Crap Kingdom (10 page)

11

THE NEXT DAY
at lunch, Tom couldn’t find Kyle. He wasn’t sitting in their usual spot. Tom had been looking forward to talking to him all morning. Without his phone, he just had to hope he ran into people. When they weren’t where he expected them to be, he didn’t know what to do.

“Hey Tom,” Jessica, the girl with the college boyfriend, said when Tom sat down at the drama table across from Kyle’s empty space. “Congrats!”

“Thanks,” Tom said. “Have you guys seen Kyle?”

“He’s over there,” Jessica said, pointing across the lunchroom to a table by a big window that was totally vacant except for Kyle, who was sitting with his back to them.

“Does he even still like us?” said her friend Ella, twirling one of her pink pigtails around her finger.

“Sure,” Tom said.

“Does he
like
like us?” Ella said in a fake husky-sexy voice. She and Jessica cracked up.

Normally this would have bothered Tom, but he was too distracted to worry about who wanted to date Kyle. He needed someone to talk to about destiny. He left his tray of food and his backpack and walked over to Kyle’s table.

“What up, Kilroy?” he said to Kyle’s back.

Kilroy was Tom’s nickname for Kyle. It was also his actual last name. Tom and Kyle had been friends since fourth grade, and sometime in sixth grade, Tom had gotten really into the idea of calling each other by each other’s last names. He saw it in movies a lot, especially movies about private schools where everyone wore ties and blazers to class. Tom started attempting to call Kyle “Kilroy” and Kyle, in turn, started to call Tom “Parking.” Kilroy sounded pretty normal and natural and even kind of cool, as Tom had intended, but Parking was awkward, so before the end of eighth grade, Kyle stopped calling Tom that and Tom gave up calling Kyle “Kilroy” not long after. It would still slip out again every now and again, a reminder of a shared and dorky history.

“I’m Kyle,” Kyle said.

“Oh,” Tom said. “Right. Why are you sitting over here?” Tom sat down across from Kyle.

“I’m looking out the window,” Kyle said.

“All right,” Tom said. There was something weird and far away about the way Kyle was acting. “Are you okay, man?”

“Yes,” Kyle said. “I’m very well. I’m very happy to be here.”

“That’s . . . good,” Tom said. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yes,” Kyle said.

“Okay, well, and this is all just like, hypothetical. But let’s say you get a chance to go somewhere. And you’re really excited about it, but you go to the place, and it sucks, and you never want to go back. But then once you’re not there anymore, it’s all you can think about. Like you feel like . . . it’s your destiny.”

He expected Kyle to say
Is this about Lindsy?
But Kyle didn’t, which was yet more proof that something was going on with him.

“Appreciate the place you’re in,” Kyle said, still spacey. “Appreciate the sky and the birds and the sun.”

Tom nodded. This was actually good advice.

“Appreciate being in a body,” Kyle said.

Tom nodded, though this advice was much weirder.

“Now . . .” Kyle said. “Please?” With a small hand gesture, he indicated that Tom should scoot over, because he was blocking the window.

“Okay, sorry.” Tom scooted down the bench of the lunch table. Kyle resumed staring out the window. He reached down, grabbed a French fry, brought it to his mouth, and started chewing. He chewed and chewed. He looked down at nothing in particular, as if he’d been moved by a great emotion. Then he looked up at Tom.

“These are delicious,” Kyle said. “Would you like one?”

What was wrong with Kyle?

Tom had been pretty much out of Kyle’s life for three weeks, phoneless and tucked away in his study cave. Maybe he’d missed Kyle’s slow transition into whatever he was now. Maybe he could’ve prevented whatever it was that had happened. He couldn’t help but feel like whatever was going on, it was about him. He wasn’t supposed to be here, he was supposed to be through that portal doing whatever he was meant to do, and because he wasn’t, existence was flying apart.

Rehearsals for
View
didn’t start until the next day. Tom had the afternoon free. If he was going to go back, today after school would be the only time for a while where he wouldn’t miss rehearsal or be missed by his mom.

Once he knew his destiny was secure in that other world, he thought, he’d be able to concentrate in this one.

