This choice: Go see some of your other friends. • Go Back...Chapter #4Go see some of your other friends by: Seuzz   "I'm going to go over and see Kevin," you tell Caleb's mother when you pass her in the living room. She gives you a look. "What?" you shout, feeling a sudden wave of belligerence. "I have to see somebody, talk to somebody about all this." She sighs wearily and turns away.
* * * * *
Kevin nods up cheerfully at you from the floor as you lean in through the door to his bedroom. Matt is there too, sprawled on Kevin's bed, listening idly to something on his MP3 player. "So, I guess you guys haven't heard about David, have you," you say morosely.
Kevin looks at you blankly. "No, I guess not," he drawls. "What's up?"
"You hear about that big fire and explosion at the base outside town?" Kevin says nothing; you scuff at the floor with your sneaker. "There was a big explosion out there yesterday afternoon. One of the warehouses or something burned down. David was inside at the time."
Kevin stares for a moment, then his jaw drops. "What happened? Is he okay?"
You shrug your shoulders and look around, trying to get tears to come to your eyes. "It looks like he's dead."
Kevin's mouth hangs open for a few more seconds before he can speak. "Holy shit!" he finally manages.
Matt looks over at him in alarm and pulls an ear bud out. "What're you guys talking about?"
"David got blown up," Kevin says, still staring at you. Matt looks between you guys in confusion. "What's the story," Kevin asks.
You give a brief recital of yesterday's events, from Caleb's point of view. Your two friends stare in shock all through it, and are silent afterward. "Are you okay," Kevin says when he ventures to speak.
"I guess," you reply. "I mean, I'm in a shitload of trouble. Trespassing and stuff." You don't want to talk about Caleb, though, and leave the subject hanging.
Matt gives a low whistle. "Still, it's better than being blown into jelly." You suppress a small smile at this unwitting near-allusion to your actual fate. "Well, fuck," Matt adds. He snatches up a nearby soda and takes a swig.
Their reaction is just about everything you could have hoped for, and you feel a warm glow of satisfaction, right up until the moment that Kevin leaps to his feet and starts pacing the room. He gives a dry chuckle. "What a way to go," he says. "Still, I'd have laid odds David would find a way to blow himself up before graduation."
You start. "What do you mean?"
Kevin snorts. "Oh, come off it, Caleb," he says. "The guy was an accident waiting to happen. Just be glad he didn't manage to find a way to take you with him." He turns to Matt. "Or us. Remember the time he wanted to go diving in that old quarry? And the time he nearly rolled his car?" Matt gives a mirthless laugh. "He could get into some real scrapes."
Now it's your turn to stare. "I can't believe you're laughing about it—" you start, but Kevin interrupts you with a wave.
"I'm not laughing about it. I'm just, you know ... It's so predictable, is all."
"The guy thought he was so cool, but he could be such a moron," Matt says.
You feel the color rising in your face and are about to say something sharp in reply, but you're checked by a sudden flood of Caleb's own memories: David preening at his bravery at climbing a small cliff in the state park; David egging others on while driving through town; David surreptitiously giving mall cops the finger behind their backs. You remember the incidents, too, and from your perspective they seemed cheeky and irreverent; but Caleb and your other friends, you now see, tended to roll their eyes at you when you weren't looking. You find yourself biting your tongue and making a face.
"Don't get me wrong," Kevin says, falling back into the chair at his desk. "This really sucks. I mean, who are we going to have to laugh at?" Matt chortles. "No, seriously, it does suck," Kevin continues, having caught your face. "I mean, we were all friends, and I really liked him. Screw ups and all. It's really awful, what happened."
"He was a great guy," Matt says. "I mean, hell, I always kind of ragged on him, and we had our fights. But he was fun." He looks thoughtful for a moment. "I guess maybe it's just weird to believe he's gone. He was always doing bone-headed stuff and bouncing back. No shit, I mean. I'm gonna miss him."
Everyone is quiet for a moment. Then Kevin pipes up again: "I'm going to miss the bone-headed stuff." Matt makes a snerking noise through his nose, and then the two of them start giggling uncontrollably.
It's too much for you. You start yelling at them, calling them ungrateful and unfeeling and uncaring, that they really weren't David's friends, and that they shouldn't be saying all this stuff, not when David isn't even— You were going to say "isn't even buried yet," but even you know that's the wrong expression to use, given the graphic picture you'd painted of yourself being blown up real good.
