by Lisa Bunker
yes
OK, go.
“As I told you before, dearheart, Tidy Teddy lived on one side of a giant tree, right by the trunk. One day he decided he wanted to go to the other side of the tree, because his friend Flibberty Florence the Floating Fly had told him how beautiful it was there, and he wanted to see for himself. Now, in our world that would have been as easy as snip snap snee, because he could’ve just hopped around the tree trunk, but in Flatworld he couldn’t do that. Also, he couldn’t tunnel under the tree or through the trunk the way the dreaded rock worms would, so the only choice he had left was to go over.
“Now, if you think about a tree, dearheart, there’s the trunk and then the big branches and then the little branches and then the twigs and then the flowers and leaves, and if you tried to draw the outline of that tree on a piece of paper, it would take a very long line to wrap around the outside of every one of those branches and twigs and flowers and leaves. That line was the path that Tidy Teddy had to travel. What in our world would have been just a step or two became a quest in Flatworld. Who knows what adventures he might have on his journey? Who knows whom he might meet?”
OK, that’s enough, thanks. It kinda hurts having you type like that.
Wow, snip snap snee. And the dreaded rock worms. I forgot about them. They could eat their way through anything. I used to have nightmares about them. Funny how strongly it comes back now, seeing the words again.
Maybe I should use the rock worms in Jarq. Hm. Now I have to figure out how I would draw them.
23 Days to Go
Rick is coming over for dinner. And how do you feel about that? the therapist said.
OK, I guess. Whatever.
Rick is Mom’s new boyfriend. I think she really likes this one. He’s not like that other stupid loud guy before. This one is quiet and nerdy. He brought her flowers once and he rubs her shoulders and stuff, and they get gooshy with each other. They think they’re hiding it from us, but they’re not. Gah. Truly squirmworthy.
felix like rick question mark
Oh, he’s all right, I suppose, but with ZeroDay so close, I don’t want to have to deal with him. As I mentioned, Mom says we need to keep on acting “normal,” whatever that means, and in this case I guess she wants us to think it means things like having company over. But I think the real reason is she wants to sit with him out on the sunroom couch after dinner and cry on his shoulder.
why mom cry
Because she’s scared. Because of ZeroDay coming, and how … how I might not survive. Gah, I don’t want to talk about it. Going on.
The other thing that bugs me about Rick coming over is that we’re going to have to keep telling the Story, which I hate, but we have to, because the Powers That Be (as Mom calls them, and she puts a world of snark into it) over at the Facility have made it clear that they don’t want anyone to find out about Zyx and the Procedure. It’s all Top Secret and Classified. Honestly, I don’t know why we have to lie. Nobody would believe it anyway. But who knows what the Powers might do to us if we tell, so the Story it has to be.
Rick. Boyfriends. Mother Hubbard, I wish she would go back to having girlfriends again. They were nicer, mostly.
All right, fine, time for dinner with company.
e6 qxr exf check Stop it I’m trying kd7 f8n check Cut it out kc7 I said cut it out!
chess fun zyx love chess chess fun
Yeah, I get that. Could you contain your enthusiasm, do you think, for a minute, so I can type?
…
Thank you.
And now that I have my fingers back, I can actually say: still twenty-three days to go.
Something freaky just happened. Rick brought his new tablet with him, and after dinner he says he wants to show me something, and I’m like, Oh no, he wants to bond with me, but then Mom gives me this “please go along” look, and Grandy (in Vera mode, it being Monday—with pearls) kicks my foot under the table, so I clear my throat and say, “Sure,” and Rick shows me how he plays chess on the Internet. He has this app that signs into a server and there are all these games going on you can watch, or you can play. It’s actually kinda cool. So he goes through the way all the different pieces move and how you win, and all of a sudden I start twitching like crazy. It’s like convulsions, it’s so intense, because Zyx is trying harder than I can remember since the early days to make my hands work.
kc8 nxq
Cut it out!
