Alek sucked in his breath. He wasn’t the first to receive the Gift of nothing, and what scared him most about that was that Cameron was nowhere to be found. Blinked out of existence, maybe. He swallowed the lump in his throat and said, “What happened to him?”
She moved to the archway and stared out into the foyer at nothing in particular. Slowly, she raised her right hand and gripped the drapes gently, as if they might help to steady her should she fall. “He came to me with this crazy theory. He thought that if he could manage to leave Misery, he might not cease to exist. If he could somehow get past its borders and head for the next town, then maybe he’d be all right.”
Alek’s forehead creased as he strained to recall where exactly the border to Misery was located. Had he ever been to the edge of town? Was there an edge to town? He wasn’t certain. He only knew that ideas were only crazy sounding to those who had other options. If Cameron had actually left Misery and was living out his days somewhere else, if he had proven that it could be done, then Alek was totally on board the crazy train, without hesitation. “Where is it? The way out of town, I mean.”
“I’m not sure anyone really knows. Cameron thought that you could leave Misery by heading north and climbing that really big hill there. He said the other side of it was the border. I don’t know if he was right or not.”
But Cameron had known. And Alek very much wanted to know that too. That there was a way out. That he didn’t have to blink out of existence just because Misery had deemed it so. He stood at last and brushed past her into the foyer, determination driving him forward. “I’m going. I have to try.”
But before his fingertips could make contact with the doorknob, she gripped the back of his shirt. “Wait! You can go. You should! But don’t tell anyone else. The people who live here … in a way, they are Misery. If they know you’re trying to leave … I don’t know. It’s not safe, Alek. They’ll stop you.”
Alek paused, letting his hand fall back to his side, before turning back to Jordan. If he didn’t ask her now, he might not ever know. “How do you know all of this, Jordan? I mean, I get that the Gift giving is some kind of psychic deal. That’s not exactly a secret. But how do you know all about Cameron?”
Her eyes glistened with tears, and when she spoke, her voice cracked slightly. “Cameron and I were engaged.”
Engaged. And then Cameron went away forever. It had to be an impossible thing to face—losing your fiancé in one way or another. Either by him disappearing completely or leaving town forever. “I’m sorry.”
“The day I gave him his Gift, he told Mr. Whirly and me about his plans to leave. Mr. Whirly used to be a joyous man, full of a bubbly, infectious spirit. But he changed after hearing Cameron’s plans. He just seemed … darker.” She lifted the corner of her apron and dabbed at her eyes. “Cameron didn’t really have a chance after that. He made it to the bottom of the big hill before he disappeared. I was there. I saw the whole thing happen. He simply … ceased to be. It was horrible. I don’t want it to happen to anyone else.”
Alek watched her for a moment, wishing he could take her pain away. Then he reached out and gave her hand a squeeze. She squeezed his back, and they exchanged nods before putting on false pleasantries. By the time Alek opened the door, all seemed well with the two of them, though it was anything but.
Sara crammed the remainder of a half-eaten cookie in her mouth and chewed fast before swallowing. As she skipped across the porch to Alek, who was closing the door behind him, she said, “So? What’s your Gift?”
Alek remembered what Jordan had said about Mr. Whirly. “I can’t tell you just yet. But I know where to go to get it.”
“That’s weird. Where do you have to go?” She followed him down the steps, a doubtful crease in her forehead.
Alek paused as they reached the next block. He had to get rid of Sara, couldn’t risk her changing like Mr. Whirly had with Cameron. What if Jordan was right? What if the townspeople really were the town? He couldn’t fully trust anyone. Maybe not even Jordan—something that sent a nervous chill down his spine. Shrugging casually, he couldn’t help but notice Virginia toiling in her flower beds again. “The north side of town. I can go get it and bring it back.”
“Don’t be stupid. I’ll come with you.” The words had no sooner left her mouth than Virginia looked up at them, a burning curiosity in her gaze. On any other day, Alek might not have noticed such blatant curiosity. But today was different. Today was his last day in Misery, one way or the other.
