Away We Go - Emil Ostrovski Page 0,76

I wrap it around my hand like a glove.

“Can you not act like a five-year-old for five seconds?” Melanie hisses.

“She has a point, Nigey,” Grace says.

“Yo, I’m a red-blooded human being,” Nigel says. “I’m admiring the way the moonlight plays off his nips.”

I haven’t told them about Zach, yet. I don’t know if I can.

I concentrate on action: for the second time that night, I break a window. I climb through, doing my best to avoid cutting myself on the jagged edges of glass. I succeed, only to land awkwardly and twist my ankle.

“Fuck,” I say, groping blindly for the light switch along the wall. I touch something smooth, and it crashes. I nearly trip over it.

“Noah!” Grace calls. “You alive in there?”

“Alive and pretty,” I call back.

How can I be doing this now? How can I how can I how can I? How can I joke? How are jokes possible in a world so full of tragic powers?

My eyes adjust and there’s the old man’s coffeemaker lying broken on the floor.

Thuds from behind, as the rest of Polo Club, or what remains of us, follows me inside. There is the sound of their footsteps scraping the ground, but all I can think about is the coffeemaker, Cuisinart or Mr. Coffee or whatever, and how the old man’s daughter bought it for him. Why did I have to go and break it?

I find the light switch and hit it. The keys hang on the far wall. Of course I have no idea which is which.

We all turn to Nigel expectantly, as before.

“I thought I was the five-year-old,” he says reproachfully.

Grace nudges him with her elbow.

“Which one is it already?” Melanie asks. “I don’t want to be here all night.”

Nigel squints. “I’m, uh, not sure.” He grabs one, seemingly at random, tosses it to me. “I think that’s it.”

“You think,” Melanie says.

“He’s doing his best,” Grace says. “Don’t pressure him.”

They’re already moving toward the window, Nigel’s out first, cursing all the while, I think he cut his hand, then Melanie, and as for me, I’m searching for paper and a pen, because I can’t leave, not like this, with the coffeemaker broken.

“Noah,” Grace says, with concern. She’s paused by the window, one foot on the sill, about to climb out. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

But I do.

I set the broken coffeemaker back on the desk, and on a piece of paper I write a minor apology in the light from the window. Then I’m out again, my feet hitting the ground, pain shooting through my leg. I peek around the corner of the greenhouse. The guards are exactly as before, sitting on two foldout plastic chairs by the construction shed. One leans over, and lights the other’s cigarette.

“I have an idea,” Melanie says. She motions to Grace and Nigel. “We’ll distract them. We’ll say some jackasses broke into the groundskeeper’s office, lead them around the other side.”

I wish I could tell the three of them what this means to me. They understand and they also don’t. I don’t know how to explain. They will have to see. They will have to feel it. I should tell them about Zach now, at least, but I don’t, I can’t, I need to keep him to myself for a little while longer; I need something to hold inside.

“Thank you,” I say.

Nigel’s hand is shaking mine. “Good luck, sexy-licious.”

Then Grace looms over me. I wince from the strength of her grip. “Run fast, Noah.”

Then Melanie, who stares skeptically at my hand and reminds me, “I don’t subscribe to social conventions that—oh what the fuck.” And she gives me a hug.

“Okay,” I say. To all three, “Remember to look up.”

And then they’re running to meet the guards, Melanie’s yelling about teenage vandalism, the lack of respect for private property, the three of them gesticulating. They lead the guards around the opposite side of the greenhouse, and I laugh because it works, I’m half limping, half running now, as fast as I can, the door of the shed growing larger, the key in my hand, I’m ignoring the pain in my leg, fitting the key in the lock with trembling hands, but it won’t work, of course, and I laugh again, of course it won’t work, but there’s not much time, the guards will realize something’s up soon, so I take a few steps back, and I ram the door with my shoulder. It shakes but doesn’t give way. I ram it again, and this time it buckles a bit, but holds. It takes three more tries until it bursts open, and the ladders, the ladders are no longer here, of course they moved them, but I’m not looking for the ladders, I’m looking for the fireworks we saw that day that feels so long ago, I’m grabbing a box of the fireworks, and running, my leg feels likely to fall off and so does my bruised arm, but I’m running, toward the lake, down the cobblestone paths that are worn into my muscle memory, that I could run with my eyes closed, I have this whole campus imprinted into me, and once I’m at the lake I dart through throngs of students still waiting for an end of the world that’s not going to come, and then I’m racing up Sunset Hill, my arms heavy, my arms heavier than heavy, my whole body screaming in protest, the pain in my leg sharper now, I can’t drop him, I can’t let him go, why does he want me to let him go, the crest is near, there are no great battles, there is only this, there are only small moments that we narrate into meaning, I can do something worthy of meaning, I can share my meaning with hundreds of others, and it can become their meaning, maybe the fact that there is no one story is what makes it possible to have individual stories, and to share them with others, and by sharing create a mythology together, a religion together, a constellation of meaning, we can escape together, this is how we defy the great tragic emptiness of the world, how we make the world full, how we become real, and then I’m standing at the top of the hill, Peter and Wendy bright above me, I have a lighter in my hands, I’m setting the fireworks off, one after another, they drift up and explode between Peter and Wendy like Skittles in the sky, and I know security is coming, I know they will stop me in a matter of seconds, but before they do, there is this perfect hush, because it is 2:33 a.m., and for this one moment, away we go to Neverland, all of Westing, all of us, all the sickly children of the world saved beneath a common blanket.

“To die,” I say, “will be an awfully big adventure.”