Where Futures End (4 page)

Dylan turned toward the door as the bus lurched to a stop.

“Or do you have plans with your Hevlen friends?” the girl asked.

“No, no plans.” He imagined calling them up:
Hey, guys, remember me? The guy who got kicked out?
Then he imagined himself at a basement party with Drury kids.
Yeah, I left Hevlen.
I guess they got sick of me—must have been all those math awards.

“It's at that puke-green house behind the high school,” the girl said. “You know the one?”

Dylan just nodded, waited for the door to
whoosh
open, and then barreled down the steps. He crossed the street toward his house, then froze. His mom had just stepped out onto the porch. “What are you doing home so early?” she asked.

Dylan tucked the fish-girl book behind his back so his mom wouldn't see it. He definitely couldn't tell her he'd gone to the library instead of to Drury. “Fast learner?” he tried.

His mom glowered at him. Clearly not in a joking mood.

“Early release day,” Dylan said quickly. He reached tentatively with his vorpal and tried to gauge whether she believed him. Maybe they could go for fish and chips, just the two of them. It'd been ages since they'd done anything like that.
Here's an Impossible Question: How does a mom forget she has
two
sons?

“If I find out you're still cutting classes—”

“I know, Mom.”

“—you're off to your dad's, I don't care at which end of Puget Sound he's got that houseboat parked.”

“Okay.” Dylan rubbed a hand over his eyes. They'd had this conversation one too many times.

His mom studied him in silence for a moment. Her vorpal ticked back and forth like a metronome. “I just came home to take Hunter to the doctor,” she said. “And now I'm heading back to the pawnshop.”

No fish and chips, then. “They find a way to stop his ego from swelling?”

“Very funny. Jumper's knee. And he's fine,” she added in a way that said Dylan should have asked. She walked past him toward the car Dylan hadn't noticed. But then she stopped, turned to look at the book in Dylan's hand.

Dylan felt a surge of panic—she'd freak if she found out where he'd been all afternoon. He imagined the novel as a chemistry textbook and tried to send the same thought out to her.

“You know what?” she said, moving her eyes to Dylan's face. She chewed her lip. “You get a good report card this semester, maybe we'll go to the lake for Thanksgiving.”

The book felt heavy as lead now. Dylan squashed his rising guilt. He nodded, and then she headed to the car.

As he stepped into his living room, he squeezed his eyes shut like he sometimes did when he walked into a room, and prayed he would step into a different world.

He opened his eyes to find darkness.

The air was close and warm and stale. This wasn't his living room—where was he? He reached out and knocked his elbow against wood, brushed his hands over linen and soft velvet. A crack of light showed between double doors. He was trapped in a wardrobe.

He breathed in. He knew that smell—
her,
the Girl Queen. These were her clothes, her wardrobe. He was in the palace. In the Other Place.

“Hello?” he called, and pushed at the doors. Locked. He pounded his fists on the wood. “Let me out!” He was like a maniac. “I'm here! I'm here! Let me out!” She would be there any moment, her face glowing with surprise at seeing him. “Let me out!”

Finally—footsteps. Rushing to meet him. It was her. The doors shuddered.

Dylan blinked in the yellow light of the living room. The wardrobe was gone. He was only scrabbling at the inside of his own front door.

Hunter eyed him from a doorway upstairs. “Where'd
you
come from?”

Dylan collapsed against the wall and clenched his eyes shut again. He reached out with his vorpal. He flung out his hand in search of a wardrobe door, hanging clothes. Nothing.

“Are you drunk?” Hunter asked. “It's two o'clock. And shouldn't you be at school?”

“Leave me alone.”

“I want my blazer back.”

Dylan shrugged it off and hurled it up over the banister.

Hunter snatched it from the railing, held it out in his fist. “Stop doing that. Stop pretending to be me.” He went back into his bedroom.

Dylan's mouth went dry. Hunter knew? He wiped his sweaty palms on his pants—Hunter's pants—and then realized he had lost the library book, the one with the fish-girl illustration. Dropped it outside or left it in the Other Place? He checked the porch—wasn't there. His head felt muffled, confused.
How did Hunter know?
He went up to his brother's room.

