Just Special Enough

A name was called and her head jerked to meet the caller’s. Not hers. Duh. She clenched her fingers and stepped forward. Tens of pairs of feet stepped after her. As the cue moved, she had a funny thought: How could anyone here know her name when she had taken such precautions as to drive thirty minutes out of her way, forsaking her usual and much preferred treat, and had not even ordered so the clerk ahead would have no way of knowing her.

           She was being paranoid.

           Brimming with newfound confidence, she straightened and took the next step in line. This time, the following cacophony of heels and leather marching behind her felt like drums in her parade. Soon, the yellow tank before her shifted and the view transformed into that of a smiling wrinkly face. Much older than she expected at such a trendy spot.

“Yes,” the old man said, his voice soft and straining. She was focusing on all the wrong things today.

           “Yes, hello,” she said. She flicked her eyes to the menu. She didn’t want to stutter over a word and have this nice man think she was an idiot. “I’ll have the taro-infused, cinnamon—”

           “…Can you believe she’s here...?”

She choked on her words and it was nearly enough to kill her. The old man blinked friendly eyes, neither condemning nor supporting; simply waiting on an order, perhaps. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Yes, sorry. I’ll the have the taro lat—”

“…She ought to be a damned shamed of herself, enjoying her morning like that…”

Fuck. She’d done it again. The word latte burst from her as if she were requesting a la-tart, for God’s sake. The man, if noticing her buffoonery, simply arched a gray brow and hit several buttons that emitted a high-pitched beeping with each tap. She swallowed and dug quickly for her wallet.

“Alright, that’d be 7.75 with tax,” whispered the old man. “Would you like this for here or to go?”

“Um, for here—”

“…keep your voice down, girl…”

Crap. She had planned to sit down and take her time—thus the 30-minutes of travel! —but now it didn’t seem like that was her best option. Damn it! What were they doing here anyway?

“…don’t think so. If she can hear me and can’t stand it, she should leave. I’m not going anywhere…”

“To go!” It was more bark then she meant. She ignored the man’s inquisitive stare. She she’d lost him anyway.

“Okay, miss. Name for the order?”

“I’m—”

“…you know Derek’s homeless now, right? After everything that happened—”

“Bryanne.”

She threw down the money, waved off the receipt, and tried not to duck as she headed towards the pick-up counter. Her phone the katana and she the lonely samurai, Bryanna whipped it from her side pocket and held it to her nose as if it were her last defense. She was determined not to look up at the duo standing five feet before her near the coffee bar. She turned her back to the que and began violently tapping at her screen, apps appearing and disappearing like a strobe-lit fever dream she desperately wanted to sink into.

Lost in the clickety-clack-click of her overpriced and overgrown acrylics, as well as the lights dancing before her eyes, Bryanne felt more than heard the expletive across the room. She glanced up to see a woman spill coffee on the table in front of her. It was an entirely uneventful moment initially. A woman, mid-to-late thirties, maybe a little haggard in her out-of-season coat with black hair falling from her ponytail in arbitrary strands, cursing to herself as she mopped up the spill with the hole in her sleeve. She seemed to think better of this and reached across the two-top to grab a napkin. Only the napkin was slightly out of reach. An annoyance sure, but what did Bryanne care, given her own situation.

Just as she was turning her attention back to her phone­—she saw it.

The world’s dumbest, tiniest miracle.

She tried to remember if she’d slept in her contacts, or if she had in fact seen this woman beckon—gently—to the silver napkin dispenser as if summoning an errant child. And Bryanne wondered even further, as she swallowed the small amount of saliva she could muster, if she had seen that very same dispenser shiver and, ever so slowly, slide the few inches to meet this woman’s hand.

That would be…dumb.

Right?

The smell of coffee fresh in her nose, the mask of a sea of strangers shuffling, indifferent, around her making her bold, Bryanne pressed the home button and clicked the little camera resting in the corner of the screen. She had no memory of actively doing this later; she would swear it was on instinct—not out of nosiness. Honest.

Through the veil of appearing lost in her own business, Bryanne stared at her phone and, through it, at the lady, now dry, sitting back in her seat and opening a book. She also reached for a packet of sugar from a ramekin on the table every minute or so to fiddle with it. Realizing she was doing this; she would throw the packet aggressively back in the bowl and continue reading. This went on for two minutes.

Fed up, Bryanne marched the few feet to the table—casually, of course. She bumped the it gently with her hip so that the tiny bowl of sugars slid to her, smiled politely and sat the bowl back on the table.

Just slightly out of reach.

The woman frowned, but not in any way that told Bryanne she knew what Bryanne was up to. Just in a way that told her she would prefer if strangers minded their footing when edging near her table.

Moving past the wave of guilt rushing her veins, Bryanne smiled again in awkward apology and returned to the pick-up counter. Just then, Bryanne’s gaze caught those of her foes. They scowled in unison and, with the smallest hiccup, Bryanne spun back to the haggard woman.

