Part 2 (2/2)
”I'm tired, Mom. Can we talk about it in the morning?”
I scavenged through the fridge, finding doggie bags left over from her and Carl's big engagement date. Wan Fu's Szechuan Emporium: the most expensive Chinese restaurant in town. At least the guy had good taste in food.
Mom leaned against the wall. ”Why does Quinn have to be like this? It's like I'm not allowed to have any happiness around here.”
I didn't feel like getting into it. ”Not everything's about you, Mom.”
”Yeah, well, not everything's about him, either.”
I s.n.a.t.c.hed up the doggie bags, and instead of escaping to my clean room, I went in Quinn's pigsty. At least there, the chaos was all out in the open, instead of hiding in unseen places.
I pushed open his door. A dart zipped through the air headed straight for my face. I deflected it with the doggie bags, and it punctured the flaming Hindenburg on Quinn's cla.s.sic Led Zeppelin poster instead, which had once been Mom's until retro became cool and Quinn nabbed it.
”That would have been a bull's-eye,” Quinn complained. I looked at the dartboard on the back of the door.
”Fat chance. It wouldn't even have hit the target.”
Quinn shrugged and turned his attention to a flight simulation game on his computer. It was typical Quinn: playing darts while playing computer games while blasting music loud enough to shake the house from its foundation. I turned down the music a few hundred decibels so I could hear myself think, as Quinn ditched his plane in a cornfield.
”Isn't the object to actually land the plane?”
”Where's the fun in that?” Quinn quit the game and flopped bonelessly onto his bed. I sat on his desk chair, handing him one of the bags of food. ”Here, stuff your face. Mom and Carl had Chinese.”
”Great! They're engaged five minutes, and we're already eating his table sc.r.a.ps.” He riffled around his desk until he found a fork with dried ketchup on it and started eating.
I studied the diamond stud in Quinn's earlobe. ”I like it better than sputnik,” I told him.
Quinn looked at me as if I'd insulted him. ”You gave me sputnik.”
”Yeah, but when I gave it to you, it was a key chain.”
He returned to his food. Lo mein noodles dangled from his chin like worms as he sucked them in. ”You watch,” Quinn said. ”This guy's going to bail, and we'll never hear from him again. Just like the other ones . . .”
I looked away. He didn't have to say it-I knew what he was thinking: Just like Dad.
I wanted to reach out to Quinn somehow, but I couldn't. It made me think of this thing I once read. Scientists now think there are actually nine dimensions instead of three, but the other ones are so folded in upon themselves, we can't experience them. Maybe that explains why I could never reach out to Quinn, because although he was only a few feet away, he somehow felt much farther than the s.p.a.ce between us. When Dad left us all those years ago, it tore open a wound that led to a whole lot of unexpected dimensions.
”Hey, maybe this guy'll hang around,” I said. ”And maybe it won't be so bad.”
”Easy for you to say. You'll be off at Columbia.”
I felt the skin on the back of my neck tighten. ”I never said I was going.”
Quinn laughed, his mouth full of noodles. ”Yeah, right. You're gonna turn down an Ivy League scholars.h.i.+p.”
When I didn't answer him, his expression changed.
”Wait a second. You're not kidding!”
I began to pace, kicking the debris on the floor out of the way. ”That scholars.h.i.+p doesn't cover everything. And do you know how expensive New York is?”
”One month to go, and you're gonna talk yourself out of it?”
”I'm being practical. I know that particular word never made it into your vocabulary.”
Quinn put down his fork. ”You're chicken, aren't you?”
”It's better for everyone if I get a part-time job and take some cla.s.ses at a junior college.”
But Quinn wasn't buying it. ”You're scared! I can't believe you. I mean, you paste your room full of places you'll never go, and when you actually get the chance to have a life, you're too scared to take it!”
He had a point. But so did I. ”If I go to junior college, I can live at home,” I reminded him, ”and maybe keep some balance around here. Besides, you never know when someone might need their a.s.s saved from a roller coaster again.”
”Oh, right. So it's my fault?”
”Do you really want to face life with the newlyweds alone? What if they do crash and burn?”
”You mean like you're doing now?” Quinn crushed a fortune cookie in his fist and let the flakes fall away. ”Fine! See if I care. Go turn your life into a car accident. Or should I say a bus accident?”
I spun to face him, feeling his words like a slap. So he did know! But to use his knowledge against me like that-it was unforgivable.
”Accident?” I said. ”No, Quinn. You're the only 'accident' in this family!”
I regretted it the moment I said it, but it was too late. I couldn't take it back. Quinn's expression hardened into hate, and I braced myself for a serious verbal beating. But instead, he broke eye contact, looking down at the mess on the ground. He brushed the cookie flakes from his hand, pulling out the fortune.
”Hey, don't worry about me, bro,” he said, waving his fortune. ”It says here YOU ARE EMPEROR OF ALL YOU SURVEY.” He crumpled the paper into a ball and flicked it away.
I wanted to say something to him. An apology, maybe, but it was like I'd just thrown a stone at a gla.s.s house and the shards were still falling all around me. I just had to get out, so I went to my room and lay down on the taut blanket of my perfectly made bed, looking up at the Parthenon and the Eiffel Tower and the Kremlin and the Great Wall of China-things that existed somewhere out there in one of the many dimensions I knew I'd never have access to. Things that were all so frighteningly far away.
Screaming. Spinning out of control. Gripping tightly on to the seat. So dizzy . . .
I am there again. I am seven, on a school bus, spinning. Cras.h.i.+ng through the guardrail, caught on the edge of the canyon now, balanced like a teeter-totter, tilting, tilting. Me, crawling down the aisle, toward the emergency exit at the back. The floor rising like a black wave before me as the front end of the bus tilts forward, and I'm climbing the rising floor toward the back of the bus. Pounding, pounding, pounding the emergency exit door. A teacher screaming, ”Open it, Blake.” What's her name? I can't remember. I'm hitting the door, banging, kicking. I'm not strong enough to open it. I'm not strong enough to open the emergency exit door.
The floor of the bus is a rising wave. The wave hits. It swallows me.
My eyes shot open, and I s.h.i.+vered uncontrollably until the warmth of my room brought my mind and body back from the nightmare. It was two o'clock in the morning-definitely not my favorite time to be awake. The dream was fading, but something wasn't right. Strange light flashed through the blinds, casting s.h.i.+fting slits of light on my travel posters. I sat up and looked out of the window.
An ambulance was parked on our driveway.
”He was just lying there on the living room floor,” Mom was telling the paramedics as I came out of my room. ”I couldn't wake him up.”
It was Quinn.
They had him on the couch now, but he wasn't moving. One of the two guys shone a light into Quinn's eyes and checked his pulse.
”Accelerated pulse. Eyes fixed and dilated,” he said. ”Do you know what he was on?”
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