Donovan Meanwhile: Kings of Sparta

by Bierley, B. L.

  The guy she was talking about didn’t sound all that interesting to me, honestly, but I let her go on about his latest accomplishments on the swim team or the fact that his parents were thinking about enrolling him in some college-prep classes, because as long as she was talking it wasn’t awkwardly quiet.

  So after dinner I’m ready to get up and go into my room. I’ve got the soft little bagged item in my backpack which is sitting on the couch, where I threw it when I came inside this afternoon, but it’s been calling to me the entire time. I can’t wait to get back to my room and check it out.

  Screw what Matt said, I think. I’m not going to get confused just by looking at something.

  I excuse myself from the table, but my mom stops me with a comment. “You’re going to have to start preparing for college, soon, you know.”

  “I know,” I say, and turn to leave.

  “Your mother has something to tell you,” my dad says in his most dad voice. It’s the only voice he can use around me lately, since his normal speaking voice is reserved for people he actually wants to converse with.

  I sit back down at the table, and my mom takes it as her cue to tell me what’s on her mind.

  “I was speaking with Kathleen earlier,” she begins. That’s her friend, the one with the son I don’t really care to meet. “She had some good recommendations about college prep classes for you, too. I know you’re only a sophomore but it’s never too early to start preparing.”

  It’s too early if it’s right this instance.

  “Your dad and I think you should start this program.” She slides a little brochure across the table at me. It’s a narrow trifold booklet with a picture of a generic, green college campus on the cover and some very happy and very diverse students milling about. I gather from a quick scan through the inside of the booklet that it’s a place where you go after school and on the weekends to learn how to go to school better.

  Like teaching inmates how to be better citizens by making them go to prison class.

  “Um,” I say. “I’ll think about it.” I drag the pamphlet off the table and start to get up again.

  “That’s not all,” my dad says, looking me in the eye.

  “What happened today,” my mom continues, looking to him briefly for moral support, “isn’t our business.”

  I realized she’s talking about whatever happened that gave me the black eye and the swollen lip (and the multiple bruises they couldn’t see at the moment). I let out a long sigh.

  “It’s not a big deal,” I explain.

  She shakes her head, “No, no, it’s ok. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. But you’re almost an adult, and we do think you’re capable of handling your own affairs at school. We spoke to the principle today, and he told us he thought some of the other boys were antagonizing you. If that’s true, just know that you have our full support and if you need us to help you, we’re here to do that.”

  My dad shot me a look. “Just don’t go to jail. Fighting isn’t the answer, ok?” Then he gets a smirk that I recognize as the smirk he gets before he says something he’s very enamored with. “Although from the looks of your face, you didn’t do much fighting.”

  My mom gives him a dirty look, and he just shrugs.

  “What he’s trying to say is that it’s important to us that you’re safe, but that you handle yourself in a respectable manner.”

  I look back and forth between the two of them.

  “Your grades have been good so far, you’ve impressed a lot of people. Don’t screw it up now,” my dad says, and pushes away from the table. My mom is left to give me that soft, apologetic look that also says she agrees with him.

  “We don’t want to see you throw your chance at a future down the drain. So we’ve decided that this year we’re going to implement some stricter rules for you. It looks like you could probably use it.”

  I don’t say anything else, and finally she excuses me. I swiftly go down the hall with my backpack and shut the door to my room.

  I let out a big sigh.

  Even nice parents can be the worst.

  I look up at the clock on my nightstand, and the glowing red numbers tell me it’s 7:15.

  Less than five hours to go before I have to leave for the mall. I’ve never snuck out of the house before, but then again I’ve never gotten beat up at school before.

  This was a whole day of firsts, it seemed.

  I watch the sun go down over the horizon, which I can see fairly well from my bedroom window.

  Later, I sit in the dark and look out at the moon, passing the mystery bag between my hands.

  Finally at midnight, I steel myself and slip out the bedroom door.

  Go out the window, you may be saying. Sure, that sounds logical. But first of all I’ve never done this so excuse me if I’m not up on all the best methods. Secondly, my parents are fast asleep and have no inkling that I’m even thinking about sneaking out, so the traditional path out of the house should also be the easy one.

  I’m halfway down the stairs when the living room light flicks on and my dad is sitting there in the reading chair, the light spilling over him like a comic book villain.

  “Your brother never used to sneak out. Don’t you think that means something?”

  My heart is pounding, but I try to speak casually.

  “I’m just going out for a bit,” I say. “Am I not allowed?”

  It’s not like I’m trying to start a fight with him exactly, but I’m also not working very hard to avoid one. Honestly, it kind of feels like a fight is inevitable between us. Like it’s this balloon of tension that’s been filling up ever since he walked in on me and Raphael, and I’m tempted to pop it just to get the whole mess over with and start the healing.

  Not that there would be any healing. It might just be a big pock mark. But either way, nobody likes a giant zit in their life.

  “We told you not to screw up your chances,” he reminds me. As if the point of their little talk earlier wasn’t abundantly clear.

