Transient - Complete Book One (Episodes 1 - 4) (Transient Serial) Read online

  Rae sat alone for the rest of the lunch period. She watched the football players on the field, tossing the ball back and forth. There was a big game on Friday, a cross-town rivalry with Beachwood High, and the jocks all looked intent, determined, like the upcoming game was all that mattered.

  It doesn’t matter. None of it matters.

  She pulled out her cell phone, and read through her Cracker stream. No one was talking about her anymore. The news had hit several hours ago, and the comments had died now and people were already moving on to other gossip, and about Mr Caldwell getting drunk last night, and a decade-old bikini beach photo of Ms Bramley that someone had found online and re-posted.

  Rae checked her other social media. Already she was getting posts on her timelines. The first few were non-specific voices of concern:

  ‘Rae! I just heard! Oh, I’m sorry…’

  ‘It’s okay. Call me.’

  ‘What??? That’s not fair. My God. I’m so devastated. Rae!’

  ‘Wait. What happened? Oh, I just heard.’

  The more recent posts were more explicit, and more hurtful.

  ‘Did it say how?’

  ‘What did it say?’

  ‘I got mine too. I just know I’m going to die from lung cancer, like my Mom. I thought I’d never start smoking, but maybe I will. What’s your COD?’

  Cause of Death.

  ‘My brother is Transient too. I was devastated. Rae, you’ve still got time to do things you want.’

  ‘Don’t let this get to you, R! At least you know, right? That’s for the best. Now you can plan your life and not be surprised. Call me. Just let me know how you’re doing. See you in fifth period!’

  ‘D-row two??? Oh, man. I don’t think I could handle that. I guess I’d have to if it happened to me, but I’m D-row twelve, so that sucks too, but not as much. Transient totally sucks. Let’s hang, okay? We should both have some fun before we go, right? I mean, eat, drink, and all that. Catchya!’

  But the latest status update was the worst. In the message it simply said,“COD Unknown?”

  And then in the comment thread under that, all her‘friends’were chiming in with their guesses and opinions.

  ‘Unknown means an accident, usually.’

  ‘Probably a car accident.’

  ‘Or an accidental drowning.’

  ‘Could be a fire either. Like a house fire or something. What about your parents? When do they check out? If it’s the same date, it could be a house fire. Just sayin…’

  ‘No, not burning. If it says unknown, that means they don’t have a clue or the probabilities aren’t in a range or something. I don’t know. Rae, Google it, I’m sure you’ll find some studies on that.’

  ‘Yeah, there are studies on the unknowns. And it is usually just an accident. Not a health thing. Like if you get a piano dropped on your head, then it’s probably going to be listed as an unknown.’

  ‘No, stupid. That’s a proper accidental death. There’s a whole category. Car accidents, plane accidents, accidental drowning, pianos on the head.’

  ‘Maybe you’ll be murdered.’

  ‘That’s true, it could be an unknown murderer. Just because you’re going to be killed, it doesn’t mean the cryptograph knows who’s going to do it.’

  ‘It didn’t say she was going to be murdered. Jeez!’

  ‘I think we should change the topic. This isn’t very helpful.’

  ‘I think you should change your face!’

  And the thread deteriorated from there.

  Rae turned off her cell phone and stared off across the lawn at the squirrels. They schemed for bits of dropped food, and seemed to be quite happy not knowing when they were going to bite the big one. Watching some of the younger kids playing on the outdoor basketball court, she noticed the same thing. Plenty of hustle and no worries other than getting the next shot in the basket. Most of those kids would outlive her. Maybe some of the squirrels would, too.

  What the hell am I doing here?

  No one wanted to talk to her, and she didn’t want to be here. A high school diploma wasn’t going to change her future. Her future was set. Written in stone.

  D-row two...

  Transient...

  She was wasting her time, what little was left of her life.

  Rae remembered something Mrs D said once, about finding out what you’re good at, what you love.“Living your passion.”It was important for every person to make their life count for something, no matter how much time you had.

