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“Hey, look at that!”
Zoey squeezed Mike’s hand and came to a halt on the sidewalk, much to the displeasure of the people walking behind them, who stepped around.
“Huh?”
Zoey pointed across the street to a little wooden two-floor building, nestled in between two concrete skyscrapers. The warm yellow lights inside shown through the cream cloth curtains, fighting against the streetlights to illuminate the cobblestone sidewalks as the evening faded into the night. The chipping paint sign nailed above the door read “Oddities”.
“It’s a little thrift store! Oh, isn’t it cute?” Zoey hugged his arm.
Mike looked down at her and smiled. “Yeah.” He pulled Zoey to the curb by the crosswalk and gave a grimace of apology to the inconvenienced pedestrians still flowing around them. “You, uh… you wanna check it out?”
“Really?”
Mike kissed the top of her head. “Yeah, well, I mean… you’ve always been talking about how you wanted to go to one, and uh… you know. It’ll be fun!” He smiled. This was the first time he had actually gone out since he had won the million- and, of course, since the coast guard of something-or-other fished them out of the ocean by Wawanakwa. He’d used a small chunk of his tax-free million bucks (who knew how Chris had acquired that) to buy Zoey and him a little flat near Zoey’s college- she was a psychology major, who’d’ve thunk?
As it turns out, your body being possessed by a rogue alter for weeks on end to commit evil makes you pretty tried, so at first, he had just slept through the day, waking up enough for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But with Zoey around, that wasn’t too bad. She was nice enough to make him said breakfast, lunch, and dinner, complete with warm tea, and she made things better when she was able to sneak into his room to cuddle him on her breaks (she’d picked up a barista job down the street- despite Mike’s protests- because she said she didn’t just want to coast through life on Mike’s million).
For the past few days, however, he’d been uncomfortably awake.
He spent the day while Zoey was to and from work doing all sorts of things to keep himself occupied. He’d solved two books full of crosswords, tended to Zoey’s succulents, watched and rewatched Total Action 2 (he and Zoey’s favorite movie), written love poems and promptly threw them away, and even managed to get his million in a bank. He’d spent a long time refreshing the page of his bank account to see how much interest he’d accumulated- six whole cents! He painted the barren walls, made the bed, did the laundry, mopped the floors, and finally got around to unpacking some boxes. Their flat was a painted, tidy mishmash of random pictures, furniture, and Total Drama mementos. It hardly looked like an adult life. But he was trying.
At nights, he would find himself waking up when the windows were dark and the streets were near-silent. One a.m., two a.m., three a.m.- his body was indiscriminate, and would wake him whenever it pleased. The streetlights snuck dull light through the window, which was good for Mike- any time he found his eyes open in the dead of night, he’d just look at Zoey. It certainly did keep him occupied, just as his random hobbies did during the day, though he did have to say he much preferred this distraction.
He didn’t dare to get up or even move much, despite the fact that by this stage in the night his arm was usually asleep and Zoey’s frizzy hair, untamed by her pigtails at night, was in his face- it was short, but it was vengeful. He just watched her, which he knew sounded weird, but he couldn’t get enough of her. He didn’t think he ever would. Her breaths were so peaceful, and even when she slept she kept her beautiful smile on her face. Sometimes, he just couldn’t resist pulling her closer. She’d snuggle into his chest without waking, perfectly content. He’d plant a little kiss on the top of her head and try to go back to sleep.
Zoey had convinced him to go out that night and walk around town. Zoey gushed about what she’d seen out in the college city- a nice Italian restaurant down the road that reminded her of him, a cozy bookstore, a park with a huge fountain, a killer bubble tea place she just had to show him- and begged him to come out with her to see it all. He, of course, couldn’t say no to her. But he had some misgivings about the whole thing. He wasn’t too overjoyed about the prospect of being recognized; he wanted to live a normal life. He wanted Zoey to live a normal life. After his first stint on the show, he’d been open to the prospect of meeting fans or answering their mail. But he quickly found that his fans could be… pushy, at best. A few of them tried to steal his shirt. When his second season- and, he decided, his last- finished, he put off the idea of interacting with people entirely. They asked too many questions. And who knew what they’d try to do now, with everything that had happened?
