Walk Among Us, page 2
The man was at least six feet tall, pale, and blue-eyed, with a close-cropped beard a shade darker than his sandy-blond hair, which was tied in a short ponytail at the nape of his neck. He was dressed in a hoodie and jeans and had a giant tote bag slung over each shoulder.
“You don’t have to apologize,” he said. Clea couldn’t place his accent. She could feel his eyes on her as he continued, “I ran into you, after all. Are you all right?”
Clea shrank back and lowered her hand from her nose, averting her eyes to the sidewalk again. She nodded mutely.
“Scuse me,” someone snapped from behind them, and they moved aside simultaneously as a dark-haired girl with a forearm crutch breezed past them, opened the door with her free hand, and disappeared inside the building without sparing them a passing glance.
So the door was unlocked.
The blond man regarded Clea with an uncertain half smile. “Are you here for . . . ?”
“Um, yeah,” Clea said, holding up the crumpled flyer. “This is the right place, right?”
“Ah, it sure is.” The man’s face lit up into a friendly grin, and he opened the door and gestured for her to go in before him. “Come on in. You’re a little early—we’re still getting things set up, I’m afraid.”
Clea only hesitated a moment before she walked inside, expecting to have to fumble for a light switch. She stopped short when she saw that the room was indeed fully lit, and she turned around to look at the front windows, confused; she now realized that they were heavily tinted, which is why the building had seemed so dark and abandoned before.
“Early?” she managed as he slipped in the door behind her.
He nodded at the flyer in her hand, which she looked at again more closely. “It says eight,” she observed.
“It says eight thirty,” he corrected gently in his strange accent, pointing to the corner of the page, which had been worried away by Clea’s twisting and crumpling.
“Oh,” she said. I’m such an idiot.
“It’s fine, though,” he said, brushing past her to enter the room. “We’re glad you’re here.”
Clea stole a glance at him as he made his way across the room, which was full of long folding tables and rickety folding chairs. The only other person in the room was the girl who’d pushed past him, and she sat in one of the chairs with her crutch leaned up against the table and her backpack under the seat. She hadn’t taken off her coat, but Clea could see she was wearing a black hoodie with some emo band’s logo on it, her hair partially covered by a slouching black beanie. She was playing a game on her Nintendo Switch; she must’ve pulled it out of her bag the moment she sat down, having entered only seconds before Clea and Mysterious Tote Bag Man.
“You can have a seat, too, if you’d like,” the man said as he plopped said tote bags down on the front table and started extracting some cups, plates, and napkins, and then all manner of snacks after that: tins of gourmet cocoa powder and boxes of fresh Buckeye Donuts from one bag and several very old board games from the other.
“I was in charge of supplies,” he said with a smile, his startling blue eyes darting up from his work just for a moment to observe Clea. Then he frowned a bit and turned to the dark-haired girl. “Hmm, if the door was unlocked—was there anyone inside when you got here?”
“I thought I saw a lady in the back, but I didn’t get a good look,” she replied without looking up from her game.
As if on cue, the back door opened and a red-haired woman entered the space, wielding a large hot-water dispenser. It was one of the big silver ones Clea recalled from her churchgoing days as a child, and although she remembered them being heavy—especially when full—the woman carried it effortlessly.
“Welcome,” said the woman, who had an accent similar to the man’s. She plopped the water dispenser down next to the tins of cocoa, turned to Clea and the other girl, and said, “You can help yourselves. First come, first served.”
Clea made the slightest movement to get up, but the other girl said, “I’d rather wait for everyone else to get here,” and Clea leaned back in her chair and nodded, although the doughnuts called to her, the siren’s song of fresh pastry. Not necessarily because she was hungry but because she was uneasy and wanted something to do with her hands, something to put in her mouth so she wouldn’t feel like she had to talk.
“Suit yourself. We’re expecting a few more people,” the man said, “but it’s early yet.” When neither Clea nor the dark-haired girl responded, he said something to the woman in a language Clea didn’t recognize.
