Libba Bray

by Going Bovine (Grade 8 Up)

  I want to say no. Or maybe yes. But my throat’s too tight to make a sound. And then, as if he can read my thoughts, Balder begins.

  “I wish you could see my homeland. In the winter, the snows greet you with vigor. Every breath you take is a warrior’s breath, fighting against that worthy adversary, the cold. Ice floes drift past our longboats, and the sails are as ghosts in the mist. But in the spring! In the spring, the land is the green of a ribbon plaited in the golden hair of a village girl you’ve glimpsed only once, fleetingly, as your horses lead you on toward battle, but whose face you remember the rest of your days. Golden-grass fields rise and fall to the sea. There are mountains! Great, slumbering giants of rock who wake with a frightful noise from time to time, shaking the earth, belching heat, reminding us that change is always at hand. At the great ash tree, Yggdrasil, which holds our nine worlds, the Norn tend the roots, keeping them nourished that they not decay, deciding men’s fates with a length of string. Above it all, Frigg spins clouds that float in the ever-blue like giants’ eyes watching from a careful distance. And there is Breidablik, where all are welcome and no lies may enter through its stones. My great, gleaming hall.” His voice falters. “My home.”

  Balder’s eyes twinkle with pride and sadness. I think of my dusty Texas town. Other than Eubie’s, there’s not much to miss.

  “You’re not the only one who feels such pain, Cameron. There have been many times during my captivity that I dearly wished I were not immortal, that I could die. But then you came. This quest has renewed my hope.”

  His eyes search mine. I nod toward the blackened marshmallows. Balder shakes them off, lets the fire take them, and starts over with fresh ones.

  “You are like the Allfather, Odin,” he says after a while.

  “What do you mean?”

  Balder turns the stick in the fire. “When Odin heard of the coming of Ragnarok, of the end to the days of gods, he found no more joy. The foreknowledge of our fate was too much to bear. He refused all food and sank into despair.”

  “I’m not that dramatic,” I say, because he’s making me feel like a wuss.

  “You miss the point. Like Odin, you see only the coming doom and lose faith in what is here, what is good.”

  I lean my head back. The moon bleeds a hole into the night sky, a wound that seems beyond healing. “So what should I believe in?”

  “That I cannot say. For me, it is the dream that Ringhorn waits for me on the sea. That I shall sail through the eternal mist until Breidablik gleams in the distance. That I will return home. Here.” Balder offers me the gooey browned mess at the end of his stick. “You must have sustenance.”

  “That’s a marshmallow,” I say, but Balder insists. Gingerly, I pry the bubbling thing loose, blow, then drop it in my mouth where it coats my tongue in scorched sweetness.

  “Thanks.”

  In the firelight, Balder’s features are sharply illuminated. I’ve never noticed the tiny lines at the corners of his eyes, the weariness etched there. “The dark does not weep for itself because there is no light. Rather, it accepts that it is the dark. It is said that even the gods must die.” He winks. “But not without one hell of a fight.”

  “Can I have another marshmallow?” I ask.

  Balder cooks me up another one, and it’s as good as the first. “If you are in need of more guidance, I could draw a rune.” He tugs the pouch free from under his tunic. It sits in his palm, heavy with destiny.

  I shake my head. “Let’s just see what comes.”

  He pushes the E-ticket meter a little closer to me. He thinks he’s being clever. Vikings. Not great at subtlety. With a sigh, I pick it up and he helps me fasten it on my wrist again. The cloud shifts into a shapeless blot. A raccoon comes sniffing for food. For a few seconds, it skirts the edge of the fire, nose up, smelling. And then it scurries off into the brush.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Wherein We Discover What Assholes These Mortals Be

  The hundred miles to Daytona are a rough, quiet affair. Everybody’s hungover but Balder and me. Every eight miles or so, I have to pull over and let somebody puke.

  The guys are splayed out in the backseat sleeping when they’re not sick. Up front, Gonzo’s curled on the front seat with his head against the door and the seat belt lax across his middle like a mom’s arm around you when you’re a kid. He’s got on a pair of little-girl sunglasses we bought at a convenience mart. They’re bright orange cat’s-eyes with rhinestones on the winged part. He wanted the mirrored aviators but the adult size was too big for his face. Fortunately, when you’re extremely hungover and the sun is torturing your eyes, you’ll wear any old damn thing.