Neck burning but attributing it to the heat, Bryanne focused on the task at hand. She held up her phone and zoomed. For a minute, nothing. Then, as expected, the woman started up her routine again. Only this time when she reached for the packets…they weren’t there. Perplexed, she raised her eyes from the page and scowled at the bowl. The woman stretched her fingers. (This was it!) She curled them. (Proof!) And she beckoned. (Yes!) The bowl slid to her as if on the worlds slowest track. She closed her hand around the cylinder triumphantly.

Bryanne pressed the home button like it was a buzzer on jeopardy.

“BRY-AN-NA!”

--she dropped her phone with a clatter. For just a moment, everyone, it seemed, was looking at her. Including the haggard woman. Only now she was the scowling woman. With a confused, then knowing, then angry expression, the woman gathered her things quickly and began standing.

“No…wait,” Bryanne mumbled, but she had no idea what she planned to say. And anyway—

“BRY-YANA!”

“Yes, yes, I hear you.” She snatched the bag. Then, feeling bad for snatching from a teenager, she tried to smile. “Sorry. I’m just—”

“My bad, miss. For real though, we couldn’t find the taro powder anywhere—”

“It’s okay. Don’t worry about—”

“If it isn’t Bryanna the Drama.”

“Bry-anne.”

The sudden annoyance in her voice surprised her so much she hadn’t realized who she was talking to until it was too late. Standing before her were two acquaintances and fellow neighbors, Rinska and Charlie. Both were tall, one significantly more commercially pleasing, the other an obvious foil to the first. Then again, maybe she was just being rude. Bryanne had gotten so used to judging people in recent years, she couldn’t tell what was appropriate anymore.

Rinska: “Derek is homeless now.”

“I heard.”

And she had. Apparently not only had she spread false rumors in her written column, but she’d also inadvertently been the cause for many dirty secrets that were true to spill out unabated. “Sorry.”

“Sorry the Prewets split up like that and left the kid to stay with the alcoholic grandpa, huh?”

“I didn’t know he was an alcoholic at the time. I thought—”

“Thought wrong,” Rinska snapped, hands still on her hips. Bryanne glanced at Charlie. As she thought. The Foil was holding two piping drip coffees, trying to strike an intimidating stance with full hands. It wasn’t working. Bryanne thought of all she could say if only she’d remained anonymous.

Instead, she’d outted herself as the writer of a juicy neighborhood gossip column, printed and delivered incognito on doorsteps bi-weekly with a little finessing on her end. Instead, she’d chosen that time to unleash her richest story yet—only to have all of her intel be phony. Most people stopped bothering to look for the author once they realized the stories held water. Tiny moments here and there would confirm the suspicions of the writer and people would gather and enjoy dissecting themselves over coffee or drinks. Sure, it was a vanity project from a failed journalist major who couldn’t afford to finish school. But who would have thought that people would love it so much, and that she’d be so good at snooping in her little community and writing about it?

Who knew it would all blow up in her face less than two years later.

Bryanne glanced at the bell on the door. The haggard woman was shuffling off somewhere and Bryanne worried she might not see her again.

“I have to go.” She took a step but somehow, between the two, they managed to shove her back in place with their bony shoulders.

“You don’t get to leave!” Charlie cried dramatically.

Bryanne went again. This time, when they pushed her, she pushed back. Incensed and embarrassed, Bryanne sucked her breath and stormed away, leaving two very tall, very agitated women in her wake.

The week got worse from there. She’d lost her job at a bookstore; her manager, Roy, got so fed up with customers boycotting or loitering to talk shit that he sent her packing. He wasn’t a dick about it and, truth be told, she’d gotten sick of being targeted by whispers in the low-lit aisles of her work every damn day.

She quit without much fanfare. Though she did pause to ask her boss what he thought of the photos she took. She’d smacked herself when she realized she hadn’t switched to video and only had several shots of the bowl maybe getting closer to the lady’s hand.

“New hobby?” Roy asked. “Well, I think that’s good, Bryanne! No one ever got hurt doing animated photography. My nephew does Claymation himself.”

Bryanne glared. “Not a new hobby; some woman magicked the bowl to herself. From across the table!”

Roy stared. Then sighed. A grizzled hand fell on her shoulder. “Perhaps you oughtta give fiction writing a chance, Bryanne. I know it’s not the type of writing you dreamed of, but you never know; it may scratch an itch!”

She threw her nametag on the counter and walked out.

She’d show them she wasn’t crazy.

A few days later, she doubted this. In fact, she doubted it a lot as the week wore on. How else had she found herself making the same 30-minute drive from her house the following day. And the next. And the next. What was she hoping for? No idea. But by day six, she felt absolutely unhinged.

That was when Bryanne saw her.

She was leaving the café. How did—? Feeling the drool on her chin, Bryanne concluded she’d fallen asleep during the stakeout and had missed the lady entering. But that was definitely her exiting.

