by Floating Boy
“I’m not lying!” I tell them. “Where do you get off coming to my house, uninvited I might add, and accusing me of lying, lady?”
Aunt Beth says, “Mary, it’s rude to talk back to your elders.”
“And it’s rude to give me the third degree in my own house for no reason. Now where’s Terry?”
More coughing fits and some whispered prayers pass around the circle.
Aunt Beth says, “Your brother is at the hospital.”
“Wait. What? Mom said you were here, watching him.”
Aunt Beth blows her nose in a way-overused handkerchief that practically crawls out of her purse. Then she says, “I was watching him. Then,” she pauses to look at her watch, “about two hours ago, a government agent from Health and Human Services was here, following up on Terry’s previous hospital visit—”
“A government agent?”
My hearing sort of cuts out there, but she prattles on, telling me about the nice chat she and the agent had about Terry and his floating. They talked about Christianity and its rightful role within our government. They even said a prayer together before she helped carry Terry outside and buckle him into the booster seat in the man’s car.
I don’t even need to, but still I ask, “Was this guy, like, old? Looks kind of like a wrinkly Muppet? Wears a brown suit and drives a brown car?”
At my detailed description, disapproving moans pass around the circle. I’m such a huge disappointment, am so not worthy of their Claremontness. Aunt Beth manages to hold it all together nicely. “He was an older gentleman, yes. He was wearing a suit, brown maybe, I think. But yes, he was driving a brown car. Have you met him, dear?”
“Have I—What? I can’t even deal with this. You let him take Terry?”
“Who—who is he, Mary?” Aunt Beth’s eyes are red and she wipes her forehead. She looks around the room for support.
“You let some stranger take Terry away!”
“I—he wasn’t a stranger. He was a government agent. He was someone. I’m not—I’m not feeling well. He showed me his ID. It was very—official.”
Some of her circle-mates pat her hand and tell her she did the right thing.
She says, “I tried telling him about Jack and how he won’t come down from the skylight. Jack’s home with his dad. He’s sick, too, like we’re all sick, everyone’s sick, and I thought the agent might want to help my Jack, too.”
“I can’t believe it!” and then, because it’ll make me feel better and them worse, I drop an f-bomb—not “fiddlesticks”—right there in the living room, and in the silence it makes, I crash upstairs to see if Terry is really gone.
He is. Really. Gone. Completely. His bedroom and my parents’ room are empty. He’s not in my room, either. Only the laptop rests on my bed where I left it.
So. Mr. Barron has Terry. I have to find Barron to find Terry. So yeah, I need to get to the mill and Liv and Floating Boy so I can find Barron and then find Terry. It’s like a bad nursery rhyme. One that doesn’t come halfway close to rhyming.
I take an old backpack and sweep inside the loose dollar bills and change off my desk, then stuff the laptop in, too. And yes, I’m definitely taking the charger with me. I might not be able to fly or float, but I can remember chargers every time.
Back downstairs and the circle is there waiting for me, huddled and hunched at the bottom of the stairs. All except Aunt Beth who’s lying down on the couch with her hands over her face, moaning and crying.
No one moves to let me through. I try staring them down because I’m so intimidating with my Hello Kitty backpack (at least I already gave the kitty a black mohawk with a Sharpie).
Still, they don’t budge, and just give me a lot more coughing. As nasty as their dripping noses and drooly mouths are, their eyes are worse: bloodshot—bloodthirsty—red, and glassy, and empty. Really, not that they weren’t crazy to begin with, but I think whatever virus they have is mucking up their heads even worse.
“Wait,” I say. “So what are you all doing here if Terry was taken hours ago?”
“We told you already.”
“We came over here to wait for him to come back.” Veiny says this, and the threat of violence in his voice, you can’t miss it.
“We’ve seen the signal you put on the roof.”
Oh, right. The reflective paint. That hasn’t really worked out like I hoped.
The sis-in-law says, “You’re going to wait here with us, now, aren’t you?”
“He’ll come for sure now.”
“His girlfriend is here.”
