by Jon McGoran
“Just about.” He nodded, looking around. “Man, that’s a lot of chimeras.”
I could hear snatches of conversation from the tables around us. Mostly it seemed to be musings on what Chimerica would be like when they got there. Lots of “I think it’s going to be . . .” and “I bet it’ll be like . . .” and “I wonder if it’ll have . . .”
Jasper was sitting with two other men at a table in the front. On one side of him was a brutish-looking man, heavyset, with a nose that looked like maybe it had been broken a few times. On the other side was a small, vaguely familiar-looking man with wispy blond hair holding his finger to his lips, like he wanted to shush the crowd. They both had WellPlants, like matching moles over their eyebrows.
I leaned over to Ruth. “Who’s that little guy sitting with Jasper?”
“His name is Timms,” she said. “Why?”
“He looks familiar.”
She shrugged. “I’d never seen him before I got here.”
I stared hard at Timms, still trying to place him. But then Jasper stood and started tapping his glass with his butter knife, demanding attention. The tone penetrated the din, and everyone quieted down. Del made his way to our table, saying hi to almost everyone he passed. He sat next to me so I was between him and Rex.
“I’d like you all to welcome some new additions to Haven,” Jasper said when everyone was quiet. He gestured toward our table. “Pell and Sly and Rex. Plus their friend Jimi, who is our guest.”
The chimeras sitting around us gave a polite round of applause.
“Before we eat, I would like to make a few announcements,” he said. “As you all know, we will be leaving here soon, leaving the state for somewhere more welcoming, where you will all be appreciated for the diversity you represent.”
Someone shouted out “Chimerica!” and the crowd burst into cheers and applause.
Jasper smiled and held up his hands, calming the crowd down. Once the cheers died out, he continued. “Tomorrow night is our sponsors’ banquet, in honor of those whose contributions make Haven possible. Prior to that, we will have an athletic exhibition, to help you show them how truly remarkable you all are. I hope you will all participate to the fullest, give it your best effort, and enjoy a wonderful dinner, thanks to their generosity.” He raised his glass in a toast. “To Haven, and to Chimerica.”
The room erupted in a ragged chant, repeating Jasper’s toast, “To Haven, and to Chimerica!”
The doors from the kitchen opened and staff came out pushing carts piled high with food. They weren’t chimeras—they seemed to be mostly Vietnamese and Filipino, probably sea-rise refugees. I hadn’t seen any of them before.
“The food here is great,” Del said, his eyes flashing as he eagerly unfolded his napkin.
The server brought us a big bowl of salad and a platter of pasta with spinach and veggie protein. Del heaped both onto his plate. He shoveled it into his mouth like a little kid, like he had done for all the years I’d known him. I suddenly felt sad, this one unchanged thing making all the other differences that much more pronounced. He looked around the table as he chewed. When he got to me, he swallowed. “What?”
“Nothing,” I said. I ate quietly. Everybody did, except Del, who talked through the whole meal, reducing the rest of us to the occasional exchange of awkward glances. He started out talking about how great Haven was, and then how exciting the banquet would be. But he seemed to hit his stride talking about Chimerica, reciting theories, guesses, and conjectures as if they were somehow new information. “I can’t wait to be in a place where chimeras don’t have to be fearful,” he said, “where we can’t be mistreated or discriminated against, where we aren’t less than people.”
At that point, I’d had just about enough. “Tell me,” I said, “have you suffered a lot of discrimination in the four days since you became a chimera?”
“What?” He was surprised at first. Then he realized it was a dig. “Yeah, you know what? I have. I’ve seen my friends shocked and beaten. I’ve been abducted. I’ve seen a lot of it, and I can’t wait to get away.” His voice rose with every word.
Jasper got up and started making his way toward our table. He was still smiling, but he didn’t look happy.
“Yeah, just leave it all behind,” I said. “I’m sure there’s not a single thing you’ll miss, is there?”
