A Pinstriped Finger's My Only Friend (28 page)

At first, I don't understand.

Judd and I appear elsewhere, and it's a place that we know, a place we've already been. We're back inside the school, in a classroom with padded walls. The last time we were here, Judd was wearing a straightjacket like a patient in an insane asylum.

This time, someone else is wearing the straightjacket. It's a boy, seven feet tall, with a unicorn horn spiraling out of his forehead and ladybug beetles swarming over his body. He looks our way when we pop into the room, and his eyes bug out with surprise.

We're there for all of twenty seconds. It's just long enough for me to notice something familiar in those eyes, something I've seen many times before.

Then, he's gone.
We're
gone, I should say, in another flash of light.

But as we disappear, I glimpse a pinky finger sticking out of a hole in the unicorn boy's straightjacket...and it's pale blue with dark blue pinstripes.

That's when I realize who he is. That's when my question is answered.

Ever since we first left home and started bouncing around, I've asked myself: What did the
other
versions of Judd look like, the ones we displaced when we appeared in new realities?

I think I've finally seen one.

And I see another right after, when Judd and I materialize in another place we know--a rickety wooden bridge rambling through a kaleidoscopic void whirling with ever-changing shapes. Like the classroom with the padded walls, we've been here before; it's a hallway at the school.

As we stand on the bridge, a sphere of electricity floats up to us. It hovers before us, sparking and crackling, spinning like a planet on its vertical axis.

Somehow, I know. The sphere has no features that resemble those of a human being, but I recognize it. I can
feel
the nature of its presence, the familiar force of its personality.

Plus, I spy a little arc of energy rippling along its side--pale blue energy suffused with deep blue striations.

The sphere of electricity is also a version of Judd, the one who belongs here.

(And the arc of blue energy is a version of yours truly, thank you very much.)

"We're moving backwards." Judd says it as soon as we appear in the next place. "We're going back through the realities we visited."

He's absolutely right. This time, we're in a world of colorful balloons. Originally, we dropped by here on our way to the kaleidoscopic void with the rickety bridge. Now, we're passing through in reverse, after the void with the bridge.

Just like before, this place is populated by crystalline people filled with sand. Several huddle nearby, watching us with eyes like glittering diamonds.

Then, one steps toward us, cocking his head. Again, I get that feeling of recognition, of meeting a familiar presence in an unfamiliar form.

(Plus which, the sand in his left arm is colored pale blue and shot through with dark blue stripes.)

"That's you, dude," I tell Judd.

"Cool." Judd smiles. He doesn't seem to be surprised.

And then we're gone again.

Next, we visit a misty hallway and meet a walrus-zebra Judd with blue pinstripes on his left flipper. Then a duck-person Judd with a swath of blue-pinstriped feathers along the fringe of his left wing.

All these versions of Judd have been returned to their native realities. We are seeing them back where they belong, and we're not displacing them on our way through.

Finally, I understand what is happening. I know where we're headed as we continue our backward journey. It's inevitable, as long as we keep going.

The only question now is, will we keep going?

(Cross your fingers, as I like to say!)

Our next stop is T. Zara's classroom. T. Zara himself rattles off something when we appear at the front of the room, but it sounds like pure gibberish to me. Local Judd, who looks just like Judd Prime...

(...a little beefier, maybe...)

...jumps up from his chair and babbles at us, too. I can't understand a word of it, but he's smiling. Could it be he's saying,
No hard feelings for bumping me out of my home reality, dudes
?

I'll never know. There's a flash of light, and again we're gone.

This time, we reappear in Judd's bedroom, face to face with a naked Judd. We're back in the world where the wicked nudist version of Judd's family tried to have him carted away by the cops for being a nonconformist.

This Judd might be a nudist, but he doesn't seem wicked. He grins and waves just before we wink out again.

(Interestingly, this Judd doesn't have a pinstriped finger, but he's in the process of painting his left arm pale blue with dark blue stripes when we stop by.)

I'm excited when we disappear, because I know which reality should be next--my favorite by far, the one where I soared solo through blue skies and out into the universe. But we skip that one...

(...because I went there alone and it's Judd-less?...)

...and wind up in the stained glass house on the planet of whiners.

(Sigh.)

(Really wish I could've flown that blue sky one more time, yo.)

Finally, we meet up with an unhappy Judd. We're in the hall when he sees us through the stained glass walls and runs out of his bedroom. He's covered in green scales, and his forked tongue flickers as he screams at us.

"You ruined my life! People won't leave me
alone
, you miserable piece of..."

But we're gone before he can finish. And I figure there's hope for him, too: the pinky toe on his left foot is pinstriped blue, and it isn't screaming at all.

(Seems like a decent digit, if you ask me.)

