A bunch of us go here just to feel the change in atmosphere. A lot of Meadows students go here to prove a point.
But see, when we arrived here that day, we just wanted to be alone.
I wanted to get drunk. I was willing to listen to Brad if it meant getting a head start on the weekend. I didn’t think I would have to run the gauntlet.
But I’ll get to that.
We arrived at Falter Kingdom and the first thing that happened was our cell phones all lost signal. Again, that’s part of the fun of the place.
Blaire hadn’t been before and Brad was being a dick about that.
“Know what that means, bro?” He nudged me in the arm.
I finished my second beer, took the unopened can from Blaire, and said, “You know she won’t go through with it.”
That kid, Steve, stood at the opening looking in.
Brad shouted at him, “Careful or you’ll be dragged in!”
Blaire snickered, “You’re a walking cliché.”
Brad signaled to me and I tossed him a beer. “Yeah?” He cracked open the beer and took a gulp. “You know what they say about being judgmental?”
This went on—back and forth—for longer than it should have. I listened and I observed the conversation from where I sat, on a flat rock, drinking the beer probably way too fast.
Blaire wouldn’t let up.
Brad was too oblivious to care about anything Blaire could say.
Eventually the conversation made its way back to me. Brad saying something like, “Why the fuck do you keep this chick around?”
But that really wasn’t a question. Brad’s good at acting like an asshole because he is an asshole. I can’t stand the guy. But he’s there. He’s around. We were freshmen when we met. I think it was biology. Yeah, that was the one. We both sucked at the subject. We were failing and quickly facing summer school. We got assigned to some peer group for people who suck at science. We had to be tutored by substitute teachers, meaning we had to take the class twice in one day. It was horrible. Brad being around made it a little less horrible but only because he knew how to get the answers. He knew people.
He still knows people. I don’t think anyone really likes the guy but they see value in how he can slack his way through anything.
Brad gets his way. Brad always has beer.
I guess we’re friends because I’ve gotten used to him being around.
Sort of like most people, I get used to them and, in time, it’s all the same.
This is as close to getting along as I’ll probably ever know.
But yeah, Brad can be a real asshole and I was the one to break up the argument. It was easy—all I had to do was tell Brad to shut up and catch up.
“I’m on my third.” I dangled the can. “Which one are you on?”
That was enough to end it, but nothing would change the fact that Blaire wouldn’t end up having much fun. Not that she would have. This is what Blaire always does. She spent most of the afternoon sitting on some far rock working on homework assignments for next week. I let her do her thing. We all did.
She was doing my homework too.
Steve, Brad, and I stood at the opening of the tunnel.
Brad went on about all the girls he wanted to try to get with before graduation, like it would be that easy. “I’ve known the girl since, like, second grade. No way she’ll turn down a strapping young lad like me.”
Steve sipped from his beer. “Strapping young lad?”
Brad shrugged. “Got it from the band. I looked up the meaning.”
Then I said something, because it was a good time to say enough without really having said anything: “You, looking up something?”
Brad laughed. “Yeah, bro, it can’t be all porn. Got to sprinkle in stuff to keep trackers off my trail.”
That made Steve laugh.
That made me take another drink.
Steve said something about how Samantha—a girl I don’t know, but a girl who both Brad and Steve seemed to have been talking about quite a bit—just got into Yale. That impressed Steve, and, for Brad, it seemed to only confirm her status as irresistible.
They talked about how Brad will get all carpe diem and just ask her out. Doesn’t matter that she has a boyfriend. Doesn’t matter that Samantha wouldn’t go for a guy like Brad.
They both talked the same way everyone talked—about how there wasn’t much time left.
Either get it done, what you want to do, or you’ll never get your due.
Then the conversation turned toward something about our plans before graduation. Steve had his. Brad had his would-be lays. Blaire would have plans too, if she were part of the conversation. I looked back at her, busy highlighting some passage from some book for some essay we both had to finish by some deadline.
Lucky.
At some point she’d come up, Becca.
“You can’t waste prom on her, dude. You’ve already wasted years on her when you could have been seeing other girls.”
I did my best to maneuver around the topic. I’m usually good about this, but see, it might have been the alcohol and how it mellows me and I say stuff I shouldn’t say or worse. By “worse,” I mean being able to say anything at all.
And looking back, I got really drunk that afternoon.
Drunker than I should have. Even Steve got on me about Becca. He talked about how my situation took me off the radar, how nothing good can come from being trapped like that.
I’m not going to go into the exact words, because I can’t be sure how it was said, but being in that kind of situation is as bad as it gets. It put me on the spot. It made me the conversation rather than part of it.
Blaire found it amusing. I know she did. I didn’t look and I didn’t hear anything, but being in this situation is what Blaire’s been putting me through since we first met. I just wanted them all to shut up, you know? I wanted it all to wash clean, having them there but on mute, so I didn’t have to try.
The company I keep... Looking back at that afternoon, it feels like I was stuck on an island with a handful of mortal enemies. It didn’t feel at all like a chill time among friends. You get what you put in, I guess.
I chose to stick around Brad. Blaire lingered and I did the same thing.
