The Displacement - Ch. 1

1. The Last Sunset

              It’s time to shift our focus a little. Oh, no, no need to worry -- we won’t be leaving Dimension Three just yet. We’ll only need to travel a good few years later and several hundred miles north from that hot place called Florida. There lies a state referred to by most of its sane inhabitants as Kansas, and there, in the outskirts of a developing city that had taken the name Stark -- as when it was under construction, the only other name thrown around for it had been Zerpfangier -- there lived a teenage boy who was completely normal; or so he liked to tell himself. He was happy enough with this state of ordinariness. If he couldn't call himself normal, so his logic went, then that would mean he was abnormal in some way or other, and the way he saw it, that could never be a good thing.

              Nestor Justinian Garrow was the boy’s name; though, as anyone with such a name probably would, he preferred to be called Nes. He found that that shortened name fit him better. It was quick and clever, and certainly ordinary enough. He lived about twenty miles outside Stark, and by his standards, this was the perfect place to live. It was not so far out in the country that you saw cows by the side of the road, but yet not close enough to the city to get tangled up in the hustle and bustle. It was a tranquil, happy place, and he had always been content knowing that even though so much was around him, he was safe, secure, and out of everyone’s business.

              The life Nes lived was no more extraordinary than he. His family made enough to get by, he went to a good school and made good grades, and he had always had a good number of friends. But, like anyone, he had a certain set of oddities that separated him from the norm. Perhaps most notable of all was the fact that he liked to think. Nes Garrow was quite the adept thinker; to him, it was something of a pastime, or perhaps even a sport. He would sit down and find some nondescript thing that he could stare at, and then he would distance himself from reality for hours at a time, simply thinking -- thinking about all kinds of things. He thought about the past, the present, and the future; of people, places, and ideas; of things that stressed or scared him, of things that brought him joy; of just about everything he could think to think about. If ever there was any reasoning for his thinking, he didn’t bother to look for it. It was simply a thing that had always been with him, and would likely accompany him to his grave, so he questioned it not and allowed it to happen.

              As anyone might assume, though, Nes did have a few favorite places to think. In the dead center of his backyard was one of his very favorites: a wide, flat tree stump. He'd never known the tree itself, and he had no idea of when it'd been cut down, but that hardly concerned him, for trees were not good places to think. Stumps, however, were often near perfect, and this one in his backyard was one fine specimen. When he sat on the stump and looked past his back fence, he had a perfect view of the wide, rolling Kansas plains, unobstructed by buildings or even trees for miles and miles out. This, indeed, was a thinking spot to kill for. So it had become a custom of his to come by the stump at the end of every day, to sit and think and let all of his worries spill out into the sunset.

              Tonight on the stump, Nes knew he had a lot of thinking to do. All sorts of heavy things had weighed down his mind that day, and now it seemed only right to take a bit of a rest. So he savored what he knew would be the last minutes of the sunset before the sky began to darken. He relished these moments like the last drops of water in a bottle. And as he stared up into the sky, he allowed his mind to slowly clear out.

              But he was caught completely off guard when, out of nowhere, a voice came.

              “Hey, Nes.”

              It was female, Nes could tell; with a relatively high pitch and a warm tone. But when he shot his head up to see who had spoken, he was a bit surprised to see his neighbor, Roseanne Porsche, standing behind him. She was a pretty girl, with curly, dark brown hair that hung down just past her shoulders. But that was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to the long list of facts that Nes Garrow could rattle off about her. She lived eight houses down from him, in a small, boxy, cabbage-green house. She went to school at the Stacey DeWitt Girls’ Prep School, in the suburbs five miles west of Stark. She played the violin and the piano. And her family’s car, by some great coincidence, was indeed a Porsche. He had learned and memorized each and every one of these facts due to one simple thing: he had a crush. Seven years ago, when he had first laid eyes on the girl, he had been struck with a feeling of love like he’d never experienced before, and it hadn’t left him since. It was a feeling that he couldn’t stop thinking about; one that drove him insane from day to day as he tried to decipher it with no luck at all. It’s a sort of feeling that I wish I could feel from time to time -- before always ultimately deciding that I’m much, much better off without it, that is.

              “Roseanne,” said Nes, playing it cool. He did not let his voice waver, despite his nervousness, for he knew that was what gave things away to girls. “What's got you out here today?”

