He glanced down at where she pointed and jerked his foot out of the puddle. “Sorry. I’ll be more careful from now on.”
Something in his tone drew her eyes to his face. A tense cloud darkened his features at the reminder of his unusual circumstances. A frisson of doubt faltered her when she realized he might have actually forgotten his otherworldly troubles for an hour or two. And she’d gone and ruined the mood.
I’m going to end up ruining the mood anyway. Her suspicions about Shane had receded for a time, but the reminder of the otherworld brought her own questions back to the forefront of her mind. Maybe he’ll be at Starla’s and I’m worried for nothing. Maybe I’m reading too much into what might just be a prank on Kit’s part.
They reached shoe check and Jack showed their key tag to the attendant, who waved them back. She followed him through a bright blue tarp serving as a curtain. The noise from outside quieted to a low murmur, buffeted by plywood shelves lined with shoes and a row of strollers parked haphazardly around the edges of the area. Some enterprising soul, inspired by the mild weather, had wheeled in portable coat racks for the winter coats that were all but unnecessary in the mild weather. A pink-lit Christmas star hung from the tentlike ceiling, making everything look twilight-purple, including the whiter parts of Jack’s hair as he ducked his head through the curtain.
They found their belongings locked into a wire basket tucked into a cubby about midway down the second row. Lin fished her phone out. She blushed and sent him a look of apology as she paused to check the phone. Nothing yet from Shane. She sighed and tucked the phone into her bra, a half-hearted smile on her lips as Jack raised his eyebrow at her maneuver.
When she turned, he blocked her. “Something’s eating at you.”
She shook her head. Shane would be at Starla’s. He’d mentioned a new date and he wouldn’t miss the opportunity to bring him around. Like he wouldn’t miss his meetings?
“Yes, it is. I can tell.”
“It’s nothing.” Nothing I’m ready for. The awareness broadsided her. What do we have, besides chemistry? Some years as colleagues? Friendship that wasn’t strong enough to resist the current of time? If I push it, will it break? She was already falling faster than she expected.
He shifted, moving them into a private space between shoe cubes. He ducked his head to meet her gaze with solemn eyes. “Lin. I’ve been down that road before. Do you know where it leads?”
“This is different.”
He shook his head. “No, it’s not. ‘Nothing’ is never really nothing. It’s something, and it keeps being something until it takes over everything, and before you know it, everything in your life is covered by a glacier, holding you down with the immense tonnage of nothing.” He slid his hands down from her shoulders to clasp her hands. The kidskin almost felt like his bare flesh. Almost.
She looked down. This wall of the enclosure backed on the ice rink and they stood at the edge of a dark puddle that lightened to uneven ice that thickened towards the edge. Before her eyes, it solidified. Jack didn’t even need to touch it. Under the music, the sounds of people outside, the growl of generators, she could hear the water crackle as it froze over.
Jack followed her gaze and his body stiffened. He chucked her under the chin and brought her face up and away from the Thing they Weren’t Talking About. “I don’t want to screw this up.” His voice, barely above a whisper, wrapped around her.
She drew a shaky breath. “You know the Thing?”
Tension tightened his body. She could feel it thrum in his arms, in the muscles of his thighs as they brushed hers. “The one we’re not talking about, right? The one I’m keeping far away from you.”
“For reasons I understand and even agree with.” She nodded, looking down to avoid the disappointment that was bound to come into his face. “I don’t think it’s gonna work.”
~*~
Fuck the Thing, he wanted to say. Fuck it, and everything surrounding it.
The moment she stepped off that elevator he knew he was lost. He’d spent yesterday ordering his life around two neatly separated categories, and fantasizing about how it would play out. In fact, his imaginary future life began looking not so unlike the one he used to picture himself having. Dinners, concerts, weekends away. Nights wrapped in each other’s arms. All blessedly absent of strange critters and weird random occurrences.
He’d gone so far as to picture two-hour blocks of time carefully shaded out, in which he’d feed little gremlins ice cream, and for the other twenty-two hours of the day, they’d scram, and frolic wherever they frolicked somewhere out of his reach. Even his little Advisor seemed to play along. She returned, saluted him, and told him a deal had been made and he could safely travel to Starla’s for the evening.
