Breath (27 page)

“Xander Atwood!”

He knew he was in trouble when his mom bellowed his last name along with his first, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Ashley was dead, Riley wasn’t returning his texts, and he’d been schmoozing with Death. He had enough on his plate already; he just couldn’t be bothered to think about his mom. Who was now shouting:

“Have you been drinking?”

Sort of rhetorical, given the empty cans littering the table.

His mother hissed in a breath, and he realized he’d said his thought out loud. Oops.

“Oh my God,” his mom proclaimed, “you’re
drunk!
”

He muttered, “’Course not. Only had three beers.” It took a good five or so to get him plastered.

“Son,” his dad said in a very fatherly voice, “I think you should go to bed.”

So Dad was good cop for the night. Okay, Xander knew how to play that game. He grinned up at his father. “Sure, Dad. Just wanna finish this episode first.”

“I said you should go to bed,” his dad replied, sounding less and less like the good cop. “Now.”

“Jeez. Keep your voice down,” Xander said, wincing. “You wanna wake the baby?”

His mother and father exchanged a look.

“The baby,” his dad repeated.

“Uh, hello? Lex?” When his parents just stared at him, he said, “You know, the screaming ball of joy currently inhabiting the crib in the nursery?”

His dad said, “Son . . .”

Xander rolled his eyes. “Man, you two go out on a dinner date, you forget about all your responsibilities. Nice. Very role modelish.”

“You’re drunk,” his mother snapped.

“Yeah, you already said that.”

She bared her teeth. She had very white teeth. “Go. To. Bed.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Xander started to pull himself off the sofa, but his father yanked him up by his shirt collar and got right in his face.

“You don’t talk to your mother like that!” his dad snarled. “I don’t give a damn if you’re drunk or not, but you will speak to your mother
with respect!
”

Xander squirmed out of his father’s grip. “Fine!” He barreled past his mom and out of the den. Jesus, his parents were so uptight! He stomped down the hallway, not caring if he woke the baby. That would serve his parents right. Let them calm their precious baby Lex, get him to stop screaming and go back to sleep.

A sound, like a screech of tires.

Xander slammed his bedroom door behind him and flung himself onto his bed. He heard his parents arguing—man, they really didn’t give a crap if they woke Lex—and he felt only a little guilty that they were shouting at each other about him. The walls were thin, and his parents were loud, so he was able to get the gist of it, even with his door closed. There was a lot of backing and forthing, but it all came back to his one-hit wonder, the gift that kept on giving: He’d screwed up with Carnegie Mellon.

Well, yeah. Reneging on early acceptance wasn’t something he’d recommend.

The room had started spinning, so he shoved his pillow over his head.

As he began to doze, one thought pecked at him like the proverbial early bird hunting for the elusive worm: He didn’t remember telling his parents about how he’d changed his college plans without their consent. He must have, because why else would they be shouting about it now? So they must also know about Stanford.

Which was why he couldn’t understand why his mother was sobbing over how he’d thrown his life away.

Whatever. He’d worry about it tomorrow.

In his pocket, his lucky penny waited.

***

Xander woke in the middle of the night, startled and disoriented. He could have sworn that Lex was crying, but as he listened, the only sound he heard was his own frantic breathing.

Xander stared at the digital clock on his nightstand, then he burrowed under the blanket and tried to go back to sleep. No good; he just couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was crying.

Uneasy, he yanked the blanket back down. He listened again, thinking that he’d hear his mom go into Lex’s room for her nightly calm-the-baby motions, but he didn’t hear a thing.

In the apartment, no one moved.

His head began to hurt, a steady, almost rhythmic throb in his temples. Xander stumbled out of bed and into the bathroom, where he popped two aspirin and washed them down with a few handfuls of water. He looked at himself in the mirror, stared at his dark reflection there in the unlit room, and told himself to get a grip. It was oh-my-god o’clock in the morning, and he had to get his butt back to bed. Tomorrow was a school day.

Tomorrow was
the
day.

