Outview

Outview

Published in the United States of America by The
Sager Group

Copyright © 2013 by Brandt Legg

All rights reserved.

Original poems attributed to Lihn written by
Roanne Lewis

Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is
available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN-13: 978-0-9881785-4-0

ISBN-10: 0988178540

Cover designed by: Caitlin Legere

Formatting by: Siori Kitajima and Ovidiu Vlad for
SF AppWorks LLC

www.TheSagerGroup.net

www.BrandtLegg.com

Without limiting the rights under copyright
reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or
introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without
the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher.
Published in the United States of America.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or
are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
businesses, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

For Teakki and Ro

1

I kept running. Nine of us had sworn our
lives to protect the precious artifact sewn inside my belt. Six were already
dead, maybe more. Struggling for breath, I pushed through the tangled jungle
toward the majestic pyramid. That’s when I heard the horses. Scanning wildly, I
knew my life meant nothing unless the treasure was protected. A conquistador’s
maniacal cry ripped the air. The glint of a sword flashed; my chest sliced
open. I crawled a few feet toward a deep, sacred pool. Soldiers laughed as one
pushed my gutted body with his heavy blade.  He teased me to the edge of the
limestone cliff, then shoved its point through. Smiling, I fell ninety feet before
plunging into the water.

A car horn startled me. The taste of blood
still filled my mouth, my body screamed in pain. I was losing my mind. What the
hell was going on? “My name is Nathan Ryder. I’m sixteen. I’m in eleventh grade.
This is Ashland Oregon. It’s Friday, September 12th . . . ” I repeated the
mantra until the tragic scene in that ancient Mayan pool receded and I was fully
back in the present. I had lived through at least a hundred deaths since the “Outviews”
began a year ago.

I strained to get up off my bedroom floor,
a burning ache in my chest. I was surprised to be already dressed for school.
Outviews weren’t mere dreams, as their torment and physical impact could last
for days. The car horn blared again. Kyle, my best friend, was waiting in the
driveway. I dashed out of the house.

“Man, you look like hell. What happened?”
He greeted me with a concerned look as I climbed into his old Subaru Outback.
Kyle was almost two years older than me, but we’d been in the same grade since
he’d arrived from Vietnam. Back then, his English was pretty bad. When the
other kids were either ignoring or making fun of him, I asked if I could take a
picture of the incredibly elaborate ancient city he was sketching. The drawing
was so realistic you’d swear it was a photograph. He wanted me to wait until it
was finished, which took another couple of days. We’d been friends ever since.

“Rough night.” I riffled through the CDs he
kept in a shoebox. “Thich Nhat Hanh, Einstein’s Theories, Stephen Hawking  . .
. come on Kyle, don’t you have any music in here?”

“Too much to learn, no time for music, except
maybe Mozart.”

“Kyle’s the only teenager I know without
any music on his iPod,” his cousin, Linh, my other best friend, said from the
backseat. “Why was it another rough night?”

I turned around and looked at her. She was
a grade behind us and didn’t look as Asian as Kyle because her father was Irish,
but there was an exotic beauty that disarmed me. Her name meant “gentle spirit”
in Vietnamese, which was fitting. Her presence made me feel grounded, and
during these tumultuous times, being with her was addicting.

“Just couldn’t sleep.” Normally, I told
them everything, but the Outviews were too hard to explain, especially after
what had happened to my brother, Dustin.

2

I struggled through the school day, but at
least it was Friday. Linh and Kyle convinced me to come home with them.

“Nate, you really do look awful.”

“Thanks, Linh, you look great.” Her long
black hair in a ponytail, a few strands dangled around her high cheekbones.

“I’m sorry.” She put her hand on my
shoulder as we were getting in Kyle’s car. “Oh, I just realized it’s your dad’s
birthday.” She closed her eyes and hugged me.

“It’s not that, really.”

“How old would he have been?” Kyle asked as
he got in the driver’s seat and slid a cigarette in his mouth. He never lit it,
but whenever he drove or worked on his computer, he usually held one in his
lips; he said it reminded him of his dad. We had that in common, losing our fathers.
It was part of our bond.

“Forty-seven today but-- ”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Linh said.

