera from her bag, flips it open and continues walking deeper into the green.
She can't be serious, I think. I stay put in my frozen state and debate cycling back down the hill, but then I remember the scout knot she put on the bicycles and run to catch up with her.
"Um, so there are a lot of rocks here, how do we know which one?" I play along. Let's find a rock, why not? She gets excited, her whole face lights up/
"We're just gonna know," she says, pointing the camera at me, "It doesn't belong here; It must look different." She aims the camera at the ground then, observing carefully.
"Don't you think there should be a crater or something? It fell from the sky, you know." I try to reason.
"Well, meteors don't just crash into Earth; they break off into several pieces because of gravity and the atmosphere. Most of these bits burn off mid-way and only a few survive, but they must be too little to create craters," she explains, pulling her hair behind her ears. She's wearing tiny cat faces as earrings. That's when I notice that she's also wearing a cat necklace. I wonder if she has a cat. But even if she has a cat, wearing various cat jewelry is w, e, i, r and d, that's how you spell it. She's the weirdo, I'm the freak. What a collision.
We hunt for a 'different' looking rock for hours. We find truly ugly looking black rocks but according to Ten, none of them have the 'astral air' around them. She said she could feel that they were normal, old, earthly rocks. She tests about a hundred such rocks by holding them between her palms and feeling them. I try telling her that maybe their 'astral air' has faded because of how long they've been on earth. She laughs at me as if I couldn't be right even if I tried. Apparently, auras don't fade. I find a weird green, fluffy rock. I almost thought it was the one, but we figured out that it's only fungus on a rock. I toss it back and try no more.
When the sun starts to cool down a bit, Ten takes me deeper into the woods. She says she knows a place where we can chill. I wonder if that's where she's going to kill me. I watch her carefully as I follow her. Her hair seems lighter under the sun, the freckles on her nose all the more visible, the light in her eyes brighter. I conclude that I might her kill me if she wants.
Apparently, there's a slight clearing in the middle of the tall trees. It's just enough space for us to stretch our legs. Also, Ten has packed a picnic in her bag. I wonder how so much could fit in that little space, that's when she produces a blanket and spreads it out on the grass. Then she lies down on it, puts her arms beneath her head, closes her eyes and crosses her ankles right in the middle of tall, towering trees.
Sunlight filters in through the leaves and lights her up. She glows, like she's the sun's chosen heir. I stand and stare, not knowing what to do or expect next. Ten squints an eye open and pats the space next to her.
"Come on, let's catch up on our cliché getting-to-know..." she mutters. I hesitate, but when she smiles at me, I realize that I've never been more comfortable, I've never ever. I lay myself down next to her, robotically, my limbs stiff and taut. I feel like a shadow next to a flame. I might be nervous, I'm not sure though. Because I don't want to be, you know.
Ten turns to face me the way she did yesterday in the park, and then reflecting off of her, the sun starts to shine on me too, like it shines on her. The darkness is chased away and unexpectedly, I'm lit, she's lit, we're so damn lit. And I've never been brighter too, I've never ever.
"I believe it's your turn to ask me something," she mutters. I keep looking at the skyscraping trees that shelter us, their leaves create our own patchy sky. And then there is the sunshine, soft and hard at the same time, beating down on me, seeping inside me. I feel my body absorb it like water on dry desert sand. Maybe it's what I've been needing all this time.
"Hello?" Ten waves her hand in front of me eyes. I jerk back to life.
"Um, do you have a cat?" I ask, cringing and shrinking inside myself. That was a shitty question to ask, Levan. Ten bursts out into laughter, as expected. It's annoying, she does it all the time. If she's not smiling, she's laughing. If she's not laughing she is at least giggling inside her small, little, big mouth. I believe that even when she's not doing any of those out loud, she's laughing inside her head. She's a laugher, a smile-er, a joy-er. A speeding zebra.
I envy her. I'm as green as these leaves. I'm so green, I can't see any other color. Everything is black and white and green.
"What! That's a very non-cliché question, Levan," she says, "but I don't." I turn to look at her; she's fiddling with her chain. Her fingernails are painted pale blue. I'm sure they weren't painted at all yesterday. "I'd like one though..." she adds, shrugging, and then looking at me again. "My turn!" She seemingly jumps. Call it exaggeration, but it's close to a bunny hop. I never knew one could bounce while lying down like that. But I think I've seen it all now. "When's your birthday?" she asks me, her warm brown eyes dancing their way to mine. It's ballet. I gulp and blink my eyes away. My stomach gets heavier. I take a deep breath and stare into the patchy, green and yellow sky again.
"January sixteenth," I tell her but then I don't want her to keep telling me that it's my turn so I return her question, "when is yours?" her eyes widen, her mouth opens and then she shuts her eyes and starts to laugh inwardly. Her cheeks turn pink, she's embarrassed.
"Number Eleven," she mutters. It feels odd when she says my name like that, like I'm an undercover agent, "just a warning, I'm about to make you laugh," Humor clear on her face, in her bird-like eyes, in her glowing, curly smile. But her words set out a fire alarm in me and for some reason, I start up the water sprinklers just to be safe. I try to command myself not to laugh at whatever joke she's about to tell me instead of her birthday.
I am insecure, because I know that if she's saying it, she can actually make me laugh. And for another reason, I don't want to. It feels like It would be against my religion to laugh, I'm a shadow in the dark, remember.
"My birthday is on September...tenth," she tells me and quickly cringes, biting down on her bottom lip. I wonder what's so funny about it until I realize; September tenth. Somehow, just the play of words makes me laugh, quietly though. I shake my head and cover my eyes with my arm. I can't stop shaking, because hilarity is spilling itself out of me with such force. It feels like slight tremors, but my ground is shaken, the dark is threatening to disown me. I can't stop.
Even though I'm not laughing that hard, it feels like I am. I start to feel like the other, light, bright, flying kite Levan again. And I can't tell what does this to me; being outside or being with Ten.