I glanced around, thinking I might catch the Poet somewhere nearby. But the block was deserted.
Looking up
The taste of the sky
on my tongue
And the taste of asphalt
on the back of my head
My right eye rolled back,
in a pool of blood.
And there is a face
Above me, there is a face
Funny
Taylor didn’t even stop to read the poem. When I looked back down, she was already half a block away.
Photograph. October 24, 09:53 A.M. Green lines:
It is an abstract image. A close-up without sense or meaning.
There is a mesh of bright green light in the middle of the frame, stretching left to right—and right to left—at very shallow angles. The lines are close together, on the same horizontal plane—hundreds of lines of light, forming a flat, tabletop surface. The lines hit mirrors on either side of the image; reflections flee at oblique angles, stretching up and out, toward the top of the frame.
The green is a bright electric green, and the lines are as sharp as razors, cutting into the shadow-gray background, glowing like radium in the night.
Light and line. Angle and vector. Form without context.
I slept in my own room that night.
The house around me was quiet, and as I lay there, waiting for sleep to come, I wondered what everyone else was doing. Floyd and Charlie, Sabine and Taylor—alone in their rooms (or so I assumed), silent, immersed in the dark. Were they dwelling on the past, scared and alone? Were they frustrated, like me? Were they plotting plans, getting ready to run?
Or were they just sleeping, lost to the world?
Finally, I took three more Vicodins to help me fall asleep. I was going through the pills like candy now—I recognized that—and they weren’t really making me feel any better. They were helping me sleep, yeah, and during the day they helped me relax for an hour or two, preventing me from thinking all those deep and horrible thoughts. But it was only temporary. And the relief I got each time was shrinking, like a stream drying up in the midsummer sun.
And that stream was getting shallow.
But what really scared me was the thought of what I’d have to do next, when I ran out again. What would Mama Cass make me do? What errands would she have me run? It wasn’t going to stay easy. I was certain of that.
As I drifted off to sleep, drugged and floating, I resolved to quit. There were other ways—better ways—to cope with stress and confusion. I just had to find them. I just had to deal.
Unfortunately, nothing’s ever as easy as it seems when you’re high and drifting toward sleep. I should have known that.
Charlie woke me up with a hand on my shoulder. “I know where he is. I know where he went.”
I was in the middle of a dream when he woke me up, and I pulled away from his hand with a start, lost for a moment in my surroundings. I looked up from my pillow and saw Charlie smiling down at me. I was still lost.
“What’s going on?” I managed, clearing phlegm from my throat. “What happened?” And why did he look so happy?
“I got an email. I think it’s from my dad, or my mom, maybe—I couldn’t trace its source. But it’s Devon. I know where he is. I know where we need to go!”
I tried to sit up, but Charlie pushed his notebook computer forward, and I had to roll onto my side to get a good look at the screen. There was an image open on his desktop, a surprisingly high-quality image, still sharp even though it had been zoomed in to fill up the entire window. It was a street view: Devon, glancing over his shoulder, cautiously scanning the street behind him as he pulled open the thick glass door of an office building. “I know where that is. See that planter?” Charlie pointed to a knee-high bowl on the left edge of the photo. The concrete bowl was filled with dead flowers. “I recognize it. That’s a research building, south of I-90, near the hospital.”
I looked up to find Charlie’s eyes searching my face expectantly. His smile was still there. “We can do this, Dean,” he said. “We can find out what’s going on. The radio … my parents …” When he started talking about his parents, his voice got hushed, imploring and desperate. “We can find them. We can find everything!”
“What’s going on here?”
Surprised, Charlie and I both looked up toward the door. Floyd was standing there, resting his shoulder against the doorjamb. His hands were busy lighting up a tightly rolled joint. “Is this when you guys hold all of the important roommate meetings? The crack of dawn? Am I missing out? Are we getting TiVo?”
“Floyd? Are you okay?” The last time I’d seen him, he’d been passed out in his bed. And before that—the last time I’d seen him awake—he’d been inconsolable.
“Yeah, I’m fine. And listen, about before, about that … I’m sorry.” He gave Charlie a cautious look, like he might not want to talk in front of the seventeen-year-old, but he went on, anyway. “I was being stupid, but I’m better now. I’m under control.” He held out his hand, palm down, and tried to hold it steady in midair, to demonstrate just how cool he was. When it started to shake slightly, he clenched his fist and took another drag on his joint.
I felt uncomfortable lying on the futon with both Charlie and Floyd towering over me, so I pulled back my covers and sat up in the middle of my bedding. I was still wearing my jeans and sweatshirt. I couldn’t remember when I’d last taken them off.
Floyd saw the screen of Charlie’s notebook and quickly knelt down at his side, grabbing the computer and lifting it up into his lap. He handed me his joint, freeing up his hands. “Is this Devon?” he asked urgently, mousing back and forth on the image, panning it from side to side. “Do you know where he is?”
“Maybe,” Charlie said. “Yes.” He turned his pleading glance back my way. “I was just telling Dean about how we need to go there. My parents … I think Devon knows something about my parents.”
“That’s good enough for me,” Floyd said with a nod. “That fucker’s got some shit to answer for.” He looked at me and tapped at his temple, his eyes going wide. “Binocular shit. Tunnel shit!”
After a moment, I nodded reluctantly. I didn’t feel too confident about this, following Charlie’s mysterious email, looking for Devon. It felt like we were being led by the nose here, and I didn’t trust that sensation; there was too much potential for traps, for disaster. But I could see that it was going to happen whether I liked it or not. With or without me.
Charlie and Floyd had already made that decision.
Floyd’s joint was sitting idle between my fingertips. I took a deep drag before I handed it back.
Taylor answered her door on the second knock. She looked tired, as if she hadn’t slept at all that night.
“Yeah, Dean, I’ll come,” she said coldly, when I told her what we were planning to do. “I’ll help Charlie any
