Where Futures End (3 page)

“What?” Hunter said. “He had his chance at Hevlen. He blew it.”

“Shut up!” Dylan said, hands shaking with anger as he shoved the drawing back into the folder.

“And now you're screwing up public school too. Just like you screw up everything.”

Dylan's gut dropped. Nobody thought he'd ever live up to his older brother.

Not even Hunter.

His mom held out her palms. “Stop already. Once upon a time, you two were friends.”

“Until Hunter's head got too big for his body,” Dylan said.
Until he made varsity. Until he started acting like he wouldn't be caught dead reading any of the books we used to love reading with Dad. Just because he wants to prove that he
doesn't care that Dad left, that he never needed Dad anyway.

Mom put a hand on Hunter's shoulder. “Leave Dylan alone about school.”

“You know he cuts all the time,” Hunter said.

“You would too if you had to spend your lunch hour hiding from punks,” Dylan muttered.

Hunter smirked. “I wouldn't have to.” He hooked an arm over the top of the fridge. “Neither would you if you didn't read kids' books in the cafeteria.”

Dylan pushed away an ancient memory of Hunter reading to him from a book of fairy tales in the car on the way to the lake house: “
I cannot return home,” said the girl as she moved in the water. “I belong here now.” And they saw that in place of legs she had a long, glimmering fishtail.

How could Hunter forget how much we both loved those stories?

“Grab your lunch, Hunter,” Mom said, heading for the front door. “And Dylan—no more cutting school.” She gave him a hard look and went out.

Hunter slung his backpack over his shoulder and reached into the fridge. “Mom doesn't need any more trouble from you.”

Dylan's throat tightened. The memory came again: the fairy-tale book, trees rushing past the car window. And then another flash: the two of them slipping into the Other Place, where a palace waited.

“You remember, don't you?” he asked Hunter. “You remember going there?” He felt his vorpal reaching out even as he said it, searching, searching.

Hunter stood staring at a shelf of produce, his faraway gaze lit by the fridge's glow. “You think that bracelet's going to help you get back to some magical land?” He slammed the fridge shut. “Trust me, it's not.” He turned toward the front door. “Just forget about it, Dylan. Life's better in the real world.”

“For some people,” Dylan mumbled as Hunter pulled the front door shut behind him.

Dylan left his half-eaten cereal and went out to the city bus stop on the corner. He was supposed to walk to school. Drury High. But he wasn't going to Drury. Everyone mistook him for Hunter; he might as well make the most of it.

He got on the bus thinking of that gold cuff.
Remember me.

The bus dropped him off at Hevlen late.
Can a person be late if he isn't enrolled?

He went to philosophy, which was the only class worth going to school for, and wasn't offered at Drury. He had to do stuff like this when his brain went numb from boredom.

Mr. Conrad looked up, brow furrowed, when Dylan walked in. Dylan could sense the man's vorpal whirring weakly like a run-down clock. Dylan stood rooted to the spot and tried to figure out if Conrad recognized him this time. Or if he remembered that Hunter didn't take philosophy this period. “I, uh, have to switch to first period for today, because . . .” Dylan's voice trailed off.

Conrad spoke to the class: “Mr. Yates here is demonstrating the principle of sufficient reason: There must be a reason he has walked in during the middle of my class.”

Dylan's face burned.

“But that does not mean his tardiness happened for any end,” Conrad went on. “A reason but not a reason. Have a seat, Mr. Yates.”

Dylan hesitated. It took him a moment to figure it out:
He thinks I'm Hunter after all.
He dropped into an empty chair.

Conrad turned back to the board, paused. His vorpal grated against Dylan's bones, searching, and then retreated from Dylan's reach. “Is it you who plays basketball?” he asked Dylan. “I'm told we won the game Saturday.” He didn't wait for an answer, just went back to scribbling on the board.

Everyone else in the room still had their gazes trained on Dylan. He could almost hear their thoughts.
Great game. Nice job.

It wasn't so bad sometimes, being mistaken for Hunter.

