Swansong (39 page)

“But—Joss—”  I look around the hideout.  “Were there poetry books here?  A prayer rug?”

“What?  Why would there be?  You know I can’t stand poetry.  And I know you don’t read.  Or pray.”

Oh.  So he was really…

I thought he was.  Azel.  But I didn’t want him to go away.  Not by any means.

It hurts.  It feels like something cold, something talon-like, is ripping through my chest.  I feel like a bird that has fallen out of its nest for the first time.

Why did you leave me, Azel?

If I’ve really been here for a couple of days now—

I sit up straight.  “Where are my meds?”

“Huh?” Joss says, oblivious.

“My medicines.  I didn’t—I forgot to bring them with me.”

“What do you need
medicines
for?”

If we weren’t in a car accident, if I don’t have a brain injury, what
do
I need medicines for?

And then it occurs to me:  My head isn’t hurting right now.  My head isn’t hurting, and Azel’s gone.

It was the medicine.

“Oh, God,” I mumble.

“This is all pretty freaky,” Joss says uncertainly.  “Huh?”

I don’t think that even begins to cover it.

* * * * *

It’s dark in the factory by afternoon.  I light a single kerosene lamp.  Too many and maybe—I don’t know how, but maybe—someone will see us from the streets.

Jocelyn.  I’m so glad she’s with me.  I can’t even put it into words.  My brother isn’t my brother and there wasn’t a car wreck and I wasn’t behind the wheel and I could throw up.

My best friend is with me.  It’s like having a partner to face the end of the world.

She shares fresh oranges with me; peels them with a plastic butter knife.  I’d forgotten oranges were her favorite.  How could I have forgotten something so important?  She smiles at me when she catches me looking her way.  She can’t know what I’m thinking.  I’m thinking it’s a miracle that she’s alive.  I’m thinking that I’m lucky, even if I’m the unluckiest person on earth.

Jocelyn is with me.  We can get through this.

We just have to figure out how.

“UNICOR,” I say.  “You called them legal terrorists.”

“Uh-huh.”  She talks with her mouth full.  Good ol’ Joss.  “They’re DoJ subsidiaries.  They build most of the country’s atomic weapons.  Other countries’, too.  You know the atom bombs we dropped on Japan during World War II?  ‘Little Boy’ and ‘Fat Man’?  Who do you think made them?”

“How can that be legal?” I ask, stymied.  I don’t mean World War II.  I mean supplying nuclear weapons to other countries.  Doesn’t that violate a convention—?

“Oh, babe,” Joss says, and tosses her hair.  It doesn’t have the same effect it once used to, considering how filthy her hair has become.  “Politics are politics.  Even the most ethical of regimes is hiding dried shit and skeletons in its closet.”

Her uncle is a senator.  Her parents never liked to talk about him much.  I forgot that, too.

“Do you think—?”  Jocelyn chews on her thumbnail.  It surprises me to see how ragged her fingernails have grown.  I guess what really surprises me is that she hasn’t chewed them down to the cuticles.  “Maybe enough time has passed?  Maybe I can go home now…  I’ll take you with me, Wendy.  My parents will take care of us.  You know they love you.”

“Joss…”  My heart sinks.  “Their phone’s been disconnected.  I tried to call them once.”

Joss stares at me.

Then I wonder:  Is that true?  I remember trying to call them and getting a disconnection service.  But just because I remember it happening doesn’t mean it really happened.

So many things I remember, and they didn’t happen…

“I’ll find them,” Joss tells herself.  She’s the one she needs to convince.  She’s always been good at giving herself pep talks.  “If they’ve moved, I’ll find them.  And they’ll be so happy to see me, and we’ll all run away somewhere…”

The real question is:  Why do we have to run away?  What’s really going on here?

My brother is not my brother.  Oh, God.  He—

“I wish I could wake up.”  There’s no filter on my mouth.  “This has all been one very long nightmare.  I wish I could wake up.”

The universe is waking up.

Has it already woken up?

The medicines.  What have they been doing to me?  Why has Judas been doing this to me?

He was never my brother.  I loved him, and he kept me alive.  And he was never my brother.

This has to be a nightmare.

I want to wake up.

* * * * *

The stars have come out.  Jocelyn stands, zipping up both of her jackets.

“Where are you going?” I ask, alarmed.

“I should get us more rations,” Joss says.  “I mean, I don’t know how long we’re going to be here.  I’ll pick up more blankets, too.  My old ones are getting kind of ratty.”

“What if someone sees you?” I ask, more alarmed than before.  “Judas lives in this town, Joss.  Jude’s with UNICOR.”

