Red Sky: Chapter 5
“I’m always trying to meet expectations.”
Aya was sitting next to me on the speedliner. Her silver necklace flashed back into my eyes as the sun reflected off its chain. We were still an hour away from the ancient cathedral we were supposed to study for class. “I’m always trying meet other people’s expectations of me,” she repeated. We were twenty minutes into the ride. Although we didn’t know each other well, we had fallen into easy conversation. There was never anything difficult about our conversations.
“I feel like everyone has these expectations of who they want me to be, what they want me to do, do you feel like that?”
“Yes,” I lied. My experience had been the opposite. I was a child without expectations.
“When I got accepted into the Academy after university, my parents were so proud, my sister was jealous, my friends said I was going to make more than them. Everyone was so interested in my future. They had so many expectations for me. But they didn’t care what I wanted.”
“What did you want?”
She sighed. And let the silence linger. She looked out at the countryside as it flattened, passing by at high speeds. She turned back to me.
“It doesn’t matter, does it?” There was a resignation in her voice. A resignation I could understand, unlike the expectations. A resignation that made her seem older than she was. A resignation that made me feel older than I was.
“Why did you apply?” I asked.
She was looking out the window again. She answered without looking back at me. “Ambition, I guess. I wanted more.”
“More than what?”
“More than what everyone expected.”
We both laughed.
“How did you end up at the Academy?” She asked.
“Luck.”
“Good or bad?”
“I’ll tell you at the end of the year”.
She couldn’t tell if I was joking. I wasn’t sure myself.
“I have some friends who are going into the Fleet. One of them, his family are in the military. He will certainly go fight in the Wars. He will be an officer, leading troops. Maybe I felt guilty, like I wasn’t doing my part for the cause, I don’t know.”
She didn’t look like she felt guilty. I hesitated. Conversations could be as dangerous as the battles in those Wars. I wondered if I should say what was on my mind. She beat me to it.
“That’s not true. I don’t feel guilty. I’m not a good soldier. I don’t want him to fight. I don’t want to fight. I don’t believe in the Wars. I’m a contrarian.
“You are, too. I’ve noticed in class. I bet you think I didn’t notice, but I noticed. No one else has, but I have. You’re clever about it. You question what the teachers say without it seeming like a question.”
“I guess that’s true,” I said. “Maybe I do that because I’m a couple years older than most of the others.”
“No, you’re a contrarian, like me. It’s your nature. You can’t change your nature. You’re either a conformist or a contrarian. Most of my friends, family, they’re conformists, it’s safer that way, but you, you’re a contrarian.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It is.”
An automated voice announced the next stop over the speakers. Aya looked out the window again. As the speedliner slowed, the contours of the flattened countryside filled out, hills and valleys and lakes and rivers rose and separated from each other.
Aya turned back to me. “Do you want to get out here?”
“Here?”
“Yes, the next stop. This town.”
“What about the assignment. Everyone is probably there already.”
“They won’t miss us. We can write the report without going.”
The speedliner stopped. Time sped up. Air rushed in from the front of the cabin as the doors opened. People started shuffling in the aisles. There was chatter on all sides. We found ourselves walking in the middle of this town neither of us had ever been to or heard of before.
“Sweetwater,” Aya announced the name of the town as she read the welcome sign. “Population 3200.”
“My mother was from a town this size.”
“Really, what’s it like?”
“Don’t know. Never been there.”
“It’s a nice name. Sweetwater. I wonder why it’s called that.”
“There’s a river on the edge of town.” I was looking at a map.
“Let’s go find it.”
*
We walked the sparsely populated main street. I wondered why they had a speedliner stop. Was it an accident of time or geography? Was this town once a flourishing crossroads with a busy downtown and thriving commerce or was the stop here merely because it was an efficient junction nestled in the hills between a number of different lines going in different directions.
Aya visited the few shops that were open, the few shops that could survive on the limited traffic of those trying to pass the time between speedliner rides. I tagged along like a retriever.
We made it to the water on the edge of downtown. We stood on the banks of a rushing stream that had once been a rushing river. We were both a little disappointed.
“I wonder if the water really is sweet,” Aya laughed. She kicked off her shoes and hiked up her pants and waded into the stream.
“Are you sure that’s safe?”
“Of course it is, it’s not deep at all, it won’t even come up to my waist.” She was already up to her knees.
I continued to stand on the edge of the grass. The sun shone brightly over the hill behind the stream. I squinted as I watched her.
“I used to swim with my sister in a stream like this when we were children.”
“I thought you said it wasn’t deep enough?”
“This one, no. The one by our cabin is twice as deep and not as fast.” She was up to her thighs now. “There were little alcoves and bends that were perfect for swimming.” She put her hands down in the water and pushed through it like she was doing a backhanded stroke.
