Seneca Rebel

WITH ALL THAT money handy I could buy a BoomJet ticket to New York City, an expense my parents probably wouldn’t have approved of. Still, I needed to use the short travel time for a catnap, and the economy cabin just wasn’t the place for that, all claustrophobic and full of crying babies. Plus, this was no vacation— I was on a mission. My justifications for spending all that money played over and over like a broken record in my head as I waited to buy my ticket. Yet, somehow, I still felt guilty for being a spendthrift when there were billions of people in need out there.

I was over the guilt thing by the time I arrived in the Big Apple. It was late afternoon. I took a flighter taxi in, and landed on the Lower East Side. I had traced Dom to a small shop called Berserk Boots, at what was probably an after school job. The store appeared to be one of the last original spots still standing in a hood that had been thoroughly gentrified before I’d even been born. Chic, environmentally efficient construction was juxtaposed with classic pre-war architecture, giving off a polished noir feel. Manhattan was a ghetto for the rich; everyone with less than a million in the bank had been pushed off the island and into the outlying boroughs. Retail chain domination had finally laid claim to one of the last cool hoods in Manhattan. It was a miracle that a place like Georgetown had managed to preserve its classic beauty and charm.

People were packed into these streets like sardines. I wondered how, even if the progress developed in Seneca were to extend to the rest of the world, how the over-population situation would be handled. While everything I did in Seneca was about looking toward the future, standing there on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, my attention was on the now. Dom probably had acclimated nicely into an after school work routine, and I was about to flood that world like a tsunami.

I popped a piece of cacao and stopped into a corner café before going into Berserk Boots. I knew I was stalling. I was scared that Dom wouldn’t recognize me, but realized it was something we both had to go through. It wouldn’t have worked to shock him with a memory block removal while he was in the middle of a school day, at work with a customer, or enjoying a family dinner. My approach had to be responsible, clean.

I walked out of the café with my mocha, mesmerized by cinematic views of the Brooklyn Bridge nearby– such a stark contrast to the flat, beige cement bridges of Los Angeles. I stood there a while, across the street from Berserk Boots, slurping the last traces of what I’d begun to think of as my “security”

beverage. It was November, and freezing cold in New York. After being in a controlled climate for the past several months and southern California my entire life, my thin blood wasn’t prepared for the shock. Most of the people who walked by were too wrapped up in their own thoughts to notice me, but the few that did gave me the most hilarious range of looks for being out in nothing but a t-shirt.

“Hey.” A woman approached me. Are you okay? Do you need some help?”

My teeth chattered. “I’m good, thanks.”

“You sure? You look like you could use a hand.”

“I just got here from Cali and I’ve never been here before so I didn’t think it would be so flippin’ cold.”

She smiled, and then took off her jacket and a sweater from underneath. “You look like a nice kid. Take this. No point in getting sick on your first trip to New York.”

“Oh no, you don’t have to.”

“Please.” She pushed the sweater into my hands. Being cold sucked, so I took it.

“You just remember that the people of New York aren’t the rude jerks we’re always painted to be.”

“I will.”

She smiled, threw her jacket back on, and skipped across the street with three seconds left on the crosswalk sign.

“Thank you!” I called after her. She turned back, waved, then disappeared into the crowd.

It was always nice to be reminded by a random act of kindness that people were inherently good. I bit down on the lid to hold my coffee cup between my teeth while I put the sweater on. It was gray, long to my knees, soft like a teddy bear and warm from being worn. It smelled like the incense Julie’s mom was always burning to cover up the smell of her weed so she wouldn’t be a bad influence on us ‘under-agers’. Little did she know that in our world of Mojo Sticks, the archaic Reefer Madness should’ve been the least of her concerns.

I was all warmed up now – the invisible force I needed to push me across the street. Through the store window, I saw the outlines of two figures. One of them was tall and built from dreamboat material. I literally sensed the handsomeness emanating from that simple silhouette. I’d found my guy.

I tossed my cup in the trash, pulled the door open without hesitation and stepped inside. A little electronic bell sounded. Dom glanced over his shoulder and spotted me, but didn’t stop stocking boxes on a shelf near the back of the store. A short and stout man, about thirty, with a chunky, poorly groomed beard and matching meaty glasses, greeted me. “Welcome. Looking for a pair of boots or just some warm air?”

“Just looking.”

“Name’s Eric if you want to see something in your size.”

“Thanks.”

I pretended to look at some boots as I inched along the wall towards the back of the store. Of course I wasn’t paying attention, walked right into a footstool and stumbled, nearly hitting the ground. Dom quickly dropped the box he was holding and rushed to help me. “You okay?” He bent down and offered his hand. For a moment, I froze.

Snapping out of it, I stammered, “Yes, sorry, I’m such a klutz,” and accepted his hand.

“Don’t be sorry. Someone falls over this particular footstool at least once a day.”

We were eye to eye as he helped me up. Electricity gushed between my soul and his. I didn’t want to let go of his hand. I was speechless, like the first time we had met.

“You looking for some winter boots?”

“Boots! Yes. Exactly.”

Dominic Ambrosia may have ignited my heart, but ours wasn’t a fairytale story– not yet, anyway. We were stuck in a no man’s land, somewhere between blossoming young love and Shakespearean tragedy. My heart raced, knowing at the same time that his had flatlined. He’d been altered to forget everything we’d had. Everything he’d had in the past two years as a Senecan. That avalanche of bliss dissipated as anger stormed in and occupied the void. How could they do this to him? To us?

“Let me show you a pair I think would be perfect for you.”

“Thanks.”

Dom sidestepped down a few rows to a pair of saddle brown leather boots with intricate stitching. “A bit steep on the price tag, but you look like you’re worth it.”

Was Dom flirting with me?

“Hey, you poaching my client over there, Ambrosia?”

Dammit, here came the dumpy guy ready to crush my bootbuying moment with Dom.

“Me, poach? Never.”

I rushed to Dom’s defense, “No, no, I just asked him to show me these boots.”

“I’ll take it from here.”

Dom gave Eric a little nod barely concealing his annoyance, and then turned to me. “You’re in good hands with Eric here. He knows his boots.”

And just like that, Dom turned his attention to stocking the shelves.

“What are you, a seven? Eight?”

“Seven and a half.”

“Baddabing! Let me get you the right size. Take a seat here and I’ll be right back.” Eric disappeared into the back room.

Dom looked over at me and mouthed, “Sorry.”

I mouthed back, “It’s okay.” Just being around Dom made me feel strong. Confident. I kept my eyes locked on his. The magnetism was just the same as the first moment I’d seen him. Then, I wanted to know him. Now, I wanted him to know me... again. He squinted a little and bit the inside of his lip. Our moment lingered, but then he went back to what he was doing without giving me a second glance.

I didn’t know how much more of this I could take. I watched him working diligently at his job. Whatever he did, he did with all of his heart. Not even a week ago, he was fully dedicated to the unearthing of an evil within our society and now, he brought the same concentration to meticulously stacking shoeboxes was his world.

Eric brought out the boots and helped me put them on. They were actually perfect. And Dom had picked them out for me. “I’ll take ’em.”

I left the store wearing the boots. Dom never gave me a wave or anything. It hurt, even though I knew it wasn’t about me.