Arrival (Maddy Young Saga 1) Page 5

 Chapter 5.

  Moving On

  Today was Friday.

  JeAnn was wearing what I could only describe as a Snuggie. A big red blanket with arm sleeves. I hoped she was wearing something underneath the blanket, but I couldn’t be sure. There was a good chance the only thing separating me from eight folds of fat was a thin layer of super soft luxurious fleece.

  She asked, “How do you like living at the Adjustment House?”

  I’d been living at the Adjustment House for going on a week now. I had my own one bedroom apartment. The place had brown shag carpet, light blue walls, and came fully furnished with all the necessities, couch, chairs, table, TV, anything and everything one would expect. There was a large meeting room and you were encouraged—by encouraged, I mean mandated—to attend three meetings a week. So far, this week, I’d attended a meeting titled, “The Road to Gainful Employment,” and another one titled, “Two Safety.” Both had been over three hours long and both times I had contemplated jabbing my pen into my neck. And I would have, if I hadn’t been accompanied by my new pal Darrel, who had decided to stay in Denver after all.

  I said, “It’s okay.”

  “There are restrictions, but you’ll find that they will help you in the long run.”

  One of the restrictions she was referring to was the eleven-thirty curfew. Two days earlier, after a dinner of pork chops, corn on the cob, a beet salad, and peach cobbler at the House cafeteria, Darrel and I had checked out a basketball and walked to a lighted park six blocks away. We played a little one-on-one, drank a couple beers Darrel had somehow acquired, and more or less chatted the night away. We didn’t realize how late it’d gotten until a Jeep drove up to the curb and over the intercom told us we were breaking curfew and to report to the Two Adjustment House immediately.

  “Nothing I can’t manage.”

  “Have you made any friends?”

  There were over two hundred people living in the Adjustment House, including the nine newest Arrivals, all from my orientation class. I had made a couple acquaintances, three guys who had all arrived together eleven weeks earlier. They had a week left, then they would be released, “into the wild,” as they referred to it. I’d sit with them if I saw them at the cafeteria, but I didn’t want to forge a bond with anyone who was about to leave. More or less, Darrel and I kept to ourselves. I think this was because we were both introverts. Both loners in our own right.

  Instead of going into this, I answered, “A couple.”

  “Any girls?” She raised her eyebrows.

  “A couple.”

  This was a lie. I had yet to speak a word to anyone of the opposite sex. I felt like I was back in high school. But, more than that, I just didn’t care. The prospect of sex was the last thing on my mind. That being said, there was one woman I’d caught sneaking glances at me. A pretty blonde. I’d heard a couple of the other guys talking about her. They all thought she was a knockout. I wasn’t convinced.

  JeAnn leaned forward and I could tell social hour was over. “You’re probably wondering why I called you here.”

  When I’d gotten back to my room last night—after losing three successive games of Dominoes to Darrel—there was a note taped to my door. It was from JeAnn. She wanted to meet with me in the morning if possible.

  She didn’t wait for my reply. “I’ve been busy since we last met.” She rummaged around under her desk, then extracted a packet. She handed it to me.

  I looked at it for a moment. Flipped through it superficially.

  She said, “It’s tomorrow.”

  I looked back down at the packet. I’d held a similar packet in my hands just hours before my death, making sure I had the date, time, and location correct. On the cover of the packet were the words, “Colorado Bar Exam. Fall Session.”

  I looked up from the packet. I thought back on the hundreds of hours I’d spent studying over the course of the past three months, the late nights, the boxes of pizza, the Red Bulls, and now it wouldn’t have been for nothing. Except. I couldn’t think of a single thing I’d learned. Everything was gone. The data on the hard drive wiped clean.

  I shook my head and said, “There’s no way I can take the bar tomorrow.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll do fine.”

  That’s what I’d thought the last time I took it and I’d gotten a measly 100 points out of 400. “I’m not taking it.”

  “You have to.”

  “Have to what?”

