The Chalk Artist

by Allegra Goodman

  Now he was creeping closer to the Gates. Digging into sludge with dragon’s bone, Aidan’s knight caught a glint of gold. He knelt to unearth a token for the ferry, which began gliding toward him, drawn by the bright coin. At last he boarded, crossing to the darker shore.

  Daphne didn’t show herself, but he heard her voice as he jumped off the boat into thick mud. “Look down,” she called. “Look down.”

  Aidan stared at his knight’s legs. Leeches, long, black, and gelatinous, had torn his leggings and his boots away. He pulled them off, one after another, flung them away, but they snapped back, wrapping themselves around his arms and neck. Each place they sucked, an ooze of silver flowed and blackened. He dripped with tarnished phantom blood.

  Invisible, Daphne laughed as he finally threw the suckers off. He slashed them with his sword and they fell, curling like dark ribbons at the mucky river’s edge.

  She taunted him, but he was strong. Furious, he charged ahead and destroyed the next monster he saw, slaughtered a double-headed dog, slashing two throats with one stroke.

  “Where are you?” he called out to Daphne.

  “Inside.”

  He stumbled through a marshy swamp, tripping over rocks, and roots, and fallen trees. He cut a path before him, but his sword dulled and slowed as he fought onward. In EverWhen you got stronger, earning more power and collecting more weapons in a qwest. In UnderWorld, you struggled as you advanced; your weapon failed you. The silver blackened on his blade, and his silvered arm tarnished as well.

  Light-headed, he played on, late into the night. His schoolbooks lay forgotten in the mud. Jack and Liam wanted to come over, but he told them no. Messages from his company in EverWhen remained unread.

  Smaller and smaller in the distance, the people he had known in real life. It was as if he’d left them on the riverbank. Their faces became indistinct and their voices died away. Diana was the last one he could hear. She threatened to tell their mother that he played all night, but he knew she wouldn’t. Week after week she kept his secret. Their pact held, even as the wall between them turned to stone.

  He battled demons while his sister slept and his mother worked her night shift at the hospital. He traveled leagues, and it was morning when at last he saw UnderWorld’s horizon glowing red, a smudge of fire in the distance. Then, with new strength, he rushed through bog and bracken to arrive stunned, breathless, at massive gates with runic messages forged in iron. ABANDON HOPE he read, and pumped his fist. Yes! He had reached the gates of hell.

  Springtime was an old movie outside. Loud daffodils and bright birds singing. Junior year was a recurring dream. For months he had done the minimum to avoid calls home. Dashed off lab reports, polished off math problems, filled bubbles on answer sheets. He learned the way he ate—gulping down enough to get through the day. School was a holding pen, home a portal for the game.

  “When can I see you?” he asked Daphne the next night.

  “Inside.”

  He pulled at the Gates’ iron bars with no success. The metal warped and bent, refashioning itself into a massive Iron Man with slits for eyes. The Iron Man was twice the size of Aidan’s knight. Under iron feet, the earth resounded like a drum. Aidan tried to fight, but with one blow, the Iron Man knocked him down and snapped his sword.

  “Daphne!” Aidan dropped his stump of a sword and struggled to his feet.

  The Iron Man had no weapons. He killed with his body and his claws. Without even bending, he kicked Aidan’s chest in.

  Aidan could not recover from that blow. He watched the Iron Man pound his gaming body again and again. Black blood trickled from Aidan’s mouth. “Daphne,” he called again. As if to silence him, the giant kicked Aidan’s head off, and with a surge of nausea, Aidan watched his avatar’s staring eyes freeze and his hair blacken in a fountain of blood.

  The world went dark. “Daphne!”

  No answer.

  “Where am I?”

  “Inside.” Her voice was hollow, echoey, as though she were hiding in a deep cave underground. Then he saw that the game was not altogether dark, but shadowy. He found himself in a new place, vast and wet. He heard the drip of water, and he began to make out the contours of cavern walls. He was ashen, from his bloody hair to his torn leather boots. With his two hands he tried to lift his head and screw it back in place. He got it on backward at first. His gaming vision blurred, and he almost lost his balance. He reached out with an arm to steady himself, and the stone walls buckled for a queasy moment before he got his head on straight.

