Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend (35 page)

Just as I expect him to wink out for ever, he turns and looks back inside the house. He waits a second, drops to one knee and places his hands out in front of him like a boy showing his mother how many fingers make ten. I cannot see the details that once made Oswald real, but I do not need to see them to know that his muscles are popping for the last time. The veins in his neck are pulsing their final pulses. He is Oswald the Giant once again, one more time, preparing for battle.

Then he turns back to me, sees me frozen on the lawn, the pale moon hanging behind me, and says, ‘Goodbye, Budo.’

I can no longer hear his words, but they somehow find their way into my mind.

And then, ‘Thank you.’

At that moment, Mrs Patterson comes into view. She is running from the kitchen into the dining room and toward the open door. She is running faster than I thought she ever could, and in that moment I realize that Max’s escape will not end with his disappearance into the trees.

It has just begun.

Oswald was right. Everyone is somebody’s devil, and Mrs Patterson is Max’s devil.

And mine.

Then the thought hits me.

Oswald is Mrs Patterson’s devil. Oswald the Giant is the devil in the pale moonlight now.

An instant later, Mrs Patterson charges into the open doorway and hits the crouching, shimmering, dying Oswald. Her right knee strikes his right hand and she topples over, head first, flying up and over and down onto the deck with a grunt and a bang and a thump. She slides all the way to the edge of the deck and then rolls down the three stairs to the grass, stopping inches before my feet.

I look up. I look to the doorway, looking for my brave and dying friend, and I already know that he is gone.

‘You saved Max,’ I say to my friend, but no one is listening anymore.

Then I hear Max shout. ‘Budo!’

Mrs Patterson’s head rises from the grass. She pulls herself up on one arm. She looks in the direction of Max’s voice. A second later, she rises to her feet.

I turn and run.

Max’s escape has just begun.

CHAPTER 58

Max is standing behind a tree. He is hugging his Lego train like it is a teddy bear. Some of the pieces have broken off but I do not think Max has noticed. He is shaking all over. It is cold and Max is not wearing a coat, but I do not think this is why he is shaking.

‘You can’t stay here,’ I say. ‘You have to run.’

‘Make her stop,’ Max whispers.

‘I can’t,’ I say. ‘You have to run.’

I listen. I expect to hear Mrs Patterson crashing through the trees and bushes, but I do not. She is probably walking slowly. Trying to be quiet. She is probably trying to sneak up on Max so that she can grab him.

‘Max, you have to run,’ I say again.

‘I can’t.’

‘You have to.’

At that moment a beam of light passes through the trees. I look back toward Mrs Patterson’s house. There is a dot of bright light near the edge of the trees.

A flashlight.

Mrs Patterson went back inside the house for a flashlight.

‘Max, if she finds you, she will take you away for ever and you will be alone for ever.’

‘I’ll have you,’ Max says.

‘No, you won’t.’

‘Yes, I will. You say that you will leave me, but you won’t leave me,’ he says. ‘I know it.’

Max is right. I would never leave him. But this is no time for the truth. I must lie to Max in a way I have never done before. In a way I never thought I would ever, ever do.

‘Max,’ I say, looking him in the eyes. ‘I am not real. I am imaginary.’

‘No, you’re not,’ he says. ‘Stop it.’

‘It’s true. I am imaginary. You are all alone right now, Max. You can see me, but I am not really here. I am imaginary. I can’t help you, Max. You have to help yourself.’

The beam of light passes across the trees to the left. In the direction of the pond. Mrs Patterson is moving down the hill, slightly away from Max, but there is not much ground between Max and the pond. Even if she is heading in the wrong direction, she will see him soon. The moon is lighting up the forest and Mrs Patterson has a flashlight.

A second later we hear the first snap of a branch on the ground. She is getting close.

Max startles and almost drops his train. ‘Which way?’ he asks. ‘Which way should I run?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I’m imaginary. You tell me which way.’

Another branch snaps, this one much closer, and Max turns and runs up and to the right, away from the water and away from Mrs Patterson. But he moves too fast and too loud. The light from the flashlight swerves in his direction and lands on his back.

