The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To (26 page)

I stand up and dust myself off. I look over at Eric.

“So that's why I said we should give them all a weakness, pretty much,” he says.

Even though it's small, the thing is heavy as hell. Eric and I carry it some ways into the desert, find a natural depression in the ground, and push as much dirt over it as we can. We don't do a very good job, if you want to know the truth. But hiding it doesn't seem all that important. And I think,
I really don't hope we keep bringing things out of our imaginary world only to have to kill them
. And I think,
Did Eric kill everything that ever came out of his head?
There's no way, right? And maybe it's because in this moment I go from buzzed to epically tired, after we've pushed the last bit of dirt into place, but I think of the weird Martian red cloud floating overhead when it wasn't even monsoon season, and I think of the thing my dad hit with his SUV on the way back from San Diego that left a
big yellow stain then disappeared into the night, and I think of everybody's cars, the parking-lot graveyard, as though some Altra-Troops hit them with an EMP. Everything becomes clear, or rather, remarkably unclear. Whereas before, I was sure the world made some sort of lame sense, I just hadn't figured it out. Now I know I won't ever know.

The mound of dirt vibrates a little as the superstructure finishes its capsuling sequence. I need a nap really badly.

“How come it's always a fight?” I say to Eric as we walk back to our staging area. “How come nothing ever appears and gives you a high-five?”

“I don't know,” Eric says, “but it helps that it always feels right. I mean, when I go into it … when it starts. My mind kind of shifts, and I belong there. Consciously I know I'm imagining it, but on some level I just feel a part of the story.”

“Cool,” I say.

“Something I've been worried about…. Am I going to break the world?” Eric says.

“I don't think so,” I say.

“Because I'm really worried I might break the world.”

“You think pretty highly of yourself,” I say. Eric laughs.

“You should go home,” he says. “We both should. One night can't hurt. And if he shows up at either of our houses, we take to the back alleys and call the other person, and we improvise.”

“Are you sure?”

“I have to go home tonight,” he says.

“Okay,” I say.

Eric looks right into the sun and squints and says, “I'm not tired. Want to go see a movie?”

We dust ourselves off and take the bus to the movie theater and see a zombie movie we never would have proposed going to see with any of the college kids. They are probably too cool and adult for it. I think about how when I was at that movie with Eric and
Christine I desperately wanted zombies to burst into the edges of the frame and rip some dude's heart out. I think of that movie as the world and Eric's thing as zombies bursting in. Except it doesn't have to be zombies. It could be literally anything.

We take the bus back and talk in hushed tones, finalizing details. Tomorrow morning behind Eric's house by the Thragnacian Containment Pylon, we will make our last stand. Eric gets up to get off before me.

“See you tomorrow,” he says.

“See you tomorrow,” I say.

I let myself into my house. Nobody's home yet. I go up to my room, and halfway up the stairs, every ounce of strength leaves me and I just barely make it to bed and when I do I crash, hard. And the last clear thing I think before I do (and granted I think it really fast, my inner monologue is still like a cartoon chipmunk having a panic attack) is, Eric can't crash. The poor kid has to live through everything.

I wake up later when my dad knocks on my door and says dinner is ready. He cooked tonight, stir-fry. It isn't half bad and my brother and me and my dad all eat around the kitchen table and no one is mean to anyone. My dad asks me how the trip was and I say “It was cool. I'm exhausted.”

After dinner I go upstairs and lie down on my bed. A star explodes in my chest and sends millions of feelings in every direction. I pick up my phone and call Christine. She picks up after two rings.

“Hello?” she says.

“Hey,” I say. “Just so you know, I love you and I'm not mad at you. And everything's going to be okay.”

“What's going on?” Christine says.

“Nothing,” I say. “Everything's fine.”

I hang up the phone and fall asleep.

 

 

The next morning, it happens like this: I call The Man and say, “I'm tired of running. Do you want to know where my friend is?”

“The last time I received a call of this nature,” The Man says, “it was a trap, if you'll remember. I was threatened by some teenagers whom I had to buy off.”

“It's not a trap.”

“Just be decent and let me know if I need to restock.”

“It's not a trap. I just want everything to go back to the way it was.” Which is kind of true. More accurately, I want everything to go back to the way it was except now I'm friends with a kid who can make anything real. I want to go back to school like that. I want to own the place.

“Where is he now?”

“He'll be at the—”

“No. No meetings. Not where he will be, only where he is. Right now.”

“Home. He's at his house. As far as I know he's at his house.”

“Alright. If this all works out you will be amply rewarded.”

“I just want you to leave me alone.”

“If this all works out I'll be out of your way and you'll be rewarded. It won't take much on your part. Just silence.”

“Okay. What are you going to do to him?”

“He won't be harmed.” The Man hangs up.

I call Eric and tell him we're going ahead with the plan early and he should head out behind the house, to the hole in the dirt, to the pylon, our staging area, and I'll be there as soon as I can.

Stealing my brother's car and the rest of his medication involves going into his room, where he's still asleep with his arm wrapped around some girl whose hip bones are tent-poling her underwear, she's that skinny, and taking his keys out of his jeans on the floor. When I have them almost worked out of the pocket one of the keys clanks against his studded belt and he stirs but he doesn't wake up. The girl opens her eyes. She stares at me. I freeze and open my mouth to start to explain. But she closes her eyes again, like she was never fully awake. My brother and this girl seem to be violating what he once told me was one of the “Ten Crack Commandments,” which is to never get high on your own supply. I guess he figures if it's not crack, it's okay. It's like ten a.m. I guess they're not going to school today. Since they're almost comatose I get way less concerned about noise and root through his drug drawer. I take the whole bottle of Adderall and go downstairs.

