by Andrew Smith
I fell out of Marbury.
“Hey, numbnuts.”
When I opened my eyes, I was standing under the shower. The light coming from beyond the doorway was the color of late afternoon. Conner stood, wearing a white shirt, slacks, an unknotted tie hanging from both sides of his collar, bouncing from foot to foot with wet socks in the middle of a puddle of water that pooled on the floor through the open glass shower door, saying something to me, holding my phone in one hand.
Thirty-Three
“Dude, are you fucking high or something? I said Nickie’s on the phone.” Conner pulled the shower door wider, swinging it back through the bathroom’s doorway. He put the phone back to his ear. “Nickie? Yeah. He’s standing here naked, in the shower. Hang on just a second.”
He waved the phone in front of me, teasingly, the look on his face an obvious confession that he’d been flirting with Nickie.
What else would I expect from Conner, anyway?
Then he flipped the phone around and snapped a picture of me.
That’s what I’d expect.
“I’m going to hang up and send you something, Nickie. Give me ten seconds, babe.” And he ran out of the bathroom.
“You’re a fucking asshole, Conner.”
Under the running water, I could hear my friend as he fell down and began laughing hysterically.
“Oh yeah, baby. And…send!” He laughed.
I shut the water off, closed my eyes. I stood there in the tub, dripping, rubbing my face with my palms.
Seth, take me back.
Fuck this place.
I have to go back. Ben and Griffin need me.
And in a flash of clarity, I came to the realization that it was Henry’s glasses that opened my eyes onto Marbury, but that it was Seth who’d brought me back each time.
Think, Jack, think.
How long was I gone for this time?
The glasses.
Fuck! The glasses.
Seth!
“Fucking Seth,” I said.
“What’d you say?” Conner called from the bedroom.
I wound a towel around my waist and stepped out of the bathroom. Conner was flat on his back, on top of the bed, still laughing, mesmerized by the screen on my cell phone.
“She’s gonna like that, Jack.” And then he giggled, and added, “My bad, dude. I think I accidentally sent it to Stella, too.”
“You are such an asshole.”
“Just kidding, Jack.” He wiped the wetness from his eyes. “But I did send it to Nickie.”
I didn’t care at the moment. The only thing I needed to do was find those goddamned glasses.
“Fuck!” I threw my backpack against the wall, scattering the contents in a debris field from the bed to the window.
“Hey,” Conner said, his voice dropped to a soothing tone. “Dude. Take it easy. You know I’m just messing around.”
I kicked my wet feet through my belongings, looking.
“Hey. Jack. I’m sorry.”
“Fuck!” I bent over and felt around inside the pack. “It’s not you, Con. I don’t give a shit about the fucking picture.”
The sock. At the bottom of the pack. I felt the glasses folded up inside my sock. Somehow I’d managed to put them back, to hide them from Conner. I exhaled in relief, wouldn’t let go of them.
My towel fell off. I was standing in front of our open window completely naked. I picked up the towel and screened it in front of me, turning around. The clock showed that it was past six in the evening. On top of the bed, Conner was sitting on the shirt and tie that I must have been wearing earlier. He looked concerned, scared almost.
Why were we dressed up?
“What day is it?”
Conner sat up, scooted back on the bed slightly. He shut off my phone, and put it down on top of my dark blue dress pants.
“Dude. Are you okay, Jack?”
I saw the look on his face.
I’m scaring Conner.
Fuck you, Jack.
I deflated, sat down on the chair at the desk, put the glasses in my lap, and dropped my face into my hands.
“Fuck this shit,” I said.
Conner got up, moved to the corner of the bed, and sat down right across from me.
“Jack. What’s going on?”
“What day is it, Con?”
“Are you kidding me, Jack?”
“I wish I was.”
“It’s Thursday, Jack. We just got back from St. Atticus School. Thursday.” He held the end of his tie up between two fingers. I remembered Wynn insisting we wear ties when we visited his old school. “We were going to change out of these things and go out.”
Three days.
I didn’t look up.
What the fuck happened to three days?
“Something’s wrong with me, Con.”
The nausea. I stood up, ran past Conner. I dropped to my knees at the toilet and began puking my guts out.
Freddie Horvath did something to my brain.
There’s nothing I can do about it.
I don’t want to do anything about it.
Fuck you, Jack.
“Jack? Jack!” Conner stood behind me. My knees, in a puddle of warm water on the slick floor, slipping out from under me.
Just like being born.
The trip of a lifetime.
“Jack? You’re scaring the shit out of me, dude.”
I must have looked ridiculous. Conner stepped away and came back carrying my towel. He draped it over me as I spit acid down into the bowl.
“Just get the fuck away from me, Conner. There’s something wrong with me. I’m all fucked up. Just get the fuck away!”
I rested my forehead on the bridge of my arms. Shaking, I still held on to that sock and those goddamned glasses that were inside of it. I could hear Conner backing away from me.
“I’m sorry, Jack.”
“I’m sorry, too, Con. I’m sorry, too.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. I wanted to cry so bad at that instant. I could feel my eyes swelling up. But I’d never cried, and I didn’t let myself do it then, either.
