The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To

strength, it just doesn’t have existence. It’s tough to watch, and creepy to watch, but it isn’t yet scary, because there’s just nothing there.

Eric grunts, loud, and sits up, his arms in front of him like he just pushed the thing off with a lot of effort. Then his face jerks to the side and there’s blood on it, like he was struck. Then, the thing that struck him is there. It just is. I blink and Eric is fighting a Tllnar Defender tooth and fucking nail.

If you’ve ever had something you’ve only ever previously seen in your head and on loose-leaf notebook pages just appear in front of you, you will sympathize with my first reaction, which is to be completely still. And if you’ve ever had that thing appear while trying to kill your best friend, and if you had a history of abandoning said friend when he was battling monsters both hallucinated and hallucinated-into-reality, then you will sympathize with my second reaction, which is to run screaming, literally screaming, at the little thing, and tackle it.

Eric has had us build a weakness into all our characters, and the Tllnar Defender’s weakness is its optical array, basically its eyes if it were all biological instead of half-and-half. I grab a rock from nearby and raise it high above my head and bring it down on the Defender’s face, or what would be its face, as hard as I can, cracking the V-shaped optical array down the middle. I bash it again, shattering it completely. It stops grunting and squealing underneath me. Metallic claws and tubes and valves begin retracting in on each other as the thing’s tech superstructure compresses itself into one tiny capsule that can be reclaimed by Tllnar Vultures sweeping the battlefield. The capsule can then be brought back to a lumbering, living Field Command Post, repaired, and reinjected with flesh, in accordance with the shrewd Tllnar precept that metal is expensive but meat is cheap. Or anyway, that’s what would happen to the capsule if this Defender had died in battle on the permanent warfields of Perseid 8, but since it died being bludgeoned by one of the human kids who made it up in the desert five minutes outside of an Arizona suburb, the capsule is probably just going to sit there embedded in its dead body, and maybe glint in the sun months or years from now when the wind uncovers it where Eric and I are going to bury it in the desert.

I stand up and dust myself off. I look over at Eric.

“So that’s why I said we should give them all a weakness, pretty much,” he says.

Even though it’s small, the thing is heavy as hell. Eric and I carry it some ways into the desert, find a natural depression in the ground, and push as much dirt over it as we can. We don’t do a very good job, if you want to know the truth. But hiding it doesn’t seem all that important. And I think, I really don’t hope we keep bringing things out of our imaginary world only to have to kill them. And I think, Did Eric kill everything that ever came out of his head? There’s no way, right? And maybe it’s because in this moment I go from buzzed to epically tired, after we’ve pushed the last bit of dirt into place, but I think of the weird Martian red cloud floating overhead when it wasn’t even monsoon season, and I think of the thing my dad hit with his SUV on the way back from San Diego that left a big yellow stain then disappeared into the night, and I think of everybody’s cars, the parking-lot graveyard, as though some Altra-Troops hit them with an EMP. Everything becomes clear, or rather, remarkably unclear. Whereas before, I was sure the world made some sort of lame sense, I just hadn’t figured it out. Now I know I won’t ever know.

The mound of dirt vibrates a little as the superstructure finishes its capsuling sequence. I need a nap really badly.

“How come it’s always a fight?” I say to Eric as we walk back to our staging area. “How come nothing ever appears and gives you a high-five?”

“I don’t know,” Eric says, “but it helps that it always feels right. I mean, when I go into it… when it starts. My mind kind of shifts, and I belong there. Consciously I know I’m imagining it, but on some level I just feel a part of the story.”

“Cool,” I say.

“Something I’ve been worried about…. Am I going to break the world?” Eric says.

“I don’t think so,” I say.

“Because I’m really worried I might break the world.”

“You think pretty highly of yourself,” I say. Eric laughs.

“You should go home,” he says. “We both should. One night can’t hurt. And if he shows up at either of our houses, we take to the back alleys and call the other person, and we improvise.”

“Are you sure?”

“I have to go home tonight,” he says.

“Okay,” I say.

Eric looks right into the sun and squints and says, “I’m not tired. Want to go see a movie?”

We dust ourselves off and take the bus to the movie theater and see a zombie movie we never would have proposed going to see with any of the college kids. They are probably too cool and adult for it. I think about how when I was at that movie with Eric and Christine I desperately wanted zombies to burst into the edges of the frame and rip some dude’s heart out. I think of that movie as the world and Eric’s thing as zombies bursting in. Except it doesn’t have to be zombies. It could be literally anything.

We take the bus back and talk in hushed tones, finalizing details. Tomorrow morning behind Eric’s house by the Thragnacian Containment Pylon, we will make our last stand. Eric gets up to get off before me.

“See you tomorrow,” he says.

“See you tomorrow,” I say.

I let myself into my house. Nobody’s home yet. I go up to my room, and halfway up the stairs, every ounce of strength leaves me and I just barely make it to bed and when I do I crash, hard. And the last clear thing I think before I do (and granted I think it really fast, my inner monologue is still like a cartoon chipmunk having a panic attack) is, Eric can’t crash. The poor kid has to live through everything.

I wake up later when my dad knocks on my door and says dinner is ready. He cooked tonight, stir-fry. It isn’t half bad and my brother and me and my dad all eat around the kitchen table and no one is mean to anyone. My dad asks me how the trip was and I say “It was cool. I’m exhausted.”

After dinner I go upstairs and lie down on my bed. A star explodes in my chest and sends millions of feelings in every direction. I pick up my phone and call Christine. She picks up after two rings.

“Hello?” she says.

“Hey,” I say. “Just so you know, I love you and I’m not mad at you. And everything’s going to be okay.”

“What’s going on?” Christine says.

“Nothing,” I say. “Everything’s fine.”

I hang up the phone and fall asleep.

13

The next morning, it happens like this: I call The Man and say, “I’m tired of running. Do you want to know where my friend is?”

“The last time I received a call of this nature,” The Man says, “it was a trap, if you’ll remember. I was threatened by some teenagers whom I had to buy off.”

“It’s not a trap.”

“Just be decent and let me know if I need to restock.”

“It’s not a trap. I just want everything to go back to the way it was.” Which is kind of true. More accurately, I want everything to go back to the way it was except now I’m friends with a kid who can make anything real. I want to go back to school like that. I want to own the place.

“Where is he now?”

“He’ll be at the—”

“No. No meetings. Not where he will be, only where he is. Right now.”

“Home. He’s at his house. As far as I know he’s at his house.”

“Alright. If this all works out you will be amply rewarded.”

“I just want you to leave me alone.”

“If this all works out I’ll be out of your way and you’ll be rewarded. It won’t take much on your part. Just