When I got home from babbling to Rosie and making an idiotic moron of myself I went to my room and took off my soaking wet clothes. My wool sweater and t-shirt both already kind of smelled like laundry that got forgotten in the washer too long. They smelled like an old people’s home, and they made a flop sound when I tossed them in my hamper. I went to the bathroom and grabbed a towel and fluffed my hair with it all over. I combed my hair, brushed my teeth, went back to my room and locked the door.
I opened my closet, reached in and pulled all the clues off of my bulletin board. I boggled them around on the floor to try to put them in a better order. Then I took some new scraps of paper and a marker from my desk and sat on the floor with my legs crossed like a Native American and all the clues in my lap. I made some new ones.
CLUES:
–How I will never be as brave as Rosie even though she is only a normal person.
Simon knocked on my door, bang bang bang.
“Yeah?” I got up quickly and tossed the clues back in my closet.
“Whatcha doin’ in there?”
“Nothing!”
“What?”
I went over and unlocked the door and Simon was holding his glasses at his side with one hand and scrubbing his eyelids with the other. There was a book tucked under his arm. He snapped his eyes open wide and smiled at me.
“Whatcha doin’, chief?”
“Getting ready for bed.”
“Want a story?” The book he was holding was some red and blue covered thing I had never seen before.
“I’m really tired.”
Simon frowned a little and put his big glasses back on his small face.
“Something wrong?”
“No. Something wrong with you?”
“Me? No, I don’t think so,” he said.
I turned around and sat down on my bed. I was obviously still kind of mad at him.
“Pretty big night tonight,” he said.
“Yep.”
I wasn’t very interested in being read to by Simon. And like I already said, I wasn’t exactly in an extraordinary mood, and besides, maybe Maureen wanted him to read her a story instead. On the phone, maybe. And then when the story was done she could ask him to marry her.
Simon put his hands in his pockets and walked over to one of my really old to-do lists that was still up on the wall. Lots of things were checked off but lots of things weren’t. He looked at it for a while, but he seemed like he wasn’t even reading it. I could tell because of how his lips slid sideways away from each other that he was thinking about something else. He took his hands out of his pockets, straightened the list and pushed the tack a bit deeper into the wall with his strong skinny thumb. Then he sat on my bed beside me.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I’m still kind of mad.”
“I know chief, I know. I’m sorry I didn’t—”
“So you’re going to give it back?”
“The book? No, I can’t give it back. Not yet.”
I knew he wouldn’t anyway.
“Well then I’m still mad.”
“I know. If I were you I’d be upset too. But I’m me, so for now I’m going to keep it, and I’m sorry.”
I didn’t even bother rolling my eyes.
“Listen, about Maureen, I—”
“You didn’t call 9-1-1 did you?”
“About the book?”
“Obviously.”
“No, I didn’t do that. I’m still not sure what to do, to be honest.”
He scratched his neck.
“Maureen’s just—”
“I don’t wanna talk about it.”
Simon scratched his neck again.
“You don’t have to be like this,” I said.
“Like what?”
“Like a security guard or something.”
“For now, I do.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“No, you didn’t. You’re right.”
“You don’t make any sense.”
Simon shook his head and looked at the carpet.
“The whole thing doesn’t make much sense,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“I mean, how could somebody... I don’t know. It seems so contrived almost, not contrived but—I don’t know. You found it in the woods?”
“Yes.”
“In our woods, right here?”
“Yeah, I already told you that.”
“I know. It just doesn’t make much sense.”
“What are you talking about? I just found it in the woods lying there on the ground, I told you that a billion times.”
Then he leaned down at me until I looked him in the eyes and he was making a completely serious look like he was a worried boulder. He said “Are you okay?” and I said “Yes.” Then he said “Arthur, tell me the truth. Are you okay?” and I felt weird because he was being a little scary with how serious he was, and I said “Yes.”
