by Barry Lyga
“Hey, Mom?”
At first he thought she hadn’t heard him. She just kept poking at an empanada. But she finally looked up at him, her eyes tired and dull.
“What, Zak?”
He’d meant to ask her something, but her expression prompted an apology instead. “I’m really sorry.”
She nodded as if she didn’t quite believe it. “I appreciate that, but what I want is less an apology and more an explanation.”
“I don’t have one.”
She threw her fork down in disgust. “Why would you do that, Zak? Leave the house and go into the city like that?” She stared at him, and he was helpless under her angry gaze. Clearly, she expected him to say something, and when he didn’t, she picked up the fork again and savagely stabbed at her food. “Is this what they warn parents about when they talk about kids becoming teenagers? Because this is crazy, Zak. This isn’t just acting out or being disrespectful. This is dangerous. This involved the police. You’re all I—we—I have left. You could have been hurt. You could have been killed. Do you even understand how serious this is?”
“I understand,” he said quietly. Because he did. Better than she knew. Because he knew more than she did.
Chowing down, Zak barely tasted Dad’s cooking as his mind spun wildly, trying to think of a way out of his situation. She was deeply focused on him right now, and she would take whatever he said very seriously. He might be able to learn something.
“I have a question,” he said, picking his words carefully. “Can I ask it?”
“I can’t believe you’re speaking. Yes.”
“It’s about Uncle Tomás.”
The stricken look that crossed her face pained him. He felt as though he’d pressed a scalding-hot iron to her flesh. So many years later, and her brother’s death still slashed at her like a sword.
“What about him?”
“You miss him, don’t you?”
Mom grimaced as though hit with a migraine. “I miss him like…” Her lower lip trembled. “When I was … A while back, before you were born, your dad and I moved from the Village to Brooklyn. And I messed up and left a box of kitchen stuff in the old apartment. Nothing expensive, just some dishes. But one of them was a serving dish that was just the right size.”
Zak wasn’t sure where his mother was going with this, but he said nothing and let her continue.
Wiping at the corners of her eyes with her napkin, she said, “By the time we’d unpacked in the new place, I remembered the box, but it was too late. It was days later and it was gone. And every time I have people over, I think of…” She sighed. “I miss him so much, Zak.”
“Did he give you the dish?”
“No. No, it’s just that … That’s how I miss him. Like that dish you forgot to go back for, the one that would be perfect for guests right now.”
It made no sense. It was actually ridiculous, but his mother seemed near tears anyway. He didn’t want to press her, but he had to.
“Did he…” Careful, now. Think about this. “Did he have a boat? Or did he go out on a boat?”
Mom’s pained expression melted into a mix of disbelief and exasperation. “What on earth are you talking about?”
Great.
“What is with you and boats?” she asked, and he knew then that Dr. Campbell had told his parents about his dreams. Which was fine. She’d said she would do as much.
“I don’t know,” he said lamely.
“Well, here’s what I know: Dr. Campbell is worried, and your father and I are worried, and we’re running out of options very quickly. You’re exhibiting signs of … Look, Dr. Campbell wants more intensive therapy sessions with you.”
He shrugged. Fine. Whatever.
“And she’s also putting together a recommendation for some medications.”
Zak tried not to let his expression betray his surprise and dismay. Drugs. Great. Just great. More meds, in addition to the verapamil he took every day for his heart condition. Who knew what these new drugs would do to him? Wasn’t there a chance they would just make him worse?
There were any number of kids at Wellington Academy who headed to the nurse’s office each day to pop some kind of pill. ADD, ADHD, bipolar disorder, whatever. There was a medication for everything, even for the things that didn’t bother the kid in question.
He’d known many of those kids before they started the meds and now after. None of them had volunteered for the drugs or asked for them. There wasn’t necessarily something wrong with them afterward, but there wasn’t necessarily something right, either. They were different kids now.
Maybe that’s what I need. Maybe I need to be a different kid.
Would that mean sacrificing his friends? The things he loved? What would he be like, and would he like himself, and would he even be able to tell the difference?
I don’t think I want to find out.
But he knew that if the decision was made, he wouldn’t have a choice.
* * *
Later, his iPod pinged from its hiding place under his pillow. He swiped it on and discovered a text message:
Check this out, it said, followed by a link to a website and Moira’s usual sign-off: xox.
He tapped on the link and stared, dumbfounded, at the headline to the article that popped up: Secrets of WTC Shipwreck Sleuthed Out.
EIGHT
Maybe Zak wasn’t so crazy after all. The ship was real.
When the site of the World Trade Center was excavated after the buildings were destroyed, a sailing ship was found there.
Underground.
Under. The. Ground.
It dated back to the eighteenth century, sometime in the late 1700s … right around the time of the American Revolution. The article was a bit long and boring for him, but one thing he got out of it was that the ship was a little … weird. He didn’t quite understand all of it, but apparently the ship’s construction didn’t quite match the typical details of the time period. It used nails instead of something called wooden trunnels, for instance.
But, whatever. Who cared? It was real.
