by Andrew Smith
Conner picked on me about it. It happened all the time. I needed to get a new leash.
I kicked, took in a deep breath of misty air, and looked back at the face of the wave rising behind me. Conner was at the top, paddling just at the lipped edge of the swell’s peak. He got it. I watched him.
Conner was beautiful and perfect.
There is just this moment when your surfboard bites into the wave.
Conner pulled his arms in and pressed his shoulders up, arching his back like a seal sunning itself, like some carved decorative god on the bow of a warship, and flip! his feet snapped right into place beneath his hips as he pressed the board on a clean and brilliant carve, down and up and down again on the curling hand of the Pacific Ocean.
The Cayucos Pier was our favorite place to surf.
The break here wasn’t that good, but no place needed to be better than this when Conner and I came surfing together.
This was the most beautiful and perfect thing I have ever seen.
This is it.
I want this to be it forever.
I heard my friend whoop and howl as the wall of whitewash came toppling over me and pressed me down again.
I flattened out and kicked toward the shore, stumbling in the shallows to retrieve my board, which had come to rest on a tangle of rust-colored kelp in the shadow of the pier.
Conner watched me.
I imagined his playful irritation at Jack for always fucking up and losing his board. He came out of the water two hundred feet down the beach from me and headed up to the warmth of the sand where we’d left our things.
It was always like this.
It all seemed perfect.
Our clothes and backpacks rested atop the same towels we always used: Conner’s was an old flag he’d stolen right off the pole from a Holiday Inn motel in Las Vegas, and mine was a giant terry cloth Twister game.
This is it.
My clothes.
Conner’s clothes.
Everything was right.
Perfect.
I had no idea how we’d gotten to Cayucos, and I didn’t care.
I was not going to say anything to fuck things up again. I was not going to check my cell phone, or ask Conner what happened after I shattered the lens.
Clack clack, clack clack.
Above us on the beach, two boys were playing with lacrosse sticks, just fucking around, testing each other.
Clack clack, clack clack.
I glanced at them, thought I knew them, but I didn’t want to see. I looked away.
I didn’t care about anything except being here with Conner.
This is it.
Conner was lying on his back, shivering. His hands and feet looked so pale, like pink marble, where they emerged from his black and sand-peppered wetsuit. This was surfing in California.
I dropped my board and sat down next to him.
“I am so happy to be here,” I said.
Clack clack, clack clack.
Conner sniffled. He kept his eyes closed.
“Dude. One of these days you are going to fucking die out there losing your board.”
“Shit.”
Conner wiped his nose with the back of his hand then reached down and adjusted his balls.
“Did you see that last one I caught?”
He looked perfect. This had to be it.
“Sweet ride, Con.”
“Shit yeah.”
I was not going to say anything to fuck things up. Being here was too good.
Conner opened his eyes and propped himself up on his elbows. He was happy. I could see that. There was nothing better than this.
He looked down along the length of the beach. I could tell Conner was thinking about going back in the water.
Clack clack, clack clack.
And Conner leaned against me with his shoulder.
“Dude. Numbnuts. Right hand red.”
“Huh?”
Conner grabbed my wrist. “You’re bleeding.”
I hadn’t felt it at all. Where my hand pressed down into my towel, there was a pool of blood seeping out between my fingers.
Conner turned my hand over in his grasp. Always careful of me, always Conner.
“Shit. You must have got skegged or something.”
I felt sick, drained.
Clack clack, clack clack.
Drip.
Drip.
“You need to get stitches, dude. It’s fucking bad.”
Conner tucked his legs in and pushed himself up to his knees.
I did not want to leave.
Clack clack, clack clack.
My blood was all over Conner’s hands. Of course I knew what it was, but I didn’t want to say it.
Drip.
Conner was scared. “Jack. Lay down. You’re bleeding bad.”
I was being emptied out onto a goddamned Twister game towel.
This had to be it.
I said, “Con, this is home, right?”
Conner twisted the edge of my towel tightly across my palm.
“Dude. Just hold that shut. I’m going to put the shit in your truck, then I’ll drive you.”
He started to gather up the boards and our packs.
Zip.
Conner opened my backpack, looking for the keys to my truck.
Clack clack, clack clack.
“Why can’t we stay here?”
“Dude. You are fucked up.”
I turned my head to look back at Conner. I wanted to cry, to scream. I wanted to grab on to him and beg him to stay there and make this real.
I did not want to look at the kids playing lacrosse on the beach behind us.
Conner said, “What the fuck? What the fuck?”
He pulled the glasses from my pack.
Time to go, Jack.
Open your eyes.
* * *
There is a tired dampness between my legs, and I am pressed up against a wall.
Cool wood. It shines like the dashboard insets in that fucking cop’s car.
But this is not here.
The world rocks gently; I hear a clack clack, clack clack of train wheels below me.
