by Stan Lee
“We’re off to see the wizard,” Nia sings back, and it’s so sweet and unguarded that Cameron imagines grabbing her by the hand, spinning her around, dancing her up the street. He’s a second away from reaching for her when she suddenly does a little skip and sashays away from him, her steps so light that she seems almost airborne. Cameron lets his hand drop back to his side, the moment passed, the opportunity missed.
Damn it.
Nia stops, waiting for him to catch up.
“So, what happened to Oz?” she says.
“They sealed off the web portals when the business collapsed. But all the structure, all the code, it’s still in place. There’s just no way in.”
Nia smiles a little. “Every system has a way in.”
“Yeah, well, if it’s there, I couldn’t find it,” Cameron says, sighing. “Before he disappeared, he talked a lot about Oz, how much potential the place had. I was just a kid, it didn’t really sink in. But a few years ago, I started thinking maybe he was trying to tell me something—like maybe he’d hidden something there, a clue that would explain why he left and where he went. I’d come home from school and spend hours trying to hack my way in. I never even got close.” He shakes his head. “Of course, my mom made me stop as soon as she realized what I was up to.”
“She made you stop?” Nia says. “But why?”
“Because she didn’t want me wasting my time, getting my hopes up and then getting disappointed all over again. Anyway, she was right,” he says. “If my dad wanted us to know what happened to him, he would have left a note. He wouldn’t have buried the information in a pile of ancient code behind a door nobody else knew how to unlock.”
“Is there really a door you can’t unlock?” She’s smiling like she already knows the answer.
“Well, a lot has changed since then,” Cameron said, grinning back.
That’s when he really starts to think of their walk as a sort of date. He looks at her hand, imagining again how he might take it in his. But the desire to touch her is being quickly overtaken by another, much more urgent need. He looks around. The house they came from—and more importantly, its bathroom—is at least twenty minutes’ walk back. He’ll never make it that long. But if he walks far enough back into one of those stands of leafy, privacy-protecting trees . . .
“Uh, Nia? Can you hold up here a second while I just—I mean, I was drinking beer earlier, and I . . . um. Yeah. Be right back.”
He doesn’t wait for her response as he steps away into the woods, grateful that it’s too dark for her to see his face turning red. He walks a little farther in than he needs to—because it’s one thing to excuse yourself to pee in front of a girl, but if she hears the splatter, you have to commit ritual suicide.
A minute later—he could swear it’s been only a minute, maybe two at most—he retraces his steps, emerging out of the woods and onto the moonlit street.
Moonlit, and empty.
Nia is gone.
“Hey!” he calls. In the dark woods behind him, something rustles, an animal in the brush—but Nia doesn’t reappear. He looks up and down the road where they’ve been walking, as his surprise gives way to worry. She wouldn’t have just left . . . would she?
Maybe she had to pee too?
There’s another stand of trees across the way. He wonders if she’s in there, and he’s just decided to risk calling out again when his phone lights up with her name. The message makes his heart sink.
My father called. I had to go. I’m sorry.
Cameron reads it three times: once in his mind as it pings the network, once as it scrolls across his AR lens, and finally on his phone itself, just to make sure he’s not missing some nuance that might make him feel less rejected.
Then, he turns and walks back to the party alone.
* * *
If Cameron is being honest, he’s starting to hate Nia’s dad—especially all his crazy rules about who she can socialize with and how. Nia talks about getting out of her house like most people would talk about escaping from prison. The little Cameron knows about her childhood sounds miserable: no birthday parties, no sleepovers, no sports. She’s frustratingly matter-of-fact about it, too, even when Cameron tells her it’s totally messed up, that a decent parent would want his kid to have a normal social life. But it’s flattering, too: that she uses her rare moments out of the house to see him, even when she could have her pick of friends—and of guys. And if it means he has to wait a little longer to take their relationship to the next level, well, so what? It’s not like that makes it less real. They spend hours talking every day. It just goes to show, he thinks, that you don’t have to be in the same room as someone to be with them, to be connected.
