“I did. Well, with a gift certificate.”
“Good enough.”
“She appreciated it,” I said. “She appreciated just being here and knowing what was going on with me and hearing stories about Thessaly.”
Kyle eyed me suspiciously. “Your point?”
I took a bite of pie as the singer sang about his one true love. “It’s not such a bad place.”
With a contemptuous sniff, Kyle said, “Someday you’ll be telling that to the mirror. And the mirror ain’t gonna buy it either.”
* * *
We drove forty minutes to the nearest multiplex, bought two tickets for a matinee, and spent the rest of the day hopping from screen to screen, checking out the latest movies. There were talking babies and a movie about a bear and one about a guy made of electricity. They were okay, but after the third one I was getting pretty bored and I pitied Kyle if this was his typical day.
Driving home, we didn’t say much, mostly kept our comments focused on the one-liners and the explosions. Kyle dropped me on the edge of the neighborhood where no one would see us.
“If Uncle acts up, you know my number,” he said as I stepped down from the van.
“I’m sure you scared him straight,” I said. But I wasn’t sure. If I was wrong about the plane, then what else was I wrong about? And as Kyle drove away, I began to go over every little incident in my head. Our rides in the van. My talks with Fiona. Dorian in the backyard, Dorian the deviant. The sleepover and the box in the road. The wake. Halloween. Today.
At the library, there was a shelf of Choose Your Own Adventure novels. Charlie liked to read those books backward, searching for the happy endings first and figuring out the path of least resistance. I always read them the correct way, and I’d invariably find myself lost in a cave or bitten by a scorpion. I rarely made it through without a misstep.
If only I could read my life backward, I thought.
When I got home, the sun was still up but low. Keri was in the driveway with a can of silver spray paint, coating a group of Cabbage Patch Kids that were laid out on a sheet of newspaper.
“What in the heck happened to you?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“Mom and Dad are crazy worried.” She held her nose and deployed another layer of paint. “Don’t worry, though. I’m not a snitch. I didn’t say a word about your ride with the Fonz.”
“Thanks.”
My parents were in the kitchen, speaking to each other in hushed tones. As soon as the door shut behind me, they clammed up. They looked at me like I was a stranger.
“So?” my dad said after a short silence.
“I know, I know, I know.”
“You know?” my mom said with a gasp. “I’m told you never showed up for school. I call home. No answer. I drive home and you’re not here. And you’re telling me you know? You know?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve had some tough things going on.”
“Skipping school is your solution?” my dad asked. “Where’d you go?”
“I don’t know. Nowhere. Walking.”
“Walking? All day?” my dad asked.
“And what’s this Mrs. Carmine is telling us about a fight on Halloween?” my mom added.
“Oh come on, like you’ve never made mistakes!” I snapped.
“Of course we have,” my mom said. “But this is not you. This? So not you.”
“Who is it, then? Who am I?”
When they didn’t answer right away, I stormed out of the room. “There will be consequences,” my dad yelled to me, but I kept moving.
The cordless phone was sitting on the dining room table. It rang as I passed, and I snatched it up and barked, “Hello.”
“I’m sorry. I need you to know I’m sorry.”
I didn’t respond. The timing of the call couldn’t have been worse.
“Alistair? Are you still there? You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to. But we’re best friends, and best friends are honest with each other. I don’t know why I do the things I do sometimes. I never mean to hurt anyone. I don’t mean to hurt you.”
I couldn’t listen to this anymore. I pulled the phone away from my head and held it at arm’s length.
“Screw you, Charlie!”
I hung it up.
My room was the only place I felt safe, and I stayed there all night. I skipped dinner, and every time my mom or dad came to my door saying “We need to talk to you” and “Everything is going to be okay” and “We’re not angry as much as we’re concerned,” I responded with “Please leave me alone!” over and over again.
