Passenger (44 page)

“Jack?”

I held my phone in front of my chin, so Conner could hear, and I watched his eyes to see if he gave a sign confirming that things were really okay.

“Hey. I’m here. With Conner.”

Conner was staring at me, too, looking for the same thing.

“Glenbrook?”

“We’re in London.”

There was a rustling, the sound of motion, like Ben dropped the phone.

“Hang on. I’m in bed. I’m going in Griffin’s room.”

I took a long breath. I was so relieved. “Are you okay?”

I could hear a door opening, shutting. Then Griffin said, “It’s Jack? Jack? Are you here?”

“We’re back. When did you guys—”

“Three days ago. We been calling you and Conner for three days,” Ben said. “You didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about.”

“Well, it’s us now,” Conner said. I could see the relief on his face, too.

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

Ben said, “Yeah. It was weird at first. We were scared. We were gone such a long time, Jack. We couldn’t remember some shit. My stepdad thought we were smoking pot or something. They fucking piss-tested both of us this morning.”

“Yeah. Screw that,” Griffin said.

Conner smiled and nodded.

“But you’re both okay?” I said.

“We don’t fucking smoke pot, if that’s what you mean,” Ben answered.

“Do you remember what happened to us out in the desert?” I watched Conner. He shook his head.

Ben’s voice lowered. “After the fight. The horses ran off. We came after you. Me, Griffin, that kid named Frankie, and Ethan.”

“Ethan’s a kid at school here.”

“When we found you, there was a Hunter standing next to you, coming for you.”

I watched Conner’s eyes while Ben said it. He didn’t show anything.

“Frankie took a bow from one of the dead bugs, and he was going to shoot the Hunter, but as soon as he did, it was like the sky opened up and you got to your feet, right in the way of the arrow.”

“Frankie shot you,” Griffin said. “He shot you with the arrow, Jack. It went completely through you and then it just fell down in the dirt like you weren’t even there.”

Ben continued, “And when it happened, both you and the Hunter disappeared. Then everything went blank, like it did when we were in the garage. That was all I knew. Next thing I knew, I was sitting on a bench in the locker room at Glenbrook, getting dressed for PE, and Griff was at his school sleeping through a test. I was so fucking scared. And then I forgot my fucking locker combination and had to spend the rest of the day in my gym clothes. I didn’t see Griff till we got home from school. We both looked like shit. We’ve been trying to call you ever since. But whenever I did, you were, like, ‘What are you talking about?’”

“And, Jack,” Griffin said. “You know … What did you do with the lens?”

“I … I’m not sure yet,” I lied. I was certain I’d find the lenses inside the bag I’d packed, hidden away inside the wadded socks and underwear I stashed in the nightstand beside my bed. Where else would Jack hide such things?

There was a long silence after that.

Conner watched me. He chewed the inside of his lip. To me, he already looked sick, like he needed to know the lens was still okay. It pissed me off. I almost wanted to punch him for it.

And he knew I was lying, too.

“Jack?” Ben said.

“Yeah?”

“I know it’s fucked up of us. Um … we think we need to go back.”

“We need to,” Griffin added.

“Don’t talk about it,” I said.

Conner and I both stood there, staring at my silent phone like we were waiting for some kind of answer to just pop out and present itself to us.

But nothing came.

“Jack?” Griffin said. He sounded desperate and weak, not like the kid I knew, the kid I always thought was so strong and brave.

“What do you want me to do, Griff? What the fuck am I supposed to do? You were the one telling me to get you home. Remember that morning in the box? Now what the fuck do you want me to do?” I exhaled a long sigh. “Look. We’re not going to do anything now. Me and Conner have to figure this out.” Then I lied again, “I don’t even know where the goddamned lens is. It might be gone for good this time, and that would be fine with me. I don’t fucking care anymore.”

Conner grabbed my arm, shook me slightly. “Hey. Easy.”

I swallowed, cleared my throat. “I’m sorry, Griff. Ben. We’ll figure it out. Call me back in the morning, your time. Promise you’ll call me back. Look, it’s not that long till Christmas. We’re coming home for two weeks. We’ll figure it out. Together. I promise.”