So. If I’m not crazy about this, then maybe I’m not crazy about the other things, either.
Which meant … which meant that the voices in his head, the dreams, the visions … They might not be inventions of his own mind.
They could be real.
And that, Zak realized with a shudder, was actually more frightening than the idea that he was losing his mind.
“Garbage. Nonsense,” Dad always said. If it wasn’t proved by a scientist in a lab somewhere, Dad would have none of it. Zak had always thought that attitude made a lot of sense.
Until now.
But there’s some physical evidence, right? This isn’t like astrology, where you can’t prove anything. I imagined a boat and—poof—there’s a boat.
So what about the dreams, the voice, the visions? If they were just as real as the ship, then what were they?
Had his uncle’s spirit somehow brought him to the tower? Was Uncle Tomás the “Tommy” of Zak’s childhood?
That almost made sense—he’d been a little kid when he’d spoken to Tommy. A young child starts hearing a voice … You don’t think, Oh no! A ghost! You think, A friend! A friend only I can see. And everyone else thinks it’s an imaginary friend, and that’s that.
Which meant … which meant that Tommy had been with Zak for a long, long time. And maybe Tommy—Uncle Tomás?—had somehow prodded Zak to sleepwalk to where the twin towers had fallen.
He wished he could talk to someone about all of this. Wished not to be alone, wished to have someone to tell. A brother or a sister or even a close cousin. Because while it would be good to bounce this off Khalid or to dig into the impressive nuggets of knowledge in Moira’s massive brain, he was pretty sure that even his best friends would rat him out to an adult if he said, So, guys, I’m pretty sure the ghost of my dead uncle has been trying to communicate with me from beyond the grave and sent me to the Freedom Tower
to learn about the boat buried under there. Yeah, if he were in their shoes, he’d go running to his parents, shouting Zak’s crazy! for sure.
In bed, he stared up at the ceiling.
“Tommy?” he whispered to the empty air. “Uncle Tomás?”
Nothing.
“If you’re there, I need a little more, okay?” He paused. “I need another vision or another dream. I found the boat, but I don’t know what to do next.” For a while now, he’d been desperate to avoid the dreams and the voice. Now he steeled himself for them. He craved them.
“I’m ready,” he told the spirit he now believed—knew—to be surrounding him. “I’m ready for whatever’s next.”
* * *
I was in darkness.
Zak grumbled in his sleep.
Secrecy.
Secret Sea.
—look up—
He rolled over.
Zak!
He shot upright in bed. The voice was right next to him. And he looked over.
Zak!
It was above him. He looked up.
ZAK!!!
Behind him. Below him. Everywhere he looked, nothing. But it was all around him.
I’m still dreaming, he thought. Dreaming I woke up. But am I dreaming the voice, or is the voice in my dream?
Zak, don’t trust him!
It was weak, fading.
Don’t trust him! You can’t—
“Who? Don’t trust who?” Before, it had been “they” who were lying. Now Zak wasn’t supposed to trust “him.”
He has been asleep too long. The voice was like a dying breeze, fading in twilight. And I …
And it was gone like sunshine.
Zak! it screamed, its return as sudden as its disappearance was gradual. Zak! You have to come back to the ship! You have to unlock the secrecy and the Secret Sea! Do it! Tell no one!
Zak groaned and rubbed his eyes. Was it a dream? Or was he really awake? He tried to pinch himself to find out, but his skin refused to cooperate, slipping out from between his fingertips.
A dream, to be sure.
Why was his heart pounding so, then?
Just a dream. Just a dream.
Something slapped against his window and he gasped. Turned to look.
It was something heavy: cloth, wet. It battered against the window over and over, buffeted by a sudden gust of air.
“Ye whistled for the wind.…”
It was a flag. He couldn’t make out the colors or the pattern; it kept whip-snapping in a ferocious wind. He clambered out of bed and pressed his nose to the glass. A storm slashed the sky, and the apartment—the building—rocked and heaved as if in an earthquake.
Or on the sea. I’m back on the boat. My whole bedroom is on the boat.
He spun around and his bedroom was gone, replaced with curved, timbered walls, a low ceiling, flickering torchlight. The timbers creaked and complained; the floor tilted.
You have to return to the tower, Zak, the voice told him. You have to unlock the secrets and set them free.
The floor shifted under him again. Zak lost his balance and collapsed, thinking, A dream. At least it’s just a dream.
* * *
He awoke on the floor.
Fell out of bed, that’s all. Tossed and turned and fell out of—
It was a wooden floor, unlike the carpeted one in his bedroom, and he panicked, remembering the ship. He knew he wasn’t dreaming any longer, couldn’t believe he was somehow on the boat now, and that’s when he realized the wooden floor was very even, very regular. Not rough-hewn.
And it wasn’t moving.
It was the hardwood floor in the bedroom that his parents switched off using.
His body ached. He pushed to his feet and glanced around. Sleepwalking again?
Great.
Sunlight poured in through the slats of the window blinds. The apartment was quiet. Still. As though the air had tired itself out and given up moving. It lay warm and languid all around him.
