Tattoo Atlas

by Tim Floreen

  I jumped at the BANG the gun made as if I hadn’t caused it myself. The splash of blood on the whiteboard behind Pete’s head looked just like I always pictured it. Pete’s body disappeared behind the desks. All the other students stared at Franklin with approximations of shock and terror on their—our—faces.

  Then I remembered Ms. Utter. I made Franklin turn and saw her sprinting along the side of the room. She’d already made it halfway to the back. The Beretta flew up. Three shots went off. She flew backward and landed against the wall with three bloody holes in her belly.

  And just like that, I’d changed history. When Franklin turned back toward the class, most of the students were still in their places, stunned, but Callie, Lydia, Tor, and Rem—the Rem on the screen—had all made a beeline for the door, like they knew they were the next targets. Now I was probably supposed to make Franklin chase after them one by one, drag them to the appropriate spots, and execute them, all before the police arrived and took him down.

  I didn’t, though. Killing one of my best friends and a teacher I liked hadn’t left me with the same euphoric feeling as killing anonymous soldiers had. I just felt tired, even though my heart continued to pound, and grubby, like crumbling smudges of paint covered my whole body instead of just my hands.

  On the left side of the room Ms. Utter sat slumped against the wall like a discarded marionette. Lydia had been right: whoever had created this game had to have done it after the Big Bang. No one could’ve predicted Ms. Utter would do what she’d done. My eyes wandered over the class one more time, until they stopped on green-haired Nil Bergstrom. I imagined a smirk on her pixelated face.

  The next instant, a digital security guard burst into the room with his sidearm drawn. “Drop the gun!” he yelled.

  For a few seconds I tried to figure out how to make Franklin throw down the Beretta, but relinquishing a weapon was one thing I’d never had occasion to do while playing Son of War. The guard opened fire. The image on the screen danced as bullets drummed into Franklin’s body. A film of blood cascaded down the screen.

  “GAME OVER.”

  I shoved my laptop away from me and slumped against the headboard again, biting my thumb.

  I needed more answers. Talking to Franklin again today was the last thing I wanted to do, but I couldn’t think of any other options. Before I could change my mind, I grabbed my phone, found the number Franklin had used to call me earlier, and dialed.

  He answered right away. “Rem.”

  “Can you talk?”

  “Yes. It’s okay. I’m alone.”

  “I just played Son of War High.”

  The line went silent.

  “What the hell, Franklin? Did you make it yourself?”

  “No,” he answered. “How could I? The detention center didn’t even have Wi-Fi. You can check yourself if you don’t believe me.”

  “But you know about it. You know somebody made a sick, disgusting game out of that plan of yours.”

  “Yes. Nil told me.”

  “Because she built it herself?”

  “No. It wasn’t her. I don’t know who built the game, and neither did she when she told me about it.”

  “You’re sure you’re not just saying that to protect her? If it wasn’t you, she’s the next obvious suspect. Whoever did it had to have been in the room the day of the Big Bang. The details are too spot-on.”

  “You’re thinking whoever built that game must’ve killed Callie.”

  “It would make sense. I mean, as much as any of this makes sense.”

  Across from me a red background still spanned my laptop screen, with the words “GAME OVER” superimposed.

  “She didn’t build the game, Rem.”

  “Who else could’ve done it?”

  “I’m telling you I don’t know!” he snapped, forgetting the camera watching him.

  “In the game,” I said, “I was one of the five targets.”

  Again he didn’t speak.

  “Was I in real life, too?” I pressed. “Was whoever made the game right about that?”

  “No way.”

  “Then how would this person have known about the locker room?”

  “Everyone at school knew about that.”

  “So you didn’t want to kill me?”

  “No, Rem. I had feelings for you, remember?”

  “But you said your feelings were more complicated then.”

  “I swear I didn’t.”

  “Well, who did you want to kill? Because you said yourself yesterday you had targets, plural. Who were they?”

  His breaths sounded shallow and uneven. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  “I think you have to. I’m the only friend you’ve got right now.”

  “I said I don’t want to talk about it!” His voice had tilted toward hysteria. He caught himself again and inhaled and exhaled a few times. I wondered if he’d had a counselor with a kindergarten teacher voice teaching him breathing exercises at the detention center. More softly he said, “Why can’t we go back to the way it was last night in the gazebo, Rem?”

  “Because someone died, Franklin. My best friend.”

  “I know. It’s all I’m thinking about. She didn’t deserve what happened to her.”

  My laptop continued to pulse red. I smacked it shut. “I just don’t want anyone else to die. Not you. Not me. Not any more of my friends.” I shoved the laptop away from me and dropped my head back against the headboard. “You should probably hang up now, Franklin. Someone’s going to see you all upset and talking to yourself on the security camera.”

  He let out a bitter laugh. “What’s the difference? They already think I’m a psycho.”

  “Good point.”

  “You’re right, though. I should go. You still won’t tell?”

  I rubbed my knuckles against my forehead. My head throbbed like I was the one who’d just had a bunch of scientists drilling into my skull. Playing the game had shaken me, but the reasons I’d had for believing Franklin hadn’t killed Callie remained the same as before. And maybe I was getting closer to finding out who had done it. Maybe I owed it to Franklin to see this through, after what Mom had done to him, and after what I’d done to him too.

