But I knew that was wrong. I didn’t save him. The night before, when Gloria came back from the woods by herself, I didn’t worry. Gloria gave me a tomato sandwich made on toast. She told me over and over how much she loved me and she let me take Rowan’s big blue book of Stories for Boys that he didn’t read no more, but didn’t share. A four-leaf clover was hiding in there. She put me in her bed and even let Chicken up. He snored like trees crashing down. It was so snuggly. In my head, I put Rowan in his own bed. He was asleep and happy. After I closed my eyes, I didn’t even wake up once.
I had to be a better sister.
Strange voices came in with the breeze. They were far away now, but I thought I could hear Telly. Darrell, too. They were in the woods with the other men, searching and searching. They were calling, “Row! Rowan Janes! Where are you?” I pinched my leg to stay awake. I waited and waited but I never heard him answer back.
ROWAN
Carl got to his feet. The yelping was getting closer and closer. Mixed among the man’s yowls was high-pitched giggling. Coming through the darkness. I heard feet trampling sticks. Two people were up on top of the bridge now. Stomping and laughing. Girl kept making that rumbling noise, but she didn’t leave Carl’s side.
My mouth was dry and my heart hammered. I could feel it in my lower jaw. Carl snapped on his flashlight, aimed it at the side of the bridge. “Stay still, Magic Boy,” he whispered. “Workers are at our door.”
I curled underneath my blanket. If I didn’t move, didn’t breathe, maybe they would keep walking along the tracks. They wouldn’t check underneath.
No.
I heard them moving down off the tracks. The bushes quivered and then a person with long shaggy hair slid through. At first I thought it was a girl, but then I saw there was nothing inside his unbuttoned shirt. He was holding hands with a second person who followed close behind. She had on overalls and a floppy hat, but her eyes still caught the light.
“Will you lookit,” the man said over his shoulder. “Ocupado.”
They both burst out laughing. Not like Carl’s gentle happy laugh, but a laugh that sliced through the air. It made my hair lift.
“She’s wearing a hat,” Carl said. “The Worker’s wearing a hat.”
I slowly sat up. The blanket fell off my shoulders.
“Stan? Yes, they are two. Two.”
I gripped the blanket in my fists.
“Hey, man.” The man’s words sounded as though they were pouring from his nose, stretched thin. “Down with the interrogation lamp, hey, hey now?”
“What’s coming?” Carl didn’t put the light down.
“Didn’t you hear me? You’re blinding me here, man.”
The beam quivered on the man’s face. I knew Carl’s arm was shaking. “Urh,” he said.
“Come on, friend. I’m asking real nice.”
Girl whined, bumped her head into Carl’s knee. He flicked off his light. Flames from the low fire still glowed on their faces. They crept closer. The man had his elbows bent, hands up. Like he was ready to catch a ball. Or fight.
“We’re lost, man.” His head bobbed up and down smoothly. “Strollin’ with my lady. Totally fucked up, you got me?”
Carl shook his head. “Beams broken. They’re here.” He was still gripping the flashlight, but I caught the silvery glint of something in his other hand. His whittling knife, tucked just inside the fold of his coat.
“You know, hard to tell what it’s like down here from up on the tracks. But there’s some serious space.” Then he spoke to me. “Right, buddy? Plenty of room for two more to bunk down?”
Carl bent his head. He was mumbling rapidly, and I was only able to catch parts. “…don’t know…Stan, Stan, systems in place, the Workers…No, no. Can’t be Magic Boy. He’s only one…Those signals…just circling in the outer orbits…” Girl continued to whimper, rubbing her head into Carl’s leg. But Carl didn’t seem to notice.
The lady stumbled toward Carl, pointed at his knapsack. “You got anything in that? I’m, like, so starved.”
I edged closer to Carl, dragging the blanket behind me.
“Back!” Carl yelled at the lady. He drew out the knife, pointed it straight at her chest. “Back! Get back!”
My limbs went numb. Was Carl going to stab her?
Girl showed her teeth then, her gums. Wet snarling, but she still didn’t budge from Carl’s side.