He also just had a general anxiety about going out that he couldn’t pinpoint a reason for. But he swallowed his nervousness to remind himself that he’d have a nice time with Zoey tonight. And they did. His first “date” with her (he could hardly consider anything on Wawanakwa to be a date).
And now, he had the opportunity to make her night. Turn it from good to great for her. And he wasn’t going to pass that up.
“Come on!” He pulled away from her and ran across the several-lane-spanning crosswalk the second the light blinked WALK.
Zoey laughed. “Hey!” She raced across after him, still chuckling as he leaned against the store wall on the other side, waiting for her. “When I get over there-!” She finally landed on the wall next to him, catching her breath.
He mimed sleeping, complete with some exaggerated snores. “Huh? Oh, hey Zoey. Where have you been?”
She shoved him as he laughed. “Shut up, you big dork!”
“Oh yeah? Maybe I will shut up,” he said, smirking.
She kissed him quickly. “Oh, don’t you dare, buddy.”
Giggling, they walked through the creaky thrift store door. Zoey’s eyes lit up. “Woah…”
The place was absolutely filled to the brim with… things. There was no better way to describe it. The shelves reached from ceiling to floor, and any floor space without shelves had some random pieces of furniture on it, with ridiculously cheap price tags. The whole thing was a maze without a beginning or an end. And to think, the floor above them was exactly the same way.
“Let’s start with the books first!” Zoey pointed to a giant mahogany bookshelf along the back wall. “No, no, how about furniture? Our place should probably have a table. I mean, I love breakfast in bed as much as the next girl, but I’d like to be able to set my food down on something too. Wait, that sign says they have clothes on the next floor, maybe we should start there! I do think you need some new clothes, you wear the same two shirts all the time-“
“Woah, woah.” Mike smiled. “Why don’t we just walk around and see what’s here? We aren’t in a hurry, are we?”
“Oh! Yeah, yeah, that would be… yeah. Probably a good idea.”
“I’m full of ‘em.”
Zoey walked off to look at books- her original idea- while Mike stayed to sift through some of the shelves closest to the entrance. They were all just full of knick-knacks. Hair brushes, belt buckles, matchbox cars, wallets, yo-yos, empty picture frames, doilies, and Barbies abound. But something did catch his eye in the back- a glint of gold.
He picked up the object the glint was attached to- a container for something, with gold flourishes making up the top and the feet while the center was a glass wall surrounding… well, Mike couldn’t tell what it was. There was a little golden key on the side, which Mike didn’t dare to turn yet— he didn’t even know if it worked. The outside was totally covered in a layer of dust. He sat in one of the randomly strewn chairs and used the bottom of his shirt to wipe the years of disuse off the glass. He stared in concentration. A faceless ballerina eventually stared back at him.
He nearly dropped the music box.
Fumbling to get it back in his hands, he took a deep breath and kept wiping the dust off, revealing a slender ballerina body in a blue leotard and tutu. Simplistically sculpted- which would explain the lack of a face- she was en pointe and had her arms raised above her head. Mike couldn’t tell why the sight of the ballerina unnerved him like it did. Satisfied with his dusting, he turned the key and watched the miniature ballerina sculpture creak to life, spinning as the music box plinked out a recreation of a classical tune. He smiled again and set the ballerina back on her shelf, next to a colorful snowglobe full of neon confetti, reading GREETINGS from SUNNY NEW JERSEY!. But he still had her in the back of his mind.
He caught up with Zoey, who’d moved on from the books and was kneeling in amongst the vinyl records sitting in a crate by the stairs. She grabbed Mike’s pants leg, tugging him to a stop. “Hey, check this out!”
He looked down to see her holding up a Sinatra record. He jumped. Man, he was jumpy today.
“I heard you humming him, back on the island a while ago. This one has everything! Isn’t that cool?”
