by Deb Caletti
She flies down the stairs. She hasn’t brushed her teeth, and she’s wearing only her underwear and Thomas’s Grateful Dead shirt, which barely reaches her thighs. She pitches open the door.
He isn’t on the front porch. No. Instead, Billy stands on the lawn. He looks like hell. Clearly, he hasn’t slept, either, and he’s in the same clothes as yesterday, and he has dark stubble cheeks from not shaving. One Converse is untied. Inexplicably, he holds an old record player on his shoulder. The cord hangs down. Its arm swoops back and forth as the turntable wobbles up there.
“Billy?”
Nothing. He just stands there, staring at her intently.
“What are you doing with that turntable?”
“Honestly?”
He hauls it down from his shoulder. Holds it in his arms. He looks sad. So does the turntable. “You don’t get it? Say Anything? You don’t know that old movie? Where the guy has the boom box on his shoulder and he’s out on the girl’s lawn and he’s showing how crazy he is for her, and playing their song . . .”
“We don’t have a song.”
“And I don’t have a boom box. This is Gran’s old record player. She’s going to kill me.”
“I never saw that movie.”
“Oh, hell. Just erase this from your memory, then. Pretend you don’t see this record player, okay? I thought . . . Never mind. Mads, come here.”
“You stay there, and I’m staying here. Don’t come any closer. Amy?”
“Mads, I’m sorry. I want to explain. About Gran, Amy, the whole fucked-up mess . . . Come over here.”
“I can’t. I haven’t brushed my teeth.”
“We need a song, Mads.”
“You’ve got to keep it down. You’re going to wake the whole neighborhood.”
“Mads? Wait a second. What are you wearing?”
She yanks the shirt down. Tries to cover more of herself than it’s covering.
“Don’t look.”
“No, I mean it! Come here! What is that? Is that what I think it is? Is that Grateful Dead Summer Tour, 1987?”
She gazes at that upside-down skull. “Yeah. I guess so.”
“I have that shirt,” he says.
“It’s Thomas’s.”
“It was my dad’s. Jesus! Don’t you see? Don’t you see what this is?”
“Not exactly.”
“A book, a T-shirt, objects through the ages? Bridges are meant to be crossed, Mads! Maps are meant to be followed!” His voice is hoarse, cracking. He’s been up too late, and the lack of sleep is getting to him, likely. But so is all that he’s lost, and all that he’s sure he’s found.
This is not how she has ever imagined telling him, right there on Thomas and Claire’s own dewy front lawn, Billy with his grandmother’s record player at his feet. But this cannot go on a minute more. He needs to know the truth. Mads can only hope she’ll be forgiven.
“Ryan?”
No.
Please, no.
“Ryan Plug?”
“Ryan?” Billy asks.
Claire’s hand is out. “It’s so great to finally meet you!”
Claire is heading toward him. She steps across that wet morning lawn. She’s thrown on some clothes, but her feet are bare, and she looks down to see where she’s walking.
She looks down, and then she catches sight of his shoes.
His Converse.
She stops right where she is. She freezes.
“I don’t know any Ryan,” Billy says. His face is all questions. He can tell something large is happening, only he doesn’t know what.
Harrison and Avery are also awake now, and they push past Claire and spin out onto the lawn, rays of a zip gun, fueled up by the lawlessness of a sleepover. Avery lets out a war cry and Harrison in his spaceship pajamas chases Avery in his alien ones. Avery stops abruptly, lifts up one bare foot to examine the bottom.
“Eyuw,” he says. Ned Chaplin’s cats, probably.
Harrison stops, too, long enough to see who’s there.
“Hey, Billy,” he says.
And then it is over.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Billy! Wait! Come back!” Mads runs down the front walk in her/his-Thomas’s/his dad’s Grateful Dead shirt with the skull on it. She makes a grab for Billy’s own shirt, the stealing Casper shirt, the joy and triumph shirt, the passion and blue balls shirt, the loss and leaving and staying up all night shirt, and now the betrayal shirt. He knows it’s betrayal by the look on Mads’s face, only he doesn’t exactly get what the betrayal is. How one T-shirt could live through all of this is beyond him. It should disintegrate on the spot, like an attack by a Breath Weapon.
