“I found these shovels and a tarp,” Martin said. “But there’s nothing to warm him up quickly. We already used all the propane.”
“Darla should be here any minute,” Lane said, checking her watch.
“Right, good,” Martin said, and he busied himself with clearing all the snow that had collected on the ground around them.
“He’s so cold, Martin,” Lane whispered, as if Chet couldn’t hear her. Both of her hands were now petting his cheeks.
“Keep doing what you’re doing,” Martin said as he shoveled. It was the best advice he could give. After all, what he was doing certainly wasn’t making much of a difference. Each time he turned around, the spot he had just shoveled was already covered in a skin of snow.
The snow was at least two feet high on the gondola, and every so often a hunk would slide down and land on Lane’s back or, worse, Chet’s face. Martin was tempted to knock some of it off the other side, but it had the potential to cause an avalanche and only make matters worse. He contemplated building some sort of a shelter around them, but the snow was coming fast and he didn’t want to leave Lane and Chet alone while he was collecting supplies.
Instead, he set the shovel down. He sat next to Lane. He took the blue plastic tarp he had found and pulled it over them.
“I’m here,” he said, placing his hand on Chet’s forehead. Chet’s eyes had finally closed. Lane waved her palm in front of his nose.
“He’s still breathing,” she said.
“Huddle in close,” Martin said.
The two curled up shoulder to shoulder to create more shelter with their bodies. They switched back and forth: one would rub both hands together while the other placed warm fingers on Chet’s face.
“We should keep talking. Give him something to listen to,” Martin suggested.
“What do you want to talk about?” Lane asked.
“I don’t know,” Martin said. “Books. Do you read books?”
“I’ve read books.”
“What type do you like? Mystery? Comedy? Sometimes I can’t tell the difference,” Martin said.
“Is that supposed to be a joke?”
“I guess so.”
“You’re not funny, Martin,” Lane said delicately. “That’s one thing about you. You’ve never been funny.”
“Oh.”
“It’s not your fault. Being funny takes experience.”
“I’ve read a lot of books.”
“And you’ve built a lot of machines, evidently,” Lane said. “Not the same as living.”
“Just one other,” Martin admitted.
“What?”
“I’ve only built one other machine.”
“Okay,” Lane said. “And did that one work?”
Martin didn’t answer.
Lane filled in the blank by saying, “And this one won’t either.”
Until that point, Martin had only been annoyed by Lane’s cynicism. Now he found himself legitimately angry.
“Then why are you helping me?” he asked.
“Have you ever wondered why we’re the only ones left?” she responded.
“All the time.”
“But you haven’t figured it out?”
“ ’Cause we’re lucky?”
“No. ’Cause we’re awful,” Lane said plainly. “None of us really care that everyone is gone. We only care about ourselves.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Martin said, though he did understand her point.
“And you’re different,” Lane said. “That’s why I’m helping. You’re the only kid in the world who wants to do something big. There must be a reason why that is. If I hitch myself to your post, things will happen to me. Things I can’t do for myself. Even when this machine doesn’t work.”
Martin blew into his hands and rubbed them together. As he placed them on Chet’s face, Lane took her hands away. Their eyes met for a moment. Over the last couple of months, Martin had gotten better at reading people. While he couldn’t tell for sure if Lane was lying, he could see in those brilliant silver eyes that she wasn’t telling him everything.
“I had one friend on the island,” Martin said. “His name was George. And I had my father. All I want to do is see them again. Maybe I’m as selfish as everyone else.”
“Maybe,” she said.
The tarp began to sag under the weight of the snow, so the two huddled even closer.
Chet died sometime around five a.m. His breathing slowed, then stopped, and no matter how much they rubbed their hands, they couldn’t bring the warmth back to his face. A couple more feet of snow had collected on the tarp and the gondola. From the outside, they must have seemed like nothing but a few bumps along the wintery landscape. Lane and Martin didn’t say anything to each other. They just took their hands off Chet’s face and stood up. The cocoon of white broke open.
Silently, they trudged through the snow as best they could, but they were wearing only sneakers, jeans, and thin jackets. The going was tough, and the sensation in their hands and feet was starting to shift from pinpricks to numbness. What should have been a five-minute walk back to the machine stretched out to over half an hour. When they finally reached it, they knocked snow from the door and tumbled inside.
They lay down on their backs next to each other. It was cold in there, but not nearly as cold as it was outside. Martin turned his head to look up at the empty spot near the control panel where the glass door was to have been mounted, where it was to have divided the machine into its two chambers. Then he turned back and looked at Lane. Her face was damp and red.
“It shouldn’t have been Chet. It should’ve been me,” she said.
Martin didn’t respond.
“This is when people say, ‘Don’t talk like that.’ This is when people cry, Martin.”
“I know,” he said, but he really didn’t. He had no idea what a person did with death, and he didn’t feel like crying. His mind buzzed with images of himself, alone in the world once again.
“This is also when people hold each other.”
Before he could respond, Lane was pushing her hand underneath Martin’s back and reaching around to his side. As she pulled herself closer to him, he felt her cold fingers on his ribs. He shivered.