“Why not?” Don’t let the dream die yet. Even though her reticence on the way down had sent a familiar chill through him that put the tarnish to his earlier imaginings of a familiar life. I’ve seen that movie, and I know how it ends. Unspoken frustration turning to avoidance, and then resentment, and finally an awkward, chilly formality that echoed with miles of distance between two people who could still touch hands.
She knotted her fingers together. “It’s Shane.”
“What about Shane? Not that you need adult supervision, but I cleared it with Shane on Saturday morning.” He rolled his eyes. “Right after he picked up my barista.”
She looked away. “You were the last person to see him.”
A curl of doubt wormed its way through him. “And that’s…unusual?”
She bunched her hands in her sweater. “Not in itself, but…you were right, the other day, when you said—” She avoided his gaze, looked up at the top of the inflatable, down at the puddle, anywhere but at him. He could almost taste her growing fear, and it burned his tongue.
“When I said what?” What did I say? Please don’t let me have said something dumb.
She still looked down and a little to her right. “When you said you can’t un-see them.”
He suddenly felt as inflatable as the castle. Just as fragile and just as full of nothing but air. “You saw them again.” He glanced around. There didn’t seem to be any of the Oddlings in their immediate vicinity and he couldn’t remember seeing any on the way over. Did I come through to the other side? He wondered. Did I get so used to seeing them that I did un-see them?
“I met one. I think. I don’t know.” She turned away and stared at the inflatable wall like nylon screen-printed with block-shapes was an Andy Warhol original. “I was supposed to meet Shane at the tea house and he never showed, never answered any texts. Starla said he called Saturday and asked her if he could bring a date to Christmas Eve. That was the last anybody heard from him.”
“He was probably out with my barista. He spent more time making eyes at him than he did paying attention to me.” Jack pulled out his phone. He flicked to the social networking app and scrolled down. “Look. He checked in someplace on Saturday night.” His gut curled in a little when he read the name of the location.
Lin tilted the phone away so she could see it. “Chesterfield’s?”
The curl turned into a clench. “That’s his old club. The one where he got into all the, uh, trouble.”
“He didn’t go to his meeting, either.” She licked her lips. “Look, there’s another entry.” She squinted. “God, he takes terrible selfies. Off-center, out of focus—”
Jack turned the phone back. The partial shot of another head, close to Shane’s own, didn’t need to be in focus for him to recognize it. “Puck. My barista.” Whom he hadn’t seen this morning. The girl with the nose ring who didn’t make it strong enough, but made cute little patterns in the foam, had served him instead.
“Where would we look for Shane, then?” The sinking feeling in his gut hoped it wasn’t in the dumpster behind the club, because this time they might not get there in time.
He pulled out of himself, his memory sharpening and focused on the exchange in the bagel shop. The o
utlandishly-pierced Puck, his strange words about being “in play,” echoed by Frosty Sal and parroted by creatures much stranger than either a punk barista or a bag lady. He flicked the phone again, this time a little frantic. The selfie had been Shane’s last entry. Not even another check-in. His gut sank lower. There were places worse than the alley behind Chesterfields.
Lin had looked away again, fascinated by the edge of the ice rink creeping under the inflatable’s wall. “My tea guy hired a new waiter. He wore fox ears and called himself ‘Kit’ and told me my fortune cookie said to look for things I’d lost in places I hadn’t yet discovered.” She dug in her purse and pulled out a slip of paper. “This is the fortune that came out of the cookie.”
“‘Your true talents will be discovered?’ Doesn’t sound at all like ‘Look for what you’ve lost.’”
“Tell me about it!” She threw up her hands. “I didn’t check for a tail but maybe I should have. Maybe that kid couldn’t take off his ears because they grew there!” A thread of fear made her voice shake. It snaked around his neck and squeezed.
