Not since before his Dakota got sick had Kit felt such pure, reckless joy.
Rows and rows of it.
As it happened, BAM! was an acronym for “Books-A-Million,” and while he never got around to counting, it sure felt like the store delivered on its promise.
Yes, it had been somewhat rifled through. But barely, as if the looters’ hearts weren’t really in it.
Unlike most shops, these windows were not broken, the space was warm enough. Outside, the moon was too low to offer much light, so they divvied up lighters, quickly checked for people-bits (none) and straggling strangers (none). Given these enviable qualities, and not having a lot of experience sleeping in one of the old buildings, they decided to barricade the doors.
They shifted four bookshelves of BARGAIN BUYS in place, and then turned to face this wild, untamed land called BAM!
Harry trotted up and down each aisle, nose to the ground.
In a matter of minutes, Nico had basically built herself into a book-fort in the corner, the walls comprising a sensible combination of hardback and paperback, classics and young adult novels.
As opposed to Nico’s rabid hunger to consume as many books in as short amount of time as possible, Lennon approached the sci-fi section with cold calculation. He pulled a few books from the shelves, opened them with a timid, almost religious respect.
Unsure what was appropriate or expected given this radical turn of events, Kit had decided to wait and watch his friends first before jumping in. Apparently, the spectrum of appropriate and expected ranged from “starved wolf” to “zealous monk.”
Okay then.
He knew what he was here for. And even though he’d never been in this store, per se, his feet seemed to know the way.
In the art section, he grabbed five boxes of colored pencils—three, he put in his bag; two for tonight; plenty more were here, if needed—and then found a sharpener and a sketch pad on the next shelf over. In the gift section, he found boxes of scented candles advertising an “authentic old book smell” (i.e., musky rain and dried paint and orange beanbag chairs).
He spread the candles around the middle of the open floor, well away from the aisles of books and toys and tech and more, and then rolled out his sleeping bag, climbed in, and opened his sketch pad.
“In the beginning, there was nothing,” he whispered. “Then the world. Then people, but no art. Then people made art. Then people died. Now there is art, but no people. And that’s how it went.”
Even now, even here, when presented with a blank page, he stewed in the adrenaline of artistic possibility. He touched the pencil to paper—only this time, instead of drawing what he knew he would draw, the pencil stopped.
He pulled it back.
“That’s how it went.” Kit stared at the whiteness of the page, the possibility . . . “But only for a little while.” He let the pencil fall again, let it create. “Years passed. The old died and the young grew. And some became artists.” Whereas before, he had created different versions of the same thing, this was wholly new. He wasn’t sure if he liked it. But he thought it was good, maybe. “And now there are people again. And art. There are people and art together, the way it’s supposed to be.”
At some point—there was no telling exactly when, as time seemed irrelevant in the land of BAM!—Nico and Lennon joined him in the center of the floor, rolled out their own sleeping bags, each having brought their stacks of favorites.
“Trying to figure out how many I can justify bringing with,” said Nico, opening her bag.
“Same. I can bring this”—Lennon held up a brick of a book called The Complete Stories: Volume 1, by a man named Isaac Asimov, which Kit thought was perhaps the awesomest name he’d ever heard—“or the first three Harry Potter books,” said Lennon.
“I mean, as far as rereads go, I have to think HP holds up better than—”
“I’ve never read Harry Potter.”
Nico froze, slowly looked up. “Expelliarmus?”
“What?”
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve never read Harry Potter.”
Nico looked to Kit. “A little help?”
Kit went back to his sketch pad. “I only got to Q in fiction.”
“Muggle-fucking son of a Squib.” Nico looked around the shop, as if the ghosts of booksellers past might come to her aid. “A slumber party—in a bookstore—and I’m stuck with a couple of HP virgins.”
“Yeah, I’m going with Asimov.” Lennon tossed the Harry Potter books aside.
“Wait—” Nico pointed to two books already in his bag. “What about those? You can replace those.”
“Uh, no. Those are Ted Chiang’s short stories. Those are what you call non-negotiables? Yeah. I bring them with me or I stay here forever.”
“Respect. That’s me, with these—” Nico held up two books: The Secret History by someone called Tartt, and I Am the Messenger by someone called Zusak.
Kit made a mental note: If he ever got a pet, he would name the animal Tartt-Asimov Zusak. His Dakota had always loved interesting names. She would most definitely approve.
“What about this?” asked Lennon, pulling a third book from Nico’s bag.
“It’s nothing.”
“Leaves of Grass, huh?”
“What.”
“Nothing, I just—didn’t peg you as a poetry person.”
“First off, I don’t know what that means. And second, I reject any literary criticism from someone who hasn’t called Hogwarts home.”
“I mean—I get the gist of Hogwarts.”
“The gist?”
“Yeah. Jean told me the story. You’ve got the kid wizard—”
“Oh my God.”
“Whatshisname.”
“He is literally the title.”
“Harry, right. You’ve got Harry. And then he goes to the magic school with Gandalf—”
“Stop.” Nico raised a hand, palm outward, took a deep breath. “Kit. My beloved friend, pray tell. What spoils will you be bringing with you?”
“Three boxes of colored pencils, already packed.” Kit pointed to his bag. “And then I’ll probably bring another one of these.” He tapped his sketch pad.
It wasn’t that Kit didn’t like reading. He loved it, truly, and very often missed his library. But the books had always been intermission.
Art was the show.
