01. When the Changewinds Blow (6 page)

"It's from home. There's so many bottles in the club room they'll never miss it. At the time I kinda figured you might need it, but to tell you the truth I forgot about it. I could'a got some grass from Louisa but I knew you couldn't stand the smell of the stuff."

Sam sighed. "I never really touched much of any of that. Too scared, I guess. What's it taste like?"

"Not much of anything, really. You just mix it with juice or pop. It just makes me real silly and it makes you feel good for a while. Too much can make you sick in the morning, though." Sam looked back outside. "Well, we got a nice fire in here, it's hot as hell inside, dark and cold outside; we got no TV, no radio 'less we want to sit in the car, and not much else. Maybe I can stand bein' silly once."

And they
did
get silly, partly because they had no real way to measure the stuff and partly because the early attempts caused no real effect quickly and by the time they had enough to really feel it it was pretty cumulative. They sang and they danced to the songs they sang and they laughed at really stupid things and Charley got up on the table and did a silly strip tease and just like the last time she'd gotten drunk she got real turned on. She had no inhibitions at all and it was all impulse, all feel, now, not thinking. Sam, too, seemed real vacant and giggly and pretty unsteady.

They were both pretty giddy and helped each other to blow out the lamps and make it to bed. Charley snuggled up close to Sam and started gently rubbing the other. She sensed Sam stiffen. "What's wrong?"

"I-I dunno. I have these funny feelings inside and I'm all mixed up. It's all-
wrong."

"You want me to stop?"

"That's just it-I
don't
want you to stop. I-I had
other
dreams, not just the bad ones. Ones I never told about. You dream about boys. I know you do. Mine had you and me in bed, like this, only in my dreams I was a boy and you was you and that made it all right. . . ."

In any other circumstances Charley would have reacted differently, but she was high as a kite and horny as hell. "Okay, just for tonight, then, let's do a fantasy. You're the boy and I'm the girl and we're here all alone. Jus' relax and pretend and ol' Charley'll show you just what to do."

It wasn't clear how long it went in the darkness before they both passed out from the booze, but it was day when Charley awoke with a splitting headache to the sounds of Sam throwing up into the toilet. Charley didn't feel that sick, but her head was throbbing and the room was slightly spinning and she could do nothing but lie there and try not to move.

She didn't remember much about the night but she remembered-enough, and it started her thinking and worrying. She was slightly troubled about herself, wondering if this was anything much inside her head or not. She sure as hell fantasized about boys, but she'd gotten turned on by looking at a girl or two and it hadn't bothered her much. Hell, when she'd been fourteen she'd had a real, if short, adolescent crush on Mrs. Santiago, her English teacher at the time. Months later Mrs. Santiago had been replaced with Mr. Horvath. Sam, though-she was such a damned straight arrow it must be killing her inside, or would when she stopped being sick and really sobered up. She and Sam were physically only a month apart in age, but emotionally Sam was closer to fourteen than seventeen going on eighteen, and she'd had that split home and since being separated so long and so far from her dad Sam had turned him into almost Superman in her mind so no boy could ever compare or measure up.

Boy, Dr. Joan Henvitz-she was the phone-in psychologist on the radio-had lots of cases like this. Sam got a crush on Charley but it went against everything her straight arrow upbringing and church groups believed. So she couldn't handle it, and finally invented this weird fantasy world and dark mysterious ghosts and talking thunderstorms. Man! These were
heavy
thoughts! Sam was running, all right, but not from the darker dreams and fantasies but rather
to
them. The solution startled Charley but it also cheered her. It explained
everything!
The trouble was, would
Sam
buy it now and deal with it? It was Sunday. There was only one day left.

Still, they had to survive a rough morning first. Charley had one of those awful problems-she
desperately
needed to take some industrial-strength Tylenol she had with her but to do so involved pumping some water and the screeching of the pump was unendurable. It was also very cold in the cabin; Sam was covered with goosebumps but first things came first and upchucking had a way of forcing itself to the head of the line. Even so, once her stomach was empty she felt much better if dizzy and lightheaded. Still, she had enough sense to know that building a fire was essential and she managed to throw some wood in the stove, light some paper with a cheap lighter, and toss it in. It would take a few minutes but at least things would be livable.

