“Hey!” I pushed my face right into Ben’s ear and pinned him against the jumble of twisted sheets where he and Griffin were supposed to be sleeping. “Fucking cool it! And you back the fuck off, too, Quinn! The kid was just joking around. Back the fuck off, all of you!”
For a moment, there was nothing, only blackness and the sound of the three boys panting like they’d just run a footrace. I felt around on the floor until I found Griffin’s bony bare knee and gave him a little swat.
“Apologize,” I whispered.
Griffin didn’t attempt to keep his voice down. “That fucking pervert had his hands on my fucking balls, Jack.”
“Apologize, Griff.”
“Screw it. I’m going to take a piss.”
And Griffin slapped his feet across the floor toward the shower room. In no time there came the echoing sound like someone was emptying a garden hose into a tin drum.
He called back, “I’m sorry, Quinn. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
Which was just another way for Griffin Goodrich to fuck with the kid. But for all his ingenuity at game playing and survival, I didn’t believe Quinn had any idea what was going on when it came to communicating with other boys.
Quinn didn’t say a word, just stepped over me and Ben and went back to his bed.
“I made this place,” he said.
Griffin came back. “I filled that shit up.”
Then he lay down on the floor next to his brother, and I went back to my bed.
I said, “This is a fucking palace, Quinn.”
Quinn rustled around in his bed. It sounded like he threw the covers off him. It was so hot and stuffy in the firehouse, made even worse by the heavy, damp smell of four boys who’d been wrestling with one another. And finally, Quinn said, “What about you, Billy? What’s the farthest back thing you remember?”
I said, “Honest?”
Quinn said, “Honest.”
“Waking up on the floor of Ben and Griffin’s garage, wearing a prisoner uniform. What was that, four or five days ago?”
“And you don’t remember nothing else?”
I cleared my throat and rolled onto my side. There was the dribbling, metallic sound again. Ben had gone off behind us, and was peeing noisily into Quinn’s trough. And I realized that it stopped raining outside.
“Well, some things my friend Conner told me about what I’d done. And you remember that cut on my hand? How you fixed it up?”
Quinn said, “Oh, yeah. That was a nasty one, Billy. How’s that thing doing?”
“It’s gone.”
“Nuh-uh. Let me see if it is.”
And Quinn raised the light and got out of his bed again.
He kneeled at the side of my cot and grabbed me by my right wrist. I opened my hand, and Quinn put his face an inch or two away from my palm, staring at the pink and jagged scar that had been left behind when Seth healed me.
“Billy, this looks exactly like that—”
“I know.”
The hole in the sky.
Ben stood over us, watching. “Like what?”
“That thing in the sky,” Quinn said. “It’s like a picture of it, stamped right there into Billy’s hand.”
“What thing in the sky?” Ben asked.
I pulled my hand away, closed it. “The boys haven’t seen it.”
Quinn’s mouth just hung open, like he couldn’t believe there was anybody—any Odd—who didn’t know about the hole in the sky.
He looked from Ben to me, back to Ben again, and I could see he was trying to figure out what our story was, even if we didn’t know enough about ourselves to tell it.
“Well, let’s go look then.” Quinn nudged Griffin’s butt with his foot. Griffin tried to cover his face in the dingy sheet.
“You, not-Ben—stop tugging on your little pecker or it’s going to fall off. Heh-heh-heh. Let’s get up on the roof—there’s something you boys need to see.”
And as Quinn led the way back to where his metal ladder stretched through the ceiling and onto the roof deck, Griffin pulled my shoulder down toward his face and whispered, “I want you to give me permission to kick the living shit out of that fuckstick, Jack.”
I just nodded and followed the redhead.
“One of these days, Griff. I promise.”
sixteen
The rain was gone; the air, thick and hot.
It felt like we were bugs, competing for air, trapped beneath an overturned cup.