  “I won’t tell,” I said.

  “Okay. Good. Thank you. Because I’m pretty sure I can handle anything as long as you still believe in me.”

  After I got off the phone with him, I called the police and told them about my two a.m. call to Callie. The cop I spoke to asked if I’d noticed anything else unusual last night.

  “Not a thing,” I said.

  When Mom got home that night, I could see the day had taken its toll on her too. The circles under her eyes had darkened even more, and her usually sleek gray hair looked frayed, with stray strands standing up from her head like a dull halo. She greeted me with a long hug, apologized for not getting away from work earlier, told me again how sorry she was about Callie. Out of habit, I put on my strong face—the one I’d started practicing after Ethan’s death and perfected after Pete’s—and told her I’d be okay. She lowered herself into a chair at the kitchen table and made an effort to smooth down her hair. I tapped my fingertips against the counter. More than anything, I wanted to go back to my room, bury myself underneath my covers, and sink into a hopefully dreamless sleep.

  But Mom might’ve learned something important at the lab.

  I got her bottle of red wine from the fridge and poured her half a glass. When I moved to put the bottle back, she patted the table. “Leave it here.”

  I set down the wine and sat across from her. “Do you know if the police have found out anything more?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so, but they aren’t telling me much. They spent the whole afternoon grilling Franklin and combing the lab for clues, trying to figure out if there was any possible way he could’ve committed the murder himself.”

  I stiffened. “And?”

  “I didn’t get the impression they found anythi
ng conclusive. Dr. Hult did some investigating too. He studied the security footage. He talked to the guard who was stationed outside Franklin’s room all night. He didn’t turn up a thing.”

  I nodded. Franklin’s boasts about his prison-breaking skills must’ve been accurate. I wondered how he’d stood up under the cops’ interrogation. Hopefully Son of War had taught him some techniques for that too. “What about you, Mom?” I said. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t believe Franklin had any involvement in Callie’s murder. I just don’t see how it would be possible.” She reached for the wine bottle. “Of course, there are other theories flying around the lab.”

  “Like what?”

  Mom tipped some more wine into her glass. She’d emptied it without my noticing. “Gertie came to my office this afternoon asking if I thought someone might’ve killed Callie hoping to implicate Franklin and get our project shut down.”

  “Do you think it’s possible? Would someone do a thing like that just to stop your work?”

  “I think it’s unlikely.” She took a sip. “Then again, there are a lot of crazy people out there.”

  My mind went to Nil Bergstrom and all that stuff she’d said in Ms. Utter’s class. She definitely disagreed with what Mom was doing. If she had killed Callie, could that have been her motive? It would also mean she’d plotted to frame her best friend for murder. Would she do something like that? I didn’t know her very well. Maybe she was capable of it.

  “You said in your text the police think Callie was abducted from her house?”

  Mom nodded.

  “And then what?”

  “The killer seems to have driven her to Duluth Central in her car. The police found it parked on a street near the school. I also overheard the cops talking about some footage a security camera caught of the car driving by. The person in the driver’s seat wasn’t recognizable. He was wearing a bulky black coat with a hood.” Her eyes rose from her glass of wine to meet mine. “Apparently he turned his head for a second. Underneath the hood he had on a Son of War mask.”

  I spent all of Saturday and most of Sunday in my bedroom. Mom brought me plates of food and a couple times tried to get me to come out, but mostly she just let me be. Every now and again I got up to look out the window. A lone cop in a cruiser appeared to be permanently stationed at the end of our block. Through Callie’s bedroom window, I kept seeing Mrs. Minwalla drifting around the room like a ghost, touching the chaotic multimedia collages that hung from Callie’s walls. If she’d never needed a reason to spiral into a depression before, she certainly had one now. I knew I should pay her and Mr. Minwalla a visit and tell them how sorry I was, but so far I’d been clinging to the lame excuse that I should give them space to grieve. I also knew I needed to keep digging into Callie’s death so I could find out once and for all if I was right to trust Franklin. For now, though, I couldn’t even bring myself to take a shower. The one time I tried to pick up my Tattoo Atlas and draw something for Callie, my pencil just sat there on the page like a stalled car.

  On Sunday evening a text showed up on my phone from Tor, addressed to me and Lydia.

  Ladies and gentlemen, I have an idea.

  That right there made me sad, because we weren’t ladies and gentlemen anymore. Just Lydia and Rem—one lady, one gentleman.

  A second text followed. Since last year’s attempt at rebuilding the ice palace was unsuccessful, how about if we pop a few Fat Tires at my house tonight in honor of Callie?

  He was referring to the day a few weeks after the Big Bang when the three of us and Callie had tried to re-create the crystalline structure in my backyard, this time to memorialize Pete. It hadn’t worked. Two of the walls we’d built had collapsed, and we hadn’t been able to keep any of the candles lit with the wind blowing through. We’d huddled in the cold, dutifully sipping our beer, for about fifteen minutes before we’d called it a night and hurried back to our houses.

