Passenger (46 page)

Leave me alone.

“What are you thinking, man? What did you do this for? Why? Why?”

Conner shook me with every word, as though his punctuation would snap the life awake inside me.

Then I was down. He laid me on my bed and drunkenly tumbled on top of me. He was heavy and out of breath, dripping from the shower, and he pushed himself up. I felt him lift my feet, pulling the sheets out from the side of the bed so he could cover me. I knew my eyes were open, but everything looked purple and dark, out of focus, like Conner was just a big shadow hovering over me.

“You fucking asshole. Why are you doing this to me?”

He grasped my jaw and shook my face.

It started coming back then. The room began to grow lighter, as though the eye of some great pale sun were opening up above us.

Why couldn’t he just leave me alone?

Five seconds.

Conner had one of his hands on top of my head; his fingers rubbed my hair, and he pressed the side of his face against my chest, listening. And I could feel how his breaths came short and spastic from the crying.

“You better fucking breathe, asshole.”

I inhaled.

“I don’t want to go back.”

My voice was a dry croak.

“I’m sorry, Conner.”

He straightened up, kneeling beside the bed where I lay naked like an unclaimed mortuary cadaver, drained and numb, twisted in the sheets and covers. Conner grabbed my face in his hands and wiped the wetness from my eyes with his thumbs.

I wasn’t even aware that I’d been crying.

Maybe it was something else, because like Conner, Jack doesn’t do that, either.

Then he kissed my forehead.

“You dumb fuck, Jack.”

Conner stood, grunting. He didn’t need to say anything else; I could feel how he seethed with anger, spinning around, looking for something that might give him a clue as to how we’d get out of this now.

This is it, after all.

We are home.

At that moment, I was so sorry for hurting him. I knew it was the worst thing I’d ever done, and I kept thinking about those five goddamned seconds.

It had to have been Seth.

He made Conner find me.

“I’m calling the fucking cops.”

It was like an electric shock. Freddie’s stun gun again. I felt every disconnected muscle in my body contract when he said it.

I tried to sit up. “No. Please don’t do that, Con!”

He paced the floor like an animal in a cage. He stopped at his bed, looked down at the note I’d left. Of course he knew what was inside the two small bundles.

“Is that what it’s about?” he said. He picked up the socks and underwear I’d used to hide the Marbury lenses from everyone. He cocked his arm back like he was going to throw them against the wall.

“Don’t!”

He stopped himself.

Conner knew what would happen if he did it.

He dropped my little gifts to him on the bed.

And then I said it.

“I’d rather die than go back again, Con.”

“I’m calling a fucking ambulance, Jack. I can’t take this shit.”

He went to the desk and picked up the handset for our room’s phone.

“Conner, please don’t do that.”

I swung my feet around onto the floor. I thought I could stand up, try to stop him, but my head pounded so hard it felt like I was going to explode.

Conner inhaled deeply, closed his eyes, and hung up the phone. Then he wheeled a desk chair across the floor and sat down in front of me with his hands clasped between his knees, just watching me, waiting for me to fix things.

“What am I going to do with you?” he said.

“I don’t know.”

He smeared his forearm across his eyes.

“I would die without you, Jack.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“You’re full of shit!” Conner’s voice shook. “You’re not the only one who gets hurt in this world! You’re not the only one who fucks things up and then has to fix them! Stop being so goddamned selfish for once!”

He was right.

“I … Shit, Conner.”

He exhaled and loosened his shoulders, slumped back in the chair. “Dude, if you want to stay, I’ll stay with you.”

I lay on my back, shivering and staring up at the creamy blankness of the hotel room’s ceiling.

“I’m afraid if one of us goes back to Marbury, we’ll all end up getting sucked into it again, Con. And I…”

Conner rubbed his hands together and shook his head. He sniffled loudly. I could hear all the wet snot that bubbled in his nose.

“What about Ben and Griff?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do anymore, Con.”

And so he just sat there and watched me for several long and silent minutes until I rolled onto my side and pulled the sheets up around my shoulders.

