“You know what I think happened to Fiona?” I said to my family after I took the last bite of my sandwich. “I think she ran away. I think the reason she read newspaper articles about missing kids is that she wanted to be a missing kid. Her parents didn’t love her. Her brother and sister, her uncle, her grandma … Fiona didn’t want to end up like them. She must not have liked how her future looked here. So she decided to start over somewhere else. Maybe somewhere warm. Palm trees. Colorful birds. Near the ocean. She’s there right now with all the other kids who got away.”
My mom took a deep breath and folded her hands together like she was saying a prayer. “Is that what you talked about when the two of you were together?”
“Not about running away, but we talked about creating new worlds, about saving people, about starting over from scratch,” I said. “We talked about how your thoughts and imagination are your soul, and how you gotta make sure no one ever steals your soul.”
“She’s twelve years old, Alistair.” My dad sighed. “I don’t doubt she has an amazing imagination, but if she ran away, then they would have found her by now. She’s too young to know how to disappear.”
“Just because she’s twelve doesn’t mean she’s not as smart and capable as anyone else,” I said. “This is what happened to her. This is Fiona’s story.”
Keri slurped at the end of her milk shake and flashed me a thumbs-up. “I like that story, little bro,” she said. “It’s better than anyone else’s.”
* * *
As we drove home, my mind was occupied by that nagging refrain: Charlie is the Riverman. Charlie is the Riverman. Charlie is the Riverman.
Charlie stole my story. The Riverman stole stories. Fiona’s dislike of Charlie was no secret, so maybe her tales of the Riverman were also elaborate warnings. We were weirdos, Fiona and I. Creative minds like ours were the minds of aliens. And the soul-suckers, the plagiarists, the malicious people like Charlie? They were sapping us. It was our mission to get away from them. So that’s what Fiona did. And she was inviting me to do the same thing.
Yet the thing was, I wasn’t ready to get away, not from Thessaly, not even from Charlie. I had been angry with him, but what he had done was so minor in the grand scheme of things. I didn’t see him as malicious. I saw him as weak, and weakness was something I could forgive. With Fiona gone, I was essentially alone. Forgiveness was the only option I had.
So when we returned home that evening, after I had thought for a while about why we tell the stories we tell, I picked up the phone and dialed a number my fingers had memorized years ago.
“Hey, Charlie,” I said. “Let’s hang out together tomorrow.”
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 19
The rain started early, pummeling my window and reminding me I had somewhere to be. Even with an umbrella, I was soaked by the time I reached Charlie’s house. He answered the door with a towel draped over his shoulder. Handing it to me, he said, “Good morning, sunshine.”
The video game was cued up to the point where we had last left off. One final level to defeat, an absurdly difficult maze through a dungeon to the big boss, an armored ogre who was both brutish and magical.
“It’s been a few weeks,” I told Charlie. “I’ll be rusty. I’m not sure I’m up to it.”
“You’re up to it,” he assured me. “If it takes all day, it takes all day.”
That it did. I played through the morning and into the afternoon, only grabbing a quick break for lunch. Charlie was patient, never chiding me for my mistakes or resorting to I told you so when I failed to follow his advice. He had said sorry so many times over the previous two weeks that the word didn’t really mean it anymore. So now he was making an effort to show it by tolerating my deficiencies. For Charlie, this was a big step, and I wondered if he had actually grown up a bit.
By evening, I had mastered the dungeon, but I still couldn’t defeat the big boss. Even using the sharpest sword and all the potions and enchanted objects, I could only get his energy levels down halfway. It was Sunday, and Sunday dinner at my house was the most important one of the week. My mom always spent hours cooking something special. I knew she would want me home, but I felt like I had to stay and finish what I had started. At least something in my life had to be solved.
I called my mom and told her I’d be home in a few hours. “If that’s what you need,” she told me.
