Thirteen Days to Midnight

  The parking lot was empty when I cleared the woods, and I knew that Milo hadn’t actually arrived yet. He didn’t have the patience to wait for people. I texted one word: liar.

  My feet wanted to run as I watched the headlights turn onto the long drive and my phone buzzed.

  8:16 PM: shut your pie hole

  I laughed out loud as the car pulled up and I got into the backseat, feeling better than I’d expected to.

  “You shouldn’t use your phone while you’re driving. It’s dangerous,” I said.

  “Hi,” said Oh from the front seat, but she didn’t turn toward me. It was the first time since I’d met her that I couldn’t read her face and make a guess at what she was thinking. Something along the lines of Milo and I have been talking about you. We’re not sure what to think. What’s wrong with you?

  I didn’t like the way it felt, being on the outside. I’d only known Oh for a day. It shouldn’t have bothered me that she might feel more at ease with my best friend than she did with me. But it did.

  “Look, you guys, I’m sorry I flipped out.”

  “It’s cool,” said Milo. He swung the car around and started through the low fog, glancing at the passenger seat. “Things are cool, right, Oh?”

  She spun around so she could see me in the dim light. “I’ve never seen anyone run away from me like that before.”

  I couldn’t think of what to say so I just sat there, stupid-faced, staring back at her. We turned onto Haysville Boulevard, and I remembered the sound of Oh’s forehead hitting the sidewalk.

  “I’ve got something to tell you guys,” I said, coughing a frog out of my throat. “But I’d rather say it at the loft if that’s okay.”

  Oh looked between me and Milo, eyes narrowed, making a cute crinkle in the center of her forehead, and I couldn’t help thinking there should have been a huge gash and a jagged line of fifty stitches in place of her perfectly smooth skin.

  “I’ve never done a face-plant like that before without breaking something or drawing blood,” she said. “Actually, I’ve never fallen that hard in my life.” There was a glint of fear in her voice that I hadn’t heard before.

  “It would have made a stellar YouTube video,” said Milo. He was doing a seat-of-his-pants dance in the driver’s seat. “The title could have been a killer: ‘Hot clumsy girl eats concrete.’ ”

  Oh laughed softly, but it was a disturbing image and I couldn’t get it out of my head. Hot clumsy girl eats concrete. It didn’t feel like we’d safely arrived at a moment where we could start joking about Oh miraculously escaping injury.

  The loft wasn’t too far off, only about a mile and the roads were clear, and I focused on the simple things as we made our way. Keep it light, small talk, lots of open spaces, pretend like you’re texting someone.

  Up Lancaster, right on Market, into the old downtown, park the car, and walk up to the black door.

  “This is the loft?” asked Oh, reading the sign over the door. “Coffin Books. Don’t your parents own this place?”

  Milo nodded and inserted a key, turning the dead bolt. He held the door open and I went inside, followed by Oh.

  “This place smells like dead books,” she observed. “Like old stuff no one reads.”

  “You’d be surprised,” I said, staring into the darkness.

  “My parents let us use it to study after hours as long as we don’t move anything or monkey with the register.”

  “We like to monkey with the register,” I said. “It’s been a problem.”

  “Okaaaay…” said Oh. “Is there a light in this place or do you write term papers in the dark?”

  I’d been inside Coffin Books so many times before, it was no problem zigzagging in the shadows until I reached the far wall and flicked on the overhead lights.

  “Can I give you the nickel tour?” Milo asked.

  Watching Milo maneuver Oh around the room made me think he should quit school, move to Chicago, and shuttle families around the Field Museum.

  “Two book lovers on the tail end of financial doom are what got this place started ten years ago. My parents worked in tech, made and lost a ton of dough, and ended up with a basement full of books. When they had money to spend, this is what they spent it on.”

  Oh scanned the shelves filled with thousands of old volumes, mouthing some of the titles.

