Away We Go (18 page)

“If this were a book or a play,” he says meaningfully, “wouldn't you want the heroes to do something holy and wondrous?”

“I thought you hated
The City of Light,
” I said.

“Like Wendy and Peter,” he says, his voice soft. He adjusts his glasses.

“Marty—” I'm about to tell him that in
The City of Light,
Winston and Jena lead the slaves in rebellion against the city's Elders, because Winston and Jena are brave, because Winston and Jena are in love, because Winston and Jena know the city of light is a city of evil. In
Escaping Eternity,
Kylie discovers that the assignment process which determines a citizen's social role in the Eternal State is rigged to keep power in the hands of the powerful, and she teams up with Tristan, the son of the local governor, to escape outside the border fence, to a place where she and Tristan can be whatever they want to be. But what do
we
know? What did Polo Club ever discover?

“You were Peter,” he says, biting his lip. “I thought you'd understand.”

“Marty,” I say, “What does F.L.Y. even want? If you run away, the only thing that'll happen is you'll get eaten by a bear.”

“Maybe it doesn't matter if we get eaten by bears, Noah. That's what I learned from writing the play. What matters is—what you do. The act. That's what we have. What Peter and Wendy had.”

He watches me as I dry a cup.

“All we do at Westing is make things up,” I press. “Maybe aliens infected the world. Maybe it's a punishment from God. Maybe we get downloaded into chips. Maybe they experiment on us like rats. Maybe the stars are Peter and Wendy. Or maybe they're all just stories.” I can't stop myself now, so I go on. “Maybe they take us away to tertiary centers and give us incontinence support until we die. Maybe that's it.”

A long time passes before he says, “What they did to Melanie was wrong. A place that does that . . .” He hesitates. “A place that does that is worth running away from.”

“The baby wouldn't have lived,” I say.

He just shakes his head at me.

Through the window, I notice our little apple tree has been shorn from its roots, probably from last night's thunderstorm. Our tree's last apples are scattered across the yard. I push open the screen door and pick them up, one by one. Minutes pass; my arms grow full. Marty comes out to help me. We gather the apples wordlessly as the horizon dims, little by little.

I want to tell him I'm sorry.

But the apples are unwieldly.

I need to concentrate, lest they spill from my grasp.

WORDS, WORDS, WORDS!

The Great Cliché is only three weeks away.

I went for a run this past Friday, jogged past a hundred Believers lying prone on the grass, pretending to be dead, practicing for September 26th I guess, with placards and posters that read “Make the End a New Beginning,” and “Suffering Is Punishment for SIN. Repent NOW, and Be Saved.” As I jogged, a song I've been listening to nonstop on AwayWeTune played in my head. When I passed Clover House, I heard it cranked to max volume.

Are you going to Scarborough Fair

Remember me to one who lives there

She once was a true love of mine

He's still here.

Tell her to make me a cambric shirt

Without no seams nor needlework

Then she'll be a true love of mine

I haven't visited since I delivered my letter, and he's remained silent, but that's okay, I'm okay.

Tell her to find me an acre of land

Between the salt water and the sea strand

Then she'll be a true love of mine.

I hooked up with a very nice blond boy to prove how okay I was. He had a slim build and small, girlish hands. I sincerely hope to never see him again. Couldn't look at Marty or Alice for days after. Alice, clacking along on her crutches. Giving her
newsies a campus tour in that believe-in-me-and-ye-shall-be-saved voice of hers.

I have my own group of newsies, and they keep me busy.

I'm not supposed to have a favorite, so of course I do.

Jane is quiet and sarcastic, likes to joke about her impending death. Rumor has it she is a master AwayWeGamer already; she has one of the top ten Zombie Survival scores. Her corner of the room she shares with Lin and Michelle is meticulous, folders stacked, books in a neat line along the windowsill, dirty laundry disposed of in three bins—one for lights, one for colors, and one for jeans. She's the third wheel in that room, which makes me like her more.

Naturally, I treat her coldly. On her second day she called to tell me she'd lost her keys.

“I think that's it. My brain is going. This is the end.”

“Security's in Galloway seventeen, on the ground floor,” I said, refusing to play along. “They'll give you another key.”

“I'm going to dictate my last will and testament to you,” she said.

“I've got to go, actually, but another time.”

I hung up, and resumed playing Age of Rome, where my parents have been sending me florins with increasing frequency. Once, my dad showed me a game on his computer, a racing game. I didn't understand why you would need a computer to race when you had a perfectly good toy car. But we raced each other, our hands poised over the keyboard.

