by Nick Courage
And it doesn’t. First it lands on the honey-skinned girl. The room makes a collective hushing noise and then quietly chants, “Mary, Mary, Mary.”
Conor leans across the circle and gives her a quick peck on her flushing cheek, the only sign she gives that she’s just been kissed. And then it’s Mary’s turn. And then, because Mary refuses to re-spin the bottle when it lands on Alice, it’s Alice’s turn. And then it’s Scott’s turn. The circle has fallen into a kind of unquestioning rhythm: spin and peck, like we’re enchanted.
Without any conscious effort on my part, my intense bodily awareness turns into a hyper-focus on the game, on its physical dynamics. I tell myself that if the bottle just spins for longer than ten seconds, it won’t land on me; that no one will have to know about my flaring side effects. Scott spins the bottle and, after a count of thirteen long seconds, it lands on Freckles; he jumps to his feet and gives her a wet, smacking peck before any chanting can commence. She takes the kiss in stride—with barely a flicker of acknowledgement on her face—and gets down to the business at hand without wasting any time, giving the bottle a solid turn.
I count softly to myself as it spins, slows, wavers, and—after sixteen taut seconds—stops. I breathe a sigh of relief, confident in my system; the bottle is pointing at nobody.
Or, almost nobody.
It only dawns on me that its red plastic barrel is pointing squarely at me when everyone starts whispering my name, “Hank, Hank, Hank,” over and over again.
“But—” I start, collecting myself in the face of a sudden panic. The bottle spun past ten, I want to say. It spun past ten. “I’m not playing,” I manage to say, my voice strangely confident. I notice that Mouse, who hasn’t kissed or been kissed yet, smiles, and then frowns when Freckles stands up anyway, disregarding my protest.
“Rules are rules,” Freckles announces to the room. “Mary kissed Alice.”
“No, no,” I say, backing hazily against the wall. I’m not freaking out anymore, but I’m still wired, and can feel my heart working overtime. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
But she’s determined. Spin the bottle only works when the bottle is king, and we’re all living, for the time being, under its random attic rule. I close my eyes and will my heart to slow down; to overpower the soda and the sugar high.
It’s no use, though.
Thinking about the kiss just makes it worse, and I can feel my pulse quickening as Freckles steps toward me across the circle, unsmiling in her determination. I try to beg off one last time, a last-ditch effort at keeping my condition a secret . . . but I’m moving so slowly, and by the time I open my mouth to protest, it’s too late—I’m backed against a broken bookshelf, my eyes squeezed shut in apprehension as Freckles’s soft lips press firmly against my quavering cheek.
Time seems to right itself when she steps backward, shocked, as I try to work up the nerve to open my eyes again and face the aftermath. When I do finally open them, I do it slowly, hoping against hope that she didn’t feel it; that the game and our lives can just go on, uneventfully, as before. But of course she felt it—I can tell as soon as I see her. She’s staring at me with two fingers resting on her buzzing lips, green cat eyes wider than I would’ve thought possible.
“You . . .” she whispers.
Her brow is furrowed, like she already doesn’t trust her memory of what we both know just happened. Cheering, Conor and Scott call for me to spin, not realizing that I’ve just electrocuted Freckles, who’s looking at me as if she’s seen a ghost. I stare back, really noticing her for the first time. She’s tall—taller than me—with a tiny, upturned nose and a thin but expressive mouth. And, of course, a thousand constellations of almost invisible freckles. She’s pretty, I realize, smiling, as the attic resounds with calls for me to “spin, spin, spin!”
It’s too late to hide what happened, so I try to play it cool instead.
“Sorry for the buzz,” I whisper offhandedly, confident that no one else will hear me above the post-kiss chanting. “I have a . . . thing.”
I twist around her, making sure we don’t touch again, and reach for the bottle, which I spin resolutely. While it’s spinning, I try to compose myself. It doesn’t help that I can feel Freckles staring at the back of my head, or that Mouse is giving me a sort of inquisitive stink-eye. Everyone else seems oblivious, which is for the best. Just because I’m electric doesn’t mean everyone has to know about it. It also dawns on me that spinning the bottle was only a temporary way out of the awkward kiss, one that would lead inevitably to another.
