Текст книги "Passenger"

Автор книги: Andrew Smith

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

thirty-two

Every day begins the same.

I open my eyes and say to myself, This is it.

This is it.

And this is what I know.

I try to make myself stop thinking about what happened to us after that hot afternoon when we gathered, sick, sweating, scared, in the garage at Ben and Griffin’s house.

But if I ever teach myself how to do that, I imagine there will be lots of other things Jack will cast off, abandon.

Remembered or not, everything happens, anyway.

*   *   *

They made Conner and me room with English kids at St. Atticus.

I supposed it was probably their way of immersing the transplanted California boys in their new culture, but that was only my guess.

Because I had no way of knowing what happened to any of us here in this world, from the moment I swung that hammer to when I opened my eyes and stared up at a perfect, cream white ceiling I initially believed was the Marbury sky, and repeated those three words in my head.

This is it.

Isn’t it?

Before that, the last thing I remembered seeing was Frankie’s arrow flying directly toward my chest.

It was raining that morning.

I held my unsteady hand up between my eyes and the ceiling and examined my palm.

No blood.

No mark.

I lay in bed waiting for something—the first clue, a sign, maybe a sound. I couldn’t guess how many minutes passed by. But then again, Jack was completely incapable of measuring such things as time. I listened to the rain, the deep and slow sleeping breaths that sounded like whispered secrets from the boy in the next bed.

Waiting, waiting.

Just listening to him, I knew it wasn’t Conner. I recognized every sound Conner could ever make, no matter what world we were in. And I knew Conner’s smell. I didn’t have to see the kid to know it wasn’t Conner asleep over there in a bed not three feet away from my face.

When I heard the stir of sheets and covers, the rodentlike squeak of old bedsprings, I turned my head and watched the boy who padded barefoot across the floor and faded like a ghost into the dark rectangle of an open doorway against the far wall.

No light came on in there.

And I listened while he took a loud, long piss. He didn’t flush the toilet, either. He just reappeared through the open doorway, gangly, deathly pale, wearing nothing but tight red boxer briefs.

He yawned casually and rubbed his eyes.

And I knew his name. Not just his Odd name, his entire name, and everything that came with it.

Ethan Robson.

He saw I was awake, watching him.

“Morning, Jack.”

Ethan turned on a television and, folding up his grasshopper-thin legs, climbed back into bed.

I cleared my throat and answered, “Good morning.”

I felt sick.

Same as always.

A news program from London came on.

Ethan grabbed the remote control that was lying on a table between our beds, in the center of some kind of monument of stacked empty beer cans.

I couldn’t help but think about Ben telling me, Fuck this place, Jack. So, where’d you leave the goddamned remote?

Click.

It seemed as though I’d heard those words only seconds ago, and I swear I still smelled the salt ash of Marbury in my hair, clinging to the sweat in my damp armpits.

My stomach tightened.

Click.

Ethan flipped through the channels until he found highlights from a Premier League match. Only then did I notice, remember all the soccer posters and banners, even a red jersey, that hung on the wall between me and what apparently was our bathroom.

“Can you put it back on the news for just a minute?”

Trying to speak made me feel awkward, drunk, even embarrassed, but I needed to see anything that might tell me more about where—or when—my world was now.

This is how it always was.

“It’s raining, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Ethan said.

Black worms.

“Thank you for the weather update.”

He switched the channel.

It was September 22.

Nearly an entire month had vanished at the swing of a hammer.

This is it.

Jack hit it out of the park.

“Okay. Never mind,” I said. “You can turn it back to your game. Thanks, Ethan.”

I needed to throw up.

Welcome here, Jack.

Wherever this is.

And, just maybe, this is it.

I tossed the covers off me, pasted my hand tightly across my lips, and staggered to the dark doorway, coughing and gagging. I found the open mouth of the toilet and dropped onto my knees—the familiar hugging position that Jack knew so well—just in time.

