Last Meeting of the Gorilla Club

by Sara Nickerson

  The good news was the smoke was clearing from the closet, rising into the attic and floating out through the busted window. Josh felt so much relief, until he looked back down and saw what was happening.

  The dry nesting material that had rained down into the closet was perfect tinder for a few leftover sparks. Another small flame grew quickly.

  “Go around!” Lucas shouted, grabbing for Josh’s coat. “There’s a door in the corner of the attic floor. It looks like a trapdoor. Get out of the attic and come to the room. Maybe the door will open from the other side. Or maybe you can run for help.”

  “Lucas!”

  Lucas was coughing again, and beating at the flames. “Hurry! I’ll be okay. Just hurry!”

  Josh got to his feet. His legs were shaking. His head bumped on the low part of the ceiling. The walls were wailing again, with sobs and cries for help.

  “We’ll get you out,” Josh said to the crying walls. He was saying it to Lucas. He was saying it to himself.

  He pushed through cobwebs and shadows to the far end of the attic. Just as Lucas had said, there was a door in the floor. Josh yanked on the handle and it opened easily. But whatever kind of steps had once been there were gone now. It was just a deep dark hole. Josh held on to the edge of the door and swung his legs down. He had no idea how far the drop was, and he was terrified, but he didn’t hesitate. He let go, into the darkness. His legs buckled when he hit the ground and a sharp pain shot up the same ankle he’d hurt when he’d fallen in the window well. Josh stayed on the floor, clutching his ankle and gasping for breath until he remembered Lucas, trapped in a closet. Then he found his way to his feet, even with the shooting pain.

  He stumbled down the same hallway as before, but nothing looked the same. The doors were all wide open and every room was furnished, like people still lived there. In the moonlight he saw it—the wallpaper and paintings and photos lining the walls.

  Gasping, limping, he ran past it all, straight to the room in the very center with the shards of broken glass and the terrible closet door. He put his hand on the door lightly, like he’d seen from firefighter demonstrations, and was relieved it wasn’t hot. “Lucas,” he shouted. “I’m here!” Lucas pounded his response.

  This was it. This was everything. There was a terrible moment when Josh turned the knob and wondered if he would be able to open it. No, he would open it. He had to.

  He pulled. The door flew open and Lucas Hernandez tumbled out. Three screeching balls of fur and claws scurried across the floor and to the open window. Black, billowing smoke filled the room and then floated away. The boys collapsed in the middle of the room, gulping in cold night air.

  Josh grabbed his backpack. He pulled out his inhaler.

  “Are you okay?” Lucas asked. He was clutching a shoebox to his chest.

  Josh nodded. “You?”

  “I don’t know,” Lucas said shakily. “I still don’t understand what she wants. What she’ll do next.”

  With those words, the boys scrambled to their feet. They made sure the fire was completely extinguished and there were no injured squirrels before helping each other to the hallway and then down the stairs. Getting out the basement window seemed easy after what they’d just been through.

  When they were in front of the house, looking up at the broken window, Lucas said, “Your coat!”

  Josh knew the coat was ruined. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. He remembered, before the move, his mom shopping for the biggest, most indestructible raincoat she could find. She’d wanted a coat to protect him from anything, and it did.

  ANOTHER TOUCHDOWN

  They were back where they started—at the NO TRESPASSING sign by the barbed-wire fence where two bicycles leaned against a tree. There was still so much to understand, but none of it seemed understandable.

  They walked their bikes across the meadow to the dirt pile next to the skeleton house. Josh looked up at the stars. He couldn’t stop thinking about the crying walls and the closet and the little girl who died in the fire. The attic and the squirrels and the ghost story told in the dark. He remembered the little kids, riding up and down that very mound of dirt—it seemed so long ago. “I can’t go home yet,” he said.

  Lucas said, “Me neither.”

