Away We Go - Emil Ostrovski Page 0,37

I needed some air, but I couldn’t leave, not yet. Nigel was still fiddling around with the keys.

Melanie cleared her throat violently. “Ahem hurry the ahem fuck up ahem.”

“We can help you look—” Zach said, still going on about the glasses.

Why did he have to be so nasally considerate while stealing?

‘“I can see all right,” the old man said, pressing his finger gently against the one-square-inch time display. “Oh, I’m all right. I manage, that I do.”

“I think the button you’re looking for is the on button,” Melanie said.

“A good button,” Gerry agreed, and continued pressing the time display. He let out a sigh and was about to give up when Zach leaped to his side.

“Let me try,” he said, and they hunched over the coffeemaker together. “I’ve always loved the first snow,” he said. “Now if it only weren’t so terribly cold. But I suppose you can’t have everything in life.”

Nobody said anything.

Melanie looked at Zach like he was crazy, and I couldn’t stand it. Effusing unreturned love. Sweat trickled down my back. “Actually,” I said, “there’s such a thing as warm snow.”

“Oh?” Zach said, brows raised and before he realized what he was doing he was looking at me, really looking at me, for the first time in what felt like weeks.

“It’s called water,” I said.

Zach laughed, and I didn’t just melt, I phase-changed straight to plasma, like fresh snowfall on the surface of the sun.

From behind us came a noise, like Nigel had knocked into something. Gerry turned, and saw him standing at the opposite end of the office.

“Hey,” he said. “What’re you doing over there, son?”

Nigel pointed at a framed picture above the keys, the old man and a woman who might’ve been his daughter. They were fishing.

“Yo, what is that, G-meister, like, a ten-pounder?” Nigel asked, pointing at the fish in the daughter’s hands.

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe twelve,” the old man said, his eyes misted over in thought. He turned back to the coffee machine. Soon we had cups of coffee in our hands, but no key. Nigel shrugged at us in resignation. But when we spilled out of the greenhouse into a snowy evening, he started skipping.

“Guess what I got,” he said, and patted his coat pocket.

“No way in hell,” Melanie said.

He drew out the key, wiggled it.

“Ladder time, boss man?” he asked, dropping it into Zach’s outstretched hands.

Zach nodded, a faint smile on his lips.

The key slid easily into the lock. The door of the shed creaked open. I watched the greenhouse, waiting for the old man to stumble out, to yell at us, to call security, to get us kicked out of Westing and taken to alien laboratories for emergency spleen extractions. Zach stepped inside first, motioned us to follow. One last look back, and I shut the door behind us.

Boxes everywhere, cleaning supplies, tools, all piled over each other.

“Oh my gosh, I see them!” Grace said, already moving toward a corner that had three ladders leaned up against the wall.

My foot hit on something hard, and I looked down, squinted.

“Blazing Phoenix Fireworks” it said on the box.

“Leftovers from convocation day?” I said to Marty.

“Probably,” he said with a nod. “You didn’t even see. You were in bed the whole day. You hissed at me when I opened the blinds.”

“I heard them,” I said. “They made beautiful sounds.”

“I brought you pizza from the cafeteria,” he said.

“Did I tell you you’re the best?”

He shook his head no.

“Martin dear, you’re the best.”

“I do try,” he admitted.

“Marty, Noah, get over here!” Grace said.

We joined the rest of the group by the ladders. I reached out a hand to touch a cool metal step. Up these steps, and I could see my parents again, defy whatever plan the administration or the government or the great tragic powers of the world had for me. Zach met my eye. His sweat-slick face shone in the light from an overhead window.

He was going to say something to me, and I knew we’d be all right again.

He said, “We need to leave everything like it was. Don’t touch anything.”

THE SEARCH FOR INTELLIGENT LIFE

That night, Marty told me, “I know what’ll cheer you up.”

He logged on to AwayWeWatch and put on this sci fi flick, Pulse, My Electric Heart, about two robots who want to have children so badly that they adopt a toaster and name it Sandy. While the credits rolled, we lay in our double in Clover and rattled off all the things we wouldn’t live to see:

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