Jude.  Jude, you’re my brother.  Jude.

“Well,” Joss says, sounding troubled, “just look at me.  I don’t look anything like myself anymore.  I look hideous!”  She does look incredibly unkempt.  I wouldn’t call her hideous, though.  “I doubt anyone’ll recognize me.”

“
I
recognized you.”

“But you’re my best friend.  We have a psychic bond.”

I crack a smile.  It hurts my mouth.  “Does our psychic bond tell you I’m scared right now?”

“I’ve got a knife,” Joss says, a complete 180.  “And a razorblade.  Mickey from the underground showed me how to hide it in my mouth.  Want to see?”

“O-Oh—”  Half a year can really change a person.

“I’ll be fine, Wendy.  But you can’t come with me.  If something
does
happen to me, then at least you’ll be safe here.”

“Then I should
definitely
go with you.”

“Wendy!  That UNICOR creep’s probably looking for you right now.  Nobody’s looking for
me
.  They think I’m dead.”

“You’re alive.”  I can’t believe she’s alive.

“Hon.  I’m too tenacious to die.  I’m like a scorpion.  You know you can stick one of those suckers in a microwave, and he won’t die?”

“That sounds mean…”

“Yeah, but they’re gross.  So it’s okay.  I’ll be back, Wendy.  Promise.”

She traipses out the bloated door.  There’s nothing I can do to stop her.  I feel powerless, and not for the first time.  Not by a long shot.

* * * * *

I get restless while Jocelyn’s gone.  I worry about her: that Judas might find her; that she’ll get caught stealing from the grocery store.  It was so sudden that she came back into my life.  Just as suddenly, she could leave it again.

Just as suddenly, everything changed.  That’s twice now that my life has changed.

I want it to stop.

I want to wake up.

My hand dips into my jacket pocket.  I’m wearing two jackets.  That’s crazy.

My hand brushes against the wooden handle of something smooth, something long.  I pull it out—

The badger brush.  Bristled hairs stained with pink paint.

The skin on the back of my neck rises in chilly bumps.

I light a second kerosene lamp.  I kneel and uncap a bottle of vinegar.  I scrub the brush’s hairs until my fingers are raw.  The paint chips away in easy, feeble flakes.

I rip open the lids on my scattered paint cans.  I mix the paints on my lacquer palette.

A blank canvas awaits me on the easel.  Feverish, frenzied, I know I have to fill it in.

I paint.  I paint in flashes of creamy white, splashes of sky-pink, dotted lavender-blue.  I wish it were a watercolor.  I don’t have the time.  I paint in broad brushstrokes and scant smudges.  I paint with my left hand, a steady hand, a gilded swan dangling from my wrist.

“Ooh!  That’s pretty.”

I lay down my paintbrush, my palette.  I show Jocelyn a smile when she scurries out onto the cement landing, plastic shopping bags hanging from her arms.  The shopping bags look rumpled, like she was hiding them under her coats until the moment of theft.

“I nabbed you some canned spinach,” Joss says cheerfully.  She sits on the mattress we’ve made, piles of worn, weather-beaten blankets that don’t necessarily appear to be clean.  “I don’t know if you can eat it raw, but whatever.”

“Thank you, Joss.”  Joss is alive.

“Sure, sure.  It’s just for a while, though.  If that UNICOR creep is really looking for you, we need to plan a getaway.  Maybe Hood River County…”

My shoulders slump.  I sit with Joss.  “I can’t believe it.  Judas…”

“I think it’s creepy.  What, did they tattoo the freckles on his face? 
Creepy!
”

He’s not my brother.  I loved him and he kept me alive.  He gave me a reason not to leave this world.

He’s not my brother.

I think about our trip to Tillamook Bay.  I think about his weary, candid confession in the restaurant booth.  Was even that real?  He told me he had planned to take his life.  And then I “fell into his lap.”  Now that I think about it, the word choice was weird. 
I hated my hometown
, Judas said.  Not
I hated this town.
  We were talking about two different towns.  I never realized.

I’ve been such an idiot.

But he kept me alive.  He took care of me.  He listened to me when I poured my heart out.  He never once complained.  He held me when I shook.  He gave me a friend.  He is my brother.  He was my brother.  He was not my brother.

What happened to my real brother?  Is he still in prison?  Or did this impostor kill him before he stole his identity?

I don’t know the man who went to prison.  I was only six when my big brother went away.  I know the man who took me for ice cream and took me to church.  I know the man who gave me a home.