He’s exhausted. Energy Drain, level: red. He wants to cry. Something else is happening—Slimy Doom Attack. Where the victim turns into infectious goo from the inside out. This can cause permanent Ability Drain. Yes. Every bit of him is useless. He’s deep into Night Worlds, lost in the maze, and if he ever finds his way out, it’ll be a miracle.
“I need to be alone, Mads. I need to be alone.”
She looks shocked. Shocked he’s this angry, shocked he’s taking that tone with her. As shocked as if he just lit his underwear on fire or started speaking in Latin. Well, hell. What does she expect? Who the hell is Ryan Plug? Is this an actual guy she’s also with right now, another J.T. Jones, or is she hiding Billy? Is he Ryan Plug? The thought makes him sick.
Hypocrite, the doctor in his head says. What about Amy? He tells the doctor in his head to shut the fuck up. Still, the doctor folds his arms and gives a smug smile.
Billy clutches that record player like it’s a baby. He turns away from Mads, that house, the street that’s as close to a real-life suburban-ish dream as he’ll ever get. He can feel her eyes on his back, and he can feel so much more, too. Dread. It’s his Blindsense working. It’s a lesser ability, lacking the precision of Blindsight, but it lets a creature notice things it can’t actually see. Ryan means something much more than Ryan, and he knows it. He doesn’t know what the more is, just that it’s coming.
The tires of his mother’s truck scream out of there. He feels bad about that, but not bad enough to slow down. Good thing that car’s got speed. The record player rides along beside him like a slightly disapproving passenger who’s keeping his mouth shut. No one is even outside yet. No one is up. Every sane person is still in bed, sleeping, or thinking about pancakes. At least no one will see his despair.
On the dock, though, someone is up. Billy smells coffee. He could drop right down there and weep, but the coffee draws him forward, like a spell. Blindsense has made his abilities keener—the chicory fumes are Gran’s, coming from a just-brewed pot.
Whatever. He’ll put on his Cloak of Disappearance and head straight to his room. Sullenness can be powerful. It says back off.
Ginger doesn’t bark when he comes in. She’s lying low. The energy in the house is like an actual sound she’s wisely hiding from, same as she does when it starts to thunder.
Gran is in the kitchen. Billy sees the slump of her robe, her shoulders curved as an old gnome’s. In the quiet house, the clink of her spoon against her cup is loud as a chunk of polar ice breaking off from the mainland. The slurp of java is the ocean spiraling down an earth drain.
His head hurts. It sucks that his father was an alcoholic, because he could sure use a drink right now. There are certain vows he won’t break, though. No morning booze. No getting misery-wasted.
He flops on his bed. He’s never been more tired in his life. And great. Terrific. Gran’s been in there. It’s her room, but still. She’s used her big old computer and left it on. It hums and glows. The thing is huge. The mouse alone is as chubby as a dinner roll.
He hauls himself back up to shut it off so he can sleep. When he moves the mouse, though, an image appears. A giant, close-up image, made large, zoomed in, the way they zoom in on the critical piece of overlooked information, the footprint, the crowbar, the fiber—evidence—in the crime shows.
; The image looks like a strand of DNA, viewed under a microscope. It’s twisted like that, links linking more links. He can’t figure out how to make the image smaller. His fingers have to remember old technology. He clicks the corner of the photo. Smaller. Clicks again. Smaller. Is it a road, maybe? No, that’s an arm, he thinks. An arm and a wrist. It’s a bracelet. Shit, goddamn it to hell, Gran, what are you trying to do to me?
How did Gran get a picture of Mads’s bracelet? Fuck, man, what is going on?
Click. It’s an arm, all right. The arm leads to a hand; her head is resting in that hand. You can’t even see her whole body, because that’s not even what the image is about. She’s off to the side. He can’t really see her all that well. The girl is not the point of this photo. Click. Click. The point of this photo is that ambulance and the park and the water’s edge.
Of course, he’s seen that photo, just before Gran ditched the paper into the bin. The article was so small, but at least it had a picture. After that, and after some two-second mention on the night’s news on TV, there was nothing more.