I am lying naked under a single sheet, heavy with warmth, sweat, gasped exhalations, and I feel the tickling, the bristle of the girl’s pubic hairs against the skin of my butt as she presses her body into mine. I smell her, play with her sleeping fingers in front of me, in the dim space between my chest and the shuddering wall that flashes light-gray-light-gray-light-gray; the shadows of things that pass outside the window.
I unfold her perfect hand to put the tips of her first two fingers just inside my lips and lick.
I taste her.
There is no screaming here, no words, only the sound of the train wheels, the rocking, the sallow pulse of light, me, and Nickie.
This is the world.
This is not the world.
Marbury.
This is the train to Grove.
Nickie puts her mouth on a place between my neck and shoulder. I hear it when she inhales; she is smelling me, and I feel the warmth of her breath on my skin.
“Would you like to have breakfast, Jack?” she says.
“I’m having it right now,” I answer.
* * *
I gave up wondering where I came from. Nothing else can ever matter when the center of the universe is the blood-splattered floor of a kitchen. I wanted this to be Jack’s world—a forever that can’t be measured in heartbeats, seconds, the meshing of a cog’s gears, the equatorial rotation of some planetary object—gazing, my eyes locked on Nickie’s, across the table from me sipping ice water with a thin slice of lemon that I could smell, that surrendered small bits of itself against the cold crystal of her glass while she brushed a strand of black hair across one eye with a single finger I’d tasted in a moment that floated like that lemon slice inside some other trapped forever.
She was so beautiful and perfect that I couldn’t swallow.
I want this t
o be the whole world.
What are you doing here, Jack?
You have things to put away. Time to tidy up. Time to fix it.
What’s in your pocket?
What’s that in your pocket, Jack?
I closed my eyes tightly. Maybe everything would be gone when I opened them.
“What are you thinking about?”
I hadn’t touched the food on my plate.
“You know what I noticed? I think you turned just a little bit red when you said that, Nickie. I want to go back to bed with you, that’s what I’m thinking.”
She laughed softly. “You are going to wear yourself out, Jack.”
Her foot brushed mine beneath the table.
“That’s exactly what I’m trying to do.”
“Eat your breakfast.”
“Are you scolding me?”
She turned even redder.
I tried anything to keep myself from thinking.
This is not Nickie.
I had some vague memory of getting on the train, how we’d locked ourselves inside our sleeper as soon as we departed, tearing at our clothing, tangling ourselves on the floor, then, with Nickie seated on the edge of the table, her naked back pressed against the cool window, and, finally, straining, crawling up into our bed.
She ate a strawberry.
I rearranged the triangles of toast on my plate.
I remembered being in the Under; I could still almost hear Quinn screaming when the light came over us and washed me away. I felt cheated by the transient flash of Conner on the beach where we surfed, and I wanted so desperately to be able to hold on to the people I loved, to find an anchor somewhere. And I knew I’d left Ben and Griffin alone back there, but this was Marbury, too, and I wanted this to be my world now.
I wanted it so bad that I refused to remember anything else.
There was no Glenbrook, or not-Glenbrook, the thousand other not-worlds; I pushed those things away. I wouldn’t let myself remember them. No Freddie Horvath. I was here in this forever where Jack was never tied down and drugged, brutalized. Raped by a fucking murderer. Ben and Griffin aren’t dead. They don’t exist. No fucking plastic barrel of bones, no goddamned fucking cop. There is no Conner, no Henry Hewitt.
No hanging boy in the trees.
And no boy with the glasses.
Just this.
My Marbury.
Welcome home, Jack.
One thing: Check in your pocket, kid.
I’m not going to say I didn’t know what I was doing. That would be a lie. And there’s no reason for me to try to make myself sound good or pure or selfless.
This was it.
This could be forever.
Fuck everything else.
Right?
“Please?” I sounded like a little boy begging for another helping of ice cream. Nickie knew it. She smiled again, blushed.
“I want you to eat your breakfast, Jack.”
I put some egg on the corner of my toast and bit it.
“There.”
“Good boy,” she said.
“Where are we going?”
Nickie had this amused expression, like she thought I was teasing, playing a game.
She was only partially right.
I looked out the window. Flat. Endless fields of something green that was planted in perfect rows, tall enough to reach the windows on the train. It looked like corn, but it wasn’t.
Marbury: (noun) Third planet in order from the sun. No natural satellites. This planet, as the only in the Solar System which is inhabited by humans.
“We have four hours to Grove, I think,” she said.
I grinned, calculating. “That’s a lot of time.”
“I have a feeling the woman in the compartment beside ours has been listening to us through the wall. She’s likely complaining to the steward right now about our noise.”
Nickie smiled and nodded slightly.
I turned around. Our neighbor was sitting alone, two tables away from us. An old woman with an unhappy expression on her face, staring at me while one of the white-suited dining car servants poured a quaking stream of black coffee into her cup.
Clack clack, clack clack.
We were the only passengers in the car.
I nodded a good morning and turned back.
“It was probably a bit too … um, stimulating for her,” I said.
