by Jen Brooks
I don’t want to chance waking Kylie up, no matter how sincere she might have been at the end there about wanting to be with me. I place the notebook gently on the ground under the spot where she was holding it. Let her think she dropped it while she dozed. I climb out the window and pull it shut. Tess is sitting in the mulch again. “Done?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
“So?”
I think about what comes next. I’m convinced I have to take action, but I’m not going to make Kylie’s decision for her. I’m going to talk to the one who has the most to lose—girlfriend Kylie. She’ll not only be giving up half of herself, but she’ll be leaving her world and everyone in it. Granted, the real world is so much like Kylie-Simms-is-my-girlfriend that it’s not like she’s moving to another continent. Still, she’ll be moving to another world.
“I need a little time,” I say. “If you really want to help me with this, can you come when I call for you?”
“Just call my name, and I’ll be there.”
Girlfriend Kylie promised if I left her alone to sleep in this morning, she would talk to me tonight. Well, I have something to say. I’m going to tell her everything.
CHAPTER 21
I SWITCH BACK TO KYLIE-SIMMS-IS-MY-GIRLFRIEND to get my own car, and leave Tess alone to drive herself wherever she goes. My sister and I have reached some kind of accord, and I’m grateful.
There’s no use putting this off. If I go in the house to prepare a speech, I might lose my courage, and I’m too close to losing it as is.
During the drive to Kylie’s my stomach rumbles, which could be nerves or could be hunger since it’s dinnertime. When I arrive, the lights are out in Kylie’s window, so she’s probably eating with her family. I use my newly learned powers to go into stealth mode and enter her dark room through the window. I open the bedroom door, creep down the hall, and find Kylie at the table with her mom and dad. The food smells excellent, some kind of roast chicken, and my stomach rumbles again. If I went back outside and knocked on the door, I’d probably get invited to join them.
I don’t do that, however. I hold on to my hunger so I can suffer one tiny fraction of what Kylie is about to suffer. While she dines with her family, I go back to her room to wait.
The red numbers of her digital clock keep me company for twenty-six minutes. I hear someone in the hall before the door opens and the lights flick on. Kylie jumps when she sees me sitting in her desk chair, but thankfully she doesn’t scream.
“Jonathan! I said I’d call you. I just finished supper.”
I stand and take a deep breath. “I know.”
She shuts the door behind her, and I get the distinct feeling I’m not welcome. Her hands rest on her hips as she waits for me to explain why I’m here when I’m supposed to be home by the phone. She looks like she hasn’t caught up on any of the sleep she hoped to today.
“I have to do something tonight,” I say. “Something that scares me. And I need to talk to you before I do it.”
That at least buys me her full attention, even if it is skeptical. “Since I wanted to talk to you, too, I guess we should get it all out at once.”
I’m nervous about someone coming up the hall and overhearing us. Kylie must worry the same thing, because she looks to her door. I have snuck into her room like usual, but her parents have never known me to do this. Tonight would not be the opportune time to be discovered.
“Should we go to Lacy Pastry?” she asks.
“Why don’t you tell your parents you’re coming to my house? I’ll meet you in the car. I think maybe we should go to the track.”
“The track?”
“Somewhere without people around.”
Now she looks über-skeptical, but she doesn’t refuse. “Okay.”
I climb out the window, which she shuts behind me, and go to her car. She emerges a minute later pulling on a light jacket. She starts the engine, and we’re off. Neither of us begins a conversation that will be interrupted by getting to the track, so we ride in silence. My thoughts, though, are anything but silent. I mull over a dozen impossible ways to tell her all she needs to know.
The high school’s driveway is well lit, but only the one orange sulfur light shines on the track. To my relief there aren’t any dinnertime joggers. Although some cars up in the rotary indicate that something’s going on inside the school, the track is deserted.
We pass through the gate, and instead of going up into the stands, we start walking around the night-dark oval. We’re not holding hands. Kylie uses lane three, and I go wide in lane four.
“Okay, Jonathan. What’s this horrible, scary thing you have to do?”
I keep my voice serious, despite the sarcasm in hers. “I’ll tell you, but I thought you might want to talk first.”
“Nope. You started this conversation at my house. You first.”
“Okay. If that’s what you want. The truth is . . . I have to tell someone the biggest secret of my life.”
She doesn’t answer right away. I imagine she thinks she’s been keeping her own big secret about the monstrous nature of her recent feelings, which must be the subject she wanted to discuss. In a way she’s right. “That someone is me, I assume,” she says.
“Yes.”
“Uh-huh.”
We pace most of the way down the back straightaway through a pause in the witty conversation. Kylie, being Kylie, doesn’t push me, and since she doesn’t volunteer her own confession, I take my time planning the right disclosure of mine. How do you blurt out to your girlfriend that she’s nothing but your made-up fantasy in a made-up world? And what would you expect her reaction to be?
I’m so afraid to speak, but so determined to speak, that my body starts to tremble. I’m cold all over. And nauseous. And glad I didn’t eat. It’s not like me to have nothing at all to say to Kylie, and I think she finally realizes that something very serious is happening here. She reaches for my hand, and my trembling passes through it into her.
