Squint

by Chad Morris

  “Just posted—”

  A boy in the front held up his phone. “No way! A new challenge.”

  A lot of mumbling and people talking over each other followed.

  McKell lifted her phone and started searching it.

  “Everyone,” McKell’s dad said loudly. “Danny just posted another challenge.” He moved to the front where everyone could see him. “It’s almost like he knew we were all together. Should we watch it?”

  Everyone agreed. As Danny’s dad hooked up his phone to the projector, the room filled with happy chattering. I heard Danny’s voice from a few places as some people couldn’t wait for us to watch it together and began on their phones. I would have too if I had data. Had Danny done this? Had he known we’d all be together and wanted to post it right now?

  So awesome. And creepy.

  After a flash of white, Danny’s face appeared on the screen.

  “Hey, everybody,” Danny said, smiling like always. “Me again. Back from the dead and stuff.” He pumped his fist. “It’s probably not nearly as cool to hear that the second time.” He shrugged.

  “Well,” he continued, “I thought I’d tell you a little bit about the afterlife today. Do you want to know?” He motioned with his finger for us all to come closer to him. I leaned a little forward despite myself. I hoped McKell hadn’t seen that. But it would be interesting if someone could tell me what would happen after this life.

  “It’s really beautiful.” His face was very serious. “Flowers and friends. There’s an all-you-can-eat ice cream bar and unicorns are everywhere.”

  What?

  “Just kidding,” Danny said. “I’m not going to tell you. You’re going to have to wait until it’s your time.” He smiled wide. If there was an afterlife and I got to know about it, I imagined that I probably wouldn’t learn about it on YouTube. Plus, Danny prerecorded these videos. He didn’t know anything then, either.

  “I hope you all had a great time watching a comedy,” Danny said. “Hopefully a lot of laughter was involved. Maybe some popcorn or pretzels. Ooohh—or chocolate-covered pretzels. Man, I love those. I’m eating tons of them in heaven.” He winked. “I hope you shared old memories, and made new memories. You might forget some of the conversations, but you’ll always remember the people you were with.”

  It was true. I would always remember this. I loved having somewhere to go and people to be with that weren’t my grandparents. McKell was cool to hang around.

  Danny clapped his hands. “Good job, everyone.”

  How could this guy make videos like this? He knew he was going to die, but wanted people to get together and have fun? That wouldn’t be me. I would want everyone to dress in black and send me off on a flaming barge. And all of the ladies should be crying. So much crying.

  “Well, what do you think?” He spread his arms wide. “Should I leave it at that? Or should I give you another challenge?”

  He put a hand to his ear and pretended to listen. People shouted for another challenge.

  “I thought so,” Danny answered. It was cheesy, but with Danny’s enthusiasm it worked somehow. I noticed a girl dab her eyes and sniffle, but she had a huge grin on her face.

  “So, I’ve tried to be a happy person,” Danny said. The film cut to him doing all sorts of smiles and goofy faces. He pulled on the sides of his mouth. He laughed loud and high. He stuck his tongue out. I don’t think anyone could watch it and not smile a little. “But I wasn’t always that way. In fact, at one point I was pretty bitter about my condition, about my life.” He dropped all his gestures and jokes for this part. “And when I was about to turn sixteen, I started to feel really bad. I mean, I wasn’t going to be able to drive. People my age were dating more and more and though I’m a handsome devil . . .” The camera did another close-up and he winked. He was back to joking. With the same joke. And somehow we all laughed as loud as we did during the movie. “Believe it or not, not every girl in my high school was clamoring to go out with me.” He threw his hands up in the air. “Crazy. I know.”

  “I just wanted to fit in, to be accepted, to be with people and not be the weird kid. Well, I made a friend. A good buddy named Yellow who not only hung out with me, but told me that I should quit trying to be everyone else. He said I should live life my way, do what I do.” Danny gave a thumbs-up. “Thanks, Yellow. You’re a great friend.” And somehow, his voice was thicker, like it was covered in sincerity. “A really, really good friend.”

