that he had found it, all that remained was to figure out what it was.
Link curled his fingers around the handle and placed his left hand over his right, gripping it from underneath. He spread his feet, bent his knees, and readied himself to pull. After counting to three in slow, evenly-paced increments, he heaved his body to the side. He strained and grunted as every muscle in his body flexed. He continued pulling until he nearly passed out from the exertion.
He knew his usual back up plan of simply pounding the handle into submission was not going to work and would most likely wake up the neighbor. If he wanted to do this now, he had to be more creative.
Link traced his fingers around the sides of the hatch, searching for something else he could use to pull it open. Near the bottom, in a part he had earlier neglected to uncover, he found a pair of thick bolts attached to the outside of the house. After a bit of fumbling, he slid both of these aside and succeeded in unlocking the door. Link gave the handle a cursory pull.
This time, the hatch flew open. The door came to a stop over a soft pile of vines. Link looked inside but could see nothing through the oppressive blackness. He reached into his pocket to retrieve a flashlight and discovered that not only had he forgotten to bring a flashlight, but he didn't even have a pocket to put it in. With a horrible, sinking feeling, he realized that in all the excitement he had forgotten to put his pants on. Thank heavens he wore boxers to bed.
Link reached into the dark, trying to ignore the disturbing thoughts of black widows and scorpions that kept popping into his mind. The hole behind the hatch was shallow. Despite his resolve to stay calm, he jumped when his hand quickly reached the back wall of the opening. He then tested the width, bringing his hand to both sides of the enclosure. That was when he found an additional opening on the left side. Pushing his arm further in, he blindly groped around the darkness.
Instead of the flat, leaf-strewn metal plating he'd found in the initial opening, Link's hand brushed against something else. Some areas jutted out in well-defined angles. Others were soft and sagged beneath his touch. He pushed harder, but he could barely tell the difference between what felt like a plastic bag and a more substantial object beneath.
Link tightened his grip and lifted the object from its place of hiding. He felt like a civilian who'd been asked to defuse a bomb by picking the right wire to cut. Sweat beaded his brow as the bagged object came into the pale moonlight.
He knew what this was. Wide-eyed and full of wonder, Link shifted the object in his hands to make sure. Then he quickly removed the camera from the cellophane bag and stared at it with disbelief. There was no way his mother's camera could have wound up buried inside his bedroom wall. And yet, Link held up what was, at the very least, an excellent copy of his mother's 35mm Nikon.
The hatch had been overgrown, no doubt caused by years of neglect. And even though the camera appeared clean, a thick film of dirt covered the bag. With his head spinning, Link decided he needed more sleep for any of this to make sense.
Who knew? If he was lucky, maybe the paper boy would deliver some sanity in the morning when he delivered the news. Stranger things had happened...today in fact.
15
Twins
As he awoke, Link glanced over at the dresser to see if finding the camera had just been a dream. He marveled again at the similarity between the camera he had found and his mother's. Then he wondered if in fact it was his mother's camera. The thought was preposterous, but he couldn't seem to shake it.
Link picked up the camera, afraid he'd only uncover more evidence that he'd totally lost it. As if the universe once again found need to mock him, a marble became lodged between two of his toes as he walked.
"Oh, very funny. I must have lost one of my marbles..." he said, shaking his finger towards the sky in annoyance.
When Link reached the camera he'd discovered last night, he found it exactly where he had left it. Who had he been kidding? Of course it was still there. He hadn't found his mother's camera buried underneath the house. That wasn't even possible. His mother's camera was upstairs on a pile of books, right where he'd left it.
Nevertheless, Link was amazed by the similarities as he examined the new camera. He searched for any differences between the new one and his mother's and found only a scratch along the grip of the camera he had taken from the hatch. By some upheaval of the laws of probability, he had discovered what was essentially a replica of the same outdated relic his mother had always used.
A mixture of emotions swirled around his head. On the one hand, he was relieved that the existence of two separate cameras had restored his tiny corner of reality to its full, upright position. On the other hand, he felt a prick of sadness precisely because his tiny corner of reality had been so miserable lately. Something new would have been a welcome change.