Not long after dark, I turned off my light and crawled into bed. I punched my mattress to burn away my anxiety and I flopped onto my back, closed my eyes, and tried to listen to my pulse as my blood pumped through my neck, across my temples, and into my scalp. I have no idea what time it was when I finally fell asleep.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4
There’s another story my dad often tells.
It’s about his college friend Peggy. After graduation, Peggy got her doctorate in botany with a concentration in desert plants. Botanists do a lot of fieldwork, and the young scientist spent a good chunk of her time in the American Southwest. She preferred to work alone and without the hassle of permits, so she often parked her car along dirt roads and set out on foot with a pack of supplies that could sustain her for a few days.
On one such solo expedition, she was eight miles south of the U.S. border when she came upon an interesting collection of cacti. She didn’t have the time to study and collect samples and make it back to the car before dark, so she laid out a sleeping bag for the night. No tent was needed. Rain and bugs were rarely a problem, and she preferred a roof of stars to a roof of nylon. Sure, it could get cold, but she had a wool hat and, as every boyfriend had told her, her body always ran as hot as a furnace.
When Peggy woke the next morning, her body was running hotter than ever, particularly in the abdomen. She unzipped the bag to let the cool morning breeze waft away the heat, and there, to her surprise and horror, was a rattlesnake on her belly.
Peggy had heard about snakes sneaking under the hoods of cars and soldiering through cold nights by sleeping on warm engines. This predicament, however, was something she had never contemplated. The snake was probably six feet long and as thick as Peggy’s dainty wrists. Curled up—its head tucked down in the center and its rattle draped over the top of the coil—it was about the size of a dinner plate.
She was lucky that the snake was a sound sleeper. Opening the bag had done little to rouse it. Peggy didn’t want to take any other chances, so she held her breath and clenched her muscles. Unfortunately, this had the opposite effect. Her breathing—the up and down motion of her stomach—had been like rocking a cradle. Once it halted, the snake stirred.
The rattle rose first, a periscope seeking out a disturbance in the water. Peggy could feel the body expanding and spreading, and she could see the scales moving to accommodate the new shape. It would be only a matter of seconds before the head popped up to say good morning. Thinking fast and acting faster was of the essence.
Three. Two. One.
Peggy grabbed the rattle and tore the beast from her body. The snake snapped like a whip, and Peggy released it at the ideal moment. It somersaulted, its body undulating in the air, and it landed on the bend of a giant saguaro cactus, where the needles impaled the reptile’s soft underbelly.
Gasping, Peggy jumped to her feet and ran her hands all over her body. Everything was intact. Tears and laughter burst forth, and she pointed at the creature that was now writhing away its last moments of life, pinned to the cactus.
“I win! I win, you slithering piece of—”
And another snake bit Peggy on the ankle.
It was a little bugger and its bite felt no worse than a bee sting. Peggy shook her foot in annoyance, but when she saw the other snake stealing away into the brush and she noticed the two red marks near her heel, s
he knew that fate was having a grand laugh.
She rifled through her pack to find her first aid supplies. Tearing them open, she remembered a note held by magnets to her refrigerator door: Buy snakebite kit.
The note was still there. Like so many errands, it was one Peggy neglected. With no towns nearby, her only hope was to walk the eight miles to the border, then the other three to her car. Peggy might have been a procrastinator, but she was no quitter. Once her tears had dried and she had gulped down a full quart of water, she set off.
By mile seven the venom had caused her foot to swell so much that she had to remove her boot. One-legged is no way to walk the desert, so she took off her shirt and ripped it into pieces, which she wrapped around her hands and knees. She continued on all fours. The sun beat down on her back. Fatigue and nausea colonized her body. It was becoming obvious. She probably wasn’t going to make it.
She had crawled just over the border and into the U.S. when a patrolman approached her. Big hat, mirrored shades, Stars and Stripes on his lapel—he was an imposing but distinctly American man. Dark-haired and sunburned, Peggy, on the other hand, was of ambiguous ethnicity. The patrolman had no reason to believe he wasn’t coming upon an illegal alien.
