Lemonade

Lemonade

I just want some damn lemonade.

We watched the news today: more death and hot as blazes. My mom always says that. Blazes must be pretty hot. You walk outside and are immediately smacked in the face with it. Hell, you look out the window and start sweating, and the only things you can smell are your nose hairs burning and various body odors because, even after taking a nice icy shower, well, compared with what it feels like outside it’s icy, you start sweating through your clothes, through your deodorant. 

But that’s also one small satisfaction in my mind. I heard that even the rich in their giant houses can’t push back the heat. I heard that someone ordered tons, literally tons of ice so she could have an eternal ice bath as if that makes any sense.

What a bitch.

She spent all that money only to have it melt after two days, leaving a sizable dent in her purse and a new heated pool in her house. Yeah, the thought always makes me smile. Then I look outside again. Hot as blazes. 

Hot enough for the once sporadic government heat warnings to be omnipresent, saying to limit your exposure, the guidelines telling us to stay outside no longer than fifteen minutes, maximum.

Will this shit ever get better? How should I know? It only started six months ago. We all still had jobs then. Hell, jobs still existed then. The difference between then and now will fuck you up if you think about it too much. Fucked me up for a while. Now, we just have people sweating in suits in front of cameras telling us about how hot it is and how it’ll surely cool off in a few months.

Sure.

Like they know.

It’s one hundred and thirty fucking degrees in Massachusetts. In January. Hot as hell. But fuck me if the plants are all fine. Then there’s the water thing. Everywhere water’s been disappearing. Oceans, rivers, creeks. Like every root and leaf sucked in as much water as its cells could store. 

Shit. That sounds just as crazy as my friends saying that it’s all aliens coming to wipe out humanity so they’ll have a blank slate planet, or that the government fucked up some insane experiment and trashed the environment. 

Who the fuck knows? I don’t. All I know is that it’s hot as hell and smells like B.O. and I just want some lemonade. Jason said he knew were I could get some. That someone went through the effort of actually picking lemons and making lemonade. I’ll have to figure out how to get there, though. Just walking out the front door is enough to pull half the water out through my pores, and my family isn’t wealthy enough, or at all, to afford a heat suit.

I sat on the couch, fans blowing in every direction, the droning almost unbearable.

“Hey,” I called to my brother who walked past in the direction of the kitchen, “get me a bottle of Fresh, would’ya?”

“Lazy ass,” he said, pulling open the fridge door. He grabbed a couple of bottles of Fresh and, walking back across the room, left it at the edge of the counter in the kitchen. He opened and took a big swig of his own water as he passed me.

“You bitch,” I said as I swung myself up from the couch.

In the time it took me to walk to the kitchen, I could feel sweat prickling on my back and sighed. What a terrible feeling. I never understood people who enjoyed being sweaty. Athletes and such. How gross. I flapped my shirt and for a moment had to admit that the feeling that sweat evaporating was nice.

I opened the bottle of Fresh and drank a third of it. I’d seen somewhere that to stay hydrated, it’s best to drink a little at a time, that if you drink too much, you’ll just pee it all out. Tell that to anyone on my street, though. They’ll tell you to shove it up your ass. How’s that for absorption? They’ll just as soon chug a whole bottle making full eye contact the whole time.

I was watching a movie, some knockoff superhero thing that wasn’t all that interesting. I checked my phone, swiped away the heat warning and went through the rest of my notifications. Some spam emails from retailers advertising sales on cold blankets and cooler fans. I swiped them away and read the next notification, a news headline from my phone’s default news app. It said that scientists had found a solution to the global climate crisis and maybe the plants are the key. I swiped that one away, too. It seemed every week there was a new article just like that, a group of geniuses had figured out how to save the planet. I figured out pretty quickly that these articles were more about pacifying people, making them feel okay about the world burning up, that they only needed to sit back and relax while someone else deals with the issue.

I swiped the article away and got a text from my brother. It was an emoji of a flushed face with its tongue sticking out, drops of sweat on one side of its face. I sent back an emoji of a smiling face turned sideways melting.

Michael came in some time later, his own bottle nearly two-thirds gone. He looked at me and I at him. His jaw moved back and forth, his bottom lip sucked into his mouth. His thinking face. He turned and looked out a window by the front door. He said something from where he stood.

I said, “What was that.”

“There’s something about these dinosaur plants,” he said.

“Dinosaur plants? What the hell are you talking about?”

