The Orphan (5 page)

Raya Lynwood sort of wished Chad would stop texting her and go to sleep already. It was almost four in the morning and she kept dozing off, only to be jolted awake by her phone buzzing from under her pillow. She rarely tired of texting with Chad, and it was really sweet that he even bothered when he was out late with the guys, but this was turning into some kind of sleep-deprivation experiment.

Of course she could have turned off the phone, or set it on her dresser on the other side of her bedroom, but she was worried about him getting home safe. If tomorrow wasn’t the last day of school, Raya would have been asleep long ago. And Chad wouldn’t be out with his friends, playing poker and drinking beer until the sun came up. In the meantime he kept sending her silly things.

It wasn’t even a conversation. He would ask her something, she would respond, and then he’d move on to some other topic. Sometimes Raya wondered if Chad really listened to her, or paid attention to her texts. Most boys didn’t listen very well, but Chad seemed different than most boys. He was polite, and patient, and when they were together he looked at her as if he had stumbled upon a pot of gold. Besides, what did it matter how she responded to such questions? Her dad wasn’t going to let her go on a road trip, not with Chad or anyone else.

Chad was seventeen, two years older than Raya. Her mom seemed cool with this, but her dad was another story. No way would her dad let Chad drive the Firebird. He wouldn’t even let Raya drive the Firebird (or his Acura for that matter), only her mom’s wagon while she had her learner’s permit. It was a Beemer but still a wagon and not even close to being as fun to drive as the Firebird.

What was her dad doing up so late again, anyway? Raya thought she’d heard someone pacing around her door earlier, and when she went to the bathroom for a glass of water about an hour ago, she noticed the living-room lights were on. Had to be her dad. Mom slept like a rock from ten or eleven until 6 a.m. sharp, and her dad had some kind of insomnia thing going lately.

Go back to your poker, Chadly
, was all she had to say to that.

Chad was not her first boyfriend but he was her longest relationship, or maybe the first one that could be called a relationship.

That one cracked her up, and made her nervous. What did he mean by that? Raya couldn’t tell if he really meant kiss your legs. Chad wasn’t crass like other boys, texting pictures of his junk and sending her lascivious messages. Lots of them did that, she’d heard. The girls too. Chad had never said or sent anything of the sort to her. He was more cryptic, always framing things in a harmless way. But sometimes Raya wondered if Chad was this way because he was really being himself or if he was only refraining from raunchier stuff because he thought she would freak out.

She probably would freak out, or pretend to, just to cool him off. But another part of her wanted to know if what he really meant was, would you let me kiss that place between your legs?

Just once
, he prompted,
for like 10 seconds?

No,
she texted back.
Stop being a beast.

But the idea excited her too. Not the idea of Chad kissing her between her legs, because hell no, she wasn’t letting anyone do that until she was like twenty-five, and then only if they were seriously in love. But the thought of Chad kissing her knees, the top of her thighs, for a few seconds… yeah, that made her stomach go a little crazy.

She drifted off, then her phone buzzed again. Except, when she looked at the screen there was no new text, from Chad or anyone else. That was weird but not really a big deal. It happened kind of frequently, actually, but usually it was the other way around. Her brain knew before her phone confirmed it.

Sometimes Raya would sense an incoming text and it wouldn’t be there, but seconds later one would arrive. Or she would just be thinking of Chad, smiling to herself about something sweet he did, like when he brought her flowers two weeks ago, or how he always remembered to open his car door for her – and right then one of his texts would arrive, or he would call. And he’d be all like, ‘Whatcha doin’, beautiful Raya?’ in his mellow voice, like it was the most natural thing in the world for him to say.

What was that all about? The timing, not his voice. It seemed to happen with Chad more often than with any of her other friends or her parents. Was it because she and Chad were connected, and some part of her had a sixth sense about when he would call or text her? Or maybe (less fun to consider) everybody was so glued to their phones these days, texting like three hundred times a day, you were always in a state of anticipation, like Emma Bovary, thinking about your boyfriend, and it only seemed like intuition when another text arrived at the same time.

Because this had happened before, in other ways. Like the time her mom went to the store, said she would be right back, and two hours later Raya knew something was wrong. Her mom hadn’t called or come home, and Raya immediately pictured her stranded on the side of the road shaking her cellphone because the battery was dead, the wagon’s hood open while steam hissed out.

Raya was so convinced by the vision, she’d gone and found her dad in the Bike Cave and told him she thought Mom was having some car trouble. Her dad tried calling and there was no answer. Worried, he went out looking for her, starting at the Safeway parking lot where Mom usually shopped. Raya stayed home, in case her mom called or got back first.

They came home twenty minutes later and it turned out Raya had been exactly right. Well, almost exactly, which wasn’t exactly at all, as her English teacher Mrs Iwerson reminded her whenever Raya accidentally used a contradictory or redundant adverb in one of her papers. Exactly the same. ‘Exactly’ was like that, it could fool you. And the car breakdown was like that. Not exactly like her vision but so close as to be spooky. In real life it turned out to be a flat tire, not the engine. And her cellphone battery wasn’t dead. She’d simply left it in her office at Fresh Starts.

Still, it was enough to make a girl wonder.

Raya was on the verge of sleep for the fourth time in as many hours when Chad finally texted back.

Too sleepy
, Raya sent back,
but are you OK to drive?

Chad wasn’t a big drinker, usually limiting himself to a few beers. His personality didn’t change when he drank, a sign her mom had warned her to watch out for.

