The Boy and Girl Who Broke the World Read online

  Outside, ice crystals shoot from the sky almost violently, as if they have volition, as if they want to hurt people. I pull Billy with me in the opposite direction. Luckily the path to the senior parking lot is covered most of the way, but Billy’s hair still gets turned into blond icicles, mine into little black spikes. The door of the van is frozen shut, but after a few good kicks I’m able to get it open. Billy and I huddle inside, the heat on full blast. The little girl comes out of nowhere and jumps into my lap, her bony butt drilling into my thigh. I flinch and Billy looks at me funny, but what’s new?

  After a few minutes, the ice on the front window melts away, and we have a perfect view of the parade of students and teachers making their way through the ice storm. They’re covering their faces as best as they can, but the ice freezes their fingers in place, a hard, translucent shell in front of eyes, noses, and mouths, leaving just a small melted hole at the nostrils for air to go in and out. The only things that don’t freeze are the body parts in motion, the legs moving the lines of students forward, across the street to an abandoned empty lot. But once still, the ice is able to accumulate in earnest. Within a few minutes, the entire student body and teachers of Fog Harbor High School have been turned into frozen sculptures, solid and completely immobile, many with their phones in front of their faces, the screens glowing eerily through the coating of ice.

  “Zombies,” I say from the warmth of Larry’s van. “Nobody knows all they have to do is move to get free.”

  A whole fleet of police cars arrives, sirens blaring, bumping into each other as they attempt to park on the ice. Flashing red lights reflect off the sparkling students like a surreal heartbeat.

  “Do you think they’re in pain?” Billy says.

  “Nah,” I say. “They’re numb. They can’t feel a thing.”

  We drive past the lines of our classmates—shiny, still, and glistening white. How easy it would be to just tip them over.

  “I’ve never skipped class before,” Billy says.

  “Don’t worry,” I say. “I’m pretty sure school is canceled for the rest of the day.”

  It’s not easy to drive on sheets of ice with an invisible nine-year-old on my lap, but I manage not to hit anything, even with her tugging at the steering wheel trying to drive us off the road. Luckily, the streets are entirely empty. No one in their right mind is driving right now.

  I don’t realize I’m driving to Billy’s house until I pull up in front. Covered with ice, it almost looks pretty, like an intricate ice sculpture. There are all kinds of vans and campers parked on the block that weren’t here before.

  For some reason, I’m waiting for Billy to make the first move to get out. But he just sits there, looking into the white glassy nothing in front of him, like he’s as frozen as all the classmates we left behind in the cold.

  “Should we go in?” I say.

  “I guess.” He doesn’t move.

  “Are you going to check on Caleb?” I say.

  Billy stares ahead, silent, into the sheet of ice accumulating on the window. “No,” he finally says. “He can come down if he wants to. For all I know, he’s already frozen in a ditch somewhere.”

  “Jesus, Billy.”

  He sighs. “Do you think Gordon has some sleeping pills?”

  “Stop it,” I say. “Just fucking stop. We’re going inside, okay? We’re going to sit on the couch and eat junk food and watch TV like normal people.”

  He sighs again. “Okay.”

  It takes several kicks to break the ice and open the car door. We have to take tiny steps to Billy’s front door to avoid slipping. I cover my face with my gloved hands, but Billy just lets his skin get pelted with the ice flying at him like shards of shattered glass. By the time we get inside, he has little beads of blood all over his face. My coat narrowly escapes being slashed by a board sticking out of the wall of the entryway.

  Even inside, we can still see our breath. We keep our coats on as we sit on the couch and Billy starts surfing channels. I pick up the half-eaten bag of cheese puffs on the coffee table and offer it to him. The little girl is in the corner, playing with a dust bunny.