  It wasn’t like they made a plan. They just started to ride. They rode on the smooth streets of Bear Creek housing development, peering into lighted windows. They saw families gathered at tables and in front of television sets. It made the world feel almost normal.

  Still, when they got to the waving bear, they turned away from the houses. The same bright moon lit the way as they found themselves on the road back to school. They rode through the bus zone and the walkway. Left their bikes at the edge of the playfield and walked to the high school stadium.

  When they reached the fence, Lucas said, “Let’s go inside.” He was still carrying the box.

  As soon as Josh’s feet touched the spongy black surface, he started to run. His ankle was sore but he sprinted across the springy lanes, right onto the football field. As he raced across the smooth green grass, he thought, This is it. This is why people run.

  He heard Lucas behind him, shouting something.

  “What?” Josh called.

  “Go long!” Lucas shouted. “For the pass!”

  It took Josh a moment to understand what he meant, and then he realized, I’m playing football! He looked up, over his shoulder, and a football appeared in the sky. It crossed the moon and soared above him in a magical, spiraling arc. Josh reached out his arms and made a giant leap. His body felt weightless, and the ball dropped perfectly into his outstretched hands.

  Tucking it under his arm, just like the Panthers did on Friday night, Josh dodged his way to the end zone. With Lucas on his heels, he dove for a touchdown and his shoulder hit the ground with a thud. He stayed on the ground with his face in the grass, closed his eyes and heard the crowd call his name. Then they stopped and the football disappeared because it was never there. But the grass—it still smelled amazing.

  Josh lifted his head. “You should smell this grass.”

  Lucas sat next to him. He leaned over and sniffed. “It smells like grass,” he said. Then he wiped his face with the back of his hand.

  They’d been trapped together in a closet. They’d scratched and pounded and kicked at a door. It all came back to them, in that moment. Everything. Sitting in the end zone, smelling grass, they tried to fit it into normal life.

  Josh lay on his back and looked up at the night sky. Lucas stretched out next to him. He said, “I keep waiting for her to show up.”

  “Why did she do it? The note? The closet?”

  Lucas clutched the box even tighter and said, “I don’t know.”

  The night air was damp and chilly but the two boys stayed like that, looking up at the stars. In that moment, the universe seemed so big and impossible to understand that Josh felt he couldn’t understand it completely. He imagined all the other solar systems out there, all the different possibilities for life. And then he thought, what if they weren’t all out there? What if there were different universes all around them? And what if sometimes, just sometimes, the spaces between them were visible?

  Lucas said, “You know how in all the ghost stories, the ghosts are always coming back for a reason? Like unfinished business or revenge or something?”

  “I guess,” Josh said, although he’d never really thought of it that way.

  “I thought that was what she was doing to me. You know, punishing me.”

  “You didn’t know she was going to get locked in the closet. Or use the lighter.” Josh glanced over at Lucas, holding on to the box. He thought about the boxes in his own house, closed up and labeled. He thought about his mom and the family photos hanging on the wall. He missed Big Brother.

  Something occurred to him then, lying underneath the big sky.
He thought, What if it’s not them that need to come back, but us needing them? What if that’s what brings them back?

  “I’m sorry about the note,” Lucas said. “I didn’t think you’d find it. And then, when I wasn’t sure, I came after you. I’m sorry I scared you like that. I’m really sorry.”

  Josh was still pondering the ghost thing. “But that’s just it. You did everything you could to help me. To protect me. Even though you were scared. Don’t you see? You went back to the place that scared you the most, and you saved me. I think—” He stopped.

  He wanted to say that Maxie Moon hadn’t come back to hurt Lucas. But that Lucas had been the one keeping his pain alive, all along. It was a hard thing to put into words. So instead Josh said, “You would have saved her if you’d known.” And when he heard Lucas let out a deep sigh, he knew he’d said the right thing.

  “Marvelous Mystery!” Lucas Hernandez exclaimed suddenly.

  “What?”