  “You have to take the test.”

  “Why? I’ll just take it in the spring.”

  “I signed you up already.”

  “So, unsign me up.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Simplify it for me.”

  “I have a friend on the board, I called in a favor. If you don’t take the test tomorrow, you will have to enroll in law school here.”

  I leaned back. “What if I take the test and fail it?”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to go back to law school.”

  “Why?”

  “That was my friend's only stipulation. You pass, you get to be a lawyer here. You fail, you go back to school.”

  “What if I’d already passed the Bar and I was a practicing lawyer?”

  “Did you pass the Bar? Were you a practicing lawyer?”

  No and no. I didn’t have to tell her this. She knew.

  She said, “But if you had passed the bar and if you had been a practicing lawyer, you would have been forced to take a six-month refresher course, then you would have had to take the Bar. If you failed it once, you could appeal to take it again. If you failed a second time, you would have to go to school here.”

   “They make it hard to be a lawyer.”

  “And there’s still too damn many of ya.”

  I sat there in silence for a good minute. Finally I said, “So, I can’t lose anything by taking the test. If by some miracle I pass it, then that’s great. And if I fail, which I’m positive I will, I’m no worse off than I would have been if I hadn’t taken it at all.”

  JeAnn, who had been waiting patiently for me to draw this conclusion, beamed. “Exactly.”

  For a moment, I felt encouraged. That is, until the two-ton anvil landed on my head. I knew nothing about this place. I’d been here two weeks. Everything was different. Including the laws.

  I said, “How exactly do you propose I'm going to pass the Bar when I know nothing about the laws that govern this place.”

  “I thought you might ask that.” She leaned down and after a couple moments of strenuous breathing, and one instance where I thought her Snuggie was attacking her, she reemerged with a textbook and a thick study-guide . She slid them across the table and said, “I propose you start studying.”

  I read the title of the textbook, Two Law Review.

  I slid back in the chair and let loose an epic groan. One that sounded like the top of a coffin being wrenched open after a century underground. I groaned because I never wanted to study another minute. I groaned because there was a textbook—weighing roughly the same as one of JeAnn’s floppy arms—patiently waiting to give me a migraine.

  JeAnn said, “Did I mention I had a present for you?”

  I was still pouting but managed, “You did not.”

  “Well I do.”

  She disappeared under her desk a second time and I had the feeling the odds of her ever resurfacing where grim. But she proved me wrong, popping up like one of those gophers you hit with the bat at Chucky Cheese. Except, for the analogy to work, I suppose the holes would have to be six feet in diameter, the bat would have to be a wrecking ball, and the Chucky Cheese would have to be a Snuggie Factory.

  JeAnn was holding a box in her hands. It wasn’t big, but then again, it wasn’t small. She handed it to me and said, “This should cheer you up.”

  The side of the box read, “SONYY Helium3.”

  It was a laptop.

  JeAnn said, “My friend
said you needed a laptop to take the Bar, so I went out and got you one. The guy at the store said it was the lightest and fastest one out right now.”

  I’d never had enough money for a laptop, using the computers at school if I needed one, and I had to check out a loaner laptop the first time I took the Bar. I looked down at the box for a long five seconds. The box in my lap was the first present anyone had given me in more than ten years. I looked up, took a deep breath, and said two words that did not come easily to me, “Thank you.”

  JeAnn smiled. “You’re welcome.”

  And for the first time since I died, I began to cry.

  ⠔

  The sun was an inch above the horizon when I finally sat down and peeled back the cover of the nine hundred and twenty-three page book that had left a two-inch indention in the center cushion of my sofa.

  After I’d stopped weeping—it wasn’t that bad; seven tears, two big sniffs—I’d gone for a bite to eat at the cafeteria, then met Darrel for our daily best-of-three Domino extravaganza. As my single greatest quality is procrastination, I would gladly have played best of forty-one, but Darrel had an interview lined up with the Denver Police Department and left me to play Domino solitaire, aka, building a castle out of Dominoes.

