Over My Head (Wildlings) (34 page)

I look around the foyer again.

You have got to be shitting me. This is
my
place?

I rub a hand across my head, looking for the bump I must have gotten when I banged my head and lost my memory.

There's nothing there. Just my head, the stubble telling me it's due for a shave.

So I didn't smash my head. But this doesn't make a lick of sense. I know I'm a member of the Ocean Avers. That my brother runs the gang. That my grandma lives in the Orchards, in a little clapboard house with next to no yard, and an asshole next door whose lane is so full of car parts you have to walk across the dirt of his front yard to reach the door.

So where does this place fit in? How did I get here?

And who the hell is Mrs. Washington?

Besides the stairs going up to a second floor, a large archway on my right leads into a fancy living room that's just as unfamiliar as everything else. Past the stairway and the grandfather clock, a corridor runs off deeper into the house. On the other side of the archway is a closed wooden door, beautifully carved with mythical creatures.

I walk over and try the knob. The door opens into a movie geek's wet dream. It's like a miniature movie theatre with a couple of rows of big plush chairs facing a screen that takes up almost the entire wall. There's a wet bar in the corner with a phone on the gleaming bar top. An answering machine sits beside the phone with a blinking red light.

When I push Play, a familiar voice comes from the little speaker.

"Hey, honey," Marina says. "I'm running a little late. If I'm not back by five, could you heat the oven to three-fifty and put in the enchiladas that Rosa Maria said she'd leave in the fridge? Love ya."

Click. The message is over.

I push Play and listen to it again while I look behind the bar at the rows of liquor bottles. I just might have to break my own rules and have a stiff drink because this is starting to freak me out now.

Marina Lopez
is Mrs. Washington?

Why don't
I
know that?

I turn away from the bar and that's when I see the guy sitting in the front row of those big plush chairs, head back on the seat, staring up at the blank screen like he's watching a movie. He wasn't there when I first came in, and he doesn't turn around as I walk down to the front of the chairs. I get an uneasy prickle in the nape of my neck when I can finally see his face. He waits until I'm standing right in front of him before he winks and tips a finger against his brow.

"I know you," I say.

And I do. I just can't remember from where, or even what his name is.

"Of course you do," he says.

I wait, but he doesn't go on. He just sits there, checking me out with this mild gaze that doesn't fool me for a minute. He's not big and he's at a disadvantage, sitting while I'm standing up. Under normal circumstances, I'm pretty sure I could take him, no problem. But there's an intensity about him like a coiled spring that, when it snaps, snaps hard.

I need to know more about him. Who he is, why he's here.

And more important, if he can explain how
I
got here.

"I can't remember your name," I say.

"That happens."

"Or how we met."

He nods. "That, too."

He's not going to make this easy. I feel like pulling him up by the front of his shirt and slapping some answers out of him. Except that's what J-Dog would do. Me, I can be reasonable for as long as it takes. Unless he pulls a gun or takes a swing at me. Then all bets are off.

So I smile and nod right back at him.

"I was hoping maybe you could help me out with that," I say.

His gaze settles on mine.

"What's the last thing you
do
remember?" he asks.

"That's easy. I …"

My voice trails off because I've got nothing. I know all kinds of things. I know my own name. Where I came from, how I grew up, the school I go to, though I don't so much attend classes as sit outside on a picnic table and let the days go by.

But an actual incident? A real memory of something I did?

I guess it shows on my face.

"Yeah," he says. "I thought as much."

I take a breath to steady the unfamiliar jolt of anxiety that's flooding me.

"You know what's going on, right?" I say.

"I do."

"So tell me."

He nods, but he doesn't say anything for a long moment. I keep studying his face. I'm sure I know him, but I still can't figure out from where.

"Normally," he says finally, "we're supposed to ease into this kind of thing. Go too fast and the mind can get so messed up it might never come back. But we're already a couple of steps behind as it is. We don't have the luxury of taking our time to work this through."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"I know. And maybe you never will. But let's give it a shot anyway."

"Any chance you could start talking English?"

"Do you trust me?" he asks.

I shake my head, but the thing is, I kind of do. I don't know why.

He stands up and waves to the chairs. "Grab yourself a seat."

"I'll just stand, if it's all the same to you."

"If you want my help, you'll sit."

With him on his feet, I still tower over him. My sitting will put him at the advantage and that's not how I roll. The first thing you learn on the street, in school, in juvie: never give up an advantage, no matter how small.

He folds his arms and waits.

"Just tell me what's going on," I say.

He shakes his head. "It doesn't work that way."

I want to argue, but I can tell he's got no give in this. If I want answers, I have to play it his way.

So I sit. Reluctantly—and I make sure he knows it—but I sit.

"Now what?" I ask.

He leans a hand on my armrest so that his head's close to mine.

"This is either going to hurt for a moment," he says, "or it'll hurt forever."

"What are you—"

I don't even see where the knife comes from before it's in his free hand. I start to ward off the blow, but I'm way too slow.

The blade punches into my skull, right between my eyes.

My head explodes with white light and pain.

When the black wave comes rolling over me I sink into it with relief.

Josh

It's funny, the things that go through your head when the guy who's going to kill you is looking you right in the eye. Vincenzo's about to snap my neck like he did with Tomás, and all I can think about is hanging in Des's garage one afternoon and him insisting we should each make out a bucket list—write down all the things we want to do before we die.

"Yeah, yeah, dude," he said. "I get it. All things considered, we've got years to go. But you see all those guys at school with no direction and we know where they're going to end up. That's not going to be us. If we've got something to shoot for, we've got a shot of making something out of our lives." He grinned. "Or at least we'll have a damn good time trying."

So we made out our lists. Goofy, typical stuff.

Lose my virginity. Check.

