Away We Go (15 page)

“Melly-baby, you're not thinking about one fundamental piece of data, right?” Nigel said. “It's
cold
out there.” He pointed at the walls, only a hundred feet from where we stood.

“Honey,” Grace said into his ear. “God bless you, I love you, but shut those pretty lips.” To Melanie, “Zach came up with a great plan, didn't you, Zach? Tell her about your plan.”

Zach explained about waiting for someone to get sick. “All it'll take is one text, and we'll know where the sick kids go.”

“Or we could go now,” Melanie said. “Have you
seen
those tertiary care flyers they pass out?
Incontinence support.
I don't fucking want to wait around for
incontinence support.
A glorified
hospice. That's where the sick kids go. To have their diapers changed 'cause they shit themselves every three hours. That's where we go, guys. Open your fucking eyes. Smell the goddamn roses. An immigrant lady with broken dreams of a better future. Will wipe your chafing ass. So she can send her kids to college. That's it.”

“If we don't let her go, we're no better than the administration,” Marty said. “The government.” He added, “I'll go with you.”

“Marty?” I asked, feeling sick.

“There you go. Someone else actually has balls,” Melanie said. “Zach,
give me the key.
Or admit to everyone here that your butt-buddy was right. This was never about giving us a choice. It was your stupid little power trip where Zachary gets to make all the rules and feel special.”

“Don't say that,” I whispered. “I didn't say that.”

Zach had his head in his hands. I couldn't tell if he was crying. I watched him, all of us did, all of us rooted in the knee-deep snow by the construction shed in a silent circle, the stars bright pinpricks overhead. He stuffed a hand into his pocket and drew out the key.

Melanie unlocked the door, shoved the key back in his face. She turned to us.

“Who's going to help me?”

I needed to get away from Zach, so I stepped forward. He shot me a hurt look, but I didn't care. Melanie and I stumbled into the pitch black of the shed, knocking into boxes and tools, wouldn't it be a ball if we knocked into the fireworks and set them off, burned the whole shed down? A fitting end to the night. Within a few minutes we had two ladders leaned up against the front of the shed.

Melanie nodded to the nearest section of the wall. She tried to heave a ladder by herself. I rushed to help. Marty joined us. The rest of Polo Club grabbed the second ladder, and side by side our two groups began the quiet trudge in the direction she'd indicated.

This was not how Polo Club was supposed to end.

I wanted say something.

To take back what I'd said to Zach.

I didn't know how.

“Marty,” I whispered. “
Why?
”

“She can't go alone,” he said simply. “Nobody deserves that.”

Melanie, holding the front end of the ladder, stiffened, stopped.

The walls were in front of us now, illuminated by lampposts running down their entire length. Zach, Grace, and Nigel trudged to a stop beside us with their ladder, and we all stood looking up, and it struck me how
small
the walls were, only about ten or twelve feet, how easily I could slip over them.

What would be waiting for me on the other side?

We were close now. Little red lights flashed along the top of the wall, spaced out every few feet. I'd heard stories about motion sensors and cameras, also laser-guided missiles and automatic machine guns, but had never gotten near enough to investigate.

“We've got to hurry,” I said.

“My man-muscles hurt,” Nigel said. “Can we at least set the ladders
down
?”

“Do you still want to do this?” Zach called.

“I don't know,” Melanie said. She lowered her end of the ladder to the ground; Marty and I followed her lead. She walked up to the wall, touched it, rested her head against it, like she was
praying. Marty took a few steps toward her, but maintained a distance. “I don't know,” she repeated. She reached out, touched Marty's shoulder, even though she didn't subscribe to social conventions that involved touching other people.

“You're sweet,” she said. “I think I like you most of all, but I don't think you like me.”

Before Marty could say anything, the blare of a siren pierced the night.

From somewhere on the wall, a mechanical voice: “Students. Your proximity has been detected. Please step away from the wall immediately and await incoming security personnel.”

“We've got to go,” I said. “Either stay or go.”

Melanie gave Marty a brief kiss on the cheek, and said, loud, “I can't. You're right. Congratulations.” She laughed bitterly. “I don't want to die.”

