Sparks Page 5

  “Sorry Heather,” Emma shouted. “We have to go!”

  “Don’t you dare, Wolf!” shouted Heather as she stomped up the hall toward us. “This ends today !”

  Emma turned to me. “Run,” she said casually.

  And she took off running like hell down the side hall.

  “You think you can outrun me?” Heather called.

  Tim and I followed Emma. Half of me wanted to just stay put and keep out of someone else’s fight, but for the moment, I was on Emma and Tim’s team.

  We ran down the hall, then down the next one, then ducked into the school newspaper office. I heard Heather behind us, calling Tim’s name out.

  “Get in here,” said Emma. “There’s a back exit.”

  We ran through the office and out a back door that took us to the staff parking lot. As soon as we got outside, Emma slumped against the wall, breathing heavily. She looked like she was almost hyperventilating—she wasn’t exactly in great shape for running that fast, obviously.

  “Think we lost her?” asked Tim.

  Emma nodded. “She’s not on the paper,” she said. “She probably won’t know about the door.”

  She forced herself back up and started walking out into the parking lot. Tim and I followed.

  “What was that all about?” I asked. “You didn’t, like, kill her family or anything, did you?”

  “Know how we told you we were in detention to meet people?” Emma asked between breaths.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “That was only half true. We also had to hide out from Heather,” said Emma.

  “She tends to get pranked during a lot of holy quests,” said Tim. “She usually doesn’t find out it was us. I guess she did today.”

  “We like to mess with her because she was mean to us in middle school,” said Emma. “You ever hear that rumor that Tim was gay?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Aren’t you?”

  Tim shook his head. “Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but that’s just a rumor Heather started a few years ago that won’t die. And she used to call Emma a sea otter or something.”

  “Manatee,” grumbled Emma. “She called me a manatee. Which is also known as a sea cow.”

  The parking lot was almost empty now—everyone had taken off after school. But off in the distance, at the edge of the lot, I could see an old, beat-up blue car that I just sort of instinctively knew was going to turn out to be Emma’s.

  “What prank do you think she found out about, anyway?” Tim asked.

  “The one a few weeks ago,” said Emma. “The dictionary one.”

  “That was a stupid one,” said Tim. “Because she’s totally not fat.”

  “Yeah, I know she’s still only about half my size, but I swear to Blue, she’s put on weight!” Emma turned to me. “And since she was getting chubbier, I put pictures of her into every dictionary in school next to the word ‘fat.’”

  “Who even cares if she’s putting on weight?” asked Tim. “She still looks fine.”

  Emma scowled. “Whatever,” she said, standing up. “It wasn’t even part of a holy quest.”

  “Well, obviously there was nothing holy about it.”

  “Can we just get going? She’s bound to figure out that we slipped outside sooner or later.”

  We walked all the way out to the beat-up old blue sedan, just like I expected we would. The car looked as though it hadn’t been cleaned in a while, and like it had gone for a drive in an acid rainstorm or something. Emma and Tim got in the front seats, and I let myself into the back.

  “Pardon the mess,” said Emma. “Just push the crap out of your way.”

  “Okay.”

  Stepping into Emma’s car was the first time I got the idea that going somewhere with the two of them might not be the safest thing I’d ever tried. I mean, I knew it could be trouble, but I didn’t realize that I might be putting myself in physical danger.

  All through the car, there were empty cans of energy drinks and paper bags from the Burger Box—some of which probably had strands of Nate Spoelstra’s hair inside of them, since he worked there—and then there was a large pile of laundry, a couple of board games, at least three backpacks, a trumpet, a bunch of Neighborhood Watch signs, enough sheets of paper to open an office supply store, and a few rusty pots and pans. And this was just the stuff I could see—if you cleared away the mess, there might have been some body parts in there, for all I knew. It certainly smelled bad enough. How did I know they weren’t going to cut me up into tiny pieces and keep me in the trunk?

  I didn’t even want to think about what might be in the trunk.

  On the dashboard was a little hood ornament or Buddha, or whoever that fat laughing bald guy you see in Chinese restaurants is, with a spring attached to his butt. I don’t know what color it was to start with, but it had been sort of sloppily painted blue. Emma and Tim both patted its head as they got in.

  “Check out the roof,” Emma said. I looked up to see several large holes. “A few more years and this thing’s going to be a convertible. Only it won’t be able to convert back to having a roof.

  “Emma hasn’t cleaned the car since she got it,” Tim explained, turning back. “And we have to keep it stocked with whatever we might need for holy quests.”

  “Tim was a Cub Scout,” said Emma. “He likes to be prepared.”

  “So you drive around with rusty cookware?” I asked.

  “You never know what might come in handy on a holy quest,” said Emma. “We could end up in another country by the time this night is up! You know Canada is only, like, nine hours from here? We could have breakfast there if we took off now.”

  “We don’t have the gas money to drive nine hours, though,” said Tim. “Just that one five dollar bill.”

  “And we couldn’t make it back in time for me to see Lisa tonight,” I said.

  “I’m just saying, is all,” said Emma. “If we had the time and money, we could go to Canada tonight. Nothing stopping us but the border guard. And when we needed to cook up some beans by the side of the road in Manitoba, you’d be glad we had the cookware.”