Simon didn’t talk for a while, then he said “Alright. We’ll discuss the book in a few days when I’ve... when I’ve given it more thought.”
“Fine.”
“So, no story?”
“No.” I was about to tell him that there was actually one book he could read me a story from if he wanted, and that it had a black and white speckly cover and that it was probably hidden somewhere in the house, but I didn’t.
“You brush your teeth?” Simon asked.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Okay. I love you.”
“Sure.”
Simon got up and stood with his hand on the light switch, waiting for me to get under the covers. I did, and he flicked the light off.
“Night, chief.”
“Night.”
My door closed and made complete blackness. That’s maybe my favourite part of the day: when I can close my eyes and it looks the exact same as when I open my eyes. Not even Simon could wreck it. I stared up at the ceiling and saw nothing, and closed my eyes and saw nothing. Still nothing when I opened them again. Then my eyes woke up and started working overtime, and I saw the bright beginnings of some things. I became the pencil eraser guy on the black page of my room.
I saw a speck of yellowish white in the middle of the darkness and I rubbed at it with my eyes. Then at another and another one, and I could see the stars on my ceiling. I drew white lines to show some of the constellations. I erased white outlines for the pieces of paper on my walls, and then filled in the rectangles one by one. My glow-in-the-dark light switch, a few stray shirts, my half-finished igloo: brick by brick I erased all the bright things into my bedroom. It’s silly, but I even scratched away with my mind and drew the Beckhams’ white cat lemniscating at the foot of my bed, and Rosie’s reflecting vest hanging on my coat hook. I could draw my own universe, if I wanted. I could make things exist that didn’t, because in my room the big bang was me.
Finally when I closed my eyes there was nothing, but when I opened them: everything. I closed them again and let go of everything and drifted asleep.
MY EYES SLAMMED open and the rain wasn’t falling inside my room and Rosie wasn’t there. I was all confused in the brain. Did that stuff really happen? I was in my bed. There were my stars and my light switch. My igloo. It was a pile of white bricks on my floor, because it fell over again. That’s probably why I was awake.
I lay there. It was one of those times when you think your dream life is real and your real life is fake. My brain started switching them back around. It must have been thinking about Rosie the instant I fell asleep and then turned it all into a dream.
In my dream Rosie said “What do you mean he’s not your dad?” and I told her about how I didn’t know who my real parents were and she asked me if I wa
nted to know very badly and I said yes and she asked why and I said I didn’t know.
We were running on the side of the highway. The sky was pitch black. Instead of Icebird we were pulling a handle attached to our rusty car with Simon in the driver’s seat reading a red and blue book. He never looked up, he just kept reading page after page really fast, and it was raining inside the car but there were windshield wipers attached to the top of his glasses and one of them was broken so he had to keep flicking it with his finger to make it go again.
I told Rosie that I was just about to crack the case of Phil when stupid Simon took him away. I told her there was no way that no one on the street had clues about Phil. I told her I only had one house left. We were getting soaked. I was really out of breath because we were sprinting full speed.
Then Rosie steered the trailer-car around a bend in the road and we went up a little gravel hill. She wasn’t saying anything about all the stuff I was telling her, she was just silent and running.
Then we slowed down, and eventually stopped. I waited for her to say something but she didn’t.
I looked around and realized where she’d brought me. The highway wasn’t the highway anymore even though it had been the whole time: now it was my own curvy old street, and we were standing in the rain at the end of a gravel driveway and a hundred footsteps up ahead was the hermit’s house.
There was one lonely orange window lit up.
I stared at the house. I was just about to ask Rosie what I should do and then I was awake.
I lay there wiping my forehead with my blanket, because it was wet for some reason. I couldn’t tell if it was sweat water or rain water. The dream was so real, I could even remember what my hands felt like on the handle of the trailer-car. I could still feel the cold metal on my wet palm. I could still see the hermit’s house. In the dream I was confused, but somehow I wasn’t scared.
