Slices (10 page)

He
stared at the piece of paper in his hand. He couldn’t quite
bring it into focus, and he sat down hard on the bed. Bedroom. This
was Mark’s room, not his. What was he doing in here? Hell, what
time was it? Why wasn’t he still at work?

He
looked down at the paper again. Torn edge, some handwriting, small
and cramped — Mark’s handwriting. His eyes shifted to the
floor. There was a small notebook full of the same writing, sprawled
open, a matching ragged edge to the page.

What
was I doing?

He
reached for the book. The room still felt like it was spinning, out
of control, a fairground ride with stripped gears and parts missing
behind the walls. As soon as he held it, he remembered:

A
notebook. The notebook.

“You
have to find it,” the old man had said. There was a wild look
in his eyes that David associated with people raving about Jesus, or
the government. But this guy was talking about —

“A
notebook. It’s in your roommate’s bedroom. You have to
find it. You have to go home right now and you have to find it.”

David
couldn’t look the man in the eye. He’d thought he was
just a panhandler, but this — why did the crazies have to get
right in his face? “Please leave me alone,” David
muttered, trying to find a way to get past him on the crowded
sidewalk.

“You
have to listen,” the man said. “You have to find it.
Megan would have wanted you to.”

David’s
head snapped up. “What — what did you just say?”

He
shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know what
any of this means, but you’ll know. You need to find it and you
need to keep it safe. You need to hide it from Mark.”

“Listen,
who are you? How do you know Mark?”

The
man grabbed his shoulders. “I don’t know him. I don’t
know any of this. You told me to tell you this. You wrote it down.
You have to — ”

Whatever
David had to do was drowned out by the blare of a car horn, the
squeal of brakes.

The
car missed David by inches. The old man folded like a doll as the car
hit him, as the car carried his body through the jewelry store
window.

There
were screams and cries of “my God, did you see that?” and
the plate-glass window falling apart, and the car’s horn was
stuck, one drawn out end-of-everything howl.

David
should have stayed. He should have talked to the police. Instead, he
dropped the sandwich and chips he’d bought, shoved his way
through the crowd, and ran. Ran all the way home.

Mark’s
room was a wreck. David had emptied out drawers, torn the bedding
apart, and he could barely remember doing it.

He
flipped through the notebook; it didn’t make much sense. It
looked like a diary, but Mark was generally so neat and organized and
methodical and this was anything but. It was looping and elliptical,
full of footnotes and additions and marginalia.

He
looked at the scrap of paper again. Just a tiny section of a page,
and it read:

“
March
12. David falls through rotten floor at old Sunderland house.
Shatters bones in right leg. Never walks right again.”

He
stared at it and frowned. That didn’t make any sense. It had
never happened. He remembered the Sunderland house, a sprawling and
abandoned old wreck; he and Mark used to play there a lot when they
were kids, but nothing bad ever happened to them there.

He
flipped through the notebook again. Everything else in there had
really happened, it looked like, but why would Mark have made up just
one thing? And why couldn’t he remember tearing it out?

Unless
—

No.
This was crazy. As crazy as that old man.

You
need to find it and you need to keep it safe.

What
if — what if this did happen? And now that he’d torn it
out of Mark’s diary — now it never happened? He didn’t
believe it. But he stared at the scrap of paper for a long time. Then
he went over to the desk, emptied the jar of pens, and grabbed a
black felt marker.

He
flipped back through the pages until he found a date he knew by
heart, eight years before. All Mark had to commemorate it was the
terse sentence,
“Megan
dies.”

David’s
eyes filled with tears. He still missed his sister, so much, every
day. He uncapped the pen and drew a thick dark line through the
words.

This
is stupid,
he thought, wondering if he expected her to walk through the door.

But
then something happened —

The
line he had drawn disappeared, the ink bled into the paper, dried
away to nothing.

He
stared, then did it again, watching the new line vanish as well.

He
thought for a second, then grabbed a ballpoint and wrote next to the
words:
“But
David gets to say goodbye to her first.”

He
felt lightheaded and strange. Why had he written that? Of course he’d
had a chance to say goodbye to her; he remembered seeing her in the
hospital.

Or
did he only remember it that way now?

No.
This is crazy. He reached a hand to rip out the whole page —
then remembered how he’d woken up bleeding. Mark would be home
soon. He needed to put everything back, back the way it was. Even
this, he decided.

But
first he flipped ahead.

Wait
— this wasn’t just a diary. This went into the future.

Mark
starting a software company. Selling it for millions. Running for
senate. Running for president. Winning.

He
took it all in with a weird half-smile frozen on his face. This was
just like Mark, ambitious, full of dreams and plans. He’d
always been like that.

But
this was weird. Obsessively detailed. Unless it was real.

David
found the page for today. Found a space in the margin and wrote,
“Homeless
man tells David about the notebook.”

He
stared at that for a moment, nodded, and went back Mark’s
bathroom. The whole medicine cabinet lifted right out of the wall —
mirror and all — he remembered doing this, now, finding the
book in its plastic bag. There was an inch or two of clearance
between the back of the cabinet and the rough plaster. He put the
notebook back where he’d found it and slid the cabinet back
into place.

He
had Mark’s room looking more or less the way he’d found
it by the time Mark got home.

Dinner
was quiet, takeout pizza in front of the tube, and Mark was exhausted
from a long day at his job. He hadn’t asked David about his
day, and David wasn’t going to say anything.

The
afternoon was starting to feel even more distant and unreal, and he
kept glancing over his shoulder at Mark, who somehow looked
reassuringly normal and boring, laughing as the TV glow flickered
over his face.

Later
that night, half-asleep in bed, David heard his voice:

“David,”
Mark said, standing in his doorway, framed in light, “What did
you change?”