  Tim started to cough. “But we’d better at least get out of here, now.”

  Heather Quinn had made it out of the back door and was marching toward us.

  Emma started up the car and drove out of the parking lot and into the streets of the neighborhood behind the school. We barely got half a block before she came to an open garage and pulled in.

  “You live this close, but you drive to school?” I asked.

  “I don’t live here,” she said. “This is Jim the Janitor’s house. We can hide out here for a few minutes while we tell you about Bluedaism.”

  “Jim’s a cool cat,” said Tim. “Sometimes when we need money, he pays us to hang fliers for his chimney sweeping business.”

  “And he doesn’t mind if you use his garage for proselytizing?” I asked.

  “I’m sure he’d be cool with it,” said Tim. “Hell, I should shut the door. Then Quinn’ll never find us.”

  “She’s probably already driving around looking for us,” said Emma. “Probably thinks we vanished into thin air.”

  Tim stepped out and hit a button on the wall that made the garage door go down, effectively hiding us from Heather.

  I have nightmares about sneaking around in people’s houses all the time. I was sure that any second someone would step into the garage and call the cops on us. But nothing happened.

  Emma turned toward me as Tim climbed back into the car. “Now that we’ve escaped Quinn’s evil clutches … where were we?”

  “You were telling me how you made up a religion,” I said.

  “Right. So, we started hanging out together because no one else would, thanks partly to Heather,” said
Emma. “No one wanted to hang out with Fatty and Faggy.”

  Tim socked her in the arm. “I told you never to use that phrase again,” he said.

  She ignored him.

  “Anyway,” she went on, “in case you couldn’t guess by looking at me, I have body issues. I used to have every eating disorder known to science. Then I found I could get a self-esteem boost by getting a random guy to have sex with me. And while I was doing that, Tim was drinking his weight in cheap booze every night. We both decided we needed to quit.”

  “One of the twelve steps in AA is acknowledging that some higher power can help you,” said Tim. “So we made up The Church of Blue.”

  “We’re Bluish,” said Emma.

  “Okay,” I said. “So who’s this Blue guy, anyway? The guy on the dashboard?”

  “No, that’s just Bluddha,” said Emma. “Our good luck charm.”

  “Blue started out being Emma’s car,” said Tim. “But the car breaks down all the time, which means it kind of fails as a deity. So we started using ‘Blue’ as an all-purpose word for God, or magic, or love, or The Force, or whatever it is that runs the world. Anything cool that we can’t explain. We got Bluddha so we’d have something to pat for luck.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So what’s it all about?”

  Emma smiled. “God,” she said, “I’ve been rehearsing this spiel forever and now I’m choking!”

  “We’ve practiced this, but no one ever pays us so we never get to do it for real,” Tim added.

  “See, it’s like this,” Emma said. “We think that something like magic is real, and anyone who doesn’t believe it can just go listen to side two of the Beatles’ Abbey Road record. Humans can’t create something that perfect without some sort of divine assistance. Some people call it ‘magic.’ Some people call it ‘God.’ We call it ‘Blue.’ ”

  “If you want to call it something else, that’s cool, but it might make things a bit confusing,” said Tim.

  I nodded. This didn’t seem too freaky so far. They hadn’t told me to start eating more figs or buy a set of robes or anything.

  “We think that everyone has their own version of magic, which we call a Spark of Blue, inside them,” Emma went on. “It’s what makes great artists, leaders, and scientists great. And if you work with people whose version of it compliments yours, you can become, like, greater than the sum of your parts. Some people are just meant to fit together.”

  “Like the Beatles,” said Tim. “That’s what made them so much better than every other band, even though most of their solo albums are just okay.”

  “Right,” said Emma. “Their Sparks of Blue were complimentary, so when they played together, they were greater than the sum of their parts.”

  I nodded some more and imagined a glowing blue sparkly thing inside me, in between my lungs or something. And I imagined it glowing brighter when Lisa was nearby.

  “That doesn’t sound too crazy,” I said. “How can you tell if someone has a spark that compliments yours?”

  Emma shrugged. “If you create Abbey Road with someone, you’ll know.”

  “And that’s pretty much the long and short of it,” said Tim. “We figure we ought to keep it sort of loose. People can join up without renouncing their other religions or anything.”

  “Yeah,” said Emma. “You can be a Christian Bluist. Or a Blue Jew, which is cool because it rhymes.”

  “Or a Bluddhist?” I asked.

  “Yeah!” said Emma. She gave Bluddha a push, and he wobbled around on his spring.

  “Now, we do have some rules, commandments, and stuff like that which we’ve made up to flesh the whole thing out,” she said. “It’s just good business.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Here,” said Emma. And she handed me a sheet

  of paper.

  Ten Commandments of the Holy Church of Blue

  1.Matters of the heart come first. Especially someone else’s heart.

  2.Be thou not an asshole. This is the point of all religion. Everything else is just commentary. But exceptions can be made for people who deserve it.

  3.Goest thou on holy quests—do amazing things. Silly, helpful, and seemingly pointless things are also acceptable.