16
The Pedestrian
After a long and pointless search of the kitchen cabinets turned up nothing good to eat, Link balanced a can of tuna in his hand and wondered if it truly was his best snack option. Talk about depressing. An obnoxious buzzing noise shattered his pity party, making it impossible to think. Half expecting a giant bee, he stepped up to the kitchen window and looked outside.
Back in Pensy, some of the older kids would tweak their mufflers so that their cars made a similar noise whenever they accelerated. It had been common there. But the images of either a dragster or a giant bee seemed ridiculous in a neighborhood like Pleasant Meadows.
The noise grew louder, and a shape began to emerge in the distance. Both of his guesses had been incorrect. Yet somehow the absurdity of what he now saw seemed even less reasonable than a giant bee. A man, who looked old enough to be Link's great-grandfather, cruised down the street on a newly polished, high-powered dirt bike. He wore a polyester jumpsuit emblazoned with large V patterns of white, black, and red. The old geezer drove so slowly, Link wondered how the bike maintained enough speed to stay upright.
When the man passed by the front of the house, Link noticed the man's grim-faced demeanor. It only served to highlight the already twisted nature of the entire scene. The meager remains of his wiry, silver hair flapped in the breeze as he slipped from view.
"Ayden! Stop!" Mr. Hartkins screamed. He quickly lowered his voice to avoid scaring him into falling. "Stay there!" Link turned away from the window in time to see Mr. Hartkins dart over to Ayden and pluck him from atop a makeshift pile of boxes. He carefully set him down on the kitchen floor and spun to face Link. Brows creased, lips tight, a fire burning in his eyes, he advanced on Link. "What the hell do you think you're doing? Ayden could've been hurt!"
At first Link was too shocked to speak. He hadn't even known Ayden was in the room until a second ago. And why was his dad yelling at him? "I...I...didn't see him. How was I supposed to know that he was up there?"
"Four feet away from him, why would you?" Mr. Hartkins thundered. "It's not like he's inside your great, big, depressing world of one, is he? Who the hell cares if he slips to his death, trying to get a snack? Right?" Mr. Hartkins handed Ayden the small packet of fruit chews that he had been reaching for.
Not only had Link failed to see the danger his brother was in, he had somehow even missed the box of fruit chews. He glanced down at the pathetic can of tuna. "But I..."
"Just stop. I don't want to hear it. I'm sick of your pathetic pity parade! It's always 'poor me,'" his father said in a mocking voice. "Nobody understands me. I hurt so much more than everyone else in the world." He straightened as he jabbed an accusatory finger in Link's face. "You act as if you're the only person here who lost someone."
Link's jaw clenched. Even shadows wouldn't stand around and take this sort of abuse. He balled his fists, readying himself to take a swing. He had been wanting to get into this ever since they had arrived in this crappy town. "Maybe I am."
"What did you say?"
Link took a step closer to his dad. "I said, maybe I am the only person who lost someone. It's not like you care, Mr. everything's w
onderful, Mr. I'm sooooo happy with our new life," Link said, mimicking his dad's spiel about positive thinking. "If this is such a great place to be," Link continued, "then where's Mom? Huh? This house sucks. School sucks. This whole town...SUCKS! And all you do is talk about how wonderful it is. Well, wake up and smell the piss in your coffee, Dad. Life sucks! We might as well get used to it!"
Link held his ground, daring his father to speak. Despite his recent resolution to treat him better, his dad had crossed the line. If he was going to start the fight, Link refused to feel guilty about finishing it. Link fumed in triumphant silence, inwardly enjoying the effects his verbal tirade had upon his father.
"How dare you! You ignorant little brat! I loved your mother for twice as long as you've been alive. I was the one who cleaned up her vomit for months before you were born. I was the one who held her hand when she got sick, stroking her hair at night when the pain was so bad she cried herself to sleep. I was the one who lost my life the day she died. Me! Not you! Me! Get it? Don't you dare act like I don't know what it means to lose someone! I died that day...I...I..."
Though his father continued jabbing holes in the air in front of Link's face, he had apparently run out of words to say, or at the very least, the breath he needed to say them.
His father's rigid