Strange Days

by Constantine J. Singer

  She smiles without parting her lips, shifts her head to the side. “G’night, then.”

  I have to look away before I say, “G’night.”

  When I get to my room, I keep the lights off and sit at my desk chair, lost in the darkness. The whole evening is collected in my mind, glued together with feelings into a ball that sits on my chest. I close my eyes and all I can see are unrelated parts of my day coming together: flashes of Jordan being afraid, me being whiny. Pete.

  Corina.

  Me.

  A thought bubbles up from under the knot of feelings, words I heard in Jordan’s mind that I can’t stop forming in my own. The knot becomes heavier, makes it hard to get air. I sit up and open my eyes, try to breathe it away, but it won’t leave:

  I told Corina I was okay. I lie about myself, just like Jordan does.

  But Jordan doesn’t lie to Will. She has a person who knows her. All of her.

  I’ve never been okay.

  With everyone but Will, Jordan feels outside of things even when she’s inside them, like a secret agent without a mission who’s living under deep cover.

  I know what she means. I feel like that, too. Not an agent, though. A baby. An infant in teenage clothes.

  I was five when I had that tantrum about the concha with Pete, but I acted like a baby and I’m still a baby.

  I’m scared all the time like a baby.

  And like a baby I get feelings that I can’t explain that I shouldn’t have, like the ones I have for Corina, and I don’t have a single person left who knows me.

  I’m about to turn seventeen and I still cry.

  Happy birthday.

  Thirty-Two

  I didn’t even want to wake up this morning because I didn’t want to have a birthday. Paul didn’t mention it at all, which was good. I don’t think I could have dealt with a “happy birthday” from him first thing. And nobody else said anything either.

  We don’t say much through breakfast, and when we get to the glide chamber, he offers to let me go down first. No rock-paper-scissors, no nothing.

  “Thanks,” I manage before lying down.

  Darkness. Light.

  It’s dark. We’re in Jordan’s bed, the scrim curtains pulled around between the posts to obscure us. The lights are off, leaving only the tablet’s glow, which makes everything look ghostly and sick.

  SECRYPT is open, Will’s name is throbbing, a camera icon flashes in time with vibrations from the tablet.

  Jordan has spent the last forty-five minutes preparing for this moment. Her hair is brushed and clipped back on the left side behind her ear. The blue silk button-up pajama top she’s wearing was the end product of a twenty-minute decision, about which she’s still not entirely sure. The white thermal top with red piping may have been better. She chose against it because she thought it might look too young, but now, as Will is calling, she’s suddenly sure that any pajama top is going to make her look like a child.

  She should have stayed dressed, but that would’ve taken explaining if anybody saw her—it’s after midnight, but it’s only just after nine in where Will lives in Cle Elum in Washington State. He couldn’t call until after church.

  “Suck it up,” she says to herself, taps the camera. The screen goes dark momentarily, sending a wave of adrenaline through us because we’re sure we’ve just lost the call, but then the darkness resolves into an image, flat at first like an old photograph, then stretching out into three dimensions.

  It’s Will. He cocks his head slightly to the side, like he’s having trouble seeing her. She checks her own image in the bottom. She’s shrouded, grainy. It’s impossible to tell what she’s wearing or what she looks like.

  “Hey, Rapunzel.” Will’s voice sounds clear and present in her pod, like he’s there with her, in her head. His voice is deep, a musical rumble.

  “Hello, Prince.” Then: “Can you see me?”

  He smiles. It’s goofy, a little lopsided. Shakes his head. “Not really—it’s dark . . .”

  “Sec.” She drops the tablet and leans backward, reaching through the scrim to the bedside table where her light is. She clicks it on—it’s blindingly bright, makes us squint against it, washes out all the colors and leaves a flashing imprint on her eyes. She sits up and adjusts the tablet, scanning her picture in the process.

  She’s clear. She’s side-lit, her hair shines in it. The blue was a good choice. “That better?”

