Life is Strange, page 7
After way too much debate, we end up asking Silas for two more water bottles and walking ourselves down the main thoroughfare of Barbazal. It’s cooler today than it was yesterday, and there’s a welcome breeze rolling through, rustling my hair, making my skin prickle.
“Ever noticed how it smells here?” asks Steph.
“Smells? Like what?”
“I don’t know. Farm stuff?”
“The hell does farm stuff smell like, Miss Seattle?”
“Hey, I was in the city.”
“Then how do you know what farm stuff smells like?”
“It smells kinda like a combination of… daisies…” she begins, sniffing at the air goofily like a basset hound, “dirt… and rust.”
I sniff the air, much less theatrically, and realize she’s right.
“It smells dry.”
“Yeah, I guess it kinda does,” she says. “Speaking of, since you’re determined to get back to the subject, no matter what extracurricular activities I suggest, what’s the new plan to talk to Jonah? Daphne didn’t seem too keen on us. What did you say to her anyway?”
“I…” Where do I even start with recalling what happened?
“That bad? Did you tell her she needs a lint roller or something?”
That gets a laugh out of me.
“Uh, no. But I uh… kind of told her I knew Jonah’s diner order?”
“You what?” she asks, mock outrage playing on that last word. “Why? Like as a threat?”
She drops her voice down a whole octave lower than I even thought her voice could go.
“I’m Alex Chen. Give me ten minutes with Jonah Macon, or I’ll tell everyone Mr. King-of-climate-change likes his tomahawk steak medium rare and his pickles extra sweet!”
“Yes, Steph,” I grin, my voice dripping with sarcasm, “as a threat. No. I don’t know, I just wanted her to know that I knew information she didn’t want me to know.”
“Wait, wait, wait. You wanted her to know that you know something she doesn’t want you to know? What if she knows you know that something she doesn’t want you to know, because she knows you know how to see things you shouldn’t know, but you know, you know?”
“You think she can tell I have powers?” I ask.
“I mean, no, but just be careful, okay? Have you told anyone about them? Besides me, and Ryan?”
I shake my head.
Not even Gabe knew.
I kept it all to myself.
Until I met her. This girl.
“Nope,” I say, “just you and Ryan. You’re both… kinda special to me, you know?”
“Couldn’t tell,” she says, playfully elbowing me in the arm. “Anyway, I’ve got your back. Always. But also, be careful.”
I have to smile, because Steph cares. But also, I’ve had these powers ever since my dad left us. Like, straight-up grabbed his car keys and walked out the front door forever.
When I learned that he died, I learned to control it. Make it work for me. Help me instead of hurt me. I know how to use my powers now. I’ve been hiding them for half my life. I know Steph cares, so why is something tightening in my chest at the thought of her trying to tell me how to manage my ability to take on the emotions of others?
I stuff those feelings down. Deep down. And smile.
“Be careful?”
“You just… seem really confident messing with people’s feelings, you know?”
I remember what Owen said about Charlotte, how I turned her into a zombie. I know not to take on the emotions of others without considering that the consequences could be dire, and permanent. I don’t do that anymore.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t use my powers to my advantage. I know what I’m doing.
“Steph, I’ve been doing this for over a decade. I know what I’m doing.”
Her eyes are trained on me, her face even, and I can’t tell what she’s thinking. No auras glow around her, no sensations reach me. She just… studies me. And then she shrugs, and moves on.
“So, you told her his diner order. Now what?”
Oh shit. I hadn’t really thought that far ahead yet. “I mean, we could try to find her again.”
“Should we wait until Daphne goes to the bathroom?”
“What is it with you and stalking people in the bathroom?”
“What, should I try to ask her out like I did with Diane? Remember how well that worked?”
“Actually, it did work, remember? Maybe Daphne will fall to your charms like Diane did. Or, like I did.”
She looks down at her shoes, but her smile brings out the red in the apples of her cheeks. She scratches the back of her neck in thought.
“Something tells me it’ll be hard to get her or Jonah alone.”
She’s right.