The kids help. They keep me busy, and busyness is a temporary remedy for the emptiness that rises in me more and more frequently as autumn's first chill sets in. Westing has all sorts of activities for the newsies, from barbecues to movie nights to alcohol/drug seminars. The night before convocation, I stumble into Allison, one of my newsies, at a room party in
Turner, drunk off her face, talking to a pair of boys much bigger than her, and much more sober.

I consider leaving.
Do
leave. It's hard to exert authority when some of your charges, Allison included, are as old as you. But I pause in the hallway, listening to the music stream out from beneath the door.

What would Zach do?

So I go back for her.

She hugs me. Says, “Noahhhh!” Says, “I missed you!” Says to the two boys, “This is my orientation leader,” with this great big smile. They look flustered. I know what they're after, and they know I know.

I say, “Ally, do you want me to take you home?”

“Home?
Home?
” She laughs. “It's only midnight!”

“You don't want to be drifting off during the director's speech tomorrow.”

“Oh
please
. You don't actually expect us to go to that, do you?”

Considering I slept through convocation last year, I'm not sure what to say. Before I can figure it out, she grabs my hands. “Stay with us, Noah!”

“Can't. It's—against protocol. I'm not even supposed to be in the same room as you, if you're drinking. I really think you should—” I drop my voice to a whisper. “These guys—”

“I know,” she interjects. “I'm drunk but not an—
an idiot,
Noah.” She pulls me closer. “Do
you
?”

“I'm leaving,” I say. “Do you want me to walk you home?”

She bites her lip. “No.”

“All right. Be careful.”

I worry about her all the way back to my apartment even though it's ridiculous. Why do I care how many dicks she rides? I guarantee I have her beat, anyway. But the moment I step
through the door I see Alice on the couch, wiping angrily at her eyes, her wheelchair in the corner. She tries to hide behind her hands, pretend she hasn't been crying.

I feel like crying with her; maybe that would fix, if not everything, then something,
a
thing.

I want to tell her I don't know what I'm doing, which stories are true and which not, whether the world is ending at 11:37 p.m. on September 26th or not, if PPV is a punishment from God or an infection seeded by a hostile alien race or simply, simply—the cruelest possibility of all—an accident of nature, with no more intrinsic meaning than a sneeze.

I want to tell her I saw her and Marty kissing the other day. She shies away from me, picks up her crutches, pushes herself up from the sofa, and clacks off into the kitchen.

I need a minute or two to swallow my self-loathing. It tastes like vomit. Alice glances up from the kitchen table and sniffs as I enter.

“I'm just—” I let out a sigh. “I'm jealous of you.” I pause. “You and your newsies. I'm horrible at it. All of it. That's the truth. And—”

And what? She waits for me to finish the thought. As if I know how.

Words. So many yet never enough!

She snorts then. Through tears and mucus she says, with surprising calm, “Oh, Noah. You're not the only one who has it hard. You think you're the only one who could use a drink?”

I've never seen her like this, speaking like this. “That's not true,” I say, without conviction.

“It is, though, Noah Falls. You think you're the only one who's ever been hurt.”

“You want a drink?” I reach inside the Cap'n Crunch cereal box on top of the refrigerator, withdraw a bottle of vodka, put it
on the table in front of her. “Have a drink. Have a whole bottle. Make a toast.”

“Noah—”

“Go on,” I say.

“You don't think I will,” she says.

She unscrews the cap, brings the bottle to her lips.

I wait for her to do it.

“I could use a drink, Noah Falls.” Then she puts it down, and softens. “But it's a crutch. I wish you could see that.”

“You have your crutches,” I say, nodding at her broken ankle, “I have mine.” I scoop the bottle up and take a swig. I hate myself for it, and to drown the hate I take another gulp.

She makes a noise, half laugh, half sob. “Do you know Marty told me something today?”

“No,” I say quietly. He must've finally come out with it. Only Alice would cry after breaking someone else's heart.

When she doesn't go on, I prompt her: “What?”

“Never mind,” she says, looking away.

“
What?
What is it? He's in love with you? Don't tell me that wasn't obvious.”

“I guess,” she says, “we're all in love with the wrong person, aren't we?”

We study each other in silence.

“Why have you stayed?” I ask after a time, even though I don't know if she's still “with” me or not. Even though I'm not even sure what it means to be “with” someone, when you can't even touch them, when they're always out of your grasp, when all you do is hurt them or misunderstand them, when you are so full of empty space.