              “I just need a place to do my homework in peace,” the girl replied. “My parents are fighting again... you know how it is with them. My house is just a mess today.”

              “You're running out of time, then,” Nes stated. “It's getting dark.”

              Roseanne laughed, then took a tentative step forward.  “Mind if I sit?”

              “Not at all.”

              Nes scooted to the side to make room on the stump. Smiling, Roseanne sat down by Nes and brushed her bangs aside. She took a workbook from her messenger bag and placed it in her lap. Then, without a word, she grabbed a pencil and began to work meticulously.

              “Nes,” she asked eventually. “How do you do these math problems? I left the textbook at home.”

              “Been a while since I took trig,” he confessed, taking the pencil from Roseanne. “Not since sophomore year...  I think I know how, though.” But Nes, in truth, was no more of a math wizard than the average, able-bodied gorilla. As hard as he tried, he could not pull back whatever memories he had retained from sophomore trigonometry, and in the end, all that came of his valiant effort was an angry scratch across Roseanne’s notebook.

              “Sorry,” Nes finally said. “It’s... not in me tonight, I guess.”

              “Oh, well,” said Roseanne, smiling faintly. “Forget this homework, anyway. I can just finish it before school tomorrow.”

              The girl put her book away, and then looked out over the horizon toward the setting sun, which, by that point, had almost dipped below the horizon. “It's beautiful,” she remarked. “I don't think I've ever watched a full sunset like this.”

              “Sunsets are great,” Nes replied. “Especially if you just... need to think.”

              “Think?” asked Roseanne. “What’s on your mind? Is there anything wrong?”

              “Nothing, really,” explained Nes. “I’m just a little stressed. Tomorrow's going to be kind of a big day for me.”

              “Big day? Like, a test or something?”

              “No, not school,” Nes corrected. “It’s... something else.”

              “Like what?” asked Roseanne. She cocked her head slightly to the side, and it was then that Nes knew he would have to explain. He cleared his throat, then began.

              “There was... this company,” he said. “Some kind of scientific organization. I’m not sure what their deal was, but last week they came and made us take a survey at school. And I didn't know what it was all about back then, but now it turns out they were... well, they were looking for test subjects. And apparently, I fit just about every category they wanted, so they sent my parents an email and promised a boatload of money if I went and did their crazy test. Of course they said yes... and I got no say in it. Just like it always is.”

              Roseanne was clearly dismayed. “So you're going to be a... lab rat?” she said in a panicked tone.

              “Relax,” said Nes. “Not in that sense... I hope. It's not like they'll be shooting gamma rays into my brain. If what my parents said was true, they'll just be testing... a machine.”

              “But why do they need human test subjects if they're just testing out a machine?” she questioned. “Especially if they're so specifically chosen?”

              “That's the part nobody told me anything about,” he said, forcing a laugh in an effort to stay positive. But Roseanne didn't laugh with him. If the look on her face was anything to go by, she seemed more inclined to lose her lunch than give anything close to a laugh.

              “Nes,” she said, her voice a whisper. “You don’t realize... this is terrible. Letting those science nuts have their way with you? With an untested machine? Nes, what if something happened to you? I... I would... you...” She trailed off. Then, finally, she blurted: “You're the only person I can just talk to like this.”

              “Wait,” Nes said. “You don’t have friends at school, or anything?” Roseanne shook her head.

              “I don’t really get much chance to talk to anybody,” she explained. “Not at school or anywhere. Most people make fun of me... with my stupid narcolepsy, you know. I fall asleep in class. It’s humiliating like nothing you could ever imagine. You’re the only person who’s ever really cared about me... or, at least cared about more than just harassing me.”

              For the longest while, Nes was silent. What could he say? All these years, he had never known this -- that Roseanne Porsche, the girl he thought was perfect, had a life like this. He’d never even known she had narcolepsy! Just how long, he wondered, had she been hiding all of this? And... why?

              “Roseanne,” he finally said. “All this... is it true?” The girl nodded.

              “I wish it wasn’t,” she said.

              “You’ve never told me any of this,” said Nes. “All this time... how come you never let me know this was happening to you?”