  “The books in here are all a little on the dark side. Strange fantasy, classic horror, end of times science fiction, hard-to-find mystery novels—a lot of stuff that’s out of print. That’s what they’re into, don’t ask me why.”

  Mr. Fielding and I were both into sci-fi books, and there was no place better than Coffin Books to get them. But once I’d met Milo, he and I would end up hanging out in the loft while Mr. Fielding and Mr. Coffin wandered down a dusty aisle of books.

  Milo pointed to each of the seven floor-to-ceiling rows like a flight attendant indicating the exits, which got me and Oh laughing and stealing glances at one another. Her look was a combination of Is he serious? and I love this place.

  Coffin Books had a medieval charm in the few places where books weren’t gobbling up all the space. One such item, a set of armor, stood behind the service counter.

  “My dad collects junk like that,” said Milo. “You should see the basement.”

  There were iron shackles, chain mail, swords, and other paraphernalia high out of reach above the shelves. It was all very Vincent Price, spooky kind of stuff you’d expect to see in an old movie with a dungeon and lots of torture devices.

  “That’s the loft.” Milo pointed. “You can only reach it from a sliding ladder on wheels. If someone moves the ladder while you’re in the loft, well, that’s your problem.”

  “This is the place?” asked Oh. She walked confidently to the sliding ladder, rolled it under the loft, and looked back at us. “What are we waiting for?”

  There were four cushy chairs in the loft and a good-sized round table in the middle where a guy could put his feet up. The table was strewn with books and a day-old newspaper someone had left behind. The light was soft and yellow. A black iron rail with metal crows welded through the middle surrounded the loft. It was a good place to read, a place where an entire day could disappear.

  “I think I know why Oh didn’t get hurt when she fell,” I began hesitantly. We each sat in a chair facing one another as the grandfather clock downstairs signaled 9:00 PM. Oh had the bottoms of her skate shoes against the edge of the table, as if it were a skateboard she wanted to ride.

  “Maybe it’s just a fluke, the way she went down,” said Milo. “Stranger things have happened.”

  “No, that’s not right,” said Oh. “I’ve only fallen hard three times. I’m not a street skater. You don’t get a longboard to do tricks—it’s transportation, you guys. The first time I fell was the day I got it. I was coming out of our garage and hit a concrete seam in the driveway. The board stopped and I kept going. My palms were a bloody mess, and both my knees turned blue and swelled up. It hurt. I mean, it really hurt. I didn’t even ride for a week.”

  “And the second time you broke your wrist?” I asked.

  Oh held up her arm, shaking the cast back and forth slowly.

  “The funny thing is I didn’t even fall that hard. Maybe my wrist was weak from falling the first time. I don’t know. It just snapped.”

  “The third fall was today, then,” said Milo. He touched the weak black fuzz on his chin and stared at the round table. “And it didn’t hurt at all, not even under the cast?”

  “Obviously I’m not being totally clear about this,” said Oh. “Either that or you’re just not listening. I didn’t feel any pain.”

  “That is a little odd, I guess,” Milo said.

  Oh stared at me, her eyes even more brilliantly hazel in the yellow light.

  I could have run away, forgotten the accident had ever happened, and moved on with my boring life at the church house. But for some stupid reason I couldn’t stay quiet anymore. I was probably t
rying to impress Oh or Milo or both.

  It was a terrible decision I came to regret.

  “Do you know how Mr. Fielding died?” I asked Oh, but Milo answered.

  “Dude, everyone knows that much.”

  So she knew about the slippery road, knew we’d slammed into the wide trunk of an ancient tree.

  “When we swerved off the road,” I began, hesitating. “He said something to me.”

  “What was it? What did Mr. Fielding say to you?” asked Oh. Her feet were back on the floor and she was leaning almost all the way over the table.

  “The same thing I wrote on your cast.”

  Oh lolled her head sideways and looked at me funny, like she was processing a long math problem.

  “Here I thought you were a poet,” said Oh. “I’m so disappointed.”

