What is Real (22 page)

I am in a hurry. I have things to do.

Today is the first game of the season. It's kind of lost in all the craziness, but it's important. It's big. It isn't big. It's an exhibition game. Play basketball. That's normal. There are no aliens. Just the ball. A team. A court. Rules. Easy.

It's nothing.

But I can
play
. I don't know what happened in that cornfield, but I do know that my knee is fine. Just fine.

One-hundred-percent fine.

My plan is to look for Coach first thing, explain to him that my knee is better, ask him to put me back in the game. But when I pull open the heavy doors, Olivia is right in front of me, too large, like a giant blocking my path, and I blink hard and she shrinks down again to normal and her hair is so blond, she looks like a model in a catalogue, which, I suddenly remember, is what I was basing her on to begin with, some misdirected mail I was reading in the bathroom.

And then I forget what I was going to do.

“You didn't come,” she says. “I thought…” She looks unsure of herself. Her eyes skim off my face and past my shoulder. “I was…” She stops. Then, “Your knee is better, right?”

“Uh,” I go. Which, if you think about it, is my standard response to everything these days. “Olivia,” I say. “Are you for real?”

“Real?” she says. “What's real?”

“Seriously,” I say. “Stop the fucking craziness.” A fleck of my spit hits her cheek and she wipes it off. She looks at her hand, surprised, like she 'll see something there.

“Dex,” she says. “You sound kind of crazy.”

“Crop circle craziness!” T-dot whoops. “That's freakin'
insane
! It's off the charts! Man! I tried to
call
you last night but you didn't pick up. Why didn't you call me
back
?
Dude
. Where
were
you? Insanorama!” He's jumping around me while he talks. I want him to stop and just breathe, but I can't figure out the words to say it. His body hits lockers and he doesn't notice, but the percussion clang of it, of him, is so loud. Too loud.

I shrug. “I don't know,” I say.

Olivia touches my back and there it is again: how it's cold. “The stone,” I say.

“What?” she says.

“There was no stone,” I say.

I am getting so confused.

No one can help me.

I looked all over my room for the stone, in the washing machine, everywhere, and I couldn't find it. It was just gone.

“Can we go there
now
?” T-dot shouts. “I gotta see it for real in daylight. Hey, what the fuck is that in your ear? It's freaky.”

“What?” I say sharply.

“In your hole, dude,” he says. I touch it. It's warm.

“Todd,” I say. His real name sounds weird to my ears. “Something weird is…”

“TOTALLY FUCKING AWESOME!” he yells. “This is the best thing ever. I can't believe we pulled it off. I gotta see it, dude.”

“We?” I say. I grab his arm. “What did you say?” I am squeezing his arm so tight my knuckles whiten.

“Hey!” he says, surprised. He's not smiling. “That hurts, dude, let go.”

I can't let go of his arm. My hand is not my hand. I say, “Tell me what you said.”

“Let go of my fucking arm,” he says. And just like that, swift and unbelievably hard, he punches me in the stomach. I go down fast, suffocating. I can't breathe.

“Breathe slowly,” he says. “Why wouldn't you let go of my arm? Fuck, Dex. That hurt, man.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I don't know. Sorry.” My breath is coming easier. I somehow stand up. He's looking at his arm where you can see red imprints of my fingers.

“What the fuck?” he says again.

“After school,” I tell him. “It can wait until after school. Come on, man. It's not going anywhere.”

“I can't believe we pulled it off,” he whispers.

“Don't say that,” I tell him. “Why are you saying that?”

“Figure it out,” he says. He shakes his head, like he's shocked or disgusted. Both. “Figure it out for yourself.”

I can't stand this feeling. Something bubbles in my chest. It's black water. It's liquid in a syringe. My veins are ice. I rub my eyes.

“See you later!” Olivia says. “Can't wait for the game!”

T-dot doesn't answer her. Instead, he looks at me and says, “Dex.”

“What?” I say.

“Dex,” he says. “I totally forgot about your knee, man.

Is it better? When did
that
happen?”

“Uh,” I say.

Olivia is pressing the small of my back, through the small of my back, I look down, like her hand is going to come through my abs. “I gotta go,” I tell him.

I let her steer me. But I don't know where we 're going. She pushes and I keep walking, and next thing I know we're in the basement. This is where we keep the sports equipment. There is a bin of basketballs the size of a car. I reach out and touch one. Basketballs are real.

Olivia is not.

“I don't want you to freak out,” she says. She isn't looking right at me, but somewhere over my head.

“I'm freaked out anyway,” I say.

She pushes her glasses up her nose. My glasses. Her nose. The nose I made up.

“We 're leaving,” she says. “We never meant to stay this long.”

“What?” I say. “What?”

“I just…,” she says. “Well, you know, we never talk. I thought we might be friends. Same glasses and…you know. So now I need to say goodbye to you, but we 're not even friends. I don't know what we are.”

“I don't know what
you
are,” I say, and it hangs there between us like all the smoke I've been holding. For a minute, I lose her in a fog.

She clears her throat again and again.

“Cough,” I say.

She says, “You wanted me to…”

“I didn't want anything,” I say. “I'm not such a good friend. You aren't missing much.”

She sneezes. Three times in a row. “Allergies.” She sighs.