Breathe, Jack. Breathe.
“Is it really Thursday?”
“You’re not fucking with me, are you?”
“No.”
“Dude. You need to talk to me, Jack.”
I nodded my head, but I didn’t look at him.
And I didn’t cry.
“I need to lay down.”
Conner stepped out of my way as I passed him. He had this uncertain and terrified look on his face, like he was watching me do something really bad and couldn’t stop me.
You’ve been doing something really bad, Jack, and nobody can stop it.
I got into the bed and pulled the sheet over me. I lay there on my side, facing the wall, just staring at it, my hand wrapped tightly around the glasses that I tucked under the wet pillow beneath my head.
The toilet flushed.
I heard the chair scooting across the wood floor. For a moment, I thought it was Seth again, but when I glanced down to the foot of the bed I saw that Conner was sitting there beside the wall with his hands on his knees, staring at me, like he was waiting for something.
“I can’t remember anything, Con.”
“Okay,” he said. “But you remember who I am, right?”
“The last thing I remember is Monday. When we went out. I don’t remember anything that happened after the fight.”
“We didn’t get in any fight.”
“I did,” I said. “After you went to sleep, I went back out. I got in a fight. I beat the crap out of this guy who’s been following me around ever since I got here.”
Conner said, “Is he a cop or a perv?”
“Neither. He’s just fucking with me.”
“You sure, Jack?”
“I’m not lying to you, Con.” I cleared my throat. “Tell me what happened since Monday.”
He scooted his chair closer to me, and almost whispered, “Really?”
&nbs
p; I looked right at Conner. “Yeah.”
He sighed. “I’ll be honest, Jack. I don’t remember going to bed on Monday night, either. I hope it was good for you, too, Jack.”
He tried smiling. Conner was always trying to make a joke out of everything.
Then he said, “Do you think you need help, bro?”
I knew what he meant. He thought I was going crazy. It didn’t matter. I thought so, too. “I don’t know.”
Conner leaned forward.
“We woke up late on Tuesday. After noon. We ate. Went for a run. Then we went all over the place by the Underground. Drank a couple beers. Pretty much the same as yesterday, only you and Nickie have been calling each other, like, every five minutes. And you told her we were coming out to Blackpool tomorrow, to hang out with her and her friend, so we’d all come back to London together this weekend. We already got bus tickets to do that. And we went to St. Atticus this morning. Do you remember that?”
I tried to remember.
“Did we take any pictures?”
“You mean besides the one I just sent to Nickie’s phone?” Conner shoved my foot, smiled. When I didn’t react at all, he said, “Dude, you really are fucking scaring me.”
“It’s not the first time this happened, Con, where I just kind of drop out and then come back and it’s, like, later. But I’ve never been out of it for three days before.”
I heard him inhale, deep, slowly.
“Where do you go when that happens to you?”
“You tell me.”
“I’ll get your camera,” he said.
My phone buzzed on the bed next to me. I rolled over and grabbed it, looked at the screen.
Nickie.
Thirty-Four
“Now I can see why you warned me about your friend Conner.” She laughed.
“Nickie. I am so embarrassed.” I flipped Conner off, but he didn’t notice. He was too busy trying to find my camera, digging around through the stuff I’d kicked all over the floor. Then I realized that I still didn’t have any clothes on, and that made me feel really stupid.
“Actually, it’s not at all an unflattering picture,” Nickie said, and I could almost hear the smile in her voice. “Rachel thinks so, too.”
“Oh God.” I picked a towel up from the floor and wrapped it around my hips as I brushed past Conner. I went back into the bathroom. “What would you do if Rachel ever did something like that to you?”
“If she did that to me, I should think I’d get even with her by introducing her to Conner.”
I fumbled through the folded and clean clothes on the bathroom’s marble counter. I must have put them there, but couldn’t remember doing it. I pulled a gray T-shirt down over my head and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.
Nickie made me smile.
Conner insisted I get dressed, said he was starving to death, and that he wasn’t about to let me stay by myself in the hotel room, even though I pleaded with him to leave me alone. We found an Italian place that made plate-sized pizzas. Conner drank beer, and tried to talk me into having some, too, but I didn’t want anything to do with that.
While we ate, he sat beside me and thumbed through the images we’d taken since Monday on my camera.
Some of the pictures seemed familiar to me as Conner narrated what we’d been doing—just like it did when I talked to Nickie on that first night—but three days was a big hole to fill up.
The last picture showed Conner and me, wearing white shirts and ties, leaning our shoulders together in front of the brilliant green of a school’s soccer field.
We were smiling.
“Is any of this coming back to you, Jack?”
I sighed. “Kind of. Not really, though.”
“Do you think the shit that Freddie guy gave you messed up your brain?”
Freddie Horvath did something to my brain and I need to get help.
“I don’t know, Con. I think it did. Maybe.”