“They’re just there, in the heat. Happy as Larry.”

“Happy as—Michael, please. It’s too hot for your nonsense.”

“I’m gonna figure it out.” I looked at him, waiting for any kind of explanation.

Then, I said, “Yeah, not like scientists everywhere haven’t been trying to figure them out, too.”

“But they haven’t. They’ve been researching for how long and they always just end up with shriveled leaves and brown stems. They’re missing something.”

The bottle of water in my hand had already become warm. I laid my head back, closed my eyes, and said with a sigh, “And you’re the one to figure it out.”

“Someone has to,” he said, and I heard some footsteps, the door opening and closing and then silence. I opened my eyes to find myself alone.

“Michael?” I said. When he didn’t respond, I stood, letting my bottle of water drop onto the couch. “What the hell is he doing?” I walked over to the window, looked out and saw him walking towards the park, towards where the plants were.

“Fuck,” I said, pulling my phone out of my pocket. I called mom. I listened to my phone ring several times before it cut to her voicemail message. I ended the call, then sent a text, saying, “Michael left. Heading toward the park. Gonna call an ambulance.” I called the emergency number and, after a series of transfers, I told someone that my brother was outside without a suit. She asked why he went out without a suit and when I told her that we couldn’t afford them, she became quiet for a beat, then asked if I knew where my brother was headed. I told her that I thought he was going to the park. She said they’d send someone once available, but there were a lot of people needing medical attention, so it might be some time. She said half an hour, at best.

Shit, I thought. I have to make sure Michael survives for half an hour?

I took a deep breath imagined myself covered in ice, reached over to a side table by the door and pulled a cooling mask from a basket there, and proceeded to push the door open. As it opened, the mental image of cold, refreshing ice dissipated faster than my will to be altruistic, and I cursed as I walked towards the park, hoping against hope that the medics wouldn’t take as long as I feared. The sidewalk, along with the rest of the street felt like an oven set to its maximum temperature. Each step felt warmer than the last on my feet, under my clothes. My insides were already starting to cook. I thought I’d last longer than I did. I put the cooling mask on, though even with the mask, I could feel my nose hairs scalding with each breath.

The air was so hot that I had to squint and my skin prickled. I thought that what capsaicin did to your stomach, the air was doing to my skin. I passed house after house, the gates to the park coming closer and closer. In the last couple of years of school, a major point that was made about any time someone had to be outside was, for one, to spend the least amount of time outdoors, but also, if you found yourself outside for longer than a few minutes, don’t exert yourself. Preserve your energy, as you might need it in an emergency. So I walked. I tried to keep myself as calm as possible, but it was difficult. Thoughts of air conditioning and cold showers pushed other thoughts out of my head. I also kept a count in my head of how many houses I had to pass before I reached the park.

Only five more, I thought to myself.

I squeezed my eyes shut, trusting the sidewalk not to disappear and counted to three. When I opened them, I was passing another house.

Four more to go.

I guessed how many steps till I passed the next: thirty-six steps. As the numbers descended in my head, I tried not to let images of ice-cold lemonade and putting my head in a freezer distract me. Once finished, I’d made it farther than I thought.

Two and a half left.

The next one, I decided to simply push through. I set my jaw, balled my hands into fists and walked as though on a world-saving mission, eyes forward—if still squinted—gate becoming ever nearer.

A breeze caught my attention, then. I hadn’t realized how sweaty my shirt had become. The wind created one of the greatest feelings I’d ever had. Through all the heat, a moment of coolness. It felt like a blessing, like someone, somewhere, some celestial being was smiling down on me. Whatever the opposite of being smote is.

When I had regained my composure, I realized the last house was passing me by. I looked over to the house. The windows at the front were broken and the inside was dark. I remembered when so many of the houses on our street were broken into, stolen, fights happening. Most of them were just left like that, bones, skeletal, hollow.

I shook my head as I crossed the street to the gate. Looking through it, I saw Michael in the park, pulling at a leaf of one of those huge, weird plants. His skin was already starting to turn pink from the heat. I walked into the park through a gate that had wrought iron fence on either side, filled with intricate swirls that ended in black flower buds. When I passed the gate, I saw Michael a couple of hundred feet off to the left. He was standing under one of those weird, seemingly heat-proof plants, its huge thick leaves that made me think of canoes hanging at weird angles overhead.

