A stack of fading novels, a dresser, a bed-side table, and a white wooden door marked the four corners of Carey Dufin’s bedroom. In the center of the room, on the four-post bed, Carey sat among a littering of papers, CDs, and clothes. A knock on the door echoed flat in the room.
“Yo yo yo what’s going down, Carey?” A blonde leapt through the door and jumped on Carey’s bed. “How come you didn’t answer my texts?”
“Hey Allison,” she muttered back as the blonde cleared a surface to sit on. Carey paused. “You texted? I think I lost my phone.” She shuffled through the stuff on her bed. “Damn. Where is that phone? I can only keep track of something so long as I don’t need it.” She tossed her body over the side of the bed and shuffled through a stack of clothes on the floor.
“I’ll call it.” Allison dialed Carey’s number and rested the phone on her knee. “So now that I’m here do you want to do something? I brought some green. Aaron and the guys are going down to the dam tonight, too, if you want to do that. It’s right next door, maybe we could do both?”
Carey popped her head back up and thrust the phone in the air, its ringtone blasting through the room. “Another successful rescue.”
“So? What about tonight? Girl party? Down to the dam?”
“They’re going down to the dam? Is that what you want to do?”
“Yeah. I think they’re smoking too. I don’t know, I figured it’s been a while since it was just us.” Allison scanned through the text messages on her phone.
“You sure this doesn’t have to do with Matt?” Carey asked, looking through her eyebrows at Allison
“Are you kidding? He was boring in the first place. I only got with him because I was bored. Then I got bored with that. Whatever. He’s not going to be there anyway, I think he found some boring girl to go out with the Phonic Grill.” She looked up at Carey. “Make a decision—are we hanging here or at the dam?”
“Alright. We can hang here. Just give me a few hours to get my shit together. I’m going to have dinner with my dad tonight, I think. He’s been getting nostalgic on me lately so it’s best if I just give in and act the sweet little daughter.” Carey looked to the corner of the room with the novels, feeling guilty because she hadn’t read them. She would probably read the first and last pages of the book. Everything else could either be forgotten or made up.
“Well do you mind if I keep the stuff here? It still weirds me out to be riding dirty. You know.” Allison reached into her purse and withdrew a little plastic baggy of green clumps.
“Absolutely.” Carey grabbed the bag to examine it. She put it back down on the bed. “Come back around nine. We should be finished with dinner by then.”
Allison got off the bed and gathered her things in her bag and threw it over her shoulder. “Keep that phone glued to your hand, okay Carey?”
“Yeah yeah. And you don’t go stalking Phonic Grill.” Carey raised her eyebrows at Allison.
“Shut up. You don’t know me.” They laughed.
Allison left the room, shutting the door behind her. The room again became quiet. Carey fell back on her bed, flung her hands over her head, and let out a grand sigh. Her right hand hit the baggy. She pulled it in front of her face and rotated the green inside. Looked like two grams. Definitely enough for the lightweights.
She got some rolling papers out of her bedside table and rolled a little joint. Just a little one, Allison wouldn’t mind. The stuff was pretty decent too, so it wouldn’t take much.
The skunky smell filled her nose, and she forgot what it was like to smell anything else. As a faint cloud of smoke filled the room, Carey felt herself take a step back from reality.
Pulling herself off the bed, she went over to her window and struggled to push the heavy thing up. She’d taken the screen out a few years ago so she could sit out on the roof. The neighborhood, the stars, the trees; they all formed a grand panorama for her daily life. They didn’t change much, but neither did she. Then, ten years later, everything looked bigger and time-worn. The window gave, and the smoke left the room slowly.
The tree outside her window, the tree that had been there since she was little, shimmied in the breeze. She used to imagine she would use the branch as a launching pad once she developed the ability to fly. By now she’d forgotten how to wish for the impossible, but the tree branch stayed there in her window. It greeted her in the morning, and beamed in the light that shone out her windows at night.
A gust of wind shook one of the leaves loose and pushed it inside the window. It hit the floor, danced each side hit the ground and then took off. It slipped under the door. Carey stared at the now empty floor, trying to picture the leaf again.
Carey opened her door and followed it to the other side, but it had disappeared. Only two possible routes for it to go in the hallway. She looked in the bathroom, where she had once sailed the seven seas looking for a golden treasure. Her voyage had failed back then; she hadn’t been able to find the box with golden baubles. She had lost the battle with the great Cyclops that protected the treasure. Definitely no dancing leaf here.
The other possible route, the only remaining destination for the little traveler, was down the steep stairwell. When she was younger she feared a black pit lurked beneath every stair step. She would leap over as many steps as she could, no sooner than a toe touched the cold wood of the stair. These things were irrational, though, and with age Carey had learned to walk slowly and gracefully. There were no bottomless pits, only stairs. No dangers, no falling. Only stairs.