  “I’m over here.”

  He whipped around, starting a small avalanche of pebbles. He heard them pinging far below. Looking down he could not see the cavern floor, only ledges upon ledges, piled with guano.

  “Careful.”

  At last. She leaned against the cavern wall. Her hair was white blond in the darkness, her leather bodice half unlaced.

  “Who are you, really?” he demanded.

  “Daphne,” she told him, for the thousandth time.

  “Where do you live?”

  “Close.”

  For a moment he couldn’t speak; he could scarcely breathe. He played with people from all over the world, and took huge distances for granted. He had never pictured her nearby. “Please.” He had to see her; he had to touch her; he couldn’t wait.

  Slowly he stepped closer. Ever so slowly, he pulled the laces on her bodice, so that for an instant he saw her breasts, or at least the swollen image of her breasts exposed.

  He heard a car and froze. Footsteps on the porch, a door opening. No, that was the other door. Priscilla, not his mother.

  In that instant, Daphne turned away and laced herself up again.

  He lifted his hand and watched himself touch her shoulder. She almost smiled as she looked back at him. He reached, but she escaped again. Sure-footed, she ran down the narrow ledge and vanished.

  Scrambling after her, he found a long fissure in the rock, an entrance to another cave, not vast, but intimate, a cavern flickering with candles set into the hollows of the walls. He edged inside. “Which way?”

  “Right in front of you.”

  He found her blocking the entrance to a tunnel absolutely dark.

  “This is the way to the First Circle.”

  “Let me in.”

  “Why?” she asked lightly. “What’s in it for me?” Her teasing voice hurt after all this time qwesting.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “Then you can’t go on.” She sealed the entrance with a boulder, easily rolling the gigantic rock. “You can wait for the release like everybody else.”

  “Don’t go.”

  In his dreams she struggled, but she couldn’t get away. Then he devoured her, ripping off her clothes, pushing himself inside her, biting her nipples until they bled. His dreams throbbed fast and hard as he licked her white skin and tasted her blood, sweet as metal. In his dreams she belonged to him, but in the game, he couldn’t catch her.

  Caverns and candlelight disappeared. When she materialized again she was standing on a stone bridge, still out of reach. In EverWhen they’d played together. Now she played against him, toying with him, and he was confused by how much he wanted her, and how much he hated her. He sensed that she was using him, but he could not break free.

  “Fight me.” He bounded onto the bridge, brandishing his broken sword.

  “You know what I want.” Her voice was close, and slightly agitated, tempted by his intensity.

  “You want me to paint.” He watched her materialize, holding two weapons.

  She tossed him a new sword, but before he could get a grip, she lunged and sliced his shoulder.

  “See you in hell,” he said.

  “Write it out.”

  “If you win,” he said, parrying her silver blade, “I’ll write it out. But if I win…”

  She grazed his ear with the knife edge of her blade.

  “I get to see you.” He slashed and severed her wrist. Her left hand fell t
o the cavern floor.

  She kept her eyes on him as she bent to pick it up, but he was quicker, and he got there first, pocketing her white hand as his prize.

  Stroke and counterstroke, they watched themselves bleed, clanging swords and breathing hard. They couldn’t feel a thing, but they were gasping with each blow. “See you…” He pushed hard, driving her back against the wall. “In real life.”

  She parried, but he cut her thigh in the gap between her leggings and her tall boots. Then in one fluid motion, he knocked her sword from her hands. “I get to meet you,” he said, drawing his dagger, plunging the point deep into her heart.

  In the next room, Diana typed with books and papers spread out on her bed. In my opinion Huckleberry Finn is a character whose morality is different from society but in a good way. She picked up her paperback and leafed through it, looking for a quote. Lazare loved quotes, so Diana used as many as possible. The trouble was Lazare expected a lot of other things too. She had written out a rubric, also a series of step-by-step instructions, starting 1. Write with a sense of purpose.

