Children of the Underground

by Trevor Shane

  “But Reggie was okay with it?”

  Addy nodded. “Reggie wasn’t just okay with it. Reggie told me that it was as much a reason why he recruited me as my other scores. He valued independence. I think he had high hopes for me. I’m pretty sure I let him down.”

  “Because the same independent streak that made him recruit you ended up turning you into a rebel?”

  “Because I got sick of sitting around doing little things when big things were happening all around me.”

  Evan knew how Addy felt. He knew what it felt like to feel destined for bigger things. “Have they always screened soldiers like that? Have they always tried to avoid independent thinkers?” Evan asked.

  “I don’t know,” Addy answered. “I don’t know if they always screened them or if they started because of something that happened or something that someone did,” she added without elaborating.

  Evan thought about it for a minute. “It doesn’t say much for the soldiers, does it? I mean, it means that the soldiers are basically chosen to be human drones with a predilection for violence.”

  Addy shrugged. She knew better. She’d met a lot of former soldiers during her two years working with the Underground. “Either that,” Addy answered Evan, “or the tests are a bunch of crap.” It was obvious to Evan which of the two options Addy believed. “I try not to put too much weight into psychological tests given to sixteen-year-olds. Even if they’re accurate at the time, people change.”

  “But Reggie believed in the tests?”

  “He thought that they were better than nothing. Reggie was looking for people who weren’t afraid to break the rules. That’s how he found me. That’s why we can trust him.”

  Twenty-nine

  The city blew by the windows of the cab as we drove toward Chinatown. I watched the buildings go by in a blur. We were leaving New York. I wondered if I’d ever come back. Michael put his hand on top of mine like he had that day on the airplane leaving St. Martin. It felt good, the touch of another person, Michael’s touch. I looked in the direction of the Brooklyn Bridge and wondered about Reggie again. Michael and I’d spent the day sitting in the apartment, listening for a knock on the door, dreading we might be discovered in the few hours before we left. A couple times, I hoped for a knock though. I hoped it would be Reggie so that I’d know he was okay. Maybe someday I’ll hear a knock on my door and it will be Reggie. Maybe Reggie made it to Brooklyn and Brooklyn protected him. Maybe Reggie outran the bullets in the last man’s gun. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

  Reggie had saved Michael’s life. He could have run away as soon as he saw what they did to Dorothy. I told him to run, but he didn’t. I wonder if what I did saved Reggie’s life. It all depends on whether or not Reggie is still alive. If he’s dead, then my killing didn’t serve any purpose. “I’ve got something to show you when we get on the bus,” Michael said as the cab wove through traffic.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “You’ll see,” he said.

  The cabbie let us out on Canal Street. We walked the half block to a bus stop near the entrance to the Manhattan Bridge, across from some sort of Chinese clinic. Other people, mostly Asian, were already waiting on the sidewalk for the bus, standing with their suitcases. The Chinatown buses were cheap buses that ran from one Chinatown to the next, up and down the Eastern seaboard, stopping in D.C., Philly, New York, and Boston. We walked over and got in the back of the line.

  The bus left at midnight. We’d be riding under the cover of darkness. After everything that had happened, I wasn’t sure if I believed that darkness helped. By the time the bus pulled up, it was five minutes to midnight and we were standing at about the midpoint of the line. We shuffled onto the bus, paying the driver our fare as we got on. Michael and I made our way to the back. “I don’t like having people sit behind me,” Michael said. I went to put my bag up on the overhead rack. Michael put his hand on my bag. “Do you still have that thing you found the other night?” he asked. I knew that he was referring to the gun. I nodded. “Is it in the bag?” he asked. I nodded again. “Then let’s keep the bag in our laps.”

  The bus was only a third full. None of the other passengers sat too close to us. Everyone tried to keep their distance from everyone else. I could feel the rumble under my feet when the engine started. The driver turned the interior lights off, making it dark inside so people could sleep. He pulled the bus into traffic and we were moving. We drove west. I watched the city out the window for as long as I could, up until the moment the bus entered the tunnel to New Jersey. We drove under the water and New York was gone.

  The sky over New Jersey was dark. Only intermittent flashes of light flared over us as we drove past streetlights or well-lit buildings. Michael turned to me. “I thought you’d want to see this,” Michael said as he reached into his duffel bag. He pulled a postcard out of his bag. He handed it to me. I flipped it over in my hands and waited for a flash of light so that I could see it better. When the next flash of light came I saw that it was another postcard from Washington, D.C., but it wasn’t one that I’d ever seen before. It had a picture of the Jefferson Memorial surrounded by cherry blossoms on it. “I found it in Dorothy’s pocket,” Michael said.

  “Is this what you were looking for?” I asked.

  “No. It was more of a consolation prize. But I saved it for you.” I flipped it over. Even in the darkness, I could see that there was something written on it, but I couldn’t make out the words. I reached up to turn on my reading light, but Michael stopped me. “Let’s not draw attention to ourselves,” he said. So I waited for another flash of light. While I waited, I tried to imagine what the postcard might say. My imagination nearly drowned in the possibilities. The words were there, right in front of me, but I couldn’t read them. Another flash of light came. I saw only the first few words. The postcard was addressed to me.