And Conner said, “But we’re not fucking breaking anything again.”

I heard Ben try to laugh at that.

“Okay, Jack,” he said. “Let’s not talk about it.”

“Good night, then,” I said. “I’m glad we’re all okay. It’s going to be okay now. This is it, right?”

“Yeah. But, Jack? There’s one thing I need to tell you. There was a cop looking up your cell number. He came here asking me and Griff a bunch of questions about you.”

At that moment, it felt like my throat sank to my stomach.

Even Conner looked scared.

“Jack? Did you hear what I said?”

“I heard you.” I shut my eyes tight, trying to think. “What did you say to him?”

“Nothing,” Ben said. “What the fuck could I say? That we all know how to walk through some fucking piece of glass and into a different world called Marbury, or whatever the fuck place it is now? That we fucking kill shit there?”

“I bet he’d leave you alone if you did tell him that,” Conner said.

“Or we’d be taken down and piss-tested again,” Griffin answered.

I heard the knocking on the door, Ben’s stepdad telling the boys to get off the phone.

“His name was Avery Scott, right?” I said.

“How’d you know that?”

More knocking.

“I gotta go, Jack.”

“Okay. Call me in the morning, Ben.”

“See ya.”

“Promise?”

Click.

“Ben?”

I felt sick.

*   *   *

“Separate beds? Damn. I was hoping we’d get our same old room, Jack. What are we going to do in
separate beds
?”

He was trying to get me to lighten up.

But I was numb.

All I could think about was that fucking cop, what he knew, and what I didn’t know.

It was Conner’s idea for us to get a room at the White House—the same hotel we stayed in at the start of our summer.

The rain cleared up.

It was early afternoon, and it felt like autumn.

I stood in front of the window and looked out at Regent’s Park.

From behind me, Conner said, “And the goddamned shower door works, too. This sucks. Everything’s different.”

He came up behind me, shoved me playfully.

“Let’s go for a run, Jack. We’re getting too lazy and fat hanging out with those fucking Brits.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

I sat on the bed and slipped my feet out of my shoes. I took off my shirt.

Conner watched me as I opened my bag, and it pissed me off. I knew why he was watching me. And I knew exactly what I could find in my bag if I wanted to.

“Are you going to change, or are you just going to stand there and look at me?”

Conner smiled and shrugged, gawking with his mouth and eyes wide, messing with me. He made it even more obvious that he was staring at me while I got undressed.

But I didn’t look for the lens.

And just like I would expect him to, Conner naturally made a crack about me wearing briefs.

“Briefs? Since when do you wear
briefs
?”

I shook my head. “All my things … seem like they’re different. I thought it was just maybe Nickie or something.”

I sighed. “What about your stuff? Is any of your stuff … different?”

Conner unbuttoned his jeans and let them fall around his ankles. “Let’s see.”

I gave him a disappointed sigh.

Typical Conner Kirk.

“You still have that thing.” I pointed to the little scar above Conner’s groin—the faded mark, the brand, a souvenir from our first times in Marbury.

Conner pulled the waistband on his boxers down and looked. The thing used to scare him. Now, it seemed as though he’d completely shrugged it off as meaningless. Conner was so good at doing that, and I wished someday I could be that way, too.

But I couldn’t.

He said, “Yeah. My tattoo from the happy place.”

“But everything else seems the same, right? I mean, some things are bound to be different after being gone so long. Right?”

Conner kicked his feet out of his pants, walked over to the narrow closet across from the bathroom, and put them on a hanger.

“Don’t think about that cop, Jack. He’s not going to do anything to us. We didn’t do anything wrong, okay?”

“Okay.”

He pulled a pair of running shorts on over his boxers and sat down to lace his shoes.

“So, were you shitting Ben and Griff, or do you really not know where the lens is?”

If I stayed there much longer, I was certain we would get into a fistfight. And I never wanted to fight with Conner again.