The toilet was dirty. It frothed with warm, thick urine; wet droplets of sticky piss flattened between the porcelain rim and the bloodless skin on my quaking forearms; and I could not stop the puking.

I sensed Ethan’s shadow looming in the doorway behind me.

“You damn American lads never have been able to hold a proper drink.”

And somehow, I remembered how we’d brought all that beer into the room the evening before—Friday night. Today, Ethan and I were supposed to be leaving St. Atticus for our weekends.

I vomited again.

The boys at St. Atticus drank all the time. I knew that, just like I remembered Ethan’s favorite team was from Manchester.

Maybe this was it.

“Are you all right?”

I spit into the toilet. The back of my nose burned with acid.

“What the fuck happened to me?”

Ethan laughed.

He didn’t know how bad I wished he might answer that question.

I sat there on the floor, watching, smelling the toilet, waiting for the nausea to recede.

Behind me, the shower came on. I immediately felt the humid breath of steam that exhaled through the lips of a moldy vinyl curtain.

Welcome home, Jack.

And Ethan helped me stand. He pulled me up from the cold floor by my hand and told me, “Come on, Jack. Get in. You’ll feel better.”

When I looked at him, I saw in his face so many things that all came rushing back to me: how Ethan the outcast, bed wetter, was the target of the stronger boys—the Odds—in Marbury. But here, I saw genuine friendship.

This is it.

It was almost as though I could hear Ethan Robson pleading with me in that piss-stained hell of a camp to let him look into the glasses one more time, just a peek; he was so desperate to get away from the other boys, to get out of Marbury.

“You don’t remember it, do you?”

Ethan smirked. “What? You passing out last night? I think I recall it a bit more clearly than you do.” He patted my shoulder lightly and said, “Don’t worry, Jack. You behaved within the acceptable bounds of propriety. For an American, that is.”

It was the same as Ben and Griffin.

They never knew anything. I could have left them there, un-fucked, shooting hoops at Steckel Park. But I didn’t. And just like Ethan, they’d begged me in Marbury, too. They wanted out.

So I took them.

And it made us all monsters.

I shook my head. I wouldn’t do it again. I was going to leave this kid alone.

But I needed to know.

All the strings had come untied, and I had no idea what I’d see when I went looking for them—the frayed ends, my friends, my life.

The lens.

So I stood there, shivering in the stale darkness of our bathroom, watching the steam puke its way out from the gashes in the torn shower curtain, while Ethan went back to his soccer match.

I found a light switch beside the doorjamb, and as soon as I flicked it remembered how the bulb had burned out weeks ago, and we’d never bothered to replace it.

This is it.

I pulled the leathery curtain back, snaked my legs out of my briefs, and got inside the shower.

I shut my eyes and leaned my head on my hands against the tile wall, letting the hot water stream down my neck.

It was like waiting to be born.

In the dark, it felt like being in the Under.

I didn’t know what I was waiting for. I only knew how much I didn’t want to open my eyes again, how much I just wanted to stay there, naked and mute in the warm dark womb of a filthy shower stall and think about nothing.

September 22.

Eight in the morning.

This is it.

*   *   *

If I thought about things too much, I realized I got panicky about not knowing anything.

I didn’t really know where I kept my clothes, or how this Jack got dressed, if he’d be uptight and nervous around other kids, just like the other Jack was.

Or if, maybe, this was not-Jack, confident and strong, funny and relaxed, and I didn’t know the first thing about him, except that he got drunk last night, puked, and ended up with some other kid’s piss all over his arms.

So what could I do?

I left my underwear soaking in the puddle of shower water that pooled on the dank floor of our toilet-cave, wrapped myself in the only towel that hung from the fake-chrome rail beside the tiled stall, and walked out into our room, aiming myself for the only piece of furniture that looked like it might contain clothing.

I tried not to think about which side of the wardrobe belonged to Jack, or what kind of clothes he’d brought along to school.

I just did it.

Ethan was still in bed, watching television when I came out of the shower.

“What time is the train in?” I said.