  “Just—everything. Don’t forget, okay?”

  “How could I forget it?” But Josh knew what he meant.

  When Lucas said, “I don’t feel as bad anymore,” the thought came to Josh again, that maybe ghost stories weren’t about the ghosts as much as about the people who saw them.

  He thought about sitting on Dead Melanie’s bench, day after day. How no one looked over. How he had become invisible. How he couldn’t even wear jeans because he was afraid they would make a noise. How it didn’t seem right to stay quiet anymore, invisible anymore. Because he was in this world. He wasn’t in the other one.

  So he told Lucas all that. His voice sounded too loud and too weird in his own ears, but he kept talking anyway.

  Josh waited until he didn’t think Lucas was going to say anything. Then, after a moment, Lucas said, “There was this one time. I was waiting for my mom to pick me up from school, but she had to work late so my grandma came. My abuela. She stood outside the car and called for me. But she called me what she always called me at home—Pollito. Do you know what that means?”

  Josh shook his head.

  “It means little chicken. But in a good way. Except some of my friends heard her and thought it was funny. They started calling me Little Chicken. So I asked her not to call me that anymore. Even at home. And now she’s gone. And all I can think about is how much I loved hearing her voice. I’d do anything to hear her call me Pollito again. And that’s—that’s what I’m thinking about Maxie right now, too.”

  Josh stood. He offered his hand. Lucas took it and Josh pulled him up, and the two boys stood in the middle of the field, feeling big and small at the same time.

  SUNDAY

  They didn’t talk on the bike ride home. They were all talked out. They barely said goodbye when Josh turned in at the waving bear. So many thoughts were racing through his head. He tried to push them away, but they swirled and danced, almost teasing him with something he should know. He knew it was about Big Brother.

  Josh braced himself before going into the house. He would have to explain his missing coat and the smell of smoke and how late it was and everything else. But when he walked into the living room, his mom was asleep on the couch, surrounded by boxes and photographs. He left her there, limped up the stairs, and climbed into bed.

  Sunday morning was bright and sunny. That was one good thing, Josh thought. He wouldn’t need to tell his mom about the raincoat. Not yet.

  She’d been full of questions since he’d slumped down the stairs for breakfast. He tried to answer without giving anything away, and the whole exchange gave him a big headache. So he excused himself to do homework, and that’s where he stayed most of the day. Big Brother didn’t show up, even though Josh got out the Lego.

  There was one thing Josh was most worried about, something he wished he’d asked Lucas on their ride home in the dark. He wished he’d asked what things would be like on Monday morning, when they saw each other in Mr. K’s class. Would they be friends? Or would it be too weird? Would Josh still be too weird? He really wished he knew.

  MARVELOUS MYSTERY

  Mr. K clapped. “Ready-set?”

  The class shouted, “You-bet!” They settled in their seats as Mr. K looked at the Marvelous Mystery sign-up sheet. “Mr. Hernandez—are you ready to wow us with your knowledge?”

  Lucas stood. He picked up the large board with the perfect miniature replica of Stonehenge and also a plain brown shoebox. He walked to the front of the class and set the board and the box on the presentation table. He cleared his throat. The faces of his classmates were blurry.

  Since the beginning of the school year, he’d been thinking about this project. It had opened his eyes to the mysteries all around him. He wondered if that’s what Mr. K had in mind, back when he assigned it. He thought it was an amazing miracle that Mr. K showed the video with the gorilla, and that he and Josh Duncan had both seen it.

  “Stonehenge is one of the most famous landmarks in Great Britain,” he started. “And to make this replica of it, I went out and I found rocks. When I was looking for the perfect rocks, I wondered about the people who built Stonehenge. I wondered what they saw in the rocks they picked. And why they placed them in the circle the way they did. I bet they had no idea that all these thousands of years later, people would be looking at their rocks, and wondering so much about them.”