He lowered his voice, trying to keep any sense of nervousness out of his tone. “I’d kinda like to get it on my own, okay?”
Sara threw her arms up in exasperation. “Why are you acting so weird?”
Virginia had stood up then and approached her picket fence. Mr. Hoffman had stopped on the sidewalk where he was walking his poodle. Both stared at Alek with an intensity that solidified his belief in Jordan’s words.
Alek tugged Sara’s sleeve and headed north. He had no choice but to take her with him. “I’m not. Come on, then.”
Sara moved up the sidewalk with him, but slowly, almost reluctantly. They’d moved two blocks before Alek felt eyes on him, almost burning their gaze into his back. Glancing as casually as he could manage over his right shoulder, he noticed Mr. Hoffman following from about a block away. He was pulling back on his poodle’s leash as it barked and showed its teeth in a way that Alek had never seen it do before. Behind Mr. Hoffman by a matter of steps was Virginia, who had seemed so kind and caring just a few minutes before he’d set foot in Jordan’s house. But there was no kindness in her face now. Misery had changed with the mention of a single word: nothing. “Alek, slow down!”
Sara was jogging beside him now. Alek hadn’t even realized that he’d instinctively picked up his pace. But he couldn’t slow down, couldn’t face whatever it was that Virginia and Mr. Hoffman had planned for him.
As he reached the final street block at the foot of the hill, Sara panting behind him, he dared a glance over his shoulder again. Several more townspeople were hurrying to his current location, none of them looking happy at all. Mr. Whirly was bringing up the rear. Alek couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw a large gray crow circling overhead. But the hill was right there! He was so close to freedom, so close to being safe. He turned back to the hill with a determined breath. And a familiar hand fell on his left shoulder.
Alek turned to face Sara. She was still his best friend, still the girl he told everything to, and why should this be any different? Yet as he opened his mouth to explain, his eyes met with hers. Only her eyes were different now. They sparkled like glass in the sun. Her eyes were that of the crow’s from the fountain. Because she was a part of Misery as much as it was. Her mouth contorted into a maniacal grin. “You can’t leave us, Alek. You can’t ever leave us.”
A familiar voice—Jordan’s voice, though he couldn’t see her from where he was standing—shouted, “Run, Alek! Run for your life!”
Alek screamed and bolted up the hill. Behind him, he could hear the townspeople scrambling after him, but he couldn’t look back. He didn’t want to see what was coming, couldn’t bear to see what had happened to his friends, his neighbors. He ran, digging his sneakers into the soft earth, and at last he reached the crest of the enormous hill. He hurried over its peak to the other side. He was there! He was free!
But as he leaned forward on his knees to catch his breath, a moment of utter terror hit him.
His hands. His hands, which should have been on his knees, were gone. Invisible. Disappeared. They were nothing, and that nothingness was quickly moving up his arms. He was fading, and fast. Tears poured down his cheeks and he shouted into the sky, “Nooooo!!! I made it! I made it!”
Alek fell to his knees, which he could no longer see, and waited for something to happen—for Misery to consume him, or for his nothingness to be completed. His heart pounded in terror. In the distance, on the side of the hill facing away from town, he saw a flash of somethin
g. It was probably the crow’s eye, he mused.
Only … it was something purple. Bright purple. A color, unlike anything at all in the town of Misery. Then there was another flash. This time orange. Then pink. Then red.
And then Alek stopped caring that he was disappearing, because a memory slipped back into his mind. A memory of colors and warmth and joy. It was a memory of home, his home before Misery. He recalled his family, his neighbors, and the way that life had been. Life—that’s what it had been. Not the place between lives, the way that Misery was. After all, he recalled, that was what Misery was—a place where people went between their actual lives.
And now, he was going home.