In fact, Dylan had to admit to himself the real reason it happened so often: He wanted it to.

During morning break, Dylan found a bench in the quad and started scribbling in his notebook the things he remembered about the Other Place: the drum of bird wings under the tower roof, the whir of wind-up clocks in the hall.

He remembered discovering a carved tree in the palace garden whose branches were really handles that rang hidden bells.

He remembered the maze of boardwalks over marshland, and crouching to rescue a tiny creature all covered in spines, only to have it pierce his hand.

He remembered floating in ocean water so buoyant he'd half expected to look down and find he'd grown a fish tail, and then wishing he
had
grown a tail, because it would mean he would never leave, that he belonged there.

Something tugged at Dylan's attention. He sensed Chess even before he saw her sitting under the trees at a table, sharing a pair of earbuds with another girl.

He stood up and walked across the quad, feeling drawn to the gold bracelet glinting on her wrist. Could he get it back from her? Probably not, but Hunter could.

That was another thing about Dylan's vorpal—usually he could use it to convince someone who
wanted
to be convinced. And who at Hevlen wouldn't rather be around Hunter than around Dylan? Especially Hunter's girlfriend.

She turned to flash him a knee-weakening smile. Then she froze, yanked the earbud away. The buzz of some pop song with an urgent beat accompanied her sudden confusion.

“Movie tonight, huh?” he blurted, scanning the science fiction film club flyer she held in her hands, hoping to distract her from whatever was making her look at him like that. Kate Chesterfield was listed as the film club's president. Chess? Had to be her.

Chess's gaze narrowed. “
The Day the Earth Stood Still.
”

Dylan's gaze went to the gold band that had slid down her arm. “You're wearing the bracelet.”

She put a protective hand over it, scrutinized Dylan. He could hear her vorpal, undeveloped as it was,
snick-snick-snick
. Why were everyone else's vorpals so much weaker
than Dylan's? Impossible to say. Maybe it ran in families—his brother's was stronger than most, but he never used it, didn't really know how.

“You're Hunter's brother.” She tilted her head to one side. “From the pawnshop.”

“Dylan,” he said, a bit deflated.

“Took me a minute to recognize you.”

Dylan shifted his stance. Well, it had
almost
worked. He looked at the bracelet. He could still ask for it back—she'd been nervous about taking it from the shop.

An image popped into Dylan's head: Chess smiling at him, the gold robot mask pushed up over her dark hair. Like a matching set, mask and bracelet.

He tore his gaze away from her and pointed to the flyer. “Which appendage will it cost me to get into your club?”

“What?”

“Arm? Leg? I'm prepared to give both.”

She looked him over.

“You're appraising them,” he said, shifting nervously under her gaze.

“No, it's just . . .” She gave him that same curious look she'd given him in the pawnshop. Same glint in her eyes. His legs wobbled. “I thought you didn't go to Hevlen anymore.”

Dylan's stomach tightened. He looked down at his uniform—his brother's uniform, pants and blazer, rolled at the hems and cuffs. Plus the Battle of the Bands shirt from the pawnshop, definitely a violation of the dress code. Was it the shirt that had given him away? Hunter never wore
anything from the shop—he couldn't be sure it hadn't been pawned by someone from school. He was careful about that kind of thing.

Chess was still looking at him, waiting for him to say something. At any minute he might offer her a shop discount on obscure movie paraphernalia out of sheer awkwardness. He might start quoting
Metropolis
. Now that he thought about it, he already was. It was a silent movie.

He cleared his throat and studied the flyer for
The Day the Earth Stood Still
. “Are you showing the original or the one with Keanu Reeves?”

“Do you have to ask?”

Dylan laughed. “Maybe they should have cast him as the robot.” He tweaked his neck and made his face into a blank mask, Keanu-style. “
The Day Keanu Reeves Stood Still
.”

Chess smiled, a slow smile that had Dylan holding his breath to see how it would end. She tilted her head to the side. “Seven o'clock. In the auditorium.”

She turned back to her friend. Dylan eyed the bracelet still glinting on her wrist. Later, maybe.