“Huh?”
was all David could reply.

Mark
stood there for a moment, not answering, not moving.

“Never
mind,” Mark said. “Go back to sleep.”

He
turned off the hall light and David slept.

He
hit the snooze button on his alarm in the morning, then turned it off
completely, and stayed asleep. He woke up around 10:30, a couple of
missed calls from work on his cell phone, and he thought,
I’ll
tell them I, I’m sick, hungover, anything,
and he padded carefully down the hall until he was sure it was
silent, sure Mark had gone to work, and then he ran into Mark’s
room and lifted the notebook out of its hiding place.

What
did you change?

It
didn’t necessarily mean anything. It wasn’t a confession.
He might just have noticed that David had been in his room, hadn’t
put everything back perfectly.

But
David found the note he’d written yesterday, and a new, even
smaller note next to it, in Mark’s handwriting.
“Homeless
man tells David about the notebook,”
it now read,
“but
dies before he can tell him how it works.”

Hours
later, David sat in a diner, a cold and half-touched omelet sitting
on a plate he’d shoved to the side. The notebook was spread out
in front of him and he had a cheap spiral-bound notebook of his own
next to it.

He’d
been taking notes, copying down long sections word-for-word, in case
he never saw the notebook again.

He
still couldn’t figure out why Mark had put it back where he’d
found it in the first place, if he knew David had seen it. Mark was a
creature of habit, though. He probably had just put it back there
because that was where it belonged, whether it was still a secret or
not.

“Can
I bring you anything else?”

“I’m
sorry? Oh. Just — just more coffee, please. Thanks.”

The
thing is, why was this a secret?

David
flipped through an old envelope of photos he’d brought with
him. Old parties, camping trips. He found the appropriate page for
each one in his notebook, slipped them between the pages.

He
was starting to be able to see it. He had to look quickly, like
catching something out of the corner of his eye, but —

“Excuse
me,” he said to the waitress, “but can you tell me what
you see in this photo?”

She
looked at him, looked at the picture on the table, and smiled
uncertainly.

“You
and two other guys out in the woods somewhere?”

He
found the right line in the notebook where it said,
“Camping
trip with David and John,”
and added,
“but
John had the flu and couldn’t come.”

“And
now. Now what do you see?”

“Same
thing.” She looked at him. “You and some guy. Why, is
this supposed to be a magic trick or something?”

“Something
like that.” He stared at the picture himself. It was just him
and Mark, but a moment ago, hadn’t it been different? Couldn’t
he see some kind of afterimage fading away?

She
laughed. “Well — keep practicing.”

He
closed the notebook and stared at its blank dark cover.

This
was — everything. This was their entire life, past and future.
Mark could control all of it. So could David now.

So
why never say anything about it? They’d shared everything since
they were thirteen. Why not this? And why — this was what
was killing him — why did so many bad things happen to him and
not Mark?

His
sister. His failed relationships. Three wrecked cars. Jobs he
couldn’t hold down. All of it was lovingly detailed here.

Had
Mark just secretly hated him all this time? Is that what this was
about?

David
hadn’t even bothered calling in with some excuse when he’d
noticed that the notebook had him getting fired from the convenience
store next week. Why bother trying when it was all here in black and
white?

All
he knew was that he couldn’t go home after this. It wasn’t
safe. He desperately wanted to get some kind of explanation out of
Mark, but Mark wasn’t safe to even talk to. He needed somewhere
to go, but there wasn’t anywhere.

He
tapped the notebook with his pen for a while, then opened it. He went
back a couple of months, then wrote:
“David
moves out into his own apartment.”

He
sat and stared at his food for a minute, trying to remember what he’d
just been thinking about.

He
shook his head, stood up and shoved his plate away, then headed for
the register.

“Hey
— ” the waitress called after him, “Don’t
forget your — ”

She
stopped and stared at the empty table, no idea what she’d been
about to say.

David’s
apartment was freezing. The power had been out for nearly a month
since he’d gotten behind on his bills. He pulled another
blanket onto his bed, and wished, not for the first time, that he’d
never moved out of Mark’s place. Mark had always been good
about covering for him —

Something
wasn’t right.

He
looked at the phone. It was ringing. And it wasn’t ringing.

He
could hear it, but it wasn’t making any sound. And outside, the
wind was whipping through the trees, and it was perfectly still; the
room was pitch black, and the bright full moon was framed in his
window and the phone kept ringing and not ringing —

He
stood, dizzy and swaying, and his nose had started bleeding again.
Again? When was it bleeding before?

He
didn’t move and he reached for the phone.
One
bright day in the middle of the night,
he
thought,
Two
dead boys got up to fight.
He
couldn’t remember the rest of it.

He
answered the phone. “Hello?”

The
voice on the other end said, “Come downstairs. I need to
talk to you.”

“Mark?”
he said, but the line had gone dead.

Mark
was parked outside, his engine idling.
Nice
car,
David
thought as he got in. Did he always have such a nice car? Was this
new?

“You
broke something,” Mark said. He hadn’t even said hello.
“You changed something that doesn’t work and I’m
not finding it.” He tossed the notebook into David’s lap.

“Wait
— ” David said, “is this — I’ve seen
this. I don’t — ”

“Yeah.
You’ve seen it. Except now I think you didn’t. And that’s
kind of a problem.”

David
had never seen Mark like this before. There was a tense, almost
desperate edge to his voice.

“What
am I looking for? What is this?”

“You
wrote something in here; I need you to find it. I keep looking, but —
”

“Homeless
man tells David about the notebook? This is my handwriting, Mark,
what — ”

“No.
Not that one. I already fixed that one. There’s something else,
it’s like having fucking cancer and knowing they didn’t
get every last bit of it and I need you to find it right now.”

“Mark,
just calm down and tell me what’s — ”