  Billy shoves a handful of cheese puffs into his mouth and lands on a flashing BREAKING NEWS logo superimposed over a photo of Caleb. He gasps. The screen cuts to reporters in the newsroom: “We interrupt your scheduled programming with breaking news about Caleb Sloat, the legendary and troubled lead singer of Rainy Day Knife Fight, who has been missing for nearly four months and presumed dead by many.” The screen cuts to the now infamous video of Caleb’s onstage meltdown. “We have just received information from a reliable source that Sloat has been traced to a fraudulent bank account at Sound Bank and Trust, where regular withdrawals have been made from an ATM in Sloat’s hometown of Rome, Washington, in the months since his disappearance. We will be working closely with investigators and law enforcement to get to the bottom of things, and of course our viewers will be the first to know any new details.”

  “Well,” says the other reporter, “Fog Harbor is certainly having their time in the limelight lately, aren’t they, Steve?”

  “Looks like Caleb Sloat may be home again after all.”

  The newscasters chuckle.

  Billy chokes.

  His eyes are bulging out of his head. Did a cheese puff get stuck in his throat?

  “Billy?” I say, but he doesn’t respond, just stares at the TV screen wheezing like he can’t get a breath in. I start hitting him on the back. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do to a choking person? He keeps gasping for air, so I keep hitting, but it’s not working.

  I’ve seen the Heimlich maneuver on TV. It can’t be that hard, right? I pull Billy toward me and try to wrap my arms around him, but he keeps swatting them and trying to pull away. “I’m trying to help you!” I say, attempting to catch him in a bear hug from behind.

  “Stop!” he shouts.

  “You can talk?”

  “Why are you attacking me?”

  “I thought you were choking.”

  “I just swallowed wrong,” he says, pulling his body as far away from me as he can get on the couch. “Jesus, Lydia.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Sorry.”

  We sit in awkward silence for three seconds, then simultaneously tilt our heads toward the ceiling.

  “What should we do?” I say.

  “I don’t know.”

  “He can’t stay here.”

  “I already told him that.”

  “This is the first place they’ll look.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “We need to hide him.”

  Billy looks at me in disbelief. “Since when do you care so much about Caleb?”

  I’m not really sure how to answer that. I don’t think I care about Caleb. I kind of hate the guy. But I wouldn’t wish what’s coming for him on anyone.

  “Let them find him,” Billy says. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “But if they find him, they’ll destroy him.”

  “There’s nothing left to destroy.”

  “Oh, come on,” I say. “I don’t know what’s going on with you right now, but it’s getting really old.”

  “You don’t get it.”

  “What don’t I get?”

  Billy looks sickly in the pale light coming through the windows. It seems to accentuate the dark bags under his eyes. He looks so much like Caleb. “Don’t you see?” he says. “I can’t help people. Neither can you. We can’t make them better. So what’s the point of trying? What’s the point of caring at all?”

  “You sound like an angsty teenager.”

  “Maybe I am an angsty teenager.”

  “No,” I say. “You’re not. That’s why I liked you in the first place.”

  “Well, sorry to disappoint you.”

  “You sound like me.”

  “Whatever,” he says, looking at the TV. “You’re new to this whole caring-about-people thing. You haven’t spent your whole life loving people who don’t lo
ve you back, who just use you up until you have nothing left.”

  Billy starts flipping channels. I grab the remote out of his hand and throw it across the room even though what I really want to do is throw it at his head.

  “Hey!” Billy says. “Grandma will kill me if the remote is broken. She will literally kill me.”

  “Fuck you, Billy,” I say. I want to be angry, but it’s something else. I feel the sting of tears in my eyes. “Don’t tell me I don’t know how to care about people.” Billy looks at me like maybe he’s sorry, but it’s not enough. There is so much I need to say, and I need somebody to hear it.

  “I loved my mom,” I say. “I loved her so much. She was a fucking asshole most of the time, but I loved her anyway. I couldn’t help it. She was my mom.” I am ugly with tears, with snot. My whole head hurts with the pressure of all the pain that’s trying to burst through. Everything hurts.

  “I’m sorry,” Billy says, looking down at his lap.

