Crap Kingdom (13 page)

“You’ll recognize this one,” Kyle said. He pointed at the wall. One of the pictographs lit up, like the lines in the drawing had been filled in with shiny liquid gold. Kyle twitched his finger ever so slightly and the stick-figure man danced up off the wall at them, finding a home in the dead center of the room, above their heads. A word appeared, orbiting the three-dimensional image like a news ticker that had come to life and then immediately gone insane.
SOUL-SWAP
, it read. It swirled around the man. The man fell backward, then collided with a man who was standing directly underneath him like a reflected image in a pond, then swung all the way around until he was standing again. An afterimage of the man remained lying at a ninety-degree angle. The reflected man fell upward into this afterimage version of the original man, and then the two that had now become one got up and walked away.

“What is this place?” Tom said.

“The laboratory of J, the greatest citizen in the history of the kingdom of Prrrkggrkrkkk,” Kyle said.

“I thought Gark’s dad was their greatest citizen.”

“When I say ‘great’ I mean, like, actually great, not just great at being miserable. He designed spells that no one had ever thought of before. Like, for instance, he created the Wall. And he was going to vanquish the Ghelm and free the people of Ffrrggggggghh from the threat of being destroyed, but he disappeared before he could get it together.”

“And they actually liked him? They actually wanted this?”

“They weren’t always like they are now. It’s pretty recent for them to be so depressed and stuff. I think when he went away, the king figured, eh, screw it, nothing’s worth anything.”

“So if you’re the Chosen One, and it says that the Chosen One will bring down the Wall, isn’t that bad since it’s the only thing protecting them from the Ghelm?”

“I think it means, once I’m done, they won’t need the Wall, because nothing will be threatening them.”

Kyle just said it so confidently. It was the same way he’d entered the cave, the way he’d shown everything off. Tom wanted to hit him, or be him, or something.

The animation of the soul-swap had cycled through five or six times. On the seventh, it was accompanied by a voice that seemed to come from everywhere:

“Right, so, the soul-swap’s quite simple, actually, for something that’s meant to incorporate two separate worlds, and then a third, too, if the intermediary—”

“
Off
,” Kyle said.

“What was that?”

“J’s recorded instructions,” Kyle said.

J had not sounded how Tom would expect a great citizen to sound. He sounded a lot younger, for one. When the ancients spoke, you expected it to be in ancient-sounding tones, like their lungs were filled with the dust of centuries and they had so much wisdom that they could barely lift their heads, but J had sounded around Tom’s age. On the other hand, he had sounded British, which more than made up for the wisdom points he’d lost by not sounding old.

“Is the soul-swap something you can learn?”

“Well, yeah, I guess . . . I mean, I learned it.”

“Oh.”

“But I think it’s something where you have to have like, some kind of base of like, magical understanding.”

“Which you have.”

“Yeah.”

“How did you find this place?”

“The king showed me.”

“Because you had that magical understanding?”

“No,” Kyle said, “I don’t know. He just likes me for some reason. But I’m not just passively learning. I’m building stuff, too. You know how I said you can’t teleport through the dome of the Wall?”

“Sure.”

“Well, yesterday, after you left, I think I figured out how to do it. I think . . . I can turn us into air.”

“Wait, what?”

“Okay, the Wall has to allow air in, right? Otherwise everyone would suffocate. So I make us air for a second. Combine that with teleportation, and we’re through.”

“And this works?”

“Well . . .” Kyle said.

Then: Tom was dead. Or at the very least, he was nowhere. He wasn’t even in the between-world void; he was just a consciousness surrounded by nothing. It was kind of how he felt on the inside just about every second of every day—awkward, stuck between things, uncertain even of his uncertainty, especially when talking to girls—made into a physical state of being. Or was it a nonphysical state of being? He wasn’t sure.

He hovered in eternal nothingness for three seconds. Could it be eternal if it only lasted three seconds? He wasn’t sure.