Whatever happens, I tell myself, I’m not kissing anyone else.
I’ll think of something.
I take a deep breath, finally centered, while the bottle slows down. It lands on Scott, who puckers up with exaggerated delight.
“Not on your life, friendo,” I say, grateful that it landed on him and not Mouse, whose narrowed eyes are shooting rusty daggers at Scott. And then, it hits me: a way out. “Anyone else need to pee?”
Scott raises his hand; Conor raises his eyebrow. Mouse stands up, but only so she can push Alice and Honey back down into the circle. “We got here, like, two minutes ago,” she says, pouting. “I haven’t even had a turn yet!”
But I’m already halfway up the ladder, reaching for the worn latch and the hot breeze beyond it. I know, as I climb, that it’ll be my last time up here. And not because of the kiss, or because everyone knows about it now. The attic just suddenly . . . feels too small, like there’ll never be enough air in there again. As I reach the top of the ladder, I look back over my shoulder for one last look around. Conor has his arm loosely draped around Mouse’s neck and is telling her that we’ll be back, that he has another bottle at home—“orange soda”—and I feel a little guilty.
I really do have to pee, though, so there’s no time to get sentimental.
Back on the roof, I hold the hatch open for Conor, Scott, and the girls, who are joking and laughing and taking their sweet time. With a growing panic, I realize that the claustrophobia that wrapped itself around me so tightly in the attic hasn’t dissipated. It’s a sickly sweetness, a thickness to the air that sticks to my dusty skin and coats the inside of my mouth, suffocating.
Through it, I hear Scott showing off on the ladder, trying to climb up with just his arms—holding things up.
“Come on,” I call down, as quietly but as emphatically as I can. I don’t like the way my voice sounds. It’s sharper than I want it to be, higher pitched. Walking to the edge of the roof, away from the hatch and everything it holds, I try to will my head clear. The Green Zone sprawls out around the school in a ragged circle, not that I can see its boundaries so much as I know they’re there. By eye, it’s all trees and roofs and river—and beyond that, the world beyond the Zones. I know there’s more to life than this. Conor’s brother Ben is proof of that; he went Outside and is doing whatever it is he’s doing beyond our borders—teasing us with soda and shirts and artifacts from a world we’re not a part of anymore.
And I’ve read enough books in that old attic to know what I’m missing out on.
After the Tragedies, it felt exciting enough just to hide out, alone, and read about Lewis and Clark and Manifest Destiny and kids who snuck out in the middle of the night to go to the movies. Now that I have a taste of life outside the Green, I’m not so sure.
“Hey-uh there, Henry!” I flinch momentarily before I realize it’s just Mr. Moonie. I squint past the sunshine, trying to make out his silhouette in the garden. Scott is still hanging from the ladder below, oblivious and goofing for Alice and Mouse and Mary and Freckles, who are in various states of laughter. Everyone else at School is quietly working among the vegetables, so of course Moonie heard us.
“Oh, hey again, Mr. Moonie,” I call down, trying to sound casual, as if I haven’t just been caught. He’s finally in focus, but it’s no use—I can’t make out his expression from this far up.
“Y’all gettin’ some air up there,” he
shouts jovially.
“Yessir, Mr. Moonie.”
Conor yells, “My turn!” from the attic, and I notice for the first time that with the hatch open the voices actually magnify, trumpeting out across the garden. Moonie adjusts his pants with one hand and shades his eyes with the other, cane hooked over his forearm.
“Nice day for it, too.”
Mortified, I just shrug.
“Well, listen, Hank. Reason I come lookin’ for ya is you got a message from your Gra’mama,” Mr. Moonie shouts.
There’s more laughter from the attic, and Moonie waits for it to die down before he tells me that I’m to run to Gram’s house at my “earliest convenience,” because apparently she has news that can’t wait. Message delivered, he tips his invisible cap, says, “Y’all be safe up there, now, y’hear,” and shuffles off to inspect the gardens.
The hatch slams, and I turn around to see Conor and the sugar-high gang. Judging from Mr. Moonie’s goodbye, they’d probably popped up behind me in time to be seen. Not that it mattered; Mr. Moonie’s a quarter deaf and we’d been loud enough for him to think to check the roof.