The Mind Is a Powerful Thing
MATT DE LA PEÑA
Joanna’s sixteenth birthday celebration kicked off at a small apartment in West L.A. where her and her girls always went to pre-party. It was Joanna, Tessa, Kelly, Laura and Tessa’s Auntie Helen, who owned the apartment. After devouring some cheap Chinese in the tiny kitchen, they gathered in the living room on metal folding chairs where they sipped out of plastic cups filled with red wine from a box. Power 106 played on the radio in the background. Everyone was talking excitedly about heading to Campos later to celebrate Joanna’s sweet sixteen—everyone except Joanna, that is. Joanna was staring at the ominous fortune she’d just pulled out of her cookie:
“The Hour Has Finally Arrived.”
Fear slowly spread through her veins, because she knew exactly what it meant.
Someone would be hurt tonight—most likely Joanna herself.
Her brain had always worked this way, immediately jumping to the darkest of possibilities. She was obsessed with news shows about forced entries, kidnappings, brutal killings and serial rapes. Every night she’d rig her bedroom window with old CD cases so they’d come crashing down if someone tried to break in. She lined up empty bottles in front of her bedroom door. First thing she’d done when she got her last cell was program 911 into every speed-dial setting. Her dreams were all nightmares filled with dark basements and slowly creaking doors and hulking men in ski masks—and coming home to her ground-floor apartment in Mar Vista one night only to find her mom and little sister massacred on the living room rug.
A message carved into their naked corpses:
We’ll be back for you, Joanna!
Joanna tried to shake herself from these thoughts. She’d step outside for a quick smoke to calm her nerves, but she was trying to quit. She took a big sip of wine instead, slipped the folded fortune into her pocket and rejoined the conversation. Her girls were now talking about what they always talked about before they went out together: how wack the dudes at school were.
“I can promise you this,” Kelly said. “Things were different back when we were freshmen.”
Everyone agreed.
“The seniors were way more mature. You remember Miguel Davies, right?”
Joanna did. She’d never met the guy personally, but she could still picture him cruising outside the quad with his boys.
“He looked good and he was funny,” Kelly said, “but he also knew how to be around girls. Remember how he’d never let you walk on the traffic side of the sidewalk?”
“What happened to Miguel anyways?” Tessa said.
Kelly shrugged.
Joanna swallowed another sip of wine, said: “Didn’t he go into the army? Maybe he got deployed or whatever.”
“It’s depressing,” Kelly sighed. “They’re all a bunch of wannabe gangsters now. You know dumbass Ricky got himself a gun last week, right?”
A gun? Joanna’s eyes widened as she thought of her fortune.
Technically, Ricky was still Kelly’s boyfriend. But for the past two months he’d been “dumbass Ricky” and she’d been going on and on to Joanna about how she was over him. Ricky didn’t take his future seriously enough. He was too jealous. He never did anything sweet anymore, like show up at her door with flowers. Instead of breaking up with him, though, like Joanna suggested, Kelly had started seeing some new kid on the side. A skater type they all referred to as “Marcus from Venice.”
And now Ricky had a gun? This could be really, really bad. She fingered the pack of cigarettes in her bag.
“What’s Ricky need a heater for?” Helen asked.
“He claims it’s for ‘protection,’ ” Kelly said, doing air quotes.
“Either they’re packing heat like Ricky,” Laura said, “or they’re geeky mama’s boys. There’s no in between no more.”
More nodding from the girls.
Joanna pushed Ricky out of her head and pictured her best friend, Ronny. He wasn’t a wannabe gangster, that was for sure. Never tried to act hard. Didn’t even have a single tattoo. In fact, the only time Joanna felt halfway safe in her own bed was when she was talking to Ronny on the phone—back when hers was still working. She’d huddle under the covers, make him stay on the line until she fell asleep. She woke up most mornings with her cell still pinned against her ear.
“Just talk,” she remembered telling him during their first marathon conversation, almost a year ago.
“About what?” he’d said.
“Anything. Your day at school. Stupid World of Warcraft. Whatever you want.”
