by Неизвестный
I wasn’t going to settle for anything less than the pyramids for Jake, even if I had to cut the tracking chip out of him myself.
# #
It took two months before we got permission. Just enough time to get passports and create an itinerary even a judge, two counselors, and a panel of doctors, could deem responsible and safe.
It took two hours to pack.
We sat in the kitchen, waiting for the taxi, and the counselors to arrive. Both of them would be our shadows for the trip, naturally. The data gods needed to be appeased, even while we played.
“Ready?” I asked, looking at his backpack and small suitcase. “If you forget anything, it will be too late after we leave the house.”
“I’m good.” He cocked his head, as if he were listening to something I couldn’t hear. He scowled, and then sighed. “Wait. There’s one thing we should do before we leave.” He walked over to the sink and took out the big yellow box of rat poison I’d bought the day before he’d come home. “This has expired. We should throw it out.”
He tapped his arm, reminding me that he was chipped. There was so much caution in his gesture. We’d pushed so hard for this trip, and one slip of the tongue could ruin it.
I thought about the listening ears. “How did you know it was expired?”
“I remembered something Ben said about checking expiration dates ever since he got super sick drinking bad soy milk.”
“So that was the only thing in this house past expiration?”
“Yep. Ben always said you were a pretty good housekeeper. I guess I should appreciate it more.”
“Definitely.”
He tossed the box in the trash and began to tie up the bag to take out to the garage.
I wanted to ask, “Are you talking to him?” But that would not get by the listeners. Still, I needed to be completely sure. “Do you miss him? It must be weird, you being here without him.”
“I know. He’ll be so jealous to know I got to ride the roller coaster and touch the pyramids and all he gets is another year of school.” He lifted the tied off bag in triumph.
When he gets back. I wondered if Jake hadn’t found the other box of poison, in the garage? “That’s his punishment. There’s no value in making punishment easy. Then it isn’t punishment.”
He challenged me back. “It isn’t punishment. It’s atonement.”
“Can lab rats really atone?” I dared the question. We could always say we were having a philosophical discussion about the whole experiment. They couldn’t prove otherwise, I hoped.
He said carefully, “If Ben were here, he would say yes.”
“The transgressors usually do. What do you say?”
“I say he must be going crazy trapped in my mind, without being able to see or do.”
“The doctors say he’s in the same state as an induced coma.”
We heard the sound of the counselor’s cars pulling into the driveway and his eyes flicked to the door. “Some people say you can hear everything in a coma.”
“People in comas don’t take Gateway, though.”
“True.”
He opened the door to the garage, determined to take out the bag. “If Ben were here, he would ask you to forgive him. Would you?”
“Would you?”
“I do. If he were here, I would hug him. I wouldn’t even punch him in the arm for doing something so dumb as texting on Diamond Road.”
“That was monumentally stupid,” I agreed.
“So. We’re good? We don’t have any need for this? I can go put this in the trash?” I marveled at how well he had learned how to convey what he meant without his listeners being any the wiser. He had just told me he was in communication with Ben. That Ben wanted my forgiveness. That Jake knew I had been thinking of using that rat poison on something bigger than a rat. That he thought he had changed my mind when I let him throw out that poison.
My mind whirled with questions I couldn’t think how to ask. “We’re better than good. We’re going to see the pyramids.” He was right. Or half right. I would never have harmed Jake. But Ben? Maybe.
# #
The counselors didn’t like the heat and stink of Giza, so they stayed at the hotel and let us have the pyramids to ourselves. And then they gave us a gift more precious than a thousand rubies. “The remote system isn’t working here. Jake will have to be monitored every evening as well as every morning.”
We glanced at each other, and we both — all three? — were thinking the same thing. A chance to say what we didn’t want overheard. “Okay. We’ll make sure to be back in time.”
The furnace blast of heat and sand whirled us up as we joined the rest of the tourists on the ride to see the most ancient monuments to death still standing. We didn’t say anything, even though we could. We still needed to be careful of our words. Think about them. The day was precious and one wrong word might tarnish it.
At last, I asked, careful of the nearby tourist ears, “Are you really talking to Ben?”
“A little. He’d go crazy in there if I didn’t.”
Good. He should. “But if the doctors find out that your dose of Gateway isn’t working, then —”
“They haven’t yet. I’m not going to tell them if their machines don’t.”
“For Ben.” It wasn’t a question. It was just Jake being led around, again, by his best friend.
“They suspect. But they don’t know for sure. I’ve been careful not to confirm anything.”
“Why would you take this risk?”
He shrugged. “Why not. They’re testing us. They think they know everything and we’re just lab rats. Why not test them back?”
Those words sounded so much like Ben’s that fury made me grip the threadbare seat in front of me hard. I pulled someone’s hair and she turned around. “Ouch!”
“I’m sorry,” I said, releasing my hands to my lap, entwining my little fingers with a vengeance. Get hold of yourself, I chanted silently.
“Mom.” He put his hand over mine, tentatively, as if he weren’t sure I might not brush it away.
When had I begun to respond to that deeper voice as if it were really Jake’s?