“Because I love you.” She says it so simply, so innocently. “Don't tell me that wasn't obvious.”

“Don't say that.” I sound too harsh, so I add, “I never thought I'd say it. But there's a little too much love in my life at the moment.”

She laughs, and I let out the breath I didn't even realize I was holding.

“Well, I'm saying it anyway, Noah Falls. I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you—”

“Don't,” I say. My voice sounds pathetic, even to me.

“I know
you,
” she says. “I love that you hate sandwiches for some inexplicable reason. I love that you told Martin you preferred Dr. Seuss to Pushkin. I love that you're a bigger troll than everyone else on AwayWeGo combined. I love
you,
Noah. I wish I didn't, but I can't help it. I know you don't love me the way I love you. The way I want you to love me. I know it's selfish. If I weren't selfish, I'd love Marty, but I can't, I told him I can't.”

“Today?” I ask, even though she basically just told me a second ago.

“Maybe—” she breaks off. “Maybe if we were out there. If we had billions to choose from. It would be different. But we're here.
Here.
I believe this
matters
. That we're here for a reason. That out of all the billions you and me are here for a reason.”

“I don't believe in reasons,” I say.

I've never seen someone wipe at her nose so angrily. “How does
Zachary
make you feel?”

I bite my lip. “Half the time I regret meeting him and half the time I think he's the best thing that ever happened to me. It's very unreasonable.”

Alice tries to hold back her laugh, but it escapes.

I reach out, touch her hand, hold it. I say, “If you still want me, I won't leave you.”

She says, “Okay.”

ALCOHOL AWARENESS NIGHT

Fast Facts

Alcohol Use Leads to:

•
      
Impaired judgment, loss of coordination, slowed reflexes, and memory loss

•
      
Weight gain, vomiting, stomach ulcers, and stomach cancer

•
      
Diseases like cirrhosis and hepatitis

•
      
Sexual dysfunction

Reduce Risk of Harm by:

•
      
Abstinence

•
      
If abstinence is not possible, imbibe no more than two standard drinks daily, and no more than four standard drinks on any one occasion

What Is a Standard Drink?

350 mL Beer = 150 mL Wine = 50 mL Hard Alcohol

DREAMS OF SELF, TO BE CONTINUED

Noah looks in the mirror, but does not see himself reflected in it.

He says, “Hand me my mouth.”

And there! A mouth appears in the mirror's reflection.

It smiles approvingly at itself.

“Eyes, too, because right now the fact that a mouth can see itself is something of a fantastic conceit. Oh, and a brain would be nice.”

And there! Reflected in the mirror are a brain and a pair of eyeballs and a mouth, each floating freely, unconnected to the others. The eyes wander through the air in opposite directions. One knocks over a bottle of deodorant.

He says, “Legs!”

“Arms!”

“Leprosy!”

In this way, little by little, Noah assembles himself.

And there he is! In the full glory of his naked form.

He blinks, and as soon as his eyes flick open, he is back to what he saw in the beginning.

In short: nothing.

In short: empty space.

Again he tries to assemble himself, listing the component parts: “mouth,” “eyes,” “brain,” and on.

Again, he blinks.

Again, his reflection vanishes.

He turns on the shower. When the mirror fogs over, he touches his finger to the glass. In place of his reflection, he begins to write.

He does not know how to write a holy story, so he will have to settle for fiction:

I am Peter Pan.

The words do not disappear.

And suddenly, he can see himself more clearly than he has ever seen himself before. His bathroom is not a bathroom, but a stage, and the auditorium is full of shadowy faces, because life requires witnesses, whether or not they clap or boo, chew loudly or talk on their phones.

But then, a thought occurs: “I don't know any of these people. I can't even make them out. I am not Peter Pan.”

The stage disappears, along with the audience.

He is back in the bathroom, in front of an empty mirror.

On a whim, Noah begins to list his real audience: “Zach.”

And in the mirror, briefly, Noah recognizes his own face.

To keep himself from disappearing, he continues: “Marty, Alice, Juan, Alex . . .”

He is happy.

He has found the way to create a lasting impression of himself.

But then, a thought occurs: “My friends will die. Other sacks of decaying meat are a precarious foundation for selfhood, no?”

His reflection shrugs, and says, “Your phone is ringing, you existential crybaby. I guess your little project here is to-be-continued?”

Noah is affronted. “You don't have to be rude.”

“Beep,”
his reflection says.