But that man…

I want my brother back.  Is that cowardly?  I don’t care.  I prefer the lie to the truth.  I loved the lie.  If I could take away my memories of the past few days, I would do it in a heartbeat.  I loved Judas.  He was at the center of the universe.

He was never Judas.

He was.  He was Judas while I thought he was Judas.  Reality only exists insofar as you can perceive it.  It was Judas who taught me that.

He was my brother.  Was I his sister?

“Wendy?” says Joss, her mouth full of saltines.  “Where’d you go?”

I smile at her feebly.  “Nowhere.  I’m right here.”

* * * * *

Late at night we lie together, our coats zipped up to our necks, blankets underneath us and blankets on top of us.

Our breath is still misty.  Snow still falls outside the unfinished window.  But with Jocelyn so close, I feel innately warmed.

If this is awake, why does it feel like a dream?  At some point, “awake” became Judas.  It became Kory.  Azel.

Azel.  His books aren’t here.  His music player’s gone.  His prayer rug.  The leathery shoes he brought with him that one time he danced
en pointe
for me.  He danced
en pointe
for me.  But that was not real.  He was not real.

He was real.  I felt his hands in my hair.  I felt his thigh beneath my cheek.  I felt his lips on my lips.  I felt anchored to the planet for the very first time.

That is real.  I don’t care if it solely took place inside of my head.

All of reality takes place in your head.

Joss snores soundly, scrunched in close at my side.  I touch her hair.  It’s so dirty.  It’s not like her.  Something has happened to her, something from which I’m sure she can’t recover.  It’s true when they say you can never go home again.

Why?  Why can’t you go home again?  We come from the ocean.  The ocean is in our veins.  The ocean never left us.  Why do we think we’ve left the ocean?

Why can’t I go home again?

I close my eyes and try to sleep.  It’s weird; because I feel as if I’m already dreaming.  I don’t necessarily like this dream.

My neck is wrapped warmly in coffee-colored fleece.

Azel’s scarf.

I never took it off.

17

Azel

The following morning Joss and I climb the staircase down to the boiler room.  We carry kerosene lamps, and with good cause:  The basement is completely dark.  The water in the boilers is liquid, but cold.  We wash sparingly, with the result that I still feel matted and dirty; only now there’s the added bonus of chattering teeth.

“I think we should definitely make a run for Hood River County,” Joss says.  We climb the tedious staircase back to the nineteenth floor.  “Crazy paramilitary guys aren’t going to look for anything there.  It’s Nowheresville.”

“Hood River…  Is that where we had that end-of-term trip in freshman year?”

“No!  That was the Columbia River.  Remember?”

I do remember.  It’s weird, but I remember.

My head doesn’t hurt.

We spend the rest of the morning drawing up plans: how far we can get by walking, how much bus fare to steal, when and where we’ll run out of perishables.  Once it sinks in—that I’m planning to run away from everything I’ve ever known—panic overtakes me.  Jocelyn snacks on a carrot stick and gives me a reproachful look.  She’s been on the run for months.  She doesn’t complain.  I don’t have the right to complain.

“This is happening so fast,” I apologize.  It was only five days ago I found out I haven’t been to school this year.  It was only three days ago I found out my brother isn’t my brother.  It was only yesterday I found out my best friend is still alive.

“Whoever’s trying to kill us isn’t going to slow down for your benefit.”  Jocelyn sounds confused.  “We can’t slow down, either.”

“I’m so sorry you’ve been living this way…”

“At least I’m alive.  Nothing else matters as long as you’re alive.”

I check at that.  “You think so?”

“Of course I think so!  If you don’t have your life, what do you have?  As long as you’re alive, something great could eventually come your way.  If you kick the bucket, you’ll never find out!”

There’s never going to be another you.

“We could steal change from the bottle recycle center.”  I can’t believe I’m talking about stealing.

“Ooh!  Smart…”

* * * * *

Around noon we eat apples for lunch.  At one point Joss suggests baking them with the kerosene lamps, but I haven’t forgotten how disastrous it is when she’s allowed to handle glass.

“Joss?” I ask.  “Was there a boy in the year above ours?  Azel?”

If anyone would know, it’s Jocelyn.  If there’s anything Jocelyn knows, it’s boys.

“I don’t know,” Joss says slowly.  “Cavalieri’s a really big school.  Why does it matter?”

It shouldn’t matter.  It shouldn’t.  But it does.