I don't really actually know how to drive, but the bus is going to be too slow and if careening around the suburbs is the most dangerous thing I do today I'll be lucky. I teach myself how to do a rolling stop and I make Eric's neighborhood in five minutes and I don't fender-bend anybody.

There are no cars in front of Eric's house, and no helicopters hovering overhead, and no SWAT teams coming up from the storm drains. I roll up the driveway and hop out, cut through the backyard and hop the fence.

Trudging through the dirt I think maybe I'm going the wrong way because I get to around where the pylon should appear between the cacti and the scrub brush, but it isn't where it should be. There's a big mound of dirt, though. Eric covered it up. It's just a little hill and maybe it will be forever but probably just until they start building houses here. Maybe it will get uncovered by the wind along with the Tllnar Defender and my brother will come out here and shoot it with paintballs when the semiconscious hip-bones girl breaks up with him.

“Dude! It's me!” Nobody comes out of the dirt hole. I jump down and there's nobody in there. The tarp is gone, and the Yerum Battlebeast.

“Darren?” I look up and standing at the mouth of the hole is Eric's mom. “What are you doing here?”

“Uhm. Looking for Eric.” Talking to moms is never not hard, especially when you're not pretending to be someone else, and I'm out of practice. “You wouldn't happen to know where he is, would you?”

“He went to school,” she says, mystified because it's a Wednesday and of course he's in school. Except he's not supposed to be in school, he's supposed to be back here with me getting ready for the showdown. “How was your college experience?”

“What? Oh. It was good. It was really interesting. I think I'm probably gonna go there. You know? Or, uhm. Or NAU.”

“Well, Eric would sure miss you. If you're going by school, bring him his backpack.” She holds out Eric's red bag. “He forgot it. He can be such a space cadet sometimes.”

I take Eric's bag. “Have a nice day,” she says, and she walks back toward the house. It makes me really sad to see her go for some reason, and I have this overwhelming desire to be normal. To give it all back in exchange for being allowed to be normal, even more
normal than I was before this whole thing started. It makes sense for me then why Eric needed to go home. Maybe I'll have him generate me a mom. But right now the sun is moving across the sky and the plan is already going haywire and my friend needs me.

The rock is still over in one corner of the hole, and underneath it is Eric's dad's gun. I unzip the bag, put the gun inside, put the backpack on my back and rolling-stop my way to our high school.

My brother has a parking space and even though parking is a concern for me the two spaces next to his are empty as well, so I don't clip anybody. He and Jake and Alan all got parking spots together. I guess they aren't coming to school today either.

It's the very end of second period and I catch Eric coming out his class, no backpack and empty-eyed.

“What's going on, man? What happened to behind the house? Our final stand?”

“I went back there and, I don't know, it's too empty back there. If he comes for me and he takes me there's no one to notice. But here, we've got a whole audience.”

“Right, and he'll probably just hold off until you leave. I thought the whole point was to lure him in so we could fight him off once and for all. And the reason he can't come and take you here is the same reason you can't end him here.”

“Huh,” he says, “I guess you're right.”

“Do you want your bag? You look pretty conspicuous without it.”

“Uhm…”

“It's got your dad's … uhm … thing in it. I figured …”

“Oh, in that case, hold on to it. In a minute I'm not gonna be somebody you want handling a firearm.”

“Dude! Don't say firearm in the middle of…” The reality sort of dawns on me, being in school with somebody else's backpack with somebody else's gun. I'm glad we don't go to an inner-city school with metal detectors. I think about how I've gotten to the point that Carl Whiteman with his list of kids who “deserved it”
could only have angry revenge-fueled daydreams about getting to. Standing in the hallway during passing period, secretly tooled up.

We're both going to class as usual, and I guess just on instinct we end up out by the auditorium ramp at lunchtime, although neither of us has a lunch or really any desire to eat.

“Maybe it won't go down today,” I say, “maybe he won't come.”

“My mom told you I went to school?”

“Yeah. She was really nice to me.”

“Last night she said it reflected well on you, that you would go to this honors college program. She told you. If he shows up she'll definitely tell him. She thinks he's from college.”

“Yeah,” I say. “How come it's taking so long?”

“Marshaling his forces,” Eric says. The sun beats down on us. I guess it's almost spring.

“I'm really fucking sorry, man,” I say. “This whole fucking thing is my fault. I told somebody in the first place and then when I had the chance I turned you in over some fucking girl.”

“It's not your fault,” Eric says. “I told somebody first. And anyway, I think it is my fault because I think I accidentally created him.”

“Who?”

“The guy. The Man. We thought him up and I think I brought him into being. That day in my room. If the glasses can be real, he can too.”

“Does he look like this guy?”

“A little. Not really. I dunno. It's pretty egotistical to think I made him, I guess, huh?”

“We did make him. In a way. Or I did. I called him. I'm sorry.”

“Yeah. But if we made him, that means we can undo him,” Eric says, washing an Adderall down with ginger ale.

It doesn't start like the Altratroops invading the school in
Time-Blaze
. All that happens is a cop car pulls up by the flagpole. No siren or anything. Two cops get out, normal fat cops who bust kids for skating. I think one of them might have been my DARE officer even. But then another police car pulls up, and another one, and another
one. Slow as can be, a little army of cops shows up in front of the school. Their radios buzzing, all looking at each other like “It's a living.” And I know they're not all inhuman monsters because the one who's driving the car The Man gets out of gives The Man a look like “Who is this asshole?” But it looks like he's in charge, and they all take orders from him because someone has told them to.