  4.Taketh thou any detours or side trips or odd suggestions that come up, for they will lead thee to knowledge, and to adventure, and bring thee closer to Blue.

  5.Never put thy words in the mouth of Blue. Thou knowest not what sort of Spark of Blue is inside of thee, or what sort is inside of others. The entire Church of Blue is an educated guess. Remember this. Don’t get cocky.

  6.Floss thy fucking teeth. Thou only getteth one set.

  7.Weareth thou no garment that costeth thou more than a tank of gas.

  8.Thou Shalt Not maketh thy home in Nebraska (Nebraska is Bluish hell).

  That all seemed okay—especially the Nebraska part. I’d driven all the way through Nebraska with Lisa once on the way to an ACTs Jamboree in Denver. Once you get past Omaha, driving through Nebraska is probably the single most mind-numbingly boring thing a person can possibly do. Other than hanging out with Norman Hastings.

  God, making that drive with him would probably create, like, a black hole on the interstate.

  Still, I couldn’t help but notice that there weren’t exactly ten commandments on the list.

  “That’s only eight,” I said, handing the paper back to Tim.

  “Yeah,” said Emma. “We left a couple blank to fill in later when we think of something good. Or if some Blue dude comes out of the sky with tablets.”

  “We were already really stretching for a couple of them, anyway,” said Tim. “Emma’s shoes cost way more than a tank of gas.”

  “But these aren’t shoes,” said Emma. “They’re an orthotic support system. In fact, maybe we should change it to say ‘never wear a pair of shoes without proper arch support unless thou wanteth thy feet to hurt.’ ”

  “That’s not much of a commandment,” said Tim.

  “No,” Emma agreed. “But, what the hell. We’re on a holy quest. We might come up with another one today.”

  “So, do you guys, like, believe in all this for real, or what?” I asked.

  “Well, we just made it up to help us stay out of trouble,” said Emma. “But I swear to Blue, it works. Tim hasn’t had a drink in months.”

  “And Emma hasn’t had sex with anyone lately, instead of five people a week.”

  “Five a week?” I asked.

  “He’s exaggerating,” said Emma.

  Tim looked back and mouthed, “I’m not.”

  “Look, I had a problem,” said Emma. “Not that I think sex is a problem, because I totally don’t, but you shouldn’t just do it to feel better about yourself, which is what I was doing, and it wouldn’t have kept me eating normally forever. And keeping Tim out of trouble gives me something else to feel good about.”

  “I’m kind of the opposite of you guys,” I said. “I sort of feel like I need to be less well behaved. I still feel weird when I swear out loud. I don’t even watch TV shows or read books that I don’t think Lisa’s family would approve of. I’ve spent the last five or six years living like a Full House character.”

  “Blue can help with that,” said Emma. “It’s not like our holy quests are all exactly on-the-level or anything.”

  “So what do you think?” Tim asked me. “We’ve told you the basics. You ready for a quest?”

  “I guess so,” I said. “As long as I’m back by the time Lisa and Norman go to the movies.”

  “Then let us begin!” said Emma.

  Seven

  Tim got the garage door open and then got back in the car. Emma started her car up but didn’t take off. Instead, she just turned on the stereo.

  “We
always open with a hymn,” she said.

  “Do I have to sing?” I said. I’m not much of a singer. When we sang in ACTs, I always just moved my lips and pretended.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” said Emma. “Tim’s not even allowed to sing, because I care about my ear drums. We just listen to the hymns.”

  “They’re mostly classic rock songs,” said Tim. “Plus some Arcade Fire and White Stripes and stuff.”

  “What makes them hymns, then?” I asked.

  Emma smiled. “Ah, young apostle,” she said, “you have a lot to learn.”

  This annoyed me a bit. Not only had I never decided to be an apostle in the first place, but she hadn’t answered my question. I really hate it when people make fun of you for asking stupid questions, but don’t answer them. Like, when I was eight or nine I asked my dad if there were tarantulas in Iowa. He snickered and said, “Oh, yeah, they’re the size of lawn mowers. We get them all the time. Your cousin Tyler was eaten by one.” He made me feel stupid for asking, and I still didn’t know if I should be on the lookout for tarantulas.

  Emma told Tim to go lower the garage door back down (not all the way, so we wouldn’t die of fumes) and turn out the lights, because everyone knows that music sounds better in the dark. Once it was darker, she fumbled around with her stereo, then started playing a song that opened up with an acoustic guitar riff.

  “This is Bob Dylan,” she said. “One of our holy prophets.”

  “There are three holy Bobs,” said Tim. “Dylan, Marley, and Hope.”

  “We sometimes say ‘Bob’ as a synonym for God,” said Emma. “And “Nebraska” was probably an Indian word that meant ‘damn it,’ so ‘Bob Nebraska’ is a Bluish way of saying ‘God damn it.’”

  The acoustic guitar turned out not to be just the opening riff; it turned out to be the only instrument, and Bob Dylan turned out to be a guy who sounded like he was singing out of his nose. It sounded nothing like the contemporary Christian music that Lisa was into, except for the fact that it had a really repetitive rhythm that bugged me at first.