He doesn’t understand. He can’t grasp why Mads’s bracelet is on that girl who’s sitting on the grass as his mother is wheeled away.
And then he does.
• • •
He crashes the computer to the floor. It takes some doing, too. It isn’t some arm swipe, some neat cinematic swoop, no. He has to shove, especially with the Energy Drain he has already, and with the Demon Fever approaching. Then he storms out to face the wicked crone. The crashed computer with its cracked screen is nothing compared to the damage she’s done.
Gran still just sits there at the kitchen table. “Are you trying to destroy me?” Billy screams at her. Her face has gone slack. It’s a pile of sags, an old dress discarded off an old body, lying in folds on the ground.
“I’m trying to save you, Buzz. You want to leave here and go off with a girl like her—”
“You went searching for that!”
“I remembered! My mind knew something. I felt it.”
“Because you’re paranoid!”
“It’s only paranoia when it’s not true. Otherwise, it’s good instincts.”
She’s a witch.
He has to get away. He slams the front door hard enough that the houseboat rocks. He’s fighting through all of it: Demon Fever, spread by night hags, causing permanent Ability Drain. Devil Chills, almost impossible to recover from, since you must be saved and then saved again. The Red Ache, which makes your skin hot and bloated. The Shakes—involuntary twitches, tremors, and fits. They descend; they take over his body as he flies back to Mads’s house in his mom’s truck. He drives so fast, he’s a blur of white fog, a manic apparition.
There’s the smell of pancakes in the air when he gets out at Mads’s house. He doesn’t even turn the truck’s engine off, just yanks the parking brake. His door is left flung open. The windshield wipers are wrongly on, ca-shunk, ca-shunking. His front tire is half up the curb.
His hand is just over the doorbell (aunt and uncle or no aunt and uncle, Ryan Plug or no Ryan Plug, none of it even matters) when Mads opens the front door. She’s heard him pull up, and her face is open, expecting, what, another record player? Another burst of innocent, trusting love?
She takes in the scene—his face with its color long gone, his trembling hands, that suddenly ditched vehicle. He probably doesn’t even need to say what he does next.
“I know who you are.”
The words are a Breath Weapon. They instantly melt her. She starts to cry. He’s so furious and confused that her tears are just meaningless raindrops he barely notices, a slight dip in barometric pressure.
“Why, why?” he cries. That stupid, endless why!
“Billy, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t know. After what happened . . . I just got caught up . . .”
“Caught up? You just got caught up?” Caught plus up, the words don’t make sense. He loves her! What does his love even mean, what is it even made of, if she’s just a lie? Her mouth gapes. It opens and closes. There are more tears and gulps. She is shaking and wiping her face with the back of her hand. Thank God she is wearing shorts and a tank top now, and not his/her/their lucky shirt. How pathetic that this is all he can find to be glad of.
“I wanted to tell you. I tried—”
This is no good. The tears are meaningless and the words are meaningless, and he is made of vapor. He’s disappearing. She’s a stranger, and he’s on some strange street, and the engine of his mom’s truck is chugging a message: out-out, out-out, out-out.
“No,” he says to the girl in front of him. And then he shouts it. “No!” It’s a word that should be shouted more often, likely. His voice is so loud, the windows of the semi-suburban house rattle. The pancake smell runs off in fear. Mads claps her hands over her ears.
He is out of there, all right. Out. Of. There. Billy realizes he is barefoot only when he takes off across the lawn. He gets in the truck, slams the door. Just before he hits that accelerator hard, he sees the uncle appear in the doorway. He has his hand on Her shoulder. Who are they? Billy doesn’t know these people. These are not his people. It’s possible that as far as people go, he has very few left.
• • •
The worst is the Mind Fire. The stupor of it is paralyzing. It’s like your brain is burning.
He is back in Night Worlds. For days, he’s been there. Even with the dangers, even with hidden rooms and spells and weapons, that place feels safer than the real one.