Then: he was alive, in a body, his body. He was in the throne room. He was facing a wall when he reappeared. He was very close to it, in fact, but he knew it was the throne room because he spun around and saw that the king and Gark were there. And he immediately had these thoughts:

1.
How did Kyle know how to do that?
It’s one thing to be taught how to do magic and stuff, another thing entirely to
write
magic. Or maybe it was easy to do that? Maybe it was just another thing you could learn, like the spells on the walls of J’s cave? Maybe J’s magic was like a video game that let you design your own levels. Maybe it was that simple. It probably was, if Kyle could do it.

2.
That was TERRIFYING
. Maybe that was the telltale sign of Kyle having created it himself. Last time Kyle teleported them, the world had changed around them instantaneously. This time, they’d hung in not-even-space for three seconds, with Tom unsure of what was happening, unsure if they’d ever come back. And it had spat them out here, dangerously close to the wooden wall.

3.
Aw, crap.

The “aw, crap” was not inspired by the teleportation, but by the king looking at Tom and yelling, “What is
he
doing here?”

“Hey, King!” Kyle said. “Did you see this? I cracked the thing that J could never figure out . . . how to teleport into—”

“Of course you did, Kyle,” the king said, “but that does not change my question.”

“I was just showing him J’s laboratory.”

“
What
?” the king yelled. “What did he see?”

“You know, the cave, and the whole thing. What’s the problem?”

“The problem, my dear Kyle, is that was never, and I mean
never
, intended to be seen by anyone but the eyes of a
Chosen One
! And that does
not
mean a
former, disgraced
Chosen One! That means a
current
Chosen One whose place was dictated by prophecy!”

“It’s okay,” Kyle said. “Tom’s cool.”

“It is not a matter of whether or not Tom is
cool
,” the king said. “Our kingdom is J’s secrets. They are the only thing separating us from utter destruction. All you have done for our kingdom, all you have yet to do, could all disappear in a moment, if those secrets were overheard by the wrong pair of ears.”

“But Tom’s not—”

“Do not finish that sentence unless you intended to say ‘Tom’s not worth risking the fate of our entire society.’ And as for
you
,” the king went on, turning to Tom. “You should be ashamed of tempting our Chosen One into showing you J’s cave.”

“I didn’t tempt him into anything! I didn’t even know it existed! He brought me there!”

“I failed to make it adequately clear to him that J’s laboratory was off-limits to anyone but him. I only showed it to him after grave consideration, once he demonstrated particular strength of character, but I forgot to make clear to him the parameters. He did not know any better.”

“I didn’t know any better,” Tom said. He was being impulsive. He didn’t know if it was the right time or not. He didn’t care. “I didn’t know any better when I said I didn’t want to be the Chosen One! I didn’t know that there would be all this magic stuff, all these secrets!”

“Of course you didn’t,” the king said. “They were secrets!”

“But you told Kyle!”

“After he gained my trust.”

“You never gave me a chance to gain your trust. You just decided I sucked right off the bat!”

“You never had a chance to gain my trust because
you left
,” the king said. “And I thank you for leaving, because if you hadn’t, we might never have received an updated prophecy. We would not have our Kyle. And now that you have left, I wish you would stay gone.”

“Come on,” Kyle said, “I’m sure we can find a place for him.”

“I don’t believe you understand,” the king said. “I was not idly wishing that he be gone forever. Wasn’t it you, Tom, who wanted me to decree more things? Well, I am decreeing something now. You . . . are . . . banned.”

“Fine!” Tom yelled, though he didn’t actually think it was fine.

“Hey,” Kyle said, “if this is about me bringing him to the cave, I’m sorry, and I won’t—”

“You have nothing to apologize for, Kyle. Now,” the king said to Tom, “begone.”

Kyle turned to Tom.

“I’m sorry, man.”

Tom shrugged. Kyle raised his arms.

“Can’t I push myself?” Tom asked.

Kyle shook his head.

“Okay,” Tom said. “Go ahead.”

If someone could shove someone else sadly, that’s the way Kyle shoved Tom.

Tom expected to land on Earth with his body in a standing position, as he had onstage the other day.

Instead, he landed lying down.