“I’m not his girlfr—”
“Probably can’t wait to see you again, eh, missy?” One of the other old boys says this, licking his lips and dentures, and he couldn’t possibly be a dirtier old man if he was covered in, you know, dirt.
I say, “Get out of my house. Now.” It doesn’t come out like the bend-to-my-will command I want it to sound like. It’s like air leaking out of a balloon.
Aunt Beth is passed out on the couch. The rest of them don’t move. That’s not true. They move. They sway, mumble, pray, and hold hands, forming a snot-oozing human barricade at the bottom of the stairs.
I could take each of them individually, I’m pretty sure—kick, kick, kick—all except Vein-Man, who looks like he still has the python arms and vice-grip hands of wherever he worked his whole life. But there’s six of them and one of me.
Crashing through their wall and running for the front door would be the most direct route. Even if there was a guarantee that I could smash through their crazed this-little-light-of-mine circle, I don’t really want to make contact with them because then I’d have to waste time at the carwash, spraying off their crazy-cooties.
I think about threatening them with calls to the police, but I run up the stairs to my bedroom instead. I shut and lock the door. They moan and shamble up the stairs after me. They’re slow, luckily. I think I can hear their replaced hips creaking. I look down at my tee and suddenly hate every zombie movie I’ve ever seen.
I open my window, pop the screen, and climb out onto the roof. My brightly painted bull’s-eye reflects the moonlight. It’s almost like day out here. Can Marcus see me from the car? I wave my arms but stop quickly, figuring there’s nothing he can do anyway.
The slope of the roof feels steeper now that I’m being chased. I crab my way down to the drop-off with the front lawn and front door somewhere below me. It’s hard to see the ground after climbing through all that reflected moonlight, but it’s about a twelve-foot drop, I think.
I can’t really roll out of any jump with the laptop in my pack, and I don’t want to just chuck the pack down then jump, either. So I hang my feet off the edge of the gutter, then my legs up to my knees, then inch forward, waiting for the moment when gravity takes over and slides the rest of me off the roof. I get about halfway up my thighs when it happens and happens quick.
The dark lawn rushes up to meet me. There’s no floating or whooshing off to safety at the last minute, and there’s for sure no nice little pads of air. Not for me. I land hard. Electric shocks of pain shoot up my ankles into my knees, which bend me over, making me plant my hands into the turf.
Off to my right, the front door opens and it’s Aunt Beth’s sis-in-law. She scrambles down the steps screaming at me. All her words sound like they’re made of consonants and saliva.
I get up and run through our small set of way-unmanicured bushes and into the driveway. Vein-Man is there waiting for me. He wipes his nose then assumes that athletic position all my coaches talk about. The one where your knees are bent, feet shoulder-width apart, hands out.
I run at him, then dodge hard to the left, hoping my feet don’t slip out from underneath me. He gets a hand on one of the loose backpack straps and spins me around. I stay on my feet and keep the spin going, which twists the nylon strap out of his hands. He yells something at me. It’s not very holy.
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Marcus has the car running. Smart skaterboy. “GO! GO! GO!” I’m screaming before I even shut the door.
“What are those?” He points at the lumpy shadows lurching down the driveway.
“Them!”
“Them?”
“Go!”
After checking both mirrors twice, and putting his seat belt back on, we’re gone.
12.
Liv: look up when you get here. k?
Once we’re off my street, I tell Marcus about Terry being gone, and then it’s a grim ride through downtown Ipswich and its shoulder-to-shoulder historical section, past the train station, to a wooded road. Then we take a random right onto a smaller wooded road, one with a thick chain and a NO TRESPASSING sign lying dead across it.
As we drive the dark twisty snake of an access road, Marcus fiddles and rolls his fingers across the steering wheel. It’s annoying. He says, “I looked it up. The paper mill was built in 1917 and has been empty since 1982.”
“Anything else I need to know, Mr. History Channel?”
“Ipswich River runs behind it,” he adds, chewing his cheek like he’s guilty for knowing.
