Under My Skin

by Charles de Lint

  What am I thinking? Too much has changed.

  No matter what Josh says, I know I've lost my best friend. Just hanging out, the band—that's all gone. Josh is going to try to lead the Wildlings—whatever that means.

  I might still have Desmond, so long as he got through last night okay, but it's not the same. Like he said before, The Gang of Two just doesn't cut it. And now he knows my secret. I just hope he can keep his mouth shut.

  Barry's even more problematic. He's always been a talker with all those geek buddies online and in the store, but hopefully he'll understand how serious this is.

  And what about the Ocean Avers who came with Chaingang yesterday? How much do they know?

  I wonder what Mamá is doing. I've never stayed out all night before and she'll be beside herself, especially given that she'll have heard about Josh's abduction by now.

  I think again about Auntie Min's plans for Josh. Being the saviour of the Wildlings seems like an awful lot to put on the shoulders of someone who's so new to what he's become that he still changes back buck naked. Does he really understand what they'll be asking of him? They may as well put a big target on his chest.

  He's slouched beside Elzie, head resting against hers, thoughtful and quiet, like I am. Once I could have just asked him what he's thinking. Now I have to guess and my guess is that he's just going to go along with the plans of the older cousins.

  But he surprises me. Almost as though he can read my mind, he straightens up and looks over at Cory and Rico.

  "You know what I don't get?" he says. "I can't figure out the point of your lives."

  Cory looks confused, but Rico bristles, clearly insulted. "What do you mean?" he demands.

  Josh shrugs. "Well, until I got changed, the things that were important to me were hanging with my friends, playing music, skateboarding, trying to do okay in school, being with my mom—stuff like that. But you guys live and act like you're in an army or a gang. It's all about conflict. Don't you have other things you care about? What exactly are you fighting for?"

  I have to smile. That is so the Josh I know. And maybe he isn't totally going along with this idea of him being their leader.

  Chaingang also looks toward Cory and Rico with one of his slow nods. Sometimes—with his eyes hidden behind his shades and the way his face can go so still—it's hard to tell if he's even listening.

  "I'd be interested in hearing what you've got to say about that, too," he says. "Because I've got to tell you, I've already got a crew. I don't exactly need to join another to make my life complete."

  Rico's so tense that I half-expect him to turn into the rattlesnake. His gaze darts back and forth between Josh and Chaingang, and at first I don't know which of them is going to get the brunt of his anger. But then he juts his chin toward Josh.

  "We're fighting for our survival," he almost spits. "You were down there in the lab with me and you still have to ask that?" He starts to moves forward.

  "Hang on," Cory says, grabbing Rico's forearm. "I get it. I see what he's asking."

  Rico yanks his arm away, but holds his ground and lets Cory continue.

  "Okay," Cory says. "Up until six months ago, I was living on a buddy's ranch out in the Sonoran Desert, trying to get this old GMC pickup of his running. That's what I like to do. Work on cars and trucks. Carter's an old desert rat—I don't mean that literally. He's human, but he spends a lot of time out there in the badlands. We'd go out and find stuff and bring it back to his ranch and try to fix it up." He smiles. "The place looks like a junkyard."

  He nods at Rico.

  Rico crosses his arms and shrugs. "Me? I like to surf. Before this happened, I just followed the waves, from here down into Mexico."

  Chaingang snorts. "A surfing snake? That, I'd like to see."

  He's smiling, but there's derision in his voice.

  Rico clenches his fists, glares at Chaingang and takes a step in his direction. "Anybody ever tell you that you've got a big—"

  "Rico means when he's in his human form," I say, inserting myself between the two of them before they can start another round of alpha meets alpha. "And I know what he means. That whole faster/stronger thing also translates into fantastic balance. Ever since I changed, I have to work at falling off my board. I own those waves."

  Rico nods and visibly relaxes. "Tell me about it."

  "So you had different lives," Josh says, "and you're only doing this because you have to."