* * *
The walk into town is on a slight decline. I look down at Steph’s hand, swinging next to mine, wondering—hoping—she’ll bump into mine and invite me to hold hers, but she doesn’t. Instead she rattles my thoughts back into the present with a single word.
“Woah.”
I look up at what we’re about to walk into. The town square. Shop after shop lines the stone path, which looks carefully preserved through the years. Decades. Maybe even centuries. Some of the stones are cracked and brittle-looking, sharp scores in the earth here and there. I wonder if it’s from the incessant heat that’s sure to settle over this place in just a few hours.
Or the lack of water.
“Morning!” chimes a slender middle-aged man in a pub cap, which somehow feels very out of place among all this central American farmland. He hops down the front steps of his shop, a huge sign dangling overhead that says Bobby’s Books n’ Things.
“I don’t recognize you two,” he says, cocking an eyebrow, “and you’re not dressed like reporters, unless…” He steps forward with a pointer finger and thumb on his chin. “Are you from some alternative publication outta Boulder?”
Steph grins, and I do too.
“Good guess,” she says. “Alternative, yes. Publication, no. We’re musicians.”
Warmth pours over his face.
“Ah,” he coos, “music is the spice of life. I can’t get any work done without it.” He gestures up at his bookstore and lets out a heavy sign. “Been in the business sixty years, my family.”
I look to Steph, who also seems to have clocked the weight of his words. He said it so sadly. More melancholy than nostalgia.
“Has… business slowed down?” she asks.
He gives a sad chuckle.
“You could say that. You wouldn’t think a drought would hit a bookstore so hard, but… we used to have a café attached. Right over there.”
I follow his gaze to a tattered awning off the side of Bobby’s Books n’ Things. Totally empty underneath. No chairs, no tables, no other sign that a café had ever been part of the business. I imagine what this place must have looked like just a few years ago. Did kids gather here after school to do their homework? Did parents use this as a pickup spot once they were off work? How many first dates happened here that led to deeper connections? How many business deals happened here, starting new ventures that may not have otherwise existed?
Did little Jonie Macon come here when he was little?
“You can’t run a café on no water,” he shrugs, “so there that went. Anyway, I’m Bobby.”
Steph shakes his hand.
“Did your parents name you after the place?”
Bobby and I both look at Steph in total confusion.
“I, uh… You just said it had been around for sixty years, so… it’s older than you, right?”
His face goes blank for a minute before he absolutely erupts in laughter.
A woman across the street, straining under the weight of an enormous potted plant, emerges from her flower shop.
“The hell are you laughing about, Robert?”
“These two,” he chuckles as he slowly regains his composure. “These lovely ladies, bless ’em, asked if I’m named after this place.”
“Oh, don’t flatter him,” she grunts, setting the plant down on the porch and brushing the potting soil from her apron. “That’s Robert William Dalliday, the fifth. He won’t let me forget it. And I’m Paisley Anne Galloway, the first. Still Galloway Flowers though,” she says, gesturing to her own business’s sign. “So I overheard you two are musicians! Are we getting a performance here in Barbazal for the election?”
“Jonie musta covered it,” grins Robert proudly, and then he levels his eyes at me. “He did pay y’all, right? I like Jonie, but I don’t trust politicians, and he’s, well…”
His voice trails off, but the look he and Paisley exchange says it all: one of them now.
There’s a story there, but I don’t press. I get back to the topic I want to know more about.
“You have a beautiful floral shop,” I say. “But how do you run this place with the drought?”
Her eyes narrow slightly, and I wonder if I’ve said something wrong.
“You two here with the government?” she asks, her voice bitter. “I’m not skimming extra off the city’s supply if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“No, of course not,” Steph jumps in quickly.
“I just,” I say, trying to save this conversation, “wanted to know if you’re doing okay. If this place is… doing okay.”
Paisley and Bobby both soften, still staring at me.
“Sorry,” says Paisley, her shoulders relaxing. “It’s just… been a long summer.”
“I apologize too,” admits Bobby. “But if you want to know all ’bout Barbazal, how we got here, our journey to where we are today? Go look at that statue.”