“Sorry,” she said, snaking her head under his arm and onto his chest.
“It’s okay.”
Her long black hair spread over him like oil. He leaned his head forward until his nose was touching her scalp. It smelled vaguely smoky and rusty, but in an appealing way. His mind wandered to passages in books about first kisses. They always described how a girl’s hair smelled. Like dew, like heather, like the ocean, like nutmeg. Like clouds, like childhood, like dreams. Like all sorts of things, but never like this.
He kissed a spot on her scalp where the hair sprouted in different directions.
“Thank you,” Lane said, not moving.
Then Martin closed his eyes. The sun would be up soon. He was hungry. He was cold. He wanted to sleep. More than anything, he wanted to sleep.
The growl of Kid Godzilla woke him. Lane stood at the exterior door of the machine. As she pushed it open, sunlight raced in. Martin pulled himself up and followed her outside.
The snow had stopped falling, but it was piled nearly four feet high in some places. It wasn’t enough to deter Kid Godzilla, though. The truck was cutting through the snow slowly, but easily. It came to a stop a few yards from the machine. The door opened and down hopped Darla, fully outfitted in a brand-new lavender snowmobile suit.
“Check it out, squares,” she chirped. “Ready for a new winter.”
Before Darla could take a step, Lane chucked a snowball at her. Darla dodged and stumbled backward, as it barely missed her shoulder. From the other side of the truck, Henry hopped down. He was wearing a white camouflage jumpsuit. He didn’t appear to notice the snowball assault. His face was uncharacteristically cheery.
“What the what?” Darla said, checking herself to see if she had been hit.
“Where were you?” Lane screamed.
“Settle down, you spaz,” Darla said. “We got distracted. Don’t worry, when the snow started, we went on a shopping spree. Got everyone new scarves and cute mittens and everything. People’s outfits from last winter are so … last winter.”
“It started snowing hours ago,” Martin said.
“Figured you’d be laughing it up by the fire, roasting marshmallows,” Darla said.
“Making s’mores,” Henry added.
“Speaking of marshmallows,” Darla said, chuckling, “where’s Chet?”
No one answered.
“Chet?” Darla pressed. “You know? Tons o’ fun?”
Lane formed another snowball as if she were crushing the life out of it. This one hit Darla square in the nose.
—— 17 ——
The Supermarket
Martin had never seen a dead body before. In those days following the appearance of the skiff, he had imagined one. He had imagined his father dead on the bottom of the ocean. Dead on a dock on the mainland, the skiff drifting away from him. Dead somewhere, anywhere, maybe even on the island, crushed and hidden beneath a tree. Dead. Rotting. Dead.
But his father wasn’t dead. It had become clear to Martin that he had left, along with everyone else. It made little sense, yet all the evidence seemed to indicate that it was true. What frustrated Martin most was what had always frustrated him: his father had never told him why. It was not only cruel, but it was the height of hypocrisy. For on the night before he’d set out on his journey, he had asked Martin a huge question.
“Have you ever thought of leaving me?”
“No,” Martin said. “Never.” This was the truth, too. As curious as he was about the world off the island, he never wanted to leave his father.
“It’s okay if you think it,” his father said. “It’s natural.”
“I never think it.”
“Never is a word that only boys use,” his father said. “If you do decide to leave, and not to come back, I just ask you this: tell me why.”
“I’ll never leave you,” Martin stated firmly.
His father smiled. He didn’t say anything else.
Martin’s father was a stickler for his own rules. Never had he been known to break one. Yet he hadn’t held himself to a promise to which he had held his son. He never told him why.
A funeral service for Chet was held in the supermarket. The church had always been a place for meetings and Arrival Stories, but when it came to events like this, no one could agree on which religious tone to strike, and no one bothered to learn about anyone else’s religious beliefs. So they held it in the supermarket. Because Chet liked food. Because Chet provided food. Because Chet was fat.
There were still cans of beets and yams and Vienna sausages populating the shelves. Pineapples and tuna fish and other canned goodies had been gobbled up in the early days of Xibalba, but the kids never had to resort to opening the strange stuff. Between Henry’s hunting, Chet’s farming, and everyone else’s scavenging, no one ever came close to starving.
The produce section had been cleared out long before, leaving a wide-open space near the entrance of the store. They brought in comfy chairs and a lectern borrowed from the school. Chet’s body, packed to the chin with snow, was placed in a coffin-shaped shelf that used to hold tomatoes. Cameron, a virtuoso on guitar, played a selection of solemn acoustic tunes.
The plan was to have kids speak at the lectern, to tell stories and talk about their impressions of Chet. The best that most of them could come up with was a few phrases: he grew good vegetables; he roasted tasty peanuts; he said “dude” a lot.
Felix went the furthest simply by reading Chet’s recently updated Internet page aloud.
CHET BUCKLEY
Chet Buckley was from a small town in an
Appalachian Mountain valley. His mother
was a scientist. His father owned a store.