She turned on her heel and began to run in the direction of the residential quad. Security had to stick to the trails, but we did not. We could make it. Polo Club began to scatter. But Zach cried out: “
Wait.
We need to put the ladders back!
They'll know if we don't.
”

It was too late. The others couldn't hear him, but I did. We exchanged glances. He picked up one end of a ladder and looked at me, begging without saying a word.

“They already know, Zach,” I said. I waved at the red lights. “They probably got it on camera.”

“Help me,” he said simply, without letting go of his end of the ladder.

So I did, even though it was pointless. I picked up the other end and we ran, carrying it to the shed. A dozen feet from the door Zach tripped, dropped his end.

“Fuck,” he said.

He dug it out of the snow and we went on, practically threw it inside the shed, against the nearest wall, but it pitched forward. I grabbed an edge; my grip was awkward. The ladder leaned further, about to fall. Zach's hand caught the other side just in time, and we set it against the wall again, better this time, our breaths coming in gasps.

“The second one,” I said.

“God,” Zach said, and took off for the wall again, me by his side.

Tonight I was faster.

The second ladder wasn't slumped in the snow anymore.

Marty hadn't scattered like the rest. He had righted the ladder by himself, set it against the wall, and now he stood, perched on the top step, looking out beyond Westing.

“Please step away from the wall immediately and await incoming security personnel,” the mechanical voice intoned.

“Marty!” I yelled up at him.

He turned, peered down at me. I knew he was considering whether to stay or to go.

The siren was closer. The security carts revved in the distance, and Marty made his decision.

He descended the steps, jumped to the ground.

Zach had drawn up by now. The three of us ran for the shed, the ladder slippery in our gloved hands. I was in the lead. I kicked open the shed door, took a step, but the ladder hit on something.

Stuck.

“Noah,” Zach said desperately.

“Trying,” I said. “Take a step back.”

We managed to unpry the ladder. Something tumbled to the ground with a terrible clatter, and I had to step over it, but finally we had the ladder inside the shed, finally Marty shut the door.

We heard the security carts.

I shuffled toward a dark corner, bent over, crouched, Marty and Zach following. Hit my head on something hard and saw flecks of light. Someone bumped into me from behind and I nearly fell. We threw ourselves behind some cardboard boxes just as the door squealed open.

Steps scraped against the floor. A flashlight flared.

“They're here,” a man said, and for a moment I thought he meant us, until his flashlight settled on the ladders. “Kind of them to pick up after themselves.”

The steps came closer. A second flashlight beam illuminated a pair of rakes and garden shears five feet from where we sat hunched together.

One of the guards cleared his throat, spit.

“Stupid fucking kids,” a second voice said.

“Ah, they don't know what they're doing,” the first man said. “Prob'ly a prank. 'Member the dumb shit we got into as kids?”

“Stupid fucking kids,” the second voice said. “Didn't even get a good shot of them, all this dark and snow.”

“Nope,” the first man affirmed. Then, “Hey, Jim, you're a poet.”

“Shut the fuck up, Langdon,” Jim said. His voice even closer now, his flashlight drifting over my head. Zach and Marty trembled into me, and I trembled into them. I held someone's hand.

“Let's go back,” Langdon said, and his steps receded. “I want to finish my coffee 'fore it gets too cold.”

Jim let out a sigh, and turned to follow. The door squealed shut, but I held my breath until the security cart engine started up again, before fading into the winter quiet.

I stayed hunched in that corner for a long time.

I stayed hunched in that corner until a pair of hands encircled me. I jumped at the touch, but relaxed into Zach's embrace. He pulled me back, until I was sitting between his legs, his arms wrapped around me.

He set his chin on my shoulder.

He whispered warm breath into my ear: “Thank you for staying.”

A few feet away, Marty sat huddled into himself.

I reached out a hand, and he took it.

“What did you see up there, Martin dear?” I asked, because I didn't want him to feel alone.

Zach's body tensed beneath me.

“Oh,” Marty said. “Just snow.”

This was Polo Club's last night together.

