This Isn't What It Looks Like

by Pseudonymous Bosch

  The younger Max-Ernest assumed this meant he should talk to Cass. But was talking to her supposed to wake her up? That sounded like exactly the sort of superstitious nonsense he couldn’t abide. He was embarrassed that his adult self would recommend it.*

  The door to Cass’s bedroom was wide open, but Max-Ernest stopped and stood in front of it for a full minute. It took all his self-control not to turn around and flee.

  The last time Max-Ernest had been in her bedroom was the day Cass had fallen into the coma. With the exception of the hospital bed in the middle (and Max-Ernest couldn’t quite get himself to look at that yet), much of the room looked exactly the same as it had looked then. Only sadder. In the past, Cass’s sock monsters—there were now quite a few of them—had always provided a little levity.** Cass had never been one to play much with dolls or stuffed animals, but she used to give each sock monster its own voice and character; and the sock monsters would lecture Max-Ernest on the finer points of emergency communication and first aid. Now the monsters just stood lifelessly on their shelf, a Greek chorus gone silent. Even Cass’s “Wall of Horrors” (as her mother called it) wasn’t as entertaining as it had once been. All the pictures and articles that Cass had clipped and taped above her bed—the imploding mines and exploding volcanoes, the forest fires and the flooded towns—were grim reminders not only of disaster and destruction but of the pointy-eared survivalist herself.

  Given that they have to die (and despite what the Masters of the Midnight Sun would wish, everybody has to die sometime), most people would prefer to die in bed at home, surrounded by loved ones. Yet Cass, Max-Ernest reflected morbidly, would have preferred a much more dramatic demise—if not a shark attack or an avalanche, then at least a collapsed building or a plane crash.

  If he couldn’t save her life, could he at least improve her death? Would a real friend make sure she died not in her boring old bed but in some spectacular disaster?

  Briefly, he considered ways of ensuring a more exciting end to the story of Cass’s life. It was hard to think of one that wouldn’t cause collateral damage. Years of friendship with Cass had trained Max-Ernest to think of worst-case scenarios:

  If he left Cass on the road, he was likely to cause a multi-car collision. The result might be even worse if he left her on a train track.

  If he threw Cass off a bridge, her body might never be recovered. He knew from watching television that an unrecovered body was never a good thing.

  If he set Cass’s house on fire, the house next door would very likely catch on fire as well. And where would Cass’s mother live afterward?

  As for natural disasters—earthquakes, hurricanes, killer viruses—you couldn’t exactly snap your fingers and make them appear. And even if you could, the rule of unintended consequences was certain to go into effect.

  No, there didn’t seem to be a way to make Cass’s dying any more tolerable. He would just have to try again to bring her back to life. No matter how long the odds.

  Max-Ernest sat down on the corner of the hospital bed and, without fully intending to, started talking aloud to Cass. Fast. And at great length. The way he used to.

  “Hi. I don’t know if you can hear me. Actually, I’m pretty sure you can’t. I know people always talk to plants and babies and stuff, but it’s pretty silly, if you ask me. You may as well just talk to yourself. Anyways, I’m talking to you now because, well, because I want to, I guess, even though it doesn’t make any sense. And because, well, you never know, right? Maybe it is what will wake you up. I mean, just to get me to stop talking or something… By the way, speaking of babies, I’m going to have a baby brother. How ’bout that? My parents are being pretty weird about it, well, not weird weird, more like just terrible, but I’m kind of excited anyway. I always wanted a brother. Just to get my parents off my back. But now they’re off my back and I still want a brother. Kind of weird, huh? Why do I keep saying weird? I hate it when people use that word! I guess I want to have somebody to talk to and stuff. Not that I don’t have you, or that you’re not going to be around to talk to anymore… Forget that—what I wanted to tell you was, no matter what happens, you’ll… I’ll always think of you as my friend. My first friend. My best friend. But more than a friend. Not more than a friend more than a friend! More like a sister, I guess… Anyways, I keep thinking about all those times you pushed me in the water even though I can’t swim. Like at the Midnight Sun Spa—remember when we had to get through that moat to save Benjamin Blake and I didn’t want to go in the water? Or that time you pushed me into the ocean off Dr. L’s boat? Sure, I might have drowned, and you should probably be arrested for attempted murder, and at the time I totally wanted to kill you, but now that I think about it, I think you actually meant well. It was probably good for me to jump in the water and to have to swim. Besides the fact that the Midnight Sun would have fed me to sharks otherwise. I mean good like I learned a lesson. Not to be afraid of water or whatever. Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m still afraid of water, but you know what I mean. And there was that time with the waterfall at Wild World… Anyways, I want you to know, no matter what happens to you, I won’t stop doing the kind of stuff you make me do. Even if I wanted to stop I couldn’t because whenever I want to run away from something, your voice is in my head telling me to turn around and jump in the water. Like just now, when I wanted to run away from here… from you. No offense… Well, that’s what I wanted to say. Just in case you were worried about me or anything… OK, I guess it’s time to try the monocle. All this talking is just stalling, isn’t it…?”