…
Thank you, again. OK. So Zyx gets my hands onto the tablet, my fingers start flying all over the place, tap tap tap, and I look down and I’m playing chess with someone. I mean, Zyx is, because I don’t know what the hell is going on. Rick looks too and gets real still, and then a message pops up saying, “Black checkmated. KnightHawk67 wins.” KnightHawk67 is Rick’s screen name.
Then the message disappears because Zyx has started a new game. Vo makes the pieces jump a fraction of a second after the other person does, and the pauses while the other person thinks get longer, and in the pauses, Rick starts talking. “But I only just taught you the rules,” he says, and, “Nobody plays this fast”—things like that. Another message pops up: “White resigns. KnightHawk67 wins.”
Zyx immediately starts a third game, and Rick looks at the name on the screen and says in an awestruck voice, “This guy is an IM.” “IM?” asks Grandy, and Rick says, “International Master.” But it doesn’t seem to make a difference to Zyx, who’s moving just as fast as ever. At one point Rick says, “No, no, that’s suicide,” and then a second later, “Oh, wait, no, it’s not …” Then he gapes at me and says, “How the heck did you see that? Nobody sees combos that fast. Nobody.” Then the IM resigns.
chess pretty more chess
Yeah, I’m not so sure about that. Will you please shut up so I can type?
…
So anyway, a chat message pops up and the IM says, “It couldn’t be more obvious that you’re using a computer. I’m flagging your account.” And then we can’t play any more games, because the master has reported Rick for cheating.
Rick doesn’t care. He asks if I’ve played chess before, and Mom says maybe somebody taught me the moves when I was little but basically no, and then Rick gets all worked up and says that I’m a phenomenon, a natural chess genius, a savant, blah blah blah.
Up until now, watching Zyx play, Mom has a couple of times started to say something and then stopped again, like she can’t quite make up her mind if what is happening is good or bad. I can see how she might think it is bad, because, how to explain? But I have an idea. By now Zyx has let go enough for me to talk, so I mumble, “It’s like my hands were moving by themselves.”
Mom gives me a sharp look, but then the thinking line comes between her eyes and she nods, like, yeah, that’ll work. “Well, you know,” she says to Rick, “he suffered a traumatic brain injury when he was three.” This is the Story, which Rick has heard, but now she adds the logical next bit: “So maybe there’s a part of his mind that has this ability, but he’s not really in touch with it except when he plays.” Which is what I was thinking, so I’m glad she thinks it’s smart. Now if someone asks me questions, it’s OK if I can’t answer them.
There’s not much else to report after that. Rick was still excited and wanted to keep talking about it, but Mom firmly changed the subject, with some help from Grandy, and now I’m up in my room so I don’t have to see through the sunroom window how the backs of their heads are getting closer together. Also, the next installment of Novaglyph—my absolute favorite webcomic ever—is due out tonight, and I want to check the rest of my regulars too. Zyx, have you calmed down?
chess pretty zyx love chess
You mentioned that.
22 Days to Go
There’s something I haven’t been saying, and I still don’t want to say it, but I feel like if I don’t I’m going to implode, so I’m making myself do it.
Type, Felix. Type!
OK, fine, typing.
The day before yester
day, when I wrote about Flatworld, there was a reason I didn’t say anything about the day, which was that when I woke up, I couldn’t move at all. My eyelids unglued themselves and breathing was OK, but other than that I was frozen. I pushed against the lockup and it just hurt, like trying to push through a concrete wall, so I stopped. Then I tried to go limp, to flop out of it, but that didn’t work either. After about five minutes Mom called me again, and then I heard her coming up the stairs and a big surge of adrenaline pumped through me and my whole body spasmed and then I was able to move again. When she stuck her head in and ordered me to get up, I pretended that the way I was twisting in the chair was wake-up stretching, and I didn’t say anything about what had happened to anyone.
I don’t want to die.
How can those words just sit there on the screen like that? I’m shaking so hard I can hardly type. I don’t think I can go to school. I don’t think I can do anything. I don’t want to die.
not die
You can’t say that. You don’t know that.
explain
Yes, please, explain it to me.