The four of us stood at the edge of the roof of Quinn’s firehouse, barefoot and sweating, looking at the thing above us while the pale redhead pointed it out like he owned it or something.
Quinn stared at Ben, noticeably taller and more muscular. Maybe the kid was sizing Ben up, using his “intellectual reasoning” to conclude that if I hadn’t gotten between them in their fight, Ben would have inflicted some serious damage.
“You never seen that before?”
Ben shook his head. “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” Quinn said. “Nobody does. It looks like the end of the world, doesn’t it?”
“It looks like fireworks to me,” Griffin said.
“I’ll tell you what it looks like, not-Ben.”
Then Quinn reached over and grabbed my wrist.
He pinned my arm against the edge of the block railing, and I was surprised by how strong the kid was. It hurt. I clenched my fist.
“Show them, Billy.”
“That hurts. Let the fuck go, Quinn.”
I kept my hand closed tight.
“What are you scared of? Just let them see it. Prove I ain’t crazy.”
You are fucking insane, asshole.
I pulled my arm back, but Quinn’s grip was like a vice.
Remember the last time you used a vice, Jack?
“It’s not funny. Let go!”
I tried pushing him off me with my left hand. The kid didn’t budge. I glanced at Ben and Griffin. Somehow, I almost got the feeling that they were curious to see the scar now, too.
“Fuck this shit,” I said.
I punched Quinn square in the center of his rib cage.
It wasn’t intended to hurt; I was just trying to knock him away, make him let go. But he got this crazy grimace on his face, and he began twisting and prying at my fingers.
I guess he was fed up with us, with our intrusion into his perfect world. Quinn Cahill was always trying to prove something about being in charge. After all, he was the king here. He didn’t like or want company. Just me, for some reason. And whatever that reason was, it bothered me from the first moment the kid started hovering over me.
Ben put his hand on Quinn’s shoulder and pulled him around. “That’s enough, kid. Leave Jack alone.”
I could tell that Ben was trying to restrain himself.
But Quinn nearly broke two of my fingers, so I gave up, let him have his way, and I opened my hand.
* * *
The first time Quinn showed me that thing in the sky, I knew it had something to do with me. Or, more likely, that I had something to do with it.
I felt it.
It was like a wound, a stab, an incision that somehow cuts through all the layers, stack after stack after stack, piercing all the insides and outsides that collapse down and converge at the center of Jack’s universe.
And here I am now, standing with my hand open in front of Quinn Cahill’s face. I accept it.
I accept the fact that I fucked up—that all of this isn’t happening to me—it’s happening because of me.
I knew it all along.
I knew it when I was tied to a fucking bed at Freddie Horvath’s house.
But I just didn’t want to think about it.
* * *
I open my hand.
The light comes first. It is always the light, and then the sound.
Of course the mark is the same. Everyone can see that.
The scar in my hand.
The hole in the sky.
The
center of the universe.
The boys are saying something. I can’t hear them. We are standing inside a thousand jet engines, beneath a churning wall of water that endlessly crashes upon sawtoothed rocks.
And I am looking directly through my fucking hand.
I am looking directly through.
The boys are saying something.
Quinn is screaming.
He’s afraid.
Fucking prick should have left me alone.
So I am looking.
In my bathroom, at Wynn and Stella’s house, a house that is in a place called Glenbrook, the mirrored door of Jack’s medicine cabinet opens in such a way that I could put my head between the door and the larger mirror above the sink, where Wynn taught me how to shave before I ever needed to. And there would be an infinity of layers there, accordioned together, blurring away into dark blue nothingness ahead of me, behind me, and I am the center.
That’s what this looks like now.
Only there are no mirrors, and I can see step after step, endless ladders like train tracks, each of them framing a narrow glimpse of here, another Marbury, a Glenbrook, Marbury again, the inside of a Cadillac, Marbury, that fucking cop, inside a barrel, the fucking inside of a plastic barrel and I am there, cramped among the bones of the friends I love, a dirty fucking bed where I am tied down, bleeding, Freddie Horvath’s hands on me, fuck this place, fuck this place, fuck this place.