  As usual, her mother was knocking on her door. “What?”

  “Hey, it’s Aidan.”

  Diana was so surprised she lost her place.

  “Can I come in?”

  “I guess.”

  He closed the door behind him, even though their mother wasn’t home. She stared as he took a seat on her desk chair, straddling it backward. “I have to ask a favor.”

  “No.”

  “Wait, listen to me first.”

  “No,” she repeated, just to annoy him. She missed him so much.

  There were days Diana didn’t talk to anyone at all. She woke and ate breakfast alone, walked to school alone, kept her head down in the halls. Brynna was still home with her new baby, and she was coming back to school at some point, but even when she talked about returning, she seemed far away, like a girl who’d died, promising to visit Earth again. Brynna had changed forever, no matter what she said. She was living this strange afterlife, sequestered with her parents and her newborn and a million stuffed animals and white china picture frames with wings and halos. She’d even named the baby Angela.

  “Are you writing your paper?” Aidan cast his eyes over the papers on Diana’s bed.

  “Obviously.”

  “When you finish, can I copy you?”

  He spoke without hesitation, but when Diana looked at him, he quavered just a moment. He’d left her far behind, but he still needed her. He ignored her, but she knew his secrets. She’d heard him whispering Daphne’s name and talking about tagging walls at night. She’d listened as he crept downstairs. She’d seen his graffiti, the long chain of letters CUCU tagging the lobby of the school.

  Naturally, Diana had heard DeLaurentis lecture about defacing public property. She’d scrunched down in the auditorium, knees up on the seat back in front of her, and watched the principal exhort students to come forward with information. Diana had not come forward. That wasn’t even a question in her mind. As far as property went, she hated school. As far as Aidan went, he was no criminal; or if he was a criminal on occasion, he was also a genius, mastering everything he tried. He had been the musical twin, the academic twin, the fantastic test-taking twin. He got the highest scores and he got into the worst trouble. When teachers talked about not fulfilling potential, they were just a little worried about Diana; Aidan was the one who really scared them. The gap between his performance and abilities was so huge.

  “Can I?” Aidan asked again.

  “No! We’ll get in trouble.”

  “Why? We’re not even in the same class.” Diana had Miss Lazare and he had Mrs. West.

  “What are you talking about? We’ll get caught and fail English. I’m not taking summer school.”

  “We won’t get caught,” Aidan insisted. “And if we do, I’ll take the blame.”

  “Don’t you think Lazare and West compare their students’ work?”

  “How would they have time for that?”

  “What do you mean? That’s like their job. That’s what teachers do.”

  “I always let you copy me,” Aidan said.

  This was true. More than once in elementary school, when Aidan had finished homework first, he’d handed over his word searches or long-division worksheets to Diana. “Why do you want my paper now?” she asked. “You never asked before.”

  “I have to turn something in tomorrow.”

  “Just do it.”

  “I haven’t read the book. I don’t have time.”

  Diana thought about the silver river in her brother’s room. “You’ve been playing that imaginary girl.”

  “She’s not imaginary.”

  “You have an imaginary friend in a totally imaginary place.” She spoke mockingly, but she also envied him. She wanted what Aidan had, crazy as that seemed. All through the winter she’d walked and run along the Charles. Panting, she had slogged through snow and ice, and now, in spring, through mud. She ran until her breath came hard and her feet ached, and sometimes even then, she could not outrun her loneliness. “Let me play,” she said.

  “No way.”

  “Let me try.”

  “You’ve already tried EverWhen.”

  “No, the new one.”

  “I can’t. It’s secret. It’s not even on sale.”

  “I want to see it.”

  “Why?”

  She sprang off her bed. “I want to see where you live. Come on.”

  “I can’t.”

  She loved that she could make him nervous. “I’ll let you copy, if you let me play.”

  —

  “You can’t tell anyone about it,” he warned, as he led the way into his room. “And you can only play a little bit. You’ll have to use my avatar. I can’t give you a new one. Stand here. Just wait. Stand still.”