While the lady froze, the man tiptoed even closer. Hands up, waving. “Calm down. Everyone got to calm the fuck down. We can all be friends, right? Hey, buddy?” He grinned at me. “We can all be friends.”
“Get behind me, Magic Boy!”
But I couldn’t move.
“I don’t like this. I don’t like this.” Carl jabbed the air with the knife. “Stan. Stan. Stan. Workers. Two. They always come in twos. The concrete and the metal. Breached. No good, no good. It lost its functionality. Stan, you need to help me. I’m found.”
“Stop,” I whispered to Carl. But the word never came out. I stood up slowly, my legs wobbling. The blanket around my feet.
“Oh, my, god,” the lady said. “This guy’s, like, nuts for real. I’m totally freaked out.”
When Carl’s arm shot forward again—“Back!”—the knife flew from his hand. Clattered on the stones. In a flash the man lurched, snatched it up. A blur around me, and the man grabbed my wrist. Tugged me toward him. My back smacked against his chest. With one arm he gripped me around my waist. The other arm pinned my shoulder. I could feel damp heat from his armpit. Then stinging on the side of my neck.
“Eeeeee-sy, now. Eeeee-sy, my little friend.”
Girl was barking now, snapping her teeth.
“Better call off your mutt, old man.”
Carl kept mumbling. “What should I do, Stan? What should I do?”
My legs were icy rubber.
“They’ve come to take me. Put me in the white room.”
“You heard me, you whacked-out piece of shit.” He shuffled me in his arms. I was like a rag doll, responding to each nudge he made. A stream of tears coursed out of my eyes. I could see bubbles of spit around Girl’s mouth. She wouldn’t stop barking.
“Call off your bitch or I’ll cut it.”
The lady took off her hat. Her hair rippled over her back. “Lionel. That’s not funny.”
I stared at the lady. She stared back at me. Carl made a click-click noise in his throat, and Girl went silent. Sat back on her haunches.
“Lionel,” she said again. “Let him go.”
“Magic Boy!” Carl yelled. “Dissolve yourself.”
A cry escaped my lips. I couldn’t dissolve myself. I was real. The skin of my neck prickled. My feet and hands and lips were numb. The guy was pressing the blade, harder and harder. It was going to slice through my skin. Into my artery. I was going to die. I prayed fast. Please, Gloria. Find me. Tell the man to let me go. I’ll be the best boy you can imagine. One look at her steel face and I knew he would listen. Telly. Come save me. Please, Telly. But Telly had a new life now, and he didn’t ever want to see me or Maisy or Chicken. Somehow, Telly had managed to do it. To dissolve himself.
I turned my neck a fraction of an inch. It burned, and I whispered, “Let me go. I won’t do anything. Honest.”
“Lionel!” the lady said. “He’s just a little kid. Stupid camping with his dad, or some shit.”
A strangled sob fell from my mouth. Camping with his dad. I had no dad.
Carl was shaking his head back and forth, yelling, “The Workers! How. How? The white room. My mother will come, Stan! I don’t, don’t, urh, I don’t trust myself!”
“Lionel!” She took a step closer. “Let the kid go.”
“Fuck it,” he said. Then he laughed that creepy laugh, relaxed his grip. “I was only fucking around with him. Joking. Right, my little friend? I was only just horsing around with you, sure.”
He shoved me. I fell forward onto the pebbles. My knees and palms smacked the ground. I touched my neck, th
e stinging spot. It was slippery. Scrambling up, I rushed toward Carl. Toward Girl. Carl pushed me behind him. “You did it,” he said. “You did it, Magic Boy.”
Still pointing the knife, the man wiped his nose on his sleeve. “I suggest you and that little runt mosey on out of here.”
“Maybe we should go?” the lady said.
I gripped the back of Carl’s coat.
“Yeah. And why would we do that?” the man said. “You are one dumb whore.”
She put the floppy hat back on. I couldn’t see her face anymore.
“You heard me,” the man growled. “Get!”
When Carl reached for his backpack the man sang out, “Ah, ah, ah. That’s ours now, old man. Thanks for being so hospitable.” His eyes squinted. “Now I’m going to count to ten. If you’re not gone from my sight I’m going to carve your face so deep your own mother wouldn’t know you.”