Clea didn’t look up from her hands, but she could feel the woman’s eyes on her. The redhead was almost as tall as the man, dressed in tight black jeans and tall black riding boots, and a tunic-length cable-knit sweater in heathered grays. She was as pale as her companion but wore precisely winged black eyeliner, subtle smoky eye shadow, and deep red lipstick, all so expertly applied that it seemed like she’d just walked out of a fashion magazine.
Clea was immediately suspicious of her, because she wasn’t sure someone so objectively beautiful would be able to identify with the feeling of being invisible. Suddenly she felt that the flyer had been a false advertisement; it was clear to her that at least one of the people running this meeting had never been in her shoes.
The dark-haired girl had finally looked up from her game and was observing the woman and man talking through narrowed eyes, and she turned sideways slightly to lock eyes with Clea for just one moment—long enough for Clea to know that she was thinking the same thing.
Then the moment was gone, and the girl looked back down at her game, but not without offering a reluctant “Jade Mendez.”
Clea managed a smile. “Clea Albright.”
“Cleo?”
“No, Clea. Short for Cornelia.”
“That’s a weird way to shorten Cornelia. Do people ever call you Corny?”
“Only when they’re making fun of me.”
“What about Cleopatra?”
Thinking immediately of her roommate’s horrid friend Delaney, Clea forced a smile. “Only when they’re really making fun of me.”
“Well, that’s a shitty thing to do. Cleopatra is an awesome name.”
“Yeah, I guess, but my name’s Cornelia.”
“Yeah, I got that. I’m just saying.”
And that was the end of the conversation.
Thankfully, other people began to wander in: a few lonely students like them, a few well-groomed people in suits, but also a few homeless people who made a beeline for the cocoa and doughnuts, which the man and woman offered up graciously. At one point, the city bus stopped just outside the building and a few more people trickled in, immigrants from the suburbs on the other side of town, each one all alone, addressing the man and woman at the front of the room in halting English.
One of them sat down to breastfeed her fussy baby: a new mother dressed in raggedy clothes, her features gaunt, eyeing the doughnuts and cocoa from across the room. At that point, the redheaded woman picked up the box and brought it over to her, offering it out and saying, “Please help yourself. You must be hungry.”
The woman smiled but looked uncertain and said something in another language Clea didn’t know. But surprisingly, the redhead responded in kind, and the woman’s face lit up and her eyes filled with tears as she accepted a doughnut from the box.
Before long, the room was nearly full—although still awkwardly silent besides the man and woman greeting any newcomers—and Clea finally decided to get in line for cocoa and doughnuts. She turned to ask Jade if she wanted anything so she wouldn’t have to get up, but the girl gave her a vicious look as if she knew exactly what Clea was about to say. Jade then got to her feet and grabbed her crutch, moved swiftly across the room, and somehow made it to the line before Clea was even out of her seat.
Clea got in line behind her and grabbed a pumpkin spice doughnut and a cup of cocoa. When she noticed Jade fumbling to pick up her own doughnut and cup at the same time, Clea opened her mouth to offer help at the exact moment Jade stuffed the doughnut into her mouth to carry it, grabbed her cocoa with her free hand, and stormed back to her seat.
“I don’t want your help,” Jade muttered when they were both back in their seats. “I can’t fucking stand people feeling sorry for me.”
“Good thing I don’t, then,” Clea replied without looking at her. The words had come out before she could stop them, and she braced herself for a scathing retort, but when she turned to give Jade a sideways look, she could swear the girl was smirking.
“Welcome, everyone,” the man said when eight thirty rolled around and the time finally came to start . . . well, whatever this was. “My name is Finn, and this is—”
“Ingrid,” the redhead said. Clea could tell even from the back of the room that the woman’s tight-lipped smile was forced.
