Page 3 of Through Quick and Quinn
I knew that I knew the answer, but I didn’t know it right then. I remembered seeing it in a book I had in the bathroom when I was younger, one of those kid encyclopedia books. I used to read that book for hours. I could even remember the lava types being on the left side of a left page, towards the top. There were two big photos in round frames with lots of bright oozing lava drops all over the page. I could even see the font! Ugh, it was on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t grasp it. Probably because it wasn’t English. What was it? Hawaiian or something?
“Simone!” Berkey was shocked someone was going for it. “What’s your answer?”
Simone said something stupid, like hot and cool. Of course Berkey couldn’t say it was stupid, but we were all thinking it. A couple of other kids gave it a go, too, but Berkey kept saying the same thing.
“No, no, not that. Good try! Anyone else?”
And then I remembered. It clicked. Just popped into my brain, like a download.
“I got it,” I uttered. “A’a and Pahoehoe.” It was Hawaiian, so surely I mispronounced them.
Berkey was stunned. It was silent for a solid ten seconds, minimum, while the whole class waited to hear if I was right.
“What the what?!” Leave it to Aiden/Kayden/Hayden/Jaden to break the silence. “How the heck? First the mile, and now this? Dude, you are so quick!”
And that was that.
Not Maverick.
Quick.
Quick:
A Cynic Was Born
Life during junior high was a blur. I was going through the motions. I got through my classes okay, I continued to tolerate (and at times even appreciate) my eager friend, and I enjoyed my spot under the radar. Well, I didn’t “enjoy” it. I just preferred being invisible to the alternative.
At home, I let my parents think I was doing better. I felt like I needed to do that for them. They were already in so much pain, I didn’t want their concern for me to make it worse. So I smiled more. Slept less. It seemed to work during the seventh grade.
Around eighth grade, things started to shift a bit. Perhaps because they were less worried about me, my folks had more time to focus on themselves. My mom self-medicated, not nearly as slyly as she thought she did. And my dad worked. Worked and worked. We barely saw him, which probably didn’t help my mom’s situation much. As for me? I read.
Not casual reading. Not chilling in the hammock for some light reading. I binged, obsessively reading for hours upon hours on end. No breaks either. I’d fall so deep into the words that I would forget to eat, drink, pee.
I was sure my parents thought that my reading was a distraction. A way to avoid the real world. An escape. A way for me to temporarily forget the fact that I was suddenly an “only” child with an addict and an absentee for parents. And maybe that would have been a valid opinion if I was reading fiction. Or fantasy. Something like that.
But I wasn’t.
I was digging. Not in dirt, although I did feel like my fingers at the computer keyboard worked together as a metaphorical shovel of sorts. Without even realizing it until it was much too late, I robbed myself of even more of my childhood by opening my eyes to the truths of the world. To the evils. I ripped off my own rose-colored glasses and became a cynic when I was barely a teenager. I researched everything from clones and aliens to fluoride and sunscreen, and almost everything in between. While kids my age were counting down the hours until their next chance to hang out at the mall where they could practice the art of flirting, I was doodling 5G towers in my notebook and brainstorming questions for my next dig.
I loved it. I came alive in front of that computer screen, typing in new search keywords, comparing information, questioning the sources. It invigorated me, and in some ways, it helped me deal with our reality. Maybe because time did that naturally and this was my favorite way to pass that time. All I knew was that I couldn’t wait for my next session, and I reveled in the fact that I could do it alone. I treasured my solitude, especially since the one person I wanted to spend time with was gone. Those digs were for me and for me alone.
I never would have guessed that I would want to give up the shovel. More than once.
I never would have guessed that I would share my digs. And want to, nonetheless.
I certainly never would have guessed that I would research the one thing I swore I never would.
Biggest shock though? I definitely did not see it coming, that second shovel.
Quinn:
Hard-Pressed
My detailed memory of that pivotal day remained completely intact for many moons.
The smell of the resilient celery wafted with the breeze. It was growing in our amateur garden, determined to push through the low odds of surviving in desert heat and being grown from random food scraps that we decided to toss into the dirt on a whim. Even with its increasingly full leaves, the celery was being overshadowed by an excessive forest of long stalks of green onion, also grown from food scraps, that we always forgot to harvest. The stalks had become so long that some had fallen over, almost as if defeated, and those small cracks in the onions released their own aroma as well. For years, if I smelled hints of celery or green onion, my eyes would well up with tears instantaneously, with no warning and certainly without permission.
It was two weeks after my eighth birthday, and my dad and I were outside in our small but deliberate backyard. We called it our oasis, and there was simply no denying that it was my favorite place in the world. Next to the homemade garden boxes that housed a variety of foods ranging from dead and rotting to surprisingly green was my childhood sandbox. I would spend hours upon hours in the land of sandy imagination, playing with large blocks as a toddler all the way through to my elementary years, pretending my dolls were at the beach being rescued by princes from faraway lands. On warm days, of which there were plenty, Dad and I would splash around in the pool until I was so tired that I would practically fall asleep on the raft, floating about and already recognizing in my youth how truly happy I was. I would look across the yard to the grassy patch where the timeworn swing set and the cherished, perpetually utilized playhouse were and think about how lucky I was that my backyard happened to be the best place on earth.
