Crap Kingdom (14 page)

17

THERE WAS A
fact so great that it made Tom suspect that the life he was living wasn’t his own, and it was this:

Lindsy Kopec was his girlfriend.

There was an additional fact that once again assured him that yes, this was Tom’s life, the life he’d always lead, and it was this:

It wasn’t going very well.

It hadn’t gone poorly immediately. There was the afternoon where they made out, and they even got to make out a little bit when Tom was actually present in his body, which was great. Then they heard the garage door open.

“Don’t worry,” Lindsy said, “they trust me.”

Tom and Lindsy got up from her bed and straightened up their clothes.

“Tom!” Lindsy said, gesturing dramatically to her bedspread. “Your fortune!”

Tom gathered up the sixty or sixty-five cents that had fallen out of his pockets onto her bed, trying to do it in a manner that indicated he didn’t care about sixty or sixty-five cents, that the money was meaningless to him but she was going to have to sleep there sometime, and she didn’t want change flying everywhere, now did she?

Going downstairs, Tom had to pretend like he’d seen her house before even though he actually hadn’t. It was big and elegant, the kind of house people who buy each other Lexuses for Christmas in commercials have. Lindsy’s father was in the kitchen, actually wearing a suit, actually setting down a briefcase. He was opening a bottle of wine when they walked through.

He shook Tom’s hand and invited him to stay for dinner but Tom declined, citing some awkward, poorly thought out combination of homework and a family obligation. If he’d been able to express the real reason, it would’ve been something like: I think your daughter will let me make out with her now whenever I want to so I need to leave now before I ruin it.

She kissed him by the big wooden front door. There were carvings in the door of ancient people doing ancient stuff.

She said, “You’re an egomaniac,” and then she said, “Can I have your phone number?”

“Uh,” he said, “my phone’s kinda . . . broken.”

“Really?” she said. “What happened?”

“Fell in a pool,” he said.

“Do you still have it?”

“Not on me, but yeah.”

“Wait here.”

She bounded up the stairs. Tom marveled at his surroundings. This place was more of a castle than the one in Crap Kingdom. And when he tried to kiss this princess, she kissed back instead of laughing at him. Well, she did laugh at him. It’s just that the laughing didn’t result from the kissing. And really, what more could you want?

She bounded back down the stairs. She was holding something behind her back with one hand. She reached him and held it up: a cell phone.

“My old phone. Take it.”

“No, I can’t do that.”

“Sure you can. Just put your SIM card in it. Boom: Tom’s phone.”

“Will that work?”

She gave him a look and slapped the phone into his palm. He told her his phone number, and she programmed it into her newer phone. They kissed and he left and the enormous door shut behind him.

It was only when he was six steps down her long, long driveway that he realized what the look she gave him when she handed him the phone meant. It meant, “This is a free phone and I’m a pretty girl, you idiot.”

As soon as he got home, he put his old SIM card in Lindsy’s old phone. He turned it on. Ten minutes later, she texted him:

this is lindsy. it worked, didn’t it?

An hour later, after he and his mom had eaten dinner, Lindsy called him. It was great for exactly twenty minutes. Tom was thinking,
She’s calling me just to talk about whatever,
which was an absolute joy until he realized he didn’t have anything to talk about. Wasn’t he supposed to be smart? Yet after twenty minutes he found himself shockingly bereft of topics. At one point, he actually opened up CNN’s website and started talking about events of the day. Lindsy had to admit she didn’t know anything about health care reform, which was a relief, because Tom didn’t either. There was a good chance that if Tom had been able to pop over to Crap Kingdom and let his other self take over, that guy could’ve given Lindsy an earful about health care reform in a way that would make her say “I’ll be right over” and come tear Tom’s face off, as she’d put it. But he couldn’t pop over, so he didn’t, so he sputtered on until they both said their good-byes and hung up.

The next day, Tobe texted all the kids in the play to tell them rehearsal was on for that afternoon, which meant that whatever Tom had done in the principal’s office, it had worked. Immediately after he got Tobe’s text, he received another one from Lindsy that said
YOU’RE MY HERO
. He spent the rest of the day looking back and forth from that text message to his lines for pages one through ten, which he still hadn’t memorized.