“We’re so glad you all could come today,” Finn continued. “Ingrid and I formed this community support group because, since we’re new in town ourselves, we recognized a need for this sort of thing. As we all know, Columbus is not only home to a diverse group of people in every sense of the word but the city is also expanding pretty quickly. It’s easy to get lost in the shuffle—you wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
The people in the room remained mostly silent; most of them, Clea thought, were probably new in town as well and took him at his word. She herself wasn’t overly familiar with the city yet, having grown up several hours away. She also hadn’t strayed far from campus in the past couple months since the semester began.
“Some of you may feel isolated,” said Ingrid. “Maybe you moved here alone for a job, or you moved here for a spouse and don’t know anyone. Maybe you’re struggling with mental illness and are having trouble finding help. Maybe you came here from far away in hopes of a better life. Maybe some of you are here, in this city, for reasons beyond your control—hell, maybe there’s a lot in your life that you feel is out of your control. You may feel invisible; you may even feel powerless.”
She paused, and the room was quiet, expectant. Clea leaned forward in her seat involuntarily, waiting for the but.
“But,” said Ingrid, “we’re here to tell you that’s not so. And even though, unfortunately, there’s only so much we can do for you in one night, we hope you stick around. Our flyers for this meeting spoke to you all for different reasons, but in the end, the reason you’re all here is the same.”
The silence in the room was absolute, but Clea had goose bumps. Ingrid’s hammer had hit her metaphorical nail right on the head.
Finn held his hands palms up and smiled reassuringly. “Now, we won’t go around the room and introduce ourselves—we know that can be painful for some of you.” He seemed to look at Clea directly when he said this, and she looked away.
“For today,” said Ingrid, “we’d just like you to enjoy your snacks and maybe meet someone new. This group is called the Common Cause, and Finn and I are your community coordinators. We really hope you come again next week. We don’t want to bore you with a lecture today. Just trust us when we say that we can help you. You don’t have to participate in anything you don’t want to—for now, just hear us out. That’s all we ask.”
Clea felt an overwhelming sense of relief. When they had started talking, she had been afraid she’d be forced into doing things like icebreakers and team-building exercises. Things where she’d have to talk in front of other people. At least it seemed like Finn and Ingrid were smart enough to know how to avoid scaring off an entire group of misfits.
People had started to leave one by one, so Finn added, “We’ve rented out the space for the night, so feel free to stay as long as you’d like. It’s cold outside.” He directed this last bit to the homeless people who had been lingering anyway.
With that, it seemed their speech was over. Some more people started to leave, especially when a bus pulled up. Others went up for second helpings of doughnuts and cocoa. Very few seemed to talk to the others.
Ingrid had a look on her face like she thought the people leaving were all ungrateful, which went against everything she and Finn had said earlier. But as soon as she noticed Clea eyeing her surreptitiously, her expression smoothed into something unreadable.
Jade hadn’t made a move to get up, but she’d taken her Switch out again, leaning her elbows on the empty table in front of her as she gamed. She’d apparently already tossed her doughnut plate and cocoa cup into the trash. Clea hadn’t even noticed her eat the food, but then again, she hadn’t really been paying attention. Plenty of other people in the room had wolfed down their first round of doughnuts and gone back for seconds already, and Clea rather wanted to be one of them. She hadn’t eaten dinner yet. She could almost taste another pumpkin spice doughnut on her tongue.
But fear of judgment was very strong for her when she was forced to eat in front of other people, and it was that very fear that kept her in her seat and made her turn to the girl next to her instead.
“Do you . . . want to play a game?” Clea hedged.
“I’m already playing a game,” Jade said without looking up.
Clea shifted and the folding chair creaked beneath her. She was suddenly overwhelmed with the sudden urge to go home, but it was too early yet; Hannah might still be there, and Clea never texted her to ask whether or not she and her friends were around. She didn’t want to annoy Hannah with these texts every night, so she always just assumed the worst, even if it turned out they were getting ready in another person’s dorm room that night. It unsettled Clea to have to live like this, for the only time she was ever comfortable was when the dorm room, her space, was her own. It made her anxious that she never knew what to expect every time she came “home.”