  “And then she fucking died, and I decided loving people sucked and I wasn’t going to do it anymore. And you know what? That was a mistake. I’ve been completely miserable and alone since then. Until I met you.”

  Billy looks up at me sheepishly for a moment, then looks away.

  “Hating people fucking sucks,” I say. “It doesn’t punish them. It only punishes you.”

  He is quiet for a long time. There is so much pain in his face. He looks like he’s aged five years in the last few weeks. “Loving them isn’t any better,” he finally says. “Am I just supposed to let Caleb walk all over me? I should let Grandma boss me around? I should keep being their slave, waiting for them to treat me right someday?”

  “That’s not what I said. You can love people without letting them use you.”

  “It’s not that easy.” Something in his face is shifting. His jaw is getting tight. His eyes are turning mean.

  “Love isn’t about living people’s lives for them,” I say. “And it’s not about trying to get something in return.”

  “So what’s it about, then? If you’re such an expert all of a sudden?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t. All I know is I hated everyone until I met you. Because you were different. Because you weren’t an asshole like everyone else.” I look him in the eye. “And now you’re being an asshole.”

  “Maybe I’ve wasted too much of my life trying not to be an asshole,” he says.

  “So, what? Now you’re going to try to be an asshole?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe,” he mumbles. “Hurt people hurt people.”

  “What?”

  “Just something I heard on a show.”

  Those damn therapy shows. What a crock of shit. As if a person can get cured of all their dysfunctions in an hour. As if there’s some one-size-fits-all solution.

  “If you want to waste your time feeling sorry for yourself, go ahead,” I say, wiping my face with my sleeve and standing up. “But I’m going to help your uncle.”

  I stomp up the stairs without waiting to see if Billy’s going to join me. The little girl stomps up after me. The truth is, I’m not really sure why I suddenly feel so compelled to help Caleb. I don’t even know the guy. What little interaction I’ve had with him was not good. I certainly don’t like the way he’s treated Billy. I don’t even like his music. But I also know, despite whatever’s going on with Billy right now, that he loves Caleb more than he loves anyone in the world. And whatever my impressions of the guy were, however flawed he may be, I believed Billy when he told me Caleb was good. I believe in Billy’s love for him. And I believe in defending that love against the coming inevitable hordes of crazed mediocre humans looking for someone to tear apart.

  I storm into the attic without knocking. It looks like someone let a horse loose in the Thrift Town bedding section. Caleb’s in the corner pissing in a bucket, his skinny white ass peeking over the top of his gray sweatpants. The little girl next to me giggles silently.

  “Time to go, Caleb,” I say.

  “What the fuck!” he shouts, spinning around, pulling up his pants. “What are you doing in here?”

  “No time to talk. You can bring whatever you can fit in a milk crate. We have to go now.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  “Fine,” I say. “If you want to stay here and wait for all the reporters and private investigators and random psycho fans who are on their way, that is totally okay with me.”

  A look of pure terror washes across Caleb’s face. “What are you talking about?”

  “Someone at the bank sold you out, dude. It’s all over the news. Everyone in the world knows you’re in Rome.”

  Caleb reaches out his hand for the nearest wall.

  I kick the milk crate in his direction. “I’m giving you, like, two minutes to fill this.”

  Just then, Billy enters the attic carrying two empty BigMart bags. “Here,” he says flatly, letting the bags fall on the floor.

  Caleb walks over and picks up the bags. “Thanks, man,” he says softly. Billy doesn’t meet his eye.

  “Pack now,” I say. “Feelings later.”

  I watch as Caleb packs as much of the pile of creepy dolls as he can fit in the grocery bags, and as many of the books as he can fit in the milk crate. Billy stands by the doorway staring at his shoes. The little girl looks out the window, like she’s standing guard.

  “I’m ready,” Caleb says.

  “I’m not sure I understand your packing strategy,” I say. “But okay. Let’s go.”

  Caleb carries the milk crate and I carry the bags. As we walk to the door, Caleb says, “Billy, will you grab the guitar?”