I held Nickie’s hand across the tabletop. The server loomed over us, offering coffee from a silver-handled decanter that was swaddled in a perfectly folded, spotless white napkin.
Somehow, I knew I’d seen them all before.
He poured.
Steam rose.
The train rocked and shuddered.
Clack clack, clack clack.
This was Marbury.
Nickie sipped her coffee. “Perhaps she’s spying on us. For your mother.”
My mother. Amy. In another world, Amy left me on the floor of a kitchen where I’d been born. In another world, my mother abandoned me.
This is not the world, Jack.
Amy had seen us to the train. Back to school for Jack, with Nickie as chaperone. School was the only safe place for boys during wartime, and Amy was just looking out for her baby.
It hadn’t gotten too bad yet.
This is the world.
Right?
Clack clack, clack clack.
I took another bite. When I swallowed, I thought it might fill me up, give Jack all the missing pieces, shut all the open doors, make this be forever.
A conductor, his uniform perfect, dark blue, unwrinkled, walked through the dining car. He smiled warmly at us and said hello. I stared at the glint of light reflected from the oval brass name badge he wore.
This is real.
I know that man.
I have seen him place after place after fucking place.
Quit it, Jack.
When he passed us, the door at the far end of the car opened. A family—a man in a freshly pressed striped shirt, a woman, and three small children—spilled in to take the only large table in the diner. The two little girls giggled and teased at their brother.
What’s that in your pocket, Jack?
I swallowed. “I’m not hungry, Nickie.”
She squeezed my fingers. Nickie turned my hand in hers and traced the crooked line of the pink scar that stretched across the center of my right palm. It tickled. She liked doing that to me. And Nickie said, “Shall we take a walk?”
* * *
It wasn’t much of a walk.
The sleeper was two doors up from the dining car.
And we both smiled, an untold joke between us, when we heard the door to the next compartment slide shut. I was lying on top of her. It was hot, and we’d scattered the sheets of the bed down onto the floor and cracked the window open, so I could feel the cooling rush of wind streaming over my naked skin.
I started to say something, but Nickie could tell I was only going to screw with our interested neighbor, so she pressed her fingers onto my lips and whispered, “Behave yourself.”
I nipped at her hand. “Behave? I didn’t hear you saying ‘behave yourself’ when we were undressing each other.”
Nickie pulled my face down onto hers. She slid her tongue past my lips.
I don’t think we’d had clothes on for more than twenty minutes for that entire train ride.
I said, “Behave.”
Then the train stopped.
There is an overwhelming quiet that smothers a train when it stops. Especially when it happens in the middle of nowhere, somewhere other than its destination.
I lifted my chest up from Nickie and looked at her. Our skin was soaked between us, and the air in our compartment, still and hushed.
“This can’t be Grove,” I said.
I glanced out the window, only to assure myself that the train was no longer moving. Farm fields and windmills. All perfectly still, brilliant green beneath the late summer sky.
I shrugged. I
wasn’t about to get up. “Maybe the train’s ahead of schedule, and we have to stop at a switch for another train.”
Nickie didn’t look concerned. I licked the side of her throat. She whispered, “Now we’ll have to be especially quiet.”
Then came the voices, urgent, distressed. Something like an argument in the corridor outside, and the sound of people—many of them—moving recklessly through the car, banging open the doors on the sleeping compartments.
I stopped, pulled myself away from Nickie. Somewhere down in the mess of cast-off clothes had to be something I could wear. I kicked through the pile, handed the top sheet up to Nickie.
“I want to see what’s going on.”
I slid into my pants, hurried. It felt awkward and wet—no underwear, socks, or shirt. I may just as well have walked out naked.
And there was something in my pocket.
Of course I knew what it was.
But I was going to get rid of it.
This is real.
It has to be.
* * *
As soon as I leaned out of our compartment, I came face-to-face with a uniformed man holding a rifle. He had one hand grasping our door, and was trying to force it open.
The hallway was choked with Rangers.
There must have been fifty of them.
My first instinct was to duck back inside, but the soldier, a sergeant whose last name was Ramirez, stuck his hand under my arm, as though he would lift me by the armpit. He yanked me out into the hallway in front of him.
“What are you doing in here?” he said. “Go that way. Forward.”
“I’m a student. I’m on my way to school. I have my student docs in there.”
I tried to push past him, back to my compartment, to Nickie.
“It doesn’t matter what you have,” Ramirez said. “Move. That way. Now.”
Then he goaded me toward the front of the train, jabbing my belly with the barrel of his rifle.
“Fuck this shit!” I pushed the gun away and tried to squeeze past him in the narrow hallway. That’s when I saw another Ranger duck his head inside the open door to the sleeping berth.
“Nickie!”
Next thing I knew, I was facedown, sprawled on the floor at the Ranger’s feet. My mouth was bleeding. The sonofabitch had punched me, and he pressed down on the back of my balls with the toe of his boot, trapping me there in agony.
I screamed, jerked. But I could feel how he’d butted the rifle barrel squarely into the base of my skull, pinning my face down into the floor.
