Undercurrent (6 page)

“Don’t be so hard on the little guys,” Dad had told him. “After a few years, you’ll learn to love them.” But of course it was only a joke; stripping and repainting his room had been the first project they tackled.

Seeing the demented-looking cartoon kittens again, my blood runs cold. I turn to my mother.

“Where is Cole?” I beg her to tell me. I’m no longer angry—I’m scared. “Where is Cole?”

Mom recoils at the question. “What’s going on, Cal?” she asks, looking terrified. “What is wrong with you?”

I stare at my mother. I don’t understand. She just stands there, wearing an awful expression for a moment, before opening the door to the guest bedroom across the hall. She walks in and waits for me. When I don’t follow, she holds out a hand.

“Cal, it’s okay,” she says. “Come see him.”

I’m shaking, head to foot now, as I cross the hall. I take my mother’s hand and let her lead me.

The guest room has been repainted, I notice instantly, changed from its cream color to a sky blue. And there are sounds in here. Strange sounds I have never heard before.

I turn my head. At the back of the room is a bed—but not a normal bed. It’s like the one I just left in the hospital, except bigger: an electrically powered bed that, from the looks of it, can move into all sorts of positions. There’s a machine beside it—a white device that looks like a robot with a hose hanging off it.

The hose leads to a figure that is stretched out on the bed, covered in blankets. His eyes are wide open, but he is not moving.

“Cole,” my mother says in the soft singsong voice she uses to wake me up some mornings, when I’ve fallen into a deep sleep and don’t hear my alarm.

The figure makes a noise. A horrible rattling noise.

“Cole, your brother is home,” she tells him. “And everything is going to be all right.”

CHAPTER 7

I remember the July before we moved to Crystal Falls. I’d just
turned twelve; Cole was fourteen. It was a hot, dry summer. Everything felt hazy and dreamlike outside.

My father had said the haze was smoke from a forest fire up north. When we started freaking out, he told us not to worry, that there was no way it could cross the river and make it this far down. Still, the fire must have been huge, because you could even smell the burning wood.

The smell made me uneasy, reminding me of something that happened when I was eight years old. Back then I liked playing with matches and used to steal them from where they were hidden under dish towels in a kitchen drawer. I would light things on fire, like pieces of paper and old toys. But after a while I moved on to trash down at the dump, where I finally set a pretty serious fire—bad enough that they started posting a security guard at the site.

A few weeks after that, I saw that a neighbor had left his garage door open. So I went in to have a look around. There was a pile of rags in the corner. I don’t know what was on them, but all it took was the touch of one match to make them burst into flames. I ran back outside.

The whole place went up in a few minutes. To this day I have no idea why I did it—but it felt good, watching the garage burn. They found me sitting in the grass out front, matchbox still in hand.

Luckily, the garage wasn’t attached to the house and no one was injured. But still, my poor parents. I ended up getting sent to a psychologist over the incident. Apparently it could be a sign—of what, no one ever told me. The lady kept asking me if I felt bad about what I’d done. And I kept on lying, saying that I did. But I didn’t—I knew I didn’t. I was just too scared to admit it.

Now I keep away from matches, just in case.

Anyway, the day we could smell that distant forest fire, Cole and I started off in bad moods. We were getting a treat, Dad said—a day out at some big water park. But we didn’t care. As far as we were concerned, the treat hadn’t been invented that could make up for having to leave everything we ever knew behind.

Still, it was hard to stay mad, at least that day. The park did turn out to be pretty cool. Set up on an off-season ski hill, it had a massive wave pool and tons of slides, including a really long winding one you rode on big inner tubes.

The most insane slide of all went straight down the side of the mountain, dropping off at what looked to be close to a ninety-degree angle.

“Oh, yeah, I’m going on
that
!” Cole declared.

Which meant I was going, too, because there was no way I could let my brother think I was even more of a wuss than he already did. But there was nothing I wanted less than to go on that monster.

I stalled my brother for a while, hoping to work up my nerve on the smaller slides. We even took a chair lift up and rode the big tube ride, which was scary enough for me.

My best hope was that he would just overlook it altogether and only remember later, cursing himself as we pulled out of the parking lot.

But no. It was inevitable.

“There it is, the big one!” he shouted as the baby-blue slide appeared on the steep mountainside. Someone flew out the end of the tube like they’d been fired from a rifle.

I felt my knees buckle.

No, I wasn’t doing it, I decided.

“What’s the holdup?” Cole asked, jogging back to find me when he realized I wasn’t beside him. “You coming or not?”

“I don’t know. I think I’ll pass.”

