Maya Loop

Maya Loop

__________

Lis Anna-Langston

~ Mapleton Press ~

Other Novels by Lis Anna-Langston

Gobbledy

Tupelo Honey

Skinny Dipping in a Dirty Pond

Tolstoy & the Checkout Girl

This book is pure fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination, or used in a strictly fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental and just plain weird.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying without written permission of the publisher or author. The exception would be in the case of brief quotations embodied in the critical articles, or reviews and pages where permission is specifically granted by the publisher or author.

Although author and publisher have made every effort to ensure the information in this book was correct at press time, the author and publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.

Maya Loop

Lis Anna-Langston

www.lisannalangston.com

©2021 Lis Anna-Langston – All Rights Reserved

Cover & Interior Art by Anastasia Khmelevska

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author.

Mapleton Press

First Edition

South Carolina

ISBN: 978-1-0879-4306-0

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2020925821

For Mark…

            Who leaps with me.

In the beginning …

Lightning cracks across the sky. Charged particles burn through the atmosphere. I watch from the kitchen window. White and blue speckles light up the cracked bistro table in a brilliant flash. My eyes settle on the refrigerator. Black eyes twist like storms and stare back at me from a drawing. Rain pounds against the window. A flickering ball of light appears out in the hallway. It sweeps over the dark ceiling like a strange code, darting in and out of the kitchen. Pre-dawn sits in shadows. The light descends the creaky staircase in the main hallway. I pull on my glitter green combat boots and follow.

Under the torn awning of my apartment building, I stop, looking for the light. A scratching gets my attention. Looking for clues, I find a sparrow huddled against the bricks. My plastic raincoat crinkles as I kneel down to inspect. The bird’s wings are too wet to fly. Raising the sparrow to my cheek, its tiny heartbeat pulses against my skin. Without warning it jumps from palm to shoulder, using the storm wind to carry it along. Rustling under my plastic raincoat, it perches comfortably in the curve of my neck.

I pull a flashlight from my pocket, smack it against my palm to jostle the batteries, and flip the switch. A dim trail of light cuts a path and I enter the storm with the sparrow.

At the end of the block I stop at the intersection and wait for the light to change. Deep in my gut a feeling arises. There is a right way and a wrong way to turn. This has never occurred to me while running down the sidewalks of Baltimore. There are no cars, no people. Just me and a storm and a sparrow. Just me and one chance to turn in the right direction.

Wind and water whip around my face as I ask, Do you know who I am?

You are Maya Loop, the sparrow says.

Confused, I look up and down the empty streets. How do you know my name?

You don’t have much time left, the sparrow says.

For what?

The sparrow walks to the end of my shoulder, holding tight. A fierce wind whips down the street making the streetlights sway. Lightning flares across the blank canvas of night. I turn to face him and for the first time realize he’s blind.

His milky white eyes focus on nothing but his voice is firm. Hold out your hands.

Stuffing the flashlight into my pocket it continues to glow as I hold my hands out. My palms quickly fill with rainwater, creating tiny puddles. An image takes shape in the reflection, like a strange fortune teller’s ball. An image of black-eyed monsters.

They’re coming, the blind sparrow says.

Chapter One

Waking from the dream I pull my favorite cheetah blanket tight and swallow back the dry taste in my mouth. A hollow feeling of goodbye fills the room. Holding my blanket tight, I stare at the tiny pieces of yellowed tape stuck to the wall. All of my wonderful drawings of fantastical bugs have been taken down, rolled, and shoved in a cardboard tube. I don’t have to see the rest of the room to know my whole world is falling apart. Just the tape. Remnants. Reminders. Pieces. That’s all that’s left. Pieces of ripped tape. This has been my bedroom for ten years. Now it’s almost empty. One sleeping bag. One pillow. One cheetah blanket. Check.

And it’s raining.

Because nothing says goodbye like rain.

Car horns honk below. The room is gray and dim.

The smell of spicy takeout from Fong’s Kitchen drifts down the street. Everything I know is about to change and I lay quietly wishing it all away. Away with it all, I think, squeezing my fists tight. If I wish it all away repeatedly then I can turn back time and make this moment never happen. And I want that more than anything. To make this moment never happen.

Baltimore is my favorite place in all the world but it hasn’t been easy lately. People complain about the curfew. It doesn’t bother me so much. Too much hides in darkness. I’m perfectly content to sit at the small kitchen table and chat with my friend Totsie. The one who put purple finger paint on my nose, traded a grape juice box for a pink lemonade back when I was three years old. A friendship was born. That was eight years ago. A lifetime ago. Almost a decade. #Sigh.

Rain picks up and I roll over, staring out the window. An old window. The kind with panes. Raindrops hit the glass and roll into puddles on the small strip of grass seven floors below. It isn’t really grass. Planted on the north side of the building it never gets sunlight. It stays brown year-round. It’s funny how much I miss that brown grass now that I know I can’t have it anymore. The crunchy prickle under my bare feet. How early morning frost clings to its weathered tips when I walk to school in autumn.

Pigeons huddle on the wires outside my window dodging rain. I like birds and bugs and imagine the coos and calls are answers to questions I haven’t asked yet. Beyond those birds, the best second-hand store in the entire world is three blocks away. The one where I found my glitter green combat boots, scuffed on the toes, laying sideways on the hardwood floor next to my suitcase.

There was a book my parents read to me when I was little where you said goodnight to all of the things in a room and then goodnight to the moon. A brick building across the narrow street blocks out my view of the sky but remembering the book makes me want to say goodbye to everything in my room.