  Billy doesn’t move.

  “Please?” Caleb adds.

  “Come on!” I say, moving quickly down the stairs.

  We stop in the hallway outside the front door. Caleb looks around at the house covered with the white film of plaster, at the new cracks in the walls and all the boards sticking out. “What happened?” he says.

  “Focus, people,” I say. These Sloat boys and their attention problems. “We can’t just walk out the door. There are people out there.”

  “What people?” Caleb says.

  “All the superfans parked up and down the street. They’ve been out there a long time, right, Billy?”

  Billy just shrugs.

  “What?” Caleb says, terror in his eyes.

  “You didn’t tell him?” I say.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Caleb says.

  “You told me not to.”

  “We don’t have time for this right now,” I say. What is wrong with these people? It’s like they have no survival instincts. “Billy, does your grandma have a large box somewhere? One big enough to fit Caleb?”

  “You’re going to put me in a box?” Caleb says.

  “Would you rather be thrown to the fans and detectives?” I say.

  He doesn’t say anything to that.

  “Grandma’s got a big rubber tub full of a million scented candles,” Billy says.

  “Go get it.”

  Caleb and I stand in the hallway awkwardly, not making eye contact, listening to Billy rummaging around upstairs, then a big crash and what sounds like a bucket of rocks rolling around the wood floor overhead. He emerges pushing a giant rubber tub as big as a small bathtub down the stairs.

  “Get in,” I say. We all look in the tub, flecked with who knows how many years’ worth of scented candle wax. Caleb climbs in almost gingerly and huddles into a ball. It’s amazing how small people can get when they have to.

  Billy secures the lid while I run outside to kick the new layer of ice off the van and open the side door. Larry’s just going to have to deal with his beloved airbrush getting chipped. The girl is already inside, pushing buttons she should not be pushing.

  “Lift with your legs,” I tell Billy as we each take a side of the box.

  “Please don’t drop me,” says Caleb’s muffled voice from inside.

  We manage
to get him to the van despite slipping a couple times on the ice and Billy complaining that his arms are going to break off. I can feel the eyes of the fans huddled in their campers and vans, watching us, wondering if whether what they’re seeing is worth getting excited about. But nobody moves, even when Billy runs back into the house and emerges carrying Caleb’s meager possessions and the guitar strapped on his back. He could be any teenager moving out to live on his own.

  Two news vans pull up in front of the house just as we drive away.

  The drive to my place is very slow, very slippery, and very awkward. It’s mostly silent, except for Caleb occasionally saying, “Billy, I’m sorry,” then a few minutes later, “Dude, I said I’m sorry,” while Billy sits stoically in the front seat. Billy took the lid off the box when we were safely a few blocks away, but only after I told him to. Caleb’s still sitting in the box, his legs folded to his chest, like he doesn’t think he deserves to get comfortable.

  The little girl keeps tugging on the steering wheel and pushing down on my feet with hers. “Are you trying to crash us?” I grumble without thinking.

  “Sorry,” Billy and Caleb say in tandem.

  “How is it a good idea to hide a drug addict in a bar?” Billy says as we push a blanket-covered Caleb through the back entrance to my apartment.

  “Do you have any better ideas?” I say.

  “Let’s put him up at the water tower. He loves sleeping there.”

  “I told you I’m sorry,” Caleb’s muffled voice says from beneath the blanket.

  I unlock the door to my dance studio and flip on the light. The walls are still bare, the floor still torn up and covered with broken glass. I haven’t had the nerve to come back in here since everything fell apart.

  “What the hell happened in here?” Caleb says.

  “Apparently glue doesn’t hold mirrors on walls very well,” I say.

  “You expect me to live in here?” Caleb says.

  I turn around and face him. “Are you serious? I just saved you from two news vans, and who knows what else that made it to that house by now. Excuse me if this isn’t up to your rock-star standards, but this is how people have been living back here since you’ve been gone touring the world.”