  He smiles. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s better.”

  “How’s Cle Elum today?”

  “I’ll show you.” He stands up, takes the tablet with him. She follows him into a hallway, down a flight of stairs. He narrates as he goes: “Hall—bathroom, brother’s room, parents’ room, stairs, living room.” He twirls the table in a quick circle. Details are impossible, but there’s an overall impression of hominess. “Front door.” He opens it, steps out onto a porch. It’s nearly dark, but not quite; the sky is a deep brilliant blue and the clouds shine bright white with reflected sunlight from the other side of the mountains that rise from what seems to be next door to his house. “Cle Elum,” he says, finally.

  “It’s beautiful.” Then: “The mountains are really that close to you?”

  “We’re sort of in them—we’re up at like two thousand feet or something.” He looks behind him at the mountains and the trees.

  “It’s amazing. Is it cold?”

  He looks down at himself. He’s wearing a T-shirt that says MARINES across the front. No jacket. He shrugs. “Not really. Not today. It gets pretty bad in the winter sometimes, but today is . . .” He looks at her, spiking her with his eyes through the camera. “I wish you were here so I could really show you.”

  Jordan flips her hair, casting a sudden shadow on the inside of the scrim in front of her.

  Panic.

  Incursion. No. Just a shadow, but Abaddon is now large in her consciousness, a bugbeast climbing in her mind. Jordan’s mind creates an image, a horrible one, a demon cresting the trees behind Will, large as a mountain, dark as char, smoking, sulfurous. It reaches down, bone fingers, tendons exposed, gibbets of flesh falling as it moves. The hand grabs Will, plucks him, lifts him, crushes him, drops him to his own porch, a mangled mess on camera for her to watch.

  “Why don’t you go back inside?” She can’t keep the urgency out of her voice.

  “Why?” He looks confused. “It’s really nice out . . .”

  She wants to tell him. We need to tell him. He’s at risk and we don’t keep secrets from Will. Abaddon is here and if he doesn’t know, then he can’t be safe.

  If nobody knows, nobody can be safe. She nods. There’s too much happening in her mind for her to do anything more complicated.

  But telling him is a crime. “I wrote a poem.”

  A flicker in his eyes—something I see but Jordan doesn’t. Disappointment. “Really?” he asks, sounding interested. “Can I hear it?”

  “Yup.” She can’t tell him. It’s a state secret. But he needs to know. “It’s a little weird—I’m not sure what anybody would think of it, but . . .”

  “I want to hear it.”

  She nods. The poem is on her bed stand next to the light. She was ready for this. Hoping he’d be interested. She reaches for it, pushing the scrim aside again, causing a ripple of shadows across the wall above her desk.

  She gasps. Abaddon. Incursion.

  A shadow. She breathes.

  “You alright?” Will asks in her ear. “Did something happen?”

  She grabs the poem, sits up, collecting herself along the way. “No, just startled myself with a shadow—thought somebody was coming.”

  “POTUS and FLOTUS aren’t asleep?” he asks brightly. “Would’ve thought they were early-to-bed types.”

  She laughs. “They are, indeed.” Will doesn’t talk much about her family, doesn’t ask
many questions, unlike a lot of the kids she meets at Bible study or at conferences. Mostly they’re interested in what she is, not who she is.

  The image of Abaddon in the forest returns to her. She freezes, then shakes her head, coughs. Tries again: “Why don’t you go back inside?”

  He doesn’t register her request, instead: “Poem me, please.”

  She takes a breath, unfolds the paper. “You know the story of Abigail and David, right?”

  He nods. “Spent as much time in church school as you have.”

  “Well, I really identify with Abigail—she’s cool, you know—smart, bides her time, and then when she’s needed to do God’s work she rises to the occasion, even though it means betraying her husband and potentially losing everything.” She shrugs. “I guess I’ve always thought that I’d like to do that . . . make up for being docile little Rapunzel when the world needs me or something?”