Del lowered his voice. “Jimi, come on. You know it’s not like that. You know I had to get away. From my dad, from all that. Of course I’m going to miss you. But . . .” He opened his hands as if to say, What can you do?
Jasper and his smile leaned between us. “You need to calm down and lower your voices,” he said.
I ignored him. I could feel myself starting to lose it, and I knew I had to get out of there, but there was one last thing I had to say to Del. “I thought you were my best friend, and that was great,” I said quietly. “But I realize now you were just my only friend. And that’s sad.”
Del looked stricken.
I turned to the table, mustering a smile I didn’t feel. “Mr. Jasper will be taking me to the ten o’clock train from Carston tomorrow,” I said. “In case I don’t see you, I wish you all the best. I’ll always remember you.”
I looked at them one by one. “Ruth. Pell. Sly.” Ruth and Pell were already crying. Sly shifted uncomfortably. When I got to Rex, his big dark eyes seemed to be swimming with sorrow and regret, and something else. Longing.
I tried to say goodbye, or even just to say his name, struggling to find that one syllable and not lose it entirely.
I failed. I heard a sob ring out in the now-silent hall. It came from me. I turned away as a handful of voices called out, “Jimi!”
I don’t know if any of them was Del’s, but I definitely heard Rex’s voice rumbling underneath the others.
I clamped a hand over my mouth to prevent another sob and I ran, trying to get out of there before the tears caught up with me.
SIXTY-EIGHT
I was up the next morning before five. The Levline station was ten miles away. I figured, to be safe, I’d give myself three hours to walk it. Jasper said he’d put me on the ten o’clock train. I planned to be on the eight.
The night before, I’d cried on my bed until I was exhausted. Several times someone knocked on my door, but I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. By the time I fell asleep, I knew I needed to get away from there as fast as I could. I had said the goodbyes I needed to say.
Except for Rex.
But that couldn’t be helped. He was leaving, and I understood that. And I needed to leave, too, to get back to my life, or what was left of it. Start figuring out what the rest of it was going to be.
So when I opened the door and quietly pulled it closed behind me, I was surprised to hear a quiet rumble saying, “I thought you frowned on leaving without saying goodbye.”
I knew it was Rex, but I jumped anyway.
“Jesus, you scared me,” I whispered. “What are you doing out here?”
“Waiting for you,” he said. “I knew you wouldn’t let Jasper drive you to the ten o’clock. After last night, I figured you’d probably want to make a clean getaway, catch the eight o’clock.” He shrugged. “It’s a three-hour walk. So here I am.”
I didn’t know what to say. I threw my arms around him and tried to stay quiet as his arms went around me, too.
“Del doesn’t deserve a . . . friend . . . like you,” he said.
I was going to say I didn’t deserve a friend like Rex, but the truth was, I did. I just wasn’t going to get to keep one.
I held on to him anyway. Tight.
My eyes were almost dry when he cleared his throat and said, “We’d better get going.”
Tiny night-lights burned in the hallways and the lobby, but apart from that, the place was dark and still. We slipped out onto the front porch, into the predawn chill. The moon was close to full, but it still took a moment for our eyes to adjust.
Rex pointed off to the left. I followed his finger to a
gap in the trees. Two figures walked side by side, carrying rifles. We watched as they moved out of sight, then we looked at each other and headed off in the other direction.
Once we had crossed the lawn and entered the trees, I breathed a little easier.
I took the lead. I was happy to have Rex along, but I knew where I was headed. We followed the dirt road a few hundred yards, then angled off to the right, through the brush.
Rex followed without question or complaint. I was pretty sure he knew where we were headed, too. When we came to the fence, we followed it for a quarter mile, until we came to the place where the two trees grew on either side of it, their limbs intertwined overhead. From this side they seemed to be reaching out to each other, like they were trying to embrace but were kept apart by the fence between them.
Rex looked at me with something like pride. He cocked an eyebrow at me and nodded, as if to say, Proceed.
