He wasn’t cornering the market with models he stole from the Internet, but he was making money. Networking, his father once said, was a beautiful thing. No one person could become everything to everyone. But if people could link their minds like computers, they could all become something greater.
Harold wasn’t sure what he meant by that. The computers were networked, he got that. They shared resources. But human brains—God’s organic computer, his father called it—couldn’t be networked.
A few floating charms of luck stayed in the bowl. He put it on the windowsill and began scooping the bug carcasses into the palm of his hand. The bay window stretched six feet across the south wall of the house, letting in sunlight that turned the room into a summer furnace or winter haven. The never-ending horde of insects feasting on the dirty dishes always came to the window to bash their brains inside out.
Harold scraped them into a neat little pile of wings and dried legs. The bottle of Coke fizzed as he twisted the lid. The first three gulps burned his eyes, a belch exploding from his thick lips.
A telescope was mounted on a tripod in the center of the window. A Christmas gift when he was ten years old, he could swivel his big eye in almost any southern direction. At night, he’d count the stars. But during the day, he checked the houses. It was amazing how many people didn’t shutter their blinds.
A squirrel tightroped a power line, pausing midway to eyeball Harold on the third floor. The furry-tailed rat knew he wasn’t going to do anything. If their neighbor Mr. Willis was there, he’d be running for his life. The old man was a war veteran and had trained snipers until he retired.
He was teaching Harold how to calibrate a scope, how to pull the trigger between breaths. They used to fire on aluminum cans, the pellets plunking with hollow finality, the frayed edges of metal blasting out the back side.
But Harold had graduated to squirrels.
Vermin, Mr. Willis called them. Just ’cause they got furry tails don’t make them any different than rats.
There was a distant scream. Harold spun the telescope to the left, aiming it across the street. In the thin slice of space between two houses, he focused on a picket fence that enclosed a backyard. John was holding a stocking cap over his head. Someone else was trying to get it. Each time they jumped, he shoved them down. No one was having any fun but John.
Harold chugged the Coke until it was half empty, then peeled back the label and scribbled two words on the inside with a green marker. A dab of glue and the label went snugly back in place.
Next, he tore a sheet of notebook paper out and twisted it into a tight funnel. Placing the small end into the Coke bottle, he swept the pile of insect parts into the open end, replaced the cap and shook it. The parts floated in the carbonated fizz.
He peered back into the telescope. John had two stocking caps now.
Later that night, when he was asleep and dreaming of palm trees, he heard his mom come in the room. She pulled the covers over his shoulder and kissed his forehead.
4.
The pinging radar was followed by an incessant buzz.
Harold dreamed the flies were coming for him, that they’d pick him up like the corners of a giant jelly sandwich and take him to a lair of humid, steamy dog turds. But then the buzzing stopped. Then started.
Stopped. Started.
It was his phone.
The alarm didn’t go off. Instead there were five missed calls from the grandparents. He looked out the window. There was no one down the street. The bus had already picked up. Somehow the grandparents knew.
“Crap.”
He was still wearing the same clothes from yesterday, socks and shoes included. He threw a sweatshirt over his T-shirt, in case someone noticed. It’s the End of the World as We Know It, was written on the front—a ketchup stain below the word End. His favorite sweatshirt he’d found at a resale shop. It never got washed. Odds were no matter what sweatshirt he grabbed, there would be a stain.
He snatched his book bag—loaded and ready—and took the steps three at a time. On the way to the kitchen, he stopped.
The basement door was open.
It was just a crack, a thin line of blackness inside. It had been years since he descended into the dank basement, old wooden steps that led to a place of humid dampness where mold devoured cardboard boxes. That was before his father converted it into a study. Equipment had been lowered down skids, lights erected and dehumidifiers chased away the spirits.
He ached to insert his fingers into the crack, to see if the draft wafted out cold and humid, but Mom was sitting with her back to him, elbows on the kitchen table, a coffee mug hoisted to her lips.
She turned at the sound of the creaking hallway.
“Good morning,” she said. The words puffed through her lips like dust.
“Morning.”
“You missed the bus.”
“I know. It was my master plan, been working on it all night. Can you take me?”
“Not today.”
She turned back to the coffee mug perched just below her nose. A long paisley scarf was wrapped over her head gypsy-like, the tail dragging between her shoulder blades. The day before, it was a plain gray scarf that matched the rings beneath her eyes. The day before that, a shade of yellow that matched her skin.
She sipped loudly and sighed.
Harold pried three frozen pancakes from the freezer and popped them in the microwave. “Want some?”
“No, thank you, hon. What’d you eat for dinner last night?”
“Pizza.”
“You did?”
“No.”
“Didn’t your father say to order some?”
“It sounded optional.”
The microwave hummed. Harold snagged a Coke from the refrigerator, twisted the cap, and the carbonation hissed as the microwave finished.
“No, hon.”
“What?”
“No soda for breakfast.”
“Studies show that carbonated drinks strip antagonistic bacteria from morning breath as well as jump-start digestive enzymes. It’s all in the literature, Mom. Numbers don’t lie.”