His stomach rumbled. He shivered against the chill coming off the gurgling fountain—

Since when had there been a fountain around here? He turned toward the cafeteria.

The building was gone.

And the crowds of students.

The burble of water was a stream and he was in a wood.

But only for one more step, and then the buildings returned, with the deafening noise from the crowd. Dylan
jerked to a stop, as if doused with a bucket of water. The mineral smell of cold dirt lingered. But the wood was gone.

He gasped for air, then doubled over with his hands on his knees. His heart was a skittering rabbit.

The Other Place. He'd stepped in for a moment, and then stepped right out again. Was that what had happened?

His skin prickled in the cold.

Rain drummed on the city bus window later that afternoon on his way home from the public library. Dylan sat in the back, whipping through the pages of a tattered book, desperately looking for the Girl Queen. He found a woodcut illustration called “The Fish-Girl.”
How do I get back there?
he asked her. As though a picture could answer.

Why is it so hard?
he wondered.
What's keeping me locked out?

In
The Blue Fairy Book,
rewards always went to the virtuous, to the pure of heart.
Maybe that's my trouble.
He hadn't exactly been virtuous these past months: lying, cheating, pretending.

He'd been looking for his rabbit the first time he'd found the Other Place, so maybe
that
was the key: You had to look for something lost. But it wasn't
only
that he'd been looking for something lost.

He'd also desperately needed to get away.

His parents had been arguing. Mom was angry at Dad for disappearing again, instead of being happy to have him home. Whenever they shouted at each other, Dylan would wish for someplace nicer. And then it would appear: the
Other Place.

Like a dream.

Or a hallucination.

Am I going crazy?

He could see the Girl Queen so clearly in his mind: a half elf, winter-pale. Not perched on a throne, but out in the trees, climbing just as well as his brother could climb the trees behind their house. Scolding Dylan in a language he didn't know but a tone he could understand—
Higher, higher!
Swinging by her knees, teasing him for being afraid. Her hair hanging down, a shivering flame inverted.

Someone leaned over his seat. “Fast reader.”

Dylan looked up. He recognized a girl he'd gone to elementary school with. The hood of her dingy anorak framed her face so that she looked as little like a queen as possible. The effect was so jarring that Dylan only stared dumbly.

“I heard a rumor you were going to Drury this year,” she said.

Dylan's brain finally started working again. “True story,” he said.

“How come I never see you around?” Her cheeks were pink with the cold. Dylan remembered a brief crush, fourth grade. Some incident involving his sticking an eraser into her ear. He prayed she didn't remember. “Are you on work release?”

“Something like that,” Dylan said. Better than telling her he'd cut school to go to philosophy class at Hevlen in the morning and hang out at the public library all
afternoon.

“Me too.” She waved a hand at her black pants, which Dylan supposed was part of some work uniform. “What book is that? Looks ancient.”

Dylan clapped it shut. “They've got this whole collection of rare books at Washington State that they'll mail to the local branch.”

She blinked. “Cool. Is that where you work—the library?”

“I, uh . . . I spend a lot of time there.”

“I work at the pet store downtown. The one with the weird snakes and exotic birds? I basically just clean up all kinds of abnormal animal crap. You should come by and see these really freaky giant lizards we've got. Monitors.”

“Yeah, I've seen them.” Dylan gazed out past the raindrops at shining sidewalks sliding past. “I used to go in that shop as a kid and try to draw them. All my old school artwork looks like it was copied from cave paintings of dinosaurs.”

He turned back to find her confused expression.

“That place used to be a comic shop when we were kids,” she said. “The pet store moved in only a few years ago.”

Dylan gripped the rail, suddenly unsteady. “You sure?” His heart pounded. Did that mean he'd seen those animals in the Other Place? He reached up and yanked the cord. “Uh, this is my stop.” The cord was wet. No, his palms were sweating.

The girl moved aside to let Dylan stand. “Hey, you want to go to a party Friday?” she asked. “Bunch of Drury kids,
no tie needed.” She flashed a smile.