  “Yeah, I get that. I’m just gonna grab a hot dog at the 7-Eleven.” I’ve never been a good liar, and this was no exception. He doesn’t even pretend to think that I think that I’m getting away with anything.

  He stands up and grabs his car keys. “I’ll take you, then. How about that?”

  I let air out of my lungs.

  Bluff: called. Well-played, Jerk Father.

  I run my tongue across my inner-cheek in thought, and then finally cast my eyes back toward my room before following with the rest of my body.

  No need to say anything, nothing to say anyway. To speak would be to acknowledge he was right, and I can’t do that.

  Back in my room, laying in my bed. I grab the bag and lay it on my chest. What could be inside it?

  Screw it. I’m not gonna make it to Virginia Highlands tonight. Let’s see what this is all about.

  I pull open the drawstrings on the bag and I kind of wish I had a drumroll or something going on, but then I fish out what’s inside and it’s just a pair of sunglasses.

  They kind of look like Oakley’s. Pretty standard wraparound. The kind I would never be caught dead wearing. The kind of sunglasses you wear if you’re into hunting or magic.

  I look them over, and there’s not really much special about them except for a light blue strip of translucent material that runs down both sides, from front to back. I pick at it with a thumbnail but it doesn’t feel like anything.

  I guess this is what Fake Matt was making such a big deal out of? A pair of Oakley’s?

  “Everything’s going to change,” he had said.

  I lay back and hang my head off the edge of the bed and look out at the upside down sky. I can feel my lip throbbing with my pulse.

  Change does sound nice right about now, I think.

  The whining sound of a motorcycle somewhere outside wakes me up sometime later. My head is killing me because it’s been hanging off the bed this whole time.

  Then the motorcycle ge
ts closer. And closer.

  And then it’s right outside my house, right at the end of my driveway.

  I get up and look but I know what I’m going to see.

  Fake Matt, straddling a black street bike, looking toward my window, helmet tucked under his arm.

  “What are you doing here?” I hiss out at him.

  “You’re late.”

  “I’m not going.”

  “You have to. You have no idea how important it is.”

  “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  “Donovan,” he says. “There’s a whole new world waiting for you out there. If you won’t do it for the cause, do it for the adventure.”

  I narrow my eyes. “Who are you?”

  He grins. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  I don’t know what’s going on, but the excitement ends up getting the better of me and the next thing I know I’m doing the unthinkable: climbing out the bedroom window.

  Something about a handsome man on a black steed, even if it’s your own brother, makes adventure seem like the right choice, every time.

  I wrapped my hands around his waist and we rode off into the night. He let me wear his helmet, so I didn’t feel the wind on my face.

  I could feel it on my hands, though, and it felt nice.

  Speed.

  Danger.

  Freedom.

  Things I wasn’t used to at all.

  There were still a few cars out as we headed north on the 1, but for the most part everything was dead. It was past midnight on a Monday, the first day of school, so most people were probably trying to be responsible and be home with their kids.

  We end up at the park in what seems like record time. As we’re pulling onto Ives street to go up by the basketball courts, Fake Matt flips a switch and the engine sound dies out. I lean over and look at him curiously.

  “The sound is just for effect,” he says. We’re still driving, but the bike is completely quiet now as we pull up to a stop.

  I get off and pull off the helmet.

  “Go on,” he says, as if I’m supposed to know what it is I’m there to do. I shrug and look around. He nods toward the basketball courts. He kind of smiles, but there’s a bit of stress in his look, too, like we’re actually in a hurry that he’s not telling me about.

  “Go down there,” he says, pointing with his eyes, “and put on the glasses.”

  “Then what?”

  “You’ll know,” he says. “Just keep looking until you find it.”

  I hope he’s right, and I walk out into the middle of the basketball court, wet with recent rain fall. It’ll turn cold enough to snow soon. Might be cold enough right now.

  I look back at him, but he’s not looking at me. He’s looking around, like a scout. Like a guard dog.

  With some trepidation, just because nobody has ever, ever, in the history of things, made this big of a deal about putting on a pair of sunglasses—I put on the sunglasses.

  Immediately I’m looking at a whole new world.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The cracked, spongey floor of the court is replaced with a tent city. Vast, and frantically busy. People hurrying left and right, wearing tattered clothes and carrying weapons. Some of them are fighting with each other, just yelling, although I can’t hear any of it. Some of them are crying. Most of the rest are either eating, laughing, or sleeping.

  It looks like some kind of refugee camp.

  Behind it I can still see some of the Arlington buildings. The topography is the same as where I’m standing.

  I take off the glasses and it all vanishes.

  I look back at Fake Matt. He’s just staring at me.

  He did say to keep looking.

  I examine the glasses again in disbelief, trying to decipher how the trick works—or even what the point of it is.

  And then I put them on again. As soon as I do I see the refugee camp in vivid color, three-dimensions. It’s like the best virtual reality display ever.

  There’s a guy standing there, maybe fifty feet away by on the of the tents, and he’s holding up a sign with a date written on it, and it just so happens to be my birthday. I mean it could be a coincidence, but something tells me it’s exactly the thing I’m supposed to be looking for.