  “Hey, it’s still the best note anyone’s ever written on a cast,” Milo reassured me.

  “You guys don’t get it,” I said.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out Mr. Fielding’s Zippo. It was a lighter with a story all its own, but for now the only important thing was that it worked.

  I flicked the Zippo open and spun the dial, catching a whiff of lighter fluid as the flame shot up. Then I put my palm directly over the flame and let it burn.

  “Stop that!” cried Oh. “You’re crazy!”

  She reached over the table and tried to knock the lighter out of my hand, but I was too quick.

  “What’s your problem?” asked Milo.

  Ten seconds, fifteen, and the flame stayed nice and fat against the skin of my palm.

  “Jacob, please!” said Oh. She began to sound as though she might cry. I pulled the flame away and held up my hand.

  “You guys, I’m fine. I didn’t feel a thing,” I said, looking into Oh’s eyes as she began to calm down. “Just like you on your longboard.”

  She shook her head, more angry than excited by what I was saying. “What the hell is going on, Jacob?”

  Her eyes stole across my face and to the ladder leading down to the door where she could escape. I understood the urge well. I tried to imagine what she was thinking, what meeting me had led to in a few short hours.

  “I made a mistake,” I said. “But it probably saved your life.”

  “This is messed up,” said Milo. “It makes no sense.”

  “What are you saying?” asked Oh.

  In the five hours between the time I’d run away and when Milo and Oh had showed up in the school parking lot, I’d had a chance to really think things through.

  “This isn’t something I can tell you,” I said. “I have to show you.”

  Oh wiped a tear that hadn’t found its way completely out of her eye.

  “Show us, wonder boy.”

  “We were driving along,” I began, my voice quiet in the soft light of the loft. “Me and Mr. Fielding, and it happened without warning. We were doing sixty when we hit the tree. Have you ever stood up close to an old growth on the way to the coast? The trunks are ten feet around at the bottom. Hitting one with a car is no different than slamming into a wall of granite. I shouldn’t have survived, let alone come away uninjured.”

  “Right… ,” Oh said very slowly, as if trying to process everything one bit at a time.

  “Mr. Fielding transferred something to me when he said those words, and then I transferred it to Oh. It’s the only explanation.”

  “You’ve lost your mind,” said Milo.

  “I would agree if it weren’t for all the evidence piling up. How else do we explain it? We hit a giant tree doing sixty. Sixty, Milo. I should be dead right along with Mr. Fielding, but I walked away without a scratch. I can hold a flame against my skin for as long as I want. Oh face-planted onto the pavement today and didn’t feel a thing. I’m not crazy.”

  “Give me the lighter,” said Oh, holding out her hand above the round table filled with books. I watched the excitement flash across her face.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Then give it to me,” said Milo. “I want in on this. Say those words to me and let’s see if it works.”

  I waited, not sure what to do, glancing back and forth between the two of them.

  Oh piped in: “Come on, Jacob, just say it to one of us. Don’t you want to see if it actually works like you think it does?”

  I couldn’t tell if Oh was serious or joking. Either she didn’t trust me or she really was curious.

  “I held the flame under my hand for ten minutes at the church house,” I said. “Trust me, it works.”

  “Then it must still work for me, too,” said Oh. She lifted her pink cast over the table, intent on slamming it down hard enough to jar the broken bone inside.

  “Oh—don’t!” I yelled. “I took it back!”

  She held her arm over the table, letting it hover there long enough to really think it through.

  “What do you mean you took it back?”

  “I mean you don’t have it anymore.”

  “How do you know we don’t both have it? And how did you take it back?” she asked.

  “It was an accident, just like when I gave it to you.”

  This came out all wrong, like I’d never meant to save Oh in the first place, so I started again.

  “What I mean is, I was lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about when we met and what all happened. I got to the part where I wrote those words on your cast.”

  “You mean these words?” asked Oh, rolling over her cast and pointing the words in my face.

