Bavaria. That is where BMWs are from, right?”
“Success is an arbitrary concept,” Jeremy said.
“The next one will be better,” I said. I hadn’t said it out loud before, but now I had, so it was true.
More writing. Jan read the next question from his paper. “Uh, that means that you guys knocked out the Human Parts Ministry album from the top ten, where it had been for over forty weeks. Sorry, forty-one. I swear there won’t be typos in the final interview. So, Joey of Human Parts Ministry said he thought ‘Looking Up or Down’ was such a long-lived hit because so many people identified with the lyrics. Do you think listeners out there identify with the lyrics of One/Or the Other?”
One/Or the Other was about the Cole that I heard in the monitors on stage versus the Cole that paced the hotel halls at night. This was what One/Or the Other was: It was the knowledge that I was surrounded by adults with lives that I could never imagine living. It was the humming noise inside me that told me to do something and found nothing to do that meant anything, the bit of me that was like a fly smashing itself again and again on a windowpane. It was the futility of aging. It was a piano piece gotten right the first time. It was the time I picked Angie up for a date and she was wearing a cardigan that made her look like her mother. It was roads that ended in cul-de-sacs and careers that ended with desks and songs screamed in a gymnasium at night. It was the realization that this was life, and I didn’t belong here.
“No,” I said. “I think it’s about the music.”
Jeremy finished his breakfast bar. Victor cracked his knuckles. I watched people the size of germs fly overhead in a plane the size of an ant.
“I read you were a choir boy, Cole,” Jan said, consulting his notes. “Are you still a practicing Catholic? Are you, Victor? Jeremy, I know you’re not.”
“I believe in God,” Victor offered. He didn’t sound convincing.
“You, Cole?” Jan prompted.
I watched empty sky, waiting for another plane. It was that or look at the blank sides of the buildings. One/Or the Other.
“Here’s what I know about Cole,” Jeremy said. Punctuated by the silence, it sounded like he was in a pulpit. “Cole’s religion is debunking the impossible. He doesn’t believe in impossible. He doesn’t believe in no. Cole’s religion is waiting for someone to tell him it can’t be done so he can do it. Anything. Doesn’t matter what that something is, so long as it can’t be done. Here’s an origin story for you. In the beginning of time there was an ocean and a void, and God made the ocean into the world and he made the void into Cole.”
Victor laughed.
“I thought you said you were a Buddhist,” Jan said.
“Part-time,” Jeremy replied.
Debunking the impossible.
Now, the pines stretched up so high on either side of the road that it felt like I was tunneling to the middle of the world. Mercy Falls was an unnumbered stretch of miles behind me.
I was sixteen again, and the road unwound in front of me, endless possibilities. I felt wiped clean, empty, forgiven. I could drive forever, anywhere. I could be anyone. But I felt the pull of Boundary Wood around me and, for once, the business of being Cole St. Clair no longer felt like such a curse. I had a purpose, a goal, and it was the impossible: finding a cure.
I was so close.
The road flew by beneath the car; my hand was cold from being in the wind. For the first time in a long time, I felt powerful. The woods had taken that void that was me, the thing I thought that could never be full, never be satisfied, and they’d made me lose everything — things I never knew I wanted to keep.
And in the end, I was Cole St. Clair, cut from a new skin. The world lay at my feet and the day stretched out for miles.
I slid Sam’s cell phone out of my pocket and dialed Jeremy’s number.
“Jeremy,” I said.
“Cole St. Clair,” he replied, slow and easy, like he wasn’t surprised. There was a pause on the other side of the line. And because he knew me, he didn’t have to wait for me to say it. “You’re not coming home, are you?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
• SAM •
They questioned me in a kitchen.
The