  "Pretty much," Cory says. "The outing of Wildlings impacts us, too, you know. Soon they'll be grabbing us up along with all you Wildling kids."

  "They're already doing that," Josh says.

  Rico shakes his head. "No, I let them grab me. We wanted to see what was happening to the kids that the Feds were rounding up. We didn't realize they weren't the Feds until it was too late."

  "Okay," Josh says. "But why not just live here, where they can't get you?"

  Cory shakes his head. "We like our human skins. Here, you have to hunt for your food and make your own shelter. Resources are plentiful, but the deeper you go, the stranger it gets."

  "Yeah, reality's a bit more … fluid … here," Rico adds.

  "But you were happy—back then before the worlds got split up. Nobody bugged you."

  "Hey, we weren't around that far back," Cory says. "We only know about the old days from what the elders have told us. And so much great stuff has happened in the last couple of hundred years."

  He ticks items off on his fingers. "Cars, books, music, movies, surf boards—why would we want to leave? He lifts his cup off the hood of the car and smiles. "And a good cup of coffee? Humans might not be perfect, but they get a lot of things right."

  "Besides," Rico adds. "Why should we have to leave? We were there first."

  "There should be room for everyone," Cory adds.

  "But people are selfish," Josh says.

  Cory nods. "Right, but not everybody's like that. It's just the usual jerks who see a buck to be made, or want to make sure their little corner of the world stays pure and untouched by anyone else. But they spoil it for the rest of us."

  "You got that right," Chaingang says.

  "Yep, we can all relate to that," Elzie puts in.

  "Okay," Josh says. "That I understand. So I'll do what I can to help. But keep in mind that I'm still going to live my own life, too."

  "You can try," Rico says, shaking his head in doubt.

  Cory motions toward the field in front of us. "Everybody ready?" he asks. "Let's get a move on. And take a look around—we don't want to leave anything behind."

  Elzie and Josh gather up the blankets, while Rico and I collect the used coffee cups and wrappers and stuff them into the paper bags that Cory brought over from the other side. We put everything into the hatch of the SUV.

  Cory is talking to Chaingang, pointing across the landscape, presumably toward the place where he'll cross back with the vehicle.

  Chaingang has some windshield washer fluid and a cloth that he must have found in the console. He's wiping the entire car, the inside of the hatch, seats, door handles, anywhere we might have left a fingerprint. Then he climbs up into the driver's seat and pulls the door closed.

  "Let's rumble," he says, through the glassless window.

  "Most of us will go over on foot." Cory explains. "Chaingang will bring the vehicle. I'm going to double-check the co-ordinates one more time—to make sure no one's parked a car or is hanging around where we're coming through on the other side."

  Chaingang nods. He leans over the steering wheel and reaches under it with his fingers. The motor coughs into life. Cory pushes down on the hood with his elbow as he passes the front of the car, but it won't close all the way.

  "Don't worry about it, bro," Chaingang tells him. "It's not like I'm going to be driving at high speeds. I'll be fine so long as I can see."

  Cory sets off again. The rest of us trail along a short distance behind. Chaingang drives the SUV at a crawling pace behind us. We proceed until
Cory holds up a hand and leans forward. For a moment his head disappears and it's just his torso standing there.

  "Show off," Rico says, laughing.

  Cory steps back and his head reappears.

  "All clear," he says. "Soon as we get over to the other side, we all just go our separate ways—everybody got that? Move fast, but don't run. And try not to look guilty. We could run into anybody. We can meet up later to figure out what we're going to do next. I'll find you."

  "How come the air's not shimmering like it did last night?" I ask.

  Cory shrugs. "It usually doesn't. It must have had something to do with the car's lights shining right on it. Come on, let's go."

  We all start to walk toward the spot where Cory stands waiting. It's a good distance from where we came through last night.

  Josh reaches for Elzie's hand, but she moves it out of his reach.

  She looks at him with a pained expression. "I'm not going," she says.

