I tapped my foot impatiently and a little nervously as I waited at Clay's doorstep. There was some clanking and crashing before I head the door unlock and the handle turn, revealing a man in his late forties. His hair was thinned beyond repair, and there were deep crow's feet stretched from the corners of his eyes to his ears, accumulated from years of laughter. I took a look at his clock, which was faster than I'd seen in a long while. I made a mental note of that, continuing to study it for a while until he broke the awkward silence. It turned out I had a bad habit of staring.
"You must be Eva!" He said, opening the door wider and welcoming me inside. "Dan Walker," Dan stuck out his hand to me, which I shook. His fingers were small and frail, as if the smallest touch would shatter them, but his handshake was firm. "Of course, I haven't a clue where Clay is, let me go grab him." Dan began to walk off, before turning around to say, "Go ahead, take a seat! Make yourself at home."
With that, I turned to the left and settled into an overstuffed chair in the living room. Across from me was a dark oak coffee table, which was mismatched with the cherry colored side tables next to the khaki-brown couches. It looked like someone tried to go with a color scheme of browns, but failed miserably. On the TV was some home and garden show, a genre I believed to be reserved for middle aged men who occasionally dragged their sons down the rabbit hole with them.
"Eva?" I heard Clay's voice behind me, sounding surprised.
"In the flesh," I said.
"Oh," he said, looking a little confused but quickly shook it off. "Well, I'm glad you're here!" Clay smiled, radiant. "Do you want something to drink?"
"I'm too young to drink," I said flatly. Clay drew back, his face turning pink before I cracked a smile and he laughed along, still jittery.
"Good answer," Dan called from up the stairs.
"Dad," Clay groaned in a special way that only embarrassed teenage boys could. "Anyways, water?" He asked, leading me into the kitchen.
"Sure." I fell in step behind him.
Clay's house was a cute little dwelling in the older half of our neighborhood, a block away from the tree, making him five blocks closer to it than I was. I looked around the kitchen in which, similarly to the den, there was a clear attempt to decorate, but it fell just a little short of looking put together. Freshly painted baby blue cabinets didn't pair well with the granite, which was shades of browns and reds. Copper pots and pans hung from the ceiling above the oven, which was cute but dysfunctional. Clay reached up to the top cabinet, pulling out two paper glasses, one green and the other blue. He stood impatiently next to the fridge and waited for the thin stream of water to fill them.
"I know, I know," Clay said, breaking the silence.
"What?"
He sighed. "I see you looking around. Dad tried, he really did. But," Clay laughed to himself, shaking his head. "Not all turns out as planned."
"It's not..." I paused for a moment too long, and before I could finish my sentence, we cracked up. "Okay, maybe it is."
"You don't say?" Clay walked around the bar and took a seat at the island, while I opted to rest standing on the other side. For quite some time we just stayed like that, drinking from our colored Dixie cups, watching each other.
After what seemed like a silence beyond awkward, Clay spoke up. "Well, as you can see," he said sarcastically. "My roaring popularity in this town has attracted many guests this evening."
"I see," I looked around slowly. "You really know how to party."
"Thanks, I spent a long time planning," Clay faked bashfulness, batting his eyelashes. "Anyways," he continued. "Thanks for coming though, for real. I haven't really met anyone else."
Before silence had the chance to take over us again, I tried to keep up the conversation. "Well, how do you like the neighborhood?"
"It's nice, the house is awesome," Clay nodded excitedly. "Oh, I forgot!" A sudden light filled his face. "C'mon, there's something really cool with this place!" I grabbed my glass and walked around the counter to follow Clay, flinching as he took my hand to lead me. "Sorry, is that not cool?" He drew his hand back so quickly he almost spilled the cup of water in his other hand.
I awkwardly stuck it back out to him like a zombie. "It's fine," I said. Hesitantly, Clay wrapped his fingers around mine and lead me through the house to his bedroom doorway.
"Alright, stay right here." Clay left me at the door, and to my surprise, opened the window and stepped right out.
"What are you doing?!" I ran after him and poked my head out the window, only to find him standing on the slightly slanted roof that was under his window.
"Same reaction as my dad." Clay laughed and took a seat, patting the spot next to him. I nervously set my cup down on the windowsill as he had before sticking my foot out the window, giving the roof a few good taps with the tip of my shoe and saying quick prayer before following through with my other leg. "Pretty, yeah?" Clay asked, pointing to the sky across from us. It was different hues of pinks, oranges and reds. Puffy clouds were tinted by the colorful rays, which seemed to go on for millions of miles. "And look," Clay pointed down to my right. "There's that tree we were at earlier."
"The Tree," I said, to which Clay raised an eyebrow.
"Okay, the tree then."
"The Tree," I said again, carefully articulating the 'T'.