  Dear Maria, it started. I was so startled when I saw my name that I couldn’t read any more before the light disappeared again. I held the postcard closer to my face, hoping I could read it in the darkness, but the words were hidden in the shadows. Dear Maria. I wondered if Dorothy wrote the postcard herself. The bus hurtled down the turnpike. We were coming up on an oil refinery that was lit up like a vigil. I’d have time to read the whole card. I looked down and waited for the light to come. When it did, I read,

  Dear Maria,

  Every picture is a picture of a picture

  Of a picture of a picture of a scene.

  Every memory is a memory of a memory

  Of a memory of a memory of a dream.

  On the sixth day, you can find your reward under a rock in the creek in the park.

  I didn’t need any time to solve the riddle this time. I knew what it meant right away. I knew to ignore the poem and concentrate only on the words that came after it. The sixth day was Saturday. My reward was my prize for helping Reggie: Dorothy’s promise that she’d help me find you. Under a rock in the creek in the park had to refer to Rock Creek Park. I suddenly felt a chill run down my back. I turned to Michael. “Do you think they’ll still help me after what happened?” I asked, holding the postcard tightly between my fingers.

  “They better,” Michael answered.

  “But Dorothy’s dead, and we don’t know what happened to Reggie.”

  “People die,” Michael said with a shrug. “It’s no excuse to welsh on a promise.”

  I looked out the window. We were already far from the city. All I could see were empty fields and trees zipping by us in the night. “You never trusted them in the first place,” I said to Michael.

  “Yeah, but you did,” he answered. “I don’t see any benefit to stopping now.” The moon hung low over the trees. “Sometimes you just have to believe whatever helps you get through the day. There’s no point in truth if it has no utility.” He took a shirt out of his duffel bag and balled it so that he could use it as a pillow. He took the
balled-up shirt, placed it on my shoulder, and rested his head on it.

  I don’t want to sleep. I want time to go faster. I want to physically push it forward. Michael fell asleep in minutes. It’s too dark to read, barely light enough to write. Instead I’ve been staring out the window, wondering where you are right now, wondering if something inside you misses me.

  Thirty

  “What was he like?” Addy finally asked Evan during one of the moments when they were alone and everything was quiet. She’d been holding back the question for so long, over so many miles. She was afraid of how Evan would react to it. She was afraid he would be jealous of her interest in his old friend. She was afraid of what she’d have to reveal to Evan once they started talking about him. But even Addy’s endurance had its limits. She simply couldn’t wait any longer.

  “Who? Christopher?” Evan asked, as if it were possible that Addy was asking about someone else. Who else could she be asking about? It was Christopher who brought the two of them together. Before the night of the fire, Christopher was all they had in common.

  “Yeah, Christopher,” Addy answered, trying to sound as insouciant as possible, trying to pretend that her interest was merely casual. “Growing up, I mean. What was he like?”

  Addy shouldn’t have been worried about asking Evan about Christopher. Evan had spent the past two weeks asking himself questions about Christopher. The questions in Evan’s head only doubled after Addy told him that Christopher was gone. What was Christopher like growing up? Evan thought about how much different his answer would have been if someone asked him the question only two months ago. It was strange how so much of what happened over the past few weeks—all things that should have had nothing to do with his and Christopher’s childhood together—seemed to have everything to do with their childhood. “He was quiet,” Evan said, “and intense. People thought that he was so different from everybody else because he was kind of a loner and because he didn’t give a shit what people thought or said about him. He really wasn’t that different from everyone else, though. He was like a lot of other kids we grew up with, just more—” Evan took a breath, searching for the word. “Focused” was all he could come up with.

  Addy gave Evan a searching look, begging with her eyes for him to continue. Evan obliged. “It’s hard to describe what someone you grew up with was like while you were growing up with him. He was my best friend since we were less than three years old. It’s the same as if I asked you what you were like growing up. You are who you were. What’s there to explain?”

  “But Christopher must have been different from the other kids,” Addy said, not bothering to explain to Evan why she was so sure that he had to have been different.

  “I guess,” Evan began with a shrug. “In the beginning, when we were really young, he really was just like everyone else. Maybe he was a little quieter. Oh, and he had nightmares,” Evan remembered. “He had these vicious nightmares. I remember the first night he slept over my house. His parents warned my parents about his night terrors—that’s what they called them—but we had no idea how bad they would be. That first time, my mother stayed up with him until morning. Chris and I were sleeping on the floor in my bedroom in sleeping bags. Every time Chris screamed, I woke up and I looked down and saw my mother, sitting on the edge of my bed, leaning over Chris, running her hands over his forehead and whispering to him that everything was okay. It was like no matter how many times my mother said everything was going to be okay, Chris knew it wasn’t true. My mother was superstitious, so she didn’t dare wake him up. Instead she simply sat there next to him, trying to soothe him. There were lulls, moments when the screaming would stop, but it always came back. My parents didn’t let me ask Chris to sleep over again for years after that night. My mother didn’t have the stomach for it. The next time I was allowed to have Chris sleep over again was after he promised me that the nightmares were gone.”