Everyone’s dead on the train.

Quit it, Jack.

“I don’t think I want to get out of bed.”

Ethan’s family lived outside Bath, a long trip for the kid to make and then have to come back to school tomorrow. From Orpington, where St. Atticus was, to London, took about forty minutes by train, including our walk from school to the station. Bath was another two hours beyond that.

And I remembered going to Ethan’s house. My brain flashed images of his parents, his two small sisters. We’d all gone to Stonehenge together, just a week ago. I looked at the ring of empties on our nightstand.

I rubbed my temples, squeezed shut my eyes.

Ethan grunted as he sat up in bed.

“Head hurt?”

“Huh? Oh. No. I feel a lot better now.”

There were school clothes scattered all over our floor: pants, socks, undershirts, shined dress shoes, shirts, and ties. The place was a complete mess, just like Jack’s room always had been. I opened the wardrobe. Nothing looked like me.

I tried to think, Where’s my goddamned phone?

Jack’s always losing his shit.

This is how it always is.

Ethan got out of bed, turned on the shower.

“Throw me a clean towel, please?”

I found a towel neatly folded beneath a stack of them inside our wardrobe and tossed it to Ethan, who stood in the doorway to the bathroom. I was relieved to know I could look through the things in the dresser and pick out this Jack’s clothes by size tags while the kid was under the shower. Ethan stood at least three inches taller than me, and was narrower around the waist.

It wouldn’t be a difficult sorting process.

And after I’d managed to finish my clothes shopping and gotten myself dressed, I sat on the floor and pulled on a pair of clean gray socks. I’d searched through everything scattered around me; turned out each pocket on every article of clothing. I found some money in both pairs of pants, keys, and Ethan’s wallet, too. But nothing of Jack’s. No lens. No glasses. Nothing. I even looked under the beds and between the mattresses, where Ethan had stashed a porn magazine.

I put it back in its hiding place and sat on my bed with my head down in my hands.

I couldn’t find anything.

“Are you sure you’re all right, Jack?”

Ethan came out of the bathroom and started picking folded clothes out of the open dresser.

I sighed. “I can’t find any of my shit. My phone, my wallet, nothing.”

Ethan smiled and shook his head. He looked at me with an unbelieving expression, and then he slipped into a pair of jeans and began threading a belt around his hips.

“You’ve gone completely crazy.” He pulled open the top drawer of our nightstand with his upturned bare foot and pointed a skeletal finger at it.

I stared down into the open drawer. It was like looking at an ancient tomb.

Jack’s tomb.

Everything was there: my phone, wallet, my digital camera, a wad of American money, a stick of deodorant, a half-eaten candy bar, nail clippers, some balled-up white briefs, and socks.

I swallowed. “No more drinking for me.”

Ethan Robson pulled a sweatshirt on over his head and shook out his long hair. He laughed at me.

“Right. That vow of abstinence will last for approximately … oh … three days, in my qualified opinion.”

Almost as soon as he said it, there was an urgent pounding on our door, and from out in the hallway came the booming foghorn voice of another English boy: “Oh, come on, you fucking wankers. What’s taking you? We were supposed to leave five fucking minutes ago.”

I knew the voice. His name was Neal Genovese. He played soccer with Ethan, and roomed with Conner. I knew it.

The doorknob jiggled and shook impatiently.

We always locked it whenever we got drunk.

Neal said, “Open the fucking door.”

Someone else down the hall shouted, “Shut the bloody hell up!”

When I stood, I tripped over my Vans, I was in such a rush to get to the door.

Ethan said, “You’re going to kill yourself, Jack.”

But I caught my balance and unlocked it without breaking anything.

When I opened the door, Neal was standing there in his Number-2 jersey and school warm-ups, square shouldered, hands on his hips, a little pissed off and red faced. He was broader and more angular than Ethan and wore a very unprofessional, uniform buzz cut that made his brown hair look like a shrunken bearskin cap.

