I ran some more, and for the first few minutes, none of what I remembered mattered. I didn’t see anyone, any signs of Chris or my brother. I saw trees, bushes. I saw the sun disappear behind clouds, reappear heavy on my neck. I grew tired. My run became a walk, and I could feel the ache in my feet. In the movies, people kept running. They never ran out of breath. They tripped. They fell, flipped over on their hands and feet like a crab, and watched the axe fall on the last of their lives.
Keep going, my story told me. You’re so close. I can see the shore.
I looked at my legs, these useless paddles. I looked back at where I came from, to see how much of the sea I’d swum. But I couldn’t see my way back. I couldn’t see anything. The trees had swallowed everything behind me. There’s only forward, the story said. There’s only Chris, your brother, and the end.
A fat gust of air ruffled my shirt, moved on, and the sea calmed. I took a long breath in, out, and began to row.
* * *
I changed from tens to twenties, to hundreds. Count to one hundred, I told myself, and if you don’t see anything, run home. After the first hundred, I stopped and looked around for clues, for bent bush limbs or a secret signal fingered in the mud. There was nothing. No paths. The woods were untouched. When I came to the second hundred, I stopped again, but not as long. When I came to the third, the fourth and fifth, I didn’t stop at all. I stopped counting before I gave up. I let a last number go, something in the high hundreds, but kept on walking. How long I’d been in the woods there was no way to tell, but it felt like forever and a second at the same time. Whichever it was, it became clear to me that the time needed for my sea story to tell itself had expired. Somewhere, in a world weirder and happier than my own, I was reunited with my brother. I braved a storm and crashed a shore, and in the morning I stumbled from my wreckage to find him sunbathing on the beach, dreaming up a list of moves to do off a nearby waterfall.
But in this world, under these trees, I sat down and cried. Softly, as if I might waken the woods. I pulled my knees to my face and sobbed, louder this time, not caring who heard. When my eyes were spent, I lifted my head from my legs. The wet I left behind was a blob on my bony knee. I let my mind play the cloud game and tried to make a shape. Something that would cheer me up, replace my sea story. Something that would tell me to get on my feet, to keep moving. All I could think of, though, was the shape the chalk kid had drawn what seemed long ago. Before I learned the secrets of the Stranger. Before the kid and mom’s apartment was robbed. Before Sandy and Rick, my dad, my mom, and everything else.
In the end I could make no shapes out of the pool on my leg or the chalk kid’s sketch. No whales or hippos, ships or pirates, no secret islands in the sea. Nothing made sense, and all that was left was to keep going. To wipe my leg and walk on.
* * *
What felt like hours passed. I found footprints and they were my own. I was walking in circles, with no idea how to go home. It shouldn’t be this hard, I kept telling myself. They weren’t that far ahead. I started in a different direction. I saw trees I hadn’t seen before, creeks I prayed were new. The sun glowed high above and wasn’t close to quitting the day. I pretended I was in the desert and started making my own mirages. That creek was an oasis. That mud was silver, those rocks were gold. And what was that laughter? Where did those voices come from? From some bush that was my brother. From some splintered trunk that was Chris.
I shook my head, but the mirage didn’t go away. I still heard voices. I heard Chris’s laughter, close, and I ran to the sound. In the fall, I would have been noisy. I would have crashed through dead leaves breaking beneath my feet. But now, at the tail end of summer, the world was much louder than me. Under the rush of wind pushing fat clouds across the sky, I ran, my feet drumming along to the beat of birdsong. I came to a faint path. A thin line of dirt stamped a lighter brown by two sets of footprints. I bent down and touched the smaller one, then sprinted the path until I saw my brother. Or the mirage that was my brother. My brother that was and wasn’t real. Chris had taken his bag and carried it for him. His other hand held my brother’s wrist.
I should have screamed right away, but the scene before me was a bad dream. Someone was standing over my bed, preparing to hurt me, and I couldn’t open my mouth. The sleep world wouldn’t let me. All I could do was moan, Mmmmm, like a mummy, and point. There. There it is. Somebody please make it stop.
I couldn’t yell or talk, so I followed. More clouds moved in, a possible storm. My marks moved quickly. They didn’t run, but they walked with long legs, their bodies in a hurry.
They paused at a hall of trees. A long, narrow clearing, with the towering woods lining each side. I had to tell my legs, so used to walking, to stop. I lay down on a muddy slope and listened, spied like I did on my parents in the dream about the tree.
“What?” my brother said. “Is this it?”
“Close,” Chris said. “This is the road to it. A little farther.”
“I don’t get it. You keep your car out here?”
“No, not here, exactly.”
My brother took his hand from Chris. “Yeah, but how did you get it here? Your car. It doesn’t make sense.”
Chris kept looking around, but not at my brother. “This isn’t the time for questions, OK?”
“Yes, but—”
“I’m sorry, we have to keep moving.”
My brother looked down at his sneakers, which he hadn’t worn all summer.
“Remember,” Chris said. “I asked you. I asked you if you were ready. I told you what it would mean. Remember? I made sure.” He handed my brother his bag. “But it’s up to you. You can take your bag and run back home, if you’d like, to your tiny apartment and your mom and dad, or we can stick to our plan. But I can’t keep talking about it.”
My brother cradled his bag to his chest, and Chris asked him what’s it going to be, my liege, a hint of his early charm returning to his voice. But my brother wasn’t so easily fooled. His body tightened and his mouth stayed straight. He wants to go home, I should have said. I should have stood up, revealed myself, and said, I’ve never seen that face, but that’s what it says. Sorry, Chris. It’s over. We’re going home.
And this time I did stand up. This time I shook off my dream and my voice returned to my throat. But as I opened my mouth to speak, my brother handed Chris his bag. He said, Here. He said, I don’t want to go back.
* * *
They walked a little longer. Chris kept his arm around my brother, though neither seemed to enjoy it. I tailed them without even trying. I didn’t watch where I stepped or keep the proper distance. I sulked. I hoped I’d get caught, but had lost the courage or will to come out. What was the point? I didn’t know where I was or how to get back, and there was no one around who cared enough to show me the way.
A bush stopped them. The size of a tree but not a tree. What is it? my brother said. A gate, Chris said. A passage to something special. Yes, my brain mocked, it’s always something special with Chris. He peeled back the bush and gestured my brother in. The gate was a mouth of darkness that led to a place unseen. But what did I care. This is the time to turn around, I told myself, to find your own way home. This isn’t the time to worry about your brother. He didn’t want to go back. This wasn’t the time to wonder why you’d heard no sounds after Chris disappeared into the bush and the gate closed up. To wonder what was so great about this place, to let doubt creep in and poke you with stupid questions: What if this is something great and you’re missing it? Or, what if it’s the opposite? What if your brother needs you? What then? What would it be like to not be able to forgive yourself?