Yeah, I went with them to Falter Kingdom of my own free will.
But alcohol and competition go hand in hand, and all it took was one mention of the tunnel and Steve shut up. It was obvious that he had never run the gauntlet.
It was a little less obvious that I hadn’t either. Every other time I’d hung out at Falter Kingdom, I’d gotten out of having to run. The trick is to wait until it becomes a possibility, the talking about running, and you encourage whoever it is who’s being pressured to run, but when he turns it on you, don’t freeze. Don’t stop and worry. Don’t say no. You pretend to think about it. If there’s beer, take a sip. By the time any pressure is given, you can ask someone who hasn’t run and have him mess up and take on the pressure. So he ends up running and you don’t. That’s how it works.
End of lesson, or whatever.
But yeah, I was drunk and on a short fuse. Brad was selling Steve on the whole thing, legend and all, and I downed the last of the beer in that can.
Then I said it: “I’ll do it.”
Instantly the conditions changed.
“Really?” Blaire had joined us, standing at my side.
Brad grinned. “My man!”
Steve didn’t say anything. He wanted to run it. He wanted the respect.
I just wanted the conversation to end. I didn’t want to hear any more about Becca.
So they crowded around me as I took my first steps into the tunnel.
“Ten minutes, bud, you got this,” Brad said.
Running the gauntlet is more or less exactly how it sounds. You run into the tunnel, into the darkness, for ten whole minutes or until you reach the end. But no one’s ever reached the end. So I had to run, sprint really, for ten whole minutes. They synce
d up and set a timer on each of their phones. On their count—three, two, one—I ran.
It was actually kind of easy, going through with it.
Everything leading up made it feel impossible. I wasn’t into running it; I had nothing to really prove, which could be cause for a bigger problem.
But I don’t know—
I guess it had a lot to do with being fed up.
With their voices. With their claims. With the fact that they were kind of right: it’s almost graduation and nothing’s changed.
It’s like I needed something to prove to myself. I needed to do something that anyone who knew me would have problems believing if told in the context of some story.
The actual running was the hard part. I felt like I couldn’t keep to a straight line. I felt like I couldn’t run fast enough. The air was thick in the tunnel, kind of a strange musk, the same kind you smell in old basements or places with stale air. The ground muddy and wet, each step had that sinking feeling that you get when you find out you spaced a test or some other important event.
But I ran the whole ten.
It didn’t even last that long.
I ran with my eyes wide but they might as well have been closed. The dark was so thick it was like running in place.
Something worth mentioning—you can’t really hear anything in the tunnel. You can’t hear your own footsteps. I ran until it felt right to stop and turn around. I didn’t hear my feet slipping in the mud. I didn’t hear my lungs gasping for air. I didn’t hear.
If I didn’t hear my own breath, there’s no way I heard their phones.
It probably doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?
It’s hard to explain. Telling it right is usually tougher than you think; it’s all about using the right amount of words to get your point across. You say too little and it’s just strange; say too much and you’re not really making any sense. This is probably one of those situations. It’s just that being inside the tunnel felt like... what’s that term for when you are frozen in a chamber?
Cryosleep?
It’s kind of like that. But there’s a better word. Let me look it up.
Oh, right—
It’s like being in suspended animation. Stuck in place, but you also know that your body is moving, your thoughts racing, because I could feel the sweat dripping from my forehead.
While inside, I could think about only one thing.
I thought about my body breaking into pieces.
And even now I can’t make complete sense of why.
When I made it back to them, you can bet they were surprised.
Brad saw me first. “Shit, bro.”
I was drenched in sweat. Dirt caked in layers all over my body.
Steve didn’t say anything.
Blaire played concerned friend: “Are you insane?”
I asked them if I lasted the full ten, but the words didn’t come out until later, after I had lay down against a cool rock. By then Brad and Steve had left. Blaire stayed with me. She was sitting next to me when I woke up. I stirred shortly before the sun completely disappeared.
“Did I make the full ten?”
Blaire stared at me in disbelief. Maybe she really was worried. I’m not sure what she felt that day. But when she told me I had been in there for twenty-five minutes, it clicked into place.
I didn’t feel any different but, well, it kind of made sense. I felt peaceful sitting there, letting the information sink in. Like I did something I wanted to do.
We walked back in silence.
I didn’t say anything and she didn’t say anything.
When we got back to Meadows, our cars were the only ones left in the parking lot. “Where’d Brad and that other guy go?”
Blaire kind of ignored me but also kind of didn’t. It was a mumble, one that I maybe imagined. “They went for help.”
We left without saying good-bye.
By the time I got home, I felt fine. Not tired at all.
I stayed up with a six-pack that I finished and watched walkthroughs of two different video games. I didn’t have trouble sleeping at all that night.
Stuff started happening the following day. Minor things: mostly the broken vase and my bedroom door opening and closing on its own. I misplaced my cell phone twice only to find it where I couldn’t have left it. Why would my phone turn up in my dad’s pocket when he had been at work all day and I used the phone not ten minutes before it went missing? These aren’t really questions, really, just the mind fighting the facts.