I hugged the maple tree and shimmied up a couple of feet so I could grab the lowest branch. After that it was easy to climb up to a thick branch that stretched over the fence. Holding smaller branches for balance, I walked out and stepped onto a similarly thick branch growing from the evergreen tree outside the fence. It swayed, but not too badly. I waited until it stopped, then made my way toward the trunk, grabbing two other branches for support. I dropped to the next branch down, and from there to the ground.
Rex grinned in the darkness. Then he started climbing.
“Wait!” I whispered. “What are you doing?”
“I’m coming with you,” he said as he clambered effortlessly up the maple tree.
“You can’t! It’s not safe out here for you.”
He paused, standing on the branch, which swayed even more under his massive weight. It let out a loud splintering sound. I tensed, expecting it to break.
Rex laughed softly, inching along the maple branch and stepping onto the evergreen bough, which swayed even more. “No place is safe for anybody.”
“But what about Chimerica? If you leave Haven, they won’t let you back in. All your friends are going there.”
He bent his knees and stepped off, flexing them again as he landed on the ground next me.
“Not all of them,” he said with a wink. “Besides . . .” He tilted his head back at the tree he’d just jumped from. “I can always sneak back in.”
SIXTY-NINE
At the bottom of the hill there was an old covered bridge. A chewed-up road passed through it heading east, toward Carston. We set off walking through the woods alongside it, staying clear of the road, but not far from it.
For much of the walk, we talked about nothing, and for the rest of it, we didn’t talk at all. Rex asked me what I liked to do when I wasn’t trying to save my friends.
“I like to read,” I said.
“Me too,” he replied.
“I like to watch Holovid movies.”
“Yup.”
“Most of all, I love to run.”
He turned to me with a gasp of mock surprise. “I love to run, too.”
That made me laugh. Neither of us had the right shoes or clothes, but I don’t think he cared, and neither did I. “I’d hate to miss my train,” I said.
We ran flat out, or at least I did. I got the sense Rex could have easily left me in the dust, but he paced me perfectly.
As always, the run cleared my head, and helped me forget for a little while how messed up my life was. The sun even came up, as if it were making a point.
Part of me wanted to run all the way to the station, and maybe keep going after that. But my feet were complaining from within my boots that if I wanted to be able to walk, it was time to stop.
“That was fun,” I said as we slowed to a stroll and caught our breath.
Rex smiled. “We’ll have to make sure we do it again sometime.”
We were quiet after that, and soon we were approaching Carston. We moved a little farther away from the road, just in case. The town looked too much like Pitman for comfort, with the fence-enclosed grid of streets and a similar mix of houses. It had a solar and wind farm instead of an illegal coal-well rig, but so did Alder, and that hadn’t been the friendliest place, either.
The Levline station was just outside of town. It was similar to all the others I’d seen: twenty feet above ground level, constructed of glass and concrete and steel, with dense metal mesh enclosing the track. But the parking area was so huge it had its own little tram, a miniature Lev train running from each parking area to the station.
We sat on a rock at the edge of the woods, barely touching, looking down at the cars filing into the parking lot. At a quarter to eight, I said, “I guess I should get down there.”
Rex nodded.
I turned and looked up at him. “Be careful, okay? Going back. And afterward.”
He nodded again. “You be careful, too.”
I got to my feet and so did he. “I hope Chimerica is everything you want it to be.” I tried to keep it light, nonchalant, like I didn’t care one way or another. The truth was, I cared both ways. I didn’t want him not to go—definitely not because of me—but I didn’t want him to go, either.
“Who said I was going to Chimerica?”
“Well . . . aren’t you?”
He smiled and scratched under his chin, thinking. “I still don’t know if I believe it’s real. If it is, I guess there’s plenty of reasons why I should.” His eyes met mine. “But there are some pretty big reasons not to, too.”
I felt a wave of relief, like a little bit of something bright just returned to my life.