But the opposite is also true—that you can be right up close to someone without having any idea what they’re thinking or feeling.
It’s why Cameron doesn’t even notice what’s happening to Juaquo until it’s almost too late.
13
A Friend in Need
After the unsettling view he’d gotten of Juaquo’s life—or lack thereof—just after the accident, Cameron always does a quick, discreet dig into his friend’s phone when he comes by the house once a week. And if things never seem to be getting any better, at least they aren’t getting any worse. And who am I to judge, anyway? As if he were an expert on coping with grief; he wasn’t, not even a little. He was just a kid when his dad disappeared, and even then, disappearance wasn’t death. Depending on how you looked at it, the lack of closure could even feel like a luxury. Unlike Cameron, Juaquo could never pretend his mom was just on an extended vacation, that she might come back to him someday. Juaquo had put his mom in the ground. For all Cameron knew, his friend’s long, lonely drag along rock bottom was just part of the normal grieving process.
* * *
“Cameron?”
His mother’s voice floats down the stairs, and he blinks in annoyance at the interruption. It’s been less than twenty-four hours since he stepped into the woods to relieve himself and came back to find Nia gone, and every time he thinks about it, the rejection burns a little hotter. The only way he can keep himself from texting her a million desperate, eager messages is to distract himself—which he’s accomplished by throwing himself headlong into designing a new game. The basement is teeming with chittering, big-eyed pink creatures that look like fur-covered basketballs—a projection from his augmented-reality lenses, but for Cameron they’re indistinguishable from reality unless he passes his hand through one. His plan was to create a high-tech city-wide game of whack-a-mole—there’s a virtual mallet lying nearby, which causes the pink furballs to explode with a satisfying pop if you hit them just right—but he’s tired, and annoyed, and he keeps thinking about Nia, and he’s made a mistake somewhere in the code that’s proving impossible to unravel. In the meantime, the creatures keep spawning and respawning faster than he can get rid of them. An hour ago there was just one; now there are dozens, rolling all over the room, clustering on his desk, bouncing up and down the stairs, where, gratefully, nobody but Cameron can see them. One of them is also trying to crawl up his leg, which shouldn’t bother him—it’s not even real, he reminds himself—but is starting to seriously freak him out. He closes his eyes, diving deeper into the program, looking for the fragment that’s causing all this—
“Cameron, I need you to come upstairs right now.”
Forget it, Cameron thinks, and sweeps the whole project into the trash. The pink puffs disappear without a sound, although he could swear the one climbing his leg gives him a dirty look before it winks out of existence.
Upstairs, he finds his mother staring out the window, her expression as dark as the raw, rainy weather outside. A casserole covered in foil is sitting on the table; the delicious aroma of baked eggplant, garlic, and oregano hangs in the air.
“What is it?” he asks.
“Juaquo just called. He says he’s not coming over today.”
“Oh.” Cameron feels a little twinge of
disappointment. He’d been looking forward to seeing Juaquo. He thought he might ask his friend for advice about the Nia situation, which would also give him a chance to brag a little about the Nia situation—a little role reversal from the usual, since Juaquo had always been a lady slayer compared to Cameron. But he doesn’t dwell on it, until he realizes that his mother is looking at him strangely.
“I want you to go over there.”
“What? Mom, it’s about to pour. Can’t I just—”
“Cameron.” The sharpness of her voice stops him cold. “He’s your friend, and something is wrong with him. He didn’t sound right on the phone, and he hasn’t looked right in weeks. Are you really so busy with your screens and your parties that you haven’t noticed?”
Cameron feels his ears get hot. The truth, and they both know it, is that he hasn’t. But only he knows the real reason why, and it’s worse than not caring. It’s that he got overconfident. He was so convinced that his powers gave him all the insight he could ever need, he forgot to consider their limits: that some secrets go much deeper than a burner email account, a fake identity, or a hidden life online. Some secrets are so shameful and fearful that people can’t bear to admit them even to themselves—and those secrets don’t get typed into a text or a search box. They stay locked in your head, where no one can see them, seeping through your mind like slow poison until everything turns rotten and falls apart. And if you don’t have anyone to talk to, to confide in . . .