It was cluttered with half-disassembled junk from the shop—DVD players and microwaves waiting to be repaired. Hunter sat at his desk, fiddling with a dinosaur of a radio that looked like it had time-traveled there from some unchronicled era. At his elbow was a framed photo of Chess squinting against the sunlight. A UW Huskies poster overhead was stuck with so many thumbtacks that Dylan wondered if Hunter was afraid it'd be stolen. Then again, he'd caught on to the fact that Dylan had borrowed his clothes, so maybe that wasn't such a crazy idea.

Hunter jerked on some hazardous-looking wiring. “What do you want?”

“Did Chess tell you I was at Hevlen today?” Dylan asked.

“Chess?” Hunter looked up, his screwdriver clutched like a dagger.

“That I was wearing your blazer and . . .” Dylan looked down at the pants he was wearing.

Hunter seemed to notice them for the first time. His gaze darkened. “Did you think I wouldn't hear about
Conrad's class?”

Dylan's stomach dropped.

“Why do you do that?” Hunter went on. “Everyone thinks you're crazy.”

A wave of dizziness hit Dylan. They knew? They had all noticed he wasn't Hunter? He put a hand against the door frame to steady himself. “Sometimes . . . sometimes people think I'm you. Because of—”

Hunter stood, grabbed the blazer he'd discarded on the bed. “Because you wear my clothes? Funny how that works.”

Dylan shook his head. “It's more than that. You know it's more.”

The silence was thick with Hunter's contempt. “Your vorpal.” He crossed his arms.

It sounded so stupid coming out of Hunter's mouth.
It always sounds stupid.
Vorpals, a girl queen waiting for him in a palace—it sounded crazy.

“You've got to stop, Dylan.” Hunter jostled his arm. “Come back to reality.”

Dylan jerked away. “I'm not crazy.”

“Dad really screwed you up, didn't he? Letting you believe all that stuff was real.”

Dylan felt the cold sting of windy Alki Beach, remembered the day he'd asked Dad the Last Impossible Question. The Impossible Question that had changed everything between them. And then right afterward, when Dylan had gone to the shed, hidden the bracelet . . .

He pushed the memory away. “It
is
real. Even Conrad—”

“Conrad is a thousand years old,” Hunter said with a snort. “He doesn't know who's supposed to be in the class and who got kicked out of school for
cheating on a stats final
.”

Dylan winced.

“Why
did
you cheat, Dylan?” Hunter sounded plaintive, almost angry. “You're smarter than most of the kids in that school. Dad was so proud of you—came to all of your math competitions before you left Hevlen,” Hunter said. “He's never even come to any of my basketball games.”

Wrong,
Dylan thought.

At Alki Beach five years ago, Dylan had watched the boats and told Dad about the sails he'd seen along the river in the Other Place: shimmering membranes made from dragon wings.
Mom doesn't like to hear about those things,
he'd told Dad.
Can't I come live with you instead?

The Last Impossible Question.

Dad's whole face had changed, shifted like sand trickling down a steep bank.
Not everyone's fit to take care of a kid, Dylan. You're better off with Mom.
Dad's voice was like water flooding his eardrums, like a wave crashing over his head.

It's time to give up those stories anyway. None of it's real. You know that, right?

“I hated those math competitions,” Dylan said, his throat raw. “They were all Mom's idea. I never wanted Dad to come.”

Hunter shook his head. “What
do
you want, Dylan?” The air hummed, full of Hunter's exasperation. Maybe it was just the radio. “What will make you stop this?
Tell
me,
I'll
give
it to you.”

Dylan's gaze went to the photo of Chess.

Hunter noticed. He pushed Dylan against the door frame. “You're living in a fantasy world.”

Dylan caught a metallic glint of fear in Hunter's eyes, even though Dylan was the one with a doorjamb pressed against his backbone.
Because he knows my vorpal is stronger than his.

Unless they were right, Dad and Hunter. Unless it was all in his head.

