Going Bovine (49 page)

“Can I help you?” Behind me is a shack. The Magic Screw Guy Boat Repair. The man at the counter holds out his hands as if to say, I don’t have all day, pal. His hat reads KEITH.

“I said, can I help you?”

“You already did,” I say, and dart for the next door.

I keep running, trying doors. In one, Eubie’s onstage in New Orleans drumming for Junior Webster; in another, he’s playing Junior’s albums and guiding college kids toward good music in his shop. The Copenhagen Interpretation plays a futuristic, Tomorrowland-worthy palace in a sky where three moons shine, and you know, the acoustics are really good. I see the busy streets of New Orleans and the quiet peace of the graveyards. I see people coming and going from the Wishing Tree, pinning their hopes to it so it’s always in bloom. In another, Gonzo and Justin ride a coaster together. When it plunges, they raise their arms and scream in happiness. I walk through all kinds of landscapes. Past. Present. Future. Alternatives. At first, I try hard to figure out what’s real and what’s not. But after a while, it doesn’t matter anymore.

Door after door after door. I open one and am surrounded by the sight of gases twirling, stars swirling. Something fires and the whole thing is set in motion. A universe is being born. It’s so cool. It’s a thing that should be shared. I wish Dulcie were here to see it.

“Cool, huh?” It’s the wizard. I know that without even looking.

“Yeah,” I say.

The room falls away and we’re in that corridor again, but it looks different. It’s still really white, but the ceiling is lower. It has spongy acoustic tiles. I hear the beep of the heart monitor, the whirr of a respirator.

“You’re out of doors, Cameron.”

Just like that, we’re back in the room by the desk. There’s nothing on it now but the Wizard of Reckoning holding the angel snow globe.

“Any last words?”

I shrug. “Only what I’ve already said.”

“Oh right. ‘To live is to love, to love is to live.’ That’s your great insight?”

“Yeah.”

He starts laughing. It’s really weird to watch yourself laugh. Like I never knew my mouth went up higher on one side. “Oh, Cameron! Dude. That is soooo lame.”

“Yeah.” I’m laughing, too, because really, the whole thing strikes me as hilarious all of a sudden.

“Come on, buddy. You’re not exiting stage left on that, are you? Give me something else—‘And don’t forget my soda, punk.’ Something.”

“Sorry,” I giggle. “That’s all I got.”

The me who’s the Wizard of Reckoning sets his mouth in a grim line. “That’s too bad. ’Cause you’re gonna die.”

I stop laughing. “Yeah. I know.”

“There’s nothing else.”

Nothing else.

“Meep-meep! That’s all for now, kids,” the wizard taunts.

Nothing else. Nothing.

“Time to say goodbye.”

Nothing else. Isn’t that what Junior said back in New Orleans? Man, that seems so long ago. You take this horn and someday, when you gotta, when there’s nothin’ else, you play it.

I try to run for my backpack and fall flat on my stomach. My legs have stopped working. So I crawl. Every inch is an exercise in will and pain.

“Oh, Cameron. Crawling? Dude, that’s an icky way to go out.”

Backpack. Just need to reach my backpack.

“Here comes the big bad coyote!”

Fingers are so stiff. Shit. Not now. Please not now. Fumble with the zipper.

“Owoooooeeeeee!” the wizard howls.

Zipper’s open. Reach in. Feel the cold metal. It’s in my hands.

“Hey. Whaddaya got there, buddy?”

“Just this.” I raise Junior Webster’s horn and blow for all I’m worth.

Nothing.

I hear nothing.

The Wizard of Reckoning chuckles, then stops. “Hey, I heard that. B-flat. Hey …” He’s starting to fold in on himself, everything disappearing, pulling in. Just before his face crumbles, he looks right at me. “Well, shit.”

All at once, the snow globes shatter. The water rises and I’m caught in it. It pushes me along, down that hallway, toward one last door. My face is reflected in the knob, all distorted. I open it wide and step in.

The ocean. A house. And there’s the old lady in her garden. She looks up briefly, nods, and goes right back to planting her garden. So I go on in the house. Walk upstairs. It smells sweet. There’s lily of the valley in a jar on the dresser. And the window looks out on the ocean, where the sun and its shadow hang low in the sky. The bed’s been turned down, and I realize I’m really tired. But a good tired, like I’ve spent all day at the beach. The sheets are cool and welcoming as I slip in.

It’s like everything is slowing down inside me. Beep. Beep. Whirr. Whirr. The ceiling. White like the moon. Like snow with all its words. The angel picture on the wall.

Beep. Whirr.

Mom, Dad, and Jenna are gathered around me. Glory steps over to the respirator and flicks a switch. She turns off the EKG and the heart monitor, too, flipping switches till the room is perfectly quiet. I’m sort of floating here. It’s not bad. It’s not anything, really.