“Not an option.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Come on, Callum. Don’t be a wimp.”

“I’m not a wimp,” I told him. “I just don’t want to.”

My brother made an explosive noise like an angry bull. But then something came over him. “Cal, seriously,” he said. “What’s the point in living if you never feel alive? Do this and you’ll feel more alive than ever, I swear.”

I thought about the garage and how alive I felt watching it burn. “I said I don’t want to,” I told him again.

Cole shook his head, clearly disgusted with me. “Oh well, your loss,” he said, shrugging. “Then make sure to watch me—I need a witness.”

“A witness? Why?”

“Wait and see. I’m going to do something extreme.”

Something about the gleam in my brother’s eye made me even more terrified. He was going to do something reckless, I knew. I had to talk sense into him, I decided, breaking into a run. Glancing back at me, Cole just smiled and picked up his pace.

There was no chair lift, which made it a long climb to the top. Not only did I get winded, but my feet started killing me, because of the stones and pine needles scattered on the pathway up.

Meanwhile my brother looked like he was running up carpeted stairs. Then he slowed down to shout back at me with a grin, “Stop being such a pussy, Callum!” Wheezing, I caught up to Cole at the top. He was standing by a sign that explained the rules for riding. A diagram showed exactly how you had to go down: on your back with your arms crossed over your chest. No exceptions, the sign made clear.

“Hey, look, it’s like you’re already in your coffin,” he pointed out. “That should save Mom and Dad some time when you die. . . .”

“Ha-ha,” I answered.

Just beyond the sign an attendant lounged in a lawn chair. Around seventeen or so, he was the most freckled guy I’d ever seen in my life. Apparently his job—other than sneaking looks at the girls in their bathing suits—was to give the signal when it was safe to go.

“Dude, can I go down headfirst?” my brother asked. I knew it—he wanted to do something stupid. I had to stop him.

Fortunately the attendant was already ahead of me. “No way,” he answered. “Park regulations.”

But as far as Cole was concerned, rules were made for other people. “Oh, c’mon,” he said, all smiles. “Please?”

“I said no,” the attendant snapped back. “Are you deaf, kid, as well as stupid?”

Cole’s eyes narrowed. He was mad. And when he was mad, bad things happened. Punches got thrown. I knew, because I was often on the receiving end.

“Oh yeah?” he snapped back. “Who’s going to stop me?”

He was definitely not leaving this alone. I had to say something; otherwise we were getting thrown out of the water park, for sure. And we still hadn’t hit the wave pool, the one thing
I
still wanted to try.

“Cole!” I shouted. “Don’t screw around!”

My brother turned, looking at me with those same blazing eyes. I was just another one of his enemies.

“Knock it off, or I’ll tell Mom and Dad,” I threatened.

The threat was a mistake, I thought immediately. Cole would only do something worse. For this was the law that kept the balance of the universe tilted in his favor—never back down. I’d always wished I could do the same, but it’s impossible—two such people could never coexist in the same family. Not without utter destruction.

Which meant that I could only stand there, hoping that the water-park employees had a good dental plan. But Cole never threw a punch. I don’t know. Maybe it was the summer day or the call of the wave pool or the pretty girl who’d just smiled at my brother before going down ahead of us. Whatever it was, for some reason Cole came up with a more reasonable option.

“Fuck you, Freckles,” he said to the attendant. Leaping into the slide, he quickly adopted the proper position shown on the sign and then launched himself.

“Hey!” the attendant shouted after him, whether for the insult or not waiting for the signal, who knows? But it was too late—Cole was gone. Unless the attendant had a radio and had memorized my brother’s red-and-yellow-floral surfer trunks, it was game over; Cole would simply vanish into the crowd of half-naked kids.

I could hear Cole laughing as he went into free fall.

Then again the attendant still had me. He turned and looked pretty ready to take out his rage on the abandoned little brother. But instead he just pointed to the slide.

“Get in,” he snarled.

That’s when things went wrong—again. As the freezing water made me shiver, I suddenly felt scared. Really scared. And when the attendant’s signal came, I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t.

“Go!” the attendant started shouting at me. “Go!”

Worse still, it turned out that nobody gets pissy faster than people waiting to have a good time. “You’re holding up the line!” voices started complaining. “C’mon, kid . . . Either go or get out!”

It didn’t make a difference. Embarrassed or not, I couldn’t release my white-knuckled death grip. I was going to have to climb out. I was going to have to climb out and walk all the way back down.

But then I pictured Cole. He’d be dripping wet and waiting for me, wondering what the holdup was. What would he think when somebody else came down? And then somebody else? What would he think when I finally came climbing down the hill, a little pussy of a brother who made him look bad?