‘Max!’ Mrs Patterson yells. ‘Wait!’

When Max hears her voice, he runs faster. I run, too.

I lose sight of Max as he runs through a tight bunch of pine trees. But he is headed in the right direction. There are five houses on this side of the road before the end of the street, and he is getting close to Mrs Patterson’s closest neighbor. I can see the lights of the neighbor’s house through the trees. But somehow I have lost Max. He was twenty or thirty steps in front of me but now he is gone.

I stop running. I walk. I want to listen and look. Mrs Patterson has stopped running, too. She is walking, not too far behind me and off to my left, doing the same thing I am doing.

We are both looking for Max.

‘Budo!’

Max calls my name, but this time it is a whisper. The voice comes from my right so I look in that direction. I see trees and rocks and leaves and the glow of street lights at the top of the hill where the forest meets the road, but no Max.

‘Budo,’ he whispers again and I become afraid. Max is trying to be quiet but Mrs Patterson is too close. He cannot afford to make another sound.

Then I see him.

There is a rock and a tree with leaves piled in between them, probably pushed there by the wind. Max has buried himself in the leaves. I can see his tiny hand waving to me from underneath the pile.

I get down on my hands and knees and crawl to him, leaning against the opposite side of the rock.

‘Max, what are you doing?’ I whisper as softly as I can so Max will do the same.

‘Waiting,’ Max says.

‘What?’

‘This is what a sniper does,’ Max whispers. ‘He lets the enemy soldiers walk right by them before they attack.’

‘You can’t attack Mrs Patterson.’

‘No. I will wait until—’

Max stops talking as the sound of footsteps rustling in leaves reaches us. A second later the flashlight passes over the rock where I am sitting and where Max lies buried under leaves.

I look up. I can see Mrs Patterson now. I can see her outline in the moonlight. She is close. Fifty steps away. Then thirty. Then twenty. She is walking quickly as if she knows exactly where Max is hiding. If she does not change direction, she may step right on top of Max.

‘Max,’ I say. ‘Don’t move. She’s coming.’

As I sit and wait for Max to be caught, I think about Max’s decision to hide under the leaves.
This is what a sniper does
, he said.

Max read a book about war. Actually, he has read a million books about war, but now he is using what he read to save himself. In a strange forest. At night. With someone chasing him. And with his best friend insisting that he is not real.

He is not stuck.

It is almost unbelievable.

Mrs Patterson is now ten steps from Max. Five steps. Her flashlight shoots ahead. Not at the ground but straight ahead. Two steps before she would have stepped on Max, she turns left and heads up the hill toward the road. It makes sense that she turns. Otherwise she would have had to climb over the rock or squeeze between the rock and the tree, but it was still close. If she had shined her flashlight on the pile of leaves, I am sure that she would have seen Max’s shape under those leaves.

‘How long are you going to wait?’ I ask, once Mrs Patterson is far enough away that I cannot hear her footsteps in the leaves.

‘Snipers wait for days,’ he whispers.

‘Days?’

‘Not me. But snipers do. I don’t know. In a little while.’

‘Okay,’ I say.

I don’t know if this is a good idea or a bad idea, but Max has made a decision. He is solving the problem. He is escaping on his own.

‘Budo,’ he whispers. ‘Are you real? Tell me the truth.’

I pause before answering. I want to say yes, because yes is the truth, and yes will keep me safe. Yes will keep me existing. But Max is not safe, and he cannot afford to believe in me now because I cannot save him. He needs to believe in himself. He has depended on me for too long. He needs to depend on himself now. I can’t get him home.

This is not choosing between chicken noodle or vegetable beef. Blue or green. This is not the Learning Center or the playground or the school bus or even Tommy Swinden. This is the actual devil in actual pale moonlight.

Max has to get himself home.

‘No,’ I say. ‘Cross my heart and hope to die. I’m imaginary. You imagine me to make things easier for you. So you’ll have a friend.’

‘Really?’ he asks.

‘Really.’

‘You’re a good friend, Budo,’ Max says.

Max has never said this to me before. I want to exist for ever, but if I had stopped existing at this very moment, I would have at least been happy. The happiest ever.

‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘But I’m only what you imagine. I’m a good friend because you made me a good friend.’

‘Time to go,’ Max says. He says it so fast that I am not sure if he was listening to me.

He stands up but stays bent over in a crouch. He starts moving up the hill but to the left of where Mrs Patterson went.

I follow.

As I step past the leaf pile where Max was buried seconds ago, I see the Lego train sitting by the rock. Max has left it behind.

In a minute we are on the edge of the neighbor’s lawn. The long, stretch of grass is split in two by a gravel driveway. On the other side of the lawn is another patch of forest. Smaller, I think. The lights of the next house look close. They shine through the tree line.

‘You should go to that house and knock on the door. The people will help.’

Max says nothing.

‘They won’t hurt you, Max,’ I say.

He does not answer.

I did not expect Max to get help from Mrs Patterson’s neighbors or anyone else. I think Max would rather melt every Lego piece and army man and video game in the world into a pile of gooey plastic before he ever talked to a stranger. Knocking on a stranger’s door would be like knocking on the door to an alien spaceship.

Max looks left and right across the lawn. He looks like he is getting ready to cross the street, even though he has never crossed a street alone in his entire life. Then he bursts out of the trees and runs across the lawn. He is visible in the moonlight, but unless Mrs Patterson is watching, he is going to make it across the lawn to the other side without being noticed.

As he reaches the driveway, spotlights on the house switch on. They light up the front yard like the sun. They are the lights that switch on and off when people move. Max’s parents have them in the backyard, and they turn on sometimes when a stray cat or a deer passes by.

Max freezes when the lights come on. He looks behind him. I am standing on the edge of the trees. I have been watching Max but not following. I have been standing and staring in amazement at this boy who once needed help deciding on which pair of socks to wear.

Max turns toward the trees on the other side of the lawn and starts running again, and that is when Mrs Patterson bursts from the trees to my right and runs like lightning across the lawn. Max does not see her at first, so I shout.

‘Max! Look out! She’s behind you!’

Max turns to look but does not stop running.

I start running. I shake off my amazement. I am suddenly filled with fear. I follow behind Mrs Patterson, who is now closing in on Max. She is faster than Max. She is faster than she should be.

She really is the devil.

Max reaches the trees on the other side of the lawn. He takes two steps into the trees and then jumps over an old stone wall. His foot catches a rock and he tumbles to the ground behind the wall, out of sight. A second later he pops up and begins running again.

Mrs Patterson reaches the trees about ten seconds later. She jumps over the wall, too, but she clears it, landing and running again in one smooth motion. She pumps her arms, the flashlight turned on but not pointed at Max any longer. She can see him now. She is getting closer and closer. The beam of the flashlight flies wildly through the trees.

‘Run, Max!’ I scream as I jump the wall.

I am seconds behind Mrs Patterson but I can do no good. I am helpless. Useless.

I scream again. ‘Run!’

Max reaches the front lawn of the next house. It is not as wide as the first, and the driveway is made of street stuff instead of gravel, but otherwise it is the same. He sprints across the grass, no spotlights turning on this time, and he disappears into the gloom of the trees on the other side.

Max is running out of houses and trees and pond. Two more houses and he will reach a street that he must cross. A street that he has never been able to cross alone before. Then he will be in a neighborhood with houses and sidewalks and street lights and stop signs. No more leaf piles and stone walls and tall trees. No more gloom. No more hiding places. He will have to find help or be caught.

But none of that will matter if Mrs Patterson catches him first, and it looks like she will.

Mrs Patterson reaches the tree line just seconds after Max. I am about twenty steps behind her when I see a thick, bare branch swing out wildly from the gloom and smash Mrs Patterson in the face. She cries out and drops to the ground like a rock. A second later I see Max. He has changed direction. He has turned right. He is running through the trees toward the road instead of into the forest toward the next house.

I come to a stop where Mrs Patterson is lying on the ground. Her nose is bloody. Her hands are pressing down hard on her left eye. She is moaning.

Max has danced with the devil in the pale moonlight, and he has won.