Mom and Dad each take one of my hands. Jenna sits beside me. Everything slows. The room gets darker, and I feel like I’m being pulled toward something I can’t see. Things streak past me. Stars. Gases. Satellites. Whole planets wobble and careen away. Universes, too. It makes me feel vast and impossibly small at the same time. Connected.

Just before the room falls completely away, Glory puts a hand over my eyes and just like that, the world disappears.

CHAPTER ONE

Wherein …

I know two things for sure.

1. I’m floating.

And 2. It’s really fucking dark. No, really, man. You have no idea.

I’m trying to be okay with it. Really, I am. But frankly, it’s freaking me out. Plus, it’s boring. I hope this isn’t the whole package, because jeez, I’ll have to learn a craft or something to keep from going mental.

There’s a soft sound coming from up ahead, and just the faintest light, like an old TV being turned on and warming up. The light reaches me enough so that I can see I’m in a boat on a river.

I hear singing. I know that song.

The boat floats out of the darkness, and I start laughing. The Bollywood puppets are singing to me. It’s a world of laughter, a world of tears. Up ahead, I can see her for real, whatever that means. In her torn fishnets and black combat boots, she’s hanging with the fishing Inuit boy.

“Hey, cowboy,” she calls, waving from the snowy white shore. Her wings have been spray-painted with Buddha cows. They look awesome. “Thanks for showing up. What took you so long?”

“Took a detour, princess!” It’s getting brighter.

She dances a little jig. “This would make a hell of a TV show, huh?”

“Yeah. But no one would believe it.” I should let it go. But it’s like the hole, like the door, and I have to know. Or at least, I have to ask. “Hey, Dulcie, was any of that real?”

She finishes her dance and the wings come to rest. “Who’s to say what’s real or not?”

“Yeah, but—my barometer on reality, not so good since I started going crazy.”

“Yeah, well, who but the mad would choose to keep on living? In the end, aren’t we all just a little crazy?”

“So. This place,” I say, whistling.

“Yeah. It’s a great ride, isn’t it?” she says wistfully while the Inuit boy pulls the same fish from the hole, puts it back, pulls it up again, smiling the whole while.

“You know what? It really is. Definitely E-ticket.”

She brushes my hair off my forehead with those soft fingers. “Wanna go again?”

“Maybe.”

I’m not really thinking about that, about what happens next, or if anything does. All I know is what I’m feeling right now. I want to kiss Dulcie. After that, I don’t know.

“What are you thinking about?” she says, laughing.

I smile. “Nothing.”

“Good. I like ’em big and stupid.”

The boat drifts to the glittering plastic shore of its own accord. I take her hand and step onto the snowbank. It’s cold against my feet, and when I reach down, the snow comes up in my fingers icy and wet.

“Awesome,” I murmur, scooping it up. It’s so bright it hurts my eyes. There’s a splashing sound. The fish on the end of the hook is struggling against its fate. The Inuit boy laughs and throws him back in the hole.

Dulcie bumps me with her shoulder. “Hey.”

“Hey, yourself,” I say, bumping her back.

She opens her wings and takes me in. The song plays on and the lights are so bright they seem to be alive. Dulcie parts her lips to kiss me and there’s music. It’s a note in an octave I’ve never heard before but that I somehow know has always been there. A note of endings, of beginnings. A note you have to be ready to hear.

“You ready?” she asks.

“Sure.”

“Are you really?”

“No,” I say. “Not at all.”

She grins wide then. It’s like the sky can’t take anymore and it explodes, all particles and partner-particles and per-hapsatrons, something new being born—a whole universe of yes and no and why the hell not? Sparks fly out past us, a zooming show of charged light that catches Dulcie’s face in midlaugh.

And there’s nothing to say but wow. Wow. The same word backward and forward.

Dulcie sighs in happiness. “That’s always my favorite part.”

And I can see why.

about the author

LIBBA BRAY is the author of the New York Times bestselling Gemma Doyle Trilogy, which comprises the novels A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, and The Sweet Far Thing. She has written short stories about everything from Cheap Trick concerts to The Rocky Horror Picture Show devotees to meeting Satan worshippers on summer vacation. Libba lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, son, and two cats. Her dream is to stop sucking so badly at drums in Rock Band. You may visit her at www.libbabray.com and you don’t even have to call first.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2009 by Martha E. Bray

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bray, Libba.

Going bovine / Libba Bray.—1st ed.

p. cm.

Summary: Cameron Smith, a disaffected sixteen-year-old who, after being diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob’s (aka mad cow) disease, sets off on a road trip with a death-obsessed video gaming dwarf he meets in the hospital in an attempt

to find a cure.

eISBN: 978-0-375-89376-6

[1. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease—Fiction. 2. Mad cow disease—Fiction. 3. Dwarfs—Fiction. 4. People with disabilities—Fiction. 5. Automobile travel—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.B7386Go 2009

[Fic]—dc22 2008043774

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