“Don’t worry,” Tom said. “I have an idea.”
Tom met Kyle at the gravel spot behind the auditorium after sixth period like they’d agreed. Kyle burst out laughing.
“Why are you dressed like that?”
“You said not to get spotted, so I figured . . .”
“You look ridiculous!”
“Well, that’s fine, right, as long as no one recognizes me?”
“You don’t look like someone else, you look like you in a fake mustache and a white wig.”
“I look like them! This is how they all dress!” Tom had snuck up to the Drama Department’s wardrobe room and now, in addition to the fake mustache and white wig, he was also wearing an oversized checkered blazer over a faded basketball jersey with the number 27 on it. Instead of pants, he was wearing a flowing floral-print skirt. He’d put all of his clothes in his backpack.
“Right, but . . . won’t you still be wearing that here in the real world as well?”
“Hopefully my other self will know to immediately change back into my real clothes.”
“You should text yourself right before we go.”
“Yeah, good thinking.” He didn’t know if his other self had any grasp of phones, but who wouldn’t look at a vibrating, beeping object in their hand?
Tom set his backpack down and took his phone out. He started to write a text and noticed that his text to Kyle, the one about how he would soul-swap if he could, was still sitting there. It hadn’t sent. He changed the recipient to his own phone number and sent it to himself as a test. Three seconds later, his phone vibrated. Cool, it would work. He wrote a new text to himself:
change your clothes immediately! they’re in your backpack.—tom
He felt lame signing his text the way Tobe did, but he didn’t have his own number saved in his phone and he wanted his other self to know where the message came from. He didn’t send the text yet. He left the thumb of his right hand on the send button. With his left hand, he grabbed Kyle’s hand.
“Ready?”
“Yep.”
They fell backward. Tom hit SEND just before they hit the ground.
Realities splashed. They were back in Crap Kingdom, or really, just outside of it.
“Okay,” Tom said, peering up over the rim. “Let’s go.”
“No worries,” Kyle said, “I can teleport through the Wall to anywhere inside the kingdom now. I’m getting better every time.”
“Does that thing still happen where—”
Before Tom could finish his question, that thing happened where he felt like he was dead for three seconds.
When he came out of it, they were on the very edge of the kingdom, just inside the Wall. Tom was pleased to discover his mustache was still glued on. He was really good at mustache-gluing, at least. The wig was still on, too. His wig and mustache work were teleportation-proof and he was proud.
“ All right,” Kyle said. “You’re gonna find a good hiding spot?”
“Sure,” Tom said.
“I’d go with you but if you’re with me it will draw attention to you,” Kyle said, “plus I got somewhere to be.”
“Okay!” Tom said.
“Don’t get upset, dude. I’m doing you a favor, remember?”
Kyle walked away fast, leaving Tom alone. Tom felt pretty silly, and it wasn’t even because of the wig or the mustache or the skirt.
Tom wandered alone in Crap Kingdom. All the things that had been strange to him about the place were old news now. But there were new strange things. For the first time, he could hear laughter in the air, and not cruel laughter, or I-give-up-and-am-crazy-now laughter, but actual warm laughter, from grown-ups and children alike. Had Kyle really taught an entire society to laugh? He couldn’t have, right? This wasn’t a commercial.
He looked around for hiding places. It was tough to distinguish between what was someone’s home and what was just junk. He’d zero in on a big pile of trash bags or a huge concrete tube and be absolutely sure there was no one inside of it and then someone would emerge just as he approached.
It was also tough to find a hiding spot because everything seemed to be in a state of flux. Children were helping their parents move the building blocks of their makeshift homes around. Years of rust and dust drifted up into the air. It was killing Tom’s allergies. He was sneezing his head (but thankfully not his mustache) off. Everybody was in motion. Everybody had a purpose. He’d never seen it like this. It felt like the first day of high school when you were a freshman. Everybody else was engaged in all this chaotic activity that seemed crazy to you, like something you’d never get the hang of, but to them it made perfect sense. And you were sure that as soon as you tried to join in, everyone would laugh at you, or chop your head off.