…
Well?
not know how say
Well, then don’t say. Sometimes I wish you would just shut up.
is three is one is not one is now is then is all now
I DON’T UNDERSTAND! LEAVE ME ALONE! LEAVE ME ALONE ALONE ALONE! IS THAT ENOUGH ALONES FOR YOU?
Zyx. Sorry.
no worries
What, you’re all cool and laid-back now?
question mark
Never mind. Gah. Triple gah. I have to go to school. This sucks so deeply, I can’t see the bottom of how deep the suckage is.
zyx love felix
Cut it out.
Still, thanks for saying. Breathing now.
OK. Sorry I freaked.
no worries
OK, that almost made me laugh. I swear you do have a sense of humor, whatever you say. Let’s go.
I felt better for a while after my freak-out this morning, but as the day went on my body seemed to get heavier and heavier, and I started to feel like the color was draining out of everything. By lunchtime a gray fog had come down over the world, and each of my arms and legs felt like it weighed fifty pounds. It was just so much work to do anything. To take a step. To look up. To breathe.
Somehow I kept going, more or less. I ditched biology, but all I did was sit behind the gym in a corner out of the wind and look at the sunlight coming down through the bare branches. Not like it seemed interesting to me at the time. It was just where I pointed my eyes last before I stopped moving them.
sunlight through branches pretty
Not to me it wasn’t.
light dance
What are you trying to do, spoil my bad mood?
question mark
Never mind. Forget it.
…
It did get a little better after I sat there for a while—only forty-pound weights on each arm and leg, and then only thirty—so I went back in and dragged myself through the rest of the afternoon. When I got home Mom and Grandy were off somewhere, and I said something stupid and mean to Bea and she went and practiced louder than usual, which got on my nerves the way I’m sure she meant it to, and then she made a point of sitting still and not looking at me when I went past to come upstairs, and may I just say that the whole day has been one long tunnel of gray horribleness? Gah.
zyx love felix
Yeah, yeah.
21 Days to Go
I talked to Hector today. I mean, he talked to … I mean, we talked.
Morning was unpleasant, because Tim the Bore finally launched his retaliatory strike or whatever. He came up behind me in the hall and threw a ball of chewed-up corn chips at the back of my head from about two feet away, and then while I’m standing there looking at it on my hands he follows up with some names—the R-word again of course, and fag, which is funny, because I really don’t think he or anyone else has seen past Zyx to this other thing about me—and then he smacks the back of my head, just to make sure the corn and saliva mush gets nice and deep into my hair. Right then Mr. N comes around the corner with his whistle around his neck and a net bag of volleyballs in his hand and he doesn’t even break stride, he takes Tim by the arm and steers him into the office, so I guess it’s trouble time for Tim again. Jerk. He 100 percent deserves it.
I go into the bathroom to wash the mush out of my hair, as much as I can anyway, and then it’s time for lunch. I’m sure I still smell like a soggy corn chip, so I don’t sit with Barry and Mike and those guys like I sometimes do. Anyway, I’m tired of Mike bragging all the time about his Minecraft prowess. Instead I sit by myself, kinda sideways so I can look at the room if I want or just at the wall, and one of the times I’m looking at the wall and kerbopping the triangle, I feel the table bump and shake and I look around and Hector is sitting down. “Hi,” he says. “OK if I sit with you?”
Me: Duuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh … no, really, I don’t say that, it’s just what’s happening in my brain. I can’t speak, but somehow I manage to make my head move up and down. Doing the marionette thing again. Or, Zyx, was that you?
not
Uh-huh, I believe that. Maybe. So he sits and starts to eat, and I copy him so I won’t be doing nothing, and then we’re eating together, just him and me and the invisible awkward elephant that has also joined us at the table. A year-long minute goes by, and then he says, “I saw Tim in the office, waiting to talk to Dr. A.” Dr. A is our principal. “Did he do something else to you?”
“Yeah.”
“What a loser.”
“Yeah. But what can you do?”
“Yeah.”