Goodbye chipped baseboard we never found the time to paint.

Goodbye old windowpanes that frame the pigeons.

Goodbye best bedroom in the world.

Goodbye cold hardwood floor made bearable by magical unicorn slippers.

Goodbye pieces of tape that held my wild and wonderful drawings in place.

I press my face into my pillow and whisper desperately, Goodbye, old life. This sucks.

Total drama llama statement. Totsie has a saying, Sometimes when everything feels like it’s falling apart, it's really falling together.

Please, let that be true.

I’m trying not to be mad. My mom wants us to have more than a tiny apartment. With only one bedroom, she sleeps on the couch. Maybe she’s right. Maybe it isn’t how to live but it’s been our way for so long. We were going to move out of the apartment when my dad started losing his balance. After he fell down the front steps of the building, running to grab my stuffed duck named Mr. Wibbles, the neighbors called an ambulance. The night he came home from the hospital he drew a cartoon on my wall of me and Wibbles. A crazy cartoon where me and Wibbles save the world. The next five months he stayed in bed and was dead before summer. He left me two things. An old digital camera and his sketchbook. I’ve never opened the sketchbook. Not once. It was his whole life and opening it feels like admitting he has no life anymore. The camera is different. I created a video of the wall but don’t understand how I’m ever supposed to leave that piece of my life behind. My dad was the best cartoonist in the world. Now the superintendent will paint over my life and make it disappear. It makes me so mad. Maybe I’ll rewind time all the way back before that day. To that day when Mr. Wibbles fell to the bottom of the concrete steps. Rewind back to that day in a wild loop of time. That’s all time is. Day after day tumbling forward endlessly.

Loop.

Like me.

And my parents. They’re both named Charlie. What are the odds, really? Granddaddy tells a story about how doctors said my mom was a boy and he got so set on that name he couldn’t change. He’s like that. Getting set on things and not wanting to change.

A tiny ladybug lands on the other side of the window. Laying my finger on the glass, I pretend we’re touching. Everyone at school squashes bugs except Totsie.

Forcing myself out of bed I stand in the middle of my bedroom and whisper, I love you, Charlie Loop, covering all bases, past, and present. The words stick deep in the walls I’m leaving forever. Over and over I repeat the words, squeezing my fists tight. Deep in the walls, the words go. Deep into the walls my hopes and wishes go to hide. Deep in the walls, all of my secrets wait until one day the words echo back like I never left at all.

Chapter Two

The rental car is cramped and smells like plastic. I can feel my mom staring.

We’ll see each other again before you know it, my mother says. A statement injected with too much cheer to be convincing.

How can you be so happy about everything falling apart?

Gold light shimmers over the treetops. Magic colors mixed with dread. Fresh grass and purple-tipped flowers line the roadside, a reminder that every petal takes me farther from home. I glance back out the window. Storm clouds are behind us now. We left the rain in Baltimore.

My mom steers the rental car off the small, two-lane highway into the parking lot of a gas station. Faded signs hang in the window advertising products I’ve never even heard of before. Beechwood gum. RC Cola. A bell dings when a car stops at the pump. This place is Hickville for sure.

In a very serious tone my mother says, I don’t mean to scare you, then stops long enough to throw the car into park, but being a cop in Baltimore isn’t getting us anywhere. Do you understand that my partner was killed in the line of duty right in front of me? There are things I try to shield you from but I refuse to lie to you. The danger pay on this new job alone is five times what I’d make in Baltimore on the beat. Look, I know you don’t understand salaries and compound interest but I must make this leap for us and you will have to leap, too.

Loops making leaps.

What’s a girl to do?

Gray sky rolls across the open field across from the gas station. All that space is overwhelming. I feel so numb it’s like my brain is going to ooze from my ears. In my mind, I conjure buildings, brick by brick. The grocer on the corner. The man who lives one block over with three TVs mounted to his wall that play 24/7. The broken windows on the way to Totsie’s apartment, the middle school seven blocks from my front door, Fong’s Kitchen, Dressed Up Consignment.

A city full of people.

Gone.

For danger pay.

Whatever that is.

Maya? my mom whispers.

The gentle hum of the car engine is hypnotic. The last car we owned was my dad’s powder blue Impala. After it was stolen, my mother replaced it with the city bus. I sigh. Baltimore was hard. I just don’t understand how leaving is supposed to be easy.

Yes?

Can you do this? For me? For us?

Us is a sensitive subject. Especially since us gets smaller and smaller. I am about to answer when a sharp, unexpected breath fills my lungs. Clean, country air hovers in the car. Mr. Wibbles stares up from my lap. Totsie and my mom are the only ones who know about Mr. Wibbles. I love Wibbles. I don’t care if he’s a baby toy. I look down at his funny little duck body squeezed into a fox costume.

What if something happens to you?

Charlie Loop laughs. Girl, I survived eight years on the B-more PD. Have a little faith in the Loops. Besides, my new role as a contractor provides me with round the clock security. It’s you I’m worried about, she says, reaching over to tickle my ribcage. You’re gonna be out there in the country with all those crazy bugs and UFO sightings and daddy with all his pickle making skills. He just might pickle you. You’re gonna have to live off canned biscuits because he never learned to cook.

My mom pushes her index finger into my ribs. Wibbles tumbles to the floorboard in the ticklefest. Reaching forward, I giggle. At first, it’s low and nervous but pretty soon the rental car is full of squealing, twisting, turning laughter. Laughter that makes my bones feel hollow and light, a great trembling that shakes the tips of my blue hair and clears the heavy heart