“Excuse me,” Tom asked a man dressed exclusively in beer boxes. “What’s going on?”
“You didn’t hear?” the beer man said. “Kyle said to look at your house today and see if there was any way you could make it better. It doesn’t have to be bigger or prettier or anything. Just whatever ‘better’ means to you.”
The man looked down at Tom’s skirt.
“That’s nice,” he said sincerely.
“Thank you,” Tom said. He was legitimately flattered.
The beer man turned back to the smashed-in hollowed-out snack-vending machine he’d been attempting to turn right side up. He reached down, dug his fingers underneath it, got it about halfway in the air, then stopped.
“Need some help?” Tom said.
“Why, thank you, that would be . . .” the man said.
Somewhere a loud, flawed bell clanged.
“Never mind!” the beer man said, and dropped the machine. Tom had to jump back to avoid losing his toes. He yelped, and when he opened his mouth to do so, he got a mouthful of the titanic dust cloud the falling machine had kicked up.
As soon as he’d blinked enough dust away, he saw that he was on an empty street, or at the very least, an empty trash-strewn dirt path. The last of its occupants were just disappearing around a corner. A tumbleweed of twisted plastic shopping bags blew by. Where was everyone going?
Tom now had his pick of hiding places. He had been worried he’d have to settle for the first dirt-puddle-at-the-top-of-an-old-shipping-container he came across. Now he could have any dirt puddle on any old shipping container he wanted, but nothing looked promising on this street. Maybe around the—
He bumped into someone much shorter than he was.
“Hey, watch it!”
He looked down. It was Pira. She was dressed in her Viking costume.
“Oh, hey, Tom.”
Tom thought quickly. “Wot?” he answered. “’Oo’s Tom, then?”
“What’s that voice supposed to be?”
“’At’s how I talk and that!”
“You sound like my dad, Tom.”
Tom took this as a compliment, since her dad had sort of a British accent, even though this world did not have an England.
“Yeah, it’s me, so what?”
“Why are you dressed like that?”
“Because your dad wants to kill me.”
“That’s right! He does. So . . . gimme it.”
“What?”
“Give me your disguise or I’ll tell my dad that you’re here.”
“Okay,” Tom said, and began the excruciating process of removing his mustache without the proper mustache-removal solution.
“Where did . . . ow . . . where did everybody go?”
“Kyle’s showing off his new invention.”
“What is it?”
“Something called music.”
“Wait, what? Kyle claims he invented music?”
“I don’t know why you’re getting so worked up about it. It�
�s pretty stupid anyway. I don’t see what the big deal is. When he debuted it last week everybody was like, oh, cool, that’s so great, that’s so fun. But who cares? It’s just noise, right? I can make noise. I’d make a noise right now if someone weren’t following me and I didn’t want them to catch me.”
“Who’s . . . ow . . . following you?”
“Gark. My dad sent him after me. He wants me to hear ‘music’ with the rest of the losers, but if I wanted to hear a noise . . . man, do I want to make a noise right now! That’s fun. That and dressing up as stuff. Why doesn’t anyone understand that? No one ever wanted to have fun before and now that Kyle’s here and they do, they don’t even know how to do it right. Ugh, hurry up!”
“Ow . . . Okay! There!” Tom handed her his mustache and wig.
“The rest of it, too. Your clothes.”
“What? Why?”
“Because I’m being chased and I need to change disguises!”
“These are the only clothes I have!”
“I bet that rock over there would sound really good against this big hollow metal thing, huh? Then you’d be in serious trouble.”
“All right, fine.”
“Aren’t mustaches the best? There was this guy the other night who I caught sneaking around, and he was wearing this neat fuzzy helmet thing, and when I made him give it to me so I wouldn’t tell anybody he was sneaking around, he took it off and he had an actual mustache! If I had a real mustache, I’d never cover it up with anything.”
