Evan rode with him as he walked, not interfering until Jordan needed a little bit more skill to climb the fence. He felt the weight of the soaked jeans, the increasing chill as the rain dripped through to Jordan's skin.
Jordan walked back to the school, becoming even more soaked with each dejected step.
Evan left him before he reached it. He could not go back to school. He could not do this to anybody else. He let his consciousness drift to the ground, almost into a puddle on the sidewalk. He had no idea what to do.
The worm would be angry, Evan thought, and it would threaten him. But surely it wouldn't kill him? Surely it wanted him too badly. It was logical, but the more he thought about it, the less he was sure that the creature worked by logic. Sinking further into the ground, he knew that he should not have taken even one other kid.
He thought of Jordan's mother. How would she react when her son began to fall ill, after just having lost another?
It doesn't matter,
Evan told himself.
It's my last day on earth. It doesn't matter what happens now.
He wanted to stay there on the ground, sink into it, and never go back to himself. He would expand and drift into nothing. It would be better than becoming a worm.
He would have done it, but there was one person he still cared about.
H
E FLOATED INTO THE STORE.
It was the end of her shift, but there was still a line at the register where his mother stood, scanning items, taking money. She looked exhausted. Her graying dark hair was pulled back into a messy bun, with pieces falling everywhere. It looked like she had slept on it, but Evan knew she hadn't slept.
A customer wanted to chat, but Evan's mother only gave a sad little smile, and the customer went away again, replaced by the next one and the next.
Evan jumped into a man as he was handing his mother a twenty-dollar bill. He was a burly man, stout and strong and tall. He looked down on his mother's graying head. Evan had never seen her from this angle. She seemed smaller. For the first time in his life, he didn't see her as his mother, but as a person. A worn-looking woman who was much too young to look the way she did.
Without really looking at him, she took the cash. There was a tension as she pulled it, as if she wanted to pull harder. As if she wanted to rip the bill in two and everything else with it. She slowly put the bill inside the drawer and gave him the change back, still not really looking at him. He tried to catch her eye, but she looked down.
“Tough day?” Evan asked. He cursed himself for saying something so ordinary, but it was all he could think of.
His mother forced a tiny smile and tapped the fingers of her right hand shakily against the counter. “You know, same old.” She glanced up at the clock, wiping a stray hair out of her face with her left hand.
“Roy late again?” asked Evan.
His mother squinted at him. “Do I know you?”
“I come here a lot,” said Evan. He noticed that his mother was wearing a name tag.
SHARON,
it said.
His mother shrugged. Her eyes were wet, and now that Evan was really looking, he could see that they were bloodshot. “Yeah,” she said. “He's late.”
“They should fire him,” said Evan.
His mother smiled, her eyes lighting up a little bit. “That's what my son says.” Her smile faded again. She chewed her lip and looked down at the counter, fingers still tapping.
“Hey!” a lady behind him said. “Are you done?”
Evan moved out of the way. The man was pushing against his mind, but he couldn't let him go just yet. He moved over to the magazine rack and picked up a newspaper, still watching his mother out of the corner of the man's eye.
“You know people are waiting, rightâSharon?” said the lady, slamming a Diet Coke down on the counter. There was no one behind her.
“I'm sorry about that,” said his mother.
Evan watched the struggle of his mother's hands as she stuffed the lady's wrinkled bills into the rusting cash register. Her hands shook, and she looked up at the clock again. She was obviously trying not to cryâover him. Why had he told her what was happening to him? He could have waited until the very last second, at least spared her a little bit of this.
The lady left, leaving the store empty except for Evan and his mother. His mother wiped a tear away, then glanced at him, then looked down, wiping her eyes fiercely.
Evan had forgotten who he was in. This strange man must be making the situation even worse. He jumped out of the man and hovered in the air above the magazine rack.
The man looked around him, put down the newspaper, and headed for the door. As he pushed the door open, he bumped smack into Roy.