“Sorry,” I tell him. “Sorry sorry sorry. I’m being a tool. Thanks for everything tonight. Really. You were a lifesaver.”
“Not the pee-colored ones?” he says.
“The opposite of those,” I say back, and that’s that.
The mill’s ancient driveway is grown over and glittery with broken beer-bottle glass. I guess this is one of those fabled party spots I always hear about.
The road empties into a lot with sprouts of weeds as tall as the car. There are other cars parked up against the building in no particular order, one of those sliding puzzle things where you can’t move any car without moving another one back.
The brainiacs are here, yeah, all their car doors open, radios blasting music. Everyone is tuned to the same station, all playing the same song, which kind of creeps me out in a really vague way. There’s a small group of three people all leaning on one car. They look up to us, to see if we matter enough to push away from their fender.
Nope. This is good, normal even.
Behind the too-cool ignorers is the mill. Marcus weaves through the post-apocalyptic-looking parking lot and pulls right in front, so we’re almost touching that faded wood. The building is this giant rectangle. The Godzilla of rectangles, yeah? I count four layers of windows, but have no clue if that translates to actual stories. It sags in parts like a deflating kiddie pool. This place is definitely haunted.
How can I tell? There are shapes buzzing the roof. They’re my classmates, flying, floating, whatever you want to call it.
“Hey,” Marcus says, looking up, kind of taking the corner of my hand for balance, so he doesn’t tip over backwards.
“Looks like we’re late,” I say, pulling Marcus in by the hand, trying my best to adopt my mom’s all-business posture—tucked butt, hunched back, eyes set on some meaningless task she’s blowing all out of proportion.
I drop Marcus’s hand as soon as we’re inside. He and his lighter can guide us up the stairs, still hanging on the wall by ninety-year-old nails. The kids have put candles in parts of the stairwell, but we’ll never see that missing stair, that gap waiting for us to fall through.
That’s the anxiety talking, not me. Sorry.
On the way up, Marcus holds his lighter hand above him. I stay three stairs behind so if one of us falls through we’ll be far enough apart that the faller won’t take the other one out, too.
Part of me is studying this place. Like I’m getting to take a secret stroll through Floating Boy’s head. There are these ghostly handprints in the dust where there should be no handprints. But there aren’t any cobwebs, either. Not even one. Dark old places like this, they’re spider factories, aren’t they?
Maybe Floating Boy was cleaning the place up for me. This is what I tell myself.
We keep going up and there are no decorations, no band posters, no band names or song lyrics written on notebook paper during geometry class.
I walk faster, fast enough that Marcus has to slow me down. His hand goes all police in a way that would definitely make him sick to his stomach if he knew.
“Where do you think Liv is?” Marcus says, half out of breath.
Some casual top-of-the-rickety-stairway conver-sation: me the soccer player totally out of breath, and Marcus the skater, his heart probably hitting just sixty times a minute. He’s walking lighter than me, too. The wood creaks only under my feet. Or maybe I’m only noticing that now.
“She’s with him,” I say, obviously, and push through the even ricketier door. This ricketier door opens onto the starry sky. Into the starry sky. I stagger out onto the roof, my feet still used to going up.
There’s an orange glow up here. Someone built a small fire with a ring of rocks around it. I’m afraid to ask if that’s only tarred and flammable roof underneath the fire.
Marcus and I, we can’t help but stare at the fire, and then there’s this quiet moment of—I don’t know what to call it. Whatever the word is for looking up and then seeing people you know just as these blurry shadows, drifting through the air, rolling into each other, laughing. And, in the far back corner, sitting between two rusted vent pipes, is Floating Boy.
Sliding down his right arm is his tether. It’s wrapped around the rustier of the two pipes. Now that everybody is like him, he wants to sit down.
I kind of touch Marcus on the shoulder, telling him to stay. I walk over toward Floating Boy. But then, just as I’m trying to figure out which side of Floating Boy to sit on, Liv touches down right beside him. She grabs onto his shoulder to keep herself there. So Floating Boy is her anchor now. Okay, I don’t really care, and I don’t want to talk about it, either.
