by Andrew Smith
It was supposed to happen, right?
All things accomplished.
So there I was, caught halfway between Ben and Griffin, the friends who I wished I might save, and Conner, the friend I hoped might save me.
And all I could do was worry, desperately, if this not-world was real, like Henry swore it was; if, maybe, there wouldn’t be any way out for us this time. At least, not all of us together, whole again, going home.
I stopped a hundred feet away from him.
He didn’t see me.
“Con?”
He moved his head, just a little, and the horse quivered.
“Con? I made it. Just like we said we would. You okay?”
I nudged my horse forward.
His horse spun around in a tight clockwise circle, and I saw that where Conner rested his face, all down the horse’s side had been smeared wet with blood.
Conner coughed, his body rattling like he was broken inside, then he spit a black blob that elongated in a glistening cord from his mouth. He lifted a rifle in the air with one hand, but I could tell he wasn’t nearly strong enough to hold it steady. He dropped it onto the ground beneath the horse.
Then he raised his eyes enough that he could see me.
“Jack?”
I jumped down and ran across the dusty ash to where my friend lay slumped on top of his horse.
“Jack?” he said again.
I grabbed the neck of Conner’s shirt and slid him from the horse’s back. He turned over in my arms, but I caught him. I couldn’t believe how light he felt, how empty. I helped him down onto the ground so I could lay him flat.
He kept his eyes on me the whole time, unblinking, as though he weren’t sure if it was all some kind of weird dream. His mouth hung open, crusted with dried blood.
One of his eyes was dark. It had turned almost entirely black, so I could barely see the circle of his pupil.
The bug.
I put the flat of my hand on his chest. “It’s time we get the hell out of here, Conner.”
This is how it was supposed to happen, right?
“How long we been here, Jack?”
I shook my head.
“Where is it?” I said.
“Huh?”
I pushed my hand into Conner’s pocket.
“The lens. Where’s the lens?”
The glove I had sacked around my palm snagged on his pocket and pulled Conner’s pants down past his hips. And there it was, the little burning mark, the red blaze of the crossed loop, the exact shape and place where I’d seen it on my friend before, the first time we’d found each other in Marbury.
Conner raised his hands, attempted to push me away. “What the fuck are you doing?”
I tried to jam my hand down into his pocket again.
It had to be there.
“It’s okay, Con.” I patted his chest. “It’s me. What did you do with the lens?”
Then there was shouting, curses, that came from across the empty desert where I’d left the boys.
I turned my head to look.
At the horizon, where the blank ground rose up and vanished seamlessly into the folding haze of the night, I made out the shapes of the boys and their horses. Frankie had returned, and behind them all hovered a flickering line of red embers.
Hunters were coming.
And at that moment I heard the whish from a volley of arrows as they cut through the sky, followed by the panicked cries of Ben and Griffin when they called my name.
“Fuck!”
I hesitated, tried to think of what to do.
“Hang on, Con,” I said. “I’m coming back.”
He coughed an answer.
I picked up Conner’s rifle. It felt heavy. I braced the butt against my hip and pulled back the cocking slide so I could see if it was loaded.
An unspent cartridge ejected from the breech.
So I leapt onto my horse and rode to where the boys were coming under attack, toward the winking line of red brands. The Hunters were a small group, a patrol team; maybe ten of them, looking for food.
Us.
“Get on the ground!” I screamed. “Get down now! I have a gun!”
I was afraid I might shoot one of the boys, so I probably waited too long before I pulled off the first burst of fire.
My horse suddenly reared back. He’d been hit by an arrow above the right foreleg. I toppled down from the animal and hit my face hard into the ground as the horse snorted, terrified, and circled away from me.
The other four horses, riderless, thundered past.
One of them had an arrow in his head.
I spit. My mouth was full of ash and blood, and an open gash burned above my eye. I raised my head, stinging, then stood up and began shooting into the line.
More arrows came. They all fell short, dying impotently in the crust of salt ash.
One by one, the red brands of the Hunters collapsed and fell, too.
The rain of arrows stopped.
One of the attackers tried to run back to where he’d come from, but I could see him and kept firing until he finally collapsed, crumpling into the flat of the desert.
When I stopped shooting, I felt myself being swallowed up in an eternal silence.
My ears rang.
I breathed.
I whispered, “Ben? Griff? You guys okay?”
Nothing.
A black figure rose up, slowly, cautiously, from the flat of the ground.
Then others.
“Jack?” It was Griffin.
“Is anyone hurt?” I called back.
“Jack? Where are you?”
I could see the kid moving around, bent forward, as though he were scanning the ground around him.
“We’re all okay,” Ben said.
I shut my eyes and exhaled.
“Stay there,” I said.
“Jack—” It was Frankie.
“Give me one minute,” I said. “Ben. Griff. Just one fucking minute, okay?”
And Griffin said, “It better be good, Jack.”
thirty-one
Conner was gone.
“Conner!”