“All right?” Conor asks, patting my back reassuringly.
“All right,” I say, although I feel doubly guilty. Like I’ve let Conor and Moonie down. “Let’s get off this stupid roof already.”
We’re quiet on the way down, even though I guess we don’t have to be anymore, tip-toeing down the ladder to the second floor balcony. I go first so I can help people if they need it. Freckles goes next. Alice comes after her, but has some trouble.
Looking up at me, Freckles whispers, “I’ve been calling you ‘Girl Shirt’ in my head.”
Her voice sounds like cool watermelon, thinly sliced, and despite the heat, a chill spreads across my bare arms. Goosebumps.
“I call you Freckles,” I say, “in my head.”
She pinches my side, through my shirt, hard enough that it actually hurts.
It’s too hot to run, but I’m running. Slowly. Jogging, really.
Trudging.
Grammy’s house is about fifteen blocks from the Library, toward the new city center: university campuses repurposed after the Tragedies. If I’d started from home, I’d have been there by now, but from the Library, with all the construction, I have to zig-zag through most of the sign-less streets of the Green Zone and through the sprawling campus.
It’s going slower than I hoped it would, and the mid-afternoon air is so heavy that I’m not breathing so much as gulping.
Conor lent me his skateboard. He insisted I take it when we realized something had to be wrong for Moonie to tell me to get to Grammy’s as soon as possible. She’s big on social calls, but with civic leaders and local celebrities and cheese plates . . . not with her grandson, urgently, in the middle of the day. In the rush of the moment, I took the board, not remembering that I don’t ride too well. Now it’s just extra weight slowing me down, its sandpapery grip rubbing the inside of my arm red.
Grammy.
I’ve covered about six blocks when the real worry hits. Grammy is young for an older lady, but I have a humming in my chest that says any number of things can go wrong.
Or it could be my parents.
A bike accident: Dad—distracted by the gingerbread woodwork on the porch of a house he’d never noticed before—riding right into a ditch. Or Mom could’ve been hijaacked on one of her routine tours of the Grey Zone. They’re careful—we all are—but anything can happen in the Grey.
It’s terrible, and I hate myself for it as I jog slowly through the Green, sweat running down my neck, imagining the worst . . . but my next thought is for myself. What if I get to Grammy’s and everyone’s gone, a freak accident leaving me alone in our big, crumbling house? I’d have to leave the Green, I think with a detachment that sends chills down my spine. I’d start off in the Other Side, letting Rachel and Tom comfort me with sludgy coffee at Foods, and then I’d—
It’s unthinkable, though.
Literally. I can’t make myself think about anything past that . . . my brain just shuts down. I’ve reached the edge of campus, anyway. It’s only a few more blocks to Grammy’s and whatever news awaits me there—no need to get carried away with worst-case scenarios when I’ll be dealing with facts in just a few minutes. I scrunch up my face, squeezing out tears I didn’t realize were collecting in my eyes. I know I’m being stupid, it’s just been a strange couple of days . . . the out-of-body experience, the hypersensitivity and electrifications, that thing with Freckles.
I laugh, wiping my eyes and hoping no one saw.
I don’t even know her real name.
The campus is maybe my favorite part of the Zone. It’s all garden paths and grey stone buildings like forts. If the Green ever condensed even further, it would probably be around the campus, like a walled-off medieval hamlet or something. Which is why the city took it over, probably. The First Exodus occurred after the first Tragedy, when the floods are said to have been Biblical. Only about a quarter of the students came back. And after the Second, only a handful, leaving the campus completely abandoned, save for five or ten graduate students and professors. Urban planners and activists. “Babysitters,” Mom called them. “Which one do you want for tonight?” Over time, they were the ones who rallied the shocked local government and moved them into the collegial embrace of the campus. From there, the history of the Green Zone really began: clearing the streets, raising funds for the Hospital, working toward self-sufficiency and some sliver of what existed Before.