Lindsy Kopec was lying on top of him.

“Whoa there,” Lindsy said. “You okay?”

“What?” Tom said. “Yeah. Yeah.”

Tom tried to remember if they had any kissing scenes in the play. They didn’t. And they definitely didn’t have any scenes that took place in a modern-day teenage girl’s bedroom, on the girl’s bed.

“Oh,” Lindsy said. “You kind of, like, twitched.”

“Totally involuntary, I swear,” Tom said. “Never happen again.”

“Cool,” Lindsy said, and smiled, and tucked a long strand of black hair back behind her ear. Then she leaned back down and kissed him and they kept making out. Tom didn’t know how long they’d been making out, but he knew how long he wanted it to last.

16

WHAT WAS GOING ON?

It was the second time today Tom had had a feeling like this, of being totally confused, with no point of reference, nothing he could build a sense of the world around. The first time was in the netherworld between J’s cave and the throne room. But in that place, or lack-of-place, there was nothing. Here, now, on Lindsy’s bed, there was everything. There was Lindsy, there was Tom, there was Lindsy’s backpack wedged carelessly between him and the wall, and the wall covered in posters, some of which were doubles of ones in the drama room, and Lindsy’s bed underneath him with its sky-blue covers, and there was sixty or sixty-five cents in change that had fallen out of the pocket of his jeans dancing on the surface of those covers. Did his breath smell okay? It probably didn’t. Yet all this was happening in spite of it. In spite of him being him, all this great stuff was happening.

He was kissing Lindsy Kopec. Like, in the face. Was he good at it? He didn’t know. He’d barely made out with anyone before. Especially if this was actually what making out was. This was intense. Lindsy was kissing him really hard. He was kissing back really hard. It was phenomenal.

What had taken place between now and the end of school? He wished his body had retained some sort of residual memory. Now Lindsy was kissing his neck, and while this miraculous rite was being performed, Tom glanced at the clock on Lindsy’s nightstand. It was 4:45. School ended at 3:15. At 4:45 in the afternoon on a school day, he was in Lindsy Kopec’s bedroom and Lindsy herself was kissing his neck.

Let’s say, just in the normal course of events, he’d gotten to see Lindsy’s bedroom. That in and of itself would have been an achievement, something he could be hugely proud of even if that was as far as it ever went. Every straight male he knew wanted to be in Lindsy’s bedroom. Even if it was just as part of a study group, it would represent a threshold crossed on the way to making out with Lindsy. And let’s say Tom had crossed that threshold one time, on an afternoon such as this. He would have then estimated that it would take him another year to actually make out with her. Yet here, in a single afternoon, he had blazed through the bedroom threshold, and fallen onto the bed and into her arms.

Who was he when he wasn’t him? He wanted to shake that man’s hand. And he would shake that man’s hand, as soon as someone removed his right hand, his good shaking hand, from Lindsy’s butt. He expected it to happen any second now. A couple of seconds passed. It wasn’t getting removed! It was just staying there! It practically lived there! If his hand could live there, where else could it go? Should he find out? Better not. He’d just been given the world. Best not to ask for more right away. Should he be thinking right now? He should probably not be thinking. He tried to stop thinking.

Lindsy finished kissing his neck, so Tom started kissing Lindsy’s neck. He immediately started thinking again: Was he doing it right? He tried to do it like she’d done it to him. Would that be weird, though, since he was a guy and she was a girl? Should he try to do it manlier than she’d done it? How did you kiss someone’s neck manfully? Then he started to worry that there would have been a noticeable difference in his conduct, bedroom and otherwise, between when he was actually in his body and when his soul-swapped whoever, that glorious genius void-dweller to whom he owed so much, had been inhabiting him. That person, if he could be called a person, would probably do things differently from how Tom would do them. He decided he’d better start kissing differently from how he would kiss. He tried to imagine how plain old Tom would neck-kiss somebody and then tried to do it differently from that.

It was pointless. He gave up and decided to just enjoy it. And, for the first time in a long history of trying to turn his head off and just enjoy something, he actually did.