  Wiping his tears, Max-Ernest took the Double Monocle out of his pocket—then immediately put it back.

  “Oh, I almost forgot, Yo-Yoji sent me something to play for you first. He thought maybe it would activate some part of your brain or something. He says hi, by the way….”

  Max-Ernest pulled his laptop computer from his backpack. He opened it on the bed next to Cass and then clicked on a sound file on his desktop. A loud guitar chord suddenly issued forth from his computer. Followed by an extended riff in Yo-Yoji’s unmistakable junior–Jimi Hendrix style.

  “Cool, huh? And don’t tell me not to use the word cool—I know I’m using it right this time!”

  After the guitar solo wound down, Max-Ernest closed the computer and put it back in his backpack.

  At first he didn’t notice that the sounds persisted after they should have stopped—the reverberating guitar chords might almost have been a lingering echo—but when the music started to grow louder again, he turned around in amazement.

  Yo-Yoji was standing in the doorway of Cass’s room. In his hand was the guitar Max-Ernest remembered so well, the blue guitar with the bright orange sticker for Yo-Yoji’s band, Alien Earache. Between his hair, which was now bright green, and his sneakers, which were an even brighter yellow, Yo-Yoji looked like he had flown in from some psychedelic alien planet.

  “Most definitely cool! I think you were using the word just right, yo,” said Yo-Yoji, grinning. “So. Aren’t you going to say hey?”

  “Hey,” said Max-Ernest, managing a small grin back—barely. “I thought you weren’t coming for another month.”

  “I got my parents to send me back early. I’m staying with you, duh. My mom talked to your mom—didn’t she tell you?”

  Max-Ernest shook his head. “I don’t know if she even remembers I exist these days.”

  Yo-Yoji plugged his portable amplifier into an electrical socket, played one last deafeningly loud chord, then leaned his guitar against Cass’s Wall of Horrors.

  His face turned somber as he took in the scene in front of him. “Whoa. It’s like a full-on hospital in here. How’s she doing?”

  “Um, she’s doing…,” Max-Ernest stammered, unable to finish the sentence.

  “Not good, huh?”

  Max-Ernest shook his head. “I was supposed to bring her back,” he said, his voice cracking. “It was my job.”

  Yo-Yoji took a step toward Cass, then stepped back, visi
bly shaken. “Well, I know you’re doing your best. I know she knows it, too. OK?”

  “She doesn’t know anything,” said Max-Ernest, hiding his face in his shirtsleeve so Yo-Yoji wouldn’t see him crying. “She’s in a coma.”

  “You don’t know for sure. She might be listening to everything we’re saying right now, and thinking what a dork you are,” said Yo-Yoji, trying hard to remain upbeat. “Hey, is that supposed to be doing that—?”

  Max-Ernest looked over at the heart monitor and thought he felt his own heart stopping. The green line on the screen had gone flat and the monitor was buzzing loudly.

  A second later, the monitor turned off altogether. And so did all the lights in the room and in the hallway. Only a sliver of moonlight, passing through the tree outside Cass’s window, still illuminated the room.

  Max-Ernest and Yo-Yoji both rushed to Cass’s side. Max-Ernest felt her wrist.