  He picked up the shoebox and lifted the lid. He took out rock after rock and set them on the table with care. “This is a collection I started back when I was five. With my best friend. We loved looking for rocks together. Some of you might remember her, but we never talk about her, do we? But I want to talk about her now. So that’s what my presentation is today. I’m going to tell you about the marvelous mystery of Maxie Moon.” Lucas didn’t tell them about all the stuff that happened after she died. He didn’t talk about the closet or the fire or her family moving away. He just talked about her, the sparkly girl who was his best friend. The girl who had always wanted to be in fifth grade, on the big kid side.

  On Sunday, when he was getting ready for his presentation, Lucas examined each and every rock he and Maxie had collected together. His sisters said, “Why are you laughing about a rock?” And then a moment later, “Why are you crying about a rock?”

  All he could say was, “It’s a marvelous mystery.”

  It took being locked in a closet to see her again—really see. She hadn’t wanted to hurt him. What happened with him and Josh and the closet and the fire was an accident. Lucas didn’t blame her. And for the first time since her death, he didn’t blame himself.

  And what about the Gorilla Club? Why the meeting? In the house? He might not ever know all the reasons, but maybe it was as simple as this: Maxie Moon had found a new friend, and she’d wanted Lucas to find him, too.

  As Lucas continued his Marvelous Mystery presentation, holding up rock after rock and describing his best friend who had found them with him, he searched the room for two faces, but he only saw one. So he smiled, right into the eyes of his new friend, Josh Duncan.

  LAST MEETING

  After school, Josh was on the floor in his room, surrounded by piles of Lego. He was ready to start building but couldn’t pick up the first piece. He still hadn’t seen Big Brother, and the Lego made him think of him even more. So when Big Brother suddenly appeared, Josh was flustered. He didn’t know what to say.

  Big Brother spoke first. “I’m sorry for all that. Being so bossy.”

  “No, it’s my fault. And I’m glad you’re back. I’ve missed you.”

  “I’ve missed you, too.”

  Josh said, “It’s been completely crazy around here.”

  “I know.”

  “You do?”

  “Sure. I’m never far away.”

  Josh picked up a base and a set of wheels. “You want to build?”

  “Sure,” Big Brother said. But he just sat back against the bed and wat
ched. “When I first came back, we made a deal. Do you remember?”

  Josh shrugged. Already he didn’t like where this was going.

  “I want you to think about something, Josh. Do you remember what was going through your mind that night in the house?”

  Josh closed his eyes and saw it again. “What are you trying to say?”

  “I think you know.”

  Josh opened his eyes. “You’d better get started if you don’t want me to use up all the good pieces.”

  “I want you to tell me what happened.”

  Josh thought about how to say it. It had happened fast, in a flash of a moment, and it had been so big and so small at the exact same time.

  “I was thinking about Mom and Dad,” he started. “And all our invisible things. And it was like I finally knew they didn’t have all the answers for me. That I had to come up with some on my own. That I had to. And later, I looked at the sky. It went on forever. And it was so full of things. Things I could see and things I couldn’t. We think we know everything but we don’t. Does that make any sense?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you know what else?” Josh was amped up. All the thoughts that had been simmering in his mind were bubbling over.

  “What?”

  “Thinking about Mom and Dad like that, like they didn’t know everything in the universe anymore? It was weird.”

  “It is weird,” Big Brother said. “It’s called growing up. And you know what?”

  “What?”

  “It was truly brave, what you did. And you probably don’t need this from me, but I’m proud of you.”

  “I do need it,” Josh said. “I always need it.”

  Big Brother shook his head. “Not anymore.”

  Josh knew he was trying to tell him something, something more than how proud he was. “You’re going away, aren’t you?”

  When Big Brother didn’t answer, Josh thought about Maxie Moon and Great-Aunt Evelyn and all the friends he used to have, including the pirate ship captain. He thought about the gorilla and how people can’t always see what’s right in front of them.