  The land’s flattening out the closer we get to the beach. It’s like we’re going to drive off the edge of the world. On the sides of the road, the ground’s gone patchy as an old man’s beard, half sand, half scrub. The air pushing past my open car window is thick with that salt-spray smell. I stick my head out and let it coat my face.

  The thing is, I can’t stop obsessing over what Dulcie told me about Keith stepping on that land mine. Why do I care? He’s a jerk. A week ago, I would have said, hey, natural selection, man. Stupid people, out of the gene pool. But now I know that in addition to being a boneheaded jerk, Keith also has a mom and a dad and two younger sisters he takes out for ice cream whenever he gets home. I know he sings goofy, off-key songs and has a habit of kissing the top of your head when he’s really drunk.

  The exit for South Daytona Beach puts us in a line of cars that’s backed up for miles. A melting pot of different songs flows out of open car windows. Girls stick their feet out windows. Surfboards are attached to car roofs. Some idiot is actually lying on the car roof with one of those silver reflector pads, trying to get a tan. The guys are awake now and ready for action. They scope each car we crawl past. If it’s a girl car, they pile their faces out the windows and chat them up, make jokes—anything to try to score their digits or hotel info. We’ve been in this line for thirty minutes and have only gone a half a mile. At this rate, we’ll be stuck in traffic for hours, and that’s time I just can’t spare.

  “Hey, guys,” I say as we get close to a side-road escape route. “I don’t want to be a jerk, but we’ve gotta get on the road.”

  “Oh hey, it’s cool,” Left Guy says. “We can make it from here. Can you just pop the trunk?”

  With the engine still running, I get out and open the trunk. Right and Left Guy pull out their gear. Keith waits his turn, holding his jacket and a bag of snacks. He looks sleepy and content, and an image of him tromping through the desert weighs me down.

  “Dude, you’re the best. Thanks, man.” He gives me a manly hug.

  “You’re welcome,” I say. Before getting back in the car, I add, “You should definitely kick it on the beach as long as you can.”

  I promise I’ll tell Gonzo they said goodbye, since he’s sleeping off his two beers. There’s the inevitable “Stay cool” and “Party hard” well wishes, even though those two things seem like a contradiction, and they hurry down the road asking everybody for a ride.

  An hour later, Gonzo wakes up in desperate need of food. We opt for a twenty-four-hour breakfast joint. I go to wake Balder, but he’s no longer nestled in my Windbreaker. He’s not in the car at all. He’s just gone. We call his name. Nothing.

  “Where could he be?” Gonzo asks, checking under the seat for the fortieth time.

  “I don’t know. He was in the car when we started on the road this morning and …” I flash back to the traffic jam. The trunk hood up like a shield. Keith coming around from the front with his hands full and his face flushed and smug. Sonofabitch.

  “What’s the matter?” Gonzo asks.

  “Those assholes kidnapped Balder.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  In Which Gonzo and I Make an Unscheduled Visit to the Party House

  We’re back in that traffic jam that stretches a full ten miles out of Daytona. I keep scanning the horizon of
heat squiggle and cars, looking for the guys, but no luck. The Caddy’s revving into the red zone. It smells like hot oil. I keep turning the engine on and off so it doesn’t overheat and die on us.

  “We gave them a ride and they took Balder,” I grumble.

  “Sucks,” Gonzo agrees. He’s got his orange little-girl sunglasses perched on top of his head like an extra pair of eyes.

  “What a bunch of total punks.”

  “Totally.” Gonzo’s smiling like a crazy man, and it’s annoying me.

  “What’s got you in such a good mood?”

  He slips the glasses back over his eyes. “Dude, we’re going to the Party House!”

  The Caddy can’t take the heat, so we leave it by the side of the road about two miles from the Party House. The entire road is jam-packed with hotels.

  “Can we just rent a room for the night? I need a shower,” Gonzo says. He sniffs his shirt and makes a face.

  “You’ll live,” I say. We’re getting Balder back and hitting the road, no stops.

  Gonzo sniffs my shirt and grabs his throat like he’s choking. “Dude, you reek!”

