Part 10 (2/2)
Charlie's fingers fell silent on the keyboard, and he glanced up. I watched as his forehead scrunched up in lines of concentration, his unfixed stare drifting up toward the ceiling. I'd managed to capture his attention.
”Is it a public message board? What type of security are we talking about?”
I shrugged. ”I don't know. You log into an account, then type stuff into a box.”
Charlie laughed and shook his head, then fell silent. His stare remained fixed on an imaginary spot above my shoulder. After a handful of seconds, his eyes refocused. ”You have your computer here, right? Did you browse the site recently?”
I nodded. ”Probably the last thing I read.”
He smiled. ”Then bring it to me. I bet you ten bucks-if it's still in the cache, I can do it. I can post whatever you want.”
”Thanks,” I said. ”That's incredible.” Charlie's eyes flickered back toward his computer, and I could tell I was about to lose him again.
”Are you scared?” I asked, seizing the moment. ”About what might come back? On the drive? In your email?”
He stopped, hands frozen over the keyboard. For a moment, I thought I'd pushed him too far. Then he smiled.
”No,” he said. ”It's them, my parents. I figured it out. They're trying to get to me, trying to tell me something. And that's what I want ... to find them, to contact them.
”And when it's time, it'll all become clear. They'll reach me, or I'll reach them.” Charlie once again had that distant look in his eyes, like he was grappling with some technical problem, trying to figure out how to make something work. ”It's the message, you see, not the form it takes. I just have to figure out what they're trying to say.”
He turned back toward his computer, dismissing me abruptly. I could see two windows open on his screen. One was filled with code, and the other showed his mother on the corner of Second Avenue and Sherman Street. Charlie had zoomed the picture in on her haunted expression.
I felt bad for him. The only message I could read there, in that close-up, was a message of fear: Charlie's mother looking back over her shoulder with that frightened look on her face, like she wasn't alone on that abandoned street, like there was something else there, chasing her. Something horrible.
Amanda and Mac were playing in the backyard when I finished up my coffee. They were having a s...o...b..ll fight. Amanda was hiding behind a row of rosebushes while Mac lobbed projectiles high into the air, sending them raining down like artillery shots. After a round of sorties, Amanda popped up over the line of bushes and whipped a s...o...b..ll directly at his head, sending him toppling over.
Their laughter was high and bright, a counterpoint to Charlie's insistent tap-tap-tap.
Amanda stuck her head in through the back door. ”Me against you three,” she panted. ”Mac needs the help. He's getting his a.s.s kicked out here!” A s...o...b..ll hit the window at her side, and she turned, laughing, to once again join the fray.
Charlie's fingers didn't even pause on the keyboard. After Amanda disappeared, he started sucking at his teeth absently, filling the room with a wet, slurping sound. I set my empty coffee cup in the kitchen sink, then headed upstairs to start work on my forum post.
Taylor's door was right across from the stairwell, and I paused when I reached it. I listened for a moment, then knocked tentatively. There was no response. I pushed, and the door swung open. The room was empty, her bed neatly made. Early riser, I thought. Already out in the world, doing whatever it is she does in the morning.
I continued on to my room.
I spent the rest of the morning staring at my computer screen, trying to a.s.semble a forum post. It was a stressful task. The way I looked at it, this was the most important thing in my life. It was the next step in my journey, putting my pictures out there for the whole world to see.
These were my dreams and aspirations. In pieces on my computer screen.
More than anything, I wanted to make the right first impression. I wanted to capture people's attention and establish credibility right off the bat. I wanted people to look at these pictures-really look at them-and take me seriously. I wanted them to recognize my pa.s.sion, my skill, my art.
No wonder I was anxious. I had the weight of my entire future sitting right there on my shoulders.
I decided to start with some of my more mundane images. If I started with the insane stuff, I reasoned, no one would believe me. I could hear the arguments now: Yeah, he just Photoshopped a finger onto that spider; and that face in the wall, it doesn't even look real-it's just a mask, a mannequin.
No, I decided, it was better to start off with the stuff no one would dispute.
First up: the soldier in front of the ENTERING SPOKANE sign. Then an empty city street. Then Riverfront Park. And finally, a pair of pictures from Mama Ca.s.s's: one showing the crowd of refugees gathered around the storefront, the other showing a handful of dirty faces watching me suspiciously. I liked this final picture; I thought it ended things on the right note. It put some human faces-ragged and tired, haunted and angry-amid all the desolation.
I was laying groundwork. Setting the scene.
I'd get to the insanity later.
I spent several hours tweaking the images, trying to make them perfect. Then I composed a couple of sentences for the top of the post. I tried to keep my preface simple; I wanted to let the photographs speak for themselves.
Greetings from Spokane! Here are some pictures from my first week in the city. I came here to doc.u.ment the conditions and, perhaps, find the truth behind the stories we've all been hearing. I'll try to post more as events and pictures happen, but my Internet connection is pretty much nonexistent (I had to sneak this post out of the city, pa.s.sing it hand to hand across the border).
I added the ”hand to hand” thing to take heat off of Danny, in case this post ever caught the attention of the authorities.
After I finished the preface, I read it over a couple of times, trying to imagine the impression it would make. I found it lacking. It felt cold, clinical. There was no emotion, no hint it had been written by a real human being, someone capable of being moved by the things on the other side of the camera's viewfinder. Tentatively, I typed out another line: It's strange here. It feels like a different world.
I stared at the post for a long time, reading over that spa.r.s.e handful of sentences, studying each and every aspect of the photographs. It still felt insufficient somehow, incomplete. It is incomplete, I told myself. There is no end here, no conclusion ... not yet.
But it is a beginning.
Floyd stuck his head into my room just as I was finis.h.i.+ng up my post.
”Come here, man,” he said, stifling a yawn. ”There's something I want you to see.”
I saved my work and followed him into his room.
At one time, this had been a child's bedroom. There were alternating rows of clowns and balloons peering out from the wallpaper, bright cartoon shapes turned bleak and gray beneath a layer of dingy smoke residue. Across from Floyd's child-size bed, some of the clowns had been gouged out of the wall, as if attacked with a potato peeler. All the balloons remained intact. In the corner, a black sweats.h.i.+rt shrouded the shape of a hobbyhorse.
The room smelled of pot and stale sweat.
Floyd was still half asleep. He stopped in the middle of the room and stretched his hands up over his head, letting out a loud yawn.
”What's up?” I asked, and I smiled. ”Did you have a bad dream? Do you need me to tuck you back in? Maybe sing you a lullaby?”
Floyd let out a fake laugh. ”f.u.c.k, man, you're funny,” he said. ”I didn't realize you were so f.u.c.king funny.”
He grabbed my elbow and pulled me over to the window. He had his blinds drawn almost all the way to the bottom, and I had to crouch down in order to peer through the gap. ”Check it out. Across the street.”
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