So I turned around and made my way down the short hallway beside our bathroom. Conner left the closet door open. Inside, there was a folding ironing board, a safe, two thick terry-cloth bathrobes, and one of those webbed racks you put suitcases on. I saw Conner’s pants and a dozen empty wooden hangers lined up like teeth on a chrome rod that spanned the width of the closet.

It looked strong enough to support my weight.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

*   *   *

We ran around Regent’s Park, just like we did together so many times in early summer.

The air felt cool and damp. Everything smelled like wet rotting leaves.

For the first few miles, we didn’t say anything. I tried to stay in front of him, position myself so I wouldn’t have to look at Conner; and he kept trying to slow us down, to block me with his shoulder, running me into hedges and the short fences that were set up in places to keep people off the grass.

When Conner and I ran together, we didn’t have to say the words out loud. Sometimes just our pace or position told the other guy exactly what we were thinking.

I felt like shit, and Conner wanted to play.

I had missed him, missed this world, Nickie, so much. But now, all I could think about was getting away from it all—being left completely alone. Alone in a way that I would never bother, or be bothered by, anyone else.

And I could do it now, too.

I’d gotten them home.

Off the hook.

I needed to be left alone now.

Fuck you, Conner.

Fuck you, Jack.

Fuck this place.

As I ran, I pictured the strings, the burning clump of grass Davey fanned smoke from on a hot autumn afternoon in Pope Valley, the nesting dolls that Stella collected; and it dawned on me that every time I had skipped around—jumped onto another string, or deeper into another layer—that whether coming or going, there was always some little thing, here or there, that was almost unnoticeably different.

But things always changed.

When an echo comes back to you, the song is always different.

It was why the pictures disappeared from my camera back in June, and why Conner saw Henry sometimes, but other times it was like Henry didn’t even exist.

So maybe I’d never gotten back home to begin with.

From the very first time I went to Marbury, things got moved, rearranged. And once those things shifted the slightest bit, they never went back to exactly the same spots they’d come from.

That’s what I thought.

Conner elbowed me below the ribs.

That was it.

We stopped running.

I shoved him. Hard. I wanted to punch him so bad I was shaking. Both my hands tightened in fists. Of course he saw it.

“What the fuck, Con?”

He shook his head; his brow tightened up like I was speaking a different language.

“What’s wrong with you, Jack?”

“Stop fucking with me! Leave me the fuck alone!”

Conner’s tone was pleading. “What’d I do, Jack? Tell me what I did.”

I spun around, away from Conner, and threw a wild hook punch at the air. Then I put my hands on top of my head, squeezing, pulling my hair.

“What is fucking wrong with me?”

I wasn’t asking Conner. I was just sending the words out across the slate surface of the lake, skipping like stones, going nowhere but down. I didn’t even want an answer, and Conner knew it.

So we stood there like that for the longest time, absolutely silent except for the panting breaths we gulped. And I think Conner was starting to get scared too.

“I’m sorry, Con.”

He stepped toward me. I didn’t see him, but I could feel his heat as he got close. Finally, he put his arm around my shoulder and squeezed me tight. He was sweating.

I said, “Dude. You fucking reek like BO.”

He gripped my bicep and pulled me in to him.

“It’s all okay, Jack. I’m not fucking with you. We’re here. Safe. Together. Everything is good now. Finally, dude. We made it. I swear to God, everything’s good now.”

I swallowed a lump and nodded.

“What if—”

Conner cut me off. “There is no
what if
, Jack. This is fucking it. I promise.”

He patted his hand on the back of my neck.

“This can be it, Jack.”

“You think?”

“It’s good enough for me, bud.”

The sky began darkening again. It would rain soon.

And Conner said, “Don’t you think this is far enough? Let’s go get drunk out of our fucking minds.”

This is it.

*   *   *

Conner didn’t say anything else about the things that were eating us inside.

He just made small talk and teased me, picked on Jack like he always did, calling me gay, testing me.

And we didn’t even clean up. Sweaty and stinking, we got dressed in the same jeans we’d worn on the train, slipped into our T-shirts and pullovers.

Conner put on his wool cap, and said, “There!” like we were racing each other out the door or something; and I just let my damp hair hang in darkened strings that went past my eyes.