  After three castles, I peered up at the clock. It was 3:34 p.m. Less than sixteen hours until I had to sign in for the Bar. Should probably get studying.

  Should.

  There was a meeting that started at three-thirty and since I still hadn't attended my third mandated meeting, I decided to see what it was about. The meeting was in conference room B. The printed sheet taped to the outside of the door read, “Traffic Safety. The Do’s and Don’ts of Driving.”

  Red light.

  I did a U-turn and made my way back to my quaint little bungalow. The textbook and study guide were exactly where I’d left them four hours earlier. Next to the books was the shiny box that held my brand new laptop. JeAnn made me promise her I wouldn’t take the laptop out until tomorrow morning. She said it would distract me from studying. I told her I would need to install a bunch of stuff, but she said the guy at Circuit City—apparently, dead businesses come to Two as well—installed everything and it was ready to go. All I had to do was turn it on. Which was exactly what I wanted to do. But a promise is a promise. Even if it is to a carpet muncher in a red Snuggie.

  I did some push-ups. Some sit-ups. Then I went for a quick jog. I took a shower. Finally, I picked up the study guide and walked it over to the round wooden table filling the compact area that would be deemed the condo’s dining room.

  I flipped it open to a random page and began reading: The defendant was arrested on February 1 and released one month later on March 1 after being charged with a felony. On December 1 of the same year as his arrest, he filed a motion to discharge since no trial or other action had occurred to that point. The court held a hearing 3 days after the motion was filed. Defendant should be

  (A) discharged because more than 175 days passed between arrest and the filing

  of the motion to discharge.

  (B) discharged because more than 175 days passed between his release from jail and the filing of the motion to discharge.

  (C) brought to trial within 90 days of the filing of the motion to discharge.

  (D) brought to trial within 10 days of the hearing on the motion to discharge.

  (E) Maddy doesn’t really care.

  It was (E).

  Three minutes later, my new laptop was powered up and I was logging onto the internet.

  ⠔

  The internet was basically the same. Except for one small detail. Google was now Goggle. Same font. Same everything. The same search box. Same colorful lettering. But now instead of Googling something, you Goggled it.

  First off, I Goggled myself, Madison Young.

  I don’t know what I was expecting. Five hits. Five million. Maybe a link to YouTube where the video of my appearance—Man with Boner—had gone viral.

  No hits.

  For some reason, the next thing I Goggled was Google.

  Strange I know.

  There were a couple thousand hits. I clicked on a link that took me to the “Urban dictionary.” The definition for Google was, “A popular search engine from the past.”

  I was quickly learning the past meant your life before this one.

  Next I Goggled, YouTube.

  Again, there were several thousand hits. But there was no, “YouTube.”

  I Goggled, Internet Video Database.

  There were billions of hits. The most popular was a site called, “YouVid.”

  Since I didn’t own a computer, I didn’t spend hours watching asinine videos—as many of my classmates did and many doing so while in class—but I had spent my fair share of time on YouTube. Usually when I needed a break from writing a paper, researching an old case file, or because my friend Lauren wouldn’t stop sending me videos of a kitten sticking its head under the faucet. Yes, it’s cute, I get it.  My favorites, the ones that made my cheeks cramp up from smiling so hard, usually had to do with little kids saying funny stuff or simply laughing their asses off.  When Michael Jackson died, I watched the Thriller video twenty times. But I suppose that was in the past.

  I couldn’t help myself and I typed, “Guy Appears with Boner.”

  It took a bit of searching but I finally found it. It was called, “New Arrival has Stiffy.”

  It had over three million hits.  I watched it a couple times to make sure it was me. It was. Underneath the video was a button that said, “Share with your friends on Deadbook.”

  I clicked on the link. Deadbook was Two’s answer to Facebook. I hadn’t been the biggest advocate of Facebook in the past, but it was the best way to communicate with classmates. Within ten minutes, I had taken a picture of myself with the webcam that came standard on the laptop and loaded my profile.