“Jonathan, are you okay?”
We stop walking because it’s awkward to hold hands when an emergency situation is collapsing all over you. “I . . . I . . . I don’t know how to say it.”
“You don’t have to be afraid to tell me. I’m sorry for my stupid attitude lately.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
“I tried to push you away in the shed, and I did push you away after yesterday’s meet. You came for me tonight anyway. I didn’t deserve that.”
“You deserve so much more than that.”
“No, I don’t. I haven’t been very nice to you.”
“Kylie.” I’m about to tell her. The confession blossoms in my chest. I need only breathe and form the words, and it will be over. I drop her hand so I won’t have to endure her dropping mine when she finds out. “Kylie.” Why can I manage to say only her name?
“Whatever it is, it will be okay.” My old girlfriend reemerges, trying to make me feel better. If enough of her is still intact, it will help the next few minutes enormously.
“I wish that were true.”
“Just tell me. You’re scaring me with all this drama.”
I rub my face with my hands. What am I going to say? Then, before I can stop them, words come pouring out of my mouth. “Have you ever just wanted to live in a world of your own make-believe?”
“What?”
“Have you ever wanted to be in another place, or have other people around you, or things you just can’t get in the real world?”
“You mean like imaginary friends?”
“Sort of. Have you ever wanted to, you know, be like Kaitlyn Frost and travel to a world of faeries and mermaids and stuff?”
“Um . . .” Her eyes are scrunching up like I’d better get to my point quickly. “I guess when I was little I wanted to have a house in the backyard. My own house that wa
s me-size where I could live kind of a magical lifestyle. You know, decorated all girlie and stuff.”
“You did?”
“Don’t make fun of me. I’m just going along with things here, Jonathan.”
“Tell me about it.”
“What, the house?”
“Yeah, describe it for me.”
She purses her lips and furrows her brow in thought. Her eyes gleam in the darkness of this side of the track. The lane lines spread away from us in both directions, as if we’ve landed in the center of some cosmic roadway. She takes a deep breath, willing to talk about a childhood fantasy for reasons she doesn’t understand. Her eyes find mine as if she’s checking that I’m serious about asking.
“Well . . . I don’t remember what color it was. Purple maybe? Light purple? With a white railing around a long porch. Victorian-looking. When you walked in the front door, there were stairs going up to the second floor. There was furniture, old-fashioned furniture but brand-new. . . . I guess there was a flower garden around it. . . . There were lamps in every room. . . . I don’t know what else.”
“Where in your backyard was it?”
“Over by the big maple that’s not there anymore.”
She’s given me enough. I wonder if I can do two things at once, make a world and move something into it. The current circumstances mean my will is certainly strong enough. I reconnect with Kylie’s hand and draw her whole body to me. She resists at first, but then softens. I wrap my arms around her and focus all my world-making energy on a purple Victorian. I squeeze my eyes shut with concentration, even though Tess said it wasn’t necessary. I’m not sure I can do this, so I go with the method I’m comfortable using.
I know I’ve succeeded when Kylie lets out a huge gasp.
We don’t let go of each other, but we’re not on the track anymore. The space between worlds rips by, and we stand in Kylie’s grassy acre of backyard. Before us is a kid-size Victorian under the wide canopy of a maple tree that Kylie’s father chopped down last year. Lamplight blazes from every window, even a small circular one up on the third floor. It’s hard to tell it’s purple with all the light coming from inside, but the gleaming white detail of the trim shines in the window light. Along the length of the porch railing, flowers trail from flower boxes, and a rose garden around the porch catches the light on a pink rose here, a white rose there.
“Oh, Jonathan,” Kylie says. “What did you do?”
I swallow hard. There’s a big, fat lump in my throat. “This is my secret. I’m a world-maker.”
She scans the whole yard, which I know is exactly like her real backyard. When she remembers to look behind her, it’s as if she expects the track to be there, but instead it’s her house with the kitchen lights on. Her fingers dig into my arms.
We turn back to the Victorian. “Do you want to go in?” I ask.
She tips her head to see up to the roof and back down to the porch. “Maybe.”
“Come on.” I tug her sleeve, and we go up the steps. We have to duck to get through the front doorframe. Once inside, the ceilings are barely high enough for us to stand upright. We have to avoid walking into overhead light fixtures.
We tour a sitting room, a living room, a kitchen, a dining room. We go upstairs to see four little bedrooms all trimmed out with lacy bedcovers and tasseled lamps. There are stuffed animals everywhere, which I didn’t specifically include, but if the parameter for this world is things a little girl loves, I guess stuffed animals are appropriate.
We go up a skinny flight of stairs to the attic, which turns out to be one long room with a velvet couch at one end and a writing desk at the other. A desk lamp shines down on a pile of stationery and a quill pen.
Kylie hasn’t said a word since we entered. She’s touched everything, inhaled the varying floral scents of each room, closed her eyes and listened. She looks at me now, her eyes still glistening, but her pupils are wide. I think she might be afraid.
“This is the house,” she says. “I couldn’t remember all the details, but everything about it is perfect.”