“There was a boy,” I tell her.  I turn and face my easel, wondering where Sinbad’s gone.  “And I really missed you.  I missed Mom and Dad.  I thought I’d never get to see you again…  I thought I killed you.  But this boy—he helped me.  Every time I considered taking my life—”  I would have taken Jude with me.  “—he was there.  He made me want to stay.  He made me feel normal.  He made me feel like…”

My vision swims.  Hot and dizzy.  I thought I ran out of tears.

A snowy swan rests calm on the paint canvas.  Her head is tucked under her wing.  She’s sleeping.  This universe should stay asleep.  It shouldn’t wake up.  I don’t know what happens when the universe stops dreaming; but some of its dreams are positively breathtaking.

I wish I’d never woken up.

When I turn around, Kory’s hand is outstretched.  I don’t know what he’s reaching for.  Nothing, I realize.  There’s a snowflake on his palm.  The whole entire universe rests inside a snowflake.  But if he isn’t careful—I know it firsthand—the snowflake will melt.  Oceans swimming in your empty palms.

He smiles at me, reminding me of oceans, reminding me of remorse.

“Sorry,” he says.  He doesn’t need to say it.  “You were my best friend, after all.  I wanted to give you back yours.”

“You idiot,” I say, my head tight.  I toss my arms around him in a hug.

“I’m sorry, Wendy.”  He hugs me.  “I’m sorry.  I’m very sorry.”

“You idiot.”  It’s okay now.  I’m finally convinced of that.  Half a year ago I couldn’t see how I could possibly live without them.  I thought I would die.  I was waiting to die.  I was the idiot all along.

There’s never going to be another me.

Whoever you are, you’re having a dream.  I’m sure of it.  I’m sure that everyone and everything in this observable universe are just a part of your long, uninterrupted dream.  It’s scary, isn’t it?  But how do you get to the good parts if you don’t first get the scary parts out of the way?

Please don’t wake up just yet.  You’ll miss the best part of all.

There is never—never—going to be another you.

* * * * *

Kory takes the badger brush from me.  He tucks it behind his ear.  It looks funny back there, especially when the white-and-blue paint bleeds into his tawny hair.  Funny that the paint’s still fresh.  It shouldn’t be.

“Don’t get scared,” Kory tells me.  “No matter how scary it gets.”

I flash him a smile.

“I mean it, Wendy, you can’t just freak out and—and—”

“I’m okay.  Really.”

Kory rubs his elbow.  Just like me.

“Do me a favor, though?” I prompt.

“What is it?” Kory asks.

“Can we meet in another reality?  Without all the craziness next time?”

“You
have
been studying superposition, haven’t you?”

I hug him one last time.  He’s so bony.  So weedy.  I can’t have imagined him.  But I’ve imagined the entire universe.  Edmund Husserl says so.  Erwin Schrodinger says so.  Astrophysicists say the same.

I think we were all Adam once, but that was too lonely.  So Adam split open his ribs.  From his bones he made Eve and Cain and Abel and all the good and bad that came with them.  I think it was worth it.  I think the perfection of this universe comes from how imperfect it is.

I let go of Kory.  He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose.  His smile is distinctly goofy.

His smile is the last thing I see.

* * * * *

“If you’ll just listen—”

I’m kneeling on the floor in Judas’ bedroom.  He approaches me.  He stops.

The expression on his face is half-pain.  Half of his mouth still doesn’t move.  It’s paralyzed with closed, rigid knife marks.  Knowing what I know now, I can’t help but think that disfiguration was deliberate.  It kept me from recognizing the stranger beneath the scars.

He hasn’t been a stranger to me these past seven months.  He took care of me.  He became my brother.  He lied to me; and I don’t know why.

If he killed my parents—if he killed Jocelyn—

“Did you kill them?” I ask.

“No,” he says.  It’s so quick, I can’t tell whether it’s a lie or the absolute truth.

Jocelyn said the agent was a woman.  I don’t know what role Judas might have had in that.

I lay his ID card on the floor.  Ash Galloway.  I can’t bring myself to connect the name with the face.  I flip the card over.  That way I don’t have to look at the name anymore.

Judas kneels on the floor with me.  He takes my shoulders in his skeletal hands.  I don’t fight him.  I don’t know why.  He could have killed me all these months and never did.  That’s probably a part of it.  The other part, I think, is—

The pain in his eyes.  I’ve always said his eyes are different from mine, even if both of our eyes are gray.  The key difference is that mine are murky.  His are wet and translucent, like clouds at sea.

In their translucence, his eyes betray what he doesn’t say with words.

I’ve never seen such sad eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he says.  It’s all he can say, again and again.  “I’m sorry.  I’m sorry.”