“Yeah,” Tom said. “They’re pretty great.” He finished taking off the blazer and the jersey and the skirt. He had never anticipated being in a situation where someone would order him to take off a skirt and he would be mad about it.
He handed it all to Pira, who skillfully put it all on over her existing costume. When the process was over, in addition to all the other stuff, Pira was wearing a mustache on top of her Viking beard, and a white wig rested precariously between the two horns of her Viking helmet. Tom was wearing white cotton briefs and nothing else. He was embarrassed by them even though he didn’t think Pira knew a thing about Earth underwear. Tom knew that at a certain point you were supposed to switch over from tighty-whiteys to some other form of more mature underwear, but he still hadn’t made that transition, and it wasn’t until someone else saw you in your underwear that you realized you’d failed to make this and other critical transitions, transitions every other kid his age just seemed to know how to make automatically.
“Great. Well, have fun!” Pira scampered off around the corner.
A few seconds later, she scampered back, picked up the rock she’d pointed out earlier and threw it against the piece of metal she’d pointed out earlier. As promised, it made an awful clanging noise. Then she disappeared again. The sound had barely finished echoing when Gark appeared behind Tom.
“Hey, Gark,” Tom said.
“Oh, no. Oh no,” Gark said. “Tom, you’re not supposed to be here.”
“I know. I know. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry about everything, okay? Seriously. When I came and saw this place it wasn’t what I expected, at all, and the king kind of treated me like crap but you were great, and I should’ve treated you better, and I guess I should’ve taken your offer, because Kyle seems to be having a really good time. I just wish somebody had told me—I don’t know. The point is, I’m really sorry for the way I treated you and if there’s any way at all that you could not tell the king I’m here, I would really appreciate it.”
Gark looked pained.
“I always liked you, Tom.”
“Thanks,” Tom said.
“No,” Gark said, “I mean, I always liked you. Not . . . gosh, don’t tell the king I said this. Not Kyle as much.”
“Really?”
“Yeah! When that prophecy first came, I got so excited! I mean, come on, a Chosen One? We used to hear about that kind of stuff a lot when I was a kid, but it seemed like the king and my dad were kind of wanting any Chosen One talk to stop completely. But here was this prophecy through my window, and I brought it to the king, and I expected him to say no and instead he said sure, go ahead.”
“It doesn’t bother you that he was only letting you do it because he thought you’d mess up?”
“Who cares what he thinks, as long as I get to do it? That’s the way I look at it. I imagined it would take such a long time to find you, but you were right there by the portal, and then I had to think of a good way to approach you . . . and I know it didn’t turn out to be the best idea . . . but, you were like my project! It was so exciting!”
“You must have been disappointed when I turned out to be a jerk.”
“I don’t think you’re a jerk. You said a lot of things to the king that maybe I couldn’t agree with out loud, but they were things I’d always wanted to say. And as soon as I heard you say them, I was so excited because I knew I wasn’t crazy. And Kyle’s great! But there wasn’t anything to do, really, to get him here. It wasn’t a project. I already knew where he was, because he was friends with you. And the king liked him and took him to J’s cave and suddenly he was the king’s project. And everybody liked Kyle. And that’s great. But it was kind of fun when it was just my thing. You were my favorite, Tom. Yeah. I liked you a lot.”
“Is there still something we can do? Because I have to be here.”
“Why?”
“It’s tough to explain. But I have to be on this side of our two worlds.”
“Well then,” Gark said, “you should leave Kkkkttttnpth. You should be beyond the Wall. I don’t see the king changing his mind, especially if he finds out you snuck in here today.”
“Is there anything you can do?”
Gark shook his head. “He’s got his Chosen One.”
“But I can’t go too far,” Tom said, “’cause I can’t go back to my world without Kyle.”
“Then at least hide,” Gark said. “You’re pretty obvious the way you’re, y’know, dressed.”