  Shakespeare had talked about this in Hamlet, Mrs D said:‘To be or not to be.’It wasn’t about living or dying, she said, but about taking action, seizing the moment.‘Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them…’

  Rae had a sea of troubles that was for sure. But how to oppose them?

  I need to live my life…find my purpose.

  She stood up and walked past the football field. The easiest way off campus would be through the gym and out the back, where the fence was short and could be jumped. That’s how the delinquents and the stoners did it.

  “Take the test or take the fence,”they said.

  Time to take the fence.

  She had to cross back near the cafeteria, and as she did so she felt the stares of the other students. She didn’t meet their looks, but kept on walking. Some of their mutterings carried across the grass, and reached her before she could get out of range.

  “Transient…”

  “What is she even doing here?”

  “…wouldn’t do my homework…”

  “…see her crying?”

  “…what Logan even saw in her…”

  Rae put the voices behind her, and trudged toward the football field and the gym.

  She saw two students behind the gym. They were embracing. It took a moment to realize who they were.

  Logan…Jenny…

  Rae ran for the back fence across dirt and grass and pavement, biting hard on her lip, fighting back tears.

  Someone was leaning against the fence, with a pad and pen in hand, guarding the escape route. As she came closer, she saw that it was Joe, the janitor. It was his responsibility to report to the principal the students who hopped the fence.

  I don’t care anymore.

  She grabbed the fence, and climbed over. Glancing back, she saw Joe watching her.

  Would he report her?

  Joe closed his notepad without writing anything in it. Then tipped his hat to her.

  Thank you, Joe.

  Chapter 9

  The city bus was nearly empty at two o’clock on a week day. There was an old man dressed in a worn sweater, and a mother with two young kids.

  Other than that, the bus was hers.

  Rae wondered about the old man. What was it like to be Constant and live so long, to advance from handsome youth to a wrinkled elder? To watch your friends and family die around you.

  I won’t have to go through that, at least.

  Her parents would outlive her. Her close friends would outlive her. She only knew a few others who had earlier expiration dates, and they had all since vanished from her life. Disappeared.

  Where did they go? she wondered. The Transients?

  She took the bus to the beach and got off. She ambled through the beach boardwalk, where the artists were selling their paintings, and the dope dealers were pushing their junk.

  She saw a few kids on the beach, skateboarders and volley-ballers.

  Seems like I’m not the only one playing hookie.

  No one seemed to bother the other kids, and no one bothered Rae either. She walked barefoot along the sand and let the cold water curl around her ankles and between her toes.

  The kids were out having fun, enjoying themselves, goofing off, wasting time.

  Wasting time…

  Rae wondered what she had been doing with her time up to now. She was sixteen, with nothing to show f
or it. She hadn’t graduated, hadn’t fallen in love, not really.

  I hardly even know him.

  She was still a virgin. So much of life lay ahead of her, and yet most of it had already passed her by.

  Rae’s cell phone buzzed. It was a text from Logan: Where are you?

  Leave me alone,she thought, but didn’t type or send it.

  Instead, she turned her cell phone off and went back to the bus stop.

  She had to transfer to the A line to get back home, and it was nearly six o’clock when she walked through the front door.

  Her mother was in the kitchen, at the sink, washing red paint off her fingers. She was a graphic artist, mostly for print magazines and websites, but she still liked to paint things just for herself, especially in the afternoons when the light was best.

  “The principal’s office called,”she said.

  “I left school at lunch,”Rae told her.

  “That’s what they said. You didn’t show up to your afternoon classes. Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “Is there a reason?”

  “You know the reason.”

  Rae went upstairs to her room. She went into her closet and took out a box of things she’d kept throughout the years. Birthday cards and little mementos. Drawings from when she was a kid. A story she’d written in first grade about a princess in Sleepyland. She read the story and smiled. It was simple, and crudely written, but not bad. And the little drawings in the margins were cute.

  Am I that Rae?

  She couldn’t remember writing the story or drawing the pictures, only that she had in fact written it. Not here, but at the old house with the oak tree in the yard and the stray cats who kept coming over for milk and affection.

