Ascending the Boneyard (20 page)

I look up. My old man's got a cigarette dangling out the side of his mouth, and next to him, my mom is standing stiff and tight, like someone shrink-wrapped her.

“What are we doing here?” I ask, gape-mouthed.

“It's your birthday, jackass,” the old man says. “Don't go and do anything stupid.”

“Come on,” Haze says, pulling me by the sleeve. “Let's hit the go-karts.”

Hey, yeah! Once a kid turns twelve, he can ride without a grown-up. Haze and I have been waiting for this day our whole lives.

“Come on!” Haze calls out. “What's the holdup?”

“We're going to the go-karts!” I shout, and the posse of boys sitting at the table scrambles after us.

“Take your brother!” the old man bellows.

When we hit the tracks, Devin wants to ride with us.

“Get your own, ass-puke,” I say, gloating over the fact that he's two years too young to get his own.

“But I wanna ride with you guys.” He starts climbing into the bright yellow buggy with us.

“Buzz off!” I push my hand against his chest, against the thin fabric of his T-shirt, against the bright green background with the yellow Termi-Pest logo printed across the front.

COCKROACHES ARE OUR SPECIALTY
.

Haze shoves me into the seat and climbs in over me. He takes the last few sips of pop and throws the cup out of the buggy as I fire it up, shooting down the tracks like a bat out of hell.

Devin gets into the kart behind us with a kid from my class who I hate so much I'm not even sure why he's at my party except that our moms somehow know each other.

I gun it.

“Slow down!” Haze calls to me, but I'm a newly minted twelve-year-old on a mission.

“Slow down!” he screams, pointing at a blackbird that's headed straight for us. “Watch out!”

I scream, jerk the wheel. Our go-kart slams into Devin's, ricochets into the wall. Tire hits concrete, go-kart goes vertical, catches, flips over once, twice, tangles with Devin's.

In a flash, we're strewn across the track, the air around us thick with shrieking go-kart engines and cries of agonizing pain.

I open my eyes.

The doctor is setting my broken arm and I'm screaming bloody murder because it hurts like hell and my mom is folded into the corner of the room as the old man rants about how this is the fifth emergency-room visit we've made that year alone and how if Devin and I weren't such jackasses we wouldn't be in this position again, and I can't even sit next to her and comfort her because the next thing I know, this other doctor comes in and just blurts it out.

He will never walk again. He will never talk again.

Devin's body is an abandoned, empty hull.

I haven't even been twelve for a whole day.

•  •  •

The fog rolls in as the wheels of that faded yellow go-kart spin silently at the bottom of the heap.

Haze calls over to me as I lift myself out of a crouch, as I start walking, then running, down the go-kart track. I hear him jogging to catch up to me as I get to the third turn, where I fully expect to see a green-and-yellow drink cup with a mostly dead bird lying next to it.

But it isn't the bird I see below the skid mark, not moving, barely breathing.

It's Devin.

Crumpled on the concrete track inside his worn black hoodie.

Curled into an impossible-shaped heap.

The puniest of agonized moans leaking onto the concrete next to a thin stream of blood.

“Devin!”

Haze grabs my jacket as I lunge forward.

“Tosh! There's nothing there,” he says as the blood and the hoodie and the Devin-shaped heap disintegrate into particles of fog, rise up in a sudden gust of wind, spin around us before dissipating into the agitated sky.

I hear the synchronized cadence of army boots,
the tick-tick-ticking
of the mantel clock, the thrash-pummeling of my own heart, slamming to break free inside my body.

I didn't fix it.

I'm not Worthy.

I can't Ascend.

16.5

If I had
a mapper, maybe I could figure out where the hell I am.

17

I have serious concerns
about how long I'm going to be able to walk since this is already the farthest I've walked in my entire life if you add up all the walking I've ever done. I don't even know where we're supposed to go now because I don't have my phone to guide me. No GPS. No locator app. No way to receive a message from the commandos, should they finally decide to freakin' send me one. This is dire. Like your-platoon-was-obliterated-in-a-raid dire. Like you're-losing-your-grip-on-the-entire-mission dire.

The girl standing next to a gas pump filling the tank of her Jeep is the first human being we see after leaving the amusement park.

Her T-shirt says
SUPERGIRL
—ironic, since she's a study in plainness: plain brown hair, plain blue eyes, 501s, black Chuck Taylors. She isn't wearing makeup, isn't smiling, doesn't even seem to notice the two of us slogging past, and Haze and I cut a pretty noteworthy image after the hell we've been through.