Dad was one of them, a professor who stayed. Unlike the rest, though, he was in the humanities—an English teacher. He was radical, sure, but outside of his alternative interpretations of Moby Dick, the most forward-thinking thing about him was his wife, my mom. If it wasn’t for her, we’d probably have packed up and moved somewhere more normal. He did get job offers from sympathetic colleagues in places out west. But there was Gram, who wasn’t leaving no matter what, and Mom, who felt the same way.
I squeeze my eyes shut again, hoping they’re okay.
And then, finally, I’m jumping up the stairs to Grammy’s house, taking them three at a time, then holding down on the doorbell. “Grammy!” I yell, not hearing the buzz. Remembering the Powerdown. I bang on the door with the heel of my hand.
“Grammy!”
The door creaks open, Grammy’s heavily powdered face peeking out past the chain. Before I can say anything, she closes the door again so she can unlatch it and then opens it wide. I’m red-faced and dirt-streaked with attic dust, and still, when I see Gram standing in front of me, healthy as ever, I drop Conor’s skateboard and hug her, burying my face in her neck.
“Henry,” she says, surprised at first and then, stroking my sweaty hair out of my eyes: “Henry, it’s okay.”
I take a deep breath and pull out of the hug. “Mom and Dad?”
She looks at me reassuringly. “We just had some lunch, on the back porch.”
The worry lifts, as easily as that. All the muscles in my body instantly relax and I slump, not having realized how wound up I was. “It’s okay, Henry,” my grandmother says, pulling me back into a hug and stroking my head, talking in a low, soothing voice. “It’s okay.”
“Why . . .” My voice cracks.
“Oh, Henry!” she says, pulling momentarily away again so she can see my face. “You didn’t think . . .” I try to compose my face, but I can feel my cheeks radiating heat. I must really look like I’ve been through it, because she trails off. “Poor baby. Poor, poor baby.”
She says “poor” like it’s two words, drawing it out and wrapping it around me like a security blanket. She’s beautiful, Grammy. Her eyes are sharp, like a hawk’s, and she still has some black in her hair, even though it’s turned mostly grey; her skin still glows like a baby, like Mom’s. Behind her is a flowering hydrangea, spheres of blue flowers bursting out from a thick leafed vine working its way around the porch.
“So,” I start, unable to contain my curiosit
y. “Why’d Mr. Moonie tell me . . .?”
She squeezes my wrist. “That’s for your parents to say.” And then she smiles, her eyes crinkling up so they look almost soft. “You look hungry.”
Gram doesn’t really know how not to entertain—she’s so used to being the perfect hostess that she pulls out all the stops for every occasion. So even though I’m crashing a casual back porch lunch, it’s no surprise when I see Mom and Dad sitting around a flotilla of plates piled high with Zone-made cheese wedges, salt-and-peppered tomato slices, and various “crew-day-tay”—what less fancy people might call “vegetables from the garden.” Dad is sipping a tall glass of cucumber juice, which tastes a lot better than it sounds.
“Hey,” Mom says. “Is for horses,” she self-corrects, looking at Dad, who snorts some cucumber juice down the wrong pipe and starts coughing. “What’s up?”
“Um,” I say, pulling myself together. “What’s up with you weirdos?”
“First,” says Mom, “a toast.” She holds up her glass, which is mostly empty, and slaps Dad playfully on the back. “Stop coughing!”
He answers with a coughy laugh and then coughs a few more times. Finally finished, he holds up his glass and says, “To your mother!”
Grammy hands me a glass of cucumber juice, rolls her eyes, and murmurs, “To her mother, more like.”
It’s all so funny, everyone here together, happy—so different from what I was expecting. I break into a smile and finish my juice in one long gulp. Grammy, consummate hostess, refills my glass almost as soon as it’s emptied and I take another drink, smaller this time.
“So,” I ask, looking from Dad to Mom to Grammy, who’s standing proudly to the side—prettily framed by a blush of hydrangeas again. “What’s the news?”
“Well,” Dad says, “I tried to tell you earlier, but Moonie couldn’t find you. Said you were probably lost in a book somewhere.” I feel my face turning red again as I remember the girls’ rolled up sleeves and the bottle; Freckles’ lips for a half second on my low-voltage cheek.