As Carey rounded the corner into the kitchen, she saw her father sitting at their small glass table with a plate of peas, corn, and pork chops in front of him. Still no leaf. The buffalo of a man perched carefully over the glass table, his mass levitating in the air above a small white plate. He was putting his knife to the chops when he realized she’d entered the room, and then put it back down on the table.
“Everything’s on the stove if you want to make yourself a plate.”
“Oh, okay. You don’t have to wait for me. I’m just going to heat up some soup.” She reached into the pantry and pulled out a can of vegetable soup and dumped it into a saucepan.
“So what are your plans for tonight? I saw Allison leave earlier. I didn’t know you were still hanging out with her. How’s she doing?” He picked up his knife and fork again.
“Uh, good. Just trying to finish high school.” Carey turned her back to her father and stirred the soup with a spoon.
“Carey.” He put his fork and knife back down on the table. “Why don’t we talk anymore?”
Carey felt his big black eyes pounding against the bag of her head. “What do you mean? We talk all the time, Dad.”
“Not like we used to. What about our philosophical debates? You still think about all that stuff, don’t you? I gave you some books. I thought you might like them.” He paused, and chuckled to himself. “You used to have the greatest imagination. One time you locked yourself in the bathroom and just pretended for hours that you were navigating a ship through the high seas.” She knew his eyes were glazing now, looking at the past as if it were some painting on the wall.
“You punched a hole in the door trying to stop me, Dad. You were mad at me. You’re forgetting that. You always got mad at me for pretending.” Carey turned away from the soup and looked at the buffalo man still hovering over his plate.
“It was for your safety, Carey, and you’re forgetting that. I have nothing against a wonderful imagination. Just don’t get hurt.”
“Don’t get hurt? Everything to you is ‘getting hurt.’ I’m not going to live like that.”
The buffalo got up from the table, his chair sending a loud screech through the kitchen. “Maybe you’re right, Carey. You’re just my little girl, I guess, and you’ll be gone soon. You’re already gone so much.” He put his arms around her and squeezed, and Carey let him. She didn’t put down the spoon.
“Okay, let’s debate something.” Carey pulled away from her father and turned back to her soup, nearly boiling by now.
“Chicken or the egg?” He stood back and crossed his arms.
She looked skeptically at him, then focused on the soup again. “The animal kingdom. There was no ‘chicken’ or ‘egg’ except as defined afterward when the two were already fully developed.”
“Atta girl.” He returned to his plate and finished his meal in silence.
Carey made her way through the thicket of woods that separated her house from the park at the dam. She and her friends had worn the path thin, but tonight she was walking alone. The full moon cast an eerie, blue-white glow, making each turn look much like the last one. Carey half-considered the moon to be bewitching her path. Unlikely. One more turn and she’d probably be at the park
When Carey surfaced from the thicket, she saw four tweedle-dums hanging their feet over the stone embankment. She hid behind a tree that stood solitary nearby.
“Goofy, goofy, did the bed-man crawl up and over the waterside wall,” she whispered after the boys. “Boo!” She jumped out and threw her hands in the air.
“Care, that you?” One of the boys got up and walked toward her.
“Has anyone ever told you that you walk like a cowboy, Aaron?” She bypassed him and sat where he’d gotten been sitting. “What’s up, guys? How’s the moon treating you? Anyone paler than they were before?”
“Hey Carey,” the boy to her left said.
“Hey Jack. Do you want to do something fun tonight? Any of you suckers want to give up the nightly toil and meet an adventure head on?” She jumped up and assumed a captain’s stance, gazing upon the wild seas before her.
“What did you have in mind?” Jack and the rest looked up at Carey.
“Who knows what’s in the mind. It’s a bunch of blood vessels and neurons firing. That doesn’t matter. What I want is to make a grand discovery.”
“I don’t know, Carey.”
“Come on. You know how many times we’ve been to this park? For all the time we’ve spent here, we’ve only ever sat right in this spot.” Carey looked out on the lake again. The stone wall that sat just above the water’s edge let her look out on the water, forming a flatter than flat glass surface. The moon’s reflection dripped from the sky. This one spot in this one park. It was the only place to see the lake like this, and the moon. “I mean. Yeah, it’s gorgeous. But are you satisfied with that? Let’s go forth and conquer! Seek gold! Become great where once we were destitute!”
Aaron grabbed Carey from behind, put his arms through her arms and linked his fingers together around her stomach. “You’re captured, captain,” he whispered in her ear.
Carey pushed him off. “Get away, you ruthless cowboy. Your kind can’t know what it is to feel the passion of the sea, to seek honest adventure. Back and forth with the cows all day, guitars at night. You know nothing of noble exploration and discovery.”
“Come on, Carey. We’re just chilling. Want to chill with us?”
“I’ll seek my profit elsewhere.” Carey stomped back into the woods, a realm that was definitely worth knowing.
Allison blocked the path back to Carey’s house.
“I thought I might find you here. Lose your phone again, missy?” Allison swayed to one side and put a hand on her hip. “I ain’t no holla back girl.”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry. I just, got lost I guess. My phone got lost. Probably up in that heap of a room.” She smiled an apology, raising her eyebrows. “But good, you’re here now. Listen, Allison. We’re going on an adventure.”