I kicked the ground, sending a spray of salt and ash upward in a dusty gray cloud around my feet.
Maybe I’d gotten disoriented, I thought. Maybe he was still lying right where I’d left him. He had to be there.
I began moving back and forth, sweeping the ground with my eyes and feet.
“Con!”
“Jack!” Frankie shouted my name from the distant blank gray of the Marbury night.
I knew he’d be coming this way, too; I could feel it. There was no way to stop him. So I didn’t answer him, hoping Frankie and the others might not see where I was standing.
I whispered for Conner, more frantic now as I began jogging around the empty area where I was certain I’d left him.
My foot twisted, caught up on something.
It was a shirt.
It had to be Conner’s.
“Conner!” I whispered again, but there was no answer.
I jerked my head around, strained to see if I could detect the shapes of the four boys out there, looking for me. And I could hear them moving, the crunch of their boots on the crust of the ground as they came closer and closer.
I picked up the shirt. It was damp from sweat, it stunk, and the collar was slick with snotty blood. Holding the rifle with one hand, I fed the fabric of the shirt back and forth between my fingers, feeling, feeling, trying to find that goddamned lens.
Then I came upon a boot, thirty feet away from where I found Conner’s shirt. It was lying on its side, laces wildly pulled out from eyes, the tongue lolling into the ash like the victim of a strangling.
I had to pick it up, had to look inside it, too.
Nothing.
Fuck this.
“Con. Please!”
Want to play a fucking game, Jack?
Getting warmer?
Colder?
Colder?
&n
bsp; A trail of clothes led me out farther into the emptiness of the desert—another boot, empty, socks, wet with Conner’s sweat. Jack liked keeping his lens inside his socks.
But not Conner.
There.
Pants.
And ten feet away from the twisted pants he’d flung away from his burning body, I saw Conner there, like an emaciated insect, naked, skeletal, squatting in the dust and watching me with a dark, empty stare.
“Con?”
I couldn’t take my eyes off him, and slowly, cautiously, I lowered myself so I could scoop up his pants.
“Get away.” Conner’s voice was a garbled, raspy hiss.
“It’s me, Con—”
“I fucking know who you are! You think I fucking don’t know who you are? Get away from me!”
Slowly, steadily, I crept to where I could see him more clearly.
Conner jammed his fingers down into the crusty surface of the salt flat, digging. His hands gripped so tightly into the ground, like he was trying to hold himself down, or as though he were strong enough to keep the world from spinning away beneath our feet. It seemed that every muscle on his body was tensed to the point of bursting, exploding; his face contorted in anger, the tendons in his neck strained taut, like cables.
It was Conner, but it wasn’t Conner.
I watched him as I squatted down and laid the rifle to rest across my knees. Then, cautious and deliberate, I began going through each of the pockets in his discarded pants.
“We’re getting out of here, Con.”
He spoke through bared, gritted teeth. “I … We waited too long. I can’t stop this.…”
And behind me, Ethan’s voice, not twenty feet away from us. “There he is.”
Conner began whimpering. He covered his eyes with twisted, shaking hands. The mark above his groin blazed so fierce.
It could not be too late.
Then I found the lens.
He’d wrapped it up inside a scrap of torn cloth that looked like it had once been a sleeve on his T-shirt, wadded, just like Jack would do, tucked away in one of the buttoned outer pockets on the uniform fatigues of a Ranger.
He began to pant, grunting between breaths. I could hear him swallowing great gobs of drool.
“Get the fuck away from me, Jack Whitmore!” Conner growled. It sounded like it hurt him to free words from his constricted throat. He slammed his fist down into the ground.
Carefully, I placed the wrapped fragment of lens in my palm. Even then, as soon as I held it out beneath the hole that dripped fire from the sky, I could see how the thing burned within the stained cloth.
My hand felt heat, and through the sack in which I’d covered my scar, I saw the seep of blood that spread out across the dirty rag covering my palm.
“It’s going to be okay, Con. I promise.”
How the fuck could I promise that?
Blood ran, tickled the back of my wrist.
Drip.
Conner stood up.
He looked like a bug.
White eye.
Black eye.
The fire brand.
Hands, muscles, twitching like over-tight springs.
He wheezed and drooled.
“A fucking bug!” Ethan shouted.
“No!” I said. “He isn’t! Stay back!”
I jammed my other hand into my pocket.
There it was, the Marbury lens. I could feel it tingle between my thumb and finger.
I pulled it out and placed it on my palm beside the piece wrapped in Conner’s shirtsleeve.
Drip.
* * *
Jack is bleeding again.
The sky lights up, an instantaneous dawning of gray Marbury nothingness.
I flip Conner’s lens around, try to unwind its cover.
He slurs, “Get the fuck out of here!”
Conner limps toward me, moving as though he’s fighting himself, giving up.
As my fingers nervously grope the edges of the filthy cloth and begin to pull it free from the lens, I glance across and see the four boys standing, frozen, under the sudden blaze of the sky.
Only Frankie starts coming toward the place where I crouch in the ash.