It was so cold.

Conner got up and put the wadded-up lenses back inside my bag. He zipped it shut and placed it on top of his bed.

He turned out the lights, and then Conner lay down beside me.

He was still crying.

I felt so bad.

Conner got under the covers and slid his arm around me. He put his hand flat on the coldness of my naked belly, so his face was pressed tightly against the back of my neck.

He whispered, “I’m not ever going to let you leave, Jack.”

*   *   *

I could lie and say that sleeping next to Conner wasn’t sexual at all, even though we didn’t actually do anything. But feeling him beside me was good, genuinely safe, and neither of us was ashamed of it.

For the first time in my life, it was like nothing could ever make me afraid again.

And I’m not scared to admit that it felt safer and closer than lying naked in bed with Nickie.

In the morning, we were awakened by an embarrassed housekeeper who walked into our room and quickly offered pleading apologies as she backed into the hallway.

I groaned. “That is totally fucked up.”

Conner still had his arms around me. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’ll be all right. I’m sorry, Con.”

“For what?”

“Nothing.”

Conner pressed closer into me, like he was covering me against something poisonous. “Let’s just stay here for, like, ten more minutes, okay?”

“Okay.”

And more than an hour later, it was nearly noon when we got out of bed and put our clothes on, silent and awkward, nervously avoiding each other’s eyes.

*   *   *

Outside, the air was so cold and heavy.

Feeling it was an amazing thing to me.

To feel.

I walked in a fog as thick and stubborn as the cover of leaden clouds that pressed down on us from above. I couldn’t stop myself from wondering about everything.

Everything.

And how every day begins the same way.

This is it.

Maybe we were still drunk, I reasoned.

Maybe this was just another not-world.

I kept my eyes down and studied the backs of Conner’s sneakers, the faded upturn of the slight cuff on his Levi’s as he walked in front of me. He led me along the slate-gray sidewalk on Marylebone Road in the direction of the Great Portland Street Underground.

Conner stopped, and it was the first time since we’d gotten out of bed that we looked each other squarely in the face.

He said, “So. You want to get coffee?”

“Oh man, I am dying for some coffee.”

Conner’s mouth turned downward. He shook his head.

I said, “Um. Sorry. Bad choice of words.”

Then he smiled cautiously and pointed me to the door of a coffee bar.

It made for a long stretch of silence, finishing two full cups of hot coffee without saying a word. But nothing else needed to be said. Sometimes Conner and I could sit together for hours and just know, exactly, what we were thinking.

We didn’t avoid each other’s stare, though, because Conner and I could never be embarrassed about anything around each other. In fact, sitting there, having coffee with him, I understood Conner better at that moment than I had in all the years we’d known each other.

He swallowed. I watched the knot in his throat bob down and up.

I reached across the table and bumped his hand with my knuckles.

“You know, you’ve saved my life about a hundred times.”

I watched Conner bite at the inside of his lip. He shifted in his seat.

I turned and looked at the traffic outside the window, and tried to change the subject. But every subject only ended up being about us, anyway.

“I really like it here. I mean, at St. Atticus. I can feel it.”

Conner tipped his empty cup, like he was trying to read a message in the drying foam.

“This is it, right?”

“This is good enough for me, Con.”

“I’m okay staying here if you are, Jack.”

He sounded nervous, choked up.

I knew he was talking about much more than just England and St. Atticus Grammar School for Boys. We both knew it.

“Well, I’m okay staying here, Con. And, well … thanks.”

“No prob.” Then he squinted and smiled. “But don’t ever try that shit again.”

“Try what? The before thing, or … um … you know, after?”

Conner turned red and tried to clear his throat, pretended to look at the cars passing by outside, too.

“Hey,” I said. “In case you’re wondering, I’m not bugged about it at all. I thought it was totally cool. Really nice. Really. Okay?”

He looked at me and nodded.

*   *   *

“Oh fucking hell!” When I saw the station sign through the window, I shook my head. “We need to get off, Con. We’re going the wrong fucking way.”