Charlie’s dad fetched some Chinese takeout, and he and Charlie’s mom ate their dinner in front of a TV in the basement while Charlie and I ate ours on the couch in the back room with the video game on pause. Chopsticks weren’t an option for Charlie, but he was already adept at holding a spoon pressed to his palm with his pinky and thumb and shoveling the food into his mouth.
“Shouldn’t we save some for Kyle?” I asked.
“Nah,” Charlie responded as he lifted another pile of sweet-and-sour chicken. “Don’t even know if he’s coming home or not.”
Outside, the rain continued its onslaught and the clouds were so thick that nighttime didn’t wait for sunset. Darkness swallowed everything beyond the glow of the game. I finished my dinner and dove back in.
It was shortly after nine o’clock, and I had gotten no further at defeating the big boss. It was time to go, as much as it pained me to admit it.
“Let’s take a breather,” Charlie suggested. “Try a few more times. All you need is one perfect round.”
“Okay. But only one more. Then I have to leave.”
Charlie nodded in agreement. “I’m going outside to feed the cats. Should be a few minutes. Mom got an electric can opener, so I’m all set on that front. You take a moment, walk around the house, do whatever you gotta do to clear your head.” He patted me on the shoulder with his gloved hand and headed for the kitchen to find some tuna.
I made a quick trip to the bathroom and then lingered in the hallway to look at photos on the wall. There were framed shots of Charlie and Kyle from when they were babies and toddlers. They both looked so happy and young, but true to Fiona’s theory, there were twice as many pictures of Kyle.
My gaze eventually wandered from the pictures, down the hall, and through the open door to Charlie’s bedroom. I hardly ever spent any time in there. It was always too messy, so we usually hung out near the TV or in the basement. In fact, it had been years since I’d even entered his room, and yet something caught my eye and compelled me to step inside. Sitting on Charlie’s dresser, underneath his mirror, was an object I recognized.
A fishbowl. Full of water, but no fish inside.
The image of Thessaly’s first missing child, of the boy named Luke Drake—splotchy and purple and staring back at me through the microfiche screen—was the only thing that compared, the only other thing in my life that tore my eyes out and put them back in upside down. Something familiar was suddenly something completely new.
A distinctive chip in its rim told me that this was Humbert’s fishbowl, the fishbowl that haunted my dream when I was six years old, the one that disappeared from my dresser and left a floating orb of water in its place. But it was also something else. It was a gateway. An object beneath it confirmed the fact.
The fishbowl sat upon a thick notebook, which I pulled out to examine its cover.
GODS OF NOWHERE
The title didn’t mean much to me, so I opened it to the first page.
The Whisper
Once upon a time at Alistair’s house I heard a whisper in a fishbowl. I went inside the bowl and met the whisper. We fought in the land of icicles and I won. I am the Whisper now.
The handwriting was barely more than a scribble. Next to the words was a crayon drawing of two boys, one lying on the ground, the other standing and holding a pen in the air. In the background was something that looked like a rainbow-colored snake.
I turned to the next page.
The Tale of Trina Cook
Trina Cook lived in a world made of zebra fur and I found her by mistake. She laughed at me and I defeated her like I defeated the Whi
sper. Zebra fur only looks black and white. Deep down it has all the colors.
The handwriting was better, but there was no picture with this story. I flipped to the next page: “The Song of Simon Abrams.”
Then the next: “The Adventure of Purvi Patel.”
Then the next: “The Chronicle of Gaby Noonan.”
It went on like that, page after page, story after story, kid after kid. I didn’t read most of them, but as I skimmed, I noticed that the handwriting got better and the stories became more sophisticated.
Near the end of the notebook, I had to stop.
The Tragedy of Werner Schroeder
Werner Schroeder was a silly boy with a silly heart that was forever bound to a chick named Chua Ling …
I closed my eyes and the notebook. That was enough. In fact, that was too much. I pounded the dresser with my fist, and the water in the fishbowl splashed over the rim and onto my knuckles. Opening my eyes, I snatched the bowl and poised it on my shoulder like a shot put. To hurl it into the mirror, to smash all the glass to bits—that was what I really wanted to do. My reflection wouldn’t let me, though. It urged me to turn away.
