I could hear a door opening, shutting. Then Griffin said, “It’s Jack? Jack? Are you here?”
“We’re back. When did you guys—”
“Three days ago. We been calling you and Conner for three days,” Ben said. “You didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about.”
“Well, it’s us now,” Conner said. I could see the relief on his face, too.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
Ben said, “Yeah. It was weird at first. We were scared. We were gone such a long time, Jack. We couldn’t remember some shit. My stepdad thought we were smoking pot or something. They fucking piss-tested both of us this morning.”
“Yeah. Screw that,” Griffin said.
Conner smiled and nodded.
“But you’re both okay?” I said.
“We don’t fucking smoke pot, if that’s what you mean,” Ben answered.
“Do you remember what happened to us out in the desert?” I watched Conner. He shook his head.
Ben’s voice lowered. “After the fight. The horses ran off. We came after you. Me, Griffin, that kid named Frankie, and Ethan.”
“Ethan’s a kid at school here.”
“When we found you, there was a Hunter standing next to you, coming for you.”
I watched Conner’s eyes while Ben said it. He didn’t show anything.
“Frankie took a bow from one of the dead bugs, and he was going to shoot the Hunter, but as soon as he did, it was like the sky opened up and you got to your feet, right in the way of the arrow.”
“Frankie shot you,” Griffin said. “He shot you with the arrow, Jack. It went completely through you and then it just fell down in the dirt like you weren’t even there.”
Ben continued, “And when it happened, both you and the Hunter disappeared. Then everything went blank, like it did when we were in the garage. That was all I knew. Next thing I knew, I was sitting on a bench in the locker room at Glenbrook, getting dressed for PE, and Griff was at his school sleeping through a test. I was so fucking scared. And then I forgot my fucking locker combination and had to spend the rest of the day in my gym clothes. I didn’t see Griff till we got home from school. We both looked like shit. We’ve been trying to call you ever since. But whenever I did, you were, like, ‘What are you talking about?’”
“And, Jack,” Griffin said. “You know … What did you do with the lens?”
“I … I’m not sure yet,” I lied. I was certain I’d find the lenses inside the bag I’d packed, hidden away inside the wadded socks and underwear I stashed in the nightstand beside my bed. Where else would Jack hide such things?
There was a long silence after that.
Conner watched me. He chewed the inside of his lip. To me, he already looked sick, like he needed to know the lens was still okay. It pissed me off. I almost wanted to punch him for it.
And he knew I was lying, too.
“Jack?” Ben said.
“Yeah?”
“I know it’s fucked up of us. Um … we think we need to go back.”
“We need to,” Griffin added.
“Don’t talk about it,” I said.
Conner and I both stood there, staring at my silent phone like we were waiting for some kind of answer to just pop out and present itself to us.
But nothing came.
“Jack?” Griffin said. He sounded desperate and weak, not like the kid I knew, the kid I always thought was so strong and brave.
“What do you want me to do, Griff? What the fuck am I supposed to do? You were the one telling me to get you home. Remember that morning in the box? Now what the fuck do you want me to do?” I exhaled a long sigh. “Look. We’re not going to do anything now. Me and Conner have to figure this out.” Then I lied again, “I don’t even know where the goddamned lens is. It might be gone for good this time, and that would be fine with me. I don’t fucking care anymore.”
Conner grabbed my arm, shook me slightly. “Hey. Easy.”
I swallowed, cleared my throat. “I’m sorry, Griff. Ben. We’ll figure it out. Call me back in the morning, your time. Promise you’ll call me back. Look, it’s not that long till Christmas. We’re coming home for two weeks. We’ll figure it out. Together. I promise.”
And Conner said, “But we’re not fucking breaking anything again.”
I heard Ben try to laugh at that.
“Okay, Jack,” he said. “Let’s not talk about it.”
“Good night, then,” I said. “I’m glad we’re all okay. It’s going to be okay now. This is it, right?”
“Yeah. But, Jack? There’s one thing I need to tell you. There was a cop looking up your cell number. He came here asking me and Griff a bunch of questions about you.”
At that moment, it felt like my throat sank to my stomach.
Even Conner looked scared.
“Jack? Did you hear what I said?”
“I heard you.” I shut my eyes tight, trying to think. “What did you say to him?”
“Nothing,” Ben said. “What the fuck could I say? That we all know how to walk through some fucking piece of glass and into a different world called Marbury, or whatever the fuck place it is now? That we fucking kill shit there?”
“I bet he’d leave you alone if you did tell him that,” Conner said.
“Or we’d be taken down and piss-tested again,” Griffin answered.
I heard the knocking on the door, Ben’s stepdad telling the boys to get off the phone.
“His name was Avery Scott, right?” I said.
“How’d you know that?”
More knocking.
“I gotta go, Jack.”
“Okay. Call me in the morning, Ben.”
“See ya.”
“Promise?”
Click.
“Ben?”
I felt sick.
* * *
“Separate beds? Damn. I was hoping we’d get our same old room, Jack. What are we going to do in separate beds?”
He was trying to get me to lighten up.
But I was numb.
All I could think about was that fucking cop, what he knew, and what I didn’t know.
It was Conner’s idea for us to get a room at the White House—the same hotel we stayed in at the start of our summer.
The rain cleared up.
It was early afternoon, and it felt like autumn.
I stood in front of the window and looked out at Regent’s Park.
From behind me, Conner said, “And the goddamned shower door works, too. This sucks. Everything’s different.”
He came up behind me, shoved me playfully.
“Let’s go for a run, Jack. We’re getting too lazy and fat hanging out with those fucking Brits.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
I sat on the bed and slipped my feet out of my shoes. I took off my shirt.
Conner watched me as I opened my bag, and it pissed me off. I knew why he was watching me. And I knew exactly what I could find in my bag if I wanted to.
“Are you going to change, or are you just going to stand there and look at me?”
Conner smiled and shrugged, gawking with his mouth and eyes wide, messing with me. He made it even more obvious that he was staring at me while I got undressed.
But I didn’t look for the lens.
And just like I would expect him to, Conner naturally made a crack about me wearing briefs.
“Briefs? Since when do you wear briefs?”
I shook my head. “All my things … seem like they’re different. I thought it was just maybe Nickie or something.”
I sighed. “What about your stuff? Is any of your stuff … different?”
Conner unbuttoned his jeans and let them fall around his ankles. “Let’s see.”
I gave him a disappointed sigh.
Typical Conner Kirk.
“You still have that thing.” I pointed to the little scar above Conner’s groin—the faded mark, the brand, a souvenir from our first times in Marbury.
Conner pulled the waistband on his boxers down and looked. The thing used to scare him. Now, it seemed as though he’d completely shrugged it off as meaningless. Conner was so good at doing that, and I wished someday I could be that way, too.
But I couldn’t.
He said, “Yeah. My tattoo from the happy place.”
“But everything else seems the same, right? I mean, some things are bound to be different after being gone so long. Right?”