He sipped loudly. Burped.
She was too tired to argue. She was always too tired for anything, and as long as he used words too big for his age and preceded them with “studies show,” he was in the clear. Studies show television creates 250% more working synapses than silence, Mom. Numbers don’t lie.
She was a scientist. Well, a scientist before she got sick, but still a sucker for data.
He painted the elastic pancakes with butter and drowned them in syrup. The first bite made his head buzz. He washed it down with fizzy Coke and nearly began shaking.
“Homework done?” she asked.
“Have I ever let you down?”
“Mmm.”
“Have I?” He stabbed the pancakes. “Have I?”
She chuckled and shook her head, a smile blooming like a daisy on a cloudy day.
“Where’s Dad?”
“Sleeping.”
“In the basement?”
She emptied her mug and went to the coffee pot for another fill, the spoon clanging on the inside. The gray cloud followed her to the table.
The basement was supposed to make her better.
That was what they told him when they started going down there and locking it. Well, that was what Mom told him. His father just went down there. Harold would occasionally see him going to his office, but that was it. Instead, the basement was draining the life out of her. She looked like a runway model sucking on the business end of a vacuum.
She needs a Coke.
She was brittle bones and gray, yellowy skin in the mornings. The afternoons, she was a bit sunnier, a little more alive. If he asked her how she was doing, she turned gray. So he just kept it light, kept it positive. But sometimes that didn’t feel like the thing to do.
He couldn’t help himself.
“Why aren’t you sleeping, too?” he asked.
; “It’s complicated.”
“Sleeping?”
“That, too. Becoming an adult, all that.”
“Is that what you’re doing down there, becoming an adult?”
She didn’t reply.
“Looks more like you’re dying,” he said.
“No one wants to die.”
“That includes you, right?”
“Of course it does.” She tried to smile like before, but it wilted.
Harold mopped up the syrup in one last bite and placed the plate on a growing stack in the sink. His phone began buzzing. The grandparents were out front.
“You need to clean your room,” Mom said. “And when’s the last time you brushed your teeth?”
“Last night.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“It’s complicated, Mom.”
“Don’t give me that.”
Harold swished the last swallow of soda and gargled it loudly. He rubbed his fingertip over his front teeth and smiled big and bright.
“See?” he said. “Coke is a teeth whitener, too. Numbers don’t lie.”
“You can’t have that at school.” She gestured to the half-full bottle in his book bag.
“I’ll throw it away, don’t worry.”
He slung the strap over his shoulder and started past her.
“I love you,” she said.
“No, don’t.”
“What?”
“Just… don’t say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re going away, that’s all. It sounds like you’re boarding the Titanic. Just say ‘love you’ without the I, it’s more real.”
The smile returned to her. The real one.
“We’ll order Chinese tonight,” she said.
“And you’ll eat?”
“Of course.”
The phone buzzed again. He held up his hand on the way past her. She high-fived him, squishing his knuckles in a five-finger hug. Harold pulled away from her but stopped next to the basement door. The blackness so tempting.
“Does he make you do this?” Harold said, his words as hollow as his mom’s eyes.
“What?”
“Down there… is he making you do it?”
“No, of course not. This is my idea. Your father… he’s helping me, that’s all. I promise.”
There were times Harold considered calling the police. How could he stand by and watch her shrivel up like that? His father, though, he’d kill him if he called the cops. And then Harold would have to live with the grandparents. At least here he had the house to himself. His parents were adults; they knew what they were doing.
And they were going to keep doing it.
All of a sudden, the syrup and Coke mixed like combustible fumes. He’d have to hit the bathroom when he got to school.
“See you after school,” she called. “Love you.”
But the door would be unlocked when he got home. The basement door would be.
And he wouldn’t see her.
5.
“You’re dead meat.”
The sound Harold’s head made against the locker door was a gunshot. White light exploded behind his eyes. His legs gave up, but a pair of hands held two wads of his sweatshirt.
It’s the End of the World as We Know It.
John slammed him into the locker again, the tin explosion loud and alarming. Harold might’ve eaten a row of knuckles had he not collided with someone retrieving books from the locker next to his.
Harold’s momentum crashed past bystanders like bowling pins. John snatched the back of his sweatshirt and was winding up for another meet and greet.
Head meet locker. Locker, head.
The excited chaos of an after-school fight buzzed in the hall. An opening quickly gave way, an impromptu ring of bodies. It wasn’t going to be much of a fight. If this was behind the bowling alley or even in the parking lot, the crowd might’ve seen the one-drop shot John was about to plant on Harold’s chin.
“That’s enough.” Mr. Long threw an arm across John’s chest. “What are you doing, John?”
“This.”
John shoved something at Mr. Long. The math teacher got between him and Harold, holding the plastic bottle up like the fluorescent hall lighting were magic X-rays.
“You do this?” he asked.
“What?” Harold said.
Mr. Long shook his head and stated deadpan, “You did it.”