He grabbed a leaf, pulled it down, and broke it in half width-wise, folding it over itself before letting it fall back open. He then ran a finger along the break and put his finger into his mouth. Shaking his head, he moved to another low-hanging leaf. This one he pushed his thumbs into, frowning with the effort. Eventually, his thumbs punctured the leaf, and I thought I could hear the pop from it from where I was still walking towards him.

“Hey,” I called, my voice muffled slightly from the mask. “What the hell are you doing?” He ignored me, proceeding to bend part of the same leaf he’d stuck his thumbs through, though not enough to break it. He held the bent part up to his face, inspecting it. “Michael,” I said, “we’re gonna die out here. Literally.” He still said nothing. “Come on. Let’s go.”

He brushed his face against the bent leaf and shook his head. He growled, frustrated. I came up beside him and put my hand out. He slapped it away before I could even touch him. “Hey, what the fuck? I’m serious, man. We need to get inside, quick.”

Michael was breathing heavily. He hadn’t grabbed a mask before leaving, so there was no telling how much longer he’d last out here.

“Hey, asshole, let’s go,” I said, more serious than I’d been about anything. Michael cursed under his breath as he held the leaf.

“No,” he said, still inspecting the leaf.

I had become so angry at this point that my insides matched the outside. Reaching over, I grabbed his shirt with both hands and pulled. I hadn’t really thought about how that would work and after some squirming, Michael had simply slipped out of his shirt and jogged over to another tree. Growling, I threw his shirt to the ground and, passing the leaf he’d punctured, swung my arm at it. Upon contact, the leaf felt rubbery and leathery, kind of what I would imagine shark skin to feel like, though it was probably not at all like that. Then, I heard a soft rushing sound as though someone had dropped a bowl full of tiny beads on a hardwood floor.

As I walked toward Michael, I felt that same ecstatic sensation as before by the house, only this time it was on my arm. Unable to enjoy the feeling through my anger, though, I kept walking, mean-mugging my brother the whole way.

When I reached him, he was tapping on one of the huge leaves with the back of a knuckle, his ear pressed close to it.

“I think it needs to be more like this,” I said as I raised a hand and brought it down hard with a slap on the top of the leaf.

Michael leapt away, cursing. There was that sound again. Michael’s eyes widened and he looked at me, but I was livid at his stupidity, his selfishness. I pushed him and he fell. “Wait,” he said.

“We’re going to die out here unless we go inside,” I said. He tried to say something, but I didn’t let him. When he reached out, I grabbed his wrist and pulled. He surprised me by moving with my momentum, pushing me instead. I fell, pulling the huge leaf I’d just smacked with me. The world swirled, my head swirled, everything swirled and if I weren’t so tired and hot, I probably would have thrown up from motion sickness. I laid on the ground, too tired to move, thinking about Michael, about how I’d taken too long, how we were both going to die here.

The world and my head continued to spin as I breathed fiery air like a reverse dragon, my throat feeling raw. Then I felt Michaels sweat drip onto my face. Wondering how he’d managed to stand over me, I grimaced and said, “Hey, what the fuck,” except it came out as a garbled series of sounds instead. My brother made similar sounds from where he lay several feet away. Another drop fell onto my face and ran into my mouth. It tasted fresh. It tasted like the most amazing thing I’d ever drank. I managed to pry my eyelids open and another drop fell onto my forehead, then another on my cheek. Looking up, my vision blurry, I saw what looked like a broken leaf just above my head.

Drop after drop fell on my face as I continued to look, convincing myself that what I saw was real. I reached up, but the leaf was too high. I called out, or tried to. My words still came out half-formed. I looked over to where Michael was laying.

n 

When I woke up, I was in a hospital. A nurse had come in and was looking at the readings on some machine I figured was attached to me. I made a sound and she looked over. “Oh, good,” she said. “You’re awake. That’s a good sign. I’ll let the doctor know.”

I made another sound, and she said, “Just a few minutes and she’ll be in.” She left and I looked around the room and found my brother lying in a bed on the far side of the room. Sure enough, though, what seemed like a few minutes passed and another woman walked in.

That was quite close, Patrick,” she said.

Another sounds bubbled out of me and the doctor said, “Sorry, I didn’t catch that. I’m sure your throat is quite sore from all that.” She leaned in close to listen.

I worked my mouth and when I was sure enough saliva had been liberated from their glands, I croaked, “Lemonade.”