It went quiet on the phone for a few long seconds, Ronny probably second-guessing why he’d wanna be friends with a schizo like Joanna in the first place. Finally he said: “I don’t get it, Jo. Why watch all those crime shows if they’re just gonna freak you out?”
“So I can be prepared, okay? Girls gotta learn all the things that could happen so we understand the warning signs.”
A few more seconds of dead air.
“Yo, Ronny,” she said into the phone. “You hang up I’m just gonna call your ass right back.”
“You shouldn’t fixate on that stuff,” Ronny told her. “Some people believe the kind of energy you put out into the universe is the same kind you’ll get back. You ever heard of a book called The Secret?”
Joanna laughed right into the receiver. “Look at Mr. Hot Yoga all of a sudden.”
“I’m serious, though. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
“I didn’t realize I was on the line with Deepak Chopra.”
She could hear Ronny start chuckling, too. That’s when she knew they were gonna be tight.
After a few seconds Ronny cleared his throat, said: “You at least know you’re crazy, though, right, Jo?”
“Rather be crazy and alive,” she told him, “than some stable bitch who gets sliced up by a serial killer.”
Somebody’s cell went off.
Joanna knew it wasn’t hers, because the piece of crap in her bag had died a week ago. She’d been saving up babysitting money to get a new one, but she probably had another month to go, two or three if she wanted one of those iPhones. But could she really wait three months to get back to her and Ronny’s nighttime conversations?
Joanna watched Kelly check the screen of her phone, roll her eyes and hit mute.
Auntie Helen started talking about back in her own high school days, but Joanna was still stuck on Ronny. A couple weeks back he’d asked if they could have a talk. Turned out he wanted to be more than friends. They already hung out all the time, he explained as he walked her home from school. Both in person and on the phone. And it’s not like they were seeing other people. And what if he told her he was developing feelings? The next-level kind?
Joanna ducked out of the conversation by saying she needed time to think.
Since then she was always making mental lists of pros and cons.
Ronny definitely wasn’t the gun-carrying type, Joanna told herself, sipping more wine. Thank God! But it’s not like he was a mama’s boy either. In fact, his real mom passed three years ago from complications with her diabetes. Ronny stayed with a family friend now, some landscaper guy named Jessie and his wheelchair wife—both were super nice whenever she called their landline. Ronny could also be funny sometimes. Knew all Chris Rock’s standup bit
s by heart.
The only thing with Ronny, Joanna decided, was he had a little geek in him. Didn’t play sports. Never been in a fight. Spent entire days locked inside his tiny bedroom playing World of Warcraft, barking nonsense into his ridiculous headset like: “Nuñez, make sure you buff everyone with horn of winter,” and “All right, guys, just remember. No DPS until five sunders are up. Got it?”
Whatever that shit meant.
But Ronny was cute. And he had good hair. And maybe for Joanna to actually feel safe around a guy, he needed to be a little geeky.
Auntie Helen was now showing pictures on her phone. Retro shots of her in a prom dress and her leaning against a school wall with her hair all gelled up like a chola. Everyone was cracking up.
“Oh, my God,” Laura said. “They’re totally in black-and-white, too.”
“For artistic purposes. I’m not that old.”
“Wait,” Tessa said, standing up in her excitement. “Tell them what we figured out last Saturday. When we were walking around the Apple store at the Promenade.”
Helen rolled her eyes, said: “Tess likes to get hung up on little details.”
“Check it out,” Tessa said to everybody else. “There was no such thing as email when my auntie was in high school. Can you even believe that shit? No email!”
“Like, it wasn’t invented yet?” Kelly said.
Laura nearly fell out of her chair she was laughing so hard.
Helen was in her early thirties and had recently left her husband. Joanna suspected domestic abuse. For the past few weeks Helen had been letting the girls come over to her new apartment to pre-party. “I know you guys are gonna drink anyway,” she said whenever she held open her screen door for them. “Might as well be here where I can chaperone.”