“I didn’t do anything. John’s got a problem. I think he needs to admit it.”
“He switched it out.” John held up his book bag, pointing at the side pocket. “In your class.”
“Did not,” Harold said.
“Is that a banana?” Mr. Long asked.
Harold looked in his open locker. The banana had slid to the bottom, the peel black and curly, mucky fruit trailing along the wall, a mucusy slug track.
“Yeah,” Harold said. “You want some?”
“You’re such a tool,” John said.
“You got a bug fetish. It’s a cry for help, everybody knows it.”
John moved quickly for a kid that could play high school football and swung a roundhouse around Mr. Long’s roadblock. His fist smashed Harold’s shoulder like a runaway logging truck. Pain tingled down Harold’s shoulder.
The crowd reacted.
“All right, all right,” Mr. Long said. “Both of you, down to the office. Now.”
“You’re going to need a surgeon,” John said. “Someone will have to put you back together.”
“You hear that? He threatened me! Put that in the notes, Mr. Long. Somebody filming this? Upload it, it’s proof. Anything happens to me, come for John, the one with the bug fetish. Remember that, everyone!”
John made another charge. Mr. Long intercepted this one, holding the portly sixth grader as other teachers directed traffic. He pointed a long finger down the hall for Harold to follow.
“You need to search his locker for body parts,” Harold said. “I mean, all I got are bananas. He’s got like severed fingers and toes, I guarantee it.”
John’s face caught fire.
“Go,” Mr. Long said.
“I’m just saying.”
The middle-schoolers that weren’t ushered away stood along the walls and peeked out of their classrooms. Some were smiling. Mr. Long caught up to Harold, leaving John with the gym teacher. He chaperoned Harold to the office, where he delivered him along with the evidence John had given him.
It’s the End of the World as We Know It. And on the back of Harold’s sweatshirt, it read And I Feel Fine.
\\\\\\\\\\////////////////////
Harold rubbed his arm while Mr. Tanner studied the plastic bottle.
The bone hurt.
Right below the skinny part of the bicep, John’s knuckle had connected with Harold’s humerus—the big bone that went from shoulder to elbow. It was throbbing in a dull, sort of fractured way, the kind that got infected if it didn’t get treated, he was pretty sure.
Reminded Harold of the time he got a tetanus shot. His mom had to hold him down while rocks were injected into his arm. His father told him to act like a man.
Mr. Tanner picked at the corner of the Coke label, dried glue snapping. He unwound it like a scroll and read the message written in green ink. It was only two words, but he stared like he was reading the Constitution.
“Eat me?” he finally said.
Harold shrugged. “Weird. Why would Coke do that?”
Mr. Tanner reached into a drawer and dealt a stiff page across his desk. Harold’s fly museum was smeared across the surface, the one from Mr. Long’s class. Mr. Tanner looked over his glasses and swirled the Coke bottle. Little wings and compound eyes stuck to the inside.
“See the connection?” he asked.
“Doesn’t prove anything,” Harold said.
“That’s an admission of guilt.”
“It’s a statement of fact. In a court of law, you couldn’t convict me. And besides,
I think he broke my arm. Why isn’t he in here?”
“This isn’t a court of law. And I think you’ll live.”
“Oh, right. This is a fascist dictatorship. I forgot.”
Mr. Tanner leaned back, twirling his glasses. He studied Harold. The curiosity made Harold uncomfortable, the long silent pauses were like surgical strikes of self-doubt. Mr. Tanner was a reflective ninja that could stamp out confidence and instill a compulsion to confess.
“What’d you think was going to happen?” Mr. Tanner finally said. “John’s not a bright kid, but a dog could connect the dots here, Harold. You knew he would. You also knew he was going to knock you into next week. Is that what you wanted?”
“I’m innocent until proven guilty.”
“This is a fascist regime, remember? And you’re guilty, Harold. We both know it. What I want to know is your endgame. You’re sharp, no question. I mean, your grades don’t show it, but you’re intelligent. So why don’t you act smart?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Mr. Tanner, but you’re a terrible counsellor.”
“You think if I graduated from an Ivy League school, I’d be at a middle school? This is what you get, kid.”
Harold shrugged. Made sense. “You got your degree from an online college?”
“What was your plan?” Mr. Tanner said. “I’m just curious, that’s all. You filled a Coke with fly parts from your collection, I’m guessing. You did that at home or the bathroom, doesn’t matter. He sits in front of you in math class, so when he falls asleep, you slip it into his book bag.”
“You missed your calling, Mr. Tanner. I’m thinking detective.”
“Hold the jokes for second, all right. John’s a future convict, all right? Tell anyone I said that and I’ll deny it and bury you with detentions. The kid’s one of the worst bullies I’ve dealt with, and he’s not a smart one, I get that. So you give him a taste of his own medicine, right? I mean, after he paraded your collection around the room”—he nudged the page of bug parts—“you decided a little revenge was in order. But what good is revenge if he doesn’t know you did it, huh?”
Seeds of Foreverland: A Science Fiction Thriller Page 2