“So where are we scooting off to?” he asked.
Peggy’s throat was so parched that she couldn’t speak, so she reached into her jeans for her passport. She chose the wrong pocket, and a small vial of white powder fell on the ground. The patrolman picked the vial up and held it to the sun. “What do we have here?” He twisted the cap off, dipped a pinkie in the powder, and took a taste.
If she had the strength and the voice, Peggy would have said, It’s not what you think it is! and I’m a scientist and I use that to measure the pH of soil!
If she knew sign language, Peggy would have done the sign for poison!
The patrolman collapsed.
That was it. Peggy threw in the towel. As the patrolman sputtered and coughed on the ground, she set her head on his chest. She looked up, expecting to see vultures. She saw only the brilliant and cloudless desert sky. She faded off to sleep.
When she woke, her body was running hotter than ever. She could feel something coiled up on her stomach. No, she thought. Not again. She couldn’t bear to look.
It was a breathing tube. And as the ambulance barreled down the dusty road, carrying Peggy and the patrolman to the nearest hospital, a paramedic used a towel to pat the sweat off the unlucky woman’s brow and made a quip that has become something of a catchphrase for Peggy and her family.
“Bet you weren’t expecting this when you woke up today.”
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4
PART II
I woke up to find Fiona in my room. Cold air rolled through the open window. The clock read 2:06. Her whisper sought out the warmth of my body.
“Alistair … It happened … Alistair.”
Whenever my dad told the story about Peggy, he said that it had two morals.
Moral number one: It’s always the second snake that gets you.
Moral number two: Don’t ever assume you know what’s in the vial.
In the story of that early November morning when Fiona snuck into my room, I was like Peggy, but I was also like the patrolman. And Fiona’s whisper was like the first snake, but it was also like the vial. The morals, however, didn’t come into play until a little later.
Fiona sat in my beanbag chair. Her hair wasn’t out of place. Her clothes—that neon jacket, those faded jeans—weren’t ruffled or dirty or wet. Her skin was the same pale it always was. Yet she looked defeated.
“What are you doing here?” I asked as I sat up.
“It happened,” she said again.
I pushed the covers away and kicked my legs over the edge of the bed. The floorboards creaked as I stood. “You can’t be here,” I whispered. “I’m already in enough trouble with my parents.”
“Then come outside with me,” she said as she struggled to rise. Beanbag chairs.
I reached out and pulled her up. The cold air bounced off her and into me. My fleece pajamas were cheap and did little to stop the chill, and I didn’t like that standing so close to Fiona could feel so cold. “Give me a minute to get dressed,” I said.
My room was on the ground floor, and the window was big enough that sneaking in wasn’t much harder than climbing a tree. She nodded and eased herself through the window.
“You scared the crap out of me,” I whispered a few minutes later when I joined her outside, now sufficiently clothed for the weather. Tiny snowflakes fought to stay afloat in the air, dipping and rising and swirling around us.
“I knocked on the window. I opened it and called for you. I made lots of noise. You were dead to the world, my friend.”
That may have been true, but I needed her to keep quiet now. I put a finger to my lips and ushered her away from the house and my parents, two notoriously light sleepers. As we reached the edge of the yard and I turned left, Fiona told me to go the other way.
We walked amid the flurries, side by side in the middle of the road. The snow wasn’t piling up yet, but the streetlights showcased the gloss it left on everything. To me it looked like the neighborhood was being encased in a thin, clear candy shell.
“It looks so real out here,” Fiona said. She held her hand out so that flakes would land on her skin. She examined them with the eye of a scientist.
“What happened?” I asked her. “You said something happened.”
“They’re not all unique in Aquavania,” she explained, still looking at her hand. “The snowflakes. There are only so many designs there. Ten. Maybe twenty. But here in the Solid World, the possibilities are infinite. It’s funny. There was a time when I thought it would be the other way around.”