He grimaced and turned it into a smile. Why did he feel so weird today? What was it about music boxes and oldies records that was throwing him off? “Oh, yeah, I, uh…” He knew one thing from years upon years of therapy, which was that if he felt weird, he probably needed to get out of the situation. Now. “Hey, you said I needed some new clothes, right? I mean… I know I don’t really have a sense of style. Can you… um…”
“Help you pick some out?” She jumped to her feet. “Of course!” She grabbed his hand and pulled him up the stairs, which were themselves covered in books the owners couldn’t cram onto the shelves. “Ooh, what about this? I know you always wear blue, so this one’s red!” She held it up to him. “It fits too!”
“Um, Zoey…”
“You’d almost match my hair!”
“Zoey…” He finally got her attention long enough to point to the bright yellow M emblazoned on the chest. “It smells like fry grease!”
Zoey laughed. “Well, maybe it’d be a good start for you! It’s about time you started pulling your weight around here,” she joked.
“Pull my weight? I’m pulling my weight to the tune of… eight hundred thousand dollars!” He put his hands on his hips triumphantly. “And six cents!” He looked around as Zoey started to turn back to the clothes. “Wait, check this out!” He grabbed a pair of round horn-rimmed glasses off a mannequin head sitting on top of a circular clothing rack. “Didn’t you say you wanted glasses like these?”
Zoey gasped. “You remembered? Oh, man… yeah, I’ve wanted some like that since I was a kid…”
Mike swept the hair by her face back and settled the glasses onto her nose. “Oh, wow… you look… uh, well, beautiful. You know.” He was just as flustered when he looked at her now as he was the first time he saw her. He was always embarrassed by it, but Zoey said she found it sweet.
“Well, I wouldn’t be able to tell.” She took the glasses off and sighed. “They’re prescription. I can’t see a thing.”
“… you only want the frames, right?”
“Yeah, I guess so, but-“ Mike grabbed the glasses from her hands, pressing his thumbs against the glass lenses. Furrowing his brow, he pushed hard against them, until he heard a satisfying ‘pop!’ and the two lenses clattered to the floor. Mike bent down and put them in his pocket, then once again placed the glasses on Zoey’s face.
“That better?”
“Yeah, but… I don’t know, are we gonna get in trouble or something?”
“I can’t see why we would.”
“I mean, what if the owner finds out? Doesn’t it count as, like… damaged?”
“Not if nobody finds out.” He winked.
Zoey laughed. “You’re a scoundrel. Now, let me find you some things…”
She turned around and continued rummaged through the racks, piling her arms with suitable clothes that she briefly shoved at Mike’s chest for a rudimentary size match. Mike trusted her to pick out something nice, and so he turned around to look at another wall of clothes. Zoey kept sizing clothes against his back.
He looked through some clearly unsuitable shirts and jackets for a while, asking himself who on Earth would wear these things. It seemed thrift stores were the dumping ground for the shirts in the back of people’s closets and the bottoms of their storage containers that they no longer had use for. His hand stumbled upon some leather. Leather! Now that was something nice- a welcome change from the plain T-shirts emblazoned with incomprehensible slogans for 5k runs and charity events. He took the leather jacket out to look at it.
The front lapel was emblazoned with a sew-on skull and crossbones, which grinned at him. The front and back were littered with all sorts of patches- bands Mike had never heard of, ironed-on renditions of dripping wax candles and drooping maroon roses. On the cuff of the right sleeve, a single eye looked up at him.
This time he actually did drop it.
“Mike?” Zoey turned around, concerned. “Uh, are you okay?”
Mike smiled back, but only out of instinct. “Oh! Yeah, yeah, I just…” He looked down at the jacket, in a heap on the floor. “Yeah. I, um… need to go to the… uh, downstairs.”
“Why?”
“I, um… think I dropped my wallet! Yeah!” Mike pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, whipping out 50 dollars in tens. “Here, buy whatever you want.”
“Your wallet’s right there-“
“Okay, gotta go, um, look for that! I’ll be right back!”
As he turned to exit, he ran face-first into a cowboy hat on a mannequin, knocking it askew.
He was going to be sick.
He flew down the stairs and spilled out the door, putting his arm out to lean against the wall next to the thrift store. He pressed his forehead against the cold concrete. He knew people would watch him, but he didn’t care. It couldn’t really be helped, could it? He tried to remember what he’d learned in therapy. Therapy, therapy, therapy. Was it a five-second breath? Ten seconds? Did he hold his breath? He couldn’t get his mind together. He settled on five. In, out. In, out. He ran his finger along the rough concrete. In, out. In, out.