  A muffled, “You too, man,” was heard off-screen.

  A girl’s voice from the middle of the mob shouted, “I love you, Yellow!”

  From the back of the room Yellow gave a loud laugh.

  “So that’s when I had this crazy idea to start up a YouTube channel. Maybe I wouldn’t be a student body officer, or the biggest dater, or maybe I wouldn’t even make friends with everyone, but I could make videos on my time, when I felt up to it. And if people wanted to watch, they could.” He spread his arms. “And look at you, you amazing people. You came and watched me.”

  I’d given up on trying to be like everyone else a long time ago too. That was something Danny and I had in common. And I drew comics on my own time, my way, like he did his YouTube challenges. But Danny was so much more successful at what he did than I was at what I did.

  “Well, for this challenge—” The camera zoomed in. “Remember that you love me.” He pointed at himself with his thumbs and wiggled his eyebrows up and down on his large forehead. “And that you really can’t tell me no for this one. I mean, I went to all sorts of special effort to send you this message from the dead. You’re in. You’re doing this.” He pumped his fists a few times.

  “Without further adieu,” Danny said, trying to sound French on the last word. “That was terrible. Adieu. Adieu.” He tried a few more times and it just got worse. He cleared his throat. Another cut. “So apparently the French word adieu . . . hey, look! I said it right! . . . means good-bye but Yellow says that I’m actually trying to say ado, which means ‘fuss, trouble, or difficulty.’ Like, without further fuss or trouble, let’s move on. We may or may not have just looked that up.” He cleared his throat. “My bad. I’m dead. Give me a break.”

  That got a laugh from the crowd.

  Danny shifted his position. “Without any more waiting or bad French accents, here is your challenge.” His mistakes did make his videos more interesting, more real. Maybe it was okay to leave them in. “Drum roll, please.” He beat the desk with his fingers, then clapped his hands in the air while making a cymbal sound. “Do something amazing you’ve always wanted to do, but you were too scared to try.” He smiled at the camera. “That’s right. I’ve given a challenge similar to this before, but I really, really want you to do it.”

  McKell gasped. “No, no, no,” she repeated under her breath. She tensed her shoulders and clenched her hands together.

  “Go out for the play,” Danny said. “Write that story, ask out that girl, start your own YouTube channel, make those brownies—” The video cut. “I don’t know . . . the brownies one was kind of weird. Who’s afraid of making brownies? No one. No one should be afraid of making brownies. They should all make me some brownies.” He paused to lick his small lips. “Whatever it is,” Danny said, “take the plunge. Do it.”

  Danny’s face filled the screen. “Like my little sister,” he said. “Don’t worry about what everyone thinks. Just show them you. Try out. Perform. You’re incredible.”

  McKell looked over at me. Her face was pale, tears welling up in her eyes. And I wasn’t the only one looking at her.

  She faked a smile as the lights came on and everyone started talking to each other. Then she whispered, “I’m not doing it. I just—”

  I didn’t even know for sure what she was talking about. “Whatever it is,” I said, “you can do it. I’ll help you. Plus, we had a deal. I’ll finish my comic; you’ll fini
sh Danny’s challenges.”

  She looked at me. “The deal’s off.”

  I leaned over my desk, drawing Squint and Rock, trying to get my mind off of McKell. She wouldn’t keep our deal, but I decided to keep mine. I had to try. Maybe she’d change her mind.

  The rest of the night at the party, McKell hadn’t told me what she was scared of or why she wouldn’t do it. Which was terrible. The night had been so great up to that point. Why was she so determined to not do Danny’s challenge? I finally had a friend—maybe—and if she didn’t do the challenges, what would happen next?

  “I’ve got to go back,” Squint said, still wearing an eye patch and blasting one target after another with his light-daggers. He had made his way back to his hideout on the top floor of an abandoned skyscraper. The targets fired back at him from the other end of the room at more than one hundred mph. The target-­shooter trainer was his invention.