She found an unopened bottle of orange juice that was slightly cold because of the cabin's temperature and got the pills from Charley's purse and brought them to her. It was only then that they both discovered that Sam, the bed, and even' Charley were something of a bloody mess and Sam felt bruised and scratched up inside. It confused her. "Jeez-my period's pretty well over and I never had flow like
that."

Charley had to laugh even though it hurt to do so. "Long fingernails," she muttered. "Sam, I popped your cherry last night. Don't worry-it'll never happen again. Hurt a little inside?"

"Uh-huh."

"That'll go away, too, and shouldn't ever come back." She sighed. "I guess if we can heat a little water we can wash ourselves off but I didn't bring but one set of bedding. I figured it was only a couple of days. Best we can do I guess is wash 'em in the sink when my head slows down. They'll still look awful but at least they can be used."

By the early afternoon both were feeling much better, although the after-effects lingered on in upset stomachs and generally feeling drained. Sam, perhaps because she'd cleared her stomach, seemed to get over it faster than Charley, much to Charley's chagrin, although the mental effects of the binge were dwelling inside the fugitive.

"So what do I do now? Go to San Francisco or Greenwich Village or somethin'?" Sam muttered unhappily. "'Cept I don't wanna go to any of them places."

"Oh, come on, Sam. Like, you never even
tried
it with a boy. Hell, I been pretty straight lately myself but I'm no saint. I got all sorts of urges and attractions and most of 'em I don't let out unless I'm high or drunk or whatever, but some I do. Don't you see? That's what's happened to you. You been so scared of letting go, lettin' your hair down when you had it and, well,
sinning
a little. You're scared you won't be the Virgin Mary and you're not. Nobody is. You're almost scared of makin' friends or gettin' into a little hell raisin' and that's got it all bottled up inside. I don't know if you really swing that way exclusive or not and I don't think you do, neither. You don't have the experience yet to know."

Sam sighed. "I always felt I should'a been a boy, that somebody screwed up someplace. I never felt comfortable around boys 'cept my dad, of course. Even my
voice
wasn't no girl's voice. But when I was naked in front of that store window I kinda liked what I saw mere, too. Fact was, for the first time in my life I liked me as I was, if that don't sound crazy."

Charley shook her head. "I understand."

"But it didn't change nothin'. I still felt the same towards you, and when you not only didn't turn me in but picked me up and went to all this trouble it was like, well, you felt somethin' for me, too. And since we been together I felt, well,
safe."

Charley hesitantly chewed on her lower Up, thinking hard, then said, "And you don't see the connection? It's been buildin' up inside you and it scared you, that's all. When I went away for the whole weekend leavin' you alone around the house you had your shadow man. When you looked at yourself in the mall and turned yourself on you got panicky and had another dream. I bet almost all of 'em happened after something stuck in your mind about your own feelings or me. And since we been together there's been nothin'. Don't you see, Sam? Them dreams, them voices, they're not real. They come for you when you get hung up and feelin' guilty and all. They're in your
head, th
at's all. They're scarier even than what you're really 'fraid of so you don't think about that no more."

Sam thought it over. "They're so
real.
And the thunderstorms-they're real, too. Thunderstorms at high altitude here in the middle of winter."

"Yeah, I guess the storms are real, but they're real with you or without you. It's not like they never happened before-I heard the weather guy on the radio. Come on, Sam! Lotsa folks are scared by things that don't make no sense. Me, I'm terrified of spiders and I ain't too fond of tall buildings, neither, even when I'm inside 'em. You step on spiders and leave 'em outside to catch flies and I bet back in Boston you went in lots of tall buildings and never thought 'bout it. You got thunderstorms which I always thought were kinda neat and exciting so long as you was lookin' at 'em from inside someplace. You just put your storms and your fears together and it
still
wasn't enough. Your shadow man didn't come durin' no thunderstorm, did he?"