He’d see Riley and find out why he hadn’t gotten a return text. It was probably nothing—maybe Riley’s phone had run out of juice—but part of Xander wouldn’t rest easy until he knew for certain that everything was fine.

Everything was fine.

And he’d also find out why Ted and Suzie and Izzy were acting so weird around him; ever since Marcie’s party—

(open your eyes, Zan)

—the three of them had been off-center. Different. If Xander didn’t know better, he’d almost think they were talking about him behind his back. Something had changed. He just didn’t know what.

He walked out of the bathroom and paused outside the nursery. It was painfully quiet.

Deathly quiet.

(today’s the day the world ends)

Xander blinked as the thought triggered a memory—no, a dream from last night. He had been standing on the balcony, trying to talk Death off the railing. Or something like that. It was a little fuzzy now. Maybe he’d remember it come morning.

He had a sudden, overwhelming urge to see Lex, to brush his fingertips across the baby’s cheek, just a soft touch to let Lex know that his big brother was there and all was right with the world.

Xander opened the nursery door and stuck his head inside.

And he saw a storage room.

He blinked and blinked again, and then he felt panic welling up inside him as the nursery firmly remained a storage room. No changing table atop a bureau; no rocker-glider. No nightstand with a lamp and his mother’s paperback novel lying dog-eared and well worn.

No crib.

Xander must have cried out, because his parents’ bedroom door flung open and his mother came crashing into the hallway.

“Zan?” she said, sounding frantic. “What’s wrong?”

“Where’s the baby?” he shouted. “What happened to Lex?”

His mother stared at him, wide-eyed, mouth gaping, and then she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Xander. Honey. You’re having a nightmare.”

“Lex is gone!” he shrieked, flailing his arms. “What happened to my brother?”

“Xander! Listen to me!” His mom grabbed his shoulders and pressed down, something she used to do when he was a kid and having a tantrum; now, as then, it automatically quieted him. “It’s just a bad dream!”

He whispered, “Where’s the baby?”

“Xander,” his mother said. “Son. Open your eyes.”

(open your eyes, Zan)

“Look,” his mother said, pivoting him until he was right in front of the room that was supposed to be a nursery. His mouth worked silently as he looked at the piles of boxes and storage bins gathered haphazardly on the floor. In the back corner, shadows gathered until they pulled into the shape of a man, reaching for him—

***

—and the shadow reaches for him and he knows that when the shadow touches him that’s the end of everything and so he screams again—

***

and Xander screamed and stumbled backward.

“Xander,” his mother said firmly, her hand pressing down on his shoulder. “It’s just a dream. Look, Son. Look.”

(open your eyes)

So he looked, and he saw shadows, only shadows. There was one man in the apartment, and that man was still fast asleep in his parents’ bedroom, because nothing short of a nuclear blast could wake his father.

His brother was gone.

“Son,” said his mother. “This is just a bad dream. Go back to bed now. Time for a good dream, Xander.”

“It’s only fair,” he said, remembering the promise from his childhood: After the bad dreams came the good, because that was only fair.

His mother nodded and steered him back to his bedroom, then she rose up on her toes to kiss his forehead. “Good night, Zan.”

Feeling lost and so very small, Xander said good night and shut his bedroom door. He threw himself into bed and waited for sleep to come.

It didn’t.

Xander shoved his pillow over his head and made himself remember holding Lex—his fragile baby brother, with the soft spot on his head that still hadn’t closed.

Except Lex was gone, erased as if he’d never been.

Xander was losing his mind.

He turned on his table lamp and grabbed the spiral sketchbook and pencil that waited on the nightstand. He had to get the images out of his head and onto paper; maybe then he’d be able to get some sleep. But when he tried to draw, his hand shook so badly that he couldn’t keep the pencil point from dancing on the paper’s surface.

Disgusted, he tossed the sketchbook onto his nightstand. It landed with an indifferent thud. The pencil missed the table completely and disappeared somewhere on the floor.

He settled into his bed and pulled his covers high. Aloud he said, “Time for a good dream.”

Sleep was a long time coming.

When it finally did, Xander didn’t dream.