And directly behind him, holding a small canvas bag for the weekend, and leaning as though he were propping shut the door to the room across the hallway, was my best friend, Conner Kirk.

I don’t think I’ve ever gasped in my life, but seeing Conner there, really looking into his eyes, gave me that rush, the fearful surge you get when you slip on ice. It was practically all I could do to resist shoving past Neal and throwing my arms around him.

He looked good.

It looked like home.

And this has to be it.

“Con!”

He just raised his chin toward me, and with that one nod, I knew it really was him; that we were back.

Conner dropped his bag in the hall and raised his hand to slap a stinging high five into mine. We grabbed on to each other so tightly it hurt, and I swear I could feel my eyes starting to well up.

Neal pushed his way past us and slung his duffel bag down on top of the mess of clothes that were strewn all over our floor, grumbling, “Bloody hell. There’s so many fucking Americans here, you’d think there was a bloody war on.” And, to Ethan, he snapped, “Are you not fucking ready to leave yet?”

Ethan, hopping, trying to get a sock over his bony foot, said, “Yeah.”

But he wasn’t ready. Ethan and I weren’t known for being the most punctual kids at St. Atticus, so we were a good match as roommates. And Neal Genovese, as tightly wound as he was whenever we weren’t drunk, was definitely not the ideal roomie for someone like Conner Kirk.

So Conner, still holding on to my hand, said, “There’s a train every fucking few minutes. Chill the fuck out for once, Gino.”

Gino. That’s what Conner called him. Neal thought it was funny, but like a lot of things Conner Kirk said, it pissed him off sometimes, too.

Neal, mocking, shaking his head with impatient disapproval as he watched Ethan attempting to get dressed, in a sarcastic and fake California accent, said, “Oh. Right on, dude.”

I pushed Conner out into the hall, away from the door, and whispered, “Is this it? Is this really it?”

He nodded, smirked. “Mind the gap, Jack.”

I threw my arms around him and grabbed on to him, cursing myself that I was not going to cry.

“There is no fucking gap,” I said.

Conner held me back at arm’s length and slapped the top of my head, rubbing his fingers in my wet hair.

“When did you get back?”

“Just now. Half an hour ago. You?”

Conner laughed. “I was in here getting fucked up with you guys last night.”

I heard Neal inside the room. He was chewing out Ethan for making him wait while Ethan stuffed random articles of clothing into an overnight bag.

“I better get my shit together before he blows up at me, too,” I said.

Conner shook his head. “You? Shit together? You are Jack Whitmore, right?”

And just before we went inside my room, Conner grabbed my shoulder and whispered, “Where is it, Jack?”

I knew what he meant.

Of course I knew what he meant.

thirty-three

On the train to the city, Conner phoned our girlfriends, Nickie and Rachel.

He made lame excuses about Jack being sick, how we couldn’t come to London for the weekend.

Ethan eyed me suspiciously. He listened to Conner’s smooth and convincing sincerity about poor Jack sleeping in bed, laid up with chills and a fever.

“He looks terrible, Nickie.”

Then he winked at me and said, “I’ll tell him you said that, babe.”

Conner was such a slick and practiced liar.

Ethan watched me, one eyebrow raised questioningly.

I shrugged and smiled crookedly. “Boys’ night out, Ethan. I guess that vow of temperance I swore isn’t going to last the day.”

Ethan slapped my knee and gave me an I-told-you-so look.

And Neal said, “Lad’s got to fucking play around sometimes, eh, Conner? One of these days, if you ever get a girlfriend, Ethan, you’ll see. Ha! If. Aren’t I right, Jackie?”

What could I say?

Neal Genovese and Ethan Robson went their own ways once the four of us arrived at Charing Cross.

Conner and I had other things to do now, and I didn’t know where to start.

But I did read through the listings on my phone while we sat on the train.

I found Ben Miller’s and Griffin Goodrich’s numbers there.

