Untaken (37 page)

I hauled myself to my feet and looked around. There was no sign of Jake. Little guy was off playing in the woods again. God knows what he found to do out there. Maybe it was better not to know. The houses by the lake were real nice ones. Someone had once paid an awful lot of money for these houses—you could see that even with the way they were starting to go to ruin. The biggest of them had a deck that jutted right out into the lake. I could imagine myself sitting out on that deck in the morning, fishing for our breakfast. Gracie sitting beside me, maybe, telling me how I was holding the pole all wrong.

Dumb. The place was huge—there was no way we’d have been able to keep up with it. No more mansions for anyone. That stuff, the good stuff beyond basic ragged-ass survival, belonged to “before.” The only thing to do with this house was to strip it of anything useful and let the forest take it.

It was dark inside, of course, and hotter than Satan’s asshole, but the house was still in pretty good shape. As I paced the corridors, my feet sank into impractical white carpeting, and clattered over rich marble. My sneakers left footprints in the dust. It must have been a summer place. No sign of hastily-packed suitcases here. I was probably the first person who’d been in here since the rich dude who owned the place was last here on vacation.

There was a huge staircase up to the second floor, with a pretty primo sliding banister, and I’d actually run to the top of the stairs and slung a leg over the rail before I realized what a supremely stupid way to die falling off a banister would be. No ambulances, no hospitals, so we had to be careful. Wouldn’t want to miss out on the fun of being alive in this brave new age of shitting in a hole in the ground and bathing in a bucket in the yard.

The heat inside the house made my skin prickle and itch, and my dirty old shirt clung to the sweat on my back. I wanted to break something, just fuck some shit up to get some of the sudden rage out of me, but the house was so big and silent and sad that it would have been like desecrating a tomb. At the top of the stairs, there was a big pair of double doors, and when I pushed them open, the angry knot in my chest loosened and faded some.

The room was beautiful. The far wall was made up of delicately arched windows, miraculously unbroken, and through them, the shimmer of the lake spread out before me. The huge expanse of floor was rich brown marble, the domed ceiling high above me painted gold, and the reflection of the sun on the water sent little wavelets of light dancing above me. A dusty giant of a chandelier still shimmered through the gaps in the veil of dust and cobwebs it wore. Whoever had owned this place sure knew how to live. I could almost see the parties they used to have here. Rich city people in tuxes or gowns that cost more than everything I owned. Bunch of stuck-up snobs. It didn’t help them in the end, did it? Now they were all dead and the house was mine. Until the woods grew right up through the floor and the whole thing crumbled into the soil.

I spun in place, knowing I must have looked like a prime douchebag, but the room just called out for dancing. King of the world! The whole lousy, broken world. My sneakers scuffed and squeaked on the floor. What I needed was some music. God, it’d been so long since I’d heard music, I’d have listened to anything, even some of those shitty old crooner vinyl LPs we’d found in a box in the attic back at the cabin.

I closed the doors to the ballroom carefully. There were bedrooms further down the corridor. I should have been in the kitchen, really, looking for food, but God knows we could’ve used some new clothes. The cuffs of Jake’s jeans were about up to his knees he’d shot up so much recently, and mine weren’t much better. Gracie was taller too, and her clothes were getting tight in places where they didn’t used to be. The last time she’d been out in the vegetable garden wearing that old T-shirt of hers, I hadn’t been able to keep my eyes off her chest.

Not cool.

She was my friend. She would’ve be all kinds of mad if she’d known that I’d been thinking about her like that. And she was just a kid, too. But when I thought on it, she’d been fourteen when we’d met. It’d been almost a year, so she had to be fifteen now, halfway to sixteen, even. My own birthday must have come and gone in there somewhere, not to mention Christmas.

Jeez, what a raw deal!

Christmas.

God, it was a stupid idea. Gracie would likely think I’d gone nuts, and Jake wouldn’t get it at all. But wouldn’t it be nice to work on something fun for a change? Not something to keep us alive, but something to actually enjoy? It was late afternoon by the time I was done in the house. I loaded canned food, matches, and an armful of clothes smelling like the ghosts of other people’s laundry detergent into the saddlebags we’d rigged on the bike. There was still no sign of Jake. I sure hoped the kid hadn’t wandered off too far. Gracie would spit nails if we had to risk the road back in the dark, and there was an hour’s ride ahead of us. I buckled the saddlebags tightly shut and made my way over to the edge of the woods.

It was much darker under the trees than it was in the open, like the night was creeping out from its den somewhere in the heart of the forest. A shiver ran up my spine. Why anyone would live all the way out here in these creepy-ass woods if they had a choice was beyond me, ballroom or no ballroom.

“Jake? Buddy, if you can hear me, you’d best get back here.”

A bird scolded in the branches above. A fish jumped in the lake. Otherwise, all was silent.

“Jake?”

Great. Just perfect. I’d go a little way into the woods, then call again, but only a little way. It was spooky under the trees. Things rustled in the bushes. What I wouldn’t have given to be on a good city street, listening to the sounds of cars and sirens and other people’s TVs turned up too loud.

“Hey? Jake? Just remember, if we’re late back and Gracie yells, it’s your—”

A small body lay still in the dirt in front of me.

“Oh God, Jake!”

I flipped Jake onto his back, then brushed dirt of his face. His skinny little chest hitched, and I knew he was breathing at the very least.