What was wrong with him?
He looked out at the street, cars coming and going, pedestrians going to and fro with purses, backpacks, shopping bags, dogs on leashes, baby strollers. He should be able to fit in here. He should be able to feel… normal here. He shouldn’t feel so bad. He pressed his back against the wall and ran his hands through his hair. He didn’t even know how long he stood out there.
People didn’t even give him a second glance. On one hand, it made him feel good. If he had to answer a question or sign something, he really would be sick. And even ignoring semi-fame, it felt nice to not have any eyes on him, given the circumstances. On the other hand, it was strange that nobody recognized him by now. But he didn’t even recognize himself.
He didn’t know exactly what was wrong, but he did know that he had to get back in there. He knew that his brain was screaming at him to get out of there, to avoid, to escape, to distract himself. But something deeper pulled him back to the door and back up the stairs. He couldn’t help but feel like this was something even bigger.
He’d gone out with Zoey to make her happy, sure. But he also went out to try to get over whatever weird funk was keeping him inside and waking him up at night. To attempt normalcy. And he knew that he was going to have a lot of days like this in the future… but he also knew that one day, they’d stop. And the only way to make them stop was to prepare for them. He sure as hell wasn’t prepared for today. But someday, he would be. It was just his new normal.
He actually found himself smiling once he was back to the second floor.
“Mike?” Zoey pulled him into a tight hug as soon as he was within her reach. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m… I’m fine.”
“Did you find your wallet?”
“Yeah, I did. Turns out, it was in my pocket the whole time,” he said, laughing.
“Who would’ve guessed it?” She smiled and kissed his cheek. “You ready to go? I’ve just got the clothes and stuff… for now. But I’m serious about getting us a table sometime.”
He glanced down the stairs. “Actually, I forgot something downstairs. Checkout’s up here, right? I’ll be right back up.”
“You forget your wallet?”
He smiled. “No. Something more important.”
Walking down the stairs, he reached up onto the shelf by the door. He grabbed the music box, smiling down at its unidentifiable ballerina. He looked up, thought, and grabbed its companion, the snowglobe. As he walked over to the stairs, he grabbed the Sinatra record, slipping it out of its cover. It was in great condition, surprisingly.
He went back up the stairs, and he could hear Zoey chatting with the seller a room over. He was face to face with a mannequin. He stole his hat, putting it in his arms with everything else. Not like the mannequin would care.
He started towards the next room… and stopped. He remembered one final thing. The leather jacket, sitting in a pathetic heap on the floor. He set his things next to it to pick it up, readjusting it on its hanger and starting to put it back on its rack. The eye on the sleeve stared back at him. He was still unnerved. What likely made him the most uneasy was that he couldn’t understand what the eye was there to convey. It could be malicious, staring into his soul… or, possibly, it was there as a guardian. A protector. Like his cornicello.
It was too much of a mystery to not add to his pile.
He heaped all his things onto the checkout table. The owner counted up the price and swept the items into a bag, handing it across the table just as quickly as it had arrived. Zoey smiled, picking up her own bags, full of clothes for her and Mike as well as some other things she’d spotted here and there. They weaved their way back through the floor, down the stairs, and out the door.
As they walked back to the flat, Zoey leaning against Mike with a content smile, Mike piped up.
“Um, hey Zoey?”
“Yeah?”
He looked down at his bag. “I… don’t like change. I never really have. But… I feel like with you around, I feel like… I don’t know what I feel like. I feel like I can do anything. The things that used to bother me don’t really bother me anymore. And, I know things aren’t perfect. And I know you can’t fix everything, if that makes sense, but I really think- I mean, I feel- like this is the best things have been for me in a really long time. Like maybe I can… do the things you do every day, and I can feel… you know, um, happy. If that makes sense. Um, I mean—“
“I know what you mean.” Zoey pecked him on the cheek. “How about we go home, I make some tea, and we watch Total Action 2?”
Mike smiled, and he meant it this time. “That would be amazing.”