“You’re right. I’ll go. I mean, I’ll be right back,” Cameron says, turning and catapulting himself back down the basement stairs.
He has an idea.
* * *
Cameron understands as soon as he pulls up to Juaquo’s place why his friend canceled today’s visit. Juaquo isn’t in evidence, but his old Honda Civic—or what’s left of it, anyway—is sitting at an awkward angle in the driveway, its windows smashed, tires flat, the driver’s-side mirror crushed and dangling uselessly. The back seat is covered with shattered glass; the front windshield has a giant pockmark in its center, with cracks radiating out like a spider web. The sky is starting to spit, a prelude to a steady frigid downpour that’ll last all day long, but Cameron stops to gape all the same, wondering if Juaquo was in the car when it happened. The wreck is so spectacular that it seems to have attracted an audience: across the street, a ragged-looking man is gawking in Cameron’s general direction—probably wondering if there’s anything left inside the car worth stealing.
Behind him, the door to the house creaks open.
“Your mom doesn’t take no for an answer, does she,” Juaquo says.
Cameron turns, holding the casserole in front of him. The rain begins to fall harder, peppering the foil with drops. He doesn’t notice; he’s looking at Juaquo’s face, which is less damaged than his car, but not by much. One of his friend’s eyes is surrounded by a fresh, livid bruise, the same deep purple color as the eggplant in Juaquo’s favorite dish.
“What happened to you?”
Juaquo ignores the question and shoots a sidelong look at Cameron’s feet, swaying a little as he does. “It’s gonna be all puddles out here soon. You remember how we used to stomp around in puddles when we were kids? I guess you can’t now. What happens if that thing on your foot gets wet? You get electrocuted?”
“No,” Cameron says, and peers more closely at Juaquo’s face. He doesn’t just look bruised; his speech sounds slurred and he looks unsteady on his feet. “Geez, man. Are you drunk?”
“Not drunk enough. This bruise hurts like hell.” Juaquo turns, his broad shoulders slumping. “You should go. As you can see, I’m not in a position to entertain guests.”
Cameron steps forward. “I’m not leaving until you talk to me about what’s going on.”
Juaquo stiffens and turns back, fixing Cameron with a withering glare. “What do you mean?”
“What do you think I mean?”
Cameron feels himself beginning to sweat, the silence stretching out between them. For the first time since the accident, he feels not just small and overwhelmed, but impotent. Ordinary. His abilities can’t help him now; he can’t read minds, and Juaquo’s phone, sitting in his pocket, reveals nothing. No calls, no texts; he hasn’t even phoned his insurance company about the car. Cameron can only gaze back at his friend and wait.
The moment seems to drag on forever. Finally, Juaquo puts a hand to his head and groans.
“Okay,” he says. “Fine. Whatever. Come in. Mi casa es su casa, as always.”
* * *
Inside, the small house is neat but dusty. There’s an empty spot by the big bay window in the living room where it would be warm and bright on a sunny day, and Cameron remembers with a pang that this is where they’d put the hospital bed—where Juaquo’s mom spent her last days after she got too weak to climb the stairs. Juaquo has been here all alone ever since, living in a house where even the furniture arrangement is a reminder of what he’s lost. Nothing, from the pictures on the walls to the soft yellow curtains, has changed. Mi casa es su casa. Only, looking around, Cameron wonders if Juaquo really thinks of this as his house at all.
Juaquo sits down heavily on the sofa, opposite a TV where an old Twilight Zone episode is running on mute. Cameron instinctively uses his abilities to scan his friend’s Netflix queue. It’s grim: an endless scroll of horror films, and one random documentary about the Unabomber.
“You want anything to drink?” says Juaquo.
“I’m good.” Cameron walks into the kitchen and opens the fridge, sliding the casserole next to the only other thing inside, a lonely, grease-spotted Chinese takeout container. “Your refrigerator is the saddest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Juaquo doesn’t smile. “I don’t know how to cook.”