  Sixteen years.

  Had she wasted her life? What did she have to show for it? Friends who already were drifting away. Memories that would go with her into the darkness. Moments that were missed, chances she might have taken. Now everything seemed a missed opportunity.

  I’m just a kid.

  But other kids had accomplished things. Sally Martin could play the piano. Rachel Vogler was a gymnast with lots of medals in regional competitions, and everyone said she had a good chance of making the Olympics. Several of her friends had taken dance, ballet or hip hop. Even goofball Eddie Garvey was doing something with his life, playing chess tournaments in Vegas and winning real prize money.

  I’ve been in some plays.

  She took out a stack of programs, and looked though them. Our Town and Little Women and You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown. Her name was in all of them. Her mother had photos and video and memories.

  Death turns us into memories, collectibles, a dormant social media account waiting for updates.

  She remembered what Mr Hartman had said in her Anatomy and Physiology class once:“We think of ourselves as alive, but that’s not entirely true. You may have heard that your hair is actually dead cells. That’s true. But it’s more than that. Your skin cells are also dead. Below the surface the epidermis lives, creating new cells, but on the outside; the body you see, the body you touch, the part that gets the makeup and the moisturizer, the part you hold when you hold hands, the part you kiss when your lips touch, is all dead on the outside. Your surface is deceased. You know how much dead skin the average adult carries around every day? Five pounds. Five pounds of dead skin, carried from home to work to school to church and back again. Every day billions of bits of yourself are falling away, scraped away, and rubbed away, to become dust in the corners of your bedroom, and on your bookshelves. So think of that next time you clean your room—for those of you who actually do—when you dust your shelves, you are dusting yourselves.”

  Rae took a nap and woke to the smell of cooking downstairs. Something with onions, she thought, but wasn’t sure what that indicated. Burgers for dinner maybe. When she went to the dining room, her mother was serving up a casserole.

  “Ratatouille,”she said.

  “I checked in on you,”her dad commented.“You were asleep. How are you feeling, kiddo?”

  “Groggy.”

  “We were all up very late last night, weren’t we? I’m glad you’re catching up on your sleep. It’s not good to be so tired.”

  Her mother said to her father,“Rae came home early, because she couldn’t stay awake at school. After last night. She was exhausted so they sent her home.”

  Her father gave Rae a look.“That so?”

  “No, I just didn’t want to be at school anymore.”

  “Me neither,”Carl piped up.

  “Carl, this isn’t about you. You’re not leaving school early.”And then to Rae:“I still expect you to set a good example for your younger brother.”

  “Why?”She sat down at the table.“He’s the one who blabbed about it all over the Internet.”

  “About what?”

  “About the lifespan test.”

  “Did not,”Carl said.

  “He has a Cracker account, and he told the whole world all about it.”

  “You have a Cracker account?”her father repeated, aghast.

  “Maybe.”

  “MonsterBear10,”said Rae.

  “Carl, now you know we talked about this,”admonished their father.“You can have a Cracker account until you’re thirteen.”

  “But Sammy has one,”

  “I’m not Sammy’s father, I’m your father, and you’ll do what I say. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.”And then to her mother:“How does a ten year old get a Cracker account?”

  “Like everyone else,”Rae said.

  “You’ll have to show me some time, then.”

  Her mother said,“Well, the damage is done, as far as that news is concerned.”

  “Carl,”her father continued,“I want you to apologize to your sister.”

  “What for?”

  “For telling her secret on Cracker.”

  “It wasn’t a secret.”

  “How did you hear about it?”

  “You told me,”Carl said.“You all did. You were talking downstairs and I got up to pee, and I heard you and I couldn’t get to sleep. You said Rae has two years and that you don’t know how she’s going to die. So I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to think about it, but I had to. I didn’t even have nightmares because I couldn’t sleep, but I had to think about it when I was awake. And I started crying, and I called out for you, but no one came, no one cared about me, only about Rae. And what if I’m going to die, too? Rae dies in two years, but in two years I won’t even be in high school yet, will I, and I’m too young to die in two years—“

  He was crying, and her mother went to him, and held him, and said,“Oh sweetie. I’m so sorry. We didn’t think you knew.”

