Jonah had Enoch write him another note, and after years of signing his mother’s checks, Will found forging his own a cinch. While their classmates sat deadened in their desks, the boys rode their ramps each day, high above the lake, threading their way between pillars and hoppers and conveyance vents, back and forth at breakneck speeds, grain dust gummy in their eyes. There they withstood unplanned splits, shinners, debilitating knee whacks, wrist tweaks, bent fingers, hippers, elbow bashings, back scrapes, rolled ankles, and chin abrasions. Despite the injuries, or perhaps because of them, Will’s skateboarding was further improving. His new favorite trick was the “disaster,” which entailed ollieing 180 degrees while on a ramp, then, instead of landing safely back in the curved transition, hooking his rear wheels on the lip. Only through a finicky rocking motion executed immediately could he escape being hurled to the concrete floor. It was like picking a lock, pure joy when it worked, pure mayhem when it didn’t. After trekking back up the creekside, Will would return home, stinking of pigeons and wheat, hacking up dollops of grain dust like little uncooked loaves, spitting them with delight into the sink in Venice.
“So what are you Icaruses training for? A tournament?” Titus said, after dragging himself from the workhouse over the high bridge to the Distribution Floor for the first time to look on. His antibiotics were nearly done, and his infection was improving. Lately he’d been calling them “Icarus Number One” and “Icarus Number Two,” for reasons they didn’t grasp.
“No tournament,” said Will.
“So what’s the schedule then, the import-export?” said Titus.
“Just to do it,” said Will. “To get good at it.”
“I can’t help but sustain that you boys should’ve been wagering your necks down here in another epoch: unblocking grain bins, leaping between freights, doing a usefulness, rather than bleeding for no account whatever. But very least you’re putting this old maid to use with your roller toys,” Titus said, patting the bricks. His beard split with a smile. “That’s a sunshine.”
“They aren’t toys,” Jonah said.
“What’s their frequency, then, Icarus Number Two?”
“Skateboards are … they’re like … tools,” Will said.
“For what career description?” Titus replied skeptically.
Will took a moment to think. Unable to find the right words, he blurted the first thing in his mind. “For falling,” he said.
“Well,” Titus said, shaking his head. “Every youth needs a war. I found mine. This constitutes yours. But don’t overshoot it. Smashing through those windows will earn you a two-hundred-and-twenty-foot blitzkrieg to the wharf.”
Later that day, as though on cue, Jonah careened off the edge of the ramp and sunk some ragged metal in his palm. “We’ll see what we can accomplish,” Titus said, holding up a pair of needle-nosed pliers he’d boiled in a pot on the woodstove. Jonah, mute with pain, surrendered his bloody hand to Titus, while Will fetched the serrated knife from his backpack and stood beside them, just to be safe. Titus dug with the pliers, and for a moment it seemed like he was torturing Jonah, and Will was trying to imagine attacking when Titus backed off. “The woodland only hurts you because it loves you,” he said, flicking the shard at the wall.
“Your ancestors mind you filleting yourselves up like this?” Titus said later when they were heating some cans of beans on the woodstove.
“Who?” said Jonah.
Titus shook his head. “Your”—he strained to produce the correct word—“parents,” he said.
“Father? Is that you?” Jonah said, eyes turned upward with his hands clasped at his neck, scanning the filthy rafters as though communing with angels. “Am I going to be all right?”
“Roger that,” said Titus. He put his head down. “How about you, Icarus Number One?” he said, almost too quiet for Will to hear.
“My mom doesn’t like me skateboarding. Or coming down here. But it’s my choice.” These days she was scarcely leaving San Francisco, and the boys had even stayed over at Pool 6 again twice more and she never said anything. Will figured she was too Black Lagooned to check his room at night. “Anyway, that’s her problem,” said Will. “My mother cares too much. About everything. She’s basically psycho.”
Titus stared at the ground for a while with his jaw set and embers burning beneath skin. “That’s not a thing to say,” he said flatly as he rose. “My pins are twinkling, Icaruses. Think I’m fixing to pay my taxes.” He hobbled to his bed and zipped himself into his sleeping bag.
At times the boys would stifle laughter when the randomness of Titus’s utterances landed in the realm of the comic, yet sometimes a switch flicked inside him and his moods took dark swerves, his hissing voice assuming a too-loud, desperate quality, the way people speak when they’re wearing headphones. At these times the very same words became frightening, portentous.
While Titus slept, they’d searched every inch of the workhouse for clues: the hexagon boots, handwriting that matched the sign, any trace of Marcus—yielding nothing. But despite its desolation, Will preferred the elevator almost more than he did Jonah’s house. Maybe it was because his uncle and grandfather had both worked and died here that Will felt some manner of bone-deep connection to it. Or maybe it was because there was nobody to tell them what to do or to worry about them. MacVicar had said that boys frequented these abandoned places—old mills, mines, and derelict cabins—because they needed to be alone. Which was probably the only thing he’d ever been right about. Because, Will was discovering, the Outside’s most forgotten areas were both the perfect places to hide and the perfect places to grow up.
Relaxation Time
It was loosed upon her now. Like that day on the subway platform, floodgates blown open, her thoughts a maze with no openings or exits.
Her son returned home each day from school smelling like Theodore and Charlie had after work: grease, sweat, sawn lumber, and grain—the only explanation was that her fear was inventing this. But canned food had been disappearing faster than she could order it. Perhaps Will was donating it to a shelter or some organization that ministered to the poor. Though she doubted it. She’d even found the bread knife tucked in his backpack. But what could she do? Forbidding him hadn’t worked. If he ran away, she couldn’t even go out and look for him. She’d have to rely on MacVicar, whose track record for locating children wasn’t legendary.
All her tricks to deactivate thinking had failed, like old clunky jokes that nobody laughed at anymore. The elastic. Will’s artwork. Her guitar. She could no longer read. Not even page-turners. Certainly not mysteries. It was like trying to soak up water with a piece of plastic wrap. The terror was as ceaseless now as her heart beating.
She’d tried to appease her spiraling thoughts, reason with them, flee from them, but her methods had betrayed her in the end. Fear had been festering inside her, and all her efforts to contain, quell, and suppress it had only incubated and nourished it.
So it came to this. It would be no permanent thing. Not like the basement. She simply felt safe in her room. She’d been wearing the same malodorous robe for a week, unwashed dishes tucked under her bed, a greenish frizz around the dregs of vegetable soup, toupees of blue floating in unfinished yogurt cups. She’d carted the phone to her night table to order groceries. With Will gone, she convinced the regular deliveryman to accept a key so he could place the bags far enough inside the door that she could reach them. She’d innovated a method to get to the washroom or retrieve packages without falling into a hole, which involved drinking half a bottle of codeine cough syrup—luckily they delivered these by the case—and darting for the door.