And I knew the symptoms.
They say it’s best to get rid of a demon quick.
Yeah, I know, I know.
But just thinking about how much effort it would have been to tell my parents... what it would mean for them—their only son, haunted—made me feel exhausted. I would never hear the end of it.
So then it just felt better to put off telling them for a little bit.
It won’t be much longer.
Soon everyone will know.
2
MONDAY. WHERE THE HELL DID THE WEEKEND GO? I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep. I mean I actually did—something like twelve hours last night—but I feel tired. It’s probably me. I’m doing this to myself. I’ve been fixating on what’s been happening lately. I can’t shake the fact that everyone’s right: it’s almost over. After that day at Falter, all I can think about is breaking up with Becca. I think about stuff I should have done a long time ago. Now might be my last chance. It’s now or never.
But, man, I never get used to these mornings.
Note to self: Don’t sign up for morning classes next year.
Can’t wait to be able to choose when my classes start. I’m going with the major made for insomniacs. What career paths involve working late into the night? Gravediggers? Um, doctors, nurses, mental ward psychos?
Man, I’m tired.
I drive to school the same way I always do: half awake. It’s out of the driveway, then it’s a left, right, right, stop at that annoying intersection with the really long red light that I always get stuck at, straight past that, two more lefts, and then I’m there.
Meadows. On time for once too.
I park the car in my assigned space and I look at the time on my phone: 7:40 A.M. Know what that means—ten minutes to sleep in my car!
Believe me, this adds up. It helps. Power naps keep me from turning into a zombie. But then again, it’s kind of hard to sleep when Brad taps on the glass.
“What, man? Go away.” I wave him off.
But he taps on the glass again.
“Fuck,” I grumble. “It’s open.”
He gets in the front passenger seat. He sits down and looks at me.
I look at him. He’s a blank stare. “What? It’s too early for this stuff, man.”
Brad shakes his head. “Bro...”
Of course I know what he’s thinking about. I haven’t been able to brush it off either. It kind of settles in the back of the mind, making everything I do a little plainer because I’m paying even less attention to the things around me.
“Yeah, I know.”
“So wild, dude,” Brad boasts, “we had to fucking run and get help.”
“Yeah,” I say, monotone, driver’s seat reclined back, eyes closed.
“But then Steve twisted his ankle like a pussy and we got lost in the fields.”
Can’t a guy get a few winks?
“And shit, bro, it sucked. Getting lost in that forest is no joke. Being buzzed makes everything look the same.”
I yawn. “But you weren’t out there as long as I was.”
“Yeah, bro, Blaire told me. She said you fell asleep.”
“More like blacked out.” I rub my eyes. “Did y’all end up copping it?”
“Naw”—Brad snaps his fingers—“texted Jon-Jon and he called it like it is, said, like, if we called the cops they’d be more about trespassing charges.”
“Jon-Jon knows what’s up.” Falter isn’t a place anyone’
s allowed to access. It’s one of the places closed off for a reason. But we all know that. It’s kind of the point. And Jon-Jon, he always knows. Older than most, he’s got the wisdom to make money work for him. He stays at Meadows because it’s where the money is. He pulls in as much as he wants selling. He’s a good guy, Jon-Jon. Still don’t know him well enough to really get a good read on the guy. Then again I don’t think anyone does. That’s him. That’s Jon-Jon. He’s a businessman.
“Bro, he’s looking for you,” Brad says.
I groan. “I’ve got first period in, like, eight minutes and I still got to pass by my locker.”
“I thought first period was free,” Brad says.
“That was last semester.” I’d kill to get that free period first thing. But no, I’m supposed to be doing awesome at calculus.
“Bummer,” Brad says.
“Yeah.” I open my eyes, staring at the faded fabric ceiling of my car.
“But, bro, you know what he wants. Fuck, I got to ask too.”
“Nothing happened,” I tell him.
“You were running that long and you’re going to tell me nothing fucking happened?”
I put the seat back up, stretching. “Yup. That’s what I’m saying.”
“Jesus,” Brad says, and sighs, “real bummer.”
“World’s full of bummers.”
We leave the car and walk toward the main building. Meadows is made up of three buildings, two on either side of a big four-story main structure where most of us spend the bulk of our time.
Brad’s talking, something about “a bunch of people are going to be blasting it in the fields this Wednesday.” It’s another party in the middle of nowhere.
I’ll probably go. Becca will want to go anyway. Everyone will be there; even if I stayed in, people will notice. The next day at school would be all about how Hunter Warden was a no-show. It’s like that here at Meadows.
Everyone knows everyone, especially if you’ve never met.
I tell him, “Yeah, you know it. Anyway, I’ll catch you later.”
“Yeah.” Brad nods. “Yeah, hit me up at lunch.”
He goes his way and I go mine. And there’s first period, which isn’t worth talking about. I think I might fail the class. I won’t, but I would, you see—Blaire’s my eyes and ears. She’s got the stuff finished and all I have to do is not fuck up the pop quizzes. I fucked up today’s pop quiz.
Falter Kingdom Page 2
