Kev (4 page)

A new family had moved into my old house.
They had no children, but despite that, had not taken down the
fort, knowing my story and happy to let me play there.

Summer came and Clive and I went to my aunt’s
house. We spent most of our time playing in the fort. Clive helped
me fix it up a bit, and we brought some toys over. Clive said
having just a journal and some pens would be too boring.

I knew the journal was mine, but I never
peeked inside. If I had, I would have learned quite a bit about
myself. If I had, I would have remembered the voice. I would have
remembered my parents, and I would have remembered the girl and
Clive. But, open it I did not.

“New challenge,” said Clive.

“What? What are you talking about?” I said,
having completely forgotten about The Show.

“See that tree?” said Clive, pointing to a
tall pine tree. “You have to climb up all the way to the top.”

“You’re going to regret this,” said the
voice. I looked around, wondering if someone else was near. “I’m in
your head, dummy.”

“Who is this?” I said.

“What?” said Clive.

“Not you,” I said to Clive.

“You don’t need to speak out loud,” said the
voice. “Just think. Anyway, don’t climb the tree.”

“Why not?” I thought, wondering if I had gone
mad.

“Trust me. You don’t want to do it.”

“Well, are you going to climb or what?” said
Clive.

“One second,” I said to Clive.

“Who are you?” I thought.

“I’m you, you moron. Don’t you remember?”

“No. What are you doing inside my head?”

“I am saving you from a world of pain,” said
the voice.

“Kev, climb the tree,” said Clive.

“What are you talking about?” I thought.

The voice didn’t answer. I turned to Clive,
forgetting about the voice, and said, “What do I get if I win?”

“Your life. Anyway, you only win a prize if
you win all the challenges,” said Clive.

“How many challenges are there?” I said,
wondering what kind of game we were playing.

“An infinite number,” said Clive.
“Climb.”

I made it about two thirds of the way up the
tree and stopped. The branches were much thinner at that height and
I didn’t think they would hold my weight. “I can’t go up any
higher,” I said.

“Yeah, you can. Anyway, if you don’t make it
to the top you lose.”

“What if I lose?”

“You die.”

“Funny.”

“I’m not kidding,” said Clive.

I moved up a few branches and stopped again
after I heard a branch crack. “Seriously, I’m going to fall,” I
said.

“Keep going,” said Clive.

I made it up another two branches before the
branch I stood on snapped, sending me falling to the ground, my
body slamming against branches as I fell. I hit the ground and
screamed. I could see my thighbone poking out of my pant leg.
Moments, later, my leg returned to normal, but there was a bloody
hole in my pants. How many pieces of clothing had I destroyed while
playing The Show?

“What just happened?” I said.

“You lost,” said Clive, coming behind me and
putting me into a chokehold. I couldn’t break free and soon blacked
out, saw a flash of light and found myself on the ground, Clive
standing over me.

“What just happened?” I said.

“You tell me,” said Clive. “Are you ready for
the next challenge?”

“How about I give you a challenge,” I said,
the memory of falling and being choked by Clive still in my mind
but fading fast.

“What challenge?” said Clive.

“How about we play let’s drown Clive in the
stream?”

Clive laughed harder than I had ever heard
him laugh before. When he stopped, he wiped his eyes and said,
“Won’t work.”

Clive sometimes wrote in my journal, although
he never would tell me what he wrote, and I never read any of it. I
now know why, but at the time I just thought Clive’s thoughts were
better left to Clive.

Later that summer, Uncle Joe flew up and
brought Clive and me down to Macon for a couple of weeks. Uncle
Joe’s model airplane collection fascinated Clive. Getting to fly
some of those model airplanes on Uncle Joe’s airstrip blew his
mind. When we weren’t flying planes, Clive and I went to the park,
where we would play The Show, the show I only sometimes remembered
playing in the past. In a five-day period, I broke my arm three
times, punctured an eye, almost had my ear cut off, and fractured
several ribs, all injuries that quickly healed.