***

It was the beep that woke him—shriller than an alarm clock, more insistent than a fire alarm. It was a sound that resonated through him, that was part of him, a sound he couldn’t ignore or tune out. It called to him, beckoning, and he had no choice but to answer.

Xander opened his eyes.

He was in bed yet not in bed; he couldn’t understand it, other than he had to be waking in a dream. He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, and he listened, waiting.

Beep.

He looked around, trying to determine from where the sound had sprung. There, on his nightstand, his sketchbook lay discarded, abandoned; beside it, his alarm clock was silent. Next to his clock, a pile of coins glittered—his change, emptied from his pockets. Farther down, his overflowing bookshelves threatened to spew paperbacks onto his carpet—works by Kurt Vonnegut and Spalding Gray and Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett and Piers Anthony and Tom Stoppard and so many others, stories that had captured him and taken him far, far away, whether they were true stories or only mostly true or not true at all. There was his desk, with his computer and cell phone and philosophy textbook, buried somewhere amid the mound of drawings and papers and sticky notes. On various shelves, framed pictures winked, showing him and Ted, him and Suzie and Izzy, him and his parents—fragments of his life captured forever in a moment, frozen. Around him, the walls were decorated with fantasyland maps and Escher’s Möbius ants and, in the center, the two blue nudes: the enraged Matisse and despairing Picasso. So many other things that defined him and yet were just trinkets, trifles. Things.

Muffled, yet adamant:
Beep.

It came from outside his room.

Xander stood up and wondered only for a moment why he was wearing his blue button-up shirt, the one that made the blue in his eyes really pop, as well as his jeans and sneakers, but he had more important things to do—specifically, he had to find out what was causing that sound.

He walked out of his room . . .

. . . and into his philosophy and film studies class. He stood in the doorway, blinking, and he said, “What? What? What?”

“The late Mr. Atwood,” said Ms. Lewis, shaking her head. “At this rate, you’ll be late for your own funeral.”

As if in a dream, he slid into his seat next to Ted and replied, “Wouldn’t you want to be?”

Ms. Lewis sighed loudly, then turned her back to finish writing on the board.

“You’re only half as clever as you think you are,” Ted murmured.

“Which is still twice as clever as you.”

“Ouch. You practice that comeback as much as you practice smiling in front of a mirror?”

Xander should have known it was a mistake to share that tidbit with Ted.

“Seriously,” Ted whispered, “why bother? If Riley hasn’t noticed you by now, it’s not gonna happen. Let it go.”

“It’s good to have goals,” Xander said, and then he frowned. Something wasn’t right. He was dating Riley—had been with Riley for two months at this point. He and Riley were in love. Everything was fine.

Everything was fine.

He listened to Ms. Lewis pitch the upcoming school musical, read her comments on his report about
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,
and listened again as she explained the theory behind solipsism.

As Ms. Lewis got the DVD of
The Truman Show
set up, Xander distinctly felt a sense of déjà vu.

The lights went off, and he heard it, even over the swell of background music, rising, building until the sound carried like a scream:

Beep.

It came from outside the classroom.

Xander rose from his seat. When Ms. Lewis didn’t stop him, he headed toward the door. His fingers over the doorknob, he paused and looked back. No one noticed that he’d left his seat, or if they did, they weren’t commenting about it or trying to stop him.

Déjà vu gave way to fear.

That was foolish, he told himself. There was nothing to be afraid of. Everything was fine.

No, he couldn’t quite convince himself that everything was fine, but even so, he opened the classroom door and took a step . . .

. . . and grabbed a paintbrush. “Light adds depth to colors,” he said to Suzie. “It changes them, sometimes subtly, sometimes drastically.” He squeezed raw umber onto his palette and added a few streaks over Suzie’s patches of brown. “See?”

Suzie complained that he was being finicky, and he replied that details matter, especially the small ones. He led her around to his section of the prop tree, and he showed her where he’d painted a few objects into the bark: War’s sword, gleaming brightly; Pestilence’s silver crown; Famine’s scales.

Around them, hundreds of coins winked.

In Xander’s pocket, his penny weighed a thousand pounds.