AWAY WE-MAIL

From:
Donovan, D
eidre

Date:
Wed, Jan 17, at 9:27 AM

Subject:
Crime Alert - North Wall Vandalism

To:
[email protected]

Dear Students,

On Wednesday, January 17, at approximately 2:35 a.m., a group of six Westing students were caught on camera attempting to vandalize a section of the north-side wall. The students involved in the incident are wanted for questioning. If you have any information about their identity, please contact the undersigned or call Officer Skorzewski at 802-08-20.

If you observe anyone acting in a suspicious or threatening manner, call the Emergency Response Service by dialing 000 immediately. Remember that security measures are in place for the safety of all students.

Deidre Donovan

Director of Investigations

Department of Campus Safety

Westing Academy

Galloway Hall, 117

*802-08-11

SIX MONTHS BEFORE THE CATACLYSMIC, FIERY, KIND OF CLICHÉD END OF ALL THINGS (OR NOT)

TO DIE WILL BE AN AWFULLY GREAT ADVENTURE

The snow melted, and Zach officially changed his AwayWeGo relationship status to “In a relationship with Addie Myers.”

The campus matched my mood. The flowers hadn't bloomed yet, leaving rolling grounds full of grays and browns, bare-limbed trees and dead leaves preserved by the cold, a perfect setting for the wave of suicides that broke out in early March, eight in one week. The last of them had been Morgan, president of the Believers. Somehow she'd gotten hold of a bottle of sleeping pills.

So much for
The End Time Is Your Time.

That didn't stop the Believers, though.

They had a new president now, and more members. They waited in the academic quad, by the library, the cafeteria, ambushing students with flyers, pins, posing questions like, “Have you ever felt empty inside? Like your life is missing something? Like you needed a direction?” I had been accosted no less than three times, and now I was trying to relax, to concentrate on the ducks gliding across the surface of the lake, but Juan wasn't making that easy. Our reflections in the water reminded me of how much taller he was. Instead of Zach and Polo Club I now had Juan and Marty's play. Today the director had called in sick, so Juan, as assistant director, had assumed the role of hounding me. After rehearsal, he insisted we meet up, the two of us, to work on a scene, “a line, if we're being specific,
yeah?” he said with a sly grin. He waved his bag of Doritos under my nose and implored me to “consider Darwin's ducks.” To “think about Darwin's ducks for a minute or a second or whatever.”

I liked to watch the ducks, to feed them bread crumbs, even though we weren't supposed to. Most of all I liked that they could fly over the walls if they wanted, find ducks other than the ones they were stuck with, fall in and out and in of duck love like normal ducks leading normal duck lives.

“Finches,” I said between chips.

“Huh?”

“Darwin's
finches
.”

“Finches, he says. Whatever, I say. Same point, I say. Strong, most well-adapted survive, weak die. Sure as shit we have
ethics,
right, yeah, I got you, but ethics is a choice, you know? Lots of people, they're not so positive on that choice. Take this on a, umm, fundamental level, Hobbesian natural state of man, zero social contracts, none of that fucking John Locke shit, and we're the exactly same as the ducks.”

I was about to correct him again, but he beat me to it. “Finches. Finches finches finches. Fuck's a
finch,
anyway, you get me?”

“We're not
exactly
like them,” I said. “We waddle less, for one. And—look at that brown and white one.” I pointed. “I'm not
nearly
that good at swimming.”

Juan had the uncanny ability to completely ignore anything you said that he deemed irrelevant. As a result, he made no response whatsoever to 95 percent of what came out of my mouth. So I gave him what he was waiting for. I focused on a duckling trailing his mother and tried the last line of the play again.

“To die will be an awfully great adventure.”

The look on his face told me everything I needed to know about the successfulness of my attempt. He gestured for me to move
closer, but I stayed where I was, so he took a step toward me.

“What I said that night, yeah yeah?” he said, and I could almost feel his hands on my throat again. “Everyone can be killed by someone, no reason, they just fucking snap, like in Camus's
The Stranger,
because it's bright and hot as the devil's nutsack out or something, right? You got me? Well, Peter Pan gets up there and it's, like, an existentialist fuck you to death.” Juan raised two middle fingers to the sky, in the direction of God, I guessed. “Peter Pan's like, you got nothing on me, right? I was born to die.”

He touched a hand to my wrist, so gently it hurt.

