flip!
Good-bye, Henry.
Good-bye, Jack.
Fuck us both.
“I’m scared to do it. I messed shit up and now everything is coming apart. I have to believe things will fix themselves, Henry. I think we will see each other in London, just like we did, like we’re supposed to. But I have to do one thing first.”
Henry wasn’t looking at me. I thought maybe he was mad, like I was holding back a present and he wanted it bad enough to do something desperate. Or maybe he was thinking of some way to take it from me.
After all, that’s what Jack would do.
I didn’t so much as glance at my pack. I didn’t want to tip off Henry that there was anything inside it that might interest him.
But he had to know.
He was dying to find out.
And it was almost like I could hear those fucking glasses whispering my name, as though they had a heart and it was beating, pumping, and I knew it was going to make me open the pack.
Don’t do it, Jack.
Do it.
Come home, Jack.
I tried to breathe, inhaled deeply.
“There’s one more of us here,” I said. “A boy named Conner Kirk. He’s…”
And I thought, He’s what, Jack? The only person who cares about you? You love him? You love him and you know you fucked up his life forever? He’s what, Jack?
“I know he’s heading for Bass-Hove, too. He has the other part of the lens. I think we need to put them back together.”
“Is that what you think?” Henry said.
He wasn’t even trying to disguise the sarcastic tone in his voice.
“Yes,” I said. “That is what I think, Henry. What do you think?”
I heard him take a deep breath. He nodded his chin out toward the circle of clearing between the boulders. “Me? I think it doesn’t matter. This is always the world. Home. We may be the last people remaining, but this is what we do.”
He shrugged. “We cross deserts looking for others who may be left behind, too.”
Henry sounded just like he did when he tried to explain about Marbury to me; the night when I was so sick, after I’d lost the lens in Blackpool and we sat together at The Prince of Wales.
“You told me that you weren’t sure whether this was the beginning of the world or the end of it.”
He looked directly at me. “Let me see the lens, Jack.”
My hands shook.
“Jack.”
I began to sweat. I could feel droplets as they rolled down my skin, tickling, insects.
And I was so thirsty.
Across from us, there was movement along the top of the boulders where the Odds had been posted on lookout. They raised their arms and pointed off, across the desert in the direction Henry’s little toy compass told us was the way out.
“Show me.”
I couldn’t stop myself.
My hand shook so bad. I dragged my fingers through the ash.
I tried telling myself that maybe this was the key.
Maybe being with Henry could make things right.
I didn’t look.
My hand found the backpack and I dragged it out and placed it between my legs.
Don’t do it, Jack.
“Not the lens,” I said. “It kills things now. There’s something else. Another way.”
Henry grabbed for the backpack. He was acting like a drug addict, desperate to get his fix.
“Don’t!” I grabbed his hand to stop him from opening the pack. “Listen to me. Wait.”
Henry tried to wrestle the pack open.
I twisted his wrist.
The kids on the rim began shouting.
They saw something in the desert.
Henry was sweating, panting.
“Listen to me! It’s something else. It doesn’t even work for Ben and Griffin.”
Because they’re dead and inside a fucking trash barrel.
I said, “It might not be anything for you.”
“Let me see it.”
* * *
I can’t stop myself.
On the rim, Alex, or maybe it is one of the other assholes, shouts Henry’s name.
“Henry! Come look!”
It is always thrilling. My chest heaves. It’s a nervous rush, like having sex.
I am excited and terrified at the same time, and I know Henry feels it, too.
Zip.
My fingers fumble through the folds in my sock.
Fuck you, Jack.
I keep my nervous hands working inside the pack. I have to hide what I am doing from the other Odds. I unravel the dirty sock. I flash on a thought, but it is gone before I know it: Should I feel sorry for what happened to Quinn Cahill?
I can see a glint of the blue glass, the small eye of the outer green lens that is flipped away.
“A rider!”
Someone calls from the lookout.
“Henry! There’s a rider!”
Henry sits beside me, so close we lean against each other. I can feel his body quaking.
I say, “Look.”
Then I flip the lens into place.
twenty-six
There is a thrashing noise.
It comes clattering in drumbeats, arrhythmic, like a fight. Someone is kicking something.
My shins ache.
I am lying on a dirty wood floor and I’ve been bashing my legs against a doorjamb.
It’s not shaking. It’s jerking, convulsing, like electric current is shooting through every muscle fiber in my body; killing me.
My legs do not belong to me.
Quit it.
I kick the wood frame again.
Nice.
Welcome home, Jack.
Now where the fuck are you?
I smell cigarettes.
They aren’t burning now, but wherever I am someone smokes here.
* * *
It was always like this.
Every time.
I lay there in a doorway, half in, half out, staring at the little creases in the jamb’s wooden frame, the finishing nails, a spot where the varnish didn’t soak into the surface, the uneven texture of the plaster wall at the baseboard. Nobody cares about those parts of walls; they are always canvases of imperfection. I heard an electric hum and bubbling water. It struck me as funny that I was lost again, in a dimly lit room, and wherever it was, there was an aquarium in here with me.
And cigarettes.
I swallowed.
Good. My throat still worked.
My legs stopped thrashing on their own, but my shins ached like fire.
I moved my eyes, tracking along the surface of the floor and into the room where my head was. I saw something. It took a while—maybe ten seconds—for the words to come into my head, but that’s how it always was.
A rusted radiator heater stood against the far wall.
I marveled at the perfectly slatted ribs, how they were coated in thick green paint—an entirely nauseating color—with small cuts of tarnished rust showing through. I counted the ribs. I don’t know why. Maybe it was the only thing I was capable of doing at that moment.
Counting.
And watching.
Then I moved my hand.
It was a remarkable thing.
It was almost as though I had forgotten I had arms—or a body—at all.
This is my hand.
I had to think again—right or left?
I couldn’t remember.
I spread open my fingers above my eyes, a bloom, a firework.
My palm was cut.
Bleeding again.
Drip.
I didn’t even flinch when the blood dropped, warm and heavy, onto my lips.
It tasted good.
I squeezed my hand shut and ran the other one over my body, feeling—what I was wearing, if everything was still connected.