He deserved to be called a hero, right? When he wasn’t looking at his lines or at Lindsy’s text, he was wondering about that. It had been him barging into the principal’s office to make a big important speech, as far as anyone else was concerned. And it was certainly something he would’ve wanted to do, if he’d thought of it. And as for the stuff he’d supposedly said in the office, well, it wasn’t stuff he’d ever thought of before, but he definitely would have thought of it, right? It was all about the play and Lindsy and Tobe, topics that were in his brain, it just took this other person inhabiting him when he was off in another world to actually put it together and say it. So it was pretty much like he’d thought of it himself and said it himself, right? And since the other person was in limbo and could not be here to share in the spoils of heroism, he might as well enjoy all of it. He was sure this noble, well-spoken soul would understand, and would even want it that way. He’d been in Tom’s body. He knew what it was like.

Being Lindsy’s hero carried him through the weekend. It got him back to Lindsy’s house after rehearsal on Friday. It got him on her living room couch, a long white leather thing that was fancy because it didn’t really have a back or arms. They were watching a movie. Lindsy’s parents were out. Tom knew he was supposed to kiss her at some point, but he didn’t know how exactly. He’d only ever kissed her after he’d already been kissing her. He didn’t know how to initiate kissing. Thankfully Lindsy mauled him at a certain point and he just went along with it.

When Lindsy canceled the plans they’d made to see a movie on Saturday night because she needed to prepare for an audition she had to tape and send to her agent in LA, Tom was secretly glad. He needed to be the guy she thought he was, but that guy was in a void somewhere, floating bodiless, and Tom couldn’t get him to make an appearance unless he got Kyle to take him somewhere he was forbidden to go.

“Are you okay?” Lindsy asked.

They were at Lindsy’s again on Monday night. They were doing homework.

Homework: this he understood how to do. So he just happened to have a homework companion who probably wanted him to put his tongue down her throat. He didn’t know how to do that, so he’d just focus on homework. They were on her bed. She was lying lengthwise in front of him, kicking her legs in the air, flipping through a French workbook.

“What? Yeah, of course,” he said. On instinct his right hand jumped out to touch her, but then he got self-conscious about it and he let it fell limply between them like a weak, target-less karate chop.

“In rehearsal today, you seemed distracted.”

“I did?” Tom didn’t know how that could be. He’d spent all his non-Lindsy time that weekend learning his lines to the point where he felt like he’d never known anything so forward and backward in his life, and that afternoon he’d worked really hard to recapture the magic that made him worthy of being called “brilliant,” even though he still didn’t have any idea what exactly it was that he’d done. But he tried. Tried and tried and tried. Now his voice was ripped up and his legs hurt from pacing. He felt like he had out-narrated every narrator in history in one afternoon. “I didn’t feel distracted.”

“Oh,” Lindsy said. “Okay.” She flipped a page of her book, then said, “Is this distracting you?”

“Your book? No.”

“No, Tom, this. Us. There was that one day last week where everyone was just blown away by you—and with good reason, you were fantastic—but ever since we’ve started dating, you haven’t seemed . . .”

Last week she had hesitated because she didn’t want to give him a bigger head. Now it seemed like she was hesitating for exactly the opposite reason.

“. . . the same, I guess. You seem different.”

“Not as good?”

“No! Not at all! You were always great. Remember what I told you on opening night of the last show?”

“Vaguely.”

Her arm lashed out and thwacked him. She could just fly off the handle to playfully hit him without thinking about it. Why did every instinct he had to touch her require fifteen different meetings in his brain?

“Well, you were always very good but there was just something special about that day last week, but ever since we started this, you just haven’t seemed the same, and I would hate to be anything but good for you, so I’m thinking maybe we should . . . put a hold on things.”

“What? Lindsy, that’s . . .” He tried to say her name the way she said his, but it didn’t feel natural. Why didn’t anything feel natural to him except lame things like eating peanut butter sandwiches alone in front of the TV? “That’s crazy. I mean, not that you’re crazy, you’re not crazy, but I mean, thanks for being concerned about me and stuff, but no, this, this is awesome. This is great. Seriously.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course!”

“Okay,” she said. “Just so long as you’re sure.”

Just so long as you’re sure?
What other sixteen-year-old girl in the world said that? God, he liked her so much.
I should just kiss her,
he thought. Instead he looked back down at his homework. Numbers swam on the page. There was no way he could focus on anything else. He needed to act. He needed to be that man of action, that man who grabbed her hand roughly in the courtyard and said “come with me.” He had flung her into the principal’s office. Flung her. And that was before they’d ever kissed, and now they’d kissed a hundred times, and he couldn’t just kiss her again. She was right there! She wanted him, too! She didn’t want to be studying French any more than he wanted to be studying Algebra 3-4!

The numbers on the page stopped swimming. They came into focus. There were six more practice problems left. He finished them all. Every so often he would hear Lindsy turn a page in her French workbook.

Flip.

Silence.

Flip.

Silence.

Flip.