  This time we weren’t even going to try. Not that I minded. The fact that we had traditions for when our loved ones got murdered only depressed me anyway. Drinking beer at Tor’s house sounded like a better alternative.

  I still had reservations, though. Up until now, the one benefit—if you could call it that—of mourning Callie was that it had kept me from obsessing about the Tor and Lydia situation. There was nothing like the death of your best friend to put stuff like that in perspective. Spending time with the two of them now—and without a fourth person to act as a buffer—might just bring all that confusion and jealousy back to the surface. But shutting myself away wasn’t doing me much good either. The four of us had hung out a lot after Pete’s death last year, and it had helped. Maybe I needed to follow that grief counselor’s advice and reach out to my support network.

  Plus, Lydia might have heard more about Callie’s death from Billy. I needed to find out what she knew.

  I texted Tor back to tell him I was in.

  We met up at Tor’s place after dinner. His parents were still out of town. Lydia was dry-eyed this time, but the sorrow had settled into her face the same way it had after Pete’s death, hollowing out her eyes and cheeks and turning her skin porcelain white behind her freckles. She balled herself up in a corner of the Agnarsons’ gigantic leather couch with her knees hugged to her chest. Tor looked like a zombie too. He didn’t even peel off his T-shirt for no reason five minutes after we were all together. We sat there in the cavernous, pristine Agnarson living room, picking at a plate of old-school tater tots Tor had warmed up in the oven (another Boreal Five tradition), Tor and I washing down the mouthfuls of deep-fried potato with gulps from bottles of Fat Tire he’d lifted from the fridge in the garage. Lydia stuck with water this time, but I caught her once or twice casting a longing glance at her purse. She must not have confessed to Tor about her secret smoking habit yet.

  “Did you guys hear about the security camera footage?” I asked after we’d made it to our third round.

  Lydia grimaced. “Billy told me. The killer was wearing a Son of War mask. Just when I thought this couldn’t get any more horrible.”

  “But the cops don’t know who it was?”

  “I don’t think so. Billy said they found a few other clues, though. They checked the Minwallas’ house, and it looked like somebody had forced the kitchen door. The killer must’ve snuck all the way up to Callie’s room and then walked her back out at gunpoint without waking anybody else.”

  “I still can’t fucking believe it,” Tor muttered. “That something like this could happen on Boreal Street.” He moved closer to Lydia on the couch and folded her into his chest. I watched from the oversized armchair opposite.

  “Why not Boreal Street?” I said.

  He frowned at me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You just said it like we’re special somehow, because we live way up here on our nice street in our nice houses and look down on everybody else.” With my beer I motioned toward the view of the city and the lake outside the big picture window. “What should really be shocking is that it happens anywhere.”

  “Come on, Nice Guy, I was just—”

  “Stop picking a fight, Rem,” Lydia murmured.

  She was right. I was picking a fight. Maybe it was the beer. I wasn’t usually much of a drinker, and my head had started feeling warm and floaty.

  I glanced out the window again. In the darkness, the drifts of snow in the front yard had turned a luminous blue. Class politics aside, I knew what Tor meant. We’d all grown up on Boreal Street. It had always felt like the safest place in the world. But danger seemed to be marching closer and closer. First my brother had died, but in a faraway country. Then Pete, at our school. Now someone had stolen Callie from right out of her bed. Even home wasn’t safe anymore. “Do the police know how the killer got into the cafeteria?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t think they have that part figured out yet.”

  “Did they find anything in Callie’s car, maybe? Fingerprints, hair, th
at kind of thing?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “What about the video game? Did you tell Billy about that?”

  “He said they’d look into it.”

  “Because if the killer is copycatting Son of War High, you’re next on the list.”

  “Yes, I’m aware of that, Rem. But Billy said the cops are keeping our block under surveillance around the clock.”

  “And our suspicions about Nil Bergstrom? You mentioned those too? I told the cop I talked to about her, but he just said something vague about how they’d ‘thoroughly investigate all leads.’ ”

  “Jesus, Rem, relax,” Tor said. “You don’t have to grill her. It’s been two days. The police will figure it out. If it was Nil, they’ll nail her.”

  “It’s okay, Tor,” Lydia said. “Yes, Rem, I told Billy about Nell.” She settled her cheek against Tor’s chest. In a small, private voice, she said, “Tor, I don’t think you should stay here alone tonight. It might not be safe. Come stay at my house.”

  “Where? In the guest room?”

  “Of course in the guest room.”

  He grinned, his eyes recovering a hint of their mischievous gleam. “Because I think me staying at your place might be more dangerous, not less.”

  I swallowed the last of my beer. My head felt even floatier now. I grabbed another tater tot and scribbled it around in the puddle of ketchup on the plate.

  “Come on, Tor,” Lydia said, pulling away from him. “You shouldn’t joke like that. Not now.”

  “Sorry, Strawberry. You’re right.” Tor cupped her cheek in his hand. In that kind voice he used only sparingly, he said, “It’s just that when we lose people we care about, we have to hold even tighter to the ones who are still with us.”

  Before he could draw her in for a kiss, I stood up and said in an unnecessarily loud voice, “Hey, is there any more beer in the garage?”