He said, “We’ve talked about it.”
“We?”
“Ben and me.”
I sank into the hot, crowded mass of humanity on the bus, dizzy for a moment. It felt like old times. When both boys had their own bodies. Their own voices.
“Better to go along. Let them test us. As long as we pass.”
“This was his idea. His big plan. You don’t have to go along, this time. You only have this year, you —”
“Right. I only have now. And I’m doing what I want. Just because Ben is helping me, doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. Do you want them to poke and prod me more? Do you want them to know you think about killing me?”
“I don’t.”
He stared at me fiercely, then conceded with a shrug. “Think about killing him, then.”
“How do you know they suspect?”
“When the shrink steps away, I open my file and take pictures.” He held up his phone.
“Let me see.”
The pictures were blurry, but the words sharp. Lab rats indeed.
# #
Inevitably, the last day came. I treated it as a morning like every other, just as I had the last, last day. When I went up to wake him for breakfast, I found him in my studio, staring at the blank canvases.
“What are you doing here?”
“I like this room.”
“I’m sorry. I should have given it back to you. We’ve just been so busy.” After the pyramids had been a score of other adventures, big and small. The Eiffel Tower, learning to ocean kayak, the Grand Canyon, the prom. Some of the plans were grand, and I refused to consider where they were coming from.
“No. But you should have painted. You should paint.”
“One day.” The blank canvases, the unopened pots of paint, the dry clean brushes all seemed to whisper a
rebuke that echoed his.
“Tomorrow. First thing. You won’t have to make breakfast for me, so you can paint.”
“What would I paint?” Something dark moved in my mind, something too fearful to make real with paint and canvas.
“Me, on the roller coaster, at the very top, right before the drop. Promise me.”
“Okay.” It was easy to agree. He wouldn’t be here tomorrow to check.
As if he knew what I was thinking, he said, “I want someone to witness your promise and make sure you keep it. Nancy can. She’s my second mother, after all.”
I had forgotten how Jake had called Nancy his second mother. Ben had coined the term for me, first. To keep the listeners from ending this last day early, I frowned to remind him the boggy ground we tread. “Nancy will have better things to do. She’ll have to help Ben make up an entire lost year.”
He stood up, grabbed a brush, opened a pot of paint and splashed a wide snaking line of red on the standing canvas. “There. I’ve started it for you. That’s the roller coaster. The Red Menace. Promise me you’ll finish it.”
“I will.”
He smiled, but I couldn’t tell if he believed me or not. I wanted him to believe me. “I’ve watched you ride a million times. I can paint that scene with my eyes closed.” That was nothing but the truth.
“Today, you have to ride with me.” He saw my objections and cut them off. “I’ll hold your hand. What’s the worst that can happen?”
“Once,” I agreed. A mental image of a roller coaster car breaking free, flying through the air, landing miles from the amusement park flashed through my mind. How easy was it to disable a latch? I drew in a breath. If Jake could dare it, so could I. “Just this once.”
“And we’ll invite Nancy and she can ride with us. It will be all of us together, like old times.”
All of us. He meant that Ben would be there, too.
“She knows, doesn’t she?” The truth hurt and yet at the same time seemed like something I’d always known. Why else would she have agreed to let me take her son’s precious borrowed body so far from home. Because he’d asked her. Because it was his grand plan of atonement. It would serve her right if the car did fly off today.
Jake said, still conscious of the listeners, “Everyone knows it’s my last day. No one will mind if Nancy plays hooky with us.” He added, softly, “I’m ready to go.”
The breeze of the seconds flying by chilled me. “If you don’t want to go, I’ll make it happen.”
He stilled, his eyes growing wide as he stared at me. His little fingers found each other and twisted together tight.
Knowing Ben was one of the unseen listeners, I added, “If we can touch the pyramids, we can do anything.”
Jake’s fingers let loose. “I just want to see you ride the roller coaster today, like a good lab rat.”
I thought about the rat poison in the garage. Had Jake found it and thrown it out? Or was it still there, ready and waiting?
# #
Nancy met us at the gate. She was smiling, but I could not. Old times were old, and hard, and painful. I didn’t want to relive them. Jake walked between us, our physical buffer. My son and her son all rolled into one.
The roller coaster ride was all heart in throat, and bated breath, and a rush of air between every stillness. No time to truly worry about all the things that could happen until I was back where I started, almost startled to realize that no cogs fell off. No latches let go. We were whole. Jake. Me. Nancy.
Jake’s eyes were shining. “Well?”
I wanted to give him something from me that would last forever, even if his forever was coming to an end. “I like the climb,” I conceded, “but I still don’t love the parts where we plunge. I just don’t trust this bar.” I tapped the padded bar that locked us in.
“You just have to give yourself to it, Mom.” He laughed. “The hardest part for me isn’t the drop. It’s when the ride is over.”
There were no words to reflect the depths of that truth. I squeezed his hand.
Nancy said, “The day isn’t over. You two keep riding. I’ll go get some snacks for …after …”
She’s offering nothing and everything. I take everything. “Thank you. Jake’s favorite is blue cotton candy.”
