Away We Go - Emil Ostrovski Page 0,25

and Wendy, like all the children on the ward, were afflicted with an unspecified disease, but whenever they got scared, about their disappearing friends, about the world outside, which magazines from a magazine rack reported was full of things like the Iranian Nuclear Program and the unlikelihood of Europe meeting its climate goals, they read Game Informer instead, and when Game Informer wasn’t enough, they escaped to Neverland by drawing a blanket over themselves at precisely 2:33 in the morning and sharing Skittles. The Skittles were the key, the incantation, Neverland was impossible without them. Once in Neverland, they could play all the games that Game Informer talked about, months before their release dates.

“Do you think Alice liked it?” he asks.

The question takes me by surprise. I respond automatically, but gain confidence as the words spill out of my mouth. “Of course she did. Anyone with half a brain liked it. More than liked it. And Alice has two halves of a brain. One full brain, Marty-guy. She was all over it.”

Marty looks like he wants to say something, but before he can, he erupts into a coughing fit, stumbles over to a nearby bench.

“Bless you,” I say, ridiculously.

“I’m energy, you know,” Marty says. “So much energy. The Buddhists say that I have the universe in the tip of my finger, in case you were wondering, and Tolstoy says religion is our relation to the infinite world.” To clarify, he adds, “Tolstoy wasn’t a Buddhist.”

“Which finger?” I drop into the seat next to him.

“What?”

“Which finger is it that you have a universe in? I mean it’s definitely not your pinky.” I take his hand in mine to illustrate my point. “Your pinky is—it’s too small Marty. It’s unrealistic to think. Now, your index finger maybe, maybe, but your pinky—”

“The universe was smaller than my pinky,” he protests. “Right after the big bang. Right after the big bang, it was so small a million universes could’ve fit into my pinky. Not to mention my index finger.”

“It’s a damn fine index finger,” I say. “For fitting universes in . . . I just wish those fingers would write another play.”

“There’s no point,” he says despondently. His glasses have fallen askew. “I didn’t want to write a play, anyway. I wanted to write something holy. About parents and walls and killer comets. I wanted to make someone love me. Do you think you can write something to make someone love you?”

“I don’t know,” I say quietly.

“I wanted to see them. . . The way people look at you when they love you—nobody’s ever looked at me that way, so I wanted to see—” He doesn’t finish, but he doesn’t have to. Every week at checkups, Marty stares at the eye chart and hopes it hasn’t gotten blurrier. For now, the meds help, but he is afraid of when they won’t.

“You said before—here’s the point, Marty. A story is your chance for things to make sense.”

“Noah?” he says.

“Yeah?”

“Can I have a hug?”

That kills me.

I reach out, and hug him, and he hugs me back.

Act 1: Scene 3

[Peter and Wendy are perusing magazines in Peter’s room. They are scared by the magazines that discuss current affairs. Peter picks up the latest edition of Game Informer, flips through it. They ignore the guards outside in the corridor, the children being wheeled out, the empty stretchers.]

PETER

The thing is, I don’t understand sports games. You have a choice between saving the universe from an alien race bent on the total annihilation of all sentient life but choose to shoot a ball through a hoop instead?

WENDY

[shrugging]:

Boys have a hero complex.

PETER

Oh yeah? And what about girls, then?

WENDY

Girls have been socialized by millennia of patriarchal oppression to accept how disappointing reality is. We know not to expect more from a world run by men. We know not to expect to be heroes. Shooting a ball through a hoop is like icing on the cake. Of gender oppression.

PETER

[casts a meaningful look at Wendy]:

I thought we liked games because we didn’t have to talk about this shit.

WENDY

I like games because, in those moments when I can get around the stylized depiction of a woman’s form, by which I mean boobs so big they have boys locked into gravitational orbit around them—

PETER

You say that like it’s a bad thing.

WENDY

I sometimes feel like a kid again. With my brother, I used to play this game where we would hide under the blanket and pretend we were space explorers, or pilots of armored suits.

PETER

[hesitant]:

Want to try?

THERE’S