Tom had been in the donation box for he didn’t know how long when he realized he didn’t know how frequently or infrequently the portal opened. What if it was once a week, or once a year? His phone was at home, broken, and he didn’t have a watch to tell time with. He had no idea how long he’d been inside the box, though it felt like forever. What if he went crazy here in the box, from the heat and subsequent dehydration? This led to another, greater worry: what if he’d always been crazy? He wasn’t going to go insane in the box: he was in the box because he’d always been insane. It explained everything. The weird visitor from the weird world, the weird world itself, the way Kyle was acting today—none of it was real. He wondered how much of the past few weeks had been paranoid delusion. Did he still get to play Alfieri?

He should get up. He should get out. He should get his bike from the Kmart bike rack and go home.

He stood up as much as he was able to in the cramped space.

Then the floor disappeared.

12

TOM SWAM UP
and up and breached the surface in a nameless kingdom where it was nighttime. A blank blue craterless moon lit up the lake of clothes. Tom swam toward the nearest waterlogged clothes pile and pulled himself up with great difficulty. He walked around the little island of clothes and saw another one that was within leaping distance. He backed up, took several soggy running steps toward the edge, and jumped. In this way, jumping from island to island of socks and shoes and underwear and dresses and T-shirts and rags, he made his way out of the open lake toward the bay of ladders and baskets, all of them abandoned now, moonlit and creepy. He reached the dock and jumped on to it from the final clothes island. He hadn’t tripped or fallen once in the entire journey and felt extremely proud of himself.

“Nice try!” someone yelled. “Take it all off, clothes-thief!” At the land end of the dock, a guard stood up and started waving an oar around like he was going to clobber somebody. In this kingdom, an oar’s function as a boat propeller seemed less important than its function as a people clobberer.

“Hey, I’m just—I’m—I’m the Chosen One!” It just came out. The clothes-raft operators they’d encountered that first day hadn’t seemed really into the idea of a Chosen One and he didn’t expect this one to be any different, but it was worth a shot.

The man stopped in his tracks.

“Chosen One? I thought you were already here.”

“I was,” Tom said, “and then I left. But now I’m back. For good.” Tom didn’t know why he said “for good.” He had to be back in his world in time for dinner. But it seemed like something a Chosen One would say.

“Oh,” the man said. “Well, in that case, right this way.”

He wasn’t even being sarcastic.

“If you could not tell the king about this, I’d really appreciate it,” the man said as he escorted Tom toward a conveyance. “He said he’s changed his mind about Chosen Ones in general and we’re now supposed to treat you with the utmost respect and things. So . . . I apologize.”

Tom was so glad to hear that the king had reconsidered, and so glad he’d come back to find that out. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, feeling extremely generous toward all mankind on both sides of the portal. “It could happen to anyone.”

Tom bid the night watchmen farewell at the edge of town, then stumbled through the sleeping town toward the castle. When he reached it, he could see flickering light leaking through the planks and portholes. Good, somebody was awake. Tom strode right in. He was the Chosen One, and he was back for good. Well, for good minus daily trips home for dinner and homework and sleep.

He walked into the throne room. Gark and the king were sitting at a table with a third person who had his back to Tom. Tom felt like he’d seen that back earlier that day, on Earth. In the lunchroom. In fact, he’d said “What up, Kilroy” to it.

Kyle turned and saw Tom.

“Tom?”

Tom just stood there.

“Hello, Tom,” the king said. He smiled. “I’d like you to meet our new Chosen One.”

13

“HEY,” KYLE SAID.
“What are you doing here?”

Tom had wanted to ask Kyle what Kyle was doing here. Now he didn’t know what to say.

“Yes, Tom, please explain why you’ve chosen to grace us with your presence once again.”

“You guys know each other?” Kyle said.

“Unfortunately, yes,” the king said.

“What? Really?” Kyle turned to Tom. “Dude, you never told me you knew about this place.”

“You never told me you were here, either,” Tom said. “What’s going on?”

Both Tom and Kyle turned toward the king.

“Kyle, I apologize for the confusion,” the king said. He closed his eyes and began rubbing them with his fingertips the way Tom’s mom did when she had a migraine. “Some time before we met you, Tom was incorrectly named as the Chosen One. Thankfully we soon received a corrected prophecy with your name in it.”

“There was another prophecy?” Tom said. “How does that work?”

Someone nudged him. Tom turned. It was Gark.

“That’s Gark,” Kyle said, “Gark, meet—”

“I know!” Tom said.