“Mare!” she says reaching for me to be her anchor, as well. “You’ve got—he says—”
“You invited all these people?” I interrupt.
“Did you notice I can fly?”
“Glad you’re okay,” I say, instead of everything else.
“He saved me,” she says back, batting her eyes, maybe on purpose, maybe not. “Here, here,” she says, pushing off from the second vent pipe, lifting off, dragging her hand for Marcus. He just catches her. It skates him across the roof, toward the edge.
Floating Boy stands like he’s supposed to do something here, but then Marcus tumbles off still holding onto Liv. They disappear over the edge, then Liv bobs back up, holding Marcus. And then she’s not holding Marcus: he drifts up beside her, amazed.
Of course his feet were light on the staircase. He’s caught it, too.
So, everybody but me now? Perfect.
“I didn’t know this would happen. I—I didn’t want it to—” Floating Boy says. He’s standing now, a couple of loops of his tether unwrapped from his arm, but the red marks are still there. “It’s not supposed to be like this.”
I say, “I know. But did Marcus have to catch it, too?”
“They all just showed up here! It’s not my fault. Well, it’s not all my fault.” He rewraps his arm in the tether, really tight.
“Hey, I’m sorry, I was just kidding. Joking, because, you know, I’m so scared.”
He stops tightening the tether and just looks at me.
“My brother—”
Logan comes tumbling through the sky and nearly clips my ear with his foot.
“Hey, it’s my favorite freshman bridge babe! What’s up? Well, I’ll tell ya. It’s me.”
I could just vomit in my mouth.
Logan catches his fingertips on the last edge of some different pipe than the one we’re leaning against. He laughs, wipes his nose with the back of his hand (so totally not gross at all), and then he slings himself around the pipe, going feet first back into whatever rough-and-tumble games his crew has going on fifty feet above the ground.
I ru
n my fingers through my hair and grrr my teeth. “Logan, now? Really?”
“I don’t even know where he came from,” Floating Boy says.
Liv had it, I don’t tell him. Liv must’ve had the floaty in her when she slammed Logan off the bridge.
“All right, all right,” I say instead. “It doesn’t matter. Look, your—Mr. Barron, right? He came to my house—and he took Terry!”
Floating Boy closes his eyes in pain. Even more pain than having your secret hide-out invaded by a bunch of ridiculous high-schoolers using your disease like happy fun time, like it’s the best thing ever and not a curse.
“Your brother,” Floating Boy’s saying, to himself, almost.
“Terry. He’s only three. You have to help me find him.” And now I’m crying. I tried to, I don’t know, to be stronger than I am, but it’s coming out tears instead.
Floating Boy stands up and pulls me into an awkward hug, with his chin on top of my head. I mean, it’s not terrible-horrible-no-good, but it’s awkward enough for me to stop crying and back out of it.
“I’ll be okay. I just need to find him.”
Liv and Marcus are there, above us, getting the hang of their float. They’re laughing and holding hands, and Liv, she’s yelling down to me, “Way to go,” or something equally obnoxious. I wave her down and, using just my lava-dagger eyes, tell her to shut up. That this isn’t that.
Liv and Marcus land next to us. I hear Marcus mumble, “Oh yeah, right,” and then he tells Liv about Terry being taken.
I wrap my arms around my chest, hugging myself. “Where would he have taken Terry?” I finally say to Floating Boy.
“My room?” he says.
“Your room where?”
“Cabin in the woods is all I know.” Floating Boy looks past us, out to all the nothing Massachusetts is. “There was a big storm the night I got away,” he says. “The wind was—it was everywhere.”
“Do you remember a river?” Marcus says.
“Lights from the city?” I add. “Highways, foghorns, airports? Radio towers? Did an X mark any spot?”
Floating Boy shakes his head. It’s like watching an infinity of nos. “I think there was a blackout?” he says. “Like, the power. It’s why my door could open?” He’s back to his statement-questions, and acting like any of us could give him answers. “Everything was dark. I just went out and up. I was gone, and I crashed here.”