“There was a lake, too, but we always swam in the river. The river was somehow more cleansing with the water running through your body. Did you have any favorite swimming holes when you were a kid?”
“No.”
“That’s sad.”
“Not really.”
“Every child should have a place to swim, there are sensations you can only experience when you’re totally immersed, floating completely and letting go.” She made another pretend stroke in the water.
“I don’t know how to swim,” I confessed.
“You don’t know how to swim,” she turned and looked at me like that was the most alien thing in the world.
“Everyone knows how to swim. Puppies know how to swim. I can teach you.”
“No thanks.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“Drowning.”
“You’re more likely to drown if you don’t know how to swim.”
“I don’t think that’s true. If I don’t know how to swim, I won’t get in the water, so I’m less likely to drown.”
She started walking back towards me.
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
I shrugged. “It keeps me safe.”
She reached the edge of the water and held out her hand.
“Come on, I’ll protect you.”
I looked at her doubtfully.
I slipped off my shoes and took her hand and took a step into the cold water. The chill surrounded my ankles, my feet burying into the sediment.
“See, I told you I would protect you.”
I took another step, up to my calves, my feet burying deeper, starting to slip in the mud. I took a quick third step hitting a rock with my toe. I lost my balance. She was still pulling me with her hand. We both tumbled into the shallow stream.
*
We walked for an hour to dry our wet clothes. We walked to the very edge of town, and beyond the edge of town, past meadows and prairies to the farms and farmhouses and great stretches of unused land. We ended up at an abandoned farmhouse, half built or half torn down many years ago, an empty shell weathered by rain and snow and heat. I rushed inside like a little child.
“What are you doing?” Aya shouted after me. It was too late. I was already inside exploring.
After a few minutes, she appeared.
“Who do you think lived here?” I wondered.
“It feels like it’s haunted.”
“I wonder where they are now.”
“Maybe they’re still here.” Aya wrapped her arms around herself.
“You can feel their ghosts?”
“Yes, I think I can.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You don’t believe in ghosts?”
“No,” I said.
She made a face like I had given an incorrect answer.
“Do you?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I stopped and stood under the sunlight coming down through a hole in the roof.
“I believe there are things we can’t see, that there are many things we don’t know about life and death.” She said.
“You should come stand over here in the light. It’s warm.”
“Do you think this is all there is?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don’t.”
She stepped over a beam on the floor and stood next to me.
“Isn’t it nice, standing here?” I felt the sunshine on my cheeks, warming my skin like a caress in a way only the sun can warm.
She walked out of the light to the other side of the room. I continued to look up at the ceiling, at the hole in the roof, streams of gold shining through rotting wood.
“Maybe we should go see what’s in the attic.”
“I don’t think the floor would hold us.”
“We used to play in buildings like this when I was a kid. We would find construction sites and sneak inside and play army. It was great fun.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“No more so than swimming.”
She didn’t laugh.
I looked down to see her reaction but she was gone. She had disappeared like a ghost. I called to her. There was no answer. I called again. Still no answer. I stepped out of the sunlight and walked outside. I found her away from the house, by the barn.
She was staring at the faded red of the side of the barn. There were two bicycles standing up against the wall. They were old but not as old as the house or the barn.
“Some children must have left them here,” I said.
Aya was still staring at them, she didn’t say anything, lost in thought.
I stepped forward, “I wonder if they still work.”
I bent down and inspected them. It seemed like everything was still in running order.
“It’s pretty far back to the station. We should ride them back.”
This brought Aya out of her daze. “No thanks.”
“Why not, it will be fun.”
“I’m not getting on one of those.”
I pulled on one, its tires sticking in the overgrown grass and weeds.
“It seems perfectly fine. Here you can use this one. I’ll take the wonky one.”
“No way.”
“They’re just old-fashioned bicycles. It’s not like they’re death machines.”
“Yes, they are.”
“What?”
“I don’t know how to ride a bicycle,” she said under her breath. The fearless Aya had an Achilles heel.
“Every kid knows how to ride a bicycle.”
“Like every kid knows how to swim?”
“Quite a pair we make, I don’t know how to swim and you don’t know how to ride a bike.”
We both laughed.
“We wouldn’t be very good in a triathlon.” One of us said.
“It would have to be a relay,” the other answered.
*
On the speedliner ride back, Aya curled up into a tight little ball on the seat next to me putting her feet on the edge of the chair. She leaned her head against the window and fell asleep. The speedliner picked up speed, travelling through time. Days, months, years passed by. Memories rose and crashed and tumbled like water through the rocks of a rapids. I rested my head against the back of the seat and looked out the window, past Aya. The lights in the distance looked like falling stars. The greens and yellows and blacks of the nighttime countryside blurred. I closed my eyes and slept.