She leans into me. Just for a second. Leans against me. I can feel the weight of her against my chest, lower, my abdomen. It's like she's lying on top of me, but we 're standing up. And then she's gone.

I stand there for ages. Far away, I hear the bell go, but I just stand there. Finally, I pick up a ball and spin it on my finger. I do that for ages. Stand there, spinning the ball and watching it. My fingertip burns.

I put the ball down and go upstairs. I have to find Coach and let him know that I'm okay to play.

Outside the front door of the school, there are two or three reporters and a few of those guys who have websites, crazy goddamn guys who think it's all got meaning. Outside the front door. No, they are inside the front door. They are in front of me. A bald, older man grabs my arm and says, “Did you do it? How did you do it?”

I look to the exit, and then Mr. V is there, shooing them away.

“We 're running a school here,” I hear him say angrily.

My head is starting to ache badly, and there is a burning in the pit of my stomach where T-dot's fist landed. Kids are milling around in the hallway. A lot of them are wearing Our Joe's T-shirts, but not inside out like I am. I don't know why I am wearing it inside out. I am wearing it inside out on purpose. The T-shirts say
LIVE
on the back, in something that looks like it was written by an old typewriter. On the front is a picture of the crop circle that looks exactly how it looks from my bedroom window.

Where did that picture come from? Was Our Joe in my room? When did he do this? I look closer at the chest of the girl in front of me, and she whacks me in the side of the head. It's not a photo. It's a drawing.

Perfectly proportioned.

“I've got to go,” I say out loud. “I've got to go.” I grab my backpack and fly out through the door and start running, pushing through the people, ignoring the questions.

I can hear T-dot screaming, “Wait up!” But I don't wait. I run. I run home on my smooth-oiled limbs, my perfect knee. I run through fields. I run so hard that all I can hear is my pulse and the rasp of my breath, and all I can smell is sweat and the faint tang of pot that is always with me.

And always coming from our house.

Our house that is surrounded by reporters.

And cops.

I run harder.

chapter 27

I stagger up the drive. The ground is uneven, and my vision is blurred from sweat dripping in my eyes and stinging. Dad's sitting on the porch in his wheelchair, staring at all the people who are trampling the corn. From here, they look like ants in an ant farm. Big destructive ants. Already the perfect curve of the outside of the knot is flattened on one side. There are vans parked everywhere. Our Joe is charging the reporters and gawkers fifty dollars a day to park on the field. There's a kid in some kind of uniform down there showing people which spot is theirs. Joe'll be able to build a bigger house. A waterslide. A spa. Redemption.

Except he won't.

Tanis is in my head. Tanis is in me. Crooked in my heart. She says, “Our Joe will get what's coming to him.”

Which is what?

“I guess you better give me a hand with the shower,” Dad goes. “Bad enough that I'm ‘elderly,' I don't need to stink too.” He nods at a pile of newspapers on the floor. I pick up the top one and skim it. I read:
Elderly renter, Tom
Pratt, and his son Dex…
Dad is older than a lot of other parents around here. This is the kind of town where you have your kids when you're eighteen because there isn't anything else to do. Dad was forty-three when I was born. He had another wife before Mom. He had a whole other family.

I've left that part out on purpose.

Dad has two other sons. He hasn't spoken to them in twenty years. I wonder just how much of a lousy father you have to be before your kids don't talk to you for twenty years.

He is a shitty father.

But he's still my dad. He's just an old man in a wheelchair. Life 1: Dad 0.

I can't hate him, and believe me, I've tried.

“I'll shower you,” I go. “No problem.” I shed my hoodie and shoes and grab hold of his chair. I release the brake and push him inside, then down the hall to the bathroom. Then I go back and lock the front door. We never lock our door, so the lock itself is almost impossible to turn.

We never have before now, that is.

“This is shit,” Dad says. “Bullshit. Wonder how he did it.”

“He who?” I say.

“Our Joe,” he says.

“Maybe he didn't,” I say. “Don't you think maybe…?”

Dad laughs. “Yeah, right. This is real life, Dex. Not a movie.”

“Right,” I say. My brain storms, the electricity dripping down my back and jolting me upright.

I turn on the taps and the water blasts out too hot, so I wait because that's all I can do. Eventually it regulates, sort of. Almost. And then I strip off and help Dad with his clothes. “This is Gary's job,” I want to say. But I don't. He's my goddamn dad.

I step into the steam and half-carry him with me to his shower seat and strap him in. He washes himself, I just stand there, waiting for him to need me again. The water is too hot. It's scalding. He doesn't complain. I can't help but see that his body hair is gray. The skin on his abdomen hangs like an old man's. There is more loose skin on his arm that moves like a sleeve, like he's wearing someone else's body and it's slightly too big. I shudder. Look away. The hot water feels good on my skin. I'm cold and can't seem to get warm. This is as close as I've been in days. The shower drowns out all the noise.

There's a lot of noise.

We finish up and I find him some clean clothes, which he struggles into while I pretend not to watch, standing by in case he falls. It happens sometimes. On top of being partially paralyzed, he has an inner-ear injury that makes him off-balance. I try to avert my eyes while still watching. Out the back window, there is no evidence of the chaos out front. It looks like it always looks.