He points into the distance, through the shops, where the path continues to the town square. A huge white stone statue sits mounted on a pillar in the middle, and I look to Steph, who’s looking back at me with a nod.
To the statue.
* * *
We make it to the center of the town, where that huge stone carving is waiting for us. It’s clearly a man on a horse, but I find the little bronze plaque around the other side and read it aloud, curiosity taking a firm hold on me.
AUGUSTUS JEREMIAH OSCAR RHETT BARBAZAL, II
COMMEMORATED HERE FOR HIS GOD-LIKE LOVE
AND COMPASSION IN PLANTING THIS TOWN ON A
FOUNDATION OF LOVE, WHERE ALL ARE WELCOME.
1928
“Wow,” says Steph, stepping up next to me and inspecting the plaque herself. She reaches down and traces the letters. Then she looks up at Mr. Barbazal. “That’s… impressively progressive.”
“1928?” I ask, following her gaze up to the horse and its rider. “I have a feeling love and compassion might have meant something totally different back then.”
“What, letting their workers use the same bathrooms as them?”
“Maybe.”
“Or maybe he was nicer than that. It says right there, underlined, all are welcome. Although, I guess, welcome doesn’t necessarily mean accepted.”
I study his face, turned up toward the sky, arm outstretched, holding his hat like he’s about to fling it into the air. His other hand is, strangely, reaching behind him. Like, all five fingers outstretched, as if he’s reaching for someone not pictured.
As if he’s prepared to help those behind him.
I grin.
“I’m gonna believe he was awesome.”
I feel Steph look over at me, but I keep my gaze on his face.
“In fact,” I continue, beginning to walk, folding my arms and reaching into the deepest recesses of my brain’s vats of creativity, “Mr. Augustus Jeremiah Oscar Rhett Barbazal, the second, began his life as a humble shoe-shiner—”
“What are you doing?”
I glance over my shoulder with a grin. “LARPing.”
I catch her grin before I turn back to pacing.
“He began as a shoe-shiner in Denver, Colorado. Mr. Barbazal would shine the shoes of the best of men. Bankers. Venture capitalists. Hedge fund managers. Stockbrokers—”
“Do you know the difference between all of those, or—”
“Shh,” I chuckle. “Do you wanna hear the story or not?” Steph folds her arms and rolls her eyes.
“Stockbrokers,” I continue. “But he was unhappy. He was lonely. He was shining shoes… but his life wasn’t so shiny.”
“Oh my god.”
“But,” I continue over Steph’s playful muttering, leaning around the statue for dramatic effect, “he had a vision. He had a dream. He knew he was going somewhere special, somewhere his heart could sing into the sky and the wind would rise up behind him, spurring him onward into the great unknown.”
“Isn’t that a Lord Huron lyric?”
“Sounds like it, huh? But no. Anyway, Mr. Augustus Jeremiah Oscar Rhett Barbazal, the second, packed up everything he owned, and he walked off into the night with nothing to his name except his shoe-shining briefcase and a granola bar.”
“Had granola bars been invented yet?”
“Okay, then jerky or… hardtack or some shit,” I laugh. “Anyway, he walked for days. He was so, so tired. So, so hungry. He dreamt of tomahawk steak and pickles.”
That gets a pffft out of Steph.
“And then, just when he thought he couldn’t go on, just as the hunger threatened to consume him, he found a clearing. Or what he thought was a clearing. He found a community of campers. Only three of them. But they all had the same dream: walking into the wilderness with only a briefcase and a snack, to create a place where love thrives, and compassion commands the law.”
Steph’s face has gone from Oh holy hell this is the goofiest story I’ve ever heard to Oh shit, you’ve got my attention.
“Turns out, he was devastatingly gay.”
“Devastatingly, you say?” she laughs. “I’m using that from now on. ‘Hi, name’s Steph Gingrich. Expert drummer, impeccable radio host, devastatingly gay.’”
“I like it. And I guess that makes me Alex Chen, professional guitarist, expert emotion-reader, devastatingly gay.”
“Lucky for both of us,” she says, stepping around the statue to join me. Before I can realize what’s even happening, she leans forward, slips her arm around my waist, tips my chin up with her free hand and plants a kiss next to my mouth.