  “She still has a pulse! There must have been a power surge or something,” said Max-Ernest quickly. “You go down and see if you can turn the electricity back on—the fuse box is right outside the kitchen. I’ll call 9-1-1 just in case.”

  By the time Max-Ernest picked up the cordless phone Melanie had left for him, Yo-Yoji was out of the room. His hand shaking, Max-Ernest started to dial the number, then realized he had no dial tone.

  That was when he felt the hard, cold object sticking into his back.

  “Put that down, old chum. I think I cut all the telephone wires, but I’m not taking any chances.”

  Benjamin Blake.

  Of course it was Benjamin, Max-Ernest thought. They had discussed turning off the power in the hospital in order to get access to Cass. How much easier to do it here in Cass’s house!

  “Hi, Benjamin,” he said, letting the dead phone drop to the floor. He was surprised that he was able to make himself sound so calm. “That was a really terrible thing to do, you know. What if Cass had been on a respirator or something?”

  “Well, lucky for her, she wasn’t. Now give me the Double Monocle. Or I won’t hesitate to use this.”

  “Use what?”

  “What do you think I’m holding in my hand, my dear fellow?”

  “You don’t have a gun. I may not be able to read your mind, but I know that.”

  “How can you be sure? Maybe I got it from our mutual friends at New Promethean.”

  “The Midnight Sun don’t have guns. They don’t need them.”

  “You really want to risk it, old chum?”

  A good question. True, he didn’t remember ever seeing a Midnight Sun member hold a gun, Max-Ernest reflected. But they were so ruthless, they wouldn’t hesitate to give one to Benjamin if they thought it would further their aims.

  “How does the monocle work, anyway?” Max-Ernest asked, stalling. “I couldn’t see into anybody’s mind with it. I saw… something else.”

  “It’s the second lens—it gives you second sight. That means something different for everyone,” said Benjamin impatiently. “Some people see ghosts, some people see into people’s minds, some people see the future. It depends on who you are and what you need to know. Except you always need to know everything, so I can’t begin to imagine what you saw,” he sneered. “Now give it back to me. It’s mine.”

  “Is it yours, really? Where did the Midnight Sun get it? Knowing them, I’ll bet it’s stolen.”

  “Not at all! It’s one of their oldest treasures, dating back to Lord Pharaoh himself. And I have been entrusted with it,” said Benjamin proudly. “I think you know Ms. Mauvais well enough to know we will all regret it if it gets lost.”

  While Max-Ernest was considering his options, he caught a glimpse of blue—Yo-Yoji’s guitar flashing in the moonlight—and just managed to step out of the way as the guitar came crashing down on Benjamin’s head.*

  He turned to see Benjamin slumped at his feet, unconscious.

  A flashlight rolled onto the floor. Clearly, the flashlight, not a gun, had been the object sticking into Max-Ernest’s back.

  “Thanks, Yo-Yo—,” Max-Ernest started to say.

  But it wasn’t Yo-Yoji standing over Benjamin, holding the guitar. It was—

  “Cass?!”

  “Cass Is Back!”… “Three Friends Reunited”… “A Month Passes”…? Honestly, I don’t know what to call this chapter.

  I know, you’re a bundle of conflicting emotions right now, aren’t you? Like Max-Ernest at his worst, you have no idea how you should feel.

  On the one hand, you’re relieved that Cass is OK. You know her so well by now. She’s like a friend, and you wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to her. Nothing truly bad, anyway. Sure, she’s stubborn and willful. She makes mistakes that imperil herself and her friends. She’s sometimes not very nice to her mom. Her ears are too pointy. But she doesn’t deserve to be punished so severely. Certainly, she doesn’t deserve to perish on some long mental journey into her ancestral past.

  You’re glad, in short, that she is still alive.

  On the other hand, you’re absolutely furious with me, your not-so-humble narrator, for putting you through this arduous ordeal. Go on, admit it. You hate me. Why couldn’t I have told you at the outset that Cass was going to survive? Why couldn’t I have skipped the coma altogether? Why put you through every blip and beep and zig and zag of her heart monitor? Do I have no heart myself?