Gark handed Tom a piece of paper without looking into Tom’s eyes. Tom looked at it. It had the same alignment of words on the page as his prophecy, same font, same size type, same everything. It said:

The chosen one must be retrieved from Earth

He will bring down the Wall and restore the kingdom to glory

His name is Kyle Kilroy

“This is exactly the same as my prophecy,” Tom said.

“With one noticeable difference,” the king said.

“Dude, why didn’t you tell me?” Kyle said. He didn’t sound upset exactly. Just confused.

“I don’t know . . . magical kingdoms and stuff . . . you’re not supposed to talk about it right? And anyway, it all happened so fast . . . I mean, Gark came and I came here and saw everything and then I went home and got in trouble and decided, I’m not going to do this if all it means is it ruins my life back home and all that happens is I get to work in a rat-snot place.”

“Rat-Snottery!” the king corrected him.

“What’s that?” Kyle asked.

“Wait,” Tom said, “he doesn’t have to work in the Rat-Snottery?”

“That was your task,” the king said, “an assignment based upon what I felt your capabilities were.”

“What’s Kyle’s task?”

“Redesigning our entire society,” the king said.

“What?” Tom said. “I thought you liked things the way they were!”

“We did. Until Kyle.”

“What . . . and I say this with, you know, Kyle’s my best friend back in our world, but, what makes Kyle so special?”

“I have a tiny spark of optimism within me that I keep alive strictly so I may familiarize myself with the mind-set of those who might fall victim to optimism, and properly dismantle their hopeful outlook for their own good. Despite my best efforts to resist, Kyle fanned this spark of optimism into a flame with his great wisdom.”

“What wisdom?”

“What was it, Kyle, that you said upon that first auspicious meeting?”

“Uhm,” Kyle said, seeming embarrassed: “Think positive?”

“
Yes!
That was it. ‘Think positive!’ Brilliant in its simplicity . . .”

“That’s it?” Tom said. “That’s basically like saying, ‘cheer up.’”

“He said that as well!” the king said.

“You guys have been depressed for generations, and that’s all it took? ‘Cheer up’?”

“Words to that effect had crossed our minds before,” the king said, “but it is not what Kyle says, it is the way he says it.”

“I guess I said it cooler before,” Kyle said.

“That’s really all you want out of your Chosen One?”

“Now that we have it, and we like it, we know that it is what we wanted, yes.”

“If somebody had just told me that was all you wanted—”

“How could we tell you? We did not know we wanted it.”

“If I’d just known—”

“You said no.”

“You kept intruding into my world and bothering me in a way that was totally ruining my life! Did you ever bother Kyle that way?”

“We didn’t have to. He said yes right away.”

“Before or after he got to redesign your entire kingdom?”

Kyle shrugged. “It all happened pretty fast,” he said.

“You don’t get to just switch Chosen Ones,” Tom said, “especially not based on a prophecy that’s been printed out by someone who just learned how to use a computer! Do you guys know what computers are? Or printers? Prophecies come on stone tablets and scrolls, not printer paper!”

“You do realize that by calling into question the validity of the prophecy which names Kyle as our Chosen One, you are calling into question the validity of the prophecy that named you the Chosen One.”

“Well, fine, but you said that you never believed any of this prophecy stuff to begin with, it was just something to keep Gark busy.”

“Oh,” Gark said. His eyes never met Tom’s.

“Sorry, Gark,” Tom said. “You shouldn’t have had to find out this way.”

Gark shook his head, shrugged, and kept looking away.

“It was,” the king said. “And then I met someone with the characteristics of a true Chosen One. Now I believe that our mission to restore this kingdom to glory is very real. Prophecies do not concern me. My old friend J, the greatest citizen this kingdom has ever known, greater even than Kyle, did not need to have his greatness foretold in any prophecy in order to do what he did. My question is, why have you returned here, to this place you thought so little of?”

“I don’t know,” Tom said, “I thought I might have missed something.”

“You have,” the king said.

“Guys!” Kyle said. “Can I—this is all, like, a lot. Can I talk with Tom for a minute?”

“Of course,” the king said. “Gark and I will retire to our beds. I would never presume to tell you what to do, Kyle, but you have worked very hard tonight and I recommend you find yourself in bed soon as well.”

“I will,” Kyle said. “Come on, Tom.”

“I’m not mad at
you
,” Tom said to Kyle. They were standing in front of the castle a few minutes later. The sun was starting to creep up over the horizon, its light reflected in filth puddles in the alleys of Crap Kingdom.