At first, I was terrified to even look for them. I convinced myself that the only way I’d be brave enough to do it was if I was sitting there with three other boys. I kept imagining that goddamned barrel in some other Freddie’s garage, in some other Glenbrook. If I closed my eyes, I saw images of the photographs of the boys, spread out on a tabletop in some fucking interrogation room, or I’d remember following Seth through an alleyway near Green Park, when I’d peered down into the mouth of the blue plastic drum and saw their bodies.

While London fell to pieces around me.

But this was it.

It had to be.

I even rechecked their names at least ten times before we’d gotten off the train and said good-bye to our roommates. I ignored the sympathetic text messages I received from Nickie and Rachel.

But there were changes, too.

I figured some things had to be different after an unobserved month slipped by.

Ander’s cell number was saved on my phone, like it had been when Henry and I popped back into his crumbling flat that last time. And I’d even made a number of calls to Ander that I couldn’t clearly remember.

My clothes were all different, too. They fit me strangely, and I couldn’t remember having any of this stuff before the end of the summer. Maybe I grew or my tastes changed, I thought, but when I woke up in bed that morning, I was wearing briefs. Jack never owned or wore briefs one day in his life. The only way I could explain it was that I must have lost or run out of my regular clothes somehow, or maybe Nickie had taken me shopping.

It wasn’t a big deal.

I wouldn’t let myself make it a big deal.

Because this was it.

This was going to be it.

And, mostly, things seemed as normal as they probably should be. All my recent calls were between me and Conner, Nickie, her brother, Henry Hewitt, my grandmother, and at least a dozen calls in the last few days had come from Ben and Griffin in California.

So once Conner and I found a relatively quiet part of the station, I dropped the bag I’d been carrying and pulled the phone out of my pocket.

I hadn’t been thinking about the lens, or the other glasses. I didn’t care about them. And I knew I had them with me, somewhere.

Same old Jack, no matter how fucked up his universe gets.

Always keeping one foot in the door.

But I needed to hear Ben’s and Griffin’s voices, just so I could begin to feel more certain that we all really did make it back from Marbury.

Conner knew what I was doing.

“It’s going to be after midnight,” he said.

“They’ll be up. If they’re…”

I didn’t need to say it; Conner knew what I meant.

If they’re the same.

If they’re alive.

If they’re here.

I called.

Ben answered, in a whisper.

“Jack?”

I held my phone in front of my chin, so Conner could hear, and I watched his eyes to see if he gave a sign confirming that things were really okay.

“Hey. I’m here. With Conner.”

Conner was staring at me, too, looking for the same thing.

“Glenbrook?”

“We’re in London.”

There was a rustling, the sound of motion, like Ben dropped the phone.

“Hang on. I’m in bed. I’m going in Griffin’s room.”

I took a long breath. I was so relieved. “Are you okay?”

I could hear a door opening, shutting. Then Griffin said, “It’s Jack? Jack? Are you here?”

“We’re back. When did you guys—”

“Three days ago. We been calling you and Conner for three days,” Ben said. “You didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about.”

“Well, it’s us now,” Conner said. I could see the relief on his face, too.

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

Ben said, “Yeah. It was weird at first. We were scared. We were gone such a long time, Jack. We couldn’t remember some shit. My stepdad thought we were smoking pot or something. They fucking piss-tested both of us this morning.”

“Yeah. Screw that,” Griffin said.

Conner smiled and nodded.

“But you’re both okay?” I said.

“We don’t fucking smoke pot, if that’s what you mean,” Ben answered.

“Do you remember what happened to us out in the desert?” I watched Conner. He shook his head.

Ben’s voice lowered. “After the fight. The horses ran off. We came after you. Me, Griffin, that kid named Frankie, and Ethan.”

“Ethan’s a kid at school here.”

“When we found you, there was a Hunter standing next to you, coming for you.”

I watched Conner’s eyes while Ben said it. He didn’t show anything.

“Frankie took a bow from one of the dead bugs, and he was going to shoot the Hunter, but as soon as he did, it was like the sky opened up and you got to your feet, right in the way of the arrow.”