You might ask why I didn’t question any of
this. At the time, I didn’t know it was something I should
question. Throughout my life, all of my injuries had always healed
in a matter of seconds. I had never had any serious injuries while
around my family or friends (other than Clive), so nobody noticed,
and I never thought much of it. Of course, I knew in some vague way
that other kids were not like me, but I never really saw anyone
other than my parents get seriously injured, and I didn’t remember
that. So, to me, the healing didn’t seem abnormal or unnatural.

On our sixth day with Uncle Joe, while at the
park, the girl appeared as I was picking myself up off the ground
after jumping off the top of the fort for at least the tenth time
that day, all a part of The Show.

“Hey, dummies,” she said.

Clive looked closely at the girl, a strange
look in his eyes, and said, “Who are you?”

“I don’t think I know you well enough to tell
you that,” she said.

“I’m Kev,” I said, dusting off my jeans.
“This is Clive.”

“I know who you are, Kev, you doofus,” she
said.

“You do?”

“I knew you wouldn’t remember,” she said.

“Remember what?” I said.

“Me.” She held out her hand, showing me her
ring. “Do you remember that?”

The ring looked familiar, but I couldn’t
place it. “Not sure,” I said.

“You gave it to me,” she said.

“Kev has a girlfriend,” shouted Clive.

“I do not,” I said.

“I’m his wife, Clive,” said the girl.

“Excuse me,” said Clive, the strange look in
his eyes now transformed into something else, understanding.
“Where’s your ring, Kev?”

I looked at my bare hands. “I don’t
know.”

The girl came over to me and gave me a kiss,
and Clive, in his ever-cheerful way, sung, “Kev and the girl,
sitting in a tree, k i s s i n g, first comes love, then comes
marriage, then comes baby in a baby carriage.”

“Shut up,” I said, annoyed. I knew that I had
a tendency to forget things, and was certain that I knew this girl,
but for the life of me couldn’t remember her name. “I’m sorry I
forgot you. I forget a lot of people.”

“That’s okay, Kev. You’ll remember
eventually. So, what are you guys playing?”

“We’re playing The Show. Kev is the
contestant. Do you want to play? You can be a contestant too,” said
Clive, a wicked grin on his face.

“You don’t want to be on The Show,” I
said.

“I’m sure I don’t. Why don’t we do something
else?” said the girl.

“Like what?” said Clive.

“Why don’t we go somewhere?” said the
girl.

Clive had a funny look on his face, like he
knew what was coming, and I almost asked him what he was thinking,
but the girl cut in with, “Why don’t we go to Pooter Gorth?”

“What kind of place is that?” said Clive,
innocently enough, but with a tone that hinted he already knew.

“The kind of place where you have fun,” said
the girl. “Do you want to fly?”

“Like up in a plane?” I said, suddenly quite
interested.

“No, like up in the air without a plane,”
said the girl.

A distortion in space and time preceded our
appearance in the middle of a grassy park, a park surrounded by
low, gray buildings and things that looked like trees, but were
not, that were, in fact, sentient beings called palents, lovely
creatures that hardly ever did anything unless roused, in which
case, they could be quite lively, although at this time they were
not terribly interested in activity of any sort, happy to observe
the three children who had come to fly.

“This looks interesting, doesn’t it, Kev?”
said Clive.

“Follow me,” said the girl, leading us to a
small building on the edge of the park. On the side of the building
I saw a shelf and on the shelf I saw several small metal disks. The
girl picked one up and instructed us to each take one and put them
in our pockets.

“Where are we?” I said, having forgotten that
we were on Pooter Gorth.

“Pooter Gorth,” said the girl. “I already
told you that.”

“Yeah, but where is that?” said Clive, now
with an almost leading tone.

“About a thousand light-years from Earth,”
said the girl, shooting Clive a dark look.

“So, we’re on another planet?” I said.

“Yup,” she said.

“Kev, do you think she’s an alien?” said
Clive, laughing.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I’m not an alien, you moron. Now, all you
have to do is think of flying, like this.” The girl rose into the
air, moving slowly away from us. I stared at her, utterly
amazed.

Moments later, Clive floated up into the sky,
picking up speed. He let out a hoot and cried, “What are you
waiting for, Kev? An invitation?”