Dylan suddenly couldn't catch his breath. He thought he could feel his vorpal like an extra organ, churning next to other worthless organs—appendix, gall bladder. But he was afraid to use it, afraid that if he tried, it wouldn't be there, that he was fooling himself after all.

Hunter still loomed over him. “All of this crap you're pulling—getting kicked out of school—can't you see what you're doing to yourself?”

“Can't you,” Dylan pleaded, “can't you just admit that you remember where we went when we were kids?”

Hunter's jaw tightened. His vorpal ground like stuck machinery. “You know what I remember?”

Just say it. Tell me you remember. I didn't make it all up. Please.

“I remember you pretending.”

Dylan thought his lungs might be going flat. He searched Hunter's face, trying to figure out whether to believe him. He couldn't decide.

He turned toward the stairs.

“Dylan?” Hunter said. “Stay away from Chess.”

Dylan couldn't help himself—he sneaked out of the house and went to the film club that night.

“Klaatu barada nikto,”
he said to Chess at the door to the auditorium, just like in the movie. He jammed his hands into his jacket pockets. Why did he always have to be so weird?

“Aren't you clever—a line from
The Day the Earth Stood Still
.” Chess still wore her uniform, plus a fleece cap that made her eyes seem bigger and brighter, even in the low light. The bracelet peeked out from under her jacket sleeve, but Dylan hardly thought about it: Her vorpal was pulsing candy colors, making halos tremble at the edge of his vision.

He knew he was ridiculous for thinking about vorpals at all. But he couldn't help it. He could swear her vorpal was radiating happiness, reaching out to him with fingers of heat.

“You do this every week?” he asked.

“Yeah, it's fun. Let's grab seats.”

She led him to the front row.

After they sat down, she leaned close. “Besides, Tuesdays are the nights my parents always render due benevolence, so I'd rather not be at home to see them flirting.” She rolled her eyes.

He turned the phrase over in his mind, then shoved his hands in his pockets, embarrassed. “What's that from, Shakespeare?”

“King James.”

“Right, that's a Shakespeare play.”

She laughed. “You're funny.”

He realized his mistake—
the King James Bible, dummy
. But she thought he was funny. Someone passed him a bowl of M&M's. “Does Hunter ever come to these things?”

“Robots don't appeal to him.”

“Not even
Blade Runner
? Acid rain, shady corporations?”

“He thinks it's weird that Harrison Ford falls in love with a girl who's not real.” She elbowed him. “He's
your
brother. Shouldn't you know?”

Dylan cracked an M&M between his teeth.

“I think
Blade Runner
's romantic,” Chess went on. But she was giving him that slow smile, so he didn't know if she was being serious.

Someone started up the projector.

“What would you want with a guy who can't appreciate
Blade Runner
?” Dylan asked.

“I don't date him for his taste in movies,” Chess said.

“So why do you date him?” Dumb question—Dylan had seen how all the cheerleaders crowded Hunter after a game, how girls fawned when Hunter did something as mundane as order a cheeseburger.

But Chess took a second to think about it. She looked up at the ceiling. “In the movies, the best guys to fall in love with are always a little sad.”

Dylan snorted. “What does Hunter have to be sad about?”

“Don't know. But he always seems like he's trying to
make up for something, you know?”

An image came to Dylan's mind of Hunter jabbing at the old radio, sweating over something that would never work again. “No, I don't know.”

Chess shrugged. “Like he lost something.”

Dylan got a weird feeling in his stomach.

“Speaking of—what happened to your uniform?” Chess gave him a playful smirk.

Dylan ducked his head. He still hadn't explained to her why he'd been at Hevlen today. “I realized they can't actually dock me points if I'm not enrolled here, so I figured it was safe to stop wearing it.”

She looked at him sidelong. “Why did you come tonight? If you're not enrolled here?”

“You bought all the good movies from the shop, so now I have to come here to watch them,” he joked.

Her smile went crooked.

She thinks you're weird,
Dylan told himself.
She probably heard about you sneaking into philosophy class.

The movie started. Dylan trained his eyes on the screen.