We interrupt this program to acknowledge the glory that is chocolate.
Another sweet thing: Glen has been walking me home after school because Alistair isn’t back in classes yet and it’s not necessarily safe for me to walk alone. Glen lives in one of those nice houses on Clutter Hill, so he takes the bus, but he’ll walk with me anyway, turn around and jog back to school, and hop on the late bus that comes at four thirty. It’s very thoughtful, and my parents appreciate it.
“She’s in good hands,” Glen said to my dad the first time he walked me home last week. There are all sorts of ways Dad could have responded. For instance:
1. Just see that you keep those good hands to yourself.
2. And whose hands would those be? (with exaggerated glances over both shoulders)
3. She will be soon enough. Now hand her over, hotshot.
He didn’t say any of those things, though. He grabbed Glen’s shoulder, gave him a little shake, and said, “Good man.”
Good man? He’s fourteen. So am I. If he’s a man, then I guess that makes me a woman. Do I feel like a woman? Ummm …
I am woman, hear me roar!
That’s supposedly something strong women say, and though I’m inclined to roar a lot lately, I’m not sure mine is a womanly roar. I guess if these were the good ol’ days, Glen and I might be considered adults. We might even be married already. At the very least, we’d be working in a factory with all the other kids. If these were olden tymes—the y makes the times especially olden, much more olden than the good ol’ days, at least—we’d be Romeo and Juliet, all cleavage and pantaloons, poisoning ourselves in a graveyard because that’s what kids were into back then. But alas, these are modern times, and we’re in eighth grade, and that means sitting next to each other at lunch and walking home together and holding hands.
Maybe it’s because he’s not as nervous now, but Glen has calmed down with saying a lot of the stupid stuff he used to say. I appreciate that, but I also don’t mind the stupid stuff that much anymore. When the stupid stuff is said for my sake, then I guess it’s not so stupid.
“You’re like the jelly to my peanut butter,” he told me today at lunch as he bit into a PB&J.
“Why am I the jelly?” I asked.
“Jelly is sweet.”
“Jelly is sticky.”
“Jelly comes in lots of flavors. Like you. You’re a complicated girl. Peanut butter is just peanut butter.”
“Not true. It can be chunky or smooth,” I said.
“Which am I?” he asked as he peeled back the bread and peered at his sandwich.
I paused. Was I supposed to be the doting girlfriend, who always says the nicest things to her beau? Or was I supposed to be Keri Cleary, world-renowned wiseass? I decided to stay true to myself, because I don’t know if I have it in me to be someone I’m not. “Chunky,” I told him. “You’re as chunky as they come.”
He scowled for a second, like he was really hurt, and I was worried that maybe he was. We haven’t been together long. I know him, but I don’t know him. I almost apologized, but slowly the scowl transformed into a smirk and he pushed me playfully on the shoulder.
“Exactamundo,” he said as he stood from the table. “Call me your big chunk of hunk.” Hands up and balled up, he flexed his tiny muscles. Not that I could see his muscles through his sweatshirt, but it doesn’t take a genius to realize they had to be tiny.
“Heads up, Hulkamania,” Trevor Weeks said as he slipped into a seat next to us. He was tossing a Granny Smith to himself like it was a baseball.
“Young Mr. Weeks,” I replied, “to what do we owe this honor?”
Trevor caught and then bit the apple in a fluid motion, and with a full mouth, he said, “My woodshop class is crashing the early lunch with all you eighth graders because we’re field trippin’ it to the mill this afternoon. Thought I’d stop by and ask how he’s doing.”
Trevor didn’t have to elaborate on the he.
“He’s fine,” I said.
Glen was still standing there, muscles flexed. Crouching down, he whispered into Trevor’s ear, though loud enough that I could hear. “She doesn’t want to talk about him.”
True. But Trevor was Alistair’s friend, and friends deserve occasional updates. “It’s okay,” I said to Glen, and, “He’s fine,” I said to Trevor again.
“Good, good,” Trevor answered. “I never thought he did it, by the way. Even though we fought that one time, I know he’s always been, like, a pacifist.”
“Thanks,” I said. I didn’t know what fight he was talking about, but it was a relief to finally have someone say something nice about Alistair. Not that people were saying mean things, but most questions were of the so what the hell happened? variety.
“Tell him hey for me, and that I hope to see him back here soon,” Trevor said.
“I will,” I said. “He’ll probably be back after Christmas break. Which is pretty soon.”
Glen finally sat back down, though his glare was still fixed on Trevor. “Bye-bye now,” Glen said.
After another bite of apple, Trevor stood and said, “Later taters.” Before leaving, though, he paused, squinted at Glen, and asked, “Wait, are you two, like, boyfriend and girlfriend?”
Glen is rarely stunned into silence, but his response was to scrunch up his face in anger and not say a thing, so I put my arm around him and pulled him close and said, “We sure are.”
Trevor nodded. “Cool.”
Cool. It’s basically what Mandy has been saying too. And basically what my parents are like.
You’ve got a boyfriend? Cool.
It’s Glen Maple? Double cool.
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. Not anger, really. Maybe … something more. Talk. Debate. Something other than a nod and a “cool.”