In the middle of his bed, Charlie’s silk comforter was a tussled mess, its folds forming a series of valleys. With no reflection to scold me, I gave in to my next temptation. I poured the water all over the silk, where it found the crags and crevices and followed the paths it was given.
For myself, I saw only one path. With the empty fishbowl in hand and the notebook tucked under my arm, I bolted through the house to the back door.
The rain was still heavy when I stepped out to the backyard. A light mounted above the door cut through only so much of it, and I couldn’t see Charlie until I was halfway to the clubhouse. He was crouching next to the entrance, a polka-dotted umbrella shielding him from the worst of the downpour. Under his chin he held a flashlight that pointed at the ground and illuminated the seven or eight cats that circled him and ate from the cans of tuna distributed in the grass.
Peering up at me, he smiled and said, “Well, looky here…”
I was already soaked to the guts. Wind was pulling the rain sideways, and the cold air was crisping it up. When the water hit my skin, it stung and incited blood to my cheeks. My face ran hot and cold. In the distance, thunder rumbled.
“What are you holding, buddy?” Charlie asked, rising up and straightening his back. He took the flashlight from his chin, balanced it in his gloved hand, and aimed its beam at the fishbowl.
The bowl had started to fill with rainwater, maybe as much as half an inch. “I don’t get it,” I said. “It makes no sense.”
“What’s to get? Back when we were kids, you threw out Humbert’s fishbowl. I picked it out of the trash and took it home. It’s called recycling. Saving the Earth.”
“Did you mean for me to find it?”
Charlie gave his umbrella a twirl, kicking a pinwheel of droplets into the air. “Nothing in life is meant. Things go the way the wind blows.”
“Where are they?” I asked.
“Who?”
“Where is she?” I yelled.
“Who?”
In a single motion, I pulled the notebook out from under my arm and flung it at Charlie. My hope was that it would sail like a giant ninja star and strike him in the face, but it hardly made it six feet before the wind opened it up and swatted it to the ground.
Charlie pointed the beam at the notebook until we could both see the open page. The handwriting was sloppy. The broken curves and squiggly lines matched the ones I’d seen in the bathroom stall, the ones that spelled out the response to my questions about Aquavania.
The author was missing fingers. That was the reason the writing was nearly illegible. The key word is nearly. Because even in the dark, at a distance, I could make out the title of the story.
The Legend of Fiona Loomis
Ink bled as the paper sucked up the rain and the words began to die. Charlie moved the beam to my face.
“‘Aliens of the Sixth Grade’ or whatever title you used,” he said. “That was actually my story, you know?”
“What?”
“Back when I first thought it up, it was called ‘Aliens of Fourth Grade,’” he explained. “But now we’re talking minor details. We were younger then. We were having a sleepover, and I told you the whole idea. Kids who weren’t kids. Kids who were older. Kids of another world. Sure, you might have written it down first, but you stole that stuff from me.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“No surprise there. You zone me out. Always have. Doesn’t mean my ideas don’t get lodged in your noggin.”
The notebook was fattening with water, and the words were almost entirely gone. Regretting my decision to throw it, I stepped forward, and Charlie closed his umbrella. As I bent to grab the notebook, Charlie skewered it with the umbrella tip and pulled it away from me. A flick of his wrist sent the notebook sliding across the wet grass and into the darkness. Some of the more timid cats scattered.
“How could you?” I cried.
“What?” he howled. “They’re stories!”
“You took them! You took her! Where are they?”
Charlie raised the umbrella like a sword and pointed the tip at my face. Stepping closer to me, he said, “You chose her. You hardly knew her. While you’ve known me your entire stupid life. But you chose her.”
“I didn’t choose anyone.”
He touched the tip of the umbrella to my forehead. “You said I was your best friend. Best! And where were you when I blew my fingers off? Where were you all those times I called? Where have you been for the last month?”
