“No,” I said. “It’s gone.” I was too tired to lie to her. “C’mon, get your stuff. We need to find some food.”
“I don’t want to,” she said. “I’m not hungry anymore.”
Neither was I. The strange thing was, we hadn’t eaten for three days and we hadn’t grown any weaker, though day and night had stopped having meaning. Our clump of earth randomly tumbled in and out of shadow.
“How come we’re still alive?” she said.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“Do you want to play Derek Jeter’s World of Baseball against me?” She held her pink pocket game out to me. The batteries had died weeks ago, but she pretended they hadn’t.
“No, Jenna. Not now.”
I looked out the window. A dead soul in a nightgown had dug hundreds of holes in the yard with her hands, as if planting flowers. But there were no flowers. All the plants, confused by the strange days, had wilted and died. The woman paused for a moment, then continued digging.
“Stop digging!” I screamed. And the woman obeyed. Her hands fell into her lap, and she sat there, dirtied, on the dead lawn. Probably would sit there until the end of time.
“You’re a bad person,” Jenna said. “You don’t deserve to live, so I’ll crush your house!” She stared at her blank game screen, making exploding sounds. “And you did poorly on your test, so I’ll kill all your friends.”
Disturbed, I said, “That doesn’t sound like baseball.”
“No, it’s ‘Smash World.’” She didn’t look up from the blank screen. “One player only.”
“Hit it out of the park, Russ!” Jenna shouts as I lift the bat, readying for the next pitch. But the umpire calls, “Time out!” A swarm of flying creatures approaches from right field. They have webbed feet and hands, and faces like rhinos. They wear black armor and leather buckling, as if they’re going off to battle. They flap their giant wings and hum a low note as they pass, like chanting monks. My bat vibrates with the sound.
There are so many flying creatures that they blot out the sky. The field goes dark, so that only the pitcher’s yellow eyes are visible in the gloom. The creatures suddenly switch their song to a high-pitched whine, almost a scream. I hold my ears until they pass, watch them drift out into space going who knows where.
The sound fades, the sky lightens. “Game on,” the umpire says.
Distracted, I take a perfectly good pitch. “Strike two!”
“Damn!”
Jenna looks like she might cry.
I awoke from a nap, and Jenna was gone. I called for her, but she didn’t come. I scoured the neighborhood but couldn’t find her. I searched under stars turning strange orbits. I searched as purple sea monkeys pecked at the rotting treetops. I ran down a street as two clumps, miles away, collided in a spectacular spray of dust, though I heard no sound. I reached the schoolyard and stared across the baseball field.
The home-run fence was cut off in right field by the starry abyss, and a bunch of see-through people huddled by the edge. A hundred feet out, a small clump turned slowly, and I watched as one of the see-through people took a running leap toward it, missed by some eighty feet, and tumbled away.
“Pathetic!” I heard someone shout. “Zero points!” It was Jenna’s voice. “Player one only has twelve…no, eleven lives left. And she can’t win the game unless she reaches the clump!”
I ran up to her. “Jenna! Why would you do such a stupid thing? I looked everywhere for you! I thought you were dead! Why’d you run away?”
She wouldn’t look me in the eye. “Go away, Russell! You never want to play with me, so I’ll play by myself!”
“Play? What the hell are you doing?”
“Long Jump One Thousand. If you can reach the clump before your lives run out, you win. I’ll show you.” She pointed to a see-through girl in the front of the group, a girl with cherry red glasses, whose mouth was open as if she were about to sing. Maeve. “You, nerd girl! Get ready to jump!” I recoiled in horror. “Jenna…no! You can’t do this. These are people.” She shook her head. “No they’re not! They’re dolls. Kens and Barbies. I have twice as many as Chrissie now.”
I felt sick and didn’t know what to do. I stared across the baseball field. Though it was littered with windblown papers, it was mostly still intact.
A see-through person, Mr. Verini, my world studies teacher, stood nearby. He held a piece of chalk, put his finger to his lip, looked like he was about to speak. But I knew he never would.
“Mr. Verini, come here!” I commanded, and he obeyed. I lifted a small pebble. “Catch this stone.” I tossed it to him. He dropped the chalk and caught the pebble.
“Excellent!” I said. Across the field, a hairless cat with huge yellow eyes and long teeth was sniffing about the dumpster. “Hey, creepy!” I called. “Know how to catch a ball?”
The cat bounded over on all fours. “Excuse me?” she said, her voice like snakes hissing.
“Do you know how to catch a ball?”
“I’m a very fast learner. You have to be if you want to survive.”
“Good. Go find eight smart friends and bring them here.”
“What for?”
“Because we’re going to play a game of baseball.”
“Base-ball?”
“Yep.” I looked at Jenna. “Humans versus Creepies.”
The cat hissed, “Why?”
“Because it’s about time I played with my sister.”
And for the first time in weeks, Jenna smiled.
Two strikes. Two outs. This is it. Now or nothing. Time seems to slow as the pitcher readies herself on the mound, as Jenna expectantly leans off first base. I glance at the Kens and Barbies sitting in my dugout, waiting for someone to instruct them. The Creepies, the Lost, they stare at me, awaiting the pitch.
It comes. It’s perfect. I have to swing. There is nothing left in all the universe except this pitch.
Time stops. Synapses ignite in my brain, a billion new connections, lightning fast time.
I feel like I’m burning, like my head is exploding with thought. Jenna is sprinting away from first. Dirt flies in slowed arcs from her heels. Her face is a twisted expression of glee and terror. The pitcher turns. The ball flies high over the head of the first baseman.
I’m dropping the bat, running for first, watching the ball fly up, up. I feel like my eyes are laser beams, my body encased in high-tech armor. My head is a supercomputer running this game.
The mound of hands in right field is scrambling for the ball, which keeps sailing farther, higher. The pitcher is jumping on the mound, shouting, “Catch it! Catch it!” Even the Kens and Barbies have turned their eyes to watch the ball.
“Screw you!” I scream to the hand who shredded this world, like I shredded so many of mine. “Screw you very much!” My voice spreads into the cosmos ahead of the sailing ball.
The ball sails up, over the blob of hands. The blob tries to catch it, leaps higher than any human ever could. But he won’t reach it. No one will. The ball flies high over the home-run fence, and out into the stars.
“Home run!” Jenna screams. “Home run! Home run! Home run!”
A dozen or a hundred or a thousand feet out, the ball explodes. The sky fills with light as I round second, and the Creepies shield their eyes. The Kens and Barbies rise to their feet. I reach third and the sky’s almost too bright to look at. Jenna squints at the light as I scoop her up, hug her, and step on home plate.
“It’s so beautiful,” she says. “What did you do?”
“
The light begins to burn away the edges of the field, moving closer every second.
“So what happens now?” she says.
