by Richard Cox
“So you’re going to use real names?” she finally asked.
“Oh, I’ll change that when it’s done. But somehow, when I sit down to write, it just flows out of me this way. Like I already wrote it in another life, or someone else wrote it. It’s hard to explain. But it comes to me so naturally that I don’t want to mess with it, you know?”
Alicia found it difficult to believe he could say these things with a straight face. His childhood experiences with Todd, and all that had happened this week, should have made it clear what was really happening.
“You know,” she said, “we’ve never really talked about David and Thomas and the detective. Like what was really going on. How Todd and his son knew the things they knew.”
“I know. And I realize there is something about the world we don’t understand. But even if we knew the answer, what would we do about it? We still have to live our lives no matter what the reality of the world is.”
Jonathan had a point. There was nothing to be done with the knowledge she’d acquired, especially since it wasn’t some supernatural force that might further complicate their lives. Still, now that her eyes were open, she could not imagine them closed. And she wondered: Why did she perceive the events of the past week differently than Jonathan? Did proximity to Todd limit his understanding somehow?
Or maybe the truth would be revealed to Jonathan at some later time. In the next chapter of their lives, for instance.
“Every day it seems a little less important to me,” Jonathan continued. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life obsessing over something I can’t control and don’t understand. I want to focus on the things I can and do understand. That I care about a great deal.”
Alicia smiled. She saw love in his eyes, and she hoped he could see it in hers, even if that love would not be translated into words for a while.
“This could really work,” she said, looking again at the manuscript page. “With all the press coverage from the tornado, I bet you’d get a lot of interest.”
“Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
Three days later, as they approached the Austin city limits, cruising along I-35 with the top down and sunglasses on, Alicia looked into the adjacent lane and spotted an 80s-era Cadillac that had been recently and lovingly restored, its bright blue paint accented by chrome spoke wheels and bright whitewalls. As the driver passed them, Alicia marveled at the long tailfins and chrome bumper, and when she saw the sticker there, a simple black-and-white design labeled with the word Deadhead, she looked over at Jonathan and laughed. After a lifetime of waiting for something extraordinary to happen, for the fairy tale to begin, Alicia finally understood the truth.
She had always been living it.
PART TEN
July 4, 1983
ZONE FORECAST PRODUCT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NORMAN OK
TXZ086-041000-
WICHITA-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF ... WICHITA FALLS
1143 PM CDT SUN JULY 3 1983
.TONIGHT ... CLEAR. LOW AROUND 82. WINDS S 10-15 MPH AND GUSTY.
.INDEPENDENCE DAY ... SUNNY AND HOT. HIGH AROUND 110. SOUTH WIND 15-25 MPH.
.MONDAY NIGHT ... CLEAR. LOW IN THE LOW 80S. SOUTH WINDS AROUND 10 MPH.
.TUESDAY ... SUNNY AND HOT. HIGH NEAR 111.
.WEDNESDAY ... SUNNY AND VERY HOT. HIGH NEAR 114.
.THURSDAY ... SUNNY AND VERY HOT. HIGH NEAR 116.
95
The five of them stood in a rough circle between three barbecue pits. It was a little after two o’clock in the morning, and the city was asleep.
Todd smiled dreamily, his eyes far away, as if he were enjoying a movie only he could see.
“Tell me again,” Adam complained. “Why do you want to burn down your own dad’s restaurant?”
“Because he’s an asshole. I caught him having sex with some woman who works here. He cheated on my mom.”
“But if he loses his business, you guys will go broke.”
“He pays for insurance,” David said. “Just like the people who owned the house we torched.”
Adam didn’t seem to appreciate this answer, but at least it shut him up.
Todd said, “We can’t use gasoline because we did that last time. But David tells me there’s a way to set these barbecue pits on fire with leftover grease.”
“You bet there is. I do it every Monday and Tuesday to clean these stupid things. Or at least I used to. After I caught my dad with that woman, I stopped working here.”
David opened the doors to the barbecue pits and explained the process to his friends just as The Turk had relayed it to him 322 pages ago. The plan was to set fires inside the pits and then prop open the building doors to provide easy egress for the flames.
“We’ll splash grease everywhere as if it were gasoline,” Todd said. “I’m sure half the place will burn down before the fire department shows up.”
“How do you know?” Jonathan asked. “The building is made of cinderblocks. Maybe it won’t burn at all.”
“I just do,” Todd said. “I read it already.”
“What do you mean you read it?”
“You know that place I saw when I was asleep? The empty white place?”
Everyone nodded or murmured agreement.
“Well, I probably shouldn’t tell you this, because it’s not the sort of thing anyone should know. But if I don’t tell you now, I won’t ever be able to.”
“What is it?” Bobby asked.
“The things I saw and heard when I was asleep were real. But they weren’t any kind of reality we know. There’s some other world out there.”
He gestured upward as if that would somehow explain what he meant.
“Other world?” David said. “What do you mean?”
“These songs I play for you guys aren’t mine. How could I write ‘The Boys of Summer?’ I’m just a thirteen-year-old kid.”
“So who wrote it, then?” asked Jonathan.
“I don’t know who he is. But I heard those songs when I was in the coma, and it wasn’t just songs. I also saw pictures of some guy’s family, and home movies he made, all kinds of stuff. Even books he wrote. One of those books was about Wichita Falls, and now I remember I read the whole thing while I was in there. While I was asleep.”
“You sound like a crazy person,” Bobby said.
“Maybe I am crazy. Or maybe not. Because this story I read, it was about us. Bobby and Adam and Jonathan and David and me. And Alicia. And some police detective named Gholson. We were all in there. I read it. Someone wrote a book and it was us.”
“That’s just weird,” Adam said. “You dreamed all that while you were asleep. There’s no such thing as some other world.”
“Maybe you’re right. But if I’m right, then we’re all just characters in a book.”
“This is bullshit,” Bobby said. “Let’s set these pits on fire and get the hell out of here before we get caught.”
“We’re not going to be caught. But a long time from now some of you are going to remember what I told you tonight. And you aren’t going to handle it well. And neither is my son.”
“In this book you have a son?” Bobby asked. “Now I know you’re full of shit.”
“Yeah, and he figures all this out before I do. In fact, he figures out how to rewrite the ending so it works out better for him.”
“He rewrites the ending?” Jonathan said, and laughed. “What kind of a story would it be if a character could step outside of it and change the ending?”
“Laugh all you want,” Todd said. “But I had to figure out a way to get in there and change the ending back, because in his version, the bad guys win.”
“So now who wins?” asked David.
“Come on, dude. I can’t tell you the ending.”
“I hate all that suspense when I read a book,” David explained. “I usually read the last line and then work my way back up to it.”
“That’s a shitty way t
o read a book,” Jonathan said.
“Maybe so, but that’s how I like it.”
“That’s all you want to hear?” Todd said. “The last line?”
“One sentence isn’t going to spoil it, right?”
David had a point. One sentence wouldn’t spoil anything.
So Todd grabbed a match from the box he was carrying and struck it alight. His eyes felt magical and alive with fire.
Then he spoke the last words any of them would ever hear.
“It ends like this.”
© Kimberly Cox
Richard Cox is the alleged author of three previous novels: Thomas World, The God Particle, and Rift. He claims to lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and is hard at work on his next novel. Then again, you shouldn’t believe everything you read.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note
Introduction
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Part Two
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part Three
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Part Four
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Part Five
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Part Six
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Part Seven
Chapter 78
Part Eight
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Part Nine
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Part Ten
Chapter 95
About the Author