I searched Juan's eyes—long and gray. He was almost twenty and healthy, a breed more mythical than unicorns here at Westing. Is that why he cared so much about this one stupid line? Because any moment his luck was bound to run out?

“You never text me back,” he said.

I tried to pull my arm away and he let me.

“I don't know,” I said.

“Well,” he said simply, and I waited for him to go on and on, the usual, but he says, simply, “I've missed you and your lame-ass Kierkegaardian irony.”

I could minimize the hurt.

But maybe he alone wouldn't die.

Maybe I could love him, and he could love me, and I wouldn't have to lose him.

It was a nice thought, so I reached for another Dorito.

I didn't care about rehearsals.

The other actors.

Director, producer, assistant this, lighting that, prop manager.

It was all a blur, a distraction.

I didn't need props.

I didn't even need other people.

Only words, Marty's words.

You could build anything out of words.

They had a
weight
to them.

For the first time, I knew which story was the right one.

Acting was a misnomer. Rather, Noah was the act, and Peter Pan was real. Time bent, compressed, in the weeks leading up to our late-April premiere. The play twisted into my life and my life twisted into the play, as I went over my lines again and again, until they imprinted themselves in me.

While my body sat in my American Revolution classroom listening to how the Battle of Saratoga was the turning point in the war, in my head, I was Peter Pan, in my hospital room with Wendy at my side, flipping through
Game Informer
issues together:

I flipped through
Game Informer
issues with Wendy, pretending not to notice as James, a ten-year-old kid in the quarantine ward along with us, was wheeled away by the doctors through a door on stage left, into a section of the hospital from which children did not emerge while soldiers stood guard over the EXIT on stage right. The doctor, the soldiers, all the adults who passed freely in and out of the building wore masks that rendered them indistinguishable from one another. Only the children had faces.

While my lips pressed against Alice's for the first time in the Galloway gardens and asked her to be my girlfriend, in my head, I was Peter, discussing with Wendy the merits of an unreleased video game called
Spec Ops: Absolution
:

“
Spec Ops: Absolution
has a level where you infiltrate a theater as a bartender and get these terrorists who've taken it hostage drunk
so you can take them out one by one by when they go to puke in the bathroom,” I said.

“You're lying,” Wendy said, rolling her eyes. “No video game yet made is that awesome.”

“It is too that awesome,” I said, defensive.

Later, we found a message from James hidden in one of the
Game Informer
issues.

“Cool story, bro,” I said, to hide the fact that I believed James a little.

Wendy punched me in the shoulder.

“Ow!”

Standing in line in the cafeteria waiting for a sandwich I knew I would hate, I was Peter, pulling a blanket over my and Wendy's heads, spilling Skittles into her hands:

I pulled a blanket over our heads, spilled Skittles into her hands.

“Let's fight the Triumvirate,” I said.

“Cool story, bro,” she said.

“It's two thirty-three,” I said, as if to counter.

“Well, when you put it that way.”

The next night at two thirty-three in the morning we became superheroes, battling the League of Tyranny in cities ranging from Tokyo to Madrid. The night after that, we were explorers who'd discovered a new continent, populated by a hostile race of lizard people. Wendy didn't mention my deteriorating vision, that I'd begun
stumbling into furniture, and I didn't mention her graying hair, the bald patches that had appeared in several spots on her head.

Afterward, she scrunched her face. “Lizard people? That's like a bad sci fi movie. What were we thinking?”

“Bad sci fi movies are the best movies,” I said, with great seriousness.

Again and again, we escaped into other worlds, all of which, we decided, were part of a universe called:

“The Other-verse,”
I proposed.

“That's dumb,” Wendy decided.

“The Vortex?”

“Dumb.”

“The Corridor of Doors to Really Cool Worlds.”

“Oh my God,” Wendy said. “Stop talking.” She shoved some Skittles into my mouth, and I laughed, pulled the blanket tighter over the two of us. By the end of the night we settled on Neverland, standing in for all places we could never go.

During a party in which I made out with three boys and one androgynous girl who had close-cropped hair and a firm grip that left red marks on my chin, I was Peter, sitting on an examination room table, waiting for my diagnosis:

I sat on an examination room table with my shirt off as a doctor with a mechanical voice intoned, “There's no easy way to say this, Peter. But it would be best for you to prepare yourself for the likelihood of losing your vision. It might also be time to consider a transfer to a different section of the hospital. A section for more, ah, advanced cases.”