Forget it. Cool is good. Cool is cool.
Alistair hasn’t said anything about it yet. Ever since Kyle woke up, my brother has kept to himself, at least when I’m around. Not mute like in those first few days. But lost in thought, like he’s considering all the angles. Even more than everyone else, he seems to be trying to figure things out.
SATURDAY, 12/9/1989
MORNING
Sometimes a knock changes everything. Earlier this morning, I knocked on Alistair’s door, he invited me in, and I found him lying on his back in bed.
“Trevor Weeks says hey,” I said. “He’s looking forward to seeing you again.”
“That’s nice,” Alistair said, but he didn’t look at me. There was a fishbowl resting on his chest, and even though it was empty, he was staring at it like there was something living inside it. He hasn’t had a fish since he was probably five or six, so I don’t know why he has a fishbowl, but people keep things for sentimental reasons, I suppose.
“I think a lot of kids are excited that you’ll be back,” I said.
“It’ll definitely be different,” he said.
“No kidding.”
This is pretty much how our conversations have been going. Small talk, nothing more. I get most of my information about how he’s doing from Mom and Dad, and half the time that’s from overhearing them chatting in the kitchen while Mom is cooking dinner and Dad is making the salad. So when Alistair moved from the small talk to the big talk, I was more than a bit surprised.
“No word yet from Jenny Colvin,” he told me.
The mention of that name drenched me with guilt. Why had I betrayed my brother’s trust? “Oh,” I replied. “I forgot about … her.”
“Really?” Alistair asked. “You listened to the tape, though, didn’t you?”
“What? I … No, I’d never … No.”
Alistair placed the fishbowl on his nightstand, rolled over onto his side, and smiled at me. “It’s okay,” he said. “I wanted you to listen. It was weird, wasn’t it?”
My heart was buzzing, definitely not up for deceit. He was giving me a pass, so I took it. “It was beyond weird, Alistair,” I said. “It was certifiably insane.”
/> This made him chuckle. Then he sat up and ran his hands across his comforter, sending little waves to the edges. “Do you believe in other worlds?” he asked me.
“Like other planets?” I asked.
“Like other dimensions,” he said.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I like the idea of other dimensions.”
Liking ideas is a good way to be noncommittal about things. For instance, if you ask a girl out and she says she likes the idea of going out with you, then it means that she’s not going out with you.
Alistair nodded and said, “How about this idea, then? If there were another dimension, would you like it to be very different from this one, or very similar?”
There are tons of books out there about kids who hop through space and time and visit magical worlds, so I guess I’ve always assumed that other dimensions are very different from ours. But maybe they don’t have to be.
“I’ve never really thought of it until now,” I told him.
“Yeah,” he said. “Most people don’t think about it until they have to. Can I be honest with you about something?”
“Sure,” I said.
“I go to another dimension sometimes.”
He said it like he might say he goes to the movies sometimes, or to the mall sometimes. Like it was nothing.
“You … What do you mean?”
“I know it sounds strange to you, but hear me out.” He slid off his bed and moved to his dresser, where he pulled a pen out of a warped clay mug he’d made in art class. “I wanted you to listen to that tape to ease you into some things. These things I’m going to tell you are pretty off-the-wall, but I think you’re open to a … different way of thinking.”
“I’m your sister,” I said. “It basically means you can tell me everything.”
His chuckle was now a full-fledged laugh. “I’m not sure if that’s what it means,” he said.
“I love you,” I said, because as I mentioned before, I don’t say that enough.
“Thank you,” Alistair said. “You might not after I’m done talking, but thank you.”
Of course, I wanted him to say I love you too. I didn’t need him to say it, but I wanted him to say it. What I needed was for him to understand what I truly felt.
“I will always love you,” I said this time, because I’ve never said that before. Because it’s true.
“This whole thing started with a sister named Una who loved her brother,” he said. “Actually, before even that, there was the wombat and the waterfall, but you already know that, don’t you?”
I did. I knew exactly what he was talking about. Not this Una stuff. The wombat! The waterfall! I can’t delve into the exact details right now, because the idea isn’t fully formed yet, but as I told you before, it has to do with the ending of Luna’s story. How would Alistair know about the ending when I’d only written the beginning? It was scary, even scarier than the dead hummingbird a few weeks ago. I struggled to respond.
“You know … about…”
“You’re uncomfortable,” he said. “I can tell. Hear me out. I’ve seen your wombat. It has strands of glowing fur. I’ve seen your waterfall. It’s in a dark forest, and the wombat is at the bottom of the pool beneath it.”
That was it, the exact image. It first came to me early that morning after Kyle’s shooting. I was showering, trying to wake up, trying to wash away my frightening new reality, one full of gunshots and missing kids. I know it was only in my mind, but at that moment the image seemed seared into the inner skin of my eyelids. Water crashing down. A shimmering pool. And at the bottom, a wombat, the strands of its fur glowing.
“Where did you see it?” I asked, afraid of his answer, afraid of any answer.
“I saw it in the last scraps of memories I can access from a girl named Una,” he said.
I was tempted to walk out of the room then and there. What was my brother doing? Who was Una and how could he see her memories? How could he see mine?