  That stops all forward momentum. For a long moment, no one says anything. We're all waiting to see what Josh's reaction will be. But he doesn't look surprised. A little sad, maybe, but he seems to have known this was coming. He lets his hand drop.

  "You don't want to stay here," Rico says to Elzie, breaking the silence. "It's harder than you think."

  "Oh, I do," Elzie tells him. "I'll tell you what I don't want to do is go back and live in the margins again."

  "This place has its own challenges."

  She nods. "I'm sure it does. But it doesn't involve noise and pollution, or guys in black suits running around trying to stick you in a cage, does it?"

  "Maybe not," Cory says from where he waits a few feet in front of us. "But I'm warning you, it's not all peaceful like this. You have to work to stay alive. Time and space shifts underfoot here. In some places, it's what you see here, but take a couple of wrong steps and you could end up walking around in other people's dreams—literally."

  "Seriously," Rico says. "It's a weird and dangerous place, and nobody knows all the ins and outs of it."

  "And you're going to be trying to figure it out all on your own," Cory adds.

  Elzie turns toward Josh and puts her arms on his shoulders. "Am I?" she asks with an exaggerated wink.

  Oh, please don't put him in this position, I want to say. Don't make him have to choose between his mom and everything on the other side and you.

  Then she laughs and lets him go, and I realize that she isn't really expecting him to come. She already knows the answer. And I understand that this is just another one of those cases of lopsided love, where one person cares way more than the other does. It isn't that Elzie doesn't care for Josh. I believe that she does love him, but true to her feline nature, she's unpredictable and curious. Purring and cozying up one minute, off doing her own thing the next.

  "Don't worry," she tells him. "It's not forever. I might get bored and come back. Or you might realize that the world's too messed up for anybody to fix and you'll come looking for me."

  "I still have to try to fix it," Josh says.

  "I know. It's part of your charm. Be noble, like Don Quixote, tilting at windmills. Just promise me you'll be careful, too, because these particular windmills might come back and smack you on the ass."

  She slaps his butt playfully, puts a hand on the back of his head and gives him a fierce kiss. Then she shifts into her jaguarundi shape and bounds away.

  We watch her go until she's nothing more than a speck on the horizon.

  "She didn't even say goodbye," I find myself saying, then wish I could pull the words back into my mouth.

  But Josh just gives me a weak smile. "She doesn't like goodbyes," he says.

  The Josh looking back at me is the one I've known forever. For one long moment he seems open to me and I can see all the hurt he's holding: the trouble Desmond brought to us, my betrayal, Elzie leaving. Then he looks away and it's gone, as though a door has slammed between us.

  He walks forward to where Cory's opening the way back to our own world. He doesn't look in the direction that Elzie took, but I do.

  I feel another twinge of guilt. It's not my fault that she left, but now he's all on his own.

  Josh

  "Hang on, Josh" Chaingang says from the car, about fifteen feet away from me.

  We've all just come through in the service area behind the Target store at the shopping center. The Target logo on the closed doors of the five loading bays back here tells me where we are, but thankfully, none of them are in use at the moment.

  Cory chose well. It was a good spot to cross over. There are no windows on the rear walls of this building. It's large and there's no one around, no one to see us literally appear out of thin air. There are security cameras, but they're pointed at the loading bays, not where we are.

  Our companions are already in motion, disappearing to their respective destinations, so it's just Chaingang and me left here beside the remains of a car that looks like it was in the middle of a war zone—which, it pretty much was. Not a good place to hang out if you're trying to keep a low profile.

  I glance around again. Any minute somebody is going to have a look back here and see us.

  Chaingang hands me the bags of trash that we brought back from the spiritlands.

  "Get rid of this as soon as you can," he says. He's working quickly, wiping down the steering wheel, door handles, anything he's touched.

  I want to take off like the others, but I hang back.

  "Is that it?" I say.

  "Afraid not, bro. That last piece of advice I gave you didn't seem to do much good, but I'm going to try again."

  "I know," I tell him, looking around nervously. "Don't change where anybody can see it happen."