  I shout to him, but he doesn’t hear me, just like I can’t hear him. All I hear is my own voice echoing across empty blacktop. I feel kind of silly and wonder if Fake Matt is giving me a disapproving look.

  I walk toward him, the man holding my birthday. I look down but I don’t see my feet, I don’t see a body or hands or anything, but I’m still moving closer.

  And when I look up there’s a couple of little kids running past and one of them runs straight through me, or straight through where I would be standing if I had a corporeal form.

  Bad collision detection, I think, harkening back to my knowledge of game design. I tut tut the lazy designers, although I have to praise their level of graphical detail. Standing next to the man with the sign, I reach out and try to tap him on the shoulder or something. I don’t really expect it to work, since I don’t have any hands I can see, and it doesn’t. I don’t have an avatar in this world, apparently.

  Another knock against the designers. Don’t they know it’s easier for someone to get invested in a game if you give them a sense of identity?

  I just stand there for a minute wondering what to do, and he lifts his writs and looks at a watch. It’s thin and black and surprisingly high-tech for the surroundings. Then as if he’s trying to keep a schedule, he starts walking down one row of tents. He’s still holding up the sign for a few paces but then he drops it down by his side. He looks behind him, looks right at me it seems, and then keeps walking.

  I follow him the whole time as we walk down to the end of the row, toward a little brown tent with a green tapestry draped over the front.

  The man pulls back the tapestry and steps aside and looks vaguely in my direction, like he’s trying to look at me but he can’t really see. I wonder for a moment if he’s blind.

  Then I look inside the tent and there’s an old man there, maybe in his seventies, sitting on the floor of the tent in front of what can only be described as an electronic altar.

  I suppose it can be described other ways, too, probably most specifically by the actual name of whatever the hell it was, but in my mind it looked like an altar made of functioning computer parts. Some sort of complex monitoring system.

  I stand next to him, looking down at the complex array of screens and keyboards.

  Suddenly I realize the guy is looking up at me. Not like the other man, looking sort of ‘near’ me, but right into my eyes. Like he could actually see me.

  He smiles, and holds out his palm.

  I back away because this is a weird thing to be happening, and I’m not sure what he point of it all is. But when I move around the tent he follows me with his eyes and his hand, his outstretched hand, palm up, reaching toward me the whole time, everywhere I go.

  Finally I realize it’s because there’s something in his hand. Or, rather, something on it. Something written in marker or ink or maybe tattoo, I don’t know.

  I take a step closer and look, and it’s a message. It sort of flickers and rearranges from characters I can’t make out—like from other language—into English characters.

  DB: Perralto Nikto

  That’s it. Just three words. My initials and two words I didn’t recognize. It’s clearly a message for me, but I have utterly no idea what it means.

  The old guy nods, though, like he can tell I’m trying to comprehend it. I squint at him, and his eyes are staring straight at me. He’s got a goofy smile on his face that kind of annoys me.

  I wave my hand slowly from side to side, the hand that doesn’t exist in his world.

  And he does the same, matching my movement exactly.

  That’s when I pull the glasses off my face and realize I’m breathing crazy hard. My heart is racing.

  I’m not where I st
arted out when I put the glasses on. I’m standing on the opposite side of the court. The juxtaposition between the world I was looking at and my shifted position makes my head swim for just a nanosecond, and I have to regain my bearings.

  Fake Matt whisper-yells at me, “Donovan!” and I start hustling over to him, feeling a little wobbly on my own legs.

  As I get close to the bike I ask him if it’s some kind of augmented reality game. That’s the best I can figure.

  Or virtual reality, but with real world elements.

  “The refugee camp was obviously an added element but the background, the general lay of the ground, was very similar to the rest. I mean, it wasn’t covered in blacktop, obviously, but it was still the same land.”

  I’m talking and I don’t even realize he’s hurriedly helping me back onto the bike.

  “Not augmented,” he says. “Real reality.”

  He drops the helmet on my head.

  I don’t get a chance to ask him what he means by that because by then we’re being shot at.

  The bike shoots forward with alarming speed and even more alarming silence.

  Down a row of houses we pass I see a pair of headlights speeding towards us very quickly.

  Behind us, a couple of red street bikes emerge from around a corner, loud like normal motorcycles should be, and ridden by bald men with very big guns and the apparent ability to steer with one hand.

  Matt jumps up onto the sidewalk and we’re speeding through the park, orange and brown trees canopying us. The motorcycles follow us.

  He takes a hard left.

  We pass a baseball field on the right and I see another red bike speeding across it to intercept us. F-Matt pegs the tachometer and we narrowly avoid a collision.

  The bike leaps off the end of the sidewalk and lands on Joyce Street, and we continue straight across into the parking lot of an apartment building.

  I look to the left and there’s those headlights again, and I can see they’re on the front of a big, mean-looking SUV, painted the same color as the three bikes that are tailing us.

  The motorcyclists fire off some more shots at us. The bullets miss, miraculously, as F-Matt swerves and carves north in the parking lot.