Freddy
Anna checked Freddy’s backyard first. She expected to find him there as she had many times before, peering through his telescope pointed east toward the ocean and the darkest part of the sky. But his telescope sat several feet from where he lay in the grass, gazing at the ribbons of green that rolled above him in a celestial light show. It wasn’t until she tapped his shoulder with the tip of her sneaker that he noticed her, his eyes dark caverns in the dim light.
“Anna,” he whispered.
“You sleeping out here?”
“Just thinking.”
What about? The words were almost off her tongue, but she decided they could wait. Anna knelt beside him. “The Big News of the Day,” she said, “is that I found out what’s happening and it has nothing to do with the solar flares.”
“What’s happening where?”
His voice was flat and she couldn’t see his face, not the details. It made him look like a stranger, or a ghost.
“In Bloomtown, where else? Let’s go inside, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
For a moment he thought she’d come because the growing distance between them was hurting her, too, but no, that wasn’t why at all. Of course it wasn’t. Freddy turned his head from the vast cosmos, from his own insignificance, pressing his cheek against the cold soil and focusing on the blades of grass. But he found no comfort there either. All around him nature was in harmony. The stars above him, the grass, the insects and the trees, they belonged, but humans were a mutation. The only way he could ever truly belong was to decay.
When he sat up a new and dreadful weight, cementing in his skull all day, began to fall in painful clumps into his chest, turning his insides heavy and stiff. Who cared about the aurora borealis anyway? It didn’t mean anything. A painful buzzing started in his head. Nothing meant anything. Despite Anna’s presence, he’d never felt so alone.
“Dude, get up,” Anna said.
Freddy allowed her to pull him to his feet. The back of his light gray hoodie was dirty and wet. Without a word he climbed the steps of his screened-in back porch, barely holding the door open for Anna before shoving his hands back into his pockets. She followed him inside to the kitchen. Whatever he was sulking about—maybe the door slamming episode at the office?—he was sure to get over it when she told him about the portals.
Freddy’s mom, Gloria, was on the phone, her long curly hair tamed in a bun. Gloria winked at Anna and ruffled the mop on Freddy’s head as they passed. He clicked his tongue in annoyance before ascending the stairs, two at a time, toward his bedroom. Anna followed, the pain in her head sharpening as the sound of Gloria’s chatter faded away.
Anna would have done anything to feel her mother’s touch again, to hear her voice, but Freddy took all that for granted. She swallowed a strong surge of resentment, knowing that her exposure to the portals could have lingering aftereffects. The portals affecting her and Jack had been extinguished, and so, she hoped, would the fits of rage she now attributed to them. Still, she needed to be careful not to overreact.
Anna closed his bedroom door behind them. Freddy studied her impassively, but Anna was sure that the playful light in his eyes would return soon enough.
“That thing above Geneva’s bed,” she whispered, moving closer. “It was a portal.”
Instead of leaning toward her in his usual posture of coconspirator, Freddy straightened up, increasing the space between them. Did she have bad breath?
He raised an eyebrow. “A portal to where?”
“We’re not sure yet. But we know who made it. This real estate agent, you know, the guy with bleached teeth on the for sale signs in people’s yards, Saul Gleason?”
Freddy stared back at her blankly.
“You know him, c’mon. The guy. His face was plastered in the window of Yo! Yogurt for like, two years, on that dumb flyer.”
But Freddy remained nonplussed. “I guess.”
Anna had expected him to be excited, to at least care. She was talking about portals here, actual portals to an unknown world. Freddy had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined with books about astronauts and wormholes in space. He still had glow-in-the-dark solar system stickers on his ceiling—stickers that looked greenish and worn under the lamplight.
“Is something up, Freddy? You’re not having headaches, are you?”
Her own headache thudded along with the anxious pulse of a growing paranoia. Maybe she should get Emi and do a sweep of Freddy’s house. But if Freddy’s house was on Saul’s list, her Dad would’ve told her, wouldn’t he?
Freddy brushed some dirt from the back of his jeans. “No, Doctor Fagan. The Sunday night blues are a little worse than usual, that’s all.”
He plunked down in his chair and booted up his dinosaur of a PC. A guitar riff blasted out of his speakers before he turned the volume down.
She spoke without thinking. “Is that the Manarchists?”
Freddy’s glare grew icicles. “Shine’s cruddy band? You gotta be kidding.”