  “I’m not that bad,” I argue.

  “Not that bad? Fucking A, dude! Have you had your olfactory sense removed? Seriously, man, you are not going to see any action if you don’t clean up, you know?”

  “I’m not looking for action. I’m looking for our yard gnome.”

  Two girls in bikinis and navel rings pass us. One of the girls has a skateboard tattoo on her arm. Mr. Happy rises, unbidden, to say hello, like he’s the sheriff in this here town. When they move on, I give myself a quick sniff. Holy cow. I could kill someone with my BO.

  “Did I warn you or what? Dude, just for the night. Come on. It’s the Party House!” He’s jumping up and down, pulling on my stink shirt and whining like a kid brother.

  “Okay,” I say. “But it’ll have to be someplace dirt cheap.”

  It takes some doing, but we find a no-frills bungalow motel. I hate using the credit card, but since we should be long gone before they can trace it, I figure we’re safe. And the shower feels amazing.

  Gonzo bursts through the door. “Dude! You should see how many people are here! It’s awesome!”

  The beach is swarming. Volleyball and Hacky Sack games have sprung up here and there. Girls sun themselves on beach towels with their bikini tops untied in the back. The Party House—a sprawling, ultramodern megamansion made of glass—shimmers on the horizon. They’ve built a couple of stages in and around the place. I think they’re filming something. Camera crews are everywhere, and we have to step over tons of wires.

  A group of television-perfect teens in headsets and bathing suits work the crowd.

  “Hey, would you like to be on our TV show?” a girl in a yellow flowered bikini and an edgy black haircut asks. She’s got a clipboard in her hands and a kitty-cat pen that looks like it should belong to a third grader.

  “We have to find somebody …,” I say, craning my neck.

  “Can you just answer some quick questions, then? Please? It would totally help me out?”

  “Go for it. Don’t worry about me,” Gonzo says. He’s looking over at a group of tattooed guys smoking cigarettes. His video-game geek monitor must have picked up their signals.

  The girl smiles at me. “Please?”

  “Just a sec,” I tell her. To Gonzo I say, “Okay. But keep a low profile. We’ll meet up in an hour over there by the stage. Got it?”

  “Stage. One hour,” he says. He walks right over to those guys and starts talking. It’s the amazing thing about Gonzo. For all his weird-ass phobias about dying, he’s absolutely fearless about people.

  “Ready?” the girl asks, taking my arm.

  “Guess so,” I say, following her into the Party House.

  “What’s your name?” she asks, leading me into a gigantic, glassed-in living room where we have to squeeze between sweaty dancers. I can barely hear her over the thumping bass line of the music.

  “Cameron,” I say. “What’s yours?”

  “Iphigenia,” she shouts.

  We leave the living room and enter a kitchen area, where some kids are reading from scripts for a table of three judges. The judges give them notes about reading “more pissed-off” or “let’s create drama.”

  “What’s that?” I whisper.

  “Oh,” Iphigenia says. “We’re casting for a realitymercial. It’s like a reality TV show mixed with an infomercial. If you like what you see happening here, you can call the 1-800 number and order up any of the custom-made lives demonstrated by the characters and, you know, try them on for size.”

  “Custom-made lives?”

  “Yeah. We send you the clothes and the name and the backstory. So you can be the troubled kid from the trailer park who comes with the Wrestle Craziness! package. Or the bright, hopeful inner-city kid of Dope I. Am. The wardrobe and sound track for that one are killer. Or the rich heiress of Envy Me. That one comes complete with a small dog and a cell phone that you can have surgically attached to your wrist. And there’s Gosh, I’m Lucky, which is the innocent country girl with the awesome singing voice. That tested huge.”

  Iphigenia pushes open a door to a small office space and offers me a chair in front of a desk. She slips into the chair behind the desk. Something’s ringing.

  “Excuse me for a sec.” She locates the ringing device and attaches herself to a headset. “This is Iphigenia. Uh-huh … uh-huh … do you want the Rad XL, the Rad Diet, the Rad Sport, or the Rad Clear and Brite?” Iphigenia makes some notes on a pad with her kitty pen. “Nuclear!” she says brightly, and hangs up.