And out of the infinity that expands before me, a throng of ghosts, faceless and bleak, run toward me, step after step, in the bed, in the barrel, Marbury, another Glenbrook, the barrel again. I am tied down on top of a bed, a naked photograph of Jack where I must be asleep, so don’t wake me up. This all must be inside his head. The ghosts coming and coming, out from my hand, out from my mouth, and I finally see among them a boy’s face.
Seth.
I cannot breathe. I am hanging by my neck, my hands tied behind me, kicking, kicking so hard my shoes come off, my pants begin to fall off as I twist in a circle, winding and winding, a spring, facing the sun, the tall trees around me, silent in the brilliant light of afternoon.
I can smell the hangmen.
And then I see Seth in Marbury, and he is a boy—a real boy—not a ghost at all, but it is a different Marbury, and I can remember it. It was like this.
Someone is screaming and screaming.
Quinn Cahill.
I look away from the image frames.
I force myself.
Shut my eyes.
Close my hand.
Make it stop.
The door slams shut.
I hear music.
An accordion.
* * *
I didn’t wake up until the following night.
Later, Ben would explain how he alone carried me tied to his back down the ladder, using rope they found in Quinn’s garage. He’d wrapped it beneath my armpits, across my chest. He shrugged apologetically and showed me how the nylon cord had cut marks into the flesh around his shoulders.
They refused to leave me up on the roof, even if they did believe, at first, that Jack was dead.
Everything hurt.
It felt like my ribs had been broken.
Maybe I was dead, I thought. Nothing made sense. The last thing I remembered was breaking up the fight between Ben and Quinn, and now here I was, lying on my side on a sweat-soaked cot, staring at what looked like someone’s kneecaps right in front of my face. And I swear I could hear the faint sound of accordion music coming from somewhere.
“Ben! He opened his eye. Jack’s waking up!”
Griffin’s voice was a rasping, urgent whisper.
“Shhh!”
I couldn’t see where Ben was standing. Only knees. They looked like clay faces where all the features had been pressed down into nothing. But they were staring at me.
I couldn’t focus on anything but the little gold hairs on Griffin’s bony kneecaps.
I tried to say something, but my mouth wouldn’t move.
Why can’t you understand me, Griffin?
I am talking to you, kid, listen to me.
But I wasn’t talking.
He couldn’t hear me.
I shut my eyes.
“Hey! Jack?” Griffin lowered himself to the edge of the cot. He shook my shoulder and I opened my eyes again. “Can you hear me? Do you know where you are?”
That was a trick question, right?
“Um. No. What happened?”
“You fucking did it again, Jack.”
I closed my eyes. “I’m thirsty, Griff.”
I heard him pop open a plastic jug that sat on the floor beside my cot. And then I could see Ben, leaning against the wall, pressing an ear up to the seam where one of the windows had been sealed over and covered by a blackout curtain.
He concentrated on listening, but he watched me as I drank.
There was music, so faint. And then it stopped.
“I heard it, too,” I said. “It woke me up. It’s the Rangers coming.”
I couldn’t sit up. I spilled more water onto my bed than I got into my mouth. Griffin kept one hand on the base of the jug to steady it.
Ben moved away from the window. He looked tense, ready for a fight.
“Next time, you’re going to fucking kill yourself.”
What could I say?
It wasn’t my fault.
Wrong, Jack. Everything was my fault.
“You mad at me, Ben?”
He exhaled and got down on the floor next to Griffin.
“Are you okay?”
I nodded. “I’ll be okay. What happened?”
And I noticed that the hand I’d been using to tilt the jug of water had been wrapped up in what looked like a sock. Medical tape wound tightly around my palm and knuckles.
“What’s this?”
The boys looked at each other, like they were both trying to figure out which of them had the better explanation.