I was nervous. I kept thinking about how I’d left those glasses wadded up under my pillow. I needed to get back to them, to keep them safe. I felt ashamed about it. And I kept looking around to see if Henry was still following me. I think Conner picked up on it, so I tried to relax and took an awkward drink of water. It made me cough.
I asked, “Well, did we like St. Atticus enough to want to spend a semester or two here this year?”
Conner shook his head. “I keep waiting for you to start laughing and tell me you’re just shitting me, Jack.”
I poked a finger at my food.
Not hungry.
“I think you seemed to like it a lot, but that’s just ’cause you’re, well, you know, so Jack. But, for me, well…I’m a tough sell on that whole boys-only thing.”
That made me laugh. “You are so fucking weird and hung up on that shit, Conner.”
Then Conner got serious. “I wish I could help you, Jack.”
“Me too, Con.”
“When we get back. You know, back to California. I’ll go with you. We don’t need to tell anyone else. So you can get this sorted out. Okay?”
He didn’t know.
Nobody was going to help Jack.
At least not here.
So I said, “Okay.”
“Sure you don’t want a beer?”
“No thanks, Con. Go ahead and have another if you want. I’ll get you home.”
I waited.
I lay there in the dark. Occasionally, I’d turn my eyes toward the window, trying to be as quiet as I could, so I could listen to Conner—to see if he’d fallen asleep. It was making me crazy. I thought he was listening to me, too.
And those glasses felt like they were burning a hole through my pillow and straight into my head.
Sweating, I threw the covers off, looked out the window again.
“You okay, Jack?” Conner said.
“Fucked.”
“Go to sleep.”
“Sure.”
I could feel him rolling over in the bed. I knew he was looking right at me, and I wished he would quit it and go to sleep.
Conner whispered, “I don’t feel bad, or guilty, at all. I mean, about what happened to that guy.”
I rolled away from him. I stared at the wall. “I don’t want to talk about this, Con.”
“Just think what he would have done to you. If you didn’t get away, you wouldn’t even be alive right now.”
“So fucking what?”
“And what happened to him was an accident. No. It was his fault, and he would have done that same shit again to another kid as soon as he got the chance to. You know what they said about him—what they found—on the news. So, fuck you, Freddie.”
“Okay.”
“Say it.”
“What?”
“Say, Fuck you, Freddie.”
It was hard to get the words out. I sounded weak. “Fuck you, Freddie.”
“Louder.”
“No. That’s enough.”
“I’m not going to let you do it, Jack.”
“Do what?”
“Whatever fucked-up thing you’re doing to hurt yourself.”
“I’m not the one who’s doing it.”
“Then who is, bud?”
“Okay, Con. Good night.”
I waited, and it finally came: the sound of a metal edge, each individual groove cut around the circumference, tumbling, turning one over the next, so faintly, near the wall, in the triangle of space between my leaning backpack and the windowsill. A coin.
Roll.
I held my breath, lifted my head from the pillow so I could look over at Conner. He slept.
Tap.
I slid my hand beneath the pillow. I felt relief like cool waves pouring over my body when my hand closed around the glasses that lay twisted inside that sock of mine. And I felt guilt, too.
We’ll only just take one peek.
Tap.
Just one short second, Jack.
A second.
Tap.
I
took them out, unfolded them.
But he’d been watching me.
“What the fuck is that?” Conner shot straight up in bed, like he’d been frightened awake from a nightmare.
My hands jerked. I nearly dropped the glasses, then I twisted in the covers and tried jamming my hand down under the bedsheet. But in that brief instant, I saw through them. Just a flash. I could see Griffin’s face, how he looked, concerned and angry, as he kneeled over me and fixed that bandage to my chest. And all through the room there glowed a dim purple light, muted like the radiation from a television screen that had a blanket over it.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The noise from behind the backpack came sharp, insistent.
Conner caught my wrist in his hand, squeezed tight.
“What the fuck is that?” he repeated.
I fumbled, wanted Conner to stop looking at me. “A mouse, I think.”
“Not that. What’s in your hand?”
Conner tried pulling my arm out from the covers.
“Let go, Con!”
“Did you see that shit? Let me see what that is.”
I let the glasses go.
Tap. Tap.
I scooted over and covered them beneath my leg.
“What the fuck, Con? Let go of me.”
When my hand came up, I pushed Conner away. I started to make a fist. We both sat there looking at each other. I knew I looked sick, was out of breath.
Tap.
“What’s going on, Jack?”
“Shhhh…”
I took a deep breath.
Calm down, Jack.
“Did you see that shit?” Conner said. He turned toward me in the bed, crossing his legs and leaning into me. He was practically touching me. I could feel his warmth. He panted. “Show it to me.”
“I can’t.”
“Did you see that shit? Let me see it.”
Conner knew I was hiding something under my leg. He pushed me back, but I slipped my hand under myself and shoved the glasses behind me.
“Quit it, Con. Please.”
“What is that thing?”
“It’s…” What could I tell him? “Forget about it. It’s not good.”
“Let me see it. I want to see that shit again.”
I squeezed the glasses tightly in my hand. Part of me wished I could crush them. Most of me didn’t.