I sat up. My alarm clock said 1:43 and my body said “go back to sleep,” but I was saying something different. I peeled my blanket off of me. I switched on my lamp and looked at all the superheroes all over my sheets, with all their flashy orange suits and huge round muscles and small pants. None of them looked like they’d needed to sleep a night in their lives. I tossed all the superheroes off of me and turned to the floor. I yawned my mouth so wide.
After I scrubbed everything out of my eyes, I stood up. There was a giant pile of clothes in front of my closet, because I was being so distracted and messy for the past couple weeks. I searched through the pile to find warm things. I picked out a dry black sweater and put it on top of my t-shirt. I put my black corduroys on below that. For some reason, even though I mostly hate them, I put socks on. I knew it was going to be cold. What I wished I could put on were my silence boots, but I didn’t even have any.
I was the groggiest I’d ever been. There were the driest but stickiest snots ever in my nose, the kind that are no fun to pick because they itch. My whole scalp itched too and I felt sweaty all over. My mouth tasted like what I imagine coffee would taste like: disgusting.
Like a little field mouse I tiptoed out of my room, up the stairs, across the hall, to Simon’s door. I looked at the doorknob, and wondered if it was going to squeak, and wondered if it was a friend or enemy. I couldn’t believe I didn’t even know whether Simon’s doorknob was squeaky or not. What kind of investigation was I running anyway, without even having my own house on the back of my hand? I yawned, with no sound. I asked the doorknob, with my eyes, to help. Someone once told me that our bodies use a language that is a million times easier to understand than when we talk with words. I figured that it didn’t work on doorknobs, but still. With my eyes I told it the whole story. It stared back at me, but not with eyes, obviously, because it was a doorknob. Still, in its metal way I thought I could hear it saying, well, I think it said, “Open sesame.” So I turned it with the carefullest fingers I had, and I pushed on it. The door opened smoothly and completely silent.
“Thanks, doorknob,” said my eyes.
“No problem, brother,” whispered the doorknob.
I only opened the door Arthur-wide so that I’d fit through sideways, but not too much light would shine in from the hall. The hall was pretty dark anyway, but I couldn’t be too careful. I slipped through, into the room. It was darker in there than the night itself was: there was a dim grey glow poking in from the window, in lines, creeping in between the blinds. The lines fell onto Simon’s bed where he was sleeping on his back like a dead mummy. He was snoring, and I was glad. It was good to be able to know for sure that he was sleeping. I snuck over to the other corner of the room by the window, to his desk.
I opened the top left drawer with silence, which took about two ice ages. I looked inside. Paperclips and a pencil; that was it. I shut it just as slowly. Every movement I made so amazingly slow that they made no sounds. I inched the next drawer open. It was full of folders and paper, so much paper. I pulled on the bottom drawer and it squeaked. I turned into an ice sculpture of myself. The squeak was really loud, and on top of it I probably squeaked too. I waited. There was still snoring. I thawed myself out. There ended up being nothing at all in that drawer. Dust.
I left the squeaky drawer half open, because I didn’t want to risk another sound. I must have been looking in those drawers for fifteen minutes, and nothing. Simon rolled over. I was starting to go a bit mental. I took a deep breath and sighed, a really slow sigh, to stay quiet and calm.
I took a good look at the top of the desk for the first time. Simon’s laptop was there, and a mug full of pens and pencils. Beside that, there was a framed picture of me. Even though it was so dark I recognized the picture, it was this one where I’m in a yellow raincoat and I’m tiny, and I have my hammer and some blocks of wood on the ground in front of me. I’m in the woods near where the treehouse is and in the background you can see only half the treehouse because it’s not all built yet. Simon isn’t in the picture, because he took it, obviously. I look like I’m uselessly banging on the blocks of wood with my hammer for some reason, but also I look happy. The picture made me smell a smell in my brain that I hadn’t smelled in forever, which smelled almost like the woods, and kind of like chocolate chip cookies baking, and then for a second I felt like I was way older than ten years old. Then I snapped out of looking at the picture and looked over on the far right side of the desk and I saw Phil.