Rex cleared his throat. “Plus, there’s something about Jasper and his pals I’m not sure about. But whatever happens, you’ll see me again, okay?”
I nodded. “Okay. Until then.”
He smiled. “Until then.”
I felt like I wanted to say something else, and I had plenty to say, but I couldn’t put it into words. Instead I put my arms around him again. I held him and he held me, too.
But then that wasn’t enough, either. I went up on my toes and gave him a deep kiss that sent shivers through me.
I don’t know what effect it had on Rex, but when I turned and ran, my legs were still wobbly.
The station was fifty yards away, and I didn’t look back until I was up on the platform. When I did, he was gone.
I was still looking for him when I heard the familiar shush of the Lev train coming. When I turned to watch its approach, I noticed a poster on the partition next to the ticket machine. GAME DAY, it said, in red and blue letters. I read it from top to bottom and smiled. After all this, I still didn’t know what the heck Game Day even was.
I glanced back the way I’d come one more time, and saw a black off-road sedan approaching across the parking lot, moving fast. The windows were tinted, and I couldn’t see the driver. It looked like one of the cars I’d seen parked behind the lodge at Haven.
The train arrived and the doors opened. Something about the car made me hurry onto it, and made me will the train to pull out in a hurry, too.
As the doors closed, the car skidded up to the bottom of the steps to the platform. The car doors flew open and three men got out. The two in the front were bigger. The one in back was small, with thin blond hair and a WellPlant. He looked like Timms, the guy who had been sitting at Jasper’s table.
They looked angry, watching the train leave and unable to do anything about it. People miss trains all the time, and they’re usually angry about it, so maybe I was being paranoid, but I had a feeling those men were there for me. Maybe Jasper was angry that I had left early, and without saying goodbye. I smiled at that thought, but shuddered as well, wondering what would have happened if they’d arrived a few minutes earlier. I was glad Rex was safely off in the woods.
SEVENTY
After having trekked for so long to get out to Haven, it was bizarre to be back in Perkins Park in less than an hour. And it was strange to find myself on a train full of commuters in the middle of the morn
ing rush.
My clothes were filthy, and my fellow riders stared at me without making eye contact. I wondered how much worse it must have been for Ryan, bleeding and legally less than a person. Ryan hadn’t been far from my thoughts since I’d found him at Guzman’s house, but with all that had been going on, he hadn’t been front and center, either. I was anxious to see how he was doing, but apprehensive as well, afraid of what I would find out.
The first two stops were towns similar to Carston. The third stop was Alder. City View Tower rose up ahead, immense and impressive when you got up close to it. I half expected to see an unfriendly policeman waiting to make sure I didn’t get off the train in his town.
The stations after that were more like Perkins Park: less imposing, with smaller parking lots and fewer quadcopters. The landscape between the stations looked more familiar, too—stretches of green, the occasional enclave along a Smart-route, and wide swaths of abandoned zurbs. We passed the swampy, dilapidated streets of Rockland. And then we pulled into Perkins Park.
I was the only one who stood to get off. Everyone else was headed into the city.
It was a Wednesday morning. A school day. Part of me thought about just going to school. I wouldn’t even be that late. I laughed at the thought as the doors opened. Hard to believe I’d only missed two days.
It struck me again how much trouble I was in. Trudy was surely freaking out. My mom was probably there, freaking out even more. There’d be counselors and school shrinks and meetings. There’d be consequences. There were always consequences.
But after all I’d been through in the past few days, I could handle whatever they threw at me. And there really wasn’t much they could do to me anyway. Grounded? Fine, I had nowhere to go. Chores? Extra schoolwork? Sure, I had nothing else to do. Can’t see my friends? Well, most of my friends were gone anyway. Except Rex, maybe.
Thinking of him made me feel better, actually.
I looked up at the train schedule. There was a train headed back out to Carston at four ten. For a second, I thought about it—go back out there, get a splice, and go off with my friends to Chimerica.