He came to Xibalba by following railroad
tracks. On his way, he collected a few items
of note, including the Declaration of
Independence, a painting that looks like
blobs of color but is supposedly really
famous, and a bunch of Civil War stuff. He
stored it all among the junk he kept
crammed in his house. Despite his outward
appearance, and the appearance of his
house, Chet was a talented farmer. He used
the word dude quite often.
When Felix finished reading, he returned to his seat. Everyone except for Nigel was there, but no one else bothered to stand, and no more than five minutes passed before the service was basically over. Martin felt bad about that, so he stepped up to the lectern. He didn’t have anything prepared, but he spoke anyway.
“Chet was a good friend to me,” Martin said. “He was honest and loyal and helpful. He died courageously and I … I … I guess that’s what I can say about Chet.”
Martin was about to return to his seat when Ryan shouted, “How’d it happen?”
“Yeah.” Felix joined in. “What shenanigans were you guys up to?”
“We were …,” Martin began, then stopped. The machine was far from finished. They needed more time. Still, he wasn’t comfortable with lying. “We were at a theme park.”
“Like with bumper cars?” Felix said.
“What crushed him?” Cameron added sarcastically, looking up from her guitar. “A giant teacup?”
“Gondola,” Martin stated, and he moved sideways from the lectern to avoid any more questions.
“Odd,” Felix said. “First big snowstorm of the season. You’re at an amusement park? Doesn’t add up.”
“Do you have to ruin the surprise, Felix?” Lane jumped in.
“What surprise?” Felix asked.
This is it, Martin thought. She’s going to tell them about the machine—the machine that doesn’t work yet and, according to her, probably never will.
“Excitement,” Lane said. “Something our lives have all been lacking. Martin kindly volunteered to power up an amusement park. Chet and I were helping. It was going to be our Christmas present to Xibalba. But it might not happen now, for obvious reasons.”
“But wouldn’t that be dangerous?” Felix asked.
“Well, sure,” Lane said. “We know that now.”
“I’m sorry,” Felix said, turning away from Chet’s body.
“No,” Martin told him, “don’t be. We weren’t cautious enough, and it ended in tragedy.”
“Which might not have been the case,” Lane said, a little louder than necessary, “if someone actually showed up when they were supposed to.”
Darla, who had been sitting quietly in the back, dismissed Lane with a flick of her wrist and said, “I’m not even going to acknowledge that.”
“What? Your incompetence or your selfishness?” Lane fired back.
“Shove it, Lane. It was my birthday, okay?” Darla explained. “I was doing something special for myself. No one here ever does anything special for anyone’s birthday.”
“Cry me a river, princess.” Lane’s voice was dripping venom.
Even though he agreed with Lane, Martin didn’t think Chet’s memorial was the right forum for such a confrontation. He moved into the crowd. Putting his hands up, he stepped between the two girls.
“I deserve some sympathy,” Darla cried, standing and holding her head aloft. “I’m an orphan!”
Lane was on her feet immediately, pointing a finger at her. “We’re all orphans, you idiot!”
Someone started laughing. It was Henry. His hand was over his mouth, but he couldn’t conceal his amusement.
“Shut it!” Darla snapped.
“It’s funny,” Henry said.
“Arrrr,” Darla snarled, pulling at her hair as if this were the most frustrating moment of her life. It appeared that at any moment, she would storm out.
“Let’s calm down and—” Marti
n said, but he was interrupted by a new guest. Remington the pig had entered the supermarket. A statue of a lizard was in his mouth. Everybody froze. They knew what this meant.
Remington surveyed the crowd and put his nose in the air. He took in a quick batch of snorts. Then he put his nose to the ground and wiggled his way around the chairs until he stopped at a pair of fuzzy camel-colored boots. That was where he dropped the statue.
Darla picked it up and sighed. “About time.”
—— 18 ——
The Prophecy
They all decided to wait outside Nigel’s house. This was a special occurrence. With the exception of Kelvin, Nigel had summoned only two people: Lane and Martin. Now there was Darla.
To keep themselves occupied, the kids built snow sculptures, dug tunnels, and had contests to see who could throw a snowball the farthest. The din of chatter and laughter indicated that they all enjoyed it much more than they’d expected. A shame, really, what it took to bring them all together like this.
Martin was giving snowman construction a try—rolling a ball to make a head—when Felix offered him a carrot.
“Traditionally, the nose,” Felix said. “Doesn’t make much sense to me. Baby eggplant would make a better nose. Or a radish.”
Martin nodded his thanks. Carrots and eggplants and radishes would be hard to come by soon. Did the others recognize this? Did they care? Was there another green thumb among them to pick up where Chet had left off?
Martin was tempted to pose these questions to Felix, but he suspected that his friend would just shrug them off and say that they’d have to do without. It had been a while since the two had spoken one on one, and Martin was starting to learn that it was always better to chat with his neighbors about common interests than problems.
“Our security system,” he said with a labored wink. “Snagged anyone yet?”
“Nope,” Felix responded.
“That’s a good thing, right?”
Felix shrugged. Then, timidly, he asked, “Didn’t you want my help? At the amusement park?”
“Oh.” Martin stumbled over his response. “I knew you were too … busy with your Internet for something silly like that.”
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