Later, once everyone had packed what books and art supplies they could fit, they ate dried meats from Echo’s cabin, a few servings of Nico’s strawberry granola, and talked more about the notion of traveling by boat.
“In places where the river’s widest, we’d be visible for miles,” said Nico. “Nowhere to hide if the Flies come. And God knows who else is in these woods. I’d rather not announce our presence to the world.”
“I agree,” said Lennon. “We’d be sitting ducks out there.”
“Plus, the water gets fast in places,” said Kit. “And there are rocks. Big ones.”
After they all agreed it was best to continue on foot, they settled into their sleeping bags. Harry nestled beside Nico as she pulled a pen out of her bag, added another tally to her hand. And Kit wondered what it would feel like if his Dakota had given him a mission before she died. Good, because he’d still have a connection to her. But not good, because what if he failed?
“Hey—” He propped himself up on one elbow, having just noticed something. “Why are you guys so far apart?”
Lennon said, “Who?” and Nico said, “What?” at exactly the same time.
“Yeah, see”—Kit pointed to Lennon, who was in his sleeping bag by the endcap labeled STRONG WOMEN—“you’re there. And then Nico’s, like”—he pointed to Nico, six aisles down by an endcap called BODY, MIND, SPIRIT—“waaaaay over there.”
A solid four seconds of silence before Lennon said, “You got any more of those hilarious jokes, Nico?”
“I mean, there’s all this space between you.” Kit threw both arms wide open. “It’s a little weird, is all I’m—”
Nico interrupted with a loud clearing of her throat. “So this alpaca walks into a fancy restaurant and asks if they serve potato chips.”
Lennon chuckled. “Ha. Good one. Alpaca. Classic.”
“It’s not over, bud. So the alpaca asks if they serve potato chips, and the waiter is like, ‘No, we don’t have potato chips. Also, we don’t serve alpacas, now get out.’ So the alpaca leaves. Next day, the alpaca comes back to the same fancy restaurant. ‘Hey, you guys serve potato chips?’ The waiter is like, ‘No, now get out.’ Day after that, same thing. Alpaca is back, asking for potato chips. Waiter says, ‘We don’t have potato chips, we don’t serve alpacas, and if you come back again, I’m going to staple that fluffy tail to the wall.’ Alpaca leaves. Next day, he comes back to the same restaurant, only this time, he asks to borrow some staples. The waiter says they don’t have any. The alpaca says, ‘Awesome. Do you guys serve potato chips?’”
Laughing with your friends in the magical land of BAM! was Kit’s new favorite thing.
Later, long after their laughter had died and the soft flickering (old book) candlelight had taken Kit by the hand, ushered him to the edge of a deep, promising sleep—
“Nothing is as strong as the absence of itself,” Lennon whispered.
Kit lifted his suddenly weighty head to inquire just how long it would be before Lennon stopped talking. It was one thing, laughing with your friends in a magical bookstore. Quite another, trying to decipher their late-night musings.
But when he looked across the room, he saw on Lennon’s face the faraway kind of sad, and so said nothing.
“Jean used to say that,” Lennon continued. “She had all sorts of wise little nuggets.”
Kit was suddenly reminded of his own mother’s nugget of wisdom. “When the majority of the world has been wiped out, you don’t kill what’s left.” He turned over onto his back, stared up at the ceiling. “My Dakota used to say that. I eat meat all the time now.”
Lennon, quietly: “We are completely different people than we’re supposed to be. In a completely different world.”
“Hey—” Nico was interrupted by her own massive yawn, which made Lennon yawn, which made Kit yawn. And by the time they’d all finished yawning, they slipped into a fit of giggles at the orchestra of yawns. Finally, when the yawns and giggles had come to an end, Nico completed the thought she’d started like an hour ago: “Did you guys know that Flies aren’t really flies?”
“Sure,” said Lennon. “I mean, no one really knows what they are.”
They lay in the dark and listened to Nico explain how her father had told her that Russian scientists had used a virus to genetically modify the honeybee. “Only it went wrong—”
“You think?”
“The virus and bee mutated, and now . . . here we are. Yawning in an empty old bookstore, in the middle of a destroyed world.”
Kit thought of the homemade sign in the Taft library, how it had theorized that the Flies were not a product of nature, but a failed experiment.
“If that’s true,” said Lennon, “it’s next-level poetic justice.”
“You mean that the world ended at the hands of human hubris?”
“You fuck with nature, it fucks you back.”
O bedtime stories of old! How Kit missed those tender-hearted tuck-ins. Even so, his eyelids felt weighted, and just when he thought he could no longer keep them open . . .
“What did she mean?” asked Nico.
Lennon rustled, turned onto his side. “Hmm?”
“‘Nothing is as strong as the absence of itself.’ What does that mean?”
The question hung in the air a few seconds, and then Lennon said, “I used to think it meant, like—the normal things people did that I’ll never do. Drive a car. Go to college. Change a light bulb.”
“And now?”
Her voice sounded as tired as Kit felt, and as he let himself plunge into the glorious free fall of sleep, he heard Lennon say, “You can’t feel the absence of something that was never there to begin with,” and Kit was vaguely aware of his friend’s words spiraling up into the bookstore rafters, another tendril among a thousand authentic old book plumes, where together, words and smoke took the shape of the saddest boy Kit had ever met, someone who surely understood absence in a way he never would.
“I wonder what happened to Echo,” said Kit, and then he fell asleep.