  He nods his head, makes a little chuckling sound. “Like Frodo?”

  Jordan hasn’t seen or read Lord of the Rings, but she knows who he means. “Yeah.” She smiles. “Like Frodo.” Then: “Anyways . . .”

  She reads him the poem. She reads it slowly so it sounds like it does in her head when she reads it. She watches the screen as she goes, looking for some sign that he understands. She’s good at reading things out loud. When it’s done, she looks up from the paper, raises her eyebrows. “So?” But she already knows. He didn’t get it.

  He shakes his head slowly. “Wow.” Then: “That’s really good. I mean not like high school good, but real person good.”

  She likes the compliment. Momentarily, we brighten. “You think so?” But it fades fast.

  “Absolutely. You should submit it to a contest or something.”

  “Maybe.” He didn’t hear the message. He didn’t get the warning. I can’t tell him. “I can’t wait to see you this weekend.”

  He smiles, too. “Me too.” His voice is quiet, but powerful enough to interrupt her breath.

  She shakes her head. The demon rattles loose inside and she flashes on the crumpled Will again. Too much. National Security Act be damned. “Will?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I need to tell you something.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s a secret. I mean . . . a real one, like, important to national security.”

  He looks less sure, but he nods again. “Okay.”

  Jordan looks through the scrim of her bed at the shadows beyond. “It’s scary.”

  “What is it?”

  She leans in, close to the speaker, whispers: “The Incursions are real.” It’s out now. Released. Jordan feels no regret.

  He looks confused, but then his eyes widen. “What? Really?”

  She nods. “Dad has the army trying to catch one of the aliens, but it’s not going well. They’re sure it’s going to happen here soon, and they definitely think it’s going to get worse.”

  “They’re real? Like, real-from-another-planet aliens?”

  She nods again.

  He turns around, looks at the mountains behind him, the growing darkness. Without commenting, he steps back inside, closes and locks the door. “What are they?”

  “The government doesn’t know. But if people don’t know they’re real, then they can’t protect themselves.”

  “If nobody knows what they are, what’re we supposed to?”

  Jordan looks through the scrim toward her door. There’s no noise in the Central Hall, but she still whispers when she says, “Dad and Jack think that there might be something to Live-Tech . . .”

  He looks surprised. “Really?”

  She nods. “Yeah. They aren’t sure, but . . .”

  He nods absently, looks around, then back at the camera. “Then I guess this is your Abigail moment.”

  She sighs. He looks scared. She suddenly doubts that she’s helped him by saying something. “You can’t tell anybody, okay?” Then: “I’ll make sure it gets out.”

  He nods. “Jordan, I . . .” But he doesn’t say anything after that. He just looks at her. Then: “You’re pretty amazing, you know that?”

  “I’m nobody,” she tells him. “I’m just glad I have you.”

  “I can’t wait to see you.”

  “Me neither,” Jordan replies. She can’t, either.

  She feels like she’ll explode first.

  After our afternoon work, I start to feel bad about not having a birthday, which is dumb because it’s what I asked for.

  It isn’t what I want.

  What I want is to have a birthday with my family, but every time I think about my family, all I can see is Pete at thirteen and how whiny and miserable I was. Or my dad at Julio’s school.

  I go back to our room alone. When Paul comes back, he doesn’t even ask about how I’m feeling. He just grabs his guitar, says, “Later, man,” and walks out.

  When he’s gone and the hallway’s quiet again, I get up and walk to the common room.

  I’ve been thinking about this for days, but this morning I decided that today was the day because I couldn’t bear the idea of sitting alone in my room. There may be nothing down my thread except a past that’s only for Zombies, but there’s another place I want to see and today is the day.

  I’m going to the Jungle.

  The commons is empty. I cross to the glide hall.

  There are lights on in the first room, so I duck under the window as I walk past, catching only the barest glimpse of Calvin and Damon at work.

