Authors: Emil Ostrovski
Away We Go (22 page)
It doesn't happen.
The red streak passes us by, like all those learned astronomers said it would, like AwayWeKnow said it would. A minute elapses, and another, and I am in pain, because the world is still here, and I am still here, because there are no easy solutions, no deus ex machinas, no great rescues, because the world doesn't end with a bang but with a whimper, because you have to live with that thin, papery feeling no matter how much you want to rage, rage against the dying of the light.
“Well,” Zach says, and pitches forward, toward the edge, but I grab his arm.
“We were together,” I plead.
“God, kid, let me go,” he says, dragging me till we're both about to topple over. He is surprisingly strong. “I didn't want to hurt you, that's why I never told you, but it felt wrong. I'm not that way. Can't you understand that? Can't you?”
Security carts rev in the distance above the sound of the alarm.
His hands are on my chest, pushing.
“You brushed your hands through my hair.”
“I can't be whoever you want me to be.”
“We metaphorically made fun of each other's metaphors.”
“What are you even
talking
about?” he asks. He's crying.
“We played ring-around-the-rosie.”
“I barely remember,” he says. “It was so late.”
And if he doesn't remember, how do I know I didn't make it up? How do I know what is true and what is not? If I am my memories, and my memories are fictions, fabrications, then what am I?
“I'm not crying,” I say, ridiculously, as I've been at it since I broke the window.
“That day in the woods, I hated that I couldn't imagine you
ever hurting anyone. I knew you'd never escape. I knew you'd sit behind these walls till you rot.”
“Why are you saying this?”
“Because I'm a terrible person,” he says. “Because I'm using you. I couldn't have dragged myself here without you. Don't you see that?”
I let go of him, put my hands to my ears, even though it's useless, even though I can't unhear what he's already said. “Do you think it'll be easier if I hate you?”
I don't know if it's what I said, or how pathetic I must look, but something in him breaks. He covers my hands in his and that simple gesture makes me believe again, in everything that he's just told me is untrue.
“I'm not saying that's what I was doing,” he says, in a low voice. “But I think that would make things easier. Wouldn't it?”
I let my hands fall to my sides.
“You're the only person who's everâ” he starts, but he can't say it. “I don't think Addie ever loved me.” He shakes his head. “God, did I ever think this was going to go so differently.”
I can see, now, he's going to do it. The resolve in his eyes.
“I'm sorry if I hurt you,” he says. “You're my best friend, for doing this. I'm sorry I couldn't make us both happy.”
He leans back, lifts his arms up, over his head, and falls.
The edge is right there, so close. I stand where Zach sat a moment before, my arms outstretched, eyes closed. My heart hammers so hard I can feel it in my ears.
The Great Cliché hurtles somewhere above.
It was never going to hit the earth.
Zach is splayed on the ground below, surrounded by a spray of Skittles.
We were never going to be together.
But that, more than anything, was the story I believed in. We have so many stories to choose from at Westing. The Great Cliché, the Home Hotline, the possibility of escaping over the walls. Westing's nefarious collaboration with aliens. Mad scientists who download our memories onto chips to sell to the highest bidder. Marty the hero, who discovers PPV is really a biological weapon against centipedes and escapes to Mexico to tan it up. The end of the world! All these stories, because the alternative is too hard to take seriously: incontinence support; giving Michelangelos and Sapphos castles and shit while Alex reads books beside a urinal; we are weak and small before the great tragic powers of the world, and so are our parents, and so are our friends; we will never know why some kids get sick and some kids do not; we will never know where away we go.
With Zach gone, I am almost nothing. A strong wind will blow me away. But there's only one thing I still believe in, one story I have left inside me, and that's Neverland.
I laugh, then, standing on the roof with my arms outstretched, because Polo Club had it all wrong. Marty, the one person who should've had it right, got it all wrong.
We should've never fixed upon those ladders, upon scaling the walls.
That would never get us where we wanted to go.
No, the answer was right next to the ladders.
I even hit my foot on it.
I take out my phone to make a few calls, because Polo Club's not finished yet.
The more I move, the less time I have to feel. Even so, watching the boy you love kill himself really takes it out of you. A peek
around the corner of the greenhouse gives me a clear view of the construction shed, and the guards stationed by its door.
“Yo, how many, bro?” Nigel whispers into my ear as I retreat into cover. I can smell the alcohol on his breath. Zach fell in a rain of Skittlesâwhat am I supposed to feel? I don't know. I don't know I don't know I don't know.
“Noah?” Nigel repeats.
“Two,” I force myself to say. “But we need the key first. You
sure
the old man has a spare?”
“Old coot has, like, seven spares,” Nigel assures me.
We use the light from our phones to guide us through the dark until we find the window to the groundskeeper's office. I try to force it up, but it's locked, so I take my shirt off and Nigel whistles approvingly as I wrap it around my hand like a glove.
“Can you not act like a five-year-old for five seconds?” Melanie hisses.
“She has a point, Nigey,” Grace says.
“Yo, I'm a red-blooded human being,” Nigel says. “I'm admiring the way the moonlight plays off his nips.”
I haven't told them about Zach, yet. I don't know if I can.