  “What were the nightmares about?” Addy asked, searching for meaning in every word.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think Chris knew. I don’t think he remembered them when he woke up.”

  “What was he screaming? Could you understand any of it?”

  Evan shook his head. “He just screamed these terrible, high-pitched screams. A few times I heard him shout the word no over and over again. He called out for his mom and his dad a few times too, but he never said anything that made any sense.”

  “How old was he when the nightmares stopped?” Addy asked.

  Evan began to feel like he was being interrogated, but that didn’t stop him from talking. He wanted answers almost as much as Addy did. He thought that maybe together, they could find them. “I don’t know. We had to be in the fifth grade when I had him sleep over again. What is that—ten years old? Eleven?”

  “Do you know why the nightmares stopped?”

  “It’s hard to say,” Evan said. “It’s not like his parents medicated him or anything. But now that I think about it, other things started to change around then too. I never really put the two together before. Right around that time, Chris made me start taking karate lessons with him. He became obsessed with it—it was his first obsession. He also got this pull-up bar in his house that his father mounted on the frame of the door leading into their laundry room. I’d go over to his house and we’d spend half our time just doing pull-ups. Most of the kids in our class could only do, like, four pull-ups. A bunch of kids couldn’t do any. Chris could do over twenty when we were only twelve years old.”

  “How many could you do?” Addy asked, figuring that Evan couldn’t have been that far behind his best friend.

  “Twenty-three,” Evan answered with a proud grin. Addy knew that Evan would remember the exact number. She would have remembered if it had been her. “Chris had the school record at twenty-five.”

  “You said that things started to change. What else changed?” Addy asked. She wanted to know more. She wanted to know everything. “It had to be more than him making you take karate lessons and the two of you doing pull-ups.”

  “There was more,” Evan answered, trying to figure out how to explain what he’d simply known growing up: that something was happening to Christopher. It was like a lever had been pulled inside of Christopher’s head. “It was more than that. He became more withdrawn around other people around then too. I think that for a while I was the only person he really talked to. And that changed only when we were in high school, because he made me set him up on dates with a few of my girlfriend’s friends. Those dates were a disaster.” Evan laughed.

  “How was he withdrawn?” Addy asked, focusing on the details that seemed important to her.

  “He became even quieter. When you were with him, he’d be intensely focused on something one minute, and the next he’d seem totally distracted. But when he was focused, I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

  “When he was focused, what was he focused on?”

  “He had us play these survival games in the woods, like we were training for the end of the world. We’d run, climb rocks, wade through rivers. He started getting his hands on whatever weapons he could find and we’d take those into the woods too. We’d practice throwing knives into trees from twenty feet away and sometimes even farther. Then he got other things. Hatchets. Bows and arrows—there were a lot of bow hunters where we grew up. I don’t know where he got any of the stuff. I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to know. Eventually, he got his hands on some guns. We practiced shooting cans off fallen trees.”

  “Did you ever shoot anything else?”

  “No. I wanted us to practice on squirrels or deer, but Chris was against it. Instead one of us would throw a rock or a tennis ball as high into the air as we could and the other one would try to shoot it out of the sky. Chris almost never missed.”

  “What did you think of all of this?” Addy asked.

  “I thought it was awesome,” Evan answered.
“It was so much fucking fun. What fourteen-year-old boy wouldn’t like doing that shit? Hell, it sounds like fun now.”

  “But it wasn’t fun for Chris?” Addy guessed.

  Evan shrugged. “Fun for Chris was different from fun for everyone else. Even when we weren’t out in the woods, Chris spent all of his free time reading these crazy books about aliens and secret societies and conspiracy theories. If I didn’t know him, I might have thought that he was a weirdo too. We quit karate after two years because a tae kwon do studio opened up in town. Chris made me start taking tae kwon do with him. When I asked Chris why we were switching, he told me that he didn’t think we were learning fast enough in our karate classes. Fast enough for what? I had no idea. I mean, no one in that class learned anything half as fast as Chris. I didn’t question him, though. I did what Chris wanted me to, because Chris was the only thing in my life that made the world seem big. But he did things because—” Evan stopped midsentence, staring down at the floor, trying for the first time that he could remember to figure out what had been driving his best friend. Evan began to wonder how much Christopher might have known back when the two of them were playing in the woods. He wondered how much Christopher had kept from him.

  “Because why?” Addy asked.

  Evan lifted his head. “Because when Chris turned eleven, he suddenly became paranoid or something. It was like his nightmares escaped his sleep and started following him around while he was awake.”

  “But you never asked him what he was paranoid about?”

  “I used to tease him about it sometimes, and he would laugh. But I never asked him about it, because I was his friend. If he wanted to tell me, he would have told me. I think one of the reasons why he didn’t run away from me like he ran from everyone else was because I was willing to accept all of his weirdo shit without asking questions.”