“I made it out of your description.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been a world-maker ever since the crash, or the coma, or sometime shortly thereafter.”
“But this isn’t real, is it?”
“Yes. It is.”
“This is my backyard.”
“It’s like your back yard, but it’s a completely separate world.”
Her head moves back and forth, slowly, disbelievingly.
For some reason I’m struck with the memory of how she loved the Arthurian paintings at the Fine Arts Museum. Knights and ladies and horses and castles. I step toward Kylie and wrap myself around her again, squeeze my eyes closed, and concentrate on details, parameters, colors. In barely more than a blink, Kylie separates from me to gape at a looming whitewashed castle in the sun, complete with an open drawbridge and banners hanging from the walls. Tournament horses draped in heraldic colors parade out of the castle. Knights and pages and servants clamor along in an endless line of baggage, weaponry, and high spirits. Tree-covered hills slope gently up and down the horizon.
Kylie’s hands smooth over the gown I’ve given her, blue with a gold fleur-de-lis pattern and gold trimmings. The sleeves almost sweep the ground. Her hair is done up in braids and threaded with gold ribbon. A large blue sapphire sparkles on a gold chain at her neck. I’ve given myself a simple tunic and tights, leather cap, leather boots, and a bow and arrow. I’m not sure if a graceful lady and a graceless archer would be a passable pair in Arthurian lore, but I’ve made acceptance of our appearance a parameter of this world.
“How are you doing this?” she asks.
I shrug. “I told you I don’t know.”
“You’re not doing it on purpose?”
“I made this world for you because you liked those paintings so much.”
We look to the castle and the parade of chivalry, and I get wistful that before now I never used my world-making powers to craft worlds like this one. I think about the things I could have created out of my favorite stories, out of historical events or speculation for the future. The closest I ever came was Jonathan-is-a-hero, my childish war against alien invaders, but even that wasn’t as much about the aliens as it was about having people who looked up to me.
Kylie and I stand just off a road leading up to the castle. A party of nobles with fancy horses and a carriage approaches. “I want to go, Jonathan. Get us out of here.” She is beautiful as a Lady in blue and gold. I wish she could see herself in a mirror.
I do what she asks, though, and hold her tight for the journey back. It takes another blink to be re-engulfed by night on the track, and now it’s Kylie, not me, who’s shaking.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“That’s some secret.” She steadies herself by holding on to me, nodding her head as if she’s agreeing over and over that my secret’s pretty colossal.
“I wish that were the terrible part.”
Her head stops as her body stiffens. “What’s the terrible part?”
“I don’t know how to say it except to say it. But I need you to believe how much I love you, Kylie. I love you more than anything.”
“What’s the terrible part, Jonathan?”
My leg quivers, like if some part of me’s in motion, somehow I can fast-forward past this moment. I have never been so scared in my life, and we all know I’ve had at least one other pretty big scare.
Her face is in shadow, but I study its contours as if for the last time. Kylie. My Kylie. Her teeth are sunk so hard into her lip, I wouldn’t be surprised to see blood. “When I got out of the hospital, I was so depressed that I wished desperately to be in another world. I squeezed my eyes shut, and when I opened them, I was holding a laser gun and shooting at aliens. It was the kind of thing an eight-year-
old kid who’s played too many video games with his dad might think of. I visited that world every day for a while, but then I kind of outgrew it.”
It sounds impossible, even to my ears, but she’s listening. She believes I’m a world-maker because she’s seen it. I take another breath and continue. “Then I made a world I called Jonathan’s-smokin’-hot-dance-club. You know, a growing boy, dancing girls, and all that.” I don’t like admitting this to Kylie, but I’m not holding that info back when something so much worse is coming.
“Eventually I realized I wasn’t going to be happy unless this certain girl I liked was my girlfriend. We’d known each other in elementary school. She had gorgeous red-brown hair. On the outside of her locker, she taped up this collage of music lyrics about friendship and love and happiness, and she never knew it, but I read every single line when I came early to school. She kept a winged-foot keychain dangling from the zipper of her backpack—I heard her say it was a prize she’d won for being “most spirited freshman” on the track team. In the cafeteria she sat in the back corner with a table full of friends and always bought tacos on taco day, so I learned to love tacos and bought them on taco day too. She had this way of drawing people into her circle. While other girls were cliquing around, she managed to be friendly with everyone. Even kids no other popular girl would be seen within a mile of.
“The problem was, I was such a loner that I’d never go near enough to let her talk to me. After losing my whole family and almost dying myself, I was, you know, in pretty rough shape. When other kids made fun of my scar, I couldn’t deal. I totally withdrew. By the time I got to high school, I didn’t have a single friend. I wasn’t an outcast at that point. I had ceased to exist.”
Her eyes can’t get any wider. This account of me is not the truth she knows, and she couldn’t have missed my saying I wouldn’t be happy without the girl I liked being my girlfriend. The pieces she already holds of her own experience are falling into place. It’s too late to take them back.
“I had never made a world that was like the real world. I never made a world with my family alive, though I wanted it badly. After torturous years of wanting Kylie Simms to notice me and knowing she never would, I decided my consolation for losing my family would be to have a girlfriend.”