Maybe I will get another doughnut, Clea thought, and then go to the library and watch Netflix. She never went anywhere without her laptop for exactly this reason.
But as soon as she moved to stand, someone plopped a tattered box containing Candy Land on the table. Clea’s startled gaze moved from the box up to the face of the person standing across from her and found herself looking at Finn.
“Were you going somewhere?” he asked, the picture of innocence.
“J-just to get another doughnut,” Clea managed.
“It’s okay if you were; you’re free to leave,” he said with a smile.
Clea shook her head. “I wasn’t going anywhere. Just—just to see if there were any pumpkin doughnuts left.”
Finn’s smile widened and his eyes crinkled at the corners. “Those are my favorite. I have to admit, I was tempted to eat a few of them on the way here.”
“You and what’s-her-face didn’t touch the food,” Jade observed with a sidelong glance at the pair of them.
“Well, that’s because the food is for you all,” Finn said cheerfully. “Ingrid and I will only give away what’s left, so please eat up. There’s a lot left, and we don’t want to take it all.”
As if on cue, Ingrid—who was deep in conversation with the breastfeeding mother she’d addressed earlier in another language, her infant now asleep in its sling across her chest—got up and grabbed one of the half-empty boxes of doughnuts and pressed it into the woman’s hands. The woman shook her head and tried to force the box back on her but eventually relented, causing Ingrid to produce the first genuine smile Clea had seen from her.
“Are you guys a cult or something?” Jade asked all of a sudden, lowering her Switch and narrowing her eyes at Finn.
His smile was still plastered in place and didn’t lose any of its good humor, although his own eyes narrowed slightly.
“Of course not,” he said. “Common Causes are springing up all over the Midwest. Cities are growing, but technology has isolated us from one another. That’s why websites like Meetup exist, you know.”
“Right, I know.” Jade rolled her eyes. “That’s how I found you guys. That’s why I’m even here.”
Clea started. So that’s why people from all over the city had shown up tonight. She hadn’t torn down the only flyer.
“But that’s just proof that technology brings us together, too,” Jade continued. “I game with people all over the country, and they’ve become my friends. I talk to them all the time online. So it’s bullshit to say that technology isolates us. It connects us.”
“Then why are you here?” Finn asked without a hint of spite in his voice—just genuine confusion, the need to understand where her argument was coming from. “Why did you come tonight . . . I’m sorry, what was your name?”
“Jade.”
“Why did you come tonight, Jade?” he repeated, more softly this time.
At this, she finally lowered her game and sighed. “Because it’s great to have friends online and all, but every once in a while, I just want to, like . . . eat dinner with someone, you know? To not do everything alone all the time.”
Finn seemed satisfied by this answer, so much so that Jade rolled her eyes when she caught his expression and went back to her video game.
“I’d wager that you’re not the only one in this room who feels this way,” he said, and he looked to Clea with raised eyebrows. “Which is why we made this group in the first place. We saw a need, and we’re trying to fill it.”
Clea only nodded.
Finn looked down at Candy Land. “It’s a shame. I picked up all these games at the thrift store on the way here, and it seems no one is sticking around to play. Ah, well.”
“That’s because Candy Land is lame,” Jade said without missing a beat. “And so’s guilting us into trying to stick around.”
“Oh, is it lame?” Finn asked, seeming genuinely concerned. “We didn’t have it where I grew up. It looked . . . I don’t know. Cute?”
“It’s for babies,” Jade deadpanned at the exact same time that Clea said, “I mean, it’s cute, but . . .”
They exchanged glances, and then Clea deflated and added, “But I mean, yeah, it’s kind of for babies.”
“Oh,” said Finn. He looked almost comically disappointed. Across the room, Ingrid looked up at them as she started gathering the party supplies and moving them to the back room. For some reason, the scowl that flashed across her face made Clea change her mind.