Harried, Bryanne elbowed her way out of her car and tripped after the woman in drunken fashion. The lady didn’t seem to notice at first. Really, she didn’t seem to notice for a while. To the point that Bryanne actually forgot she was stalking someone and found herself casually following the woman in a sort of confused haze. The whole time all she could see was herself sitting dejected in before her laptop after another failed attempt to earn enough money to go back to school. She’d missed the enrollment yet again and she wanted so badly to just write something. Looking out of her window, the blazing white of a fresh page before her, Bryanne began to write. And she wrote what she saw and when she was done, she gave it anonymously to her neighbors. The rest, as they say, was history.

Bryanne was pulled from her self-indulgent reverie by a rattle and a thunk. They were walking along a narrow path, not far from the café, in what appeared to be a small neighborhood park. Bryanne was only aware of the woman as she bent to inspect her heel. She had been holding something but had tripped on the uneven path and so had lost what she had. Bryanne, though, understood the assignment immediately. Just as the woman turned her head and lifted her hand all at once, Bryanne was there…going for the item. It twitched for a moment and lifted barely two inches—an inhale before a breath—

And Bryanne snatched it. Like the opportunity she couldn’t let pass by any means.

“I got you!” She breathed, waving the item. “I caught you again!”

Bryanne recognized the expressions. Confused. Knowing. Angry as all hell.

“You.” The lady spit.

“I…I caught you last week. You were in the café and you—you made the sugar move!” Bryanne knew how she sounded. For once, she didn’t care.

The lady scowled. For a moment, Bryanne fully expected the woman to shriek. To declare her crazy and dash away. But the lady only clenched her teeth. “And what do you plan to do about it?”

“Nothing! Nothing. I just, I want,” Bryanne fumbled for a sec with the item as she tried to reach into her own bag. She dug through all sorts of things. Edibles. Q-tips. Breath mints. A little mirror. Hand sanitizer. Tampons—enough for others. Quotes written onto little pieces of paper that she used to motivate herself—crumbled into balls gathering crust from remnants of her energy bar. She was looking for a phone. “I know it’s here—”

“Hey! Crazy.”

That wasn’t her. Was that her? Bryanne glanced up.

“Yeah, you,” said the lady. She brushed her black hair back and took a step toward Bryanne. She was pretty close. Bryanne had been doing a poor job of shadowing, it seemed. “What do you want?”

“Me? I just…I want you to confess.”

“To what exactly?” It was Bryanne’s turn to glare. To her surprise, the lady laughed. It wasn’t very mirthful but it was a laugh to be sure. She looked Bryanne dead in her eyes. “Why do you care?”

Bryanne thought. “Because…you’re special. You’re special in a way none of can be and I…” Bryanne wanted to stomp her foot out of frustration. She didn’t, of course. “I saw you! I was the one who found you.”

The lady scoffed. She kicked a rock and Bryanne felt in her heart the lady wished it were Bryanne’s head she were kicking. “Special, huh? I don’t know what your deal is but since you made this a party, I’ll tell you something. I can’t get out of bed half the days of the week because I feel like shit. I can’t hold down a job to save my life because I can’t stop digging through people’s things, thinking they know something about where my daughter is. Because, you know, he took her when he left and called me unfit. And maybe I was. But I can’t stop…” The lady paused. Straightened. “Yeah, I can lift a fucking can or two. It was a ticket in college, to be sure. Lot of small change made on gimmicks. But I couldn’t whisk you over here so I could punch you in the face if I used all of my fingers. My trick doesn’t work that way. Actually, it never has. It’s a trash gift and if it makes me special, I had no fucking idea.”

Bryanne could only stare. She felt horrified.

“You think anyone gives a shit? What’s so important about snitching on me anyway?”

“So they know,” Bryanne found herself saying. Was she crying? “So they’d know I wasn’t lying. I’m not a liar. I’m a good…a good person.”

“And you want them to think that you’re good.”

“No. I want them to know it.”

“…are you? A good person?”

Bryanne hadn’t thought of it until just now. She was honest. “I don’t know.”

The lady scoffed. “But you want them to know it—even though you don’t.”

Bryanne blinked. Fresh tears. “I…”

“Look, Crazy, I don’t care! What I do care about is you stealing my medication and stalking me all the damn week long. Now, do you fucking mind?” She held out her hand and Bryanne dropped what she now realized was an orange vile of prescription medication into the lady’s open palm.

Fuck. What was wrong with her.

“It was not a fucking pleasure to meet you.”

And with that, the lady was gone. Bryanne went home too. She sat and wondered at her motive for most things she thought mattered in her life. She wondered at the woman, who looked worse off than Bryanne, and what being “special” had meant to her. She wondered for a long time. Maybe there was nothing special about it at all. Like Bryanne’s ability to turn daily mundanities into addictive speculative pieces seized upon by weary persons, so to was that lady’s ability to move sugar a foot away into the cup of her hand.

Maybe it was just special enough.