Drop in the Bucket
In a half-awake state, Nemo reclines on his bed, now free of his ankle monitor. A ceiling leak has formed from constant winter rains, and the hypnotic drip plays in a bucket near his head.
His next trial date is February 1—a verdict is supposed to be reached then.
Impressions tumble over each other like waves..
He remembers how, at trial, the gold necklace was presented as evidence: he won it for Casey at the summer fair, and it was revealed for the court to be a locket. How could he have missed that it was always a locket?
More, he can’t get over how the trial proved that Casey was already in touch with OriginalSyn over the summer. He thought that happened in the fall, after she returned to school.
But, nonetheless, sometime during that summer she hid a key in that locket, and in a locked box she stored a mask given to her by an OriginalSyn scout. Perhaps because she didn’t want him to know of her plans to join them?
Nemo reaches over to his nightstand and grabs his phone. He pulls up the last text conversation between him and Casey—sometime back in the fall.
“Hey, I want to ask you something about the heart locket. . .”
Casey types back immediately: “Nemo, what are you doing? We shouldn’t be talking with the trial still happening. I’m going to have to tell my lawyer about this. . .”
“No, you won’t, I’m not asking you anything you and I both don’t already know.”
“Then why are you asking me?”
“Because I want confirmation and closure.”
“What do you want to know?”
Nemo’s thoughts drift to the Magic Beach Motel, where an early July party was raging after he and Casey came back from the fair. He recalls how they went to his room for a smoke—and how she mentioned that the necklace’s fake gold paint was already starting to chip.
“You must’ve picked at the necklace and realized it was a locket then, right?” Nemo asks.
“What? Where are you going with this?” Casey says, with a note of apprehension and irritation in her voice.
“You knew that you could hide something in there—right in the center of what we had, there was deception.”
“The only one being deceptive is you, Nemo. You’re asking me leading questions. . .”
“It doesn’t take away the truth that you wanted to have it both ways: me, the underdog, by your side while you also got the glow up from Original Syn. . .”
“No, there are layers to this you don’t understand, Nemo, which I can’t go into. . .”
He tosses the phone aside as someone taps at his window: it’s Tom, the upstairs neighbor.
Nemo cracks the window. “What’s up, Tom? It’s damn cold.”
“Yeah, I’ve locked myself out. I know you’re on house arrest, but do you have any ideas?”
“Actually, I’m not on house arrest anymore.”
“You’re not? Then get on out here and let me stand on your shoulders, man, before this next wave of cold ass rain starts falling!”
Nemo shivers cold as Tom climbs on his back and up to the window, props it open, then tumbles head-first inside.
“That’s what friends are for!” Tom calls back. “I don’t care what others say, you’re a good man!”
“I try not to read the news about me,” Nemo replies.
“You know what’s funny, Nemo, I wasn’t even sure if this window would even open or not. If you hadn’t gifted me your help, I would’ve never considered another layer to this thing. Thanks for helping me break and enter into my own place, man. I won’t tell anyone. Hey, maybe that’s your second act! ‘Hi, I help people break into their happy place!’ Ah ha ha. . .”
Nemo rolls the words over in his head, and begins to doubt that he knows all the details surrounding Casey’s locket.
He goes to text her back and finds his number blocked.
“Well, I have no regrets. I said what I truly wanted to say. What falls apart now. . .must eventually go back up,” he muses. “Like water forming clouds, and from clouds to rain, this is just a drop in the bucket, it will all work out if we remember to serve what calls us. . .”