Next, we go to the world where there's nothing but whiteness and floating black text. The word "JUDD" drifts in front of us in the midst of a cloud of smaller words, including "CALM," "CONFIDENT," "WELL-ADJUSTED," "GRATEFUL"...and "OOGACHUCKA."

Then we flash out of there and into the torchlit dungeon halls of Serial Killer High School. This time, the Judd we meet is human, not text, and looks like the fiercest Judd yet. He's more than half-naked, wearing only a pair of black shorts, and his body is studded with blades, hooks, and needles. Blades on his shoulders, chest, and legs spin like propellers, driven by battery packs in the belt around his waist. He wields electric carving knives in both hands, fully powered and humming away. Even his sharpened teeth are wired and throw sparks as he grins at us.

(I'm glad when we move on from that Judd a few seconds later.)

Next, we appear in the vast gymnasium of the godlike wonder-teens, where Super-Judd with his massive muscles and flashy purple-and-orange costume is flying by overhead. Glancing down, he winks one gleaming golden eye, then continues swooping into the heart of what looks like an especially apocalyptic game of Basketball of the Gods.

We're gone from there in a flash. Our stops are speeding up as we get closer to our starting point.

Still, I wonder: will we keep going? Will we reach what ought to be our destination? Or will we stop prematurely or overshoot the mark, spinning off into a whole new raft of bizarre realities instead of the one we want the most?

Instead of
home
.

We're about to find out.

Our next stop is Judd's bedroom in the world of white puffballs. A chain of puffballs floats in midair before us, watching us with tiny black dot eyes. Midway back along the chain, a smaller puffball is attached, about the size of a cherry...and it's pale blue with dark blue stripes.

Flash
.

Suddenly, we're in a different version of the bedroom, face to face with a hulking cyclops. The creature has shaggy black hair, rings of jagged teeth, and clumps of shivering white barnacles all over its body. It spews gray goop when it speaks. "Jih-yugg? Mah-gah hah-yuv Jih-yugg hee-rah!"

It's the cyclops version of Mom, and she points a thick finger at creature made of barbed wire strung with chunks of meat. That creature waves a twisted strand of wire and speaks through a sphincter on one of its chunks. "Splendid to see you, dear counterpart!"

(There's a pale blue chunk on its left side etched with dark blue pinstripes.)

Flash
.

Then, we're gazing at a purple furry with swirly orange eyes and a mouth like a green croissant. Hot adrenaline surges through Judd's bloodstream...

(...firing me up along the way...)

...and I know the reason why.

Because this is where we started. This was our first stop on the crazy tour. Our next stop ought to be home.

Unless the craziness isn't done with us yet.

The purple furry's face turns all the way around, so its mouth's on top and its eyes are on the bottom. It raises its left hand, giving us a good look at its fur-covered fingers. One of them's pale blue with dark blue pinstripes.

But it's the
middle
finger.

Why do I have a feeling that the crazy universe just gave us a sign...a
bad
one? Could it be we've got no chance of getting home?

A feeling of panic rises up in me as the light flashes again. The face of the purple furry Judd spins round and round like a wheel of fortune as we disappear from its freak show reality.

*****

When the light fades, Judd and I are standing in a hallway at school. Somehow, I've switched from his right hand back to his left.

(Don't ask me how the fudge
that
happened.)

The hallway we're in is perfectly normal, as far as I can see. But that means nothing in the crazy-verse, as you well know.

We're in the middle of an intersection of hallways, actually. None of the doors are close enough for us to look inside a room from where we're standing.

"Classes change in one minute." Judd's watching a digital clock on the wall, its red numbers glowing like the digits on the Permanent Tournament scoreboard.

"So this is it." I stiffen from the tension. "We're about to find out."

What's going to emerge from those rooms when the bell rings? Normal human teens talking and laughing? The old gang, all happy to see Judd back in the house?

Or will they be frog-people or giant amoebas or human pickles or half-cows/half-dirt bikes?

At that moment, anything is still possible. As far as we're concerned, the people in the classrooms are normal humans and all possible oddities all at once.

Judd swallows hard. "Do you think we made it? Are we finally home?"

Just then, the numbers on the clock change, moving one minute later. At the same instant, the bell rings, echoing through the hallways.

We hear the usual commotion in the classrooms as the occupants gather their things and scramble out of their seats.

(I can't tell from listening what
kind
of occupants they are, though.)

Then, the doors fly open. All up and down the hallways branching off from our intersection, they burst open.

And we see the halls fill with the crowd, and we know.

"OMG," I say. "OMG OMG OMG!"

Judd shakes his head and blows out his breath. It's been a long trip. We've been through every crazy reality under the sun, struggled to survive against the odds, done everything we could to get home, and now...

And now...

"We made it!" I bounce up and down, flick back and forth, and spin in circles with pure pinky-finger joy. "
Yipee
!"