And on my opposite side is Conner.
The lens tumbles from my bloody hand.
“Fuck!”
Frankie has a bow, captured from one of the dead Hunters. He notches an arrow, pulls it tight against the strain of the bowstring.
All arrows point to the center of the universe.
All arrows point to Jack.
I sweep my hand across the ground, let the other half of the lens fall there.
Conner growls like an animal. He is so close to me now I can feel the heat from his skin.
Frankie raises, aims.
He shouts, “Don’t fucking move, Jack!”
Conner twists his fingers into my hair, grabbing, jerks my head so my chin notches upward. I look at him, but he can’t see me anymore. He clenches his other hand into my throat.
“Con!”
And I can’t breathe.
Blindly, my fingers find the pieces, lift the tattered rag away from the one I’d taken out of Conner’s pocket.
Now I have them both.
Black dots begin to swallow everything I see, a closing aperture on a camera’s lens. I can’t say anything, and when I move my head I can feel Conner’s fingers tear into the flesh on my neck.
But I see Frankie as he releases the arrow.
This is how it always is.
Drip.
I push myself up. It takes all my strength; and I can feel the aching, the blood as it runs down my chest.
The swimming shapes come back, rise up from the ground below us.
This is how it always is.
Drip.
I am standing in front of Conner as he slobbers and tears at my throat.
Everything is everywhere.
The arrow comes.
The aim is precise.
I cannot move.
Drip.
And in my hand, the lens is made whole again.
thirty-two
Every day begins the same.
I open my eyes and say to myself, This is it.
This is it.
And this is what I know.
I try to make myself stop thinking about what happened to us after that hot afternoon when we gathered, sick, sweating, scared, in the garage at Ben and Griffin’s house.
But if I ever teach myself how to do that, I imagine there will be lots of other things Jack will cast off, abandon.
Remembered or not, everything happens, anyway.
* * *
They made Conner and me room with English kids at St. Atticus.
I supposed it was probably their way of immersing the transplanted California boys in their new culture, but that was only my guess.
Because I had no way of knowing what happened to any of us here in this world, from the moment I swung that hammer to when I opened my eyes and stared up at a perfect, cream white ceiling I initially believed was the Marbury sky, and repeated those three words in my head.
This is it.
Isn’t it?
Before that, the last thing I remembered seeing was Frankie’s arrow flying directly toward my chest.
It was raining that morning.
I held my unsteady hand up between my eyes and the ceiling and examined my palm.
No blood.
No mark.
I lay in bed waiting for something—the first clue, a sign, maybe a sound. I couldn’t guess how many minutes passed by. But then again, Jack was completely incapable of measuring such things as time. I listened to the rain, the deep and slow sleeping breaths that sounded like whispered secrets from the boy in the next bed.
Waiting, waiting.
Just listening to him, I knew it wasn’t Conner. I recognized every sound Conner could ever make, no matter what world we were in. And I knew Conner’s smell. I didn’t have to see the kid to know it wa
sn’t Conner asleep over there in a bed not three feet away from my face.
When I heard the stir of sheets and covers, the rodentlike squeak of old bedsprings, I turned my head and watched the boy who padded barefoot across the floor and faded like a ghost into the dark rectangle of an open doorway against the far wall.
No light came on in there.
And I listened while he took a loud, long piss. He didn’t flush the toilet, either. He just reappeared through the open doorway, gangly, deathly pale, wearing nothing but tight red boxer briefs.
He yawned casually and rubbed his eyes.
And I knew his name. Not just his Odd name, his entire name, and everything that came with it.
Ethan Robson.
He saw I was awake, watching him.
“Morning, Jack.”
Ethan turned on a television and, folding up his grasshopper-thin legs, climbed back into bed.
I cleared my throat and answered, “Good morning.”
I felt sick.
Same as always.
A news program from London came on.
Ethan grabbed the remote control that was lying on a table between our beds, in the center of some kind of monument of stacked empty beer cans.
I couldn’t help but think about Ben telling me, Fuck this place, Jack. So, where’d you leave the goddamned remote?
Click.
It seemed as though I’d heard those words only seconds ago, and I swear I still smelled the salt ash of Marbury in my hair, clinging to the sweat in my damp armpits.
My stomach tightened.
Click.
Ethan flipped through the channels until he found highlights from a Premier League match. Only then did I notice, remember all the soccer posters and banners, even a red jersey, that hung on the wall between me and what apparently was our bathroom.
“Can you put it back on the news for just a minute?”
Trying to speak made me feel awkward, drunk, even embarrassed, but I needed to see anything that might tell me more about where—or when—my world was now.
This is how it always was.
“It’s raining, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Ethan said.
Black worms.
“Thank you for the weather update.”
He switched the channel.
It was September 22.
Nearly an entire month had vanished at the swing of a hammer.
This is it.
Jack hit it out of the park.
“Okay. Never mind,” I said. “You can turn it back to your game. Thanks, Ethan.”