“Did you bring the green?”
“Yeah. I rolled a few joints for us earlier. Here.” Carey handed her the joint and lighter.
“So, what’s this adventure about?” Allison lit the white paper, burning the end orange-red.
“I don’t know, but we’ll find it.” She marched off the path and through the underbrush of the thicket.
Carey slashed vines out of the way with her knotted staff as she climbed, the slope growing steeper and steeper the further on they went. Further behind, Allison dusted the ground with powder that raised the vines and the undergrowth again, as natural as they had once been and healthy enough to flourish.
“If I remember correctly the Crags of Damnation are just around the bend, leading us directly to the Great Cave. The Cyclops wouldn’t dare follow us there.”
“What if we just go back to the clearing and sprinkle stuff around us, so we’re immune, you know?” Allison breathed heavily behind Carey. “And I’ve got the munchies. Can we find some magic berries or something? Ale?”
“Don’t lose hope, Allison. He can’t gain on us. If there’s a treasure at the end and a beast in pursuit, then this is our path. Seek only forward, and see only success.” She quickened her pace, beating her staff rhythmically into the ground.
The pair surfaced from the woods atop a stone precipice, looking over a rushing waterfall. To the right, rough crags formed a precarious staircase leading up to the Cave.
“Is that the Big Cave?” Allison bent over, catching her breath.
“Great Cave. Yes, it is. Allison, can you taste it?”
“What?”
“You know, like something that’s in the room with you. Success is in the room with us. We can taste it. Yeah?” Carey resumed her captain’s stance.
“Yeah I can. Alright, let’s do this.”
The two of them scaled the crags one at a time. Below them dark pits warned against a dreadful tumble. What a dreadful tumble that would be. But if they went on, slow and careful, they would reach the top alive and well enough to go on even further.
Breathing much heavier by now, Allison and Carey had scaled the crags and ascended in front of the Great Cave. The cave breathed calmly with the coming and going of soft winds, so slight they caused only the smallest shiver.
“I think this is it,” Carey said, trying to look past the darkness of the cave. She couldn’t see anything. “Keep on, move forward, I guess.”
Once inside, Allison pulled out the lighter and sparked its flame. As they neared the back of the cave, they saw a tiny dwarf sleeping on a stool with his with a pet owl beside him. Carey shook his shoulder.
“Mmh. Hmm. Oogh. Yes. I’m awake. I’m awake now, see it?” He opened his eyes and looked up at his disturber. “Who are you?”
“Uh, I think I’m Carey. Who are you?”
“What? Oh, well I don’t guess anyone’s asked me that before. Who should I be?”
Allison held the flame closer in an attempt to illuminate the man’s face. “What do you do, mister?” The flame showed his scraggly beard, broken glasses sitting atop a crooked nose, and a hat with a hole where it bent.
“I tell stories, fair lady. This is my owl. He seeks out the stories from above and returns to me.” He reached down to the now-attentive owl and petted its head. “Now tell me, what’s your story?”
“I think we’re in the middle of one, actually. We’re seeking a treasure. Have you heard of it?”
The dwarf laughed heartily at this question. “Yes, I think I, ooh hoo hoo.” He stopped his sentence to laugh again. “Here, I’ll take you.” The dwarf stood up, still only reaching about waist-height, and revealed a fist-full of shimmering powder. He then stepped onto the stool and filtered the dust through his fingers onto their hair. The flame extinguished, the cave went dark, and the world dropped out.
Carey opened her eyes in a clearing. The morning sun beamed through the tops of trees and formed shifting patterns of light on the ground. Tiny fairies, no bigger than specks of dust floating in the air, flew inside the shafts of sunlight. Some landed on Carey’s head. A shower of leaves fell on the far end of the clearing.
A dwarf with all his stories of travel and the forest, a treasure chest overflowing with fair dresses and gold jewelry, a tree trunk exquisitely hollowed out, and a portal in the shape of a birch tree’s trunk formed the boundaries of the clearing. She grinned. A pounding sound echoed in the clearing. Looking over at the birch tree, Carey saw her father’s head peeping through.
“Carey, honey. I made some pancakes if you girls are interested.” He walked into the clearing and kissed Carey on the forehead. As he walked back through the door he shut the birch tree behind him.
A text message reminder buzzed on her phone. “No smoke tonight? Where are you?” Guess that was from last night. Probably should have kept her phone on her. Things worked out in the end.
Carey pushed off her covers and shoved her feet over the side of her bed, landing among some papers. A breeze brushed by her, making her shiver. Allison slept curled up on top of the covers on the other side of the bed.
Carey walked over to the window and looked outside to see if her neighborhood was still the same as it’d always been. A few leaves laid at her feet, probably from the tree outside. Spring made everything wild and windy. She picked up the novel on top of the stack, stuffed it under her arm, and climbed out onto the roof.