  “Nice shooting, Cyclops,” Rock said and barked. “Only having one eye hasn’t slowed you down.” He buried his face in a pile of gravel and came up crunching a mouthful.

  Squint swiveled his head back and forth. “Unless something sneaks up on me from my right side,” Squint said, shooting a few more. It had taken a while for him to adjust to only one eye after his last fight with Gunn and Traz. But he did look cool in his eye patch.

  Squint glanced at Rock. “Could you eat a little quieter? You sound like a Cardanian chuk chomping down a tree.”

  “Nope,” Rock said, chewing even louder. “Good to know about the right-side thing. I’ll cover it, Cyclops.”

  “Stop calling me that,” Squint said.

  “It’s accurate,” Rock defended.

  “I could call you Biclops,” Squint said. “Or Annoyingly Loud-Chewing Magical Rock Dog Biclops. That would be accurate too.”

  “Point taken,” Rock said, and bit into some more gravel, chewing just as loudly. “But we can’t go back to Gunn’s castle the same way this time or the same thing will happen to us. We need a new plan, a new advantage.” He scratched behind his rock ear for a second with his rock leg. “And we need more gravel. All this adventure has made me really hungry.”

  “We have to try,” Squint said, blasting another target. “If we don’t get the Empress back, the Oververse will fall. Any army in the known kingdoms could conquer us without her leadership and power.”

  “That’s not the point,” Rock said, spitting out a rock he didn’t like. “The point is that if we go back just the two of us, you’ll die. We’ll both die. And I’m too awesome to die.”

  “You’re a bunch of magical rocks,” Squint said. “I don’t even know if you can die.”

  “I’d rather not find out,” Rock said.

  “Me either,” Squint said, shooting from a prone position this time. “But Diamond refuses to come with us. And she won’t tell me why.”

  “Any theories?” Rock asked, scooting closer to Squint.

  “I think she may have been a new Centurion,” Squint said, rolling over onto his back and shooting over his head, his accuracy still dead-on. “That could be why she was there at the castle. Gunn and the others recruited her after they abandoned me. Maybe they were training her and she switched sides.”

  “But she doesn’t have a cape,” Rock said. “All the Centurions have capes.”

  “No, that would just mean that her training isn’t complete,” Squint said. “But what doesn’t make sense is why the Empress would give her diamond ­powers.” The Empress was the most powerful force in the Oververse, but she only gifted powers; she never used them for herself. That was why she could be kidnapped. “Why give powers to someone recruited by your captors?”

  “Maybe she knew Diamond would turn on her friends to help you,” Rock suggested.

  “Maybe,” Squint said, still shooting targets as he got to his knees. “And that’s why Diamond doesn’t want to go back and have to fight her friends.” Squint shot a few more targets then turned his back to them and began twisting around in time to shoot them.

  “Or maybe there’s something else she’s afraid of,” Rock said.

  “Maybe,” Squint said, and shut down the targets. He moved his hand toward his eye patch, then pulled it away. “My eye itches so bad.”

  “Just scratch it with your back foot, like this,” Rock said, demonstrating.

  “Thanks for the advice,” Squint said, resting the patch on his forehead for a little relief.

  His eye made a sizzling sound, followed by a spark. A glowing ember hit the floor and fizzled out.

  “What was that?” Rock asked. “Did that spark just fall from your eye?”

  Squint put a hand to his eye. “I think so.”

  “It’s like you’re crying fireworks,” Rock said.

  Squint nodded. “I felt it, too. And it’s freaking me out.”

  Though I was really far behind, the story was coming along better than I expected. But I needed time to finish.

  “Flint,” Grandma said.

  I didn’t answer. I’d draw a little more, then I’d talk to her.

  “Do you think that’s a side effect of the magical surgery?” Rock asked.

  “I guess so,” Squint said. “But it was an actual spark.”

  “Flint,” Grandma repeated, standing in the doorway with a serving spoon in one hand and rubbing her forehead with the other. “Sweet thing, can’t you answer your grandmother the first time for once in your comic-obsessed life?”

  “Um, sorry,” I apologized.