“Jake, buddy, wake up! Please.” His nose was crusted with dried blood. “Jake, seriously, you’re scaring the shit out of me.”

Slowly, Jake’s eyes slid open. His brow creased in a frown as his eyes fixed on mine.

“Jake, dude, are you okay?”

“Fell,” whispered Jake.

“Fell? How in the hell did you fall?”

“I climbed. Up a tree.”

“Why would you be climbing any damned tree? Who do you think is gonna help you if you’re really hurt? Are you really hurt? Jeez, what a goddamn mess this turned out to be!” I shook. If anything was broken, just what were we going to do about it?

Jake climbed slowly to his feet.

“If you broke your back or anything you shouldn’t be moving,” I told him.

“I didn’t break my back,” said Jake. “I just fell down. I’m fine.”

“Gracie is gonna go crazy.”

Jake rubbed his head. “Secret.”

I stared at Jake. He didn’t seem to be in pain. His eyes were focused. He looked a little pale, but that didn’t mean much on its own. “You mean we don’t tell her you fell?”

Jake nodded. “Gracie will be sad if Jake fell.”

“She’ll be fucking furious.”

“Gracie says ‘fuck’ is a bad word,” said Jake, primly.

I snorted a laugh in spite of myself, and Jake giggled too.

“You’re sure you’re okay?” I asked him. “Nothing hurts? Your head feels okay?”

“I feel normal,” said Jake.

“Wave those arms around. Wiggle those fingers and toes.”

Jake did as he was told. “See? I’m not broken.”

“I guess you’re not, and even if you were, what in the hell would I be able to do about it?” I shrugged, and after a beat, Jake copied me.

“We won’t tell Gracie, I guess, but if you start feeling weird, you come tell me, okay? If your head starts hurting or you feel dizzy, anything.”

Jake nodded solemnly. “I will.”

If anything felt weird. That was real funny. Maybe I should have just straight out asked the kid about everything right then; about those sunflowers, for starters. But Jake looked so small and worried. There was a big smear of mud on his face, and I tried my best to wipe it off while he stood there impassively. Trustingly.

We’d talk another time, when I knew the kid wasn’t about to drop dead of a brain hemorrhage or something.

“Well, let’s get going, before anything else goes wrong,” I said.

As Jake clambered onto the back of the trail bike, he kept looking back at the woods like he was expecting them to wave him goodbye or some shit, but that was just normal Jake-level weirdness as far as I could see. I took my time adjusting my helmet. My hands were still shaky from seeing Jake laying there on the ground, and the last thing I needed was to wipe out on the bike. I squinted back over my shoulder at Jake.

“If you need to stop, you just let me know, okay? Don’t need you falling off now.”

But the kid was staring back at the woods again, in a world of his own.

Gracie

6_Star:
You should just tell him. What’s the worst that can happen?

GRC97:
I’m stuck in a cabin with him for the next 40 years of ultimate awkward?

6_Star:
You didn’t tell me you guys live in a cabin. Rustic.

GRC97:
I guess you live in some underground bunker. With doors that go “swoosh.”

6_Star:
Not exactly. And you changed the subject.

GRC97:
Haha, I’m not telling him. I’ll get over it right?

6_Star:
I guess. When I was your age I used to get crushes all the time. And as soon as I saw a new guy I liked better? It was like the first guy had never existed. Not gonna work for you though, huh?

GRC97:
I’m not even sure if it’s a crush. It’s just…weird. How old are you, anyway?

6_Star:
A/S/L? That’s old school, G. I’m 35. Young enough to remember my first crush (which this totally is btw) on a guy. Honestly, just tell him.

GRC97:
IDK…

6_Star:
Or
don’t. But you’re gonna feel awkward around him
anyway, right?

GRC97:
So what’s the update on the Big Bads?

6_Star:
Well,
something’s
going on. They’ve called in another unit, but they’re not moving anywhere. I don’t think it’s anything for you guys to worry about. They’re hardly going to call in backup to deal with 3 people. And that was subject change #2 ;-)

GRC97:
Cool. At least one thing is going right for me. How are you? How is Jami?

6_Star:
Ugh. It’s not good. He’s hanging on. Lisa does what she can, but we’d need a medical suite to help him. The infection is spreading. Lisa thinks he needs an amputation, but we don’t have the stuff to do it…so it’s wait and see. As usual. He keeps screaming. I kind of find myself wishing it would just be over for him. Then I feel guilty.

GRC97:
You shouldn’t feel guilty. I’m sorry. I wish we could help.

6_Star:
Me too.

“What you doing up here? I thought you were going out?”

I jumped when I heard his voice. “Nothing, Brandon,” I said, closing my chat window. “Just reading. Jeez, you shouldn’t creep up on me like that!” Had he seen the screen? My cheeks heated up. This Brandon business was getting really old. “Are you going to be fooling around in there all day again?” I asked him.

The attic of the cabin was divided in half. One half was my room, the other half was a dark and spooky cavern stuffed with boxes. Brandon had been hauling junk out through my room for the past two days, and if he was going to be at it again today, there was no point even trying to talk to 6_Star.

“Why don’t you let me help?” I asked him. “The quicker it gets done, the quicker I get my peace and quiet back.”

“Nah, that’s okay,” said Brandon. “It’s hot, and it’s pretty gross back there. Wouldn’t ask you to deal with it when I’m the one with the hair up my ass about getting organized.”