  Diana wasn’t listening. She was watching the game rise up around her. Great caves shadowed Aidan’s walls, dark passageways came into focus, and suddenly a flight of tiny animals. She sprang back as a thousand white bats swooped down upon her.

  “That’s you,” said Aidan, pointing to a ghostly knight, ducking and weaving in the onslaught. “You can fight off these bats with your sword. Lift your right hand.”

  She lifted her right hand and saw her weapon. When she slashed her sword, the bats screamed around her, and their red blood spattered. Startled, she stopped moving, and the creatures swarmed her ghostlike body, biting and ripping at her neck, arms, and face. She covered her eyes as Aidan warned, “Don’t drop the sword.”

  Too late. More and more bats attacked her, flying mice with tiny vampire fangs. They covered her entire body. Whenever she moved, the creatures moved with her, a mass of squirming bodies and red eyes. She swatted at her face, and watched herself knocking bats away.

  Her stomach lurched when she saw what was left of her avatar. The bats had eaten half the knight’s flesh away, but they had not exposed muscle or bone. No, their attack revealed something else, another creature, an elongated nose, black eyes, wide-set, rolling independently. An ear, unfolding like a leaf from the raw patch where the knight’s ear had been, and from his forehead, nubs of horns. Doubled over now, she heard Aidan calling to her.

  Her image doubled over too, and shook the bats away as human limbs morphed into four legs. She was changing into a deer. She could reach out and almost touch her other self, the doe hovering before her, pale flanks foaming, ears twitching, body quivering with a strange, borrowed life.

  Aidan said, “Don’t throw up in my room.”

  “I won’t!” She felt hot and tearful all the same. As she tried to catch her breath, she lifted her head, and saw the deer prick up her ears. Her head was small, her neck long and delicate, her legs slender. How beautiful she was. Heart pounding, adrenaline racing through her body, she couldn’t take her eyes off her deer-self.

  A clanging echo in the cavern, great footsteps like giants walking. A jolt of fear. How could she escape?

&nbs
p; “Aidan!” she pleaded.

  He knelt and closed a black box, a console without buttons. As he screwed top to bottom, the deer vanished, along with swirling bats. The bloodstained cavern melted, and Aidan’s walls emerged again, his foil-covered window, his bookcase, his floor strewn with dirty clothes.

  Diana sank onto the bed.

  He looked at her anxiously. He couldn’t copy her essay if she couldn’t write. “Are you okay?”

  “That was sick.”

  “I know.”

  She closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall. “I’m seeing spots.”

  “They go away.”

  “I can see them with my eyes open.” The spots were small and bright like fireflies, but they didn’t last.

  She had a strong stomach. She could read on long car rides. She did fine in boats. After a few minutes, Diana sat up on the edge of his bed. “That was seriously the most nauseating thing I’ve ever seen. Can I play again?”

  “You promised. You can’t change your mind now.”

  “I was kidding. God!”

  He didn’t see the joke. She didn’t care about the game, she didn’t care about the copying; she cared about him.

  “It’s late,” he said.

  She asked, “Is this like the first thing you’re going to turn in all year?”

  He opened the door. “Get started.”

  “Stop panicking!”

  She returned to her room, gathered up computer, rubric, paperback, and descended to the kitchen. There, beneath the apple clock, she ate half a bag of pretzels as she pounded out three pages. She was writing with a sense of purpose now, and words came easily. She laid on the quotations. She expatiated on Huck Finn’s personal morality. She even threw in Lazare’s favorite word, ironically. Huck Finn decided to go to Hell but for a good cause which ironically shows some things are more important than what you believe society wants you to do.

  That year school went on almost forever. To make up for snow days, the district mandated extra class time straight through the end of June. Kids pulled together their portfolios, and, without warning, the weather changed from cold to scorching. Bees flew in through the open windows of Emerson’s un-air-conditioned classrooms. Kids brought miniature spray-bottle fans, and Mr. DeLaurentis had to announce that these devices were for personal use only, which caused some snickering. You could spray yourself, but not your girlfriend.