  “But I did.”

  “You’re not going to die in two years, Carl,”her father said.“It’s different for everyone, and you don’t even have to take the test until you’re sixteen, which is six years from now. You could live to be ninety years old, like your great grandpa. We’ve got good genes in this family, so you could be ninety or a hundred, even. It’s possible. Anything’s possible.”

  “Until you take the test,”Rae pointed out.

  “Well, yes.”

  “Or someone takes it for you,”she added bitterly.

  Her parents exchanged a guilty look.

  “Now here, Carl. Wipe your eyes. It’s okay to be sad. We’re all sad. Your sister will be leaving us, but not right away. We have two years together. And that’s a long time. Two years ago, you were eight years old. Do you remember when you were eight years old?”

  Carl shook his head no.

  “You were in third grade. Do you remember third grade?”

  Carl nodded.

  “That was a long time ago, wasn’t it? That was two years ago. A long time, right?”

  Carl nodded.

  “And that’s how much time Rae has. Think of all the things you
’ve done since then. You’re much bigger and smarter now, and you have more friends, different friends, and we’ve moved since then too, haven’t we?.”

  “Are we moving again?”Carl asked worried.

  “No,”her father said.“We’ll be here a long while, I think. At least two years. I don’t see a reason to move again before that, it would be good to have some more stability around here, and let Rae finish high school where she started.”

  “I’m not finishing,”Rae argued.

  “Of course you are.”

  “No, I’m dropping out.”

  Her mother said,“Rae, we can talk about this later.”

  “Later?”she felt the heat in her cheeks, her anger rising, the pitch of her voice getting higher as her body tensed.“I don’t have later. I have now. I have today, and tomorrow, and a little bit more. But I don’t have later. I can’t keep putting things off, can’t you see that? School is a big waste of time. It’s always been a big waste of time.”

  “You needed to graduate to get into college…”her father said, but his voice held no conviction.

  “You’ve got friends in school,”her mother chimed in.“All your classmates. You have a lot of friends.”And then, with an edge of doubt creeping in,“Don’t you?”

  “Yes,”Rae nodded.“But it’s changing. I can already feel it changing. Even today. One day. The news broke—thanks, Carl—and now everyone treats me differently, like I’m a pariah, like I’m some sort of a—”

  “What’s a pariah?”Carl asked.“I thought it was a fish.”

  “That’s a piranha,”her mother said, taking the casserole dish off the stove.

  “Rae means that people are treating her different,”said her father.“That’s natural. But you’re still our Rae. You’re still their friend. And that won’t change. Not if you stay in school. You’ll get over this sweetheart, and your friends will learn to deal with it. They just don’t know what to think. That’s the same with everybody. It’s a big change, news like that, and people need to find a way to deal with it, and they will. Maybe a few of your friends will think of you differently, but your real friends will stick by you, and you’ll make new friends. You’re not the only one going through this. We all go through it. By the end of the school year, all your friends will have taken the cryptograph. Some already have, I know. But think about the ones who haven’t. When they hear about a Transient…I mean, when they hear that one of their friends doesn’t have as much time as some other people, it makes them worried about themselves, and that’s natural, completely natural. It’s just human nature. But then they’ll take the test, and the results will be whatever it is for them, and then they’ll know that whatever time you have doesn’t affect them, and they should make the best of their friendship with you. This can even bring you closer to people.”He leaned forward, warming to his theme.“I’ve seen it myself. Bob at work, he has eight years left. He’s the hardest worker at the plant, I swear. Gets in early, leaves late. And he’s the happiest guy I know. He’s found his purpose. He was almost going to get a divorce, I never told you that Judy,”he said to Rae’s mother,“but he and Martha were going to split, or at least they were in counselling. And then Bob took the cryptograph and he realized that life is short. It’s short for all of us, but shorter for him than most -”