“You’re scaring me,” I said. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“I’m saying that the idea for the wombat didn’t materialize from nothing. It originated somewhere. It found its way to you. Which means you’re special.”
It was cold outside. It was cold in his room. Yet my skin felt hot, like I was about to sweat. I didn’t feel special. I felt sick.
“Ideas like that don’t come from an actual place,” I said. “They just … come.”
Alistair shook his head and twirled the pen in his fingers like a little baton. “There’s another dimension besides ours. It’s a place where only kids go. I go there. I’ve spent a long time there. I call it Aquavania, but there are other names for it.”
“Alistair, stop. You’re—”
“No,” he said. “I have to ask you to stop. Before you say anything else, let me tell you that this is real. This is not something I’m making up. I’ve stood where you’re standing. Actually, I was sitting in the corner in the beanbag chair, but … technicalities. Point is, you’re going to try to read something into what I’m saying. Don’t. What I’m telling you is the plain and simple truth.”
“What you’re telling me sounds crazy.”
“Well, the truth can be crazy sometimes,” he said. “Let me explain why you saw that wombat. If you still think it’s crazy, fine. If you can come up with a better explanation, then go ahead and believe that. But this is what I believe. This is what I know.”
“Go on,” I said, because that’s what you say to your brother when he decides it’s time to bare his soul. His cracked soul.
He spoke slowly and clearly, like he didn’t want me to miss any details. “When kids visit this other dimension, this Aquavania, they basically become gods,” he said. “Think of it as the ultimate sandbox, but kids can create more than castles and sand sculptures. It all starts with water, and from that water, they build worlds containing anything they can think of. Anything is possible. Ice caverns swarming with flying polar bears. Talking stick figures. Space stations with monster galleries. Anything. And the kids, the daydreamers as we call them, have a long time to create. Because when they go to Aquavania, it’s as if the regular world—or the Solid World as we call it—freezes. They can spend countless years in Aquavania and come back and not even a second will have passed at home.”
I was staring at Alistair’s bookshelf, the spines of classic fantasy tales staring back at me. “Okay,” I said. “So it’s like … What’s the book where the kids go to a magical—”
“This isn’t a book,” Alistair said. “This is where the inspiration for books comes from. Images and sounds and ideas from these worlds seep through the water and into our dimension. And those things inspire people like you. Storytellers.”
There was frost on Alistair’s window, clinging to the edges. If I held a magnifying glass up to it, what would I see? A web of ice crystals. Molecules. Frozen water—that’s all.
“So the wombat is something some kid thought up in Aquavania?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” Alistair said. “The wombat is how it all began. It was the original gateway into Aquavania.”
“And the image came to me … through water?”
Alistair nodded and said, “For some reason, you saw the beginning.”
“Why me?”
“I don’t know. Maybe so you can help me.”
“Help you? I don’t even know what you’re doing.”
Alistair paused. Then he tapped on his teeth with the pen. Tap. Tap. Tap. “I’m doing my job.”
“Which is?”
“I’ll tell you,” he said, “but first you have to make me a promise.”
Then he slipped the pen behind his ear and put out his hands. I grasped them, and he squeezed back, hard. The bones in my fingers couldn’t take this for long, and while I don’t think he was trying to hurt me, it was pretty obvious he was showing me how serious he was.
“I need to know what I’m promising,” I said.
�
�You’re gonna be tempted to tell Mom and Dad about this,” he said, and he squeezed harder. “And you can tell them. But I need you to wait a few days. At least until I hear back from Jenny Colvin.”
Keeping stuff from Mom and Dad was sort of my specialty. I guess it’s every kid’s specialty at one time or another. But sometimes moms and dads need to know things.
“I’ll make that promise under one condition,” I said.
“Name it.”
I struggled for the words. The best I could come up with was, “Tell me you’re not … that you aren’t going to get hurt. Or, I guess I mean that if I keep this secret, you aren’t going to hurt yourself?”
“Right now, I’m in more control than I’ve ever been,” Alistair said as he released his grip. I stretched my hands. My fingers felt slightly bent, though not as bent as my mind. I didn’t know if Alistair was in control of his life, but at that moment, he seemed so much more in control of things than I felt.
“I promise,” I told him. “So tell me. What’s this mysterious job that you have?”
“I am the guardian of the images and ideas,” he told me. “When daydreamers need the end, then I give them the end. I am the holder of the souls. And once I figure out how, I’m going to release them.”
“What? Who?”
“Fiona and Charlie. All of them.”
THE KNOCK-KNOCK JOKE
In a small village, in some snowy mountains, lived a joke. She had arms and legs and a face, but she was a joke all the same. Not in the metaphorical sense. In the literal sense. When she walked into a room, her very presence told a story. People would shrug or gasp or sometimes laugh when she was around, but not only because of how she looked or what she said. It was because of who she was.
She was, to be precise, a dark and disturbing joke. Not excessively disturbing, but certainly not family dinner material. Consequently, she couldn’t go certain places. To schools, for instance. To churches, synagogues, and mosques, obviously. Basically anywhere kids and sensitive folks were likely to be hanging out.
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