“Tom,” Lindsy said. Lindsy said your name a lot when you talked to her. Not a lot of people actually did this in real life, but Lindsy did it, to everybody. Yet you still felt special when she did it to you. Tom felt special, lying there, looking at Lindsy’s face, one of her eyes invisible, buried in a pillow, random strands of her black hair creating a nest for the other eye. You know what, he thought, he was special. He was here. They’d just made out a ton. They might make out more, he thought. Stick around.

“Tom,” Lindsy said, “that was incredible.”

Tom wasn’t sure what she meant. “Do you mean just now?”

Her one visible eye squinched up and it, too, disappeared into the pillow as she laughed. “Whoa! Cocky!”

“What?” Tom said. “It was, right?!”

Lindsy laughed more into her pillow. The blinds on the window above her bed were mostly closed but yellow late afternoon light was still slanting in. She let one eye show again, and the light got caught up in her eyelashes.

“Verrrry cocky,” she said. “But then again, that’s what I liked about it.”

“About what?”

“The meeting this afternoon!” she said. “What else could I be talking about?”

Tom shrugged, but it was hard to shrug effectively when you were lying on your side in a bed. “Tell me about it,” he said.

“I
know
,” Lindsy said.

“No, I don’t mean, like, ‘Tell me about it,’ I mean . . . actually tell me about it.”

“As in what happened?”

“Yeah,” Tom said, “like I’m someone else. Like I wasn’t there.” He smiled so in case she thought he was joking he could just smile wider and she could be sure he was joking.

She opened her mouth wide, fake astonished, or maybe real astonished. “You
are
cocky! Tom Parking, have you no shame?”

“Clearly not,” he said, and smiled more. He didn’t know what he meant, but it sounded like the right thing to say. She laughed.
Okay, good,
Tom thought,
it was the right thing to say.
“Seriously, it’ll be an interesting exercise in perspective, like, were you in class when we watched
Rashomon
?”

They had watched the Kurosawa movie
Rashomon
in Tobe’s Intermediate Drama class. They were supposed to watch
Throne of Blood,
because it was based on
Macbeth
and they were doing a Shakespeare unit, but Tobe said he hadn’t returned his Netflix movies in time so he didn’t have the DVD and the school library had
Rashomon
, which was still a Kurosawa movie and still had samurai.

“No, I was in LA for an audition.”

“Okay, right, well. Well, it’s about perspective, and different people seeing different things. Like, that was your perspective. Not being there, being in LA.”

“What’s your point, Parking?”

“My point is, tell me what happened this afternoon, from your perspective.”

“No!” she said. “That would be weird.”

“Okay, fine then,” Tom said. “Let’s act it out.”

“What?”

Tom was being very unlike himself, but he didn’t think he’d gotten here by being like himself and if he wanted to be back here he needed to know exactly how unlike himself he’d been, so he pressed on.

“Yeah, come on. It’ll be fun. You can play me.”

“Now
that
,” Lindsy said, lifting herself up on one elbow, “is the first interesting thing I’ve heard all afternoon.”

“The first interesting thing?” Tom said. “But you’re about to say all the interesting stuff I said.”

“Oh, it wasn’t that interesting, you’re giving yourself way too much credit,” Lindsy said. Was this flirting? Tom was pretty sure this was flirting.

“Well, go ahead,” Tom said, “do your me impression. I hear you’re an excellent impressionist. I heard your Taylor Swift impression, for instance—”

“Who told you about that? That was just for a dumb English class skit! I never claimed to be able to do a Taylor Swift impression!”

“And I don’t claim to be able to do a you impression, but here it goes anyway.”

“Wait, you’re going to be me?”

“Of course.”

“Okay, well, be extremely good at acting while playing me.”

“I will.”

“Capture everything about me.”

“I will! Okay, so I’m Lindsy, and it’s earlier today, and I’m . . . where?”

“Out in the courtyard by the Performing Arts wing,” Lindsy said. “I was going to ask Tobe if we had to memorize pages ten through twenty for tomorrow.”

“You couldn’t just text him back?”