He dismissed her with a swivel of his chair, planting his back to her. Anna sighed and retreated to a corner of Freddy’s mattress. This wasn’t going well. She debated whether or not she should leave or give him a minute to chill the hell out.
Freddy hoped that Anna’s infatuation with Shine would pass like it had with the other idiots she’d crushed on over the years, but this one was sticking. Freddy forgave her a long time ago for not loving him back. But now she pulled farther from him every day, and their friendship, once thought unbreakable, was disintegrating. Except when she wanted something: a ride to school, help at the office, whatever she was doing here now. But it wasn’t him she wanted and maybe it never was. It hurt and Freddy was tired of hurting; he wanted a way out. He hit refresh on his keyboard, and there it was. An email popped up in his inbox from the Cosmology Institute in Florida. As he read it, the new heaviness inside him sunk into his legs, pooling at his feet like an anchor meant to drown him.
“Dear Mr. Simms, while we were impressed with your transcripts, you have not been selected to receive this year’s Young Physicists Scholarship. We wish you the best of luck with your future endeavors.”
The door opened and Gloria popped her head in. “Five hundred and fifty bucks a month. How's that for pocket change?”
Freddy turned around in his chair. “You’re supposed to knock first, and it doesn’t matter anyway.”
“Okay. I just thought you’d like to know that the man from the management office—”
Freddy cut his mother off. “I didn’t get in.”
“Oh, honey.” Her features relaxed. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “But, do you mind? We’re studying.”
Sluggish and sullen, Freddy wheeled his chair over to the door like it was a monumental effort and pushed it shut. Gloria’s shadow remained under the door for several seconds before her footsteps faded down the stairs.
Anna was on the verge of walking out herself, but then a high-pitched yapping erupted from the side of the bed. Penelope’s puppies were huddled on a blanket between a laundry basket and the wall, waking, it seemed, from a nap.
“The pups!” Anna dropped to the floor. The puppies charged her, licking her face in a frenzy of tiny tongues, soft paws and warm bellies.
Laughing, she looked at Freddy, but he was glaring at her.
“Did you forget about them?” His upper lip curled in disdain. “You did, didn’t you? You didn’t even know they were here.”
He was right. Anna had forgot about them. How could she? They were Penelope’s babies.
“It’s the portals,” she said, flustered, her face hot. “There was one in our basement, too. I’ve been trying to tell you. We think they’re messing with people’s heads, literally, messing with their brains.”
None of it was coming out right, but Freddy wasn’t paying attention anyway. His focus was back on his computer screen. He hunched over his keyboard, the screen’s pale light washing over his face.
She left the puppies on the floor and went to Freddy’s chair, leaning over his shoulder. “Since portals are boring you, I’m dying to know what has you so fascinated.”
“Right here,” he said, tapping the screen. He was looking at the website for the Cosmology Institute of Florida. “Do you see my name? Under enrollment status, it no longer says ‘Your application is under review.’”
Under Freddy’s name was the text “Your application has been processed.”
“That’s why you’re in such a crappy mood?” Anna asked. “Because you didn’t get into space school?”
He looked at her like she was being deliberately obtuse.
“As I was saying,” Anna said, “Saul, the real estate guy, was supposedly forced to make the portals by this nasty entity he conjured up as a kid.”
Freddy sighed. “A Bloomtown real estate agent. Yep, that seems like the exact type of guy to make inter-dimensional portals.”
She elbowed him playfully. “Are you, perchance, being a wiseass?”
Ignoring her, Freddy pushed his chair back and walked to his bookshelf with the ponderous movements of a tired old man. He wiped his finger through a layer of dust on the bottom shelf.
A part of him was desperate to shake off the darkness consuming him. It was Anna, after all, the girl he loved, had always loved. But another part of him was furious at her, and himself, the kind of fury that deadened that love, and maybe that was a good thing.
Freddy looked at the tip of his finger, at the remnants of his hair and skin that lined the bookshelf in a fine dust. He was being processed, all right, and one day he’d be reduced to worm food. The thought brought him a strange peace. Nature was never dusty. You never saw dust in the forest.
Anna felt doubly relieved despite Freddy’s sour mood. He had a reason to be in a funk, and he wasn’t leaving New Jersey. Yet he clearly wanted to leave her and Dor behind. Freddy appeared utterly devastated to be stuck in Bloomtown. She tried to empathize, but instead her jaw tightened.
