She almost seemed angered, frightened, like she thought Conner and I were just a couple of punks who were screwing with her, or maybe we were going to rob her. She pushed the car door shut with a knee and turned toward her house, swinging her bags, ignoring me.
“Whoa.” Conner laughed. “Ladies’ man. What the fuck was that all about?”
I slumped down into the seat, put the window up.
I sighed. “I don’t know. Nothing.”
* * *
This is real.
I am sitting here in the front seat of my best friend’s car in the town I grew up in.
This is all real.
And nobody knows anything about me.
We hardly say another word on the way to the diner. Conner asks what that was all about again and I lie to him and say it was only a bad joke. I say the names again.
Ben.
Griffin.
My friend thinks I’m insane.
I want to ask him about the lens, the garage. I want to tell him about the glasses I left in my clothes, but I am afraid.
I am afraid of what Conner will think of me.
This is real.
Welcome home, Jack.
* * *
“You’re staring at me.”
“Huh?”
“You keep staring at me, Jack. It’s creeping me out.”
Conner never ate syrup on his pancakes. He liked to roll them up and eat them with his hands. There were things I could always count on, always wanted to count on. But sometimes things slipped away and then came back as something else, too.
I felt myself turning red, getting ready for another one of Conner’s Dude-you-are-so-gay jokes.
“Sorry.”
“Well, quit it.”
But I couldn’t. I saw something in his eyes. Something that wasn’t the same as before. So he kicked my foot under the table.
“There are these things that have been happening to me, Con. It’s real. I thought I had it figured out, I mean, how it happens. So you have to believe me. I can prove it.”
I drew circles with my fork in the syrup on my plate. Circles inside of circles; a line cutting through all of them.
Conner shifted in the booth across from me. “This is like a fucking horror movie.”
I took a deep breath.
He looked around, guiltily, like he wanted to be certain nobody was listening to him and his crazy friend. The kids who killed someone. “Okay. So tell me.”
“That woman getting out of the car on Forest Trail. Her name is Ellen Goodrich. She has two sons named Ben and Griffin. You could probably check in a phone book or something. I know who they are.”
“And she knows you, right?”
I didn’t say anything.
Of course she didn’t know who I was.
Nobody did.
“So let me tell you what I think,” Conner began. I eyed him over my cup of black coffee. How anyone could drink Coke with pancakes and eggs was beyond me, even if it was evening in Glenbrook.
If this was Glenbrook.
“Okay. I want to know what you think, Con.”
He watched me lift a forkful of pancakes into my mouth.
“I have a feeling you were thinking about talking to that doctor. Weren’t you? Really talking to him, about that Freddie guy and what we did to him. Then you couldn’t do it. You couldn’t talk about it. That’s what I think.”
I swallowed. Picked up my coffee. “So?”
“So, then you started tripping out on all this other stuff. This nonsense about things we never did and people you don’t even know. A lens thing, these kids, whoever. That lady you scared over in Cracktown. Just to get in the way of what you need to do.”
“What do I need to do, Con?”
He always made everything so simple. That was Conner.
He crossed his fork and knife on top of his empty plate. “I figure you only have two options: You either forget about it and move on, we take off for England in a few days and it’s done; or we go tell someone, Jack. But you got to get it over with, once and for all.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah.” Conner smiled and kicked my shin under the table. “Was I right?”
Conner’s always right.
This isn’t Conner.
I left him in Marbury, and he’s trying to find me.
I was scared.
I looked my best friend straight in the eyes. “This isn’t you, Conner.”
Conner looked shocked, tried to laugh. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Jack?”
I pulled out my wallet, left a twenty on the table, stuck inside the ring of sweat made by Conner’s Coke glass.
The center of the universe.
“You remember Blackpool?”
Conner shrugged. “What about it?”
“You remember having a fight?”
“Did I kick your ass?” He laughed.
“I’m not joking, Conner. Do you remember when we got into a fight on the beach?”
Conner shook his head. “Over what?”
“Nothing. Never mind. You’re right, Conner. You’re right. Let’s forget about it.”
I stood up and started to make my way out of the diner.
Conner followed. “What’re you doing? Will you cool it?”
I didn’t want to look at him. I pushed for the door, almost knocked down one of those cheap wooden stands with free Glenbrook real estate magazines in it. And Conner stayed right on my heels all the way out into the parking lot.
The sky was gray.
It looked like Marbury, but the sun had just finally dropped below the mountains to the west and a white-hot sliver of moon hung in the thick furnace of evening.
Marbury: (noun) Third planet in order from the sun. No natural satellites. This planet, as the only in the Solar System which is inhabited by humans.
I think, standing there at the front of Conner’s identical-to-mine truck, facing away from him, at that moment I realized that I was totally alone.
There’s nobody home, Jack.
It was like being dead, or standing in the center of an endless cemetery.
THIS WAS THE HARDEST TO GET OUT OF.
I was done.
So I made a list in my head—first, second, third—the things Jack would do; the last things Jack would ever do.
Fuck this place.
I needed to get out.
“I’m sorry, Con,” I said. “I think I better go home. Maybe I need to sleep or something.”
Conner opened his door and started the truck.
“I don’t want you to do anything weird, Jack. Maybe you should just spend the night at my place.”
I got in.
“Oh. I’d never do anything weird.”
That made Conner laugh.
That was good.
I had to get away.
nine
It wasn’t completely dark yet when I left Conner’s house.
I promised I’d bring his clothes back in the morning, and he joked that I didn’t need to bother returning them—because seeing them on me, he realized how gay they looked.
Before I drove away, I shook my head and rubbed my eyes. I felt like everything I ever knew was gone. I was just so tired.
I believed it was the last time I’d ever see my best friend.
But it wasn’t Conner.
* * *
I left my truck in the lot at Steckel Park and then I found the bench—the same one where I’d passed out the night Freddie Horvath took me and drugged me. I thought it was the same bench, but I couldn’t be absolutely certain.
I couldn’t be sure anything was the same anymore.
I knew what I was going to do. I had that cop’s business card in my hand. I was just trying to will myself to hit the SEND button on my phone. I’d already punched in the numbers, after I’d double-checked to be sure there was no contact listing for Ben or Griffin—like I’d almost convinced myself that I was just fucked up, that my friends would appear again out of nowhere, and everything would simply go back to being the way it was all supposed to be.