Griffin took a drink and recapped the jug. “You’ve been knocked out since last night. I don’t even need to tell you, but we thought you were dead for good this time. You remember going up on the roof?”
I kind of did. Not really.
“There was shit coming out of your hand, Jack,” Ben said.
“What kind of shit?”
Griffin shrugged, shaking his head, as though he didn’t know what to say.
Then I thought of something, lifted my head. It made me dizzy.
“Where’s Quinn?”
“Fuck,” Ben said. “There were ghosts, Jack. Hundreds of them. You know how I feel about those fucking things. They were all coming out of you, like you were setting free a swarm of bees or something, like bats from a cave, going everywhere. It freaked the shit out of that kid.”
I remembered.
“Did you see that boy? The kid named Seth?”
Ben shook his head, but Griffin said, “I saw him, Jack.”
“I didn’t watch them. I can’t,” Ben said. “That fucking Quinn started screaming. Like he was looking straight into the worst nightmare you could ever have. And, next thing, he tried to jump off the fucking roof. I pulled him back and then he tried to do it again. So I punched him. I’m sorry, Jack, but I had it with that fucking kid after he put his goddamned hands on Griff, and so I beat his fucking face.”
I guess I saw that coming from the beginning.
Ben swallowed, like he was trying to gather his thoughts. “Then Quinn just jumps down the ladder. That was right when you collapsed, Jack, and the ghosts were scattering everywhere. The noise was insane. And then that fucker just ran away. I looked over the side of the roof for him. I saw him come out the door and go running down the street, carrying his speargun and yelping like a fucking dog.”
I took a deep breath. I thought about asking the boys to help me up, but I didn’t want them to think they’d be carrying me, watching out for me like I was going to be some kind of cripple. So I gathered every bit of will I had and pushed myself up into a
sitting position. I put my feet down on the floor.
My head spun so bad I was sure that I was going to pass out. Ben and Griffin were still talking to me, telling me something, but I couldn’t hear anything they said over the rushing tide in my ears.
Don’t fall down. Don’t fall down.
I stood up, holding on to the waist of my shorts and slurring my speech like a drunkard. “The lens. Glasses. He didn’t take them, did he?”
“The pack’s under your bed,” Griffin said.
I aimed myself for the block divider in front of the shower and took wide steps until I could catch myself on it.
It was like walking across the deck of a boat in a storm.
I heard Ben, behind me. “Jack?”
But I ignored him. I didn’t want any goddamned help.
I turned the shower on and got under it. It felt so cold.
Then I was suddenly looking at the backs of my hands, how they were holding me up on either side of Quinn’s floor drain, a black metal grate the size of a baseball. It looked like a planet floating between my dirty, bandaged hand and outspread fingers.
Nice.
The fucking universe.
I heard the boys come up behind me.
“I’m okay. I’m okay. Just get away from me. I’m okay.”
I don’t know how long I stayed there like that, on my hands and knees with the water raining down on me. Probably too long. The shower stopped by itself. The upper tank had run dry.
I shook my head.
Better.
I got up and made it back around the wall without falling down. Dripping water everywhere, I sat on the edge of my cot and began putting on my clothes. My prison clothes.
“We need to get out of here. The Rangers are coming. It’s a guy named Preacher, and a girl, the captain, named Anamore Fent. They’re hunting for me.”
“A girl?” Griffin said.
“Get dressed. We need to go.”
Ben said, “We shouldn’t go out at night, Jack.”
“I think I know what to do. Get your boots on. Now.”
We hurried. I ran down to make sure Ben had thought to bolt the main door shut, then I locked the second door at the top of the staircase.
I told the boys to drink as much water as they could hold, to gather together as much as they thought we could carry on our backs. We found an empty canvas pack hanging from a peg on the wall by Quinn’s stove. I tossed it across the room to Ben. Fuck Quinn Cahill. He took off, left us here; so we were going to claim whatever we wanted.