“Yeah, what are you waiting for?” said the
voice.

“Who are you?” I thought.

“I am you, dummy.”

I lifted off the ground and chased after
Clive and the girl.

“How do you land?” I called out after about
an hour of zipping through the sky, now at least a thousand feet in
the air and a little uncomfortable.

“Carefully,” called out the girl. “Think of
landing slowly or you’ll hurt yourself.”

Clive floated to the ground, followed by the
girl and then me.

“Holy crap,” laughed Clive. “Are you sure
you’re not an alien?”

“Pretty sure,” said the girl, now clearly
annoyed with Clive.

“What else can we do?” said Clive, ignoring
the girl’s tone.

“Where else can we go?” I said.

“Well, we could go to Nerux. Zero gravity.
Tons of fun. It’s another playground,” said the girl.

“Let’s go,” said Clive.

We appeared in a large space station, in a
large chamber with a variety of floating objects of different
shapes, sizes and colors, drifting in space, surrounded by aliens
that I guessed were children, judging by their sizes.

“Do you think this is a dream, Kev?” said
Clive.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Don’t you think it’s
odd that we would be having a dream together?”

“You’re not dreaming, Kev,” said the girl,
pushing off of a rotating cube toward us, bumping into me and then
reaching out and giving a Clive a push. Clive drifted over to a red
sphere about the size of a basketball and held on. The girl and I
drifted over to a wall, and then she pushed off heading for a star
shaped object. I attempted to follow her, but found myself floating
toward a stationary, green cylinder. As I neared it, I reached out
and grabbed it, stopping myself.

“What is this place?” I said.

“It’s a space station orbiting Neta Nexus
Nine,” said the girl. Neta Nexus Nine sounded familiar.

“What’s the planet like?” said Clive. “Maybe
we can go there some time if it isn’t ruled by an evil dictator or
something.”

“Maybe you should go down there and find out
for us, Clive,” said the girl.

I had been looking at the girl, a memory
coming back to me. I knew who she was and I knew how I felt about
her. I remembered giving her the ring. If there was anything more
to remember, it was, at least for the moment, lost.

We played a game of zero gravity tag, a
difficult game for me, much less so for the girl and Clive.
Following that we returned to the park in Macon, me in a dream-like
state.

“Where else can we go?” I said, filled with
excitement.

“I don’t know,” said the girl. “Eventide,
Blathus, Keek Snit, a bunch of places,” said the girl, looking
quite hard at Clive, clearly deciding something.

“I want to travel the way you do,” I
said.

“You can, dummy,” said the girl, turning away
from Clive.

“No, I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. You just don’t remember.”

I remembered her telling me that I didn’t
remember some things on some other world, but not what, and
wondered if that was a false memory.

“Can, I travel like you?” said Clive, a silly
grin on his face.

“I would think you would know the answer to
that question already, Clive,” said the girl.

There was a tone in her words, something that
made me feel like she knew something about Clive but was holding
back from saying anything direct.

“I would also think I would know if I could,”
said Clive. “Who knows? Maybe I can.”

“I have to go now,” she said, ignoring Clive,
taking my hand in hers.

“When will you be back?” I said.

“Maybe not for a while. We’ll see.”

“What do you mean?” I said, feeling my heart
sink.

“Don’t worry, Kev. I’ll find you. I always
do,” she said, and with that she disappeared.

“She is definitely and alien,” said Clive.
“Dude, you have an alien wife.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not so sure about that,” I
said.

The girl didn’t return to the park that
summer, or in any of the six following summers, but I remembered
her. Many times, I cried thinking about her, praying that she would
come back.

Seven years after that day, I visited Uncle
Joe again, alone this time. I had just graduated from high school,
co-valedictorian of my class. Clive and I shared that title. I
spent a month with my uncle, visiting the park every day. On my
last day there, she returned, transformed into something words will
never describe.

“You’ve grown,” she said.

“So have you. I’ve missed you.”

She smiled an ancient smile, something you
would never expect to see on a seventeen year old’s face, or on
anyone’s face, for that matter. In that instant I realized I had
peeked into infinity, and knew I was in the presence of much more
than a girl.