“I killed him Linh. Whatever you say or
think doesn’t change it.”

“Nate, you’re the only one who believes
that.”

“Really? Ask my mom why she can hardly look
at me, why she works around the clock so she doesn’t have to be around me.”

“Your mom and dad built that restaurant
together. She’s just trying to keep it going.”

“Linh, I know you like my mom, but let’s
get real. The Station is one of the most successful restaurants in town.”

“How would you know? You never even let us
go,” Kyle said. “Have you even been back in the four years since the funeral?”
He shot me one of his stern looks, peering over his mirrored shades. His mop of
coal-black hair, shaggy and unkempt, combined with the cigarette to give him a
tough guy image.

“What is this, gang up on Nate when he’s
down day? Let’s go.”

Kyle began the short drive to his house.

“It wasn’t like I lost just my dad. The
whole family was obliterated that day.” My voice cracked. “I was only twelve,
and all mom cared about was me not making a scene at her perfect funeral.”

“She was grieving too, Nate,” Linh said.

“She’s always been so practical and driven;
get better grades, haircuts and manners.”

“At least she makes the best brownies,”
Linh said.

“Yeah, well you eat them. I want my dad
back. He was the gentle one. He was always encouraging me, more like a friend.
Everyone loved him. Two hundred and twenty people jammed the restaurant for the
funeral . . . and they all knew he was dead because of me.”

“No,” Kyle said.

“You weren’t there. The only one who
understood was Dustin. Some lady said that my mother was
never
going to
be able to handle two teenage boys on her own. She nailed that. It started
right then: Mom and I got into a huge fight, in front of everyone.”

“What about?” Linh asked.

“I don’t even remember. Dustin swooped in
and told Mom our aunt Rose was looking for her. A minute later, he and I were
outside laughing. I can still see his funny dunce expression when he called the
funeral another episode of
The
Ryder Family In Crisis
reality
show.” Dustin had always taken care of me like that. I smiled just talking
about it.

I tried not to think of the funeral, but
that day replayed regularly in my head. It was a line that marked the end of my
childhood, of my family. The ever-growing chasm between Mom and me started
then. It was the last day we were allowed to see Aunt Rose, Dad’s sister. And,
it began the brutal march toward the loss of Dustin. In truth, I’d been a
basket case ever since the funeral. The Outviews were just the final piece to
shove me over the edge.

Something else happened at the funeral,
something that would make going on without my dad and even the Outviews seem
trivial. Of the more than two hundred guests listening to eulogies that day,
two were destined to impact my life like colliding comets. One would attempt to
kill me many times, and the other would try equally hard to save me . . . but I
didn’t know any of that then. I was just a kid trying to get through my shock
and guilt.

3

I was happy to escape the car once we
arrived at Kyle and Linh’s house. It was a restored Victorian near the Southern
Oregon University campus where his uncle was a physics professor. His aunt, a
secretary at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, always got us free tickets. We’d
seen every play for three seasons. I liked them, but Bà, Kyle’s
grandmother, made me a little nervous. She was an old medicine woman or
something, and during the Vietnam War, she took care of soldiers with herbal
remedies. For the past two years, they’d been my “normal” family.

“Nate, when my parents were killed in
Vietnam by that explosion, I was twelve, like you when your father died.”

“I know,” I said suddenly feeling selfish.

“Everything was taken from me, too.
Everything.” He looked at me across the car’s hood, pulling the cigarette from
his lips. “I spent almost a year in an orphanage, before Bà and Linh’s
dad got me out and brought me to America.” Lihn’s father was Kyle’s biggest
hero, and he was whom Kyle named himself after once he decided his Asian name
was holding him back.

“Sorry man. I’m not a Zen master like you.”
I knew he was reminding me of his story to make the point that I didn’t have it
all that bad. Kyle had been holding me together for a long time, but even his
great patience had an end.

I followed him into the house. We were on
the steps to the attic when Linh caught up to us, tapping my waist. “You okay?”

I turned to face her. She stepped up so we
were inches apart on the narrow staircase. “No, not even close. Are you happy
I’m finally admitting it? And surprise, today is the day you get to find out
how
not
okay I really am.” I had to tell them; the Outviews were a
secret I couldn’t carry any longer.