I don’t dream. I just stop being.
When I come to, I’m not cuffed or in jail, I’m outside, nose-down in grass and dirt. A breeze plays on my back, almost like Denby tickling me. It cools the sweat my borrowed shirt is soaked in. I should be thrilled, but I’m not. I roll to get the grass out of my mouth. I’m on a sloped hill, a hundred yards from a side exit to the building. Above me the forest begins. And it turns out I didn’t get here by myself. The woman who gave me the ID badge is also here, looking down at me with a mix of fear, disgust, and concern.
“I thought you were dead,” she says.
“No, I’m fine, I think. Thanks.”
She’s tense, just like she was in the stairwell, afraid to make eye contact. She holds out her shaking manicured hand. “Give me back the ID.”
I yank the ID from my pocket. She snatches it, spins, and trots down the hill.
“Wait!” I just want to thank her, apologize for screwing up.
“Don’t talk to me! Don’t even look at me.” She runs like something’s chasing her.
Taking the hint, I hobble up into the woods and find a big oak to hide behind. When I dare a peek, I see, below, a dozen gray-suited security guards rushing through the parking lot. A few search car to car, others put their hands to their foreheads and scan the woods.
When they stop looking, I head uphill. I’m not sure where to go or why. It would be crazy to go back inside and try again, and I’m not that kind of crazy. I can’t even trust myself to check the code again. So what else? I can’t call or head home—Prometheus will be looking for me. At least I don’t have another panic attack. I’m even too tired for that.
It takes hours but I reach the strip mall at the outskirts of town, exhausted and dehydrated. I’m afraid my face will be plastered on all the TV screens in the window of the local Best Buy, but there’s nothing. What next? No more directions from Judith. I’m on my own. Mr. Schapiro drove me to his place last night, so my car’s still a few blocks from school. Good a place to go as any.
I manage the last few miles and get in. When I feel the wheel in my hand, I realize there is someplace I have to go, something I have to deal with, someone, before the world ends: Denby.
Her house is about ten minutes away. As I drive, the only related news I hear on the local radio station is about a false alarm at the collider. False, huh? What could that mean? Maybe they think I ran the sim and they don’t want the press or the locals looking for me. Maybe they want me for themselves. Ha! I’ve never been less of a threat to them.
As I get closer to Denby’s, a black SUV pulls behind me and seems to follow. Some big Slavic guy is at the wheel, trying to look tough. His personalized plates say ALEK18. Probably nothing, but paranoia seems like my last friend, so I slow down until he passes me, then park and walk the last half mile.
When I get to her street, instead of staying on the sidewalk I clamber along the backyards toward her parents’ nice colonial. I’m two houses away when it dawns on me that some guy tramping through people’s yards isn’t exactly incognito. I’m full of mistakes today. Too late to fix any.
Great. Now a woman’s staring at me from her kitchen window. I smile and wave, hoping she’ll recognize me as Denby’s boyfriend. She waves back, but keeps watching. I’m about to abandon the backyards when I see a limo parked across the street. It’s a different make from the sedans at the high school, or the SUV, but it’s the same black.
Perfect. Can’t run. Can’t go in the front door. I sidle closer to Denby’s, like a crab, trying to stay out of view of both the kitchen-woman and the street. What if her parents spot me first? They like me well enough, but her mom’s been staring at me cross-eyed since I gave her daughter that engagement ring. Right now, frankly, Anthony has the brighter future.
The first floor seems empty, but I see a wonderfully familiar shadow in the second-floor hall. It’s her, listening to her iPod, swaying her hips and moving her lips to a song I can’t hear. Probably “I’m Just Wild About Harry.” Heh.
A trestle alongside the house leads to the roof of their sunroom. From there I can get to the hall window. Why not? Wouldn’t be the worst thing I’ve done today. So I climb. The wood creaks, and I’m sure I kill a rose or two. The roof is more slanted than it looks, but I still get my hands to the second-floor window ledge.
Only, it’s my feet I should have watched out for. They slide from under me. My knees crash into the aluminum siding, crunching it. I nearly lose my grip, but hang on by the tips of my fingers.
Even through her earbuds Denby hears the crash. She yanks open the window. The expression on her face belongs in the dictionary, next to the word “surprise.”
“Wade! What—” she says loudly.
“Shh!” I say, half from pain, half from fear someone in the limo will hear. She pulls her buds out and I’m happy to hear I’m just wild about Harry! Nice to be right about something.
Still clinging to the ledge, I whisper, “Are they here?”
“Is who here?” she whispers back.
“Prometheus. Black car out front.”
“The limo? Cheryl Cannon’s going to France with the senior class. Her parents didn’t want her taking the bus to the airport.”