              “Because I thought you’d never want to hear it,” Roseanne replied. “You’ve always been so confident and happy. Nes... all this time... I’ve wanted to be like you. But I’ve always known that could never happen. Not as long as I’m stupid, clumsy, dorky, idiotic Dozeanne. That’s what people call me, by the way. Because I fall asleep. You know.”

              Roseanne smiled -- but it was a somber smile, a smile born of nothing close to happiness. Nes, however, thought it made her look beautiful. She was pretty before; there was no doubt about that. But when she smiled, she was stunning. And being so close up made it ten times better. If any truth would ever exist behind what Roseanne had said -- that she was stupid; clumsy; dorky -- there at that moment, he could see none of it. There before him sat an angel, the girl of his dreams.

              That was when he knew he could hold it in no longer. Nes Garrow wrapped his arms around Roseanne Porsche, pulled himself forward, and kissed her on the lips. At first she was surprised, and he could tell that, but she did not pull away. Instead, when her shock had passed, she closed her eyes, returned the embrace, and held it. It wasn’t awkward, as Nes had feared it might be. In his mind, it simply felt natural, as if all of his years had been leading up to the very moment. He was ready to make that moment last.

              Indeed, it seemed like an eternity before Nes and Roseanne pulled themselves apart. When they finally did, and Nes finally looked back toward the horizon, he saw that the sun had disappeared. The last glimmers of twilight had already begun to fade. But that was of little concern to him as he looked back into the gleaming eyes of Roseanne Porsche -- the girl with whom he had just shared the first kiss of his life.

              “Nes,” she said, smiling -- with a real smile this time. “I... I don’t-”

              She was interrupted when, behind their stump, a fence gate creaked -- the sign of an intruder. Nes jerked his head quickly to the side to see who had come, but he knew as soon as he saw her that he had no reason to worry. There by the fence stood Nes’s little sister, Celine.

              “Oh... hey, Celine,” said Nes, smiling.

              “Hi, Nes,” she replied. The little girl, eight years old, was the youngest of the four Garrow children. Nes’s brother Spencer, a college freshman, was his only elder; below him in age were his two sisters, twelve-year-old Audrey and finally eight-year-old Celine. Celine was a bright, springy girl with dark, bouncy curls that flopped up and down when she walked, and of all Nes’s siblings, she was undeniably the closest to him. How long she had been there behind the fence, watching, listening, Nes couldn’t tell. But he certainly wasn’t concerned. Celine could keep secrets, and he knew she would respect it if Nes preferred to keep hidden what had happened on that warm Thursday evening.

              “Just letting you know dinner’s ready,” Celine said. “Oh, by the way, hi, Rosie.”

              “It’s... Roseanne,” corrected the girl, giving a small smile.

              “Oh,” said Celine. “So, Nes. Are you coming? Mom says your soup’s getting cold. Come in whenever you’re ready.” With her mission accomplished, the girl bounded away, swinging the gate closed behind her. Nes rose slowly off the stump and turned back to Roseanne.

              “Guess I’d better go,” he said.

              “Well... I'll see you, then,” the girl replied. Nes nodded and then began to turn away, but Roseanne halted him with a sudden shout of “Wait!” He whipped his head back around.

              “I just wanted to say... thanks,” she said. “For... caring. And... by the way...” She blushed. “That kiss was amazing.”

              Nes smiled. “Well,” he said. “You’re welcome, then. I’ll see you when I can. And... wish me luck for tomorrow.”

              Roseanne only nodded, keeping silent. But before she walked away, Nes caught the last look in her eyes, and that told the real story. The sight unsettled him, and throughout the night -- as he ate his lukewarm leftover soup, took his nighttime shower, and crawled into bed -- it lingered on and on, as if it had been burned into his eyelids. He thought of Roseanne’s words and wondered if she had been right. And it was then that he knew full well why he had enjoyed the kiss so much. On that day, a new fear had been instilled in him; a fear of something happening to him, and of Roseanne, poor Roseanne Porsche, being left all alone in the unforgiving world. It was an ugly thought, and he tried with all his might to banish it, but it wouldn’t go, and it haunted him.

              As he lay in his bed, enveloped in darkness within his windowless bedroom, he began to wonder if time still remained to tell his parents that, for the sake of all that was holy, he couldn’t go off to be tested tomorrow. But it was too late -- his tiredness was claiming him, and soon, despite his running mind, he slipped into an unavoidable sleep.