We were on the Tube, at Finchley Road, heading in the entirely opposite direction, on the totally wrong line to get to the train station at Charing Cross.

We weren’t paying attention to what was going on around us—outside our little universe—that morning, so in our daze we ended up boarding a wrong-way train at Baker Street. And we barely made it out of the car before the doors whooshed shut.

But after spending a few minutes decoding the colored lines on the Underground map, we switched tracks and headed south on the Jubilee Line, which unfortunately also took us out of our way.

I sighed, and slapped my head when we passed the Baker Street stop.

“Why the fuck didn’t we get off there? What the fuck is wrong with me? I am so messed up today.”

Conner sat beside me, our bags on the floor between our feet.

He laughed. It was a real laugh, and it sounded good.

Like home.

He pressed his foot against mine. “It’s not like we have a plane to catch or something.”

When the train slowed into the Bond Street station, I pulled a small folding map from my back pocket.

Like Henry’s compass.

“We can switch at Westminster or Waterloo,” I said. “Waterloo’s probably better. Then we won’t have to get off again till we’re at Charing Cross.”

I tucked the map away. “I’m sorry about getting us lost, Con.”

Conner leaned forward and turned so he was looking straight into my eyes. He tapped his hand on my knee.

“I’m having a good time. Don’t sweat it.” He grinned. “It’s kind of fun being together in a place where nobody cares about us, and nobody’s trying to kill us.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Welcome home, huh?”

“Yeah. Home.”

The train stopped.

The doors swished open.

We were at Green Park.

And this was it.

thirty-six

There is something about this particular place.

It is a magnet, and Jack cannot break free.

My head snaps around; Conner watches me. He senses something, too, and I am aware of a tightness that clamps down, invades the edges of my vision.

Like being in a vice.

Something is wrong.

Don’t black out, Jack.

Conner’s hand is on my back, between my shoulders, and he says, “Are you feeling all right?”

This is the arrow.

There are so many people waiting to board the train.

They begin pressing into the car, packing everywhere. Suddenly it is as though their collective mouths inhale every molecule of air around me. Suffocating, empty, I shake my head and hang my chin down to my chest.

“I don’t know. I feel sick, Con. Like I’m going to pass out.”

“Jack?”

He’s rubbing my back, like he’s trying to keep me awake, and I say, “Shhhhh…”

Everything is suddenly so noisy. I am trapped inside the howling engine of a jet.

Whiteness paints my drained skin; I feel the opening of each pore and I begin to bleed small tears of freezing sweat. I am shaking, and Conner has his arm around my shoulder.

“Let’s get off for a second, Jack. Catch your breath.”

Conner begins to lift me up, but it is too crowded and too late. The doors are closed. The air turns to chalk dust, and I drop back into my seat as the train sluggishly lurches, skips, accelerates.

Of course.

This is why we got onto the wrong train.

The train passes into a tunnel. Outside in the velvet black, a white light smears by; it burns a trail like a glowing worm across my eyes. And as it wriggles, I stare blankly at the glass, waiting for it to become real and swallow me.

I take a deep breath.

Breathe, Jack.

I know Conner is here, he’s pressing his mouth up to my ear, saying something. I can feel the steam of the words that evaporate against my skin, but I can’t tell what he’s saying.

I feel along the seat beside me, find his hand, and grab on.

Tight.

I lean into him. “Conner, no matter what happens, I love you.”

I feel him squeezing my hand.

“Jack?”

“Hey,” he says, trying to shake me back. “Jack? Do you know that kid? What’s he want?”

Someone is saying, “I have a score to settle with you.”

The train begins to slow, it leans me forward, and I nearly fall into Conner.

Conner says again, “Do you know him?”

I shut my eyes tightly, reopen them.

Everything is everywhere.

Seated across the aisle on the bench directly facing us is a redhead kid.

The punk.

Quinn Cahill.

Slower.

Slower.

The kid is saying something.