“Are you checking out on me, is that it?” Anna asked, standing by the door, arms crossed. “Already mentally in Florida, or wherever it is you can’t wait to escape to?”
Freddy made a noise as he turned to her. It might have been a laugh, but one choked with bitterness. “You are accusing me,” he said, “of checking out on you?”
There was more venom in his voice then she’d ever heard from him before. She took a step back, putting distance between herself and Freddy’s unfamiliar, dull eyes.
“Why are you still here?” he said. “You want my help with your dad’s stupid detective work, is that it? Did it ever occur to you, Anna, that I don’t care about the problems that your freak of a father digs up? Whatever’s wrong with Bloomtown, it’s probably his fault. It’s probably your fault, too. I think you know that, deep down, don’t you? That’s why you punish yourself and fall for losers like Craig Shine.”
Enraged, Anna searched for something to hurt him just as much.
“At least I let myself fall for somebody,” she said, her heartbeat thudding in her ears. “I bet you haven’t even kissed a girl. I bet that’s why you want to run away.”
“Wrong, dumb ass. But I suppose you think whoring around with Hastings made you an expert. Is that it, Goblin Girl?”
“Screw you.” Anna’s hand was on his keyboard. She pulled her arm back, wanting to rip it out of the PC, but it was wireless. Undeterred, she threw it at his bookshelf, hitting a globe bookend that crashed to the floor and broke in half. They were breathing hard and staring at each other when Gloria yelled from downstairs.
“What was that?”
“Nothing, Mom!”
There was a glimpse of softness in his eyes—or maybe it was desperation—asking her for forgiveness, and for something more than that.
“Anna.”
“Forget it,” she said, so unnerved that she flicked the light switch off on her way out of the room, leaving him alone in the darkness.
Freddy went to the window thinking he’d open it and call out to Anna, but his leaden arms were too heavy to perform such a feat. Instead, he watched the aurora borealis twist through the atmosphere, wishing he could float so easily through space. Space was clean. It was as old as time, but always new and never dusty. It would take a human life, all of its greedy wants and needs, and reduce it to an empty husk, to less than nothing. A thought rose up, buoyant, from the great weight inside him. You are nothing.
Anna was right. He wanted to run away and had never kissed a girl. She was gone now and would never come back, not this time, not after what he’d said to her. He was afraid and thought about opening his door and calling for his mom. But he was too old to cry to Mommy like a spineless little shit. What would he say? Help me, Mommy. What’s my purpose if not to be with Anna? How pathetic.
Besides, Freddy didn’t think his parents believed in a purpose, or a God. Don't put your faith in sky monsters, his father had said once during Passover, at an elaborate Seder at his uncle’s house. Then why do we do this? Freddy asked him. It was a ritual, his father said, a tradition important to strengthen bonds between family and community. So, there was no God? His father had shrugged. Who knew? Freddy was disappointed that his father didn’t believe, betrayed even, but he was just a stupid kid.
Freddy went to his bed, unable to withstand the burden of his body weight any longer. He stared up at the picture on his wall of him, Dor and Anna camping in his backyard. He was shorter than Anna then, but his curly hair was spectacularly overgrown, giving him a few extra inches. Freddy watched as his image began to fade. He was disappearing. He looked at his open closet, his eyes drawn to the single tie he owned, dangling from a wire hanger. He’d worn it to a memorial dinner for his great-grandmother, Edie.
Edie had died in a concentration camp in Poland in 1942. Freddy had seen pictures of her before the war. When she smiled, the left side of her mouth drooped a little. Edie used to sew dresses for all the girls in the neighborhood. She’d always wanted a baby girl but only had time to have Freddy’s grandfather.
We’re the real demons, Freddy thought. There was nothing as horrible as the human race in all of existence. Genocide. Torture. The thing that killed Anna’s mother was small potatoes compared to the evil humanity inflicted on itself.
He could hear the puppies playing with their tennis ball. He knew that he should get up and play with them, but his body was too dense. Gravity held him down. He was too busy being processed.
Freddy squeezed his eyes shut, holding them closed as his heart and head pounded. They’d be better off without him, his family, Anna, Doreen, the vicious hateful world. He opened his eyes and saw the tie for what it could be, saw that he could knot it in such a way that it would tighten against the slightest pull of his horrible, crushing body weight. An ugliness inside him jeered. Another way to float! Outside Freddy’s window, the aurora borealis slithered across the sky.