"Alright, the Tree."
"Good."
We simply sat for just a moment, enjoying each other's company, but more so the beauty before us. Though we weren't that high above it, the suburbia below us seemed to fade away under the fleeting rays of the sun. To the far left I could make out the shadow of the moon, a faint glow about it but nothing in comparison to the sun. I looked at Clay, who had closed his eyes, and was breathing in and out deeply. I did the same, my nostrils filling with pine... And car exhaust. It was an urban suburb.
"So," I said, gazing into the horizon. "What brought you all to Mogermentry?"
Clay paused. "It's complicated."
"Typically so is sitting on a roof, yet here we are."
Clay tipped his head back, taking in one last deep breath before turning to face me. "My dad," he paused, catching my attention. "Is sick."
"Really?" Which was a stupid thing of me to ask, but it slipped out of my mouth anyways. Clay nodded. "I'm sorry." I thought back to meeting Dan only less than an hour earlier, and to any outsider, he'd seem like he was healthy. But not any outsider can see his clock. The clocks could be so personal, so revealing, like I knew something vitally important to a stranger that they didn't even know. I felt like I knew something I wasn't supposed to, like it was something I should've learned from Clay and not something that I should've been able to piece together myself.
"It wasn't supposed to get this bad." Clay muttered, interrupting my thoughts.
"You really don't have to tell me," I assured him, cringing at the likely awkward conversation that laid ahead.
"There's really not that much to tell. We thought he had pneumonia, it was lung cancer, and at this rate it's-- it's terminal." His chest rising and falling slowly, Clay fiddled with his shoelace for a while. I studied his clock, which was at a normal pace. At least the stress wasn't affecting his health. "Sorry, that was like, really heavy."
"It's cool," I leaned back, putting my weight onto my palms, the cool asphalt of the roof drawing the sweat from them. "What about your mom?"
"Left when I was four. I don't remember her." Clay laughed, shaking his head. "Really depressing night so far, don't you think?"
"To say the least."
Clay shifted himself so that he was leaning against a dormer window beside him, facing me. I did the same with the one next to me so that we were facing each other, the toes of our shoes inches apart. "So," Clay clasped his hands behind his neck. "If you could choose to know where you are in ten years, or tell yourself five years ago about your life now, which would you choose?" I squinted at him in confusion. "What? Your answer tells a lot about you, y'know. Renowned by psychologists around the world." I stared at him blankly. "Okay, maybe it's just me."
"I think it is."
"Would you just answer?"
"You first."
"Alright, fine." Clay sighed, giving in, apparently not one for arguments. "I'd want to look into the future. See if dad's okay, what college I got into, if I got married, the whole list," he said. "Your turn."
"I wouldn't want to do either."
"That defeats the purpose of this!"
"Well, I wouldn't want to tell myself what I know now because it would ruin it, and I wouldn't want to find out what happens in the next however many years because it would also ruin it."
Clay contemplated this for a moment before saying, "Okay, technically that wasn't the answer that I was looking for, but I'll take it."
Instantly, Edith's face appeared in my head, like a computer pop-up. You don't have to be looking for anything, I thought to myself.
"What?" Whoops. Apparently that wasn't in my head.
"Nothing," I said. "Got any other psychological questions? Preferably world renowned. Or maybe by just you."
Clay's eyes crinkled as he laughed, the lines falling in a pattern just like his dad's. I supposed Mr. Walker's racing clock was explained, but was not satisfactory. There had been very few instances, but I hated when there was nothing I could do to help someone's time.
"I'm sorry to say," Clay said, breaking my concentration. "But I'm really a one-trick kind of guy."
"Unfortunate."
"Well, what are you doing for the rest of the summer?" Clay asked. By this time, the sun had fallen, the moonlight left to illuminate his face. The other half was covered by an orangey glow from the incandescent bulb in his room, streaming out the window onto the roof.
"Probably never this again, I'm not one for testing to see if my roof can support my weight."
"Neither am I," I cocked my head. "I saw a cat sitting out here."
"Ah, not quite the creative adventurer you appear to be."
"Who do you think lead me to that tree?" Clay, although slightly clumsy in his nature, had wit about him that actually met mine. I'd always been at the top of my class, but judging by his win at the AIME, he had been as well. "Thirsty?" Clay said, stretching over to the windowsill and grabbing our cups, being careful to hand me mine and not his.
And there we sat, drinking from our colored Dixie cups, watching each other.
A/N: Please vote and comment, I'd love for this story to gain momentum and get more views/appreciation!!! Any tips from you guys on how to do this, as well as promotion is so so SO appreciated!!! I just finished writing the book a few days ago and it is now a matter of scheduled uploads, so if you were afraid the story was going to stop in the middle— fear not!
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