Cameron sits down at the other end of the couch. “So,” he says.
“What do you want to know?”
“What happened to your face?”
“Same thing that happened to my car. Any other questions?” Juaquo says, but Cameron stays silent. Juaquo sighs, leaning back. He keeps his eyes closed as he talks. “All right. One of the guys at the yard, Serge, has a cousin who runs an MMA club out of a garage in the Flats. He kept asking if I wanted to fight, he said he’d train me. So I did. Friday nights. For a while.”
Cameron’s mouth drops open. Juaquo had always been ready to step in on Cameron’s behalf if someone else tried to start shit, but he was also intensely aware, always, of his own size and strength. The idea of him fighting on purpose, let alone for fun—it’s the most ridiculous thing Cameron has ever heard.
“Are you kidding? You’re in a . . . a fucking fight club? What, like, for money?”
Juaquo shrugs. “Sometimes. The money can be pretty good, if you win. But I guess, you know, since I’m spilling my guts”—he opens his eyes and looks directly at Cameron—“maybe I just wanted to hit something. Or get hit. I’m not real picky about it.”
“That’s messed up,” Cameron says.
“Says the guy whose mom is still alive,” says Juaquo, with a humorless laugh. Cameron winces. “Anyway, a few weeks ago, they put me against some guy—and I knew right away I shouldn’t, okay? It was like, what do you call it, lizard brain. I could tell from the way he looked at me that whatever happened, he was gonna take it personally. And he did.”
Juaquo takes a deep breath, closing his eyes again. “Can I tell you the weirdest thing? I’m almost relieved. I’ve been looking over my shoulder, wondering if I should, I don’t know, get a weapon or something.” Cameron bites his tongue before he can say So that’s why the googling for guns, and stays quiet. “But it’s over now. And he didn’t even come for me. He came for my car. Can you believe that? My freaking car. What a dick. It’s just dumb luck that I forgot my mouthguard, came back out just in time to find him bashing up my headlights with a baseball bat.”
“He hit you with a bat?” Cameron tries to leap to his feet in a righteous rage, loses his balance, and nearly face-plants into the
couch. Juaquo stares at him for a split second, and then starts laughing—in earnest this time, smacking his hand against his knee, until the whooping turns into a cough.
“Damn it, Cam. Don’t make me laugh, it hurts. And yeah, he hit me with a bat. But as you can see, he only did it once.”
Cameron looks at Juaquo’s bruised-up eye, then looks out the window.
“You know it’s raining inside your car,” he says.
Juaquo shrugs. “Probably for the best. He pissed in the back seat after he smashed the windows. Did I mention that there was something very wrong with this dude?”
Cameron can’t help laughing, and then can’t help thinking that this is the most he and Juaquo have said to each other in months.
“I can’t believe you joined an underground fight club.”
“I know,” Juaquo says. “It’s crazy, and self-destructive, and I’m sure that shrink of yours would have all kinds of things to say about it. But, man, being in this house, with my mom gone . . . you just don’t know what it’s like. And I’m glad you don’t. But you don’t.”
“You could move,” Cameron says. “Why don’t you? Sell this place, get a sweet loft downtown.”
Juaquo shakes his head. “It’d be worse somewhere else. Here, I’ve at least got good memories.”
Cameron couldn’t have asked for a better opening. He smiles and says, “Then I’ve got something for you.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, Juaquo stands up and walks slowly toward the kitchen. When he reaches the doorway, he stops short, gripping the wall so hard that his fingers turn white. A petite woman with round hips and black hair is standing at the sink, drying a dish and humming to herself. She turns at the sound of his footsteps, smiling.
“Hey, chiquito,” she says. “I’m just washing up. Are you hungry? How was school?”
Juaquo swallows hard. Behind the AR glasses, his eyes are wet.
“School was fine, Amá.”
Milana Velasquez beams at her son, then turns to put the dish away. The cupboard is closed, but she doesn’t seem to notice; the hand holding the dish is obscured by the door as she reaches for it, then reappears again, empty.