“I know! I was looking for a hiding spot, and I didn’t mean to be not wearing clothes. . . . Anyway, if you see Kyle, and there’s any way to tell him this without the king finding out, just tell him I’m hiding underneath . . . underneath . . .” Tom looked around. “I don’t know, maybe that old canoe?”
“I wouldn’t worry about it. Just pick the best hiding spot you can, and I’m sure Kyle will find you with a person-finding spell.”
“Oh,” Tom said. “All right.”
“Did Pira come this way?”
Tom pointed directly behind him, toward the piece of metal and the rock and the corner she’d disappeared around minutes before.
“Thanks.” Gark started to walk away, then turned back to Tom and started taking his shirt off.
“Gark!” Tom said.
“You’re going to be cold,” Gark said.
“Maybe, but I’ll figure it out. What’s the king gonna say when he sees you without a shirt?”
Gark seemed to really think about this. “I don’t know.”
Tom laughed. “It was a rhetorical question. Go, I’ll be fine.”
“All right,” Gark said. “Good-bye, Tom.”
Gark went out of sight behind a tent flap that was actually an old beach towel. It was blowing around in a wind that was just now kicking up. The sun was just starting to set. The temperature was dropping rapidly, even without the wind’s help. Tom was freezing. He sincerely hoped that, back on Earth, his soul-other was using his body to win a fencing competition or something equally cool, to make it worthwhile that the real Tom was here, freezing in his underwear in a world where nobody wanted him.
At least Gark liked him. At least he was Gark’s favorite. Then Tom remembered that Gark was not the smartest guy, and was the kingdom’s least respected citizen. If the dumbest person liked you and no one else did,
did that mean you were a bad person? If the smartest person here, which the king seemed to be, hated Tom, then that meant he was the worst, right? But Tom didn’t like the king. The king was mean and judgmental. A smart mean person hated him, and a dumb nice person liked him. Whose approval was he supposed to want?
It was finally time to pick a place to hide. As usual, he had started out with every intention of making a really good decision, but as usual, the options had overwhelmed him, and he was tired and cold, so he gave up and climbed into what he thought was called a wardrobe. It did not take him to a second fantasy world, though. What had seemed appealing about it was that it had doors, and he could just open it, climb in, and not even have to crouch down because it was a little taller than he was, and he could close the doors and be out of the wind. What was unappealing about it were the things piled up at the bottom. He saw them as he stepped in. They appeared solid enough, but they crunched underneath his feet as he turned around to shut the doors. He looked down. They were like smooth, gray circular rocks, and they all had holes in the middle. But why were they crushed so easily if they were rocks? Because they weren’t rocks, he realized. They were doughnuts. Extremely old doughnuts. The sprinkles were the dead giveaway. The bread and frosting had molded over, but the sprinkles, the cockroaches of the confectionary world, had maintained their color and shape. Ewww, Tom thought.
He considered kicking them out into the road, but he figured once he shut the doors, a pile of doughnuts outside would be a dead giveaway to whoever had placed them in here. This was what he could’ve done as Chosen One. This was how he could’ve been a leader. He could’ve said, “Hey, you know what? GET RID OF THE DOUGHNUTS!”
He winced, shut the door, and tried to be thankful that Pira hadn’t asked for his shoes. No one here seemed to recognize the value of shoes. Kyle was teaching them music? Kyle needed to be teaching them shoes.
In the periods when the wind died down, Tom could hear Kyle’s show, or gathering, or whatever it was. There was loud recorded music playing. It sounded like The Beatles. Maybe Kyle had found a boom box and some D batteries underneath a different pile of rotting doughnuts. Would Kyle do a whole lot to dissuade the people from thinking he’d invented music and not just brought it over from another world? Probably not. Tom didn’t know why he assumed that, but he did. He was no longer sure whom he was mad at, exactly, but if he kept being mad at people it would keep him from being mad at himself.
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