Judd just stands there and grins as the crowd rushes around us. The hall is packed with normal teenage boys and girls, every last one of them chattering away...

(...in a language we understand!...)

...and jostling each other with abandon. Blond, brunette, or redhead...Asian, Caucasian, Indian, Latino, or African-American...skinny, bulked up, or flabby...short, tall, or in-between...every last one of them is different, no two are completely alike...

(...except the Tamil twins...)

...but none is so different that he or she belongs in another reality. There aren't any vampires, werewolves, or witches...no electrical spheres or half-walrus/half-zebras...no nudists or albinos...no purple furries, pogo-bots, or white puffballs. There isn't a green-scaled whiner, a super-powered wonder-teen, or a serial killer in sight.

Every last one of those kids is exactly the way we'd expect them to be if we were back home.

Almost
.

"Wait a minute." Judd frowns. "Look at their hands. Their
left
hands."

That's when I see it. The kids passing by--every one of them has something in common.

And Judd sees it loud and clear. "Their
pinkies
. They're all like
you
."

I look away, then look at the passing fingers, but nothing's changed. And
everything's
changed.

I see a left pinky with a pale red background and purple pinstripes. There's another with yellow pinstripes over a dark blue base. And there's one with silver pinstripes over brown.

Everyone has them. Every last kid in sight has a pinstriped pinky just like me.

"Holy crap." One of the passing pinkies says "hi" to me, and I'm even more blown away.

Judd, however, doesn't waste any time seizing on the obvious implication. "So we didn't make it
home
?"

"Maybe this
is
home," I suggest. "Maybe it's just changed since we've been away."

The words of the guy in the empty world come back to me:
Change is inevitable and constant. And it isn't necessarily a bad thing.

More pinkies give me a shout-out as they pass, and I feel like smiling. "I like it, though." An especially cute finger--pink pinstripes over pale yellow--wiggles in my direction from the hand of a passing girl. "I could get used to this."

Judd stands quietly for a moment as the mob of people and pinstriped pinkies washes around him. "What if other things have changed, too? Not necessarily
good
things?"

"Then it'll be like any other reality, won't it?" I remember more of what the guy in the empty world said, and I repeat it. "It's a crazy life--stark, raving crazy." Then back to my own words. "But whatever happens, wherever it leads, you can handle it."

There's something I told him back on that nearly-deserted planet. It won't hurt to tell him again. "You're a better person than you were when we started." I pat his palm when I say it. "I ain't worried about you, dude."

"Maybe you're right." Judd takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. "Get by or give up, huh?"

I laugh and give his palm a friendly jab. "I still say this is a better version of home than the one we started with. Don't you think people are better off with a best friend pinky of their own? A guardian finger to guide and protect them?"

Judd sees Kaela across the crowd and gives her a wave. She shoots back an excited wave of her own and hurries toward us.

(Her pinky is magenta with delicate white pinstripes, BTW.
Very
sexy!)

"I kind of liked it when it was just the two of us," Judd tells me. "I liked that we were special."

Perched there on his left hand, in the middle of the crush between classes, I watch the people and pinstriped fingers flow past in a river of color, sound, and motion. I hear people talking to people...fingers talking to fingers...fingers talking to people. And I gotta say, it doesn't freak me out. I was only surprised to begin with because Judd could see it, too.

The truth is, this world isn't so different from the one we started with. The truth is, there's a secret that Judd never knew, one I never told him.

The world was always like this. True story. That's the big secret.

"Everyone's special," I tell him. "You just never noticed before."

*****

About the Author

Robert T. Jeschonek is an award-winning writer whose fiction, comics, essays, articles, and podcasts have been published around the world. His young adult urban fantasy novel,
My Favorite Band Does Not Exist
, won the Forward National Literature Award and was named one of
Booklist
’s Top Ten First Novels for Youth. His cross-genre science fiction thriller,
Day 9
, is an International Book Award winner. Simon & Schuster, DAW/Penguin Books, and DC Comics have published his work. He won the grand prize in Pocket Books' nationwide
Strange New Worlds
contest and was nominated for the British Fantasy Award. Visit him online at www.thefictioneer.com. You can also find him on Facebook and follow him as @TheFictioneer on Twitter.

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A Young Adult Fantasy Novel That Really Rocks!

One of Booklist's Top Ten First Novels for Youth

Being trapped in a book can be a nightmare—just ask Idea Deity. He’s convinced that he exists only in the pages of a novel written by a malevolent author . . . and that he will die in Chapter 64. Meanwhile, Reacher Mirage, lead singer of the secret rock band Youforia, can’t figure out who’s posting information about him and his band online that only
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School of Rock
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you?

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Chaos theory meets rock 'n' roll in adult author Jeschonek's ambitious, reality-bending YA debut." "...this proudly surreal piece of metafiction could develop a cult following
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