I wasn’t looking forward to finding out. So I let go.

I don’t remember much after that. The sudden acceleration, drop-off, and then the free fall. My stomach was in my mouth, and I shut my eyes, terrified.

There was a disgusting squeak as my skin finally regained contact with the slide. When I hit the pool, my feet caught the water, and my body went flying end over end. The landing must have looked bad, because even my brother joined in on the sympathetic groaning as I surfaced.

Cole met me at the top of the pool ladder. “Nice air,” he remarked. It was a rare compliment—the last before we moved to Crystal Falls.

Fast-forward to four years later. Four years of what my mother describes as ups and downs, but what I call just one steep slide—ever since first setting eyes on that stupid welcome sign.

But I was finally getting used to things. At least I had a friend in Bryce—and something unexpected and exciting with Willow.

Now everything appears to have changed. Could I really have forgotten what actually happened in my life and remember only these dreams? It seems to me there are only two possibilities. Something has either gone very wrong with this place, or something has gone very wrong with me.

I honestly don’t know which one it is.

But I’ve calmed down, at least compared to earlier, when my mother tried to take me back to the hospital. There was no way I was going. I shook her off and ran straight out of the house. After racing home, my father found me in the driveway pressed up against the red hatchback.

I don’t know why I picked there, of all places, to collapse and cry my eyes out. Maybe it’s because that stupid old hatchback is the one thing that remains exactly as I remember it, with every dent, scratch, and rust stain—even the same soft tire Cole was nagging Mom about just last week.

But now I’m supposed to believe he hasn’t moved a muscle or said a word in four years. Now I’m supposed to believe there was some sort of accident at the water park—the same water park where I don’t remember anything except us having the time of our lives.

Mom had been sitting on the porch as she waited for Dad, I guess making sure I didn’t hurt myself or something. She was pretty upset, of course, especially when I shouted at her to leave me alone. I don’t know why, but I didn’t want her coming close to me, touching me. But she rushed over again as soon as my father got out of the van.

Dad also insisted on taking me straight back to the hospital. Hearing him, I became completely hysterical again. They didn’t know what to do—they would have literally had to tie me up to get me there.

So instead they just watched helplessly as I cried myself out. Eventually they got me to go inside—back into the wrong color house, where my brother lies paralyzed.

Once we were inside, my parents called the hospital. Sitting on the couch in the living room, I listened in as they talked to the neurologist on the phone in the hallway, occasionally passing the receiver between them. In hushed voices, they described not only my erratic behavior but my sudden inability to accept the tragedy that had struck my brother four years ago: that he suffered a spinal injury that left him paralyzed from the neck down, unable to even breathe on his own.

My parents listened as the neurologist talked, my father having now gone through to the old corded phone in the kitchen. “So Callum is suffering from some kind of posttraumatic shock?” I heard him ask.

“What do we do?” my mother wanted to know. “How is it treated?”

I have no idea what the doctor said next. But whatever it was, it seemed to put a stop to the discussion about taking me back to the hospital.

A couple of hours later, I’m having dinner, barely holding down whatever I’ve put in my mouth and swallowed.

I still can’t remember Cole having an accident four years ago. Well, that’s not entirely true. After the water park, when we came to Crystal Falls, I watched him crash his bike, smash his sled, and take spills on a skateboard dozens of times. But nothing that caused any worse injuries than scratched knees, big bruises, and a few bloody palms.

“Hey,” my father says from the head of the table, a position I haven’t seen him occupy in almost a year. “Is there anyone you want to call? A buddy or one of your girlfriends, maybe? Because talking to someone might make you feel better.”

Buddies? Girlfriends? He’s talking like I’ve got them growing on trees somewhere.

“Where’s your phone?” my mother asks.

“I don’t know,” I answer. Lying dead under some papers in my room would be my best guess.

“Of course—you lost it,” my father says. “Well, don’t worry, we’ll get you another one. Do you have anybody’s number? Do you want to call your buddy?”

“Look, I don’t really feel like talking to Bryce right now,” I answer. It’s an understatement. “But maybe I’ll call Willow a little later.”

“Bryce?” my father says. “Who’s Bryce?”

“And Willow,” my mother says, brightening. “That’s a lovely name. You’ve never mentioned her before. Is she a new friend?”

“Wait a second,” Dad says. “Why is every girl you hang out with named after a plant?”

I drop my fork on the plate. They are not teasing me, I can tell. They are seriously acting like they’ve never even heard of Bryce or Willow.