Jake added, as Nancy climbed out of our car, “Don’t forget pretzels with mustard. And caramel corn.”
As the car began to move away from her, I said, “Not the best last meal in the world. The doctors may not be pleased.”
“I’m not the one who’ll have the stomach ache tomorrow.” There was a flash of sadness in his grin, until we started climbing higher and then he gave himself to the roller coaster ride.
I snapped a picture with my phone just before we began the climb once again. I didn’t capture the face, which wasn’t really Jake’s. Instead I captured the strong, long fingered hands resting on the bar that kept us from hurtling to the ground — little fingers linked together, ready to help him master the coming drop.
The car started climbing and I put my hand over his; we linked our little fingers.
We rode like that, never stopping, until the counselors came to get us and take us back to the doctors in their white coats and beeping, whirring machines. We ate the cotton candy, and the popcorn, and the pretzels, on the ride, and didn’t stop until it was all gone.
Jake looked at me, and then at Nancy. “Ben and I agreed. I’m going to tell them the truth. I have to. We’re good lab rats.”
When they came into the room and shook his hand and said all the right things that sounded all wrong, Jake stopped them with a simple, “I’ve been talking to Ben for most of this year.” He handed over his second journal. Not the one the doctors had given him to record his feelings and reactions to the grand experiment. But the one he’d kept his real feelings and reactions in: a battered old math notebook from freshman year.
The doctors nodded. They had suspected. But now, with his bald admission, they had questions. Jake answered patiently, while I lay my hand over his on the table, all too aware of each passing second.
He got an extra two hours, as the doctors questioned him. Maybe the questions would help other lab rats sometime in the hazy future, but it gave me two more hours in the here and now, and I savored them. Now that it was too late to stop what the boys had set in motion, I could see that Ben’s grand plans had given Jake the best year he could have had. The best year we could have had.
Listening to all the things Ben had encouraged Jake to experience, I couldn’t even worry at some of the riskier choices. It was all done and over, and we lab rats were here now, ready to exit the maze for good.
They prepped him for the transition, all clinical and precise, as if what they were doing was just another part of life’s grand plan.
We formed that circle once again. Doctors, counselors, Nancy and me. But this time, Nancy and I were in the center of the circle, flanking the boy who had agreed to this experiment.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I wish there were another way out of this maze.”
“Hey,” he protested, though I saw his little fingers were tightly crooked together. “At least we got to touch the pyramids, Mom. That’s something we should never forget. You should paint it. Right after the roller coaster.”
“I will.” I gently pried his hands apart and took his left hand in both of mine. Nancy took the right in hers.
We held his hands until he was gone.
And then I let go, and knew Nancy would do for her son what I wished I could still do for mine.
Play it Again, Sam by Deb Stover
Once upon a time Deb Stover wanted to be Lois Lane until she discovered Clark Kent is a fraud and there is no Superman. Since publication of Shades of Rose in 1995, Stover has received dozens of awards for her cross-genre fiction. For more information, please visit www.debstover.com.
The moment Lou Aronica mentioned the theme he had in mind for this anthology, I knew exactly what I wanted to write. I Never
Thought I’d See You Again provides the perfect vehicle for a story I have wanted –– needed –– to write for more than a decade. Though it is a stand-alone story, the characters were first introduced in my second novel, A Willing Spirit, published in 1996, and now available in digital format. The character of US Marshal Sam Weathers endeared himself to my readers, and to this date I still receive mail asking when I’m going to write Sam’s story. My contribution to I Never Thought I’d See You Again, titled “Play It Again, Sam,” is Sam’s story.
Marshal Sam Weathers might be dead, but he could still smell trouble. He kept a wary eye on Henry, Transition’s ugliest resident, as he removed his Stetson. “You want me to what?”
Henry folded his beefy hands on the golden desk separating them, his expression unreadable. “You heard me right, Sam. I want you to go back. I know this is complicated.”
Sam snorted as he dropped into a small marble chair. Heaven probably had nice soft clouds, but Transition had the hardest damned — he darted a glance at Henry — “Complicated how?”
“You were assigned to me because I was in law enforcement, too,” Henry explained on a sigh. “Since I was a New York City cop better than half-a-century after you died, I’m not sure why that matters.”
Henry was determined to jaw on and on about his life. This might take a while. Sam stretched his denim-clad legs out before him and crossed his ankles. Even as jeans go that a man died in, these were in sorry shape. ‘Course, it wasn’t like he needed a new pair now.
“Of course, there’s no such thing as time up here,” Henry continued. “Not that it would make any difference if there were — all things being eternal.”
“I reckon.” Sam pinned his gaze on his so-called superior. “So let’s get this right. You want me to go back where?” He arched a brow. “Or is it when?”
Henry’s fleshy jowls reddened as he bobbed his bald head. “Now.”
Sam ground his teeth. “Pardner, where I come from ‘now’ means 1896. What’s it mean to you?” He didn’t even know how long he’d been here. “I been waitin’ to join my missus in Heaven. What’s the hold-up?”