“Right under your nose, man!” said the doorknob.
I couldn’t believe Simon left it out in the open like that. Was he stupid? I felt weird picking it up. I held it tight in my hands, and I realized that maybe he didn’t hide it really well because maybe he trusted me. All of the sudden I felt like a bank robber. The moon glow from the window blinds made stripes on my black sweater like it was a bank-robbing sweater on TV. I felt bad that he trusted me. I felt like a murderer. But I was trying to be the opposite.
I held onto the book anyway and tiptoed back to the door. I took another look at Simon. He was on his side now with his back towards me, and he was still snoring.
“Good luck, brother,” said the doorknob, and I closed the door with him, giving him a quiet high-five.
Back in my room, I packed my backpack, putting in Phil last. I looked over the clues, and then I left my room. In the kitchen I pulled the biggest knife out of the wooden thing that holds our knives and I wrapped it in a dishcloth and quietly put it in my backpack too, which made me feel a little mental but also a little safer. When I got to the hallway I got a funny feeling. I went back to my room and picked up a bright green towel from my clothes pile, for some reason. I tied two corners of it around my neck like a cape.
Then I left. I was super quiet, and I snuck down the hall and past the kitchen and out the front door. It was definitely the first time I’d been outside by myself at two in the morning. It was just me and my breath. Every time I exhaled there was a puff of ice in front of me. I wanted to breathe on
somebody and completely freeze them, not to be a jerk, but so that they could wake up in the future like I read about on Wikipedia before.
“Where am I?”
“I’m Doctor Arthur Williams, welcome to the year 3000.”
“Where is my family?”
“There are some things we must sacrifice for the sake of science.”
“You mean to tell me that I was just about to sit down to a lovely lasagna dinner, and now suddenly it’s the year 3000 and you think that’s just grand?”
“Isn’t it fantastic?”
“Take me back.”
But meanwhile back in the actual year, I was walking up the first small hill of our street, away from my house. I’d definitely walked up that street five thousand times in the past two weeks, but still it felt a little different every time.
This time the walk was longer and more freezing than ever. And darker. Gosh was it dark. I could kind of see my feet moving, and that was it. Our street had barely any streetlights, I guess ’cause of how far it was from downtown, and I could see absolutely nothing without my flashlight. I couldn’t find the moon anywhere, even though I knew it was somewhere. I shone my flashlight to stay alive.
As usual when I walked, or as usual when I did anything at all, my brain became an infinite list of questions and memories. There was the hermit’s house, first of all, and how terrible and destroyed it looked. There was the fact that I had only ever seen it from halfway up the driveway, and it still looked amazingly spooky. I knew it had a porch with a broken railing, and no railing at all in some spots. And the whole thing was damp and grey looking, and wood showed through the grey paint in really big patches on the front.
Then also Finch had told me that the hermit ate kids. While Finch was generally a person full of crap, it was still in my head. More realistic, I’d also heard he was a thief. And that no one ever actually saw the guy because he was such an anti-socialist. He stayed home, and then hunted his own meals in the woods after dark. To sum up everything I knew: he was a murderer, a cannibal, a crack dealer (whatever “crack” was), a robber, a vegetarian, an insane asylum patient, and he owned a bunch of guns. I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that he was every one of those things, but even if he was only two or three of them I had a problem. Plus, I wasn’t exactly as prepared as I wished I was. I didn’t have my camouflage suit or my silence boots or anything. I figured maybe I’d just try to go right up and knock on the door first and try to just be normal, and then if anything especially evil happened, I’d have to improvise. When I imagined improvising my knees started to get shakier. I could feel the not-sharp side of the kitchen knife pushing against a bump on my spine.
A Matter of Life and Death or Something Page 17