Whoever this girl is, I doubt she's super-anything.

We swing into the convenience-store part of the gas station to get a pop and have a whiz. I suggest stocking up on provisions since we don't know what's going to happen from here, but Haze doesn't want to, says he has nothing to carry provisions in. I grab a bag of snack mix off the rack and a couple of Mountain Dews out of the cooler, which he then has to pay for. He makes it seem like a gigantic pain in the ass to take his wallet out of his pocket, but he also refuses to let me handle any of the winnings from the casino.

“I can hold some of that money,” I tell him, casting a look out the store's front window. Watching a wallpaper girl pump gas is still better than not watching any girl at all.

“If it wasn't for me,” I remind him, “you wouldn't have won that money in the first place.”

Haze's face goes from zero to rage in three-point-five seconds.

“If it wasn't for you?”

Whoops.

“You mean if it wasn't for you leaving your phone in Starla's car? Or if it wasn't for you breaking into that school, or that other building, or that subway station? If you hadn't stolen a car and wrecked it in the first place—is that what you mean? Man, if it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be dragging my ass through Bumfuck, Nowhere, with no way to get home. I have a chem test on Thursday, Tosh!”

The clerk snorts as he hands over the change.

I try to block his way out the double glass doors. “I just meant—”

“Don't talk to me right now,” he says, brushing past me.

We leave the store, walk across the parking lot toward the road. I get a vague sense that Supergirl is tracking us in her sights, but I'm a thousand percent more worried that Haze is upset with me for losing our only connection to the UpperWorld—my phone. I have to figure out how to get through to him. I mean, I need the guy more than ever right now. It's not his fault that I ditched a perfectly good platoon back at I-Tech, but we were about to go under siege, and if I'd got caught, I'd be screwed ten ways to Sunday right now. But I'm in desperate need of platoon members, so like it or not, Haze is the only backup I've got.

“Hey,” I call out, trying to think on my feet as he barrels down the road ahead of me. I need a hook. For me, a simple offer of junk food usually does it. Haze's weakness?

Random factoids.

“Yo, Haze. What was the carny shouting out back at the amusement park—do you know?”

“Revelations,” he says. The word clips the air between us, but at least it's something.

“From the Bible?” I ask. “What does it mean?”

“I don't know, Tosh. Why don't you look it up on your phone? Oh, that's right. Because you don't
have
your phone. Because you left it in some girl's car.”

“Hey! That wasn't my fault! The battery was almost dead—I had to charge it up. What was I supposed to do?”

“Try taking it
out
of the car before she strands us in the middle of nowhere.”

“Do you really think I knew she was going to leave us there? How would I even know that?”

“You wouldn't, Tosh. You wouldn't know anything. I bet you don't even know what you're doing here.”

“I'm on a mission!” The words are out of me before I can hit the kill switch, words I never wanted to say in front of Haze because he wouldn't understand. He doesn't know the Boneyard the way I do, doesn't know what's supposed to happen.

The look on his face solidifies my fears. Massive tactical error.

“A
mission
?”

I nod.

“You're on a mission?” He's breathing sweat and anger all over me, even from inside his mask. “To do what? Save the fucking world?”

I square myself in front of him, open my mouth to answer, only nothing comes out.

He throws his hands up.

“You know, I think I've been pretty patient, Tosh. I've stuck with you through all the shit times. Hell, I even went through some of those shit times with you. And I haven't said one word to you about any of this, but I can't make you want to be part of—” He stops, shakes his head.

“Go ahead,” I tell him, glad that it's rage fuming through me and not tears. “Be part of what?”

“Whatever. Go on your little mission to save the world. I give up.”

“Give up on
what
?”

“On trying to save
you
!” He's standing inches away from me, his words swarming me, crowding me with aggressive energy. This is not the attack I was expecting.

Am I here to save you, or are you here to save me?

No one can save you.

I shove against him with the flat of my hand.

He answers by shoving back.

We're just about to level up to a bona fide fight when the squeal of tires stops us both in our tracks. We spin around in time to see the Jeep pull up behind us, stand slack-mouthed as Supergirl gets out and slams the door behind her. We continue to stare at her as she approaches, and while I'm grateful to have our fight interrupted, I also wonder what this girl could possibly want with us.