“Frankie shot you,” Griffin said. “He shot you with the arrow, Jack. It went completely through you and then it just fell down in the dirt like you weren’t even there.”

Ben continued, “And when it happened, both you and the Hunter disappeared. Then everything went blank, like it did when we were in the garage. That was all I knew. Next thing I knew, I was sitting on a bench in the locker room at Glenbrook, getting dressed for PE, and Griff was at his school sleeping through a test. I was so fucking scared. And then I forgot my fucking locker combination and had to spend the rest of the day in my gym clothes. I didn’t see Griff till we got home from school. We both looked like shit. We’ve been trying to call you ever since. But whenever I did, you were, like, ‘What are you talking about?’”

“And, Jack,” Griffin said. “You know … What did you do with the lens?”

“I … I’m not sure yet,” I lied. I was certain I’d find the lenses inside the bag I’d packed, hidden away inside the wadded socks and underwear I stashed in the nightstand beside my bed. Where else would Jack hide such things?

There was a long silence after that.

Conner watched me. He chewed the inside of his lip. To me, he already looked sick, like he needed to know the lens was still okay. It pissed me off. I almost wanted to punch him for it.

And he knew I was lying, too.

“Jack?” Ben said.

“Yeah?”

“I know it’s fucked up of us. Um … we think we need to go back.”

“We need to,” Griffin added.

“Don’t talk about it,” I said.

Conner and I both stood there, staring at my silent phone like we were waiting for some kind of answer to just pop out and present itself to us.

But nothing came.

“Jack?” Griffin said. He sounded desperate and weak, not like the kid I knew, the kid I always thought was so strong and brave.

“What do you want me to do, Griff? What the fuck am I supposed to do? You were the one telling me to get you home. Remember that morning in the box? Now what the fuck do you want me to do?” I exhaled a long sigh. “Look. We’re not going to do anything now. Me and Conner have to figure this out.” Then I lied again, “I don’t even know where the goddamned lens is. It might be gone for good this time, and that would be fine with me. I don’t fucking care anymore.”

Conner grabbed my arm, shook me slightly. “Hey. Easy.”

I swallowed, cleared my throat. “I’m sorry, Griff. Ben. We’ll figure it out. Call me back in the morning, your time. Promise you’ll call me back. Look, it’s not that long till Christmas. We’re coming home for two weeks. We’ll figure it out. Together. I promise.”

And Conner said, “But we’re not fucking breaking anything again.”

I heard Ben try to laugh at that.

“Okay, Jack,” he said. “Let’s not talk about it.”

“Good night, then,” I said. “I’m glad we’re all okay. It’s going to be okay now. This is it, right?”

“Yeah. But, Jack? There’s one thing I need to tell you. There was a cop looking up your cell number. He came here asking me and Griff a bunch of questions about you.”

At that moment, it felt like my throat sank to my stomach.

Even Conner looked scared.

“Jack? Did you hear what I said?”

“I heard you.” I shut my eyes tight, trying to think. “What did you say to him?”

“Nothing,” Ben said. “What the fuck could I say? That we all know how to walk through some fucking piece of glass and into a different world called Marbury, or whatever the fuck place it is now? That we fucking kill shit there?”

“I bet he’d leave you alone if you did tell him that,” Conner said.

“Or we’d be taken down and piss-tested again,” Griffin answered.

I heard the knocking on the door, Ben’s stepdad telling the boys to get off the phone.

“His name was Avery Scott, right?” I said.

“How’d you know that?”

More knocking.

“I gotta go, Jack.”

“Okay. Call me in the morning, Ben.”

“See ya.”

“Promise?”

Click.

“Ben?”

I felt sick.

*   *   *

“Separate beds? Damn. I was hoping we’d get our same old room, Jack. What are we going to do in separate beds?”

He was trying to get me to lighten up.

But I was numb.

All I could think about was that fucking cop, what he knew, and what I didn’t know.