“Hi,” I whisper, slipping both my hands around her waist and pulling her into me. I kiss her back, square on the lips this time, wanting to drink her in and assure her we’re going to make it out here in the middle of fucking nowhere, because we have each other.
She pulls back.
“Hey,” she says, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Thanks for being out here with me. For this adventure. It’s… pretty cool. Even if Fort Collins is… maybe not happening.”
“It’s happening,” I promise, although I’m still not sure how we’re going to fix this stupid car, and drive six hours to the show by tomorrow night. “Anyone in the group chat have an old Saturn for us?”
I immediately wish I hadn’t asked. Steph’s smile vanishes. She reaches into her pocket to pull out her phone and check. I take the moment to look back up at the statue, wondering what the original Mr. Barbazal was really like. He supposedly founded this place on compassion and love, but… would he have tried to fix the car of two strangers who’d wandered into his home?
I can feel my forehead wrinkling as determination wells in me.
“Someone in this town has to have the means to help, and I intend to find out who. Even if I have to start busting down some doors.”
“Okay, woah,” she says, hands up like she’s calming a racehorse. “No need to get violent on these people.”
“Violent on who?” comes a voice from nearby, so close it startles both of us into oblivion. As I focus on slowing my heart rate back down to a survivable pace, a figure emerges from around the other side of the statue—a tall man, white cowboy hat, grey T-shirt, dark jeans. He has a big gray handlebar mustache. Looks like a country singer from, like, the Eighties maybe?
“Morning!” He grins, warmly.
Warmth radiates from him. His smile is genuine, like the kind of smile you see on a parent’s face at their kid’s wedding. Is he always this bubbly? In a way… he reminds me of Gabe.
I somehow trust him immediately.
“Morning,” I reply.
“Nice to meet both of you. I’m Mayor Griffin Biggs. I heard you two broke down just down the road. Hope you don’t mind that I arranged a tow for ya.”
“Mayor?” asks Steph.
“A tow?” I ask.
“’Course!” he says, as if the idea of just leaving the car out there was absolutely preposterous. “Can’t have vehicles broken down on the highway. It’s a hazard to drivers, not to mention who knows what could happen to it out there. You can find it at Elias’s shop. It’s just up the road that way. Walkable distance. Maybe half a mile. Get yer exercise.”
I smile at him, then look at Steph.
“Sounds like the car will be safer now.”
That gets her to crack a smile.
“Thanks, Mayor Biggs,” she says.
“Don’t mention it. City’s covering the cost of the tow. Can’t rightfully tow a car and then charge the owners, seein’ as y’all are so young. How’d you end up here anyway?”
“We’re supposed to play a show in Fort Collins tomorrow night,” Steph explains. I nod.
“Oh, you’re musicians?” He grins hugely. “That’s delightful! I used to play the banjo myself years ago—don’t tell anyone you heard that. Had to let it go after the missus passed.”
“Oh, I’m… sorry to hear that.” And I really am. “Why, uh, why did you give it up when she passed?”
A blue aura glows over his head, and Steph looks at me like Why the hell are you asking this poor man such invasive questions?!
He answers though.
“She loved the banjo. She’s the one who taught me to play. My Wisteria Avileen. We used to be a whole family of musicians, me, Wisteria, and our twelve.”
“Your twelve?” asks Steph.
“Children. Most are grown now.”
Holy shit, this man has twelve kids.
“Clover, Ethel, Heather, Clementine, Blossom, Rosemary, Primrose, Juniper, Opal, Daisy, Laurel, and Iris. All girls.” His aura fades from blue to a brilliant gold at the mention of his daughters, and my heart lifts. I feel a warmth come over me, a cloud-soft tickle against my skin like I’m neck-deep in a bowl of feathers, or like fish are gently swimming all around me in a sea of gold. It makes me wonder when, if ever, I would have seen Dad glowing gold. It’s hard to imagine. If I’d had my powers then, I can only dream of what he would have looked like. Definitely purple. All the time. Especially right before he walked out.