“Dude, I’m so glad to hear that, because seriously—”

“Hello, Kyle!” shouted a passerby in a cowboy hat and six T-shirts.

“Good morning, Clar. How’s the new lean-to comin’, man?”

“Going . . .
good
,
Kyle!”

“Great!” Kyle shouted back.

The man stopped in his tracks, clearly confused.

“Great’s even better then good!” Kyle explained.

“Ah!” said the man, and moved on down the street. “Greaaat . . .” he said, trying it out as he walked.

“Anyway,” Kyle said, “seriously, I had no idea about any of this. You being the Chosen One before me, I mean. They never told me anything about it, and if they had—”

“Hi, Kyle!”

“Sorry, one second.” Kyle turned to speak to a middle-aged woman who was wearing striped pajama pants and an orange crossing-guard vest. “Vina! What’s up?”

“I was just trying to remember what it was you said when you stopped by our house the other day . . . ‘Today could be better than . . .’ What was it?”

“Tomorrow could be better than today,” said Kyle.

“Right!” she said, “Sounds so simple when you say it . . .” and wandered away.

“Do you know everyone here?” Tom said.

“I’ve been spending a ton of time here,” Kyle said. “Anyway, sorry, but dude, if I would’ve known, I would’ve at least told you. I mean, I’m mad at the king for not telling me about any of this. We gotta work something out though, seriously, because I know you would love this place if you really, like, I know it’s not much to look at but I just feel like there’s really so much potential here, for—”

“Kyle?”

Tom and Kyle turned to see, standing at the end of the alley in front of the castle, a girl about their age dressed in bubble wrap. It was wound around her body so many times that you couldn’t see anything, and there was so much of it that it was sort of bulky and ridiculous. But she was still a girl dressed in only bubble wrap. “My friends and I were wondering if you would come by later and tell us what things are,” she said.

“Sure,” Kyle said, “Later. Remember that thing I gave you?”

“Yeah,” the girl said, smiling.

“When the thing on that thing points at the ‘three,’ I’ll be there.”

“Okay, see you then,” the girl said, and disappeared among the men carrying random rolls of fabric, and women pushing hazardous-material containers on hand trucks.

“You didn’t tell her whether it was the big hand or the little hand,” Tom said.

“It’s one of those fancy watches that only has an hour hand,” Kyle said.

“Ah,” Tom said. “What did she mean by . . .”

“I just tell them about their trash and stuff, like, what it is on Earth. Because they kind of don’t know what everything’s used for, but I guess you couldn’t expect them to.”

“I should be getting back to the portal,” Tom said. “It’s probably getting pretty close to dinnertime on Earth.”

“Okay,” Kyle said. “No problem.”

Tom turned and started trudging down the alley.

“
Tom
!” Kyle yelled after him. Tom turned back.

“Stay still,” Kyle said. He smiled, and suddenly, they were standing on two banks of denim and wet cotton on the lake of clothes.

“What,” Tom said. “Just. Happened.”

Kyle smiled bigger. “Awesome, right?”

Kyle has magical powers,
he thought.
MAGICAL POWERS.
Why hadn’t he gotten magical powers?

“Yeah,” Tom said. “Awesome.” He was very upset and confused, and he wanted to be home as quickly as possible. “Okay,” he said, “I better go. You coming?”

“Me? Oh, no. I don’t go through here anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“I could tell you, but it’s going to be so much cooler for you to see it for yourself. And I’ve been wanting to try it out with someone else anyway. What are you doing after school tomorrow?”

“I have rehearsal.”

“Well, right after school. It won’t take long. And you’re gonna love it. I swear.”

“Okay, tomorrow after school. Oh, speaking of school, how come you were so weird today at lunch?”

“Uh, that wasn’t—” Kyle started to say, and then stopped himself. “Never mind. You’ll see tomorrow.”

The thing that made Tom the most upset, more upset than he was about the new prophecy or the magical powers or anything, was the look on Kyle’s face when he said
you’ll see tomorrow
. He wasn’t being smug or mean. He was just excited. Tom wanted to be that excited. Instead he walked out to the water, felt it finally get too deep for him to stand in, and started swimming. He swam out toward the diaper that marked the portal’s mouth.

“Hey, I’m really sorry about all this, man,” Kyle yelled after him. “It’s all so crazy, right?”

“Yeah,” Tom said. “It is.”