Lost & Found by Brooke Davis Page B

may have missed. The day, the night, the clouds, the stars, the feeling of the ocean lapping beneath you. And he thought,
C’mon, Branson Spike
.
    The beautiful Veronica Hodges was not that woman, as it turned out. Turned out the woman was his best friend, Joan Peters, who had been there all along. Cute, mousy, reliable. There. And Karl had found Evie, and Branson Spike had found Joan Peters.
    But what would happen to Branson Spike when she left him? For a job offer, for someone else, to die? What happened to Karl? As the credits rolled, he caught his reflection in the black of the television screen.
    What will happen to Karl?
he thought.
    Later, Karl sat upright in his bed in the darkness. The lights had been turned off hours ago, but he couldn’t bring himself to lie down. He felt like if he did he would never wake up, or that he would become one of them. There seemed a depressing choreography to the smacking lips and whistling noses and rasping breaths that surrounded him. He thought,
I don’t matter anymore.
    And then, with stinging clarity,
Have I ever mattered?
    He had become blank, but there was not the expectation of something blank, like a page or a canvas; there was not the hope and fear and wonder that blankness can sometimes create. There was just nothing. In the world of punctuation, he might have been a dash—floating, in between, not necessarily required.
    Karl wanted to feel again. He wanted to walk onto a crowded bus and make eye contact with a woman with brown hair, blond hair, blue hair—just hair would be enough—and feel that flip in his stomach, that nice hurt. He wanted to laugh loudly, to lean over his knees with it, to throw grapes at someone, to sit in a mud puddle, to yell things, any-things, it didn’t matter. He wanted to pull down a woman’s skirt, to sit on the bonnet of a moving car, to wear shorts, to eat with his mouth open. He wanted to write love letters to women, tons of them. He wanted to see some lesbians. He wanted to swear loudly. In public. He wanted an unattainable woman to break his heart.He wanted a foreigner to touch him on the arm. Man or woman, it didn’t matter. He wanted biceps. He wanted to give someone something big. Not meaningful, just huge. He wanted to jump and try to touch something way out of his reach. He wanted to pick a flower, to pick his nose. He wanted to hit something. Really, very hard. And he thought,
When did I stop doing things and start remembering them instead?
    And so Karl the Touch Typist pushed back the covers. He maneuvered himself to the edge of the bed and kicked off his slippers, one, then the other, kicking them off like a child would upon reaching the homestead after a day at school, no care for where they might land. One slipper went straight up into the air, flipping like a gymnast, and the other clear across the room, landing on the end of a roommate’s bed. No one stirred. He slid off the bed, pulled down his pajama pants and stomped on them, leaving them to cower on the ground. He ripped off his pajama top, the buttons pinging away to different corners of the room, and stood there for a few moments, reveling in the glorious feeling of being mostly naked. He dressed himself by the streetlamp light coming through the window.
    He put on his shoes. His skin tingled with decision. He ripped a marker off the clipboard that sat at the end of his bed and wrote,
Karl The Touch Typist Wuz ’Ere
, in shaky letters, hugely, on the wall above his bed. He threw the marker up in the air and it clattered to the ground. After a moment’s reflection, he picked up the marker and pocketed it. He placed hishat and gloves on the foot of the bed and waved to the four sleeping men. He peeked around the doorway and tiptoed down the hall. He opened the front door and stepped out into the night. And as he walked down the path and out the gate, he thought,
This is the bravest thing I’ve done by far.

part

two

karl the touch typist
    K arl sits at a desk in