Matt and Kevin listen to you with bemusement. When you run out of breath, Kevin gives you a satirical look. "Maybe you could give the eulogy. Like, if they have an assembly in David's memory at school."
"You think they'll have an assembly," Matt asks. He doesn't even try to hide his incredulity.
"Sure, why not," says Kevin. "I mean, maybe. It'd be cool to get out of class, even if it's for something like that." Matt actually looks cheerful at the thought.
You've had enough, and stalk out without even saying goodbye.
* * * * *
You wind up at the mall, strolling up and down, lost in your own thoughts. You see some other people from school there, in the food court, and go up to hang out with them. They mostly ignore you, and you have to interrupt in order to share your news of yesterday's events. They are all briefly shocked, but they seem more interested in the details of the accident than in the fact that one of their classmates has died; some perfunctory expressions of sadness are offered, but the conversation soon returns to the meaningless gossip and joshing that you'd broken in on. Maybe you shouldn't be surprised, as it's not a group you'd ever really hung around with. Still, it depresses you even more to see how little your apparent death has stirred anyone.
So you're in a black mood when you return to Caleb's house, where you find that his aunt and seven-year-old cousin, Joshua, have joined Caleb's mother. Aunt Sylvia tries to be generous and understanding; you only mutter darkly and escape to the bedroom as quickly as you can. You hurl yourself onto the bed and stare up at the ceiling.
You are, naturally, deeply depressed by the evidence that your passing is not affecting anyone the way you'd wanted. You were never part of the "A" crowd, or even the "B" crowd, when you get right down to it, but you are vexed by Matt's and Kevin's satirical reactions. The truth is, you bitterly reflect, that your little group mostly hung together because there weren't a lot of other people willing to hang out with you guys. Caleb had his interest in astronomy, and Kevin his passion for anime, and Matt his talent at chess. You were the one, you thought, who could make you and your friends kind of "cool" by being playful and (so you flattered yourself) a little dangerous. It now appears to you that you were tolerated as a kind of clown and cut up. It's rather worse to reflect—now that you see him from the inside—that Caleb was really the closest you had to a real friend: someone who liked you for who you were and really enjoyed your company. But even that carries a sting, because Caleb knew you didn't have a whole lot of respect for him. Caleb gets along well with most everyone at school, but he doesn't fit in well with lots of other people, and it seemed to him that you were the only person whose groove fit his own, so he not only put up with the way you pushed him around, but actually kind of liked it. Now you're riding around inside him, controlling him, even thinking his thoughts for him—and you're still using him for your own selfish purposes.
And yet this doesn't make you feel guilty; if anything, it makes you feel something like contempt. You have the very black feeling that you are a loser, and that you have chosen another loser as a host because losers are the only people who were ever close to you.
It makes you feel sick, and you feel a sudden heaving in your stomach. Before you can react, you feel something rising in the back of your throat, and you turn over just in time to keep it from spilling all down the front of your shirt and into your lap. You feel dizzy, and the sense of disorientation doesn't go away when you look down and see that you've vomited up a little blue worm. That's because, even as you look down at it, you find yourself looking up into Caleb's face from the puddle you've just expelled.
You stare at it, and stare back at yourself, in confusion. You are inside Caleb, with an undiminished sense of control over him. At the same time, though, you are outside him. You put out your hand to touch the worm; at the same time, you feel yourself recoil from the giant hand stretching toward you, and you see the worm struggle to escape. You freeze, and then with a deliberate thought you will the worm into reaching up and clasping onto your fingers. It takes only a little concentration to control it, because it feels like it is part of your body. In fact, it must be part of your body, even though it is separate from you. You look at it with fascination, even as, from the other perspective, you slither around inside Caleb's cupped palm.
This is unexpected: You can divide your gooish body, and control its parts? You can do this, even though you still have control of a human host? If you can do this with a little piece of yourself, what would happen if you put that piece inside another person? Would you be able to control two bodies simultaneously?
You glance up at a noise: Joshua has come into the bedroom. He stares up at you with wide but mischievous eyes. He is so small; he would be easy to grab, easy to force to swallow the worm; easy to experiment on, as a prelude to other plans ...  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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