More lunch with the awkward elephant. I have no spit in my mouth, none at all, so chewing is, well, um, sticky and weird. Swallowing, too. All I can think of is corn chip corn chip corn chip, and I would say I wished I could die if I wasn’t saying just yesterday that I don’t want to die. Right when I’m ready to bolt, Hector points at my chest and says, “She’s coming to MainahCon, you know.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about, so I look down and remember that I’m wearing my Novaglyph shirt, the one without words, just the symbol. I look back up at him, thinking, No way. Yes, it is the best webcomic in the universe, but nobody knows about it. Can he really actually know about it? Yes, he can, because he says, “Ash Cortez, who draws that. You know about MainahCon, right?”
“Yes. Of course. And seriously? Ash is going to be there?” Then for a second I’m not thinking about Hector even though he’s right there, because, Ash. I could actually meet her. My comic-drawing hero. And MainahCon is just within the fifty-mile limit of the circle we’re not supposed to go out of according to the Powers That Be, and it’s the weekend after next so I’ll still be alive.
“Yeah,” he says. “She lives in Boston, didn’t you know that? I wanna go meet her.”
This makes me look fully at his face for the first time, and, Nelson, he’s pretty. I like how his hair is so curly, with the clean, exactly shaped edge of it outlining his face, and he has such a pretty mouth, and his eyes are as brown as his face and they’re doing that brain-eye-eye-brain thing, just like with Ms. C. I say something like, “Fwa?” and swallow and try again. “You follow Novaglyph?”
“Yeah.”
“You draw?”
“Yeah.” Mother Hubbard, could this boy be any more perfect? Somewhere in my brain a little voice is telling me to say, “Me too,” but all I can do is gape at him.
He keeps looking back, and then he says, “Felix, can I ask you a personal question?”
“Fwa?” Great, Felix. But he gets it, because he goes ahead and asks: “What’s wrong with you?”
That looks bad just to type it, but it wasn’t. He wasn’t being mean, and it wasn’t the way people sometimes ask with this eager light in their eyes like they hope it’s something unusual and dangerous so they can think, “Cool!” No, it was like he cares. But not even like, “Ooh, poor baby.” L
ike a friend.
So, I know the drill. I’m supposed to tell him the Story. All of a sudden, though, I want to tell him the truth. I want to tell him everything, really badly. I even open my mouth to do it, but then Mom’s face pops up on the screen of my mind, looking scared, and she’s shaking her head and doing, “No, no,” with her mouth—she’s snarky about the Powers, but I get the feeling that underneath she’s scared that if we tell, they might do something awful, like take me away—and my whole body jumps like a frog getting zapped. Zyx, was that you?
not
It must have been you. It was exactly how it always is when you’re excited.
not not
By which you mean who knows what. Anyway, I’m flailing and flapping my mouth, and Hector starts to pull back. Not like I’m grossing him out, though. It’s like he held out his hand and I slapped it. His eyes go away and his face closes up and he says, “Never mind, sorry I asked.” Then he picks up his tray and starts to get up.
I really really want him to stay, so somehow in spite of the flailing I manage to say something like, “No! It’s OK.”
He stands there with his tray in his hands, looking at me. My face won’t stop twitching, but my eyes stay on his eyes, and after a couple of seconds he sits back down.
“You’re not going to blow up at me again?”
I shake my head, and he looks at me for another second and then says, “OK then.” And he starts eating again.
I go back to eating too, and the awkward elephant comes back and joins us, because I haven’t answered his question. I know Mom in My Mind is right, so it is going to have to be the Story, which I believe I have mentioned that I hate. Still, though, I think as I sit there, it does have little pieces of the truth in it, and I hear myself say, “I had an accident when I was three.”
He keeps his head down, but I can tell he’s listening, so I make myself go on. “And this accident, it left me with a traumatic brain injury.”
He nods. Silence. Siiiiilence. Actually, though, I’m starting to get used to it. At last he says, “So that’s why you …” and he does a move with his hand that means, all the weird things you do.