Jam with The Wild Surf. A half-check there, because at least I did get to meet them.

Win the X Games in L.A. and get a bunch of product endorsements. Des has at least come close, winning a few local comps, though no one's throwing money at him yet.

But most things are still sitting there on those lists.

The headline tour. Except we still haven't even had our first gig. The band doesn't even have a name.

Backpack through Europe.

Go to Hawaii and surf with Marina—or at least, go along to lend her moral support because those waves would kill me.

Make it to the Olympics like Shaun White.

Wrestle a kangaroo in Australia. Okay, that was Des's, but he made me put it on my list, too.

It went on, some serious, some just a couple of guys taking the piss out of each other. The wilder those lists got, the harder we laughed.

We managed to fill a couple of pages. A lot of the stuff was never going to happen, but the possibility was always there.

Except not anymore. Not for me.

Vincenzo is saying something to me, but I can't even hear him. I just want this to be over with. I look anywhere but at him. Movement catches my eye overhead and I track a red-tailed hawk until it's out of sight. It makes me think of
los tíos
.

Boy, did they make the wrong call about me.

If that hawk's one of
los tíos
, he's probably flying back to the others to tell them that whatever they thought they'd seen in me wasn't there, and they'd better get back to looking for someone else.

Vincenzo gives me another shake and I realize he's been telling me to change back to my human shape. That suits me just fine. I'd rather die the way I came into this world. The only thing being a Wildling has ever done is bring me grief.

As soon as I change, he throws me onto the ground. I can hardly think straight—but even if I'd had plans to get away, I'd never pull one of them off because he's on me as soon as I'm down. His bare foot presses down on my chest—not hard enough to crush it, but hard enough so that I can't grab a real breath or get out from under it.

"This is better," Vincenzo says. "It will be so much more satisfying to kill you when you look like what you really are: a five-fingered
pretender
."

Past his face I see that damn hawk is back, circling directly above us like a vulture waiting on his dinner. I wish it would either fly down and save the day, or screw off and leave me alone. The way it is, it looks too much like a big fat "I told you so." Because I can remember another hawk in the barrio, warning me off when I went to follow Vincenzo—back before I even knew who he was.

So yeah. I get it already. I'm an idiot.

The stupid bird doesn't have to hang around up there to keep reminding me.

Vincenzo bends down closer to me.

"I could lie," he says, his hands reaching to grab either side of my head, "but we both know I'm going to enjoy this."

If he wasn't so damn strong. If I wasn't so helpless …

That hawk up there reminds me of something Tío Goyo told me the first time we met.

You are only as weak as you think you are. Expect to be defeated and you will be.

It just pops into my head and I think, what the hell. Sure, it sounds like what Chaingang said it was—fortune cookie advice—but that doesn't mean it's wrong. I may not be what everybody thinks I am, but I'm better than the loser who just gives up. I'm fast and I'm strong. These Thunders—whoever they are—made me what I am for a reason. I'm guessing that reason isn't to simply die here.

I catch hold of Vincenzo's hands before they can grab me.

He laughs and pushes down harder with his foot. I can feel my ribs cracking under the pressure.

But then I let the mountain lion free.

Marina

It seems like we've been here forever, Des and I, sitting on either side of Theo, too scared to even lift his head to pillow it in case it makes things worse. Auntie Min stands with her back to us, arms folded, her gaze on the far horizon of the Pacific. Tomás's body lies where it fell, unchanged except that Auntie Min laid her scarf over his face after she talked to us.

I turn to Des. "How long has Cory been gone?"

I can't get my head around the fact that Cory's supposed to be literally inside Theo's head—or at least inside his dreams. Except how is that even possible? I know we saw him touch Theo's brow and then disappear, but it doesn't make any sense. Cory's not a big guy, but how can
anything
physical go into a person's head without, you know, severe physical damage?

Des looks at his watch. "Since it's only been a minute since the last time you asked, it's now sixteen minutes."

"Thanks."

I smooth my hand across Theo's brow.

"If he's not back in another ten minutes," I say, "I don't care what anybody thinks. I'm calling an ambulance. They can airlift him out of here and have him in the hospital in about—"

"No." It's loud enough to echo off the rocks.

Auntie Min has turned around to fix us with her gaze. Something changed in her after Tomás died and everything else that's happened. That calm, wise energy she's always given off seems really tired now, and there's a deep anger inside that's a little scary. But I'm too worried about Theo to let it intimidate me.

"This is serious," I tell her. "It's not something that can be fixed with hocus pocus."

"I understand your concern," she says, "but if you move Theo before Cory returns, we might not get either of them back."

"I don't understand.
How
can he be inside Theo's head?"

"He's not. Cory's walking with him in the dreamlands."

"In his head."

Auntie Min sighs and shakes her head. Then she comes over to where we are and sits on her haunches near Theo's feet.

"The dreamlands are a physical place," she says. "The five-fingered beings usually access it only with their spirits—when they dream. We cousins can access it more freely, though some of us—like Cory—can do it with greater ease."

"You mean its in the otherworld?"

She nods. "But they lie much deeper. The otherworld you visited can be accessed by anyone, once they've been shown how to make their way through to it. The dreamlands are far more dangerous. The landscape, the weather, the time of day, even the points of the compass change randomly from one moment to the next."

"Like in a dream," Des says.

"Exactly," Auntie Min says. "So Theo's position here on this headland is the only anchor that will allow Cory to bring him back."

"But how long does it take?" I ask.

"That, I can't say. The dreamlands—by their very nature—invariably present complications to even the simplest task."

"So, it might be awhile."

She hesitates, then finds a smile that I don't believe.

"Yes," she says. "But not too long, I hope."

She doesn't say it, but in her eyes I can see what she's not telling us: if they
ever
come back.