It was Conner’s idea for us to get a room at the White House—the same hotel we stayed in at the start of our summer.

The rain cleared up.

It was early afternoon, and it felt like autumn.

I stood in front of the window and looked out at Regent’s Park.

From behind me, Conner said, “And the goddamned shower door works, too. This sucks. Everything’s different.”

He came up behind me, shoved me playfully.

“Let’s go for a run, Jack. We’re getting too lazy and fat hanging out with those fucking Brits.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

I sat on the bed and slipped my feet out of my shoes. I took off my shirt.

Conner watched me as I opened my bag, and it pissed me off. I knew why he was watching me. And I knew exactly what I could find in my bag if I wanted to.

“Are you going to change, or are you just going to stand there and look at me?”

Conner smiled and shrugged, gawking with his mouth and eyes wide, messing with me. He made it even more obvious that he was staring at me while I got undressed.

But I didn’t look for the lens.

And just like I would expect him to, Conner naturally made a crack about me wearing briefs.

“Briefs? Since when do you wear briefs?”

I shook my head. “All my things … seem like they’re different. I thought it was just maybe Nickie or something.”

I sighed. “What about your stuff? Is any of your stuff … different?”

Conner unbuttoned his jeans and let them fall around his ankles. “Let’s see.”

I gave him a disappointed sigh.

Typical Conner Kirk.

“You still have that thing.” I pointed to the little scar above Conner’s groin—the faded mark, the brand, a souvenir from our first times in Marbury.

Conner pulled the waistband on his boxers down and looked. The thing used to scare him. Now, it seemed as though he’d completely shrugged it off as meaningless. Conner was so good at doing that, and I wished someday I could be that way, too.

But I couldn’t.

He said, “Yeah. My tattoo from the happy place.”

“But everything else seems the same, right? I mean, some things are bound to be different after being gone so long. Right?”

Conner kicked his feet out of his pants, walked over to the narrow closet across from the bathroom, and put them on a hanger.

“Don’t think about that cop, Jack. He’s not going to do anything to us. We didn’t do anything wrong, okay?”

“Okay.”

He pulled a pair of running shorts on over his boxers and sat down to lace his shoes.

“So, were you shitting Ben and Griff, or do you really not know where the lens is?”

If I stayed there much longer, I was certain we would get into a fistfight. And I never wanted to fight with Conner again.

So I turned around and made my way down the short hallway beside our bathroom. Conner left the closet door open. Inside, there was a folding ironing board, a safe, two thick terry-cloth bathrobes, and one of those webbed racks you put suitcases on. I saw Conner’s pants and a dozen empty wooden hangers lined up like teeth on a chrome rod that spanned the width of the closet.

It looked strong enough to support my weight.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

*   *   *

We ran around Regent’s Park, just like we did together so many times in early summer.

The air felt cool and damp. Everything smelled like wet rotting leaves.

For the first few miles, we didn’t say anything. I tried to stay in front of him, position myself so I wouldn’t have to look at Conner; and he kept trying to slow us down, to block me with his shoulder, running me into hedges and the short fences that were set up in places to keep people off the grass.

When Conner and I ran together, we didn’t have to say the words out loud. Sometimes just our pace or position told the other guy exactly what we were thinking.

I felt like shit, and Conner wanted to play.

I had missed him, missed this world, Nickie, so much. But now, all I could think about was getting away from it all—being left completely alone. Alone in a way that I would never bother, or be bothered by, anyone else.

And I could do it now, too.

I’d gotten them home.

Off the hook.

I needed to be left alone now.

Fuck you, Conner.

Fuck you, Jack.

Fuck this place.

As I ran, I pictured the strings, the burning clump of grass Davey fanned smoke from on a hot autumn afternoon in Pope Valley, the nesting dolls that Stella collected; and it dawned on me that every time I had skipped around—jumped onto another string, or deeper into another layer—that whether coming or going, there was always some little thing, here or there, that was almost unnoticeably different.