  Next, I began searching for friends.

  There was only one name that came to mind. 

  Perry.

  Perry Whitcomb had attended the same elite middle school as me. You were forced to play a sport at Lassiter Middle School and I picked soccer.  Perry and I were both on the “C” team.  I had always been a head taller than most of my peers and I was especially uncoordinated in my youth.  I found it easier to mask my flailing limbs and awkward gait on the soccer field than say the basketball or tennis court.  The only player who was worse than me was Perry, which was sad considering Perry’s life revolved around soccer.  He would wear a different soccer jersey every day and he would drone on about English Premier League for hours.  He was fat, slow, uncoordinated, and for as much soccer as he watched, I’m not sure he understood the objective was to get the ball in the other team’s goal.

  The second game of our eighth grade season, Perry was substituted at goalie for his compulsory twenty-five minutes. Twenty-five minutes all the parents would spend holding their breath and hoping the three-goal lead we'd built up would withstand Perry’s dreaded play.

  It happened with eight minutes left in the game. The score was tied, 4-4.  Perry had already allowed three goals, two of which had gone through his legs. The other team had just missed a shot and Perry was getting ready to take the free kick. I could still replay it in slow motion. Perry running towards the ball, his face smashed together in concentration. His big lurching steps as he approached the ball. His knees buckling. His body crumbling to the ground.

  The coach never told us how Perry died. I always figured he had a heart attack.

  I typed his name in the search box and clicked search.

  Perry Whitcomb had come to Two. And from the looks of things Perry still loved soccer and still loved his food. (He was wearing a soccer jersey in his profile picture and he was still fat.)

  I clicked on his picture, but it wouldn’t let me look at his profile until we were friends. So I sent him a friend request. I wasn’t sure if he would recognize my picture, so I wrote him
a quick message: Perry, I don’t know if you remember me, we went to middle school together in Florida. Saw you were “here” and wanted to drop you a line. Maddy Young.

  I sent the message.

  I went to the bathroom and as I passed the couch, I looked at the two books. What was I doing? Why wasn’t I studying? I had just spent three months studying my ass off for this test. I knew all the material. If I crammed for the next twelve hours on the new stuff—according the JeAnn the stuff that was different from the past was highlighted in red, so basically I would just have to flip through the textbook and read all the highlighted parts—there was a good chance I could pass the Bar tomorrow.

  I picked up both books and made my way back to the table. I placed my hand on the top of the laptop and was getting ready to close it when I noticed I had a message. I clicked on it. It was from Perry. It was titled, “No Fucking Way.”

  I forgot to mention Perry had the dirtiest mouth and was the most sexually perverted individual I’d ever met. And he’d been twelve.

  I opened the message:

  No Fucking Way! Maddy Fucking Young! When did you get here? How did you die? What the fuck is up? You still playing soccer? Hit me back.

  I hit him back.

  I got here a couple weeks ago. You’re going to think I’m kidding, but I died jerking off in the shower. What is soccer?

  Perry: JERKING OFF IN THE SHOWER! Yeah right. How did you die? What do you think so far? Crazy huh? You know what soccer is asshole.

  Me: I’m serious. I died jerking off in the shower. Check, YouVid. (New Arrival with Stiffy.)  I think crazy is an understatement. You still playing soccer?

  Perry: HA! I saw that video last week. Holy shit. Nice dick. Of course I’m still playing soccer. I play in three leagues. What Adjustment House you in? Miami? Tampa?

  Maddy: Denver.

  Perry: NO FUCKING WAY. I’m in DENVER!

  Me: Serious?

  Perry: Yeah, I moved here three years ago. I work for the Denver Chronicle. Let’s meet up. I’m going to a bar downtown in about an hour. It’s called Pubbar. It's on the corner of J and 23. Lot’s of girlies.

  I looked at the books. Looked at the computer.

  Me: Okay. See you there.