  “Yeah, I mean those. I kept saying them, whispering them, but something didn’t feel right. It was like something outside was trying to get back in, but couldn’t unless I did something different. So I said it another way. I am indestructible. And I could… I don’t know… I could feel it come back into me.”

  “That’s freaky,” said Milo.

  “And after that,” I went on, staring at Oh, “I had this feeling that you weren’t safe anymore but that I was. Like nothing could harm me. That’s when I took out the lighter.”

  The pink cast swayed over the table for another moment, then Oh gave up the idea and leaned heavily in her chair.

  “Say it to Milo,” said Oh. “I’ll hit him and then you can take it back. That’s how we’ll test it.”

  “This whole thing is a joke,” said Milo. “It can’t be real.”

  I wanted to agree with Milo and hoped he was right, but we weren’t going to get to the bottom of things unless the three of us could agree on what it was.

  “You are indestructible.”

  Milo took in a deep, exaggerated breath. “I feel like I could jump off the Empire State Building.”

  “Don’t joke around,” said Oh. “This is serious.”

  “Come on,” said Milo. He glanced from me to Oh, half smiling and half nervous that one of us was about to punch him in the face.

  “Put your hand on the table,” Oh commanded.

  Milo shook his head in disbelief. “For God’s sake, be careful,” he said, slowly reaching his hand out and fanning his fingers against the wood. “I have a chemistry test tomorrow. I’m going to need those fingers.”

  Oh lifted her pink cast and slammed Milo across the knuckles with a solid blow. She cried out, cradling her broken arm like a baby as she pulled her knees up to her chest and fell back into the chair.

  I had been tricked. She had wanted to test herself and Milo at once, and she’d managed to do it. We all knew instantly that Oh did not have any unexplainable power of protection.

  “I knew this was a bad idea,” I shouted, bolting around the table next to her.

  She hid her face behind her hair. “I hit it a lot harder than that on the sidewalk,” she responded in a cracked voice.

  “Hey, you guys… ,” said Milo.

  Oh pushed her hair back and we both looked at Milo together. He was making a fist and stretching his fingers out over and over.

  “Didn’t feel a thing.” He laughed an
d shook his head. “Craziest thing I ever saw.”

  Oh picked up a book from the table with her good hand.

  “Hold still.”

  The smile evaporated from Milo’s face as Oh reeled back and threw the book. It was big, it was a hardback, and it tagged Milo right in the nose.

  “That’s for making my arm hurt,” said Oh.

  “Doesn’t bother me a bit! In fact I sort of enjoyed it! Keep it coming.”

  Milo was really getting into the idea, and I have to admit it was entertaining to watch. I was smiling, too—at least until Oh turned her violent intentions on me. Without the slightest warning she leaned forward and punched me in the shoulder. Don’t let anyone tell you a girl can’t hit hard when she wants to.

  “You felt that?” asked Oh inquisitively. She was about as curious as I’d seen her all day. Something about the experimenting really turned her wheels.

  “Yes, I felt it,” I answered, rubbing the sting out of my arm.

  Oh was looking at me like I was a lab rat she’d just spun around her head by the tail and I was standing drunkenly on an examination table.

  “I barely hit you,” said Oh. “It was a love tap.”

  “I’d hate to see you when you’re angry.”

  Milo had his thumb on the table and kept hitting it with the book Oh had thrown at him. He looked like a lunatic, raising the book as high as he could and cracking the spine against his own thumb.

  I was starting to feel more curious myself and couldn’t help advancing our experimentation by closing my eyes and saying the words to myself.

  I am indestructible.

  About three seconds later Milo hit himself again, and this time he felt it. He threw the book out of the loft as if it were a football. The pages fluttered until the spine hit a shelf and the book spun wildly.

  “Good idea, take it out on the book,” I muttered.

  Milo kept shaking his hand and cussing up a storm, but Oh didn’t say another word. She seemed to be drinking everything in, calculating the different possibilities.