A silence longer than all the other silences.

Flip.

“I should probably take off soon,” Tom said.

18

TOM CALLED KYLE
as soon as he got home. He needed his help. It wasn’t ideal, but he’d already had one great thing slip through his grasp, and he didn’t want to let another one go. He hadn’t known that the first thing was great at the time, but he knew dating Lindsy was great. The only thing making it not great was him being himself.

Kyle picked up on the third ring.

“Hello, this is Kyle.”

“Hey man, did I wake you up?”

“I was beginning to sleep, yes.”

“Are you . . . all right?”

“I’m not sure I know to what you are referring.”

This wasn’t Kyle, Tom realized. It was his other self. Kyle was in Crap Kingdom.

“Hey, Kyle, call me back when you’re
you,
okay?”

“Indeed.”

“Can you write that down? Can you write that down for the real Kyle?”

“I am Kyle, if that is your concern.”

Tom hung up.

Tom found Kyle at a bench in the courtyard on Tuesday morning before school.

“Are you you?”

“Krrgrgggprrrr . . .” Kyle said, rolling his eyes back in his head like a zombie. “Nah, kidding, I’m me.”

“That’s not what you’re like when you’re not you.”

“What am I like?”

“You use way more big words but in this weird awkward way that leads me to believe you’re not actually all that smart.”

“So like you then.”

“Hey, you know what?”

“Dude! I’m kidding. I know he’s not that smart. I came back to check my own homework. It’s not good. I’m gonna try to fix it in first period and go back after that.”

“Cool. I need to go back, too.”

Kyle shut his notebook and looked up.

“You can’t, man.”

“I know, but I have to.”

“Why?”

“Lindsy and I are dating now.”

“What? Lindsy Kopec? You didn’t tell me that!”

“I know, you’re always in . . .”

“Krrrgggghhhrr.”

“That sounded like your zombie noise.”

“Yeah, I guess. But Lindsy, man, that’s excellent! When did this happen?”

Tom told Kyle everything. He hadn’t heard about the play almost getting canceled, or about Tom waking up in Lindsy’s house, or any of it. It was weird. Normally, the second anything happened to either of them, the other one would hear about it. But for the past week of Tom’s life, basically the craziest week since he’d found out about Crap Kingdom, his best friend had been several universes away. They used to tell each other everything, but once another world got involved, they’d stopped.

Once Tom finished, Kyle said, “But won’t you miss out on the good part?”

“What do you mean?”

“Won’t you miss, like, you guys making out and stuff?”

“Hopefully not. Anyway, it’s not just about making out, she’s great, she’s so fun and cool and smart and I think she would like me, the actual me, if I could just be the actual me in front of her. But I don’t know how to yet, and I need to learn, and I will learn, but I can’t right now. The other me needs to take over for a little bit before she breaks up with me or something.”

“The other you sounds awesome. You’re lucky. My other me sucks.”

“Yeah, he does. So can you do it? The king will never see me. I’ll hide or something! I won’t get you in trouble. I swear.”

“I have to think about it.”

Tom texted Kyle in third period:

???>

Kyle wrote back:

still thinking

Tom wrote:

dude, if i could soul-swap by myself, i would.

Later, Tom saw Kyle in the lunchroom.

“Man,” Kyle said, “school is
boring
.”

“Yeah,” Tom said, “I know. So are we going?”

“Yes,” Kyle said. “But if anybody sees you, I don’t know anything about it.”

“Don’t worry,” Tom said. “I have an idea.”

Tom met Kyle at the gravel spot behind the auditorium after sixth period like they’d agreed. Kyle burst out laughing.

“Why are you dressed like that?”

“You said not to get spotted, so I figured . . .”

“You look ridiculous!”

“Well, that’s fine, right, as long as no one recognizes me?”

“You don’t look like someone else, you look like you in a fake mustache and a white wig.”

“I look like them! This is how they all dress!” Tom had snuck up to the Drama Department’s wardrobe room and now, in addition to the fake mustache and white wig, he was also wearing an oversized checkered blazer over a faded basketball jersey with the number 27 on it. Instead of pants, he was wearing a flowing floral-print skirt. He’d put all of his clothes in his backpack.

“Right, but . . . won’t you still be wearing that here in the real world as well?”

“Hopefully my other self will know to immediately change back into my real clothes.”

“You should text yourself right before we go.”

“Yeah, good thinking.” He didn’t know if his other self had any grasp of phones, but who wouldn’t look at a vibrating, beeping object in their hand?