  He shakes his head and lowers his shades so that I can see his eyes.

  "Come on. We're out of here," he says.

  We walk quickly away from the car, following the fence that separates this part of the complex from the street behind it. Dumpsters are dotted at various intervals along it—some for recycling, some for garbage. I go to toss the bags into the closest one.

  He puts up his hand.

  "Not there," Chaingang says. "It's too close to the car. Wait until you're in front of the store. They always have big trash cans there."

  "Okay, see you later."

  "Hang on," he says. "I want to talk to you about Auntie Min and the rest of them—whoever these elders are. They're going to try to change you. It'll be just some little thing here, another there, but I'm telling you, bro, if you don't watch out, the guy standing in front of me won't even exist anymore."

  "And you know this how?"

  He taps a finger against his temple. "Experience. You don't think I've been more than one social worker's pet project? Changes are good for everybody, they tell you. What they don't say is that if you don't pay attention, you'll wake up like a puppet with somebody's hand up your ass, telling you every little thing you can say or do."

  "Yuck. Thanks for putting that picture in my head."

  "You're welcome," he says without irony. "So take a good look at it whenever they ask you to do something."

  I nod.

  "What changed your mind?" I ask.

  We're halfway to the corner of the building. I'll feel so much better when we're nowhere near that wrecked car.

  "About what?"

  "Wildlings pulling together. When I first talked to you at school, you said that stuff about having each other's backs."

  "I never changed my mind about that, bro. What are you talking about?"

  "You told Cory you didn't want to join in on anything."

  He nods. "Right. I don't want to be in their gang. Cousins, elders, whatever they are. I don't trust their intentions. Hell, I can't even be sure that they didn't do this to us in the first place."

  "I doubt it. It seems to have put a pretty big cramp in their lifestyle."

  "Maybe," he says. "But we don't know their endgame, do we?"

  "What's that supposed to
mean?"

  He shrugs. "Maybe it just happened. Maybe they're just taking advantage of the situation. But for sure we don't have the whole picture. There are too many unknowns."

  "I guess. But if the stories are true about the elders, then don't we have a responsibility to help them? And if not them, what about the world in general? Maybe we can actually do something to stop this environmental nosedive we're in."

  Chaingang shakes his head. "That crap always sounds good from a pulpit or on paper. It's all political bullshit. Try to do something and it all goes to hell."

  "I've still got to try."

  We've reached the corner of the building. ValentiCorp is in plain sight, yellow tape and barricades surrounding it.

  "Want a ride somewhere?" Chaingang asks. "My bike's not far from here."

  I shake my head. I haven't told anybody what I'm planning to do. I've pretty much lost the only people I might have confided in and I don't see much room for me in their lives anymore. Elzie abandoned me for that other world. Marina's better at taking secrets than sharing them. And Desmond ... well, he's Desmond. Big heart, big mouth.

  But I want as much of my life back as I can get and there's only one way I can see that happening.

  "No, I'm good," I tell Chaingang.

  He pulls me back behind the corner of the building and I almost drop the trash bags. He studies me for a moment. "You're not planning to do something stupid, are you?"

  "Why would you say that?"

  "You've got a look about you." He hesitates, then goes on. "You need to know, bro. What happened with the girls was harsh, but don't hang on to it for too long. Make friends with that hurt and it's going to settle down inside you and never go away. I've seen it happen too many times before."

  "I'm doing okay."

  "Yeah. That's what worries me."

  "Don't. Later."

  I can feel his gaze on me as I walk away from him toward the entrance of the Target store.

  "Later," he says.

  I drop the bags into the big trash can by the shopping cart return at the front of the store. As I walk, I notice all the weird stares I'm getting from people. I might be clean from last night's swim, but the white pants and shirt I took from the lab are streaked with dirt and they don't fit well. My feet are bare and I've got a head full of stubble. I must look like a street person or some guy in a religious cult. Or maybe like somebody who's just escaped from a loony bin.