“Watch where you're going,” said Roy. He was tall and thin, except for a potbelly that stuck straight out from his middle, and older than Evan's mother. “Hey, Sharon.”
Without thinking about what he was doing, Evan jumped into Roy. Suddenly, he had a close-up of his mother's face.
“I am so sorry,” said Evan. “I know what I've put you through.” He stopped, closed Roy's eyes, remembered who he was in. “I know how much it means to you to spend time with your son. I promise it won't be a problem again.” He wanted to reach out and put his arms around her, but he knew Roy couldn't do that. He had to stand there, watch her try to hold the tears back.
“Goodbye, Roy.” She grabbed her purse from under the counter and rushed out, not looking behind her.
Evan jumped out of Roy and followed her.
She slid into her dirty old station wagon and peeled out of the parking lot. She was crying freely now, speeding and careening around corners.
Evan wanted to cry too, floating inside the car, rolling with the turns. Which would be worse for her? he wondered. Having him here, or having him gone?
As she pulled into the driveway, Evan slid back into himself. He tried to lift his head, but it barely moved. While he had been out of his body, his head had lolled forward and the membranes had grown from his chin into his chest. As he struggled to move, they stretched only a little. His webbed hand lay, twisted, on the wood square. From the way his fingers were now curled, he knew he would never be able to open them well enough to use the square again. And a thick membrane had grown down from his nose, sewing his lips almost completely shut.
The light fixture fell from the ceiling and landed on Evan's leg. He yelped. It was a strange sound, weak and whiny. He could not look up, but he didn't have to look to see what had fallen with it.
“Running children into their trap, proem,” Foul hissed. “Shall I
trust
you? Shall I presume it
forced
you?”
“It was only one,” Evan whispered. His voice was barely audible and garbled by the membrane. “You should be happy. It's just more for you to eat.” Evan heard its wings beating the air.
“Never mind what they have offered. Or what they have
threatened.
You will meet us here in this room, at this time, three weeks from now. You will deliver on our bargain. Or it will not be just you who we tear into, piece by piece, then bone by bone.” Its wings flapped harder. “We don't like to eat humans, but we can.” The sound of its wings flapping rose up and up, and with a sucking noise, the thing was swallowed into its hole.
Without knocking, his mother burst into the room. Her tears were worse than just a few minutes before. And then she really saw him.
“Evan!” she cried, and raced over to his bedside. She tore the blanket away from his body and sobbed over him. His legs were now fused together, too, the thick yellow membranes like plastic tubing, not flexible at all like the webbing of his hands. His toes were curled under, and the membranes glued them to the bottom of his feet. “It can't be true. Don't go yet!”
“Don't . . . watch . . . this . . .” he growled, but it came out like a painful squeak. His mother just went on sobbing. Tears fell from Evan's eyes and filled up the membranes covering his face, so it looked like he was in a fish tank.
“I love you,” he squeaked. “Please don't watch.”
His mother stared at him. “I love you!” she sobbed, and she threw her arms around him, squeezing him tight. Some of the tears escaped the membranes at the top of Evan's cheeks and dripped down onto her head. She kissed him on the head and, with one last squeeze, ran shaking from the room. She slammed the door behind her, and Evan heard her drop down on the other side, shaking the door frame with her sobs.
E
VAN TRIED AGAIN
to move his head, but it was still stuck to his chest. A few tears were trapped between the membrane and his skin, or what was once skin, and they tickled him. He flexed his cheeks to move them, but they wouldn't go.
His organs twisted and heaved, sliding around his body and tearing the tissue as they slid. They had shifted slowly over the years, so that Evan was not sure where his liver, kidneys, or stomach were. His heart was near the center of his chest now, and his lungs . . . he had no idea where they were. He seemed to be breathing from his whole body at once.
He tried to scream in pain, but his mouth was nearly pulled shut, and nothing but a hum came out. He jumped like a suffocating fish, flopping on the bed, reaching his hands toward the cracked ceiling. But a force greater than Evan's pulled them down again and wrapped them to his flopping body.