“I don’t know, this might sound weird, but I like going to see him when I can. Is that . . . ? I don’t know.”

“I do exactly the same thing,” Tom said.

“Seriously? Don’t be mean.”

“No, I’m serious. I did that exact same thing today. But enough about me, this is about you, and I’m you, and I’m walking through the courtyard.”

“That’s how I walk?”

“It’s hard to demonstrate how you walk when I’m lying down.”

“Okay, this is silly. You want to know my perspective? Here it is: I’m walking in the courtyard . . .
not
like that . . . and you walk up and you say ‘come with me’ and you grab my hand. You say ‘Tobe needs our help.’ Any disagreement so far?”

“That’s pretty much what I remember,” Tom said.

“And I kept trying to ask you what was going on, and you were just being so serious, there was no hesitation. We were headed toward the office. And the principal’s secretary was sitting outside, and we just rushed past her, right through the principal’s door, and you flung me inside—”

“I
flung
you?” Tom said. Then he corrected himself. “I mean, you thought of that as a fling?”

“It was pretty much a fling, Tom, you flung me. Not that I—I mean, if I’d had a problem with it, I would have said something, I was just completely—caught up, I guess, would be the right way to put it. And you go, ‘Principal Scott, Mr. Lowsky, my name is Thomas Parking and this is my associate Lindsy Kopec.’”

It was Tom’s turn to laugh into Lindsy’s pillow.

“Don’t laugh! You said it! You actually said ‘associate’ with a straight face, so you can’t all of a sudden laugh now! I didn’t laugh and if I don’t get to then you don’t get to.”

“I’m amazing,” Tom said.

“You’re something, definitely,” Lindsy said, then continued: “And the principal and Tobe were upset at you being there, but you were like—and you
don’t
need to hear this because your head’s definitely big enough already—but, Tom: you were
commanding
.”

“Really?”

“Ugh, this is exactly what you wanted, isn’t it? Not enough that I basically tear your face off, I actually have to
say
how great I think you are.”

“So what did I say?”

“You were there! You know what you said!”

“I mean, I got kind of caught up in the moment, like you were saying.”

“I just remember thinking, did he write this? But I can’t remember exactly. . . .”

“Right, it wasn’t so much what I said as how I said it.”

“No, it was what you said and how you said it. You said that we’d both worked really hard on productions in the past, and how I had all these things going on with academics and also my acting and modeling outside of school, but how I was electing—I remember you used that word,
electing
—to be here because I believed in the project and what it meant and, to sacrifice that, stood in opposition—there’s another phrase you definitely used—to the spirit, or something, of the play. And there were all these things that you said, but if there was going to be a thesis statement in all of this, this would have been it, something about how everything Arthur Miller stood for, all his lessons of tolerance and dignity, that could just go away at any time, and it wouldn’t have to be in a big court case, it could happen very slowly, just from people being too afraid in situations they assumed really didn’t matter because they were so small, like a school play. Small decisions, small moments, they matter. That there are small victories to be had everywhere, in our own lives, not just in the Supreme Court and stuff. Does that sound about right?”

“Yeah,” Tom said. “It’s all coming back to me now. That part of it, anyway, because the other part—”

“What other part?” Lindsy said. “Oh, you mean the part where, after the principal said he’d have to give some serious consideration to it, but you’d made a lot of excellent points, and then thanked
me
for my sacrifice in light of my many endeavors, we were outside and you said how we still had the whole afternoon free and I asked you if you’d like to come back here, and you said . . . Oh,
god
, I can’t even say it . . .”

“Say it!”

“
Ugh
. Fine. You said, and
this
I can quote: ‘Only if it’s not just to run lines.’”

“I . . . am . . .
amazing.
”

Lindsy thwacked Tom so hard he almost fell off the bed.

“And then you said something about telling you all about everything from this afternoon that you said was about getting a ‘different perspective’ but was really about inflating your already overinflated ego.”

“Wait! You skipped a part.”

“What part?”

Tom looked at her. She remembered. Then they reenacted that part, each of them playing themselves this time.