I concentrate on action: for the second time that night, I break a window. I climb through, doing my best to avoid cutting myself on the jagged edges of glass. I succeed, only to land awkwardly and twist my ankle.
“Fuck,” I say, groping blindly for the light switch along the wall. I touch something smooth, and it crashes. I nearly trip over it.
“Noah!” Grace calls. “You alive in there?”
“Alive and pretty,” I call back.
How can I be doing this now? How can I how can I how can I? How can
I joke? How are jokes possible in a world so full of tragic powers?
My eyes adjust and there's the old man's coffeemaker lying broken on the floor.
Thuds from behind, as the rest of Polo Club, or what remains of us, follows me inside. There is the sound of their footsteps scraping the ground, but all I can think about is the coffeemaker,
Cuisinart
or
Mr. Coffee
or whatever, and how the old man's daughter bought it for him. Why did I have to go and break it?
I find the light switch and hit it. The keys hang on the far wall. Of course I have no idea which is which.
We all turn to Nigel expectantly, as before.
“I thought I was the five-year-old,” he says reproachfully.
Grace nudges him with her elbow.
“Which one is it already?” Melanie asks. “I don't want to be here all night.”
Nigel squints. “I'm, uh, not sure.” He grabs one, seemingly at random, tosses it to me. “I think that's it.”
“You
think,
” Melanie says.
“He's doing his best,” Grace says. “Don't pressure him.”
They're already moving toward the window, Nigel's out first, cursing all the while, I think he cut his hand, then Melanie, and as for me, I'm searching for paper and a pen, because I can't leave, not like this, with the coffeemaker broken.
“Noah,” Grace says, with concern. She's paused by the window, one foot on the sill, about to climb out. “What are you doing?”
“I don't know,” I say.
But I do.
I set the broken coffeemaker back on the desk, and on a piece
of paper I write a minor apology in the light from the window. Then I'm out again, my feet hitting the ground, pain shooting through my leg. I peek around the corner of the greenhouse. The guards are exactly as before, sitting on two foldout plastic chairs by the construction shed. One leans over, and lights the other's cigarette.
“I have an idea,” Melanie says. She motions to Grace and Nigel. “We'll distract them. We'll say some jackasses broke into the groundskeeper's office, lead them around the other side.”
I wish I could tell the three of them what this means to me. They understand and they also don't. I don't know how to explain. They will have to see. They will have to feel it. I should tell them about Zach now, at least, but I don't, I can't, I need to keep him to myself for a little while longer; I need something to hold inside.
“Thank you,” I say.
Nigel's hand is shaking mine. “Good luck, sexy-licious.”
Then Grace looms over me. I wince from the strength of her grip. “Run fast, Noah.”
Then Melanie, who stares skeptically at my hand and reminds me, “I don't subscribe to social conventions thatâoh what the fuck.” And she gives me a hug.
“Okay,” I say. To all three, “Remember to look up.”
And then they're running to meet the guards, Melanie's yelling about teenage vandalism, the lack of respect for private property, the three of them gesticulating. They lead the guards around the opposite side of the greenhouse, and I laugh because
it works,
I'm half limping, half running now, as fast as I can, the door of the shed growing larger, the key in my hand, I'm ignoring the pain in my leg, fitting the key in the lock with
trembling hands, but it won't work,
of course,
and I laugh again, of course it won't work, but there's not much time, the guards will realize something's up soon, so I take a few steps back, and I ram the door with my shoulder. It shakes but doesn't give way. I ram it again, and this time it buckles a bit, but holds. It takes three more tries until it bursts open, and the ladders, the ladders are no longer here, of course they moved them, but I'm not looking for the ladders, I'm looking for the fireworks we saw that day that feels so long ago, I'm grabbing a box of the fireworks, and running, my leg feels likely to fall off and so does my bruised arm, but I'm running, toward the lake, down the cobblestone paths that are worn into my muscle memory, that I could run with my eyes closed, I have this whole campus imprinted into me, and once I'm at the lake I dart through throngs of students still waiting for an end of the world that's not going to come, and then I'm racing up Sunset Hill, my arms heavy, my arms heavier than heavy, my whole body screaming in protest, the pain in my leg sharper now, I can't drop him, I can't let him go, why does he want me to let him go, the crest is near, there are no great battles, there is only this, there are only small moments that we narrate into meaning, I can do something worthy of meaning, I can share my meaning with hundreds of others, and it can become their meaning, maybe the fact that there is no one story is what makes it possible to have individual stories, and to share them with others, and by sharing create a mythology together, a religion together, a constellation of meaning, we can escape together, this is how we defy the great tragic emptiness of the world, how we make the world full, how we become real, and then I'm standing at the top of the hill, Peter and Wendy bright above me, I have a lighter in my hands, I'm setting the fireworks off, one after
another, they drift up and explode between Peter and Wendy like Skittles in the sky, and I know security is coming, I know they will stop me in a matter of seconds, but before they do, there is this perfect hush, because it is 2:33 a.m., and for this one moment, away we go to Neverland, all of Westing, all of us, all the sickly children of the world saved beneath a common blanket.
“To die,” I say, “will be an awfully big adventure.”
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