  “Have you written that letter yet?”

  “What letter?”

  “To the family of the person who gave you your eye,” she said. “Remember?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. I wanted to write the letter. Say thank you. But every time I tried, I got stuck. It was just so awkward. What was I going to say? Hey, sorry about your dead relative. This eye is cool. Someone actually had to die for me to get this eye. Would the family even want a letter from me?

  She put her hands on her hips. “Yeah, you wrote it?” she asked. “Or yeah, you’re just remembering?”

  “I’m just remembering,” I admitted. “But I don’t know what to write.” Nothing sounded good enough.

  “Tell them your story,” she said. “Whoever it is, they just lost someone they loved. They might need to know something good has come of it. Get me a solid first try and I’ll help you with it if you want.”

  I thought about giving excuses: Danny’s challenge, finishing a comic that I’d started over, doing my actual homework. But it wouldn’t help. Grandma wasn’t going to back down. “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay, you’ll do it right now?” she asked. “Or should I go and get Grandpa so he can tell you a story about perseverance?”

  She really wasn’t letting me out of this.

  “I’ll do it now,” I gave in.

  “Thank you,” Grandma said. “Bring it to me when you’re done.” She disappeared back into the hall.

  I leaned back in my seat. I didn’t want to write the letter. Squint and Rock were trying to figure out Diamond and mount their final attack on Gunn and the others. But I sighed and opened a blank document.

  Hello,

  Good start.

  My name is Flint and I am thirteen years old. My grandma is making me write you a letter. And seriously, she’s never going to leave me alone until I do.

  Okay. I deleted the part about Grandma. She was going to proofread it, after all. And it didn’t sound very sincere or grateful. I was really grateful—I just didn’t know how to write it.

  My name is Flint and I am thirteen years old. I wanted to write you a letter to tell you thank you. I’ve had problems with my eyes for more than three years now. Thanks to the cornea I got from someone you love, I can see so much better. Thank you.

  My grandpa says that saying thank you is a . .
.

  Nope. I deleted that line. They wouldn’t care what my grandpa says.

  Well, I understand that you’re probably going through a really hard time right now. Someone you love has died and I can’t imagine what that would feel like.

  I had tried imagining what it had been like when McKell lost Danny. I could barely even grasp what someone would feel. They were probably like McKell’s family—sad, but trying to get by. How would they feel if they got a letter like this? Would it help?

  They could get a letter like this. Danny had only been dead for a few weeks. If he was a donor . . .

  My heart thudded. He died in the last few weeks. If he . . .

  My fingers clicked the keys as I looked up Danny’s obituary again. When did he die? When did he die? There it was. I checked my calendar. It was a week before my surgery. My fingers typed in a flurry. How long after someone dies would a cornea be okay to use for a transplant?

  I scrolled through the answers. Up to fourteen days.

  It could be him.

  Wait. He had a disease. They wouldn’t give me the cornea of someone who had a disease, right? What was his condition called? I checked his obituary. Progeria. A few searches later I found out that unless he had active cancer or some other serious diseases, he would have been able to donate his corneas. So maybe . . .

  I took a deep breath. There was a chance I was staring through Danny’s eye right now.

  “Hey, McKell,” I said, catching up to her as we left science class. We’d just learned about meiosis, mitosis’s cousin, and my brain hurt. “Can I talk to you?”

  “Squint,” she said, holding her books in front of her. “Hey.” She grinned, but then it faded away.

  I searched her eyes. Was this okay? Was it not? We had gotten along so well at her house, but now we were back in school. It didn’t seem like she hated talking to me, so I kept going. “I wanted to talk about meiosis some more,” I said.

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m kidding,” I said. “Bad joke.” I cleared my throat. “I know you said that you didn’t want to do Danny’s challenge, but I don’t even know what he wants you to do. Maybe I could help and stuff.” And stuff? That was awkward. But I couldn’t stop thinking that if Danny were here, he would want to help. And maybe I was looking through his eye. Maybe I could see better than anyone else that she needed help.