In the Path of Falling Objects

by Andrew Smith

  My defining moment came last summer, when I was sixteen.

  That’s when I got kidnapped.

  I am going to build something big for you.

  It’s like one of those Russian dolls that you open up, and open up again. And each layer becomes something else.

  On the outside is the universe, painted dark purple, decorated with planets and comets, stars. Then you open it, and you see the Earth, and when that comes apart, there’s Marbury, a place that’s kind of like here, except none of the horrible things in Marbury are invisible. They’re painted right there on the surface where you can plainly see them.

  The next layer is Henry Hewitt, the man with the glasses, and when you twist him in half, there’s my best friend, Conner Kirk, painted to look like some kind of Hindu god, arms like snakes, shirtless, radiant.

  When you open him up, you’ll find Nickie Stromberg, the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, and maybe the only person in this world, besides Conner, who ever really loved me.

  Now it’s getting smaller, and inside is Freddie Horvath. That’s the man who kidnapped me.

  Next, there’s the pale form of the boy, Seth, a ghost from Marbury who found me, and helped me. I guess he was looking for me for a long time. And the last thing on the inside is me. John Wynn Whitmore.

  They call me Jack.

  But then I open up, too, and what you’ll find there is something small and black and shriveled.

  The center of the universe.

  Fun game, wasn’t it?

  I don’t know if the things I see and what I do in Marbury are in the future or from the past. Maybe everything’s really happening at the same time. But I do know that once I started going to Marbury, I couldn’t stop myself. I know it sounds crazy, but Marbury began to feel safer, at least more predictable, than the here and now.

  I need to explain.

  “Hey, kid.”

  I felt a hand on my shoulder, shaking me.

  “Kid. Are you okay?”

  A face leaned in close to mine. I could feel the warmth of breath.

  “Do you need any help? Are you hurt or something?”

  “Huh?” I put my hand up to my eyes. My head hurt. The guy was looking right into my eyes, like he was trying to see if anyone was really home.

  “Did you take anything tonight, kid?”

  I wasn’t sure where I was, had to think, remember. The man in front of me smelled like cigarettes and coffee. He was dressed all in green, a doctor or something. I thought I must have been in the hospital, but it was too dark.

  “Where are we?”

  “Yeah,” he said. I heard him sniff at me. “How much did you drink?”

  “Huh?”

  “Can you sit up?”

  “I’m drunk.”

  The man pulled me up. His hands felt warm, careful. When I sat up, everything in front of me spun like a compass needle in a hallway of magnets.

  “Do you know where you are?”

  No.

  “I was at a party. I was trying to go home.”

  The man looked over both shoulders. I thought he was trying to see if there were any other kids there, that maybe they’d know what to do with me. I could hear music coming from somewhere. I remembered, the park was in front of Java and Jazz. I heard jazz.

  The man was still looking right into my eyes.

  “Are you going to throw up?”

  “No.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Glenbrook.”

  I tried standing, but it felt like there was no blood in my head. I fell back onto the bench.

  “I’m a doctor at Regional. I’m headed that way. I can take you home, if you want.”

  The man pulled me up from my armpit. “But you have to promise not to throw up in my car.”

  “No. I’ll be okay,” I said. “It’ll be okay for me to walk.”

  He let go of me. “Are you sure? It’s no problem.”

  “I’ll be okay,” I repeated.

  The man turned away. I fell down, caught myself on the pavement, and landed on my hands and knees.

  He turned back. “I think I’d better call someone.”

  He started to unclip a phone from the waist of his loose green pants.

  “No,” I said. “Do you think you could drop me off?”

  He smiled. He helped steady me on my feet. “Sure.”

  He said his name was Freddie Horvath. He even gave me his card, which, I guess, was supposed to prove something. I didn’t know what to do with a doctor’s business card. I slipped it into my wallet, which I dropped when I tried putting it back in my pocket. Freddie laughed and picked it up, handing it to me.

  “I remember what it was like, being a kid, too. You’ll be all right.”

  He was nice, and I trusted him. But I was drunk and stupid.

  I fell asleep again in Freddie’s Mercedes. I woke up when my head snapped forward. The car stopped somewhere. I couldn’t recognize the place, and had to think, again, about where I was, piece together the blurry sequence of disjointed events from the party: walking in on Conner and Dana, and ending up, somehow, asleep in this car that was now parked in front of a dark ranch-style house that I had never seen before.

  “Stupid,” Freddie said. “I left my ID badge at home. I’ll be right back.”

  He pushed his door open. I could have sworn he was wearing an ID badge when he found me on that park bench.

  “Where are we?”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re probably less than a mile from your house. I’ll be right back. Can I get you some water or something? You look like you could use it.”

  My head pounded. My mouth was paper.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He closed the driver door and walked around beside the car. I watched him as he came up and pulled my door open.

  “Want to come in?”

  I knew I was stupid, should have never accepted his help. But I rationalized that he was a doctor. Still, all I really wanted was to get home; and I wanted to speed him along, too.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll wait here.”

  Freddie smiled. “I’ll be right back, John.”

  John?

  I never told him my name. At least, I don’t think I did. I figured he must have looked at my driver’s license when I dropped my wallet in the park, because I’d never say my name was John.

  I felt in my pocket. My wallet was still there.

  I nodded and said, “Thanks.”

  Freddie came back out in a minute, a plastic badge dangling from his breast pocket and a bottle of drinking water in his hand. He got in and started the car and passed the water to me.

  “Are you going to be okay?” he asked.

  I was so thirsty. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  I opened the bottle and drank.

  I was unconscious before we made it out of Freddie’s driveway.

  That’s how I ended up in that smoky room.

  Freddie smoked constantly.