He took her shoulders, fingers tight, muscles shaking. He wanted to tell her she could talk to him, that he’d been down that stony-silent road with Nancy and wouldn’t make that same mistake again. He wanted to tell her he understood her fear, felt the same himself, and that together, they could weather it. Things he couldn’t say to Nancy in that time when his mother’s health was a giant question mark and their future erased to a blank slate. Back when he believed fear of the unknown was something you had to endure alone if you wanted to be a man.
What came out was something beyond different. “I am not a thing to be feared.”
She jerked her head up to meet his eyes. “What?”
Now it was his turn to look away, at the ripstop nylon wall. Is this how it goes down? Loses its air before you can even recognize its shape? The hum of the air blower covered the sounds of people around them with a white-noise blanket that kept them isolated. Maybe even from each other. “I can see it in your face. I told you it would hit you sooner or later.” Maybe his chest would cave in. Maybe there was some sort of gravity well in there, ready to hit critical mass and suck him in until he was a hollow shell made out of thin ice, only held up by air.
Her warm fingers gripped his chin. “Jack Winters, don’t be a jackass.” She turned his face towards hers. “I’m not afraid of you, I’m afraid of fighting with you. This thing we have—”
A cloud of relief swelled through him. “The good Thing?” He leaned into her touch.
“The good Thing.” She nodded. “I didn’t want to ruin it by kicking over the one limit you asked me for.” She looked away again. “I wanted to give you—to give us—time to ease into it.” Her lips tightened. “But that’s not gonna—” Her hand tensed. “Jack, look.” She pushed against his face until he turned his head where she guided him.
“No! Be casual.”
“But you pushed—” Shut up, shut up, already! You just got through your first minor spat, don’t ruin it! He shuffled his feet and looked where she’d guided him.
The inflatable wall behind the shoe cube had begun to ice over with his presence. There, at the edge of the thin coating of ice creeping up the wall, was a Frostling, stuck to the surface, dreamily tracing ferns.
How had he not noticed the little guy before? “Hey!” He hissed at the Frostling. “Scat! Get outta here!”
The Frostling ignored him at first, but lifted its head when it had completed one graceful arc of ferning. “M-majesty?” He dropped to the ground and bowed.
“Cut that out,” Jack growled.
The Frostling cringed. “Majesty would deny Frostling Tribe its reason for existence? The Boundaries must be patrolled!”
“Boundaries? This is a Boundary?” So close to his house? “That can’t be right.” So close to people?
“Majesty must know the Oddways lie but a step away.”
Little stinker knew the right words. His glance caught Lin’s worried one as she muttered, “Here we go again.”
He shook his head, looked at the corners of the inflatable. “This isn’t even a circle!” He pulled the vague memory of the map that his advisor had drawn. “And it’s not out of bounds for me. I’ve seen the map.”
The Frostling shook his head. “No, Majesty. This gateway simply leads to the Oddways and the Realm.”
“Oh.” He breathed a relieved sigh that fogged the air. “So…not a trap, then.”
“Not for Majesty.”
“What?” Lin’s tone escalated sharply.
Jack glanced around in sudden panic. He was familiar with how literal the little buggers could be. “Oh, hell no. If I find out you guys are pulling people—regular people—into the Oddways, I’m gonna give you such hell—”
The Frostling snapped to attention. “None shall pass!” He puffed out his little chest. “Er, unless Majesty wishes it.” He cocked his head. “Does Majesty wish it?”
“What? Are you—?”
“Wait, Jack.” Lin put her hand on his arm. “I know we said we were going to set a-a boundary on this, but—”
The defeat of a dead dream deflated inside him. There were places Shane could be that were worse than the alley behind a club that sold drugs. “Look for what you lost in a place you haven’t discovered yet, says the fox.”
She winced. “Do you mind?”
He set his ice skates down in one of the wire bins lining the cubes. “It couldn’t hurt, just to be sure.” The words sounded hollow, even to his own ears.
~*~
“Hey, buddy?” Jack crouched down to the child-sized creature that only they could see. “You think you could help us find our friend?” Jack held up a hand to his shoulder. “About yay tall, reddish hair, maybe with a blue-haired guy about the same height?”