For the first time there was a glimmer of doubt in Sam's mind. "You really think so? That this was all for
nothin'?
But everything was so
real."

"I guess it can be. But it's out in the open now, at least between the two of us, and I don't
care.
You told me and showed me and I didn't run screamin' away or nothin'. Look, you go home, you see a shrink. Your mom's into all that liberal cause shit; you'll wind up gettin' one that'll say just what I'm sayin', I'll bet you. We won't tell anybody else about it." She was thinking furiously now. She'd hooked the fish and didn't want to let it slip away. "Maybe we'll go off to college together. How's that sound? We'll room together and raise a little hell ourselves."

"But you hate the idea of college!"

"Well, like maybe I can stand it with a good friend, huh? It'll freak out our parents but they'll love it. Come on-what do you say?"

Sam thought hard about it. "I really want to believe it, Charley. But what if I go back and it all starts again anyway?
They'll
get me sure, mthen, and you better believe I'll be grounded for months."

"And if you don't? Where you gonna run, Sam? Sure, you look and can act like a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old boy, but ten years from now you're
still
gonna look fifteen or sixteen. Nobody'll hire a kid that young with no ID, no background, no experience, no family. Nobody you could ever trust workin' for, anyways. You can't even get a job for the minimum at
MacDonalds,
for Christ's sake, without a Social Security card, home address, parental permission, you name it. Only thing you could do would be to turn yourself back into a girl with everything hangin' out and sell yourself."

"I-I couldn't do that."

"You get hungry enough or fall into the wrong hands and you damn well will, or you'll die-and what's the difference if your shadow man kills you or you freeze to death hitchin' or starve to death in Denver? Hell, you can't even
drive.
There's bastards out there pickin' up
boys
for the last ride, you know, and if they find out you're a
girl
they'll find your body in a ditch someplace years from now if ever."

"But what if my dreams are
real?"

"They're
not,
damn it, but real or not they'll follow you and you know it. You don't face it, it'll get you. I can just see you hitchin' on some warm day in the middle of nowhere when t thunderstorm comes up.
There
you face it alone. Back we face it together."

"Charley, I-I really want to believe you but I
have
to
know.
Before I can go back, I just have to."

Charley looked out the window. It was a clear sky, only a few high wispy clouds, but the winter sun was coming close to the horizon. "Then let's face them now, huh? All night if necessary, or until we freeze our tits off. Together."

Sam looked suddenly nervous as Charley pulled on designer jeans, a lavender cashmere sweater, her calf-length boots with high, thick heels, then got her fur coat. "Put on your boots, coat, and hat and we'll see just how nasty this all is. If they're so hot to find you, then they should accept a call."

"What?"

"If you love me, or
think
you love me, then you'll do it. For me."

"But-what if they come?"

Charley sighed. "Well, if you can conjure up a storm it'll show there's some ESP or that kind of stuff and if you can do it here you sure as hell can convince other folks. Besides, didn't you tell me that you thought you sent it away from the mall? If anything really shows up, push it back."

She didn't really believe any of this, but clearly Sam did. It was better to play the game out.

"Come on," said Charley. "Prove to me that you can screw up this pretty day."

They walked down the dirt road until they cleared the trees, Charley leading. She wanted as unobstructed a view of the sky as possible, convinced that there was no way to imagine storms or demons in a sky like this. There was a chill in the air but it wasn't unbearable, partly because there was almost a dead calm; the sky pale blue with only those high, thin, wispy clouds and nothing else visible as far as they could see.

"Here. This is far enough," Charley said firmly. She stopped and looked around. "Well, I don't see no shadow man and I don't see no storm clouds. If you can conjure up anything in the here and now then you got a hell of a power."

Sam looked uncomfortable, feeling vulnerable, but she was unable to back out at this point. "So what do you want me to do?"