He explored quickly. It was past nine in the morning, and Mom was nowhere to be seen, but he did discover a note from her:
Zak—
Had to go in to work for a meeting. La-La is on her way. Go nowhere.
Underlined twice. Just in case he didn’t get it.
He went to his room and got dressed, thinking. It must have been a life-or-death (more likely a job-or-else) meeting to get Mom out of the apartment, under the circumstances. And his grandmother was on the way over to babysit because Zak was now officially unreliable, dangerous, etc. He was a Bad Kid, and you didn’t leave Bad Kids unattended. Who knew what they could get into?
Like sleepwalking …
He’d sleepwalked to the tower, and there had been some reason for that. Now he’d sleepwalked to his parents’ room.
Why?
He went back in, fully aware that he was racing a clock that ticked down to a deadline he couldn’t see. Who knew when La-La would arrive? Still, he had to figure this out.
Immediately, he realized what was happening. Near where he’d woken up, his parents’ safe squatted in a small niche between the wall and the dresser.
The safe was only a foot wide, tiny but heavy. It was grayish green, with rounded corners and a black pug nose of a combination lock on its door. As a child, Zak had been curious about the safe, had spent time twirling its dial like safecrackers on TV, but to no avail. His parents had chuckled at his interest. “There’s nothing fun in there, big man,” his dad used to say. “Just insurance papers and birth certificates and passports.”
And right now … it was open. The door was just slightly ajar, a black crack waiting to admit light.
Had Mom left it unlocked when she went to work? No. Zak knew that—somehow—he had opened it. The same way Tommy/Uncle Tomás had jogged him from his bed and steered him to the spot where the mysterious eighteenth-century ship had lain buried for centuries, the spirit had this time led him here and guided him through the proper twirls and twists of the combination lock.
Hurry! It was no voice but his own. La-La’ll be here soon!
He opened the safe and peered inside. No gold bars and stacks of cash, like in the movies. As Dad had promised, there was just a pile of papers and file folders and a few thin envelopes.
He riffled through as quickly as he could. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but he figured that anything remotely interesting would have to jump out at him from this heap of boring.
First, he found an envelope labeled Zak. It contained some old report cards and some medical records and his birth certificate: Zakari Malcolm Killian. No big deal. There were a lot of medical records—a log of every doctor’s visit Zak had ever had for the heart condition that lived in his chest.
But then, under that, was another envelope. Identical. For some reason, Zak’s hand shook as he drew it from the safe, as though his hand knew something his brain didn’t.
Tommy was printed on the envelope, in Mom’s very steady, very neat handwriting.
Wait, what? Is this … Did they call Uncle Tomás “Tommy”?
He opened the envelope and slid out the few papers within. Medical stuff again. It made his eyes want to bleed, so he shuffled the documents aside.
Birth certificate.
Thomas Oscar Killian.
What?
The birthday was the same as his own. April 27.
The. Exact. Same. Day.
Oh God.
Thomas Oscar Killian was born at 3:32 in the afternoon on April 27, approximately three minutes after Zak.
Zak’s head swam. His vision blurred, refocused, blurred again. This was … this was impossible. This couldn’t be happening.
One of the medical papers caught his eye. TTTS? stood out in large letters, scrawled in red pen. Underneath, someone with different handwriting and a black pen had written (Twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome).
I don’t … I don’t understand. I don’t understand.
A twin? A twin brother? Named Tomm
y? Zak’s arms raced with gooseflesh, and his teeth began chattering on their own. He was suddenly freezing in the middle of August, sitting in the sunlight from the window.
Where was his brother, then? Where was Thomas Oscar Killian? Why were they keeping his brother from him? Why didn’t anyone ever talk about him?
What in the world was happening to his life?
That phantom sense he’d always had, that sense of something carved away from him, amputated—it always lingered, but now it was stronger, so powerful it hurt. He could barely breathe.
He couldn’t bear looking at the birth certificate any longer, so he shoved it back into the envelope and beheld the last piece of paper from the Tommy envelope.
CERTIFICATE OF DEATH was stamped officially across the top. Zak didn’t want to look farther down, but his eyes were already skipping ahead, heedless of the demands of his brain, his heart, his soul.
Thomas Oscar Killian had died at the age of two and a half, of kidney failure.
No, Zak thought, and then couldn’t think anymore. His brain refused to cooperate, refused to form words as his brother’s death date seemed to come unmoored from the paper on which it was printed and to float into the middle space between him and the death certificate.
Dead.
His heart jumped. That was normal. Everyone’s heart skipped a beat occasionally, even Zak’s.
But this time, when it jumped, it didn’t come back down. It just kept rising, pressing up high in his chest until the pressure became more than he could stand, and he realized that something was wrong, something was quite desperately wrong, and he gurgled something that might have been Help, but there was no one to hear, and the next thing he knew, he was facedown on the floor and the world was shrinking into utter darkness.
NINE
Zak?
Tommy? Tommy, is that you?
Zak, can you hear me?
Am I dead? Is that what happened? Am I dead like you?
Zak, can you hear me?