Tom set his backpack down and took his phone out. He started to write a text and noticed that his text to Kyle, the one about how he would soul-swap if he could, was still sitting there. It hadn’t sent. He changed the recipient to his own phone number and sent it to himself as a test. Three seconds later, his phone vibrated. Cool, it would work. He wrote a new text to himself:

change your clothes immediately! they’re in your backpack.—tom

He felt lame signing his text the way Tobe did, but he didn’t have his own number saved in his phone and he wanted his other self to know where the message came from. He didn’t send the text yet. He left the thumb of his right hand on the send button. With his left hand, he grabbed Kyle’s hand.

“Ready?”

“Yep.”

They fell backward. Tom hit
SEND
just before they hit the ground.

Realities splashed. They were back in Crap Kingdom, or really, just outside of it.

“Okay,” Tom said, peering up over the rim. “Let’s go.”

“No worries,” Kyle said, “I can teleport through the Wall to anywhere inside the kingdom now. I’m getting better every time.”

“Does that thing still happen where—”

Before Tom could finish his question, that thing happened where he felt like he was dead for three seconds.

When he came out of it, they were on the very edge of the kingdom, just inside the Wall. Tom was pleased to discover his mustache was still glued on. He was really good at mustache-gluing, at least. The wig was still on, too. His wig and mustache work were teleportation-proof and he was proud.

“ All right,” Kyle said. “You’re gonna find a good hiding spot?”

“Sure,” Tom said.

“I’d go with you but if you’re with me it will draw attention to you,” Kyle said, “plus I got somewhere to be.”

“Okay!” Tom said.

“Don’t get upset, dude. I’m doing you a favor, remember?”

Kyle walked away fast, leaving Tom alone. Tom felt pretty silly, and it wasn’t even because of the wig or the mustache or the skirt.

Tom wandered alone in Crap Kingdom. All the things that had been strange to him about the place were old news now. But there were new strange things. For the first time, he could hear laughter in the air, and not cruel laughter, or I-give-up-and-am-crazy-now laughter, but actual warm laughter, from grown-ups and children alike. Had Kyle really taught an entire society to laugh? He couldn’t have, right? This wasn’t a commercial.

He looked around for hiding places. It was tough to distinguish between what was someone’s home and what was just junk. He’d zero in on a big pile of trash bags or a huge concrete tube and be absolutely sure there was no one inside of it and then someone would emerge just as he approached.

It was also tough to find a hiding spot because everything seemed to be in a state of flux. Children were helping their parents move the building blocks of their makeshift homes around. Years of rust and dust drifted up into the air. It was killing Tom’s allergies. He was sneezing his head (but thankfully not his mustache) off. Everybody was in motion. Everybody had a purpose. He’d never seen it like this. It felt like the first day of high school when you were a freshman. Everybody else was engaged in all this chaotic activity that seemed crazy to you, like something you’d never get the hang of, but to them it made perfect sense. And you were sure that as soon as you tried to join in, everyone would laugh at you, or chop your head off.

“Excuse me,” Tom asked a man dressed exclusively in beer boxes. “What’s going on?”

“You didn’t hear?” the beer man said. “Kyle said to look at your house today and see if there was any way you could make it better. It doesn’t have to be bigger or prettier or anything. Just whatever ‘better’ means to you.”

The man looked down at Tom’s skirt.

“That’s nice,” he said sincerely.

“Thank you,” Tom said. He was legitimately flattered.

The beer man turned back to the smashed-in hollowed-out snack-vending machine he’d been attempting to turn right side up. He reached down, dug his fingers underneath it, got it about halfway in the air, then stopped.

“Need some help?” Tom said.

“Why, thank you, that would be . . .” the man said.

Somewhere a loud, flawed bell clanged.

“Never mind!” the beer man said, and dropped the machine. Tom had to jump back to avoid losing his toes. He yelped, and when he opened his mouth to do so, he got a mouthful of the titanic dust cloud the falling machine had kicked up.

As soon as he’d blinked enough dust away, he saw that he was on an empty street, or at the very least, an empty trash-strewn dirt path. The last of its occupants were just disappearing around a corner. A tumbleweed of twisted plastic shopping bags blew by. Where was everyone going?

Tom now had his pick of hiding places. He had been worried he’d have to settle for the first dirt-puddle-at-the-top-of-an-old-shipping-container he came across. Now he could have any dirt puddle on any old shipping container he wanted, but nothing looked promising on this street. Maybe around the—

He bumped into someone much shorter than he was.

“Hey, watch it!”

He looked down. It was Pira. She was dressed in her Viking costume.

“Oh, hey, Tom.”

Tom thought quickly. “Wot?” he answered. “’Oo’s Tom, then?”