All at once, the membranes beneath his chin softened and his head popped back from his chest. He was staring at the ceiling, but the picture was distorted through the growing membranes. They covered all of his face and were thick over his eyes. As soon as they had let his head up, they reworked themselves and extended from his chin to meet the membranes that grew quickly up his neck. As they met, he was immobilized again, like a long, stiff Popsicle stick.
His hearing suddenly became much more acute. He heard his mother sobbing from behind the door so loudly that she might have been right next to him, sobbing into a megaphone next to his ear. He tried to cry out again, but his mouth was still too tightly shut. The rustle of his sheets as he tossed and twisted was as loud as the banging of hundred-foot sails in a storm.
He would have covered his ears, but his arms were pinned, and the sound seemed to come into everywhere at once, ringing his toes as much as his head.
Then all the membranes on his body tightened. They wrapped and squeezed, and Evan flopped and tugged, but it was useless. He was stuck, folded in a little, now more like a banana than a Popsicle, staring up blurrily at the light fixture that was now a gaping hole. He wondered if Foul was up there in the darkness, looking back at him, salivating. He tried to close his eyes to keep from looking up, but they wouldn't close. The membranes squeezed even tighter, and his whole body gasped for air. He sucked with his nose, but nothing came in through the mask. His blurry eyes got blurrier, and then, for a second, it all went black.
He came to with a deep breath. Like the sound, the air seemed to come in from all over, as though his whole body was a lung. He struggled to move, and instead of pushing against membranes so tight it was useless, he flew up with his effort and fell right off the bed, landing on where his nose should have been. But instead of a nose, he felt a flatness, and instead of a throbbing pain from falling, he felt as if he had landed face-first on a cushion.
He moved his arms forward to push himself up, and they came easily. He pressed what should have been his hands against the floor. They were nubs without fingers, but when he pushed with them, they held his weight. He rolled back on his now- kneeless legs, until he was sitting upright, legs folded under him like rubber tubes.
He rolled curiously back and forth, but there was no pain at all, only a slight rubbing sensation. No pain at all!
He looked down at himself. His vision was clear now. Clearer than it had ever been. He had grown used to things being a little blurry. They had blurred a little more each year since he was too young to remember. But now, even in the dim light, he could see with perfect sharpness. It seemed much lighter in the room now. He saw shadows where he had never seen them before. Edges where there had been only shapes.
He saw his own arms, pink like the creature's, covered in the yellowed membrane. But the membrane no longer held him. It moved and stretched, just like his skin had. He lifted his arms and made a circle with them. They were easy to lift and did just as he asked.
Evan sprang up, pushing easily off his new nub legs, his heart starting to sing. He could move again! He could see! His legs held him with no trouble. He kicked one out in front of him and then the other. They moved so well!
He could still hear his mother's now-quieter crying from behind the door. What should he do? Should he call out to her, tell her he would be all right, that he was better now? Or should he leave her, not let her see him? Would seeing him frighten her more than his death?
“Mom!” he said finally, pressing his face against the door.
“Evan?”
He heard her standing, swallowing a last faint sniff. Evan was aware that his voice sounded different, more rough, and lower. He wondered if he would sometimes growl and sometimes hiss, just like the others.
“Yes, it's me! Please don't come in. It will be too horrible, I know it will. It was for me when I first saw one.” He heard the doorknob turn, just a little, as though she couldn't think of what to do.
“Mom, I look awful. You'll be disgusted. But I'm all right. I can move again! I'm up out of bed.” He heard her sob at this, but with relief.
“Oh, honey,” she sobbed. “I don't care how you look. Of course I don't care. You're still my baby, no matter what you look like!”
Evan pushed his body against the door with all his strength. He was much stronger than he had been an hour ago, but he was not sure how strong.
“I care!” he cried. “I care!”