The lady’s hat shook back and forth. Maybe underneath there she found it funny. Or maybe she was scared, too.
“One. Two. Three—”
Carl edged away. Girl stayed by his side. “Keep close, Magic Boy. We need to lift off.”
“Four, five, six—”
I looked at the backpack, full of his clothes and food and Girl’s stuffed squirrel with the deformed face, but the man poked the air with the knife and grinned again.
“It’s okay, okay,” Carl whispered. “Just involute, Magic Boy. Make yourself invisible like me and Girl. They don’t see us. Put extra space between your electrons. They can’t see our atoms. We are spinning and spinning.”
“Seven!”
“Okay,” I whispered. My mouth was like paste. I followed Carl and Girl toward the end of the bridge. Behind us, the woods were black. No moonlight found its way through the dense leaves. The creek gurgled and bubbled as though everything was fine.
“Eight thousand nine hundred and ten-fucking-zero!” He was laughing. Then he howled. And yipped. I heard tin cans crash together. Glass smashing.
“Keep your feet in the water,” Carl said. “Don’t leave a smell.”
Moving carefully on the silt and pebbles and slimy grass, the three of us stayed near the edge of the creek. Stepping back and back and back. Somewhere off in the distance I heard real dogs barking. A chorus of them. This time, though, Girl didn’t react at all.
* * *
—
After a long time, Carl stopped. My whole body flumped right into his, and I jumped. “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t see you.”
Movement of fabric, and Carl flicked on his flashlight. “Not invisible anymore. Urh. If you stay like that too long, you can’t come out again.”
Cool water rushed over my ankles. The creek had gotten deeper. I stepped onto the bank, sat down on a large rock.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Away,” he said.
“Away where?”
“Urh. Why do you ask so many questions?”
“Sorry,” I said again.
I leaned down and rubbed my feet. Even though they’d been in the water, they felt hot and swollen. The bottoms were tough, but not tough enough for walking so long on rocks and twigs.
Carl came out of the water and stood beside me. Girl was right next to him and shook, droplets pecking my face.
“Did you know them, Magic Boy?”
“What?”
“Did you know those Workers.”
“Know them? How would I know them?”
“Did you, did you, urh, did you send out a signal?”
“What? I was almost asleep. You saw me.”
“Sure I did, but I can’t see what you emit.”
Emit? I swallowed. What was he talking about? “I swear, Carl. I never sent out anything. I don’t even know how. I never saw them before. And I don’t want to see them ever again.”
“Urh,” he said. “I told you so.”
“Told me what?”
“Not you,” he said. He twitched his fingers, and I knew he’d pulled out more hairs. “I was figuring things out with Stan.”
I looked around. Outside our tiny orb of brightness from Carl’s flashlight, there was nothing. Only blankness. But maybe I should try to find my way home. If I kept going in a line, I’d come out of the woods eventually, wouldn’t I? Then I could fix everything with Gloria. I could mow the lawn, in those perfect straight lines she liked. Or dig up the garden and plant some beans or some radishes. It wasn’t too late. I’d even scrape the old paint off the porch. And the deck, too. Things would be better if I didn’t give her a single reason to get upset.
Carl’s flashlight sputtered and we were swallowed in heavy black again. I could feel the cool darkness in my nose and sitting on my top lip. Winding its way down my arms, around my fingers. If I left Carl and Girl, I might run into that man and the lady with the stupid hat. Straight into Carl’s whittling knife. I touched my neck. The spot was sticky. I couldn’t go home now even if I wanted to.
Three bangs against his palm and the flashlight burst back into life. Carl shone it up the length of the creek.
“The Workers might be, urh, tracking us. We best stay close together.”
I wanted to reach out and hold onto his coat.
“What are we going to do, Carl?” I said. “Where can we go?” I knew I was asking even more questions, but I couldn’t help it. Water pooled in my eyes. I tried to shove the wetness away but Girl trotted over, licked my cheeks.
Carl mumbled. He sounded frustrated. “No, that’s right. We can. It’s still mine. Once you build something, it’ll always be yours. Paper doesn’t matter. That’s the law.”