The day after the party, when Alice broke up with me and I punched a wall out of self-loathing, I was Peter, and the whole stage had fallen into shadow, all except for me, sitting half naked on the examination table:

I sat half naked on the examination table, spot lit, feeling the cold weight of the doctor's diagnosis.

For half a minute, I did not move.

Eventually, the lights dimmed, and I, too, fell into shadow.

The day Alice and I made up, when I bought Alice a cupcake on which the icing spelled SRY and she ate the S and R, leaving a cupcake that demanded “Y,” I was Peter, and the stage had lit up for the play's final scene:

I whispered into Wendy's ear that I wanted to go to Neverland forever.

“Don't say that,” she said.

“I do,” I maintained. “They're going to take me away. They told me.”

She understood.

“Peter,” she said.

My name, just my name, nothing else.

I couldn't eat for a day and a half before opening night, it made me weak, but it was also reassuring, because feeling pain was better than feeling empty. I wandered the campus in a daze, and as I did, I was Peter, leaning forward, touching my forehead to Wendy's, my way of saying good-bye before rising from my hospital bed to depart to Neverland:

I rose from my hospital bed, and she rose, too, but she was confused. I took a step outside our room, into the corridor, toward the guards and she understood now, I could see her struggling with herself, “I can go alone,” I said, and she punched me, “Don't be stupid, Peter,” her hand fit neatly into mine, and she pulled me toward the guards with their guns, standing between us and all the places we would never get to go. We ran toward the soldiers, toward the door that we knew led outside, and the soldiers drew their weapons, but we were under our blanket, under the cover of Neverland, we had
eaten Skittles in the night and touched forehead to forehead, they couldn't stop us, the soldiers took aim and this was when I said my line: “To die will be an awfully great adventure.”

And then everything went dark.

In that darkness, Skittles pattered onto the floor.

The time on the wall read 2:33 in the morning.

The play got a standing ovation, but as I took my bow I was Noah again; that felt like the real tragedy.

That night, everyone who worked on the play, everyone except Marty, got together in Juan's lakeside apartment.

Juan uncorked a bottle of champagne, met my eye, and, saluting me with the bottle, said, “To great adventures.”

“To great adventures!” a girl named Lizzie cried; I didn't know what her contribution to the play had been. In fact, I barely knew any of the people who kept clapping me on the shoulder, smiling at me. A guy with puffy sideburns said, “Do you need some crutches?”

“Huh?”

“Because you totally broke a leg out there, man.”

Juan circled the room, refilling glasses, refilling my glass. Once the champagne was gone, people began to disperse—Friday night: parties, dances, places to go, no time to linger, no time to dawdle—until only Juan and I were left. He hugged me. He smelled like salt, his shirt was wet. He spoke in my ear. “That line, Noah. Fucking finches, yeah? You nailed the shit out of it.”

“Oh, I know.”

He rolled his eyes. “Come out tonight, Noah. Let's celebrate. Let me be your Wendy. Say yes. Just say yes. Yes yes yes yes yes.”

That's when I noticed he was trembling.

“Are you okay?” I asked. He seemed off—in a rush, somehow,
though we had nowhere to rush to. It was still fairly early, only midnight.

“Fantastic, if you say yes. Don't be difficult, Noah. It doesn't have to be difficult. Just say yes, yeah?”

I guess I nodded, because he kissed me on the cheek and went off to change. I lowered myself into an armchair in his living room to wait. He returned a few minutes later in a new T-shirt, ruffled my hair, and said, “Come on.” We traveled through the Friday night together, the sounds of partying all around—laughter and AwayWeTune music tumbling out of windows and from beyond closed doors. Groups of students hurried by, whistled at Juan's arm around my waist. We found our way to the residential quad, glowing in the lamplight, then to a suite belonging to some friends of Juan in Turner House. The door opened, revealing a press of people packed in the common room, everyone talking, smoke trailing from cigarettes and spliffs. A guy next to me raised a shot glass and made an unheard toast. A girl flicked him in the ear and he spilled some alcohol on his pants, flicked her back.