“Oh,” I say. “Never mind. Could you help me in, please?”
She pulls at my forearms and I scramble in.
“Why didn’t you use the door? Don’t get me wrong. You don’t surprise me often, you know. Not until lately, anyway.”
I wipe my pants, rub my knees, then rise. I am so happy to see her, for a second I manage to forget how badly I’ve screwed up and why I’m here.
“Where have you been? Your dad’s worried sick. Between him and Anthony I feel like I’m your social secretary.”
“Denby, I know I’m an anxious jerk, I never relax, I’m no fun, and I’m probably a lot of other lousy things I don’t even know about, but are you seeing Anthony behind my back?”
“Okay, now you’re getting a little too surprising.”
“Are you?”
“No! What a ridiculous—”
“Did he send you any e-mails about… his feelings? And what a lousy boyfriend I am?”
“What? Hey, it’s not like anyone has to tell me what a lousy boyfriend you are. What kind of feelings are you…”
She looks at me a moment. The meaning behind my words catches up with her and her mind adds two and two. That definition-of-surprise look creeps up on her face again. “Oh. Oh! No. No! No way. He has been looking at me funny lately, but I thought he was just lonely. Wow, awkward, huh?”
“A little,” I say, but really I’m too busy exhaling to get to awkward yet.
She looks at me, righteous and annoyed. “You didn’t think I’d do anything like that, did you? With your friend? With anyone? I mean, you want to marry someone you can’t even trust?”
I put my hands on her shoulders and rub her arms, not for her so much, but for me. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long day, and it turns out I can’t trust my best friend or myself.”
She strokes the side of my face. “Wade, tell me what’s going on before I kill you. I will kill you, you know, and that would be very sad because I am terribly fond of you.”
I look around, out the window. “Is anyone here?”
She hesitates, probably about to demand I answer her first, but she’s taken in enough of my haggard appearance to give me some slack. “Mom’s with her sister in Bay Ridge, Dad’s in Chicago until Monday. Chet and Bobby are at college. I’m alone. So talk.”
“Can I have some water first? Please?”
“Sure. Why not? Would you like to see a menu?”
On the way to the kitchen, I start my convoluted story, pausing only long enough to see Cheryl Cannon climb into the backseat of the limo as the driver loads her bags.
Denby takes me by the hand and sits me at their breakfast nook. For a second I have a little fantasy, like we’re already married and this is our house (a trifle smaller than I’d imagined). Only, instead of a theoretical physics professor or a mathematician, I’m a total screw up. When I’m done, I repeat my last sentence three times: “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.”
She shrugs and smiles. “I’m sorry for all you’re going through, but it’s nice to hear you say that for a change. What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing. I just wanted to see you and find out about Anthony before the world ends or I get whisked off to some secret detention camp for wayward programmers.”
“That’s not going to happen,” she says, squeezing my fingers, feeling them shake. “Geez, you poor thing. You need some rest, a bath. Go home, ask your dad for help.”
“I can’t. I can’t even call him.”
“That’s crazy paranoid. Just leave your precious flash drive with me if you’re so worried.”
I twist my head side to side, rolling my eyes as I struggle to get out the words.
Denby looks hurt. “You still don’t trust me, or do you think all my ideas are stupid?”
“No, no. I’m making faces at myself. I don’t want to go home because I don’t want to tell my father. I’m afraid he’ll… Look, I haven’t told anyone this, ever.”
She softens, waits.
“You know he’s a recovering alcoholic. He was two years sober when he met my mother. What you don’t know is that after I was born he took a job he hated, to pay the bills, lots of pressure. When I was six months old he had a slip, a lost weekend. A lost two months, really. He… abandoned us. Mom freaked. She had the house on the market and was in touch with a divorce lawyer when he turned up and begged for one last chance. She gave it to him, and he pulled himself together. Went to regular meetings, got that job at Prometheus, made peace with himself, been sober ever since.”
“And then she died.”
“Yeah. It hurt me so much, but he was crushed, like an invalid. In AA they say you never really recover, you’re always recovering. People slip and start drinking anytime. It was only a little while after Mom died that Prometheus was temporarily shut down by the lawsuit and he was laid off. He once said the only thing that stopped him from drinking then was that I was doing so well. If I could pull myself together, he owed it to me and Mom’s memory to do the same. Ever since, I feel like if I screw up I’ll take him with me.”
There are tears in her eyes. “I still think you should talk to him. It’s his turn to be the strong one. Maybe he’ll surprise you.”