“I’ve been here. But people change, Charlie. You have to understand that.”
Before he could respond, the glow of headlights and the distinctive rattle from Kyle’s van pulling into the driveway grabbed Charlie’s attention. I seized the opportunity, swinging the fishbowl and using it to knock the umbrella from his hand.
“Careful now,” Charlie whispered, stepping back.
“What? Are you afraid that I’ll break this?” I shook the bowl in the air.
“I’m afraid you’ll get hurt.”
“It’s your way into Aquavania, isn’t it? That wasn’t a dream I had, was it? And when I didn’t answer the call, you took my place, right? If I fill this bowl with water, it will disappear, and if I touch the water—”
“Fill that bowl with water and you can put sea monkeys in it.”
“Screw you.”
“Would you believe me if I told you I have no idea where Fiona is?”
“No,” I said. “Would you believe me if I told you I was going to hit you over the head with this fishbowl?”
“No.”
Thwack.
The glass was so thick that it didn’t shatter, and the blow reverberated through my arm and into my clenched teeth. Charlie doubled over, dropped the flashlight, and raised his gloved hands to his head. He stumbled backward, groaning, “What is wrong with you?”
“Tell me you’re the Riverman. Say you’re the Riverman.”
“This is how you treat a best friend?” he asked as he struggled his way toward the clubhouse. I kept after him, the bowl raised and cocked for another strike. As Charlie threw open the clubhouse door, one of the hinges popped off and the door tilted and smacked me in the nose. Blood let loose. I pulled my arm to my face. It gave Charlie a precious few seconds to get inside.
With my bleeding nose tucked in the pit of my elbow, I stepped into the black and dank of the clubhouse. Even with that bleeding nose, the odor was overpowering. Wet fur. Cat urine. My lungs burned with the stink. I hacked and coughed, which was met with a chorus of hisses. All around me, red eyes. I could see nothing other than those eyes.
“Get outta here!” I shrieked, swinging the bowl wildly in the air. The cats began to scatter. Up and down and past me. The awful smell was now joined by the awful sound of claws on wood. One cat even nipped at my calf as it slunk out into the
rain. I flinched and floundered until my shoulder hit the wall. An exposed nail tore open my wet shirt and the skin underneath.
Someone had boarded up the windows long ago, and while the place was a calamity of holes, dark clouds were keeping all of the moonlight out. I was essentially blind, and thanks to the rain drumming on the roof, I was close to deaf too. Getting my bearings was nearly impossible. Not that it was a very big clubhouse. It was perhaps the size of a small bedroom. But it had a lofted space on top and a crawl space below. I didn’t know whether Charlie was above me, beneath me, or standing right in front of me, ready to dig his thumbs into my neck.
“Where are you?” I groaned.
“Prrrrack!” Charlie’s voice volleyed off the walls.
“What’s that?”
“That’s the sound of me shooting you with the gun I’m holding.”
He was above me. I was pretty sure of it. I started drawing the fishbowl back so I could hurl it upward, and I said, “You don’t own a gun.”
“No, I don’t. But Kyle does. And the fool hides it in here.”
I stopped. As much as I wanted to believe Charlie was lying, I knew he wasn’t. No one ever dared enter that nasty clubhouse. It was the only sensible place for Kyle to hide the gun. “Okay,” I said. “You have a gun. But why would you shoot me?”
“Um … nothing to do with the fact that you thumped my skull with an aquarium.”
It was the brand of sarcasm I expected from Charlie, but I didn’t find it the least bit amusing. He was pointing a gun at me, and it was as if he was pretending this entire thing was a game. Only he wasn’t pretending. This was a game to him. Everything was a game. And I realized if I was going to stop him, I needed to play.
Weaknesses. Spot them, exploit them, and you win. That was the key to every video game. Only what were Charlie’s weaknesses?
“So how’s this gonna go, Alistair?” he asked. “You seem very upset with me. But all I want is to talk this out, address our differences.”
The Riverman (The Riverman Trilogy) Page 20