“Carl?”
“We’re going to a secure location, Magic Boy.”
He shone the flashlight on my face, then onto my feet. Rummaging in another enormous pocket, he pulled out a roll of gray tape. He walked toward me, and I could hear squelching from his shiny shoes. They were ruined. Bending in front of me, he picked up my left foot, swiped the bottom on his pant leg, then peeled off strips of tape and stuck them to my skin. Over the toes and up around the heel until my foot was a secure clump of silver. Did the same with the other.
“Too tight?”
“No.”
When he stood up, he stuck his big hand in my hair. Ruffled it. “I know. I think so,” he whispered. Then to me, “You really should float, Magic Boy. That’s just common sense. Much easier on your soles.”
After he said that, I couldn’t help smiling. The weight around my heart fell away. Carl had a plan. Things were going to be all right. “Thank you, Dot,” I said. I knew it had come from her.
He and Girl started walking, moving in and out of the creek. “Just to keep them guessing.”
“Do you see them?” I’d wanted to ask this for a long time.
“Who?”
“You know.” I limped along with my taped feet. Water had oozed in, and with each step my heels made a soft gulp. “Dot,” I said. “And the others.”
“No. They’re not like that.” He took a few steps then stopped, whispered, “Sometimes I see Stan though.”
“Really? What does he look like?”
“He’s vast, Magic Boy. So vast. Dark, dark red in, in, urh, in my sky. And when he’s mad, he fills me up and stretches me so thin and he seeps out through all my pores.”
Carl sounded afraid, so I said, “It’s okay. I get it.” I sort of did. Sometimes I felt that way about Gloria.
ROWAN
It seemed like we walked for hours. I thought I was going to collapse. Every part of me was exhausted, and my tooth throbbed. Insects bit my neck then flew into my mouth, a metal taste spreading over my tongue when I crushed them.
Carl did not seem tired at all. He stomped ahead, step after step, swinging his flashlight left to right. Several times he caught a pair of yellow eyes in the glow, low to the ground. The creature would stare, then skitter away.
Eventually the creek grew wider and the bank turned into a tangle of tall grasses and sharp bushes. I knew
I was covered in cuts and scratches, and I could feel blood trickling down my legs. More than once when I stepped, my foot met with nothing. A dip in the ground or a space between rocks, covered by leaves. I went down. Cracking against the ground, bones twisting. While Girl halted, Carl kept ambling forward, shoulders hunched. He didn’t even notice. It sounded like he was arguing, saying, “No, you’ve got it wrong this time. Listen to her, listen to her. I can tell, Stan. Urh. Listen to her. Unsubstantiated slanderous allegations.”
I tried to breathe slowly. I didn’t like it when Carl talked to Stan. His voice always went low and hollow.
Finally the creek spread out, gently tumbling over larger rocks into a lake. As we got closer a line of purple appeared on the horizon, and then a layer of orange slowly pushed up beneath it. As the colors flushed across the water everything was suddenly alive and glittering and magical. I’d never seen anything like it before. I stopped. “Carl. Look!”
Putting his hands out straight, palms facing the water, he said, “Because we’re here.”
I felt it too. No one owned it. No one could claim it. No one could abandon it or make it disappear. So beautiful and free, the sight of it filled every crack inside of me. Maybe I was even floating a little. Like Dot had suggested.
I looked at Carl and Girl, and even though I was dead tired, I was so happy I’d stayed with them. Carl had protected me back at the camp. Had cared enough to tape up my feet. Girl was right there each time I tumbled. She even licked away my dumb tears.
“Come on,” Carl said. “Urh, daylight is coming.”
We walked along a narrow path of flattened rock until we came to a dock that jutted out into the lake. A rowboat was tied to a post with a thin stretch of rope. When we stepped onto the dock the dry wood bobbed up and down, water lapping underneath. The rowboat clunked against the dock. Empty sounds. Lulling me. I knelt down, wanted to lie down, but I knew if I did I wouldn’t be able to get up again. Reaching over the side, I cupped cold water in my hand, splashed and rubbed my face.
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