His turn. What if he doesn’t take it? I bristle. I settle down. I bristle again. “I should let him know I’m alive. But I can’t go home. They will be looking for me. I can catch him tomorrow morning, I guess. He always stops at the Java Hut to sneak some real coffee. Thinks I don’t know, but he leaves the receipts all over the place.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Can I… can I stay here tonight?”
“Of course,” she says. She leans forward to kiss me. I lean forward, too. Our lips meet. We kiss for a while, but then I feel something stiff in my pocket. The flash drive.
I pull out of the kiss. “Denby?”
“Yes?” she says dreamily.
“Do you have a decent computer?”
She gives me a look of mild annoyance, then sees me take out the bag with the drive.
“Way to ruin a mood, Einstein. Right, right. End of the world. Come on.”
She leads me upstairs. The house is all clean, straight lines, level family photos centered on the walls, until we get to her room. There, the light changes from white to auburn, the sun filtered by sheer cloths tacked over the windows. Her mattress is piled with stuffed toys. The cheap bust of Plato I gave her sits alone on her night table like a treasure, but her laptop sits on the floor in the middle of the room, half-covered with dirty laundry. I could never live in this kind of mess, but I always love seeing it here. It’s totally Denby.
She kicks the clothes off the rig and opens her palm toward it. “Have at it.”
So I do. I feel stupid for doubting her, for letting Anthony’s e-mails get to me, but knowing she’s still with me lets me stay calm enough to focus. I spend the next few hours going through my code again, correcting my stupid mistake, finding one more, checking it, proofing it, over and over as if I can somehow see what the results would be like if I ran it again. It’s good. It makes me feel like I’m doing something useful, something I’m capable of. It makes me feel like myself.
Denby, being herself, is more interested in ordering pizza and forcing me to eat a slice. Once I do, she leaves me until I’m finally, finally finished.
When I am, I tell her, “I don’t know what running it in the simulator will do, but at least now I know it’s right.”
“Great. Can we please go to sleep?”
I look at her. “Even if the world could end anytime?”
“Especially. I want to be rested for it.”
I look at her like she’s crazy. She punches me in the shoulder.
“If you’re on a roller coaster to hell, Plato, you may as well stick your hands up in the air and try to enjoy the ride.”
“For you? I’ll… try.”
She shakes her head. “Not for me. Not for your dad. Not for the world. For you.”
I shrug. “That, too.”
It’s only then I notice how dark it is outside, only then I glance at the clock and realize it’s past midnight.
“Wow. Sorry. Want me to go to the guest bedroom?”
“No,” she says. “Roller-coaster time.”
She yanks me to the mattress and kisses me. I fumble to put the flash drive back in the bag and next to the bust of Plato. I turn back and kiss her for a while. I know it doesn’t make objective sense, but time feels like it stops. I imagine that even the particles in Prometheus are taking a break, and all I’m doing is trying to find the line where Denby ends and I begin, just so I can lose it again.
Eventually we fall asleep.
Dreams come, but they’re different. It’s not another world. I am where I am, in Denby’s room. Plato’s head floats above us, looking down at me with white marble eyes. He seems disappointed, like I missed something. What? I followed every detail as best I could. There’s nothing left I can think of. I’m done now. Done. Nothing? Done? There’s still you, isn’t there? His dead eyes tear into me, analyzing my every thought, feeling, memory. Once he figures something out about me, it vanishes. Once a part of me is known, it’s no longer needed. It’s just dirt, and Plato hates the dirt of life because it’s not perfect. So he shreds me with understanding until I’m nothing but a particle, fading after a nanosecond, a strangelet that never touches the vacuum’s end.
I wake, panting.
Denby snores peacefully. Morning light, turned deep auburn by the drapes, makes the room’s edges glow. I turn to the bust of Plato. He glows, too, but still seems disappointed. Then I look at the plastic bag at his side. It doesn’t look right.
The drive… it’s gone!
Gone? Wrapped inside, instead, is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen: a toy car covered in diamonds. One of the wheels is off. It’s broken. I know this stupid toy. I know the broken wheel. It’s from my dream.
I tell myself I’m asleep, or half-asleep, or a tenth asleep—whatever fraction of sleep will let me believe this thing isn’t here, that this thing, which should only exist in some psychedelic corner of my mind, hasn’t crawled out into the world.
I pick it up. I squeeze it. By any way I can measure real, it’s real. I’m not dreaming. My time with Denby feels more like a dream than this. But that, that was just the calm before the storm. The hurricane is here.
My head spins, faster than it did when I ran from Finley, faster than when I read Anthony’s letters, faster than when I found my mistake. It spins so fast I feel like I’ve careened out of my body and am falling into nothing. I fall out of my mind, out of my heart, out of everything, as if even the idea of a bottom is impossible, and falling is all there is.