  I’m still puzzling over the realitymercial thing. “I don’t get it. Why would anybody want to order up somebody else’s life?”

  Iphigenia looks at me like I’m an idiot. “Why? Because figuring out who you really are is hard work. Why do all that if somebody else has done it for you, if they can tell you who to be? It’s like me with Iphigenia.” She whispers, “That’s not my real name.”

  “No?”

  “No. My real name? Ann. Jones.” She rolls her eyes and giggles. “Can you imagine anything more boring? Yeah, Ann Jones is not going to get behind the velvet rope. So I changed it. I read that name in some Fake It! Notes and liked it.”

  “You know, the Greeks sacrifice Iphigenia. So they can get home.”

  She lights up. “Hey, so it has a tragic feel to it? Big drama name. I love that!”

  “But why not just be who you are?”

  “Hello!” she says, pushing away from the desk and twirling around in the rolling chair till she’s facing me again. “Nobody wants to be themselves. That’s why there’s TV. So you know what to want and who to be. That’s what I did. I mean, Ann Jones? Ann Jones played flute in marching band, okay? Ann Jones’s future was going to include a good state college and a few boyfriends and, you know, like maybe a used compact car to get to her job at a yogurt shop. But Iphigenia, one name, is, like, a totally different person. She’s ethnically ambiguous—you’re like, ‘Is she Afro-Greek-Japo-Indian chic?’ She has a dad who had a slight alcohol problem, which gives her street cred, and a mom who used to model in her native country, wherever that is, which makes her hot. She wears the latest jeans and everybody copies her. Everybody listens to her and sees her and wants to be her. I mean, you’re nobody unless everybody knows who you are.”

  I nod, speechless.

  She grabs her pen, all business. “Questionnaire time. Where are you from, Cameron?”

  “Texas.”

  “Ride ’em, cowboy!” she says, apropos of nothing. “So, who are your best friends?”

  “Gonzo and Balder,” I say. I like the way it sounds.

  “What do you guys like to do?”

  Go on insane road trips dictated by personal ads in tabloids. Search for fugitive, time-traveling doctors. Evade the cops. Steal money from low-rent druggies. Fight beings from parallel worlds.

  “Hang out,” I answer.

&n
bsp; “Mm-kay. Good. Anything interesting you want to add?”

  I should tell her a bunch of bullshit, but for some reason, I want to be honest.

  “I’ve got a fatal illness. Creutzfeldt-Jakob.”

  Iphigenia writes something, then scratches it out. “How do you spell that?”

  “Just put mad cow disease.”

  “Great!” She jots it down. “Now for the really important questions. Do you drink Rad soda? And if so, how often? Frequently. Often. Rarely. Never.”

  “Rarely.”

  The kitty pen bounces across the page like a deranged pet. “Which of these situations would most increase your thirst for a Rad soda? Hanging with friends. Talking with Mom and Dad. Playing a game of hoops. Going to the mall. Doing homework. Attending a funeral …”

  “Attending a funeral?”

  She shows me the paper and I see the question right there. “New marketing strategy. They’re getting ready to launch a new teen drink? Rad Grief—‘For those times when your thirst needs a friend.’ So, do you think you would drink Rad Grief?”

  Death and soda don’t really go together in my head, but it’s getting late and I need to find Gonzo. “Sure. You bet.”

  Iphigenia lets out a little squeak and bops in her chair. “Excellent! You’re my first yes. Hey, Cameron, you’re so nice. Would you like me to get you on one of the shows? They need players for What’s Your Category? today. Whaddaya say?”

  “I don’t think …”

  “I could totally hook you up with the producers. You can win a lot of money,” she singsongs.

  My brain does a cost analysis: could I win us some cash, find Balder, and get our butts out of here before we’re found out? The Party House crowd doesn’t really watch the news, and the bounty hunters probably aren’t watching YA! TV. It’s a risk, but a risk with a lot of money attached, and we desperately need the money.

  “Sign me up.”

  “Nuclear!” Iphigenia says. “Okay, we need to figure out what category you go in.”

  “Category.”

  “Yeah, like are you a techno gadgetronic, a Saturday cinephile, sports authority, sex machine, audio boss, comics crusader, party hopper? You know. Where do you fit in?”