After two nights at Alex’s, he’s back under Gran’s roof. He hates her. He hates her, and he still loves her, of course, in some shrinking, withering way, with some desperate need keeping it alive. She’s practically all the family he has left, except for the uncle he can’t bear to call now. Billy ignores Uncle Nate’s messages until he stops phoning. What’s Billy going to do, cry and fall at his uncle’s feet, because he just needs one fucking shred of kindness he can count on? Plan A is gone, and the rest of it is back: the not eating, the not sleeping, the fists and fury and self-hatred. He can’t even think Her name. In place of it, he thinks only Why?
He goes to work, though. He would never, ever ditch the people and dogs who count on him. Every minute he’s away from Casper, he misses him. He wants to bury his face in him and Jasper. Freeing Casper was a great thing, no matter what else came along with it.
In the darkness he swims in, in this putrid, prehistoric pool in a prehistoric cave, he can almost understand what his mother did. But then he thinks of Jane Grace and even Gran, and even, yes, even Her, and definitely Casper, and the almost stays an almost. In the middle of this black water of all he’s lost, the almost is the life ring that keeps him from going under.
• • •
He blocks Her calls. Because, wow, she’s sure calling him now, isn’t she? He’s so angry and confused that his thoughts spin out like faulty fireworks screaming and thrashing on a sidewalk. Her pleading and crying and semi-explanations sound similar to a black ripple, with the strange distance of liquid. It all turns to a submerged echo, the blub and whoosh of the underneath.
At work, Jane Grace gives him the hardest jobs. Physical labor. Cleaning, mowing the whole backyard. Replacing wood chips in the outdoor pens. Sanitizing playrooms. All the dog walking, multiple times a day. He walks every dog at least twice. She sends him out with Jasper and Casper three times in one shift.
It’s good for Casper to have that exercise. He wouldn’t come out of his cage for the first few days. He was scared, but he was also probably exhausted. All that trauma kicks a creature’s ass. It’s good for Casper to be with the others, too, especially a great guy like Jasper, who’s not someone to get aggressive or make some surprise play for a ball Casper’s been brave enough to sniff. Casper has to learn to trust again. He barely leaves Billy’s or Jane Grace’s side, so he needs to get out in the world, too. His cage, the hallways of Heartland that lead to rooms and other rooms—it’s fine, but the real world waits. Out in t
he world is the last place Billy wants to be, but he’ll do it for Casper.
“They need you in the yard,” Jane Grace says. He barely has Jasper’s and Casper’s leashes off.
“Okay.” Jasper’s raring to go after a big, sloppy drink, but Casper is as stuck to Billy as his own soul.
“You all right without a break?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.” She actually claps twice. It’s a get-going clap. It’s a don’t-stop-or-you-might-fall-into-a-pit clap. Yeah. He knows what she’s up to. Jane Grace heard from Amy and Amy heard from Alex, though he’d only told Alex that Mads was seeing another guy, Ryan. Old Ryan. He almost starts to believe Ryan exists. He hates the dickwad. Plug. Slobbery, self-centered asshole. He can barely meet Jane Grace’s eyes. If he looks straight at her and sees her kindness, he’ll bust right up like a big baby.
He’s never been more tired in his life.
“Get a move on,” Jane Grace says.
• • •
“Come on, man, you’re not even trying,” Alex says.
The weird thing is, Billy can’t tell if Alex is right or not. He feels like he’s trying harder than he ever has in his life. Every single move, on the controller, in general, takes more effort and energy than he can describe. Lifting a spoon is raising a boulder. Walking to his car is plowing through earthquake rubble. The game takes the concentration of detonating a bomb. Still, it’s true—he’s playing like shit. They had to quit last night, because he was instantly slain due to his negative energy level. This meant he couldn’t rise again for twenty-four hours. After twenty-four hours, depending on the creature that kills you, you might rise next as a monster, or you might rise as a wight. Of course, he’s a wight. Wights are about the height and weight of a human and speak Common, but a wight’s appearance is only a weird and twisted reflection of the form it once had.
“You can’t let a girl destroy you,” Alex says.
Yeah, he should talk. After Leigh, Alex barely got out of bed. Now they have this hot-cold thing going, and look at the four beers Alex has downed already. The bottles are spread out on the floor of his sister’s place, next to the couch that’s also Alex’s bed. Not to judge, but Jesus. It’s a good way to end up drowned in a water-skiing accident.