Didn’t drink tonight,
Chad replied.

Raya found this unlikely, though she didn’t think Chad would lie to her about having a few beers. She’d never hassled him about it, so maybe he was telling the truth.

You too
, Raya wrote.

That always made her happy, when he said the words. But she couldn’t say the actual words back. She knew ‘you too’ was misleading, and she sensed he understood the difference. She didn’t love Chad,
really
love Chad, like she knew she would love somebody when she was older. She cared about him a lot, and he was super-sweet to her, and what was wrong with telling someone ‘you too’, even if it wasn’t the purest, strongest, most amazing love you would ever have? Maybe nothing, except that she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Maybe someday. Not tonight.

Finally she could go to sleep. Except now she had to pee again.

Raya got out of bed and walked to the bathroom attached to her bedroom suite. She was about to drop her pajama bottoms when she noticed that the toilet paper roll had only like four squares left. Probably enough, but she hated getting pee on her hand, even if it was her own pee. And she would need more in the morning anyway, so might as well get a fresh roll now. She opened the cabinet under her sink but it was empty. Great, now she had to go out to the bathroom at the front of the house to stock up. She could have put it off, but one of the things she took pride in was something her dad told her over and over when she was little, until it became a habit of her own.

Don’t put off getting things done, honey. Even the little stuff, the stupid stuff. Every day there are dozens of things you could do, and should do, to make life easier, and you will be tempted to put them off until tomorrow. But don’t do that, because it’s a small bit of lazy, and it only gets easier and easier to be lazy. And pretty soon, after years and years, your life might still be good but there will be hundreds, thousands of little things you could have done, done so easily, but you didn’t.
 

And the secret is this, honey. Putting off thousands of little things makes it easier to put off doing one or two of the really big things, something really special and worthwhile. If you want to build a company, write a book, travel around the world, get your PhD, you will never get there by avoiding the stupid little details that accumulate. To do the special thing, the one main thing in life, you have to sweep up the little things like dust, out of habit, without even using your brain. Because you’re that smart. And your life is special, Raya, so don’t do that to yourself. Don’t live your whole life accomplishing less than you are capable of and making things easier on yourself when you could be onto something great. Under
stand?
 

She hadn’t minded the speech because he wasn’t lecturing her, and she respected her dad. He’d already built his own business by the time she was born. By the time she was three, he owned a strip mall in Milwaukee. It was totally ghetto, but he owned it. So she digested what he told her, and soon she began to notice things, little things that nagged at her when she didn’t do them.

Like folding her clothes, which looked nice and made getting ready for school easier. Or writing thank-you notes after Christmas or her birthday, which felt like an obligation and a hassle until she did them, then made her feel grateful and calm. Lots of stuff got easier once she got in the habit of just doing them before she made them a big deal in her head. Which is why now, at age fifteen, even something as small as changing out the toilet-paper roll at four in the morning would drive her nuts if she put it off.

That’s my Lynwood girl
, she could almost hear her dad saying,
go get yourself a damn roll of toilet paper and go to bed.

Stuffing her phone into the waistband of her pajamas, she walked into the hall. The living-room lights were still on. On the other side of the foyer, she turned into the front bathroom and flipped on the light. The cabinet was stocked, so she grabbed four rolls, making a mental note to tell her mom to buy more anyway, because she liked to have a good supply of everything in her own bathroom, and the mini-fridge, which made her suite like a boutique hotel. Carrying two rolls in each hand, her fingers hooked into the cardboard spools, Raya used one roll to turn off the bathroom light and headed back into the hall.

She had gone a few steps when her phone vibrated inside her waistband. She thought of ignoring it because her hands were full, but it might be Chad, confessing his inebriation, and she didn’t want him giving up and driving home drunk. Wedging two rolls under her left arm, she pulled the phone out and looked down at the screen.

That was it. No punctuation, no context. At first she thought it must be another of Chad’s non sequiturs, until she saw the number, which did not list Chad or any of her contacts and which wasn’t a phone number at all, just a string of zeroes and ones.

That was weird. She’d never seen a number like that as a source for an incoming message or call. She was reading the text again when it disappeared. The entire screen of her phone went black, as if in shutdown mode. Must have been an error, a message garbled in the company’s servers or something.

She hadn’t liked the feel of those words, but it was gone now and she was tired.

Raya was stuffing the phone back into her waistband when it vibrated again. She held it up. The screen was still black but a new text was visible, this time in white letters.

The white text seemed to dissolve before she could tap the screen, and then another string of crisp white words replaced it:

Again the letters dissolved to total blackness, but almost immediately were replaced by:

The four rolls of toilet paper dropped to the floor. She looked back toward the kitchen, expecting her mom or dad to be in there, hoping one of them was there to explain this. She needed to show someone. But there wasn’t anyone in the kitchen, and worse, the kitchen lights were off, except for the little ones under the cabinets.

The bright white letters dissolved and she was left standing in the dark.

Instinctively Raya pivoted and looked back, past the bathroom, to where the hall angled into the laundry and mud room that connected to the garage. She felt like she was being observed by someone, or something. But it was too dark to see to the end. A draft of cold air swept by her and she decided the door to the garage must be ajar. It was always colder in the laundry room.

None of which had anything to do with her phone, but still…

Who was sending these messages? Chad wouldn’t play a trick on her like this. The messages bore no resemblance to his tone of voice, or his sense of humor.