  In my defense, I could say that it is my duty to report the truth, whatever it is, wherever I find it. But you know better than that. You know me better than that.

  So I will respond by stating the obvious: you could have put the book down.

  And yet you kept reading, didn’t you? You have kept reading about Cass and Max-Ernest book after book, if I am not mistaken, almost as if you enjoyed seeing these two innocent young people put in harm’s way. As if their trials and tribulations existed purely for your entertainment. As if they had no feelings of their own.

  Please, therefore, spare me your criticisms and accusations, your pleas and complaints. At the end of the day, you, dear reader, are nearly as guilty as I. We’re in this mud pit together. And don’t you ever forget it.

  There. I don’t know about you, but I feel much better getting that off my chest. Now can we please get back to the story?

  Thank you.

  Let us begin this chapter anew by asking the most basic question:

  What awakened Cass?

  If you’re the sentimental sort, you might be inclined to believe it was Max-Ernest’s long and heartfelt bedside speech that roused her. All Max-Ernest’s memories stirred Cass’s own memories and brought her back to the present. Combined with the familiar yet always jarring sounds of Yo-Yoji’s guitar, they were too powerful an antidote to resist. That’s probably what Cass’s grandfathers or even Pietro would say.

  Personally, I think it more likely that the power surge Benjamin created was responsible and that an electrical charge jolted Cass awake. Just think of Frankenstein’s monster or a frog on a dissection table.

  Of course, it’s also possible that she would have awakened on her own, regardless. As the all-powerful author of this book, I give you permission to choose whichever explanation you like best. The happy fact remains that Cass was back, returned from wherever and whenever it was that she had gone.

  As for Cass, not only was she unsure what had woken her, she didn’t even remember what had put her to sleep.

  After Yo-Yoji returned to her room, he and Max-Ernest filled her in on a few vital details (for example: that she’d been in a coma for two weeks; that, yes, that was Benjamin Blake lying unconscious at their feet; and that, no, the lights were not out because of a nuclear attack or even an earthquake but rather because their old classmate had cut the power). Then Max-Ernest tied Benjamin’s hands together. “This is the Handcuff Knot,” he explained to his friends. “The Spanish Bowline might also work, but I think it’s better for ankles.”

  Meanwhile, Cass lit a couple of her emergency glow sticks, adjusted her IV to a more c
omfortable position, and settled back into bed. “OK,” she said. “You guys have been holding out on me long enough. What happened?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Yo-Yoji.

  “I mean, what happened to me? What else would I mean? I was in a coma, right? People don’t just fall into comas for no reason. Was I in a car accident? Did I almost drown? Do I have a rare infectious disease? Is there an alien virus in my brain? Tell me. I can take it….”

  “You mean you don’t remember?” asked Max-Ernest. “For real?”

  “Remember what?”

  “Eating the chocolate…”

  “Señor Hugo’s chocolate? That’s what did this?” asked Cass, completely surprised. “Who gave it to me?”

  “You did,” said Max-Ernest, confused. How could she not remember?

  “Why would I do that? It nearly killed me and Yo-Yoji the first time! Right, Yo-Yoji?”

  Yo-Yoji nodded, grimacing. “No doubt. It was insane. Fun. But insane.”

  “So, then, all that time, you were just… unconscious… you weren’t… traveling back in time?” asked Max-Ernest slowly.

  “Was I supposed to be?”

  They didn’t have a chance to discuss the issue further because Cass’s mother had gotten home. She and Cass’s grandfathers could be heard downstairs at that very moment worrying about the lack of electricity.

  “Max-Ernest, are you up there? Is Cass OK?”

  “Quick, you guys, untie Benjamin. Just pretend he came to visit with Yo-Yoji,” whispered Cass. “It’s going to be hard enough to explain why the lights are out.”

  “Actually, it might make it easier. We could tell her there was a break-in and the burglars tied him up,” said Max-Ernest. “How ’bout that?”

  Cass shook her head. “No, then she would call the police. Too complicated.”

  “Wake up, dude—this is your lucky day,” said Yo-Yoji, tugging on Benjamin’s ear while Max-Ernest bent down to untie the knots he’d made only minutes earlier.