Lin didn’t know what she was hoping for. Half of her wanted the Oddling to shake its head and shrug. Then she could contact the authorities and pull this thing firmly back into reality territory. The other half held a brief fantasy that the Oddling would nod, point to somewhere off behind himself, and Shane would appear out of thin air.
Neither half expected what really happened.
“Open the way, or the gate, or whatever, then.” Jack picked up the little creature by the back of its little iridescent tunic. “We’re going in.”
She stared at the wall of the inflatable. “Do we know what we’re doing?” She ventured.
Jack shook his head. “Not a bit.”
“Okay. Just so we’re clear on that.” Her feet went numb as she waited for something—special effects, maybe the glow from the other night. The inflatable wall stayed stubbornly solid. “Umm..”
The Oddling wriggled free. “Majesty and consort only need to step down.” Was that a hint of “duh” in his tinny little voice?
She glanced down. The frozen leakage from the ice rink took on depth. Instead of three inches of scraped-up ice and slush, the pale, gritty gray surface became the walls of a tunnel leading down. Sudden vertigo twisted her insides and she had to hold onto Jack’s elbow for balance as she realized her toes hung off the edge of a hole leading down. “Oh. Well.”
Jack glanced at her. “You okay?”
She nodded, gritting her teeth together. “Let’s do this. Where’s the first step?”
Jack crouched and peered down into the hole. He sighed. “Really?” He lifted his head to glare at the frost creature.
That annoyed tone didn’t bode well. She squatted down next to him and squinted into the optical-illusion depths. “There are no steps, just a—”
“A slide,” Jack said. “What are we? Twelve?”
She glanced around at the castle walls. “It sort-of fits. Inflatable bounce-house, place with loads of kids.”
Jack’s hands tensed. “Oh, God, it is a trap.” His hand shot out and closed around the Oddling’s little uniform collar. “Are you trapping little kids in here?” His voice rose with anger, directed at the Oddling. Or maybe h
ysteria.
There were people nearby. Lin shushed him. “Keep your voice down! There haven’t ever been news reports about people going missing here.”
“The gateway is as its Proud creator intended. No more, no less.” The Oddling stood to attention, disapproval in its body.
“A slide.” Lin couldn’t quiet her own hysterically-tinged laugh. Jack glared at her. “Oh, come on, it’s funny. Remember the Little Ralphie movie? They go and see Santa, and Ralphie crawls back up the slide?”
He shot her a look. “Ralphie’s parents were waiting at the bottom of that slide. God only knows what’s waiting at the bottom of this one.”
She stepped forward and sat down on the edge of the hole. “Let’s find out.” She answered his unspoken question. “If Shane’s there, at least we know he hasn’t fallen off the wagon.”
“No, just down Alice’s rabbit hole.”
She shot him a glance. “You, sir, are no Alice.”
He pursed his lips. “More Alice Cooper, less Alice in Wonderland.”
“If we’re talking old rock gods, you’re more Ziggy Stardust than Alice Cooper.”
“Welcome to my Nightmare.”
~*~
Jack was pretty sure they’d gone from zero to crazy in eight-point-five milliseconds. Lin scooted her sweater under her rear end and glanced up at him. “Are you coming?”
He sat down behind her and pulled her into his lap. “Only one of us needs a wet ass if we’re going to do this.” He nodded to the Frostling. “Let’s go.”
The Frostling dropped into the hole, Jack pushed off from the edge and wrapped his arms around Lin. Together, they plunged down.
As his head came even with the ground of the real world, the hole they’d dropped down iced back over. He had time for one glance up before they picked up speed.
Wind whipped Lin’s hair into his face. He spat out inky strands that smelled of herbal shampoo and squinted his eyes against a spray of snow that heralded their passing. The slide under his rump spiraled in a widening turn that went from steep to mild in three turns. He saw flashes of ice-covered trees in the distance in one direction, the grimy jewel of a lake tucked between hills that blocked his view by the next turn around, and a building far enough below them for his gut to churn at their height.
WinterJacked: Book One: Rude Awakening Page 21
