Other Worlds Than These

Jeremy wants to say, “I hate both of you.” But he doesn’t say it, and he doesn’t. It would be easier if he did.

When Jeremy told Karl about Las Vegas, Karl punched him in the stomach. Then he said, “Have you told Talis?”

Jeremy said, “You’re supposed to be nice to me! You’re supposed to tell me not to go and that this sucks and you’re not supposed to punch me. Why did you punch me? Is Talis all you ever think about?”

“Kind of,” Karl said. “Most of the time. Sorry, Germ, of course I wish you weren’t going and yeah, it also pisses me off. We’re supposed to be best friends, but you do stuff all the time and I never get to. I’ve never driven across the country or been to Las Vegas, even though I’d really, really like to. I can’t feel sorry for you when I bet you anything that while you’re there, you’ll sneak into some casino and play slot machines and win like a million bucks. You should feel sorry for me. I’m the one that has to stay here. Can I borrow your dirt bike while you’re gone?”

“Sure,” Jeremy said.

“How about your telescope?” Karl said.

“I’m taking it with me,” Jeremy said.

“Fine. You have to call me every day,” Karl said. “You have to e-mail. You have to tell me about Las Vegas show girls. I want to know how tall they really are. Whose phone number is this?”

Karl was holding the scrap of paper with the number of Jeremy’s phone booth.

“Mine,” Jeremy said. “That’s my phone booth. The one I inherited.”

“Have you called it?” Karl said.

“No,” Jeremy said. He’d called the phone booth a few times. But it wasn’t a game. Karl would think it was a game.

“Cool,” Karl said and he went ahead and dialed the number. “Hello?” Karl said, “I’d like to speak to the person in charge of Jeremy’s life. This is Jeremy’s best friend Karl.”

“Not funny,” Jeremy said.

“My life is boring,” Karl said, into the phone. “I’ve never inherited anything. This girl I like won’t talk to me. So is someone there? Does anybody want to talk to me? Does anyone want to talk to my friend, the Lord of the Phone Booth? Jeremy, they’re demanding that you liberate the phone booth from yourself.”

“Still not funny,” Jeremy said and Karl hung up the phone.

Jeremy told Elizabeth. They were up on the roof of Jeremy’s house and he told her the whole thing. Not just the part about Las Vegas, but also the part about his father and how he put Jeremy in a book with no giant spiders in it.

“Have you read it?” Elizabeth said.

“No,” Jeremy said. “He won’t let me. Don’t tell Karl. All I told him is that my mom and I have to go out for a few months to check out the wedding chapel.”

“I won’t tell Karl,” Elizabeth said. She leaned forward and kissed Jeremy and then she wasn’t kissing him. It was all very fast and surprising, but they didn’t fall off the roof. Nobody falls off the roof in this story. “Talis likes you,” Elizabeth said. “That’s what Amy says. Maybe you like her back. I don’t know. But I thought I should go ahead and kiss you now. Just in case I don’t get to kiss you again.”

“You can kiss me again,” Jeremy said. “Talis probably doesn’t like me.”

“No,” Elizabeth said. “I mean, let’s not. I want to stay friends and it’s hard enough to be friends, Germ. Look at you and Karl.”

“I would never kiss Karl,” Jeremy said.

“Funny, Germ. We should have a surprise party for you before you go,” Elizabeth said.

“It won’t be a surprise party now,” Jeremy said. Maybe kissing him once was enough.

“Well, once I tell Amy it can’t really be a surprise party,” Elizabeth said. “She would explode into a million pieces and all the little pieces would start yelling, ‘Guess what? Guess what? We’re having a surprise party for you, Jeremy!’ But just because I’m letting you in on the surprise doesn’t mean there won’t be surprises.”

“I don’t actually like surprises,” Jeremy said.

“Who does?” Elizabeth said. “Only the people who do the surprising. Can we have the party at your house? I think it should be like Halloween, and it always feels like Halloween here. We could all show up in costumes and watch lots of old episodes of The Library and eat ice cream.”

“Sure,” Jeremy said. And then: “This is terrible! What if there’s a new episode of The Library while I’m gone? Who am I going to watch it with?”

And he’d said the perfect thing. Elizabeth felt so bad about Jeremy having to watch The Library all by himself that she kissed him again.

There has never been a giant spider in any episode of The Library, although once Fox got really small and Ptolemy Krill carried her around in his pocket. She had to rip up one of Krill’s handkerchiefs and blindfold herself, just in case she accidentally read a draft of Krill’s terrible poetry. And then it turned out that, as well as the poetry, Krill had also stashed a rare, horned Anubis earwig in his pocket which hadn’t been properly preserved. Ptolemy Krill, it turned out, was careless with his kill jar. The earwig almost ate Fox, but instead it became her friend. It still sends her Christmas cards.

These are the two most important things that Jeremy and his friends have in common: a geographical location, and love of a television show about a library. Jeremy turns on the television as soon as he comes home from school. He flips through the channels, watching reruns of Star Trek and Law & Order. If there’s a new episode of The Library before he and his mother leave for Las Vegas, then everything will be fine. Everything will work out. His mother says, “You watch too much television, Jeremy.” But he goes on flipping through channels. Then he goes up to his room and makes phone calls.

“The new episode needs to be soon, because we’re getting ready to leave. Tonight would be good. You’d tell me if there was going to be a new episode tonight, right?”

Silence.

“Can I take that as a yes? It would be easier if I had a brother,” Jeremy tells his telephone booth. “Hello? Are you there? Or a sister. I’m tired of being good all the time. If I had a sibling, then we could take turns being good. If I had an older brother, I might be better at being bad, better at being angry. Karl is really good at being angry. He learned how from his brothers. I wouldn’t want brothers like Karl’s brothers, of course, but it sucks having to figure out everything all by myself. And the more normal I try to be, the more my parents think that I’m acting out. They think it’s a phase that I’ll grow out of. They think it isn’t normal to be normal. Because there’s no such thing as normal.

“And this whole book thing. The whole shoplifting thing, how my dad steals things, it figures that he went and stole my life. It isn’t just me being melodramatic, to say that. That’s exactly what he did! Did I tell you that once he stole a ferret from a pet store because he felt bad for it, and then he let it loose in our house and it turned out that it was pregnant? There was this woman who came to interview Dad and she sat down on one of the —”

Someone knocks on his bedroom door. “Jeremy,” his mother says. “Is Karl here? Am I interrupting?”

“No,” Jeremy says, and hangs up the phone. He’s gotten into the habit of calling his phone booth every day. When he calls, it rings and rings and then it stops ringing, as if someone has picked up. There’s just silence on the other end, no squeaky pretend-Fox voice, but it’s a peaceful, interested silence. Jeremy complains about all the things there are to complain about, and the silent person on the other end listens and listens. Maybe it is Fox standing there in his phone booth and listening patiently. He wonders what incarnation of Fox is listening. One thing about Fox: she’s never sorry for herself. She’s always too busy. If it were really Fox, she’d hang up on him.

Jeremy opens his door. “I was on the phone,” he says. His mother comes in and sits down on his bed. She’s wearing one of his father’s old flannel shirts. “So have you packed?”

Jeremy shrugs. “I guess,” he says. “Why did you cry when you saw what Dad did to the van? Don’t you like