“What happened?” I repeated.
Fiona shook the snow off herself—steeled herself—and said it. “I saw the Riverman.”
“You saw the Riverman?”
“Yes.”
“You saw the Riverman?”
“Yes.”
“Of course you did,” I snapped. There was plenty of anger behind my words, but frustration was pushing them harder. I had held this in for far too long.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Fiona asked.
“You live with him! You see him every day!”
“Huh?”
“Your uncle? Dorian? He’s the Riverman. That’s what you’ve been trying to say, right? He murdered all those kids … and maybe your grandma … and I don’t know what he’s done to you, but … but Aquavania … it’s like your … I don’t know … the place you make up to deal with it all. We both know that. We’ve both known that since the beginning.”
I’m not sure I could have said anything worse. She exhaled as she kept walking. Clouds of breath rose and spread in the air, and there was so much of it that I was surprised she had enough left in her lungs to speak. Her voice was both wistful and worried. “Alistair. Kid. Don’t you dare treat me like this.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like a stupid little schoolgirl.” Was she disgusted or was she ashamed? Was she livid? Whatever the case, she didn’t look at me.
“I’m not,” I said. “I’m not.”
“You are,” she replied. “And I’m not naïve. Haven’t been in forever. I didn’t expect you to believe me. Not about everything. What I expected you to do was listen. Obviously you weren’t even doing that. Because here you are talking about Dorian like he’s some … well, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I thought about Kyle hitting that remote control to the ground and the plane crashing into the windshield. I thought about the rage and the red and Dorian’s unreadable face.
“Did he get to you?” I asked. “Was Dorian angry because of Kyle? I was worried he might take it out on you.” I placed my hand on her shoulder. She brushed it away with a flick of her fingertips.
“Uncle Dorian is a nice man. He’s a sweet man. He has nothing to do with
any of this. I don’t know why you would think he does.”
“Because,” I explained.
“Because what? Because I have a portal in my basement that leads to a magical world full of candy and teddy bears and unicorns?”
She had never mentioned any unicorns, but I wasn’t about to point out that inconsistency. I kept my mouth shut and kept walking.
“That’s fine,” she went on. “Go ahead and see this as pure craziness. What do I care? But please also see that this is something I believe in. I believe in it more than anything else.”
I took a step in front of her and turned to face her. She stopped. The spot where her nose had been broken all those years ago—that knobby bit of cartilage right below her eyes—made me imagine that a tiny asteroid had crashed into her face and had determined the orbit of her life. She probably hated that asteroid, but to me it was essential. She wouldn’t be Fiona without it. Her hair fluttered a bit, and the snow tried so hard, but failed, to make her hair less black. Fiona was right. Everything looked so real out here. She looked so real.
“Why?” I asked. “Why do you believe?”
Fiona drew three breaths, full and thick, and then she said, “In the beginning, when I was really little, I was only called to Aquavania once every year or so. Then it was every few months. Then sometimes weeks or days. But there was never any pattern to it. The radiators spoke, and I followed, and I was happy to go. I figured it was random.
“I was called an hour ago, and I went in thinking I might stay forever. Or as long as I could. I mean, it’s what I’ve been doing for most of my life. I know it so much better than this.”
She put her hands out as wide as possible. The Solid World.
“On that first night back in Aquavania, I had a thought when I was fading off to sleep,” she continued on. “I let my guard down and made a wish that Aquavania couldn’t deliver, and that wish … that need … well, it invited something across the folds. Because I woke up and there was a figure standing across from my bed, watching me sleep. ‘Fancy meeting you here,’ it whispered.
“At first I thought it was Toby and I told him to buzz off. When it didn’t move, I turned on a lamp. The room didn’t brighten much. Most of the light came out of the lamp in wisps and threads and swirled through the air until the body of the creature absorbed it.
The Riverman (The Riverman Trilogy) Page 17