  And it wasn’t until maybe a full twenty-four hours had dissolved invisibly past me — Sunday night — when I started to soberly realize that I was in a situation that seemed unreal, like something you’d only see on TV, something that would never happen to me.

  But it was real.

  Something hurts on my foot.

  That’s the first really clear thought I have: Something hurts.

  I sit up. There is a constricting tightness around my ankle, cutting into me if I pull against it too much. That’s what holds me there. I’m lying on a bed. There are no sheets on it. I can feel the swirling grooves stitched into the mattress.

  My hands are free. I sit up and rub my ankle. The binding feels like one of those heavy-duty zip ties, the kind cops use. That’s what it is. I feel the trap mouth where the toothed band has been fed through.

  I see a slit of light along the floor. A door.

  I run my hands over my body. Check everything. I don’t feel like I’ve been hurt. I don’t feel
like he did anything to me. He didn’t. I am sure of that. But I’m lying there, stripped of everything I remember wearing, except for my boxer briefs, the same ones I put on when I got dressed for Conner’s party.

  How long ago was that?

  I try to think, feel around the bed to see if I might find my clothes, my wallet, something I can use to cut this goddamned strap off my leg.

  Nothing. I track my fingers along the edge of the bed as far as I can, my hands blindly squeeze between the mattress and the foundation, probe the cool bare floor underneath. It is clean, but I can reach pretty far. I push my hand up inside the box spring. Something metal is there. I slide my fingers behind it and begin pulling.

  Black shadow moves beneath the door.

  Someone is out there.

  I flip myself back up onto the bed. My ankle burns. Just that moment of exertion leaves me gasping for breath. I am sweating, my eyes wide; and I watch the light at the door’s edge.

  It opens.

  I shut my eyes.

  I heard him walk up to the edge of the bed. He put his hand flat on my chest.

  “I know you’re awake, John.”

  I opened my eyes.

  “How are you feeling?”

  And I thought, What an idiot. How do you think I feel? I wanted to scream, howl, but I kept my mouth shut. Mostly, I had questions. I kept hearing them over and over, but I didn’t want to say them.

  What the fuck are you trying to do to me?

  “I bet you’re thirsty,” Freddie said.

  I was.

  “Would you like a drink of water, John? Do they call you Johnny, or just John?”

  Jack, asshole.

  “I promise it’s only water this time.”

  He walked out the door, leaving it open. My eyes adjusted to the light. He was wearing those same doctor’s scrubs. I saw the name badge, too. He didn’t even try to lie about his name. That was bad, I thought. And he looked big, like I’d never be able to fight him, even if I was pretty strong.

  In a minute Freddie Horvath came back through the doorway, pushing one of those adjustable rolling desk chairs in front of him. There were some plastic bins on the seat that had things in them — I couldn’t tell what they were — and a bottle of water, the same brand he’d given me the night before.

  A cigarette pointed at me from his mouth. The smoke curled back through the uncombed hair that hung down over one eye. I tried to take in as many details about him as I could, but looked away every time his eyes landed on mine. I thought he was maybe about thirty. Maybe younger than that. His mouth and eyes looked dead, like he was bored.

  He took the things from the chair and put them down on the floor beside the bed. He took a drag from the cigarette and pulled it away from his lips, exhaling streams of gray from his nostrils.

  “I know.” He smiled. “A doctor who smokes.”

  He held the water bottle in front of him and sat down.

  I could reach your fucking throat.

  “Thirsty?”

  I put my hand out, but Freddie jerked the bottle away.

  “First lesson, John.” He drew another hit from his cigarette and said, through the smoke, “You have to ask me.”

  I looked at him, his name badge, the water.

  He sat back in the chair.

  “Ask me for it.”

  “Can I please have some water?” My voice sounded sick, far away from my body.

  “That’s nice,” he said. “That’s how you do it.”

  He handed the bottle to me.

  “See?” Freddie said. “It’s sealed. No tricks.”

  I drank, and spilled some of the water down my neck onto the mattress.

  “What did you do to me?” I said.

  “I didn’t do anything. You did it to yourself.”

  I capped the bottle.

  If that’s what you think, asshole.

  “This thing really hurts my ankle.” I thought about what he’d do. I wanted to be careful. “Will you take it off, please?”

  Freddie leaned over the bed. He put one hand beneath my heel and the other on top of my foot. The way he turned my foot in his hands and looked at me told me he really was a doctor.

  “Stop pulling against it,” he said. “I can put something on it so you don’t get an infection. Tomorrow, maybe I can switch it to the other side if you want.”

  I wondered if he was going to make me ask for that, too. He reached down to the floor. I heard him moving things around, the sound of a plastic lid being pulled open. He took the cigarette from his lips and tilted it toward me.

  “Smoke?”

  I looked away.

  “Didn’t think so. You sure can drink, though.”

  He put the cigarette down somewhere. I couldn’t see. He squeezed clear, greasy cream from a silver tube onto the tips of his fingers and wiped them around the burning cut on my ankle. Gently. I looked at the window, wondered what was out there.

  “Does that feel better?”

  I didn’t say anything. I took another drink and recapped the bottle.

  “You need to pee? I bet you need to pee, John.”

  I needed to piss so bad, it felt like I was going to burst.

  “My name’s Jack.”

  I looked right at him, trying to see if he’d have any reaction to that. I couldn’t tell anything from his eyes. He scared me. I knew I’d have to play along with him so he wouldn’t hurt me, but I wanted to lash out and hit him as hard as I could. The only way he’d think my name was John was if he’d looked through my wallet. I wondered what he did with it, with my clothes. How he got me into this room. I knew what I’d done to myself to get here, and I realized nobody would even miss me yet.