I don’t know whether I should believe him.  I know I want to.  He pulls me into his arms and apologizes, again and again, and it feels like family, it feels like love—but there’s no blood between us.  We weren’t raised under the same roof.

I don’t put my head on his shoulder.  I want to, though.

“Tell me what’s going on.”  My voice sounds like it belongs to a child.  “Tell me what you’ve done.”

“I can’t.”

“You mean you don’t want to.”  I don’t blame him.

“I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry.”

I pull out of his arms.  I pick up his ID card.

Ash Galloway didn’t die in the car wreck.

“There was no car wreck,” I say.

I watch Judas’ eyes close themselves up, his half-paralyzed mouth, his freckled face.  The freckles…  Oh, God.  I think Jocelyn was right.

“There are five and a half million ‘car accidents’ in the US every year,” Judas says.  “At that rate, the US will be completely devoid of life in sixty years’ time.  Do you really believe that ridiculous number?  Or do you think somebody, somewhere, is lying?”

Somebody, somewhere, is lying.

“You work for UNICOR,” I say.  That much wasn’t a lie.

“We build cars,” Judas says.  “Bombs.  And fuel.”

“Fuel…?”

“Mostly nuclear, sometimes alternative.  Water fuel, for instance.  We dig up 12,000 aquifers a year.”

That’s ten times the planet’s sustainability rate.  Somebody told me so.  I swallow a wave of bitterness.

“Do you think we don’t know we’re killing the planet?” Judas says.  “We’ve known it since the 1930s.  That’s how long UNICOR’s been around.  Only it was called FPI back then, and Roosevelt was running the show.  Federal agencies are required by law to buy all their power, all their weapons from us.  But we operate on commission, so we’re not subject to federal law.  The government answers to us.  We don’t answer to them.”

I’ll admit I don’t know much about the law, but that premise strikes me as soundly terrifying.  Leave a monster to grow unchecked in your backyard and he’ll probably get around to eating your house.

“How can you work for that company, Jude?”

I bite my tongue.  He isn’t Jude.

“You act like I had a choice.”  Hunched, guarded, Judas reminds me of a dog on the end of a chain.  “UNICOR employs inmates.  I’ve told you that.”

Judas went to prison for killing an innocent man.

This man is not Judas.  “What were you…?”

“In for?  Vehicular homicide.  Ran over my old man.  Twice.”

This man is not Judas.  This is the part where I can’t deny it anymore, and I hate it; and it scares me.

“He ran dog fights,” Judas—not Judas—adds as an afterthought.  “I don’t like that shit.  You don’t mess with animals.”

I wonder where Maurice is.

“Where is my brother?” I ask.  My real brother.

But this man is my…

“Don’t know.”  Judas rubs his face, haggard.  “Probably dead, or they would’ve used him in my place.  Unless he was a wildcard.  In which case, he still would’ve wound up dead.”

Was he a wildcard?  I was a little girl the last time I saw—Judas.  I remember him being mouthy, brazen, bragging about his crime.  Nothing at all like this ruminantly melancholy man.  Prison can change a person.  I thought…

“Jude.”  He’s not Jude.  “There was no car wreck.”

“There are five and a half million ‘car wrecks’ in the US every year.  Most of them are staged.”

“Why—?”

“I told you,” Judas says.  “We’re in the business of making fuel.”

A headache is an efflux of protons inside your skull.  One trillion protons were what made this universe.

Universes pouring out of my head.

I think about the glass casket.  That wasn’t oxygen therapy, was it?

“Best case scenario,” Judas says, “we can harvest enough protons from people like you to shut down the nuclear reactors.  Nuclear energy produces carbon emission.  Carbon emission is what’s depleting the ozone layer.  Worst case scenario, when we relocate to Europa in a few years, we can take your output with us.”

I think I’m going to throw up.

“I’m sorry, Wendy.”  Judas slumps.  “I’m sorry.”

Why does he remind me of a little boy right now?

“Did you kill my parents?” I ask him.  I need to know.  I might be shaking.  “Did you kill Jocelyn?”

He looks me in the eye.  “That was my partner.”

“Partner…?”

I await his answer.  He doesn’t give it to me.  He falls forward.  With a gasp, I brace him.  He’s much heavier than me; he takes us both down.

Pinned between my brother and the floor, I can feel his blood trickling on my face.

“Judas.”  I’m shaking.  “Jude—”

His body rolls off of me.  A woman stands over me.  I wipe the blood from my eyes.

Smoke coils around the silencer on the end of a pistol.  An earpiece crackles with static transmission.  Marguerite Modesto grins at me.  Her teeth—sharp—remind me of a shark’s.