  They’re working late—everybody should be done already. Doesn’t matter—nobody else’ll be coming back here.

  I slip into the last room, closing the door behind me as lightly as I can, and lie down on the couch, closing my eyes.

  The Jungle.

  I stand at the place on the path where I can hear the Jungle best. I can pull out some individual sounds. There are things that sound like guitars and things that sound like bass and things that sound like mandolins and banjos—for some reason I hear them all as strings.

  It sounds like strings, but they’re like voices, too. They aren’t talkie voices. They’re not making words—it’s more of a feelings-and-ideas thing, like if you could hear the inside of other people’s heads.

  I’m pretty sure that when I go under, everything I “see” is something I’ve pulled from my own mind. I invented the skateboard and the path I’m on, so it seems like I probably built the walls that separate the Jungle from the paths, too.

  I just need to “see” something that I can use to knock them down.

  I imagine a sledgehammer. I feel its weight in my hands. I lift it over my head and begin to pound against the wall.

  It gives. The blackness that makes up the wall leaks out onto the path, rearranging itself to create a fork in the road. One fork goes down deep on the path, and a new path—a narrow one that I can barely see—leads to the Jungle road.

  I squeeze and push through. The walls give and I’m on the narrow path. The guitars grow louder. It feels like they’re going to break my eardrums but I know they can’t—they’re inside me and underneath, not anywhere near my ears.

  I can see something ahead. It’s growing brighter, lighting up the road as I move with flashes of color that make everything glow and then fade back to black.

  As I approach the source of the flash, the road gives way.

  I’m falling. Then I’m floating.

  Things brush against me. My patch begins to hurt and then I feel it move on my arm. I’m suddenly sure that I’m going to lose my connection to my biology but I can’t free myself to go back.

  “Relax. Welcome to the Jungle, scared boy.”

  I hear her and feel her at the same moment. She is a cascade of relief. I reach out toward her, but I can’t find her. I’m mixed up in a web of colorful musical threads. There ar
e millions of them, billions, trillions, bazillions. They are everywhere, tied together, tangling and untangling, going on forever. I can’t see where one strand ends or any others begin, they just seem to unfold and go. They feel like the way music is sometimes shown in cartoons—endless wavy banners of notes that grow big, then small, winding and twisting all around.

  But they’re more than music. More than color.

  They are us.

  They are us. Each strand is somebody. Vibrating, pulsing, moving, screaming.

  And the colors. Bright, brilliant, iridescent, incandescent, shimmering, intense, colors like I’ve never seen, sensed, known.

  I’m not physically here in the Jungle, but I can’t tell that by how it feels. I have no arms here and no body.

  I can feel it. Here, in the Jungle, I am music, too.

  WHAT IS THIS PLACE?

  “Scared boy’s floating in the Silly Juice. But scared boy’s not ready to run away.”

  WHAT’S THE SILLY JUICE? WHY DO I NEED TO RUN AWAY?

  “Time comes up, we do our thing, and time goes down again. Silly Juice, it’s the splash.”

  I find myself focusing on a single musical thread floating near me. The strand is thin like spiderweb, but strong like metal. Colors shift, flash, pulse so fast I can’t name them before they change.

  I’m floating into it.

  As I get closer, it expands, grows thicker until it feels bigger than me. Or not. I don’t know my size here. I feel it pull on me like it has gravity.

  I’m falling onto it. Falling fast. Faster.

  I’m afraid.

  If I touch it I might stick. I might become stuck to it, trapped in the Silly Juice, the Jungle of Guitars.

  I’m falling closer to the spider-silk strand that is, I suddenly know:

  Corina.

  I’m about to fall into Corina. I don’t know what any of this means. I don’t know what will happen if we get tangled.

  NOOO!

  I’m pulled back, away from Corina and the million other strands that I can see, back out from down deep and back into my biology. It happens so fast that I forget how to breathe and I think I’m going to die from strangling.