Away We Go - Emil Ostrovski Page 0,5

be important.”

“Sometimes,” I say, hesitating. Dangerous. I need to say something dangerous. “Sometimes, when my phone rings, I think for a second it might be my parents.”

It’s crazy to even mention getting a call from outside Westing. It’s not like I even want to talk to my parents, not like I even know who they are, anymore. And yet. . .

“Is that crazy?” I ask.

He’s fingering his collar. “No,” he says softly. “Or rather, crazy normal, I think.”

I don’t quite know how to respond, so I check my phone.

where are you??

are you sleeping again??

how much sleep do you need??

i never see you doing work??

All from my old roommate and current best friend Marty, whom I was supposed to meet for a late breakfast.

I glance at the time and suppress a groan. People were never late until time was invented to tell them otherwise.

“Shit,” I say, and throw Zach an apologetic look, but a part of me is relieved.

Zach and I are most manageable to each other in small doses.

I’m at his door when he calls me back.

“Wait.”

He reaches into his nightstand, breathing hard. His hand shakes a little as he takes something out.

“Come here.”

He watches me with a bemused expression as I approach him warily.

“Hold out your hand.”

I hesitate. “Are you going to give me a baby heirloom tomato?”

He laughs, but the laugh turns into a grimace.

I’ve caused him pain. So I try to make up for it. I hold out my hand.

He drops a key into it.

Polo Club’s key.

The one we stole.

My hand closes around it.

“You’ll be the keeper of the key from now on. A most esteemed position within the ranks of our noble order. My way of saying sorry.”

I don’t know why he’s giving it to me.

I don’t know what it means that he’s giving it to me.

I want things to be simple.

I want an ease of being, because when it’s easy to be alive, it feels like you’re doing something right. It feels like you’re adding up to something.

I want to lean in and brush his sweat-slick hair out of his eyes, fall into bed together, share his sickness, his fatigue, listen to sixteen-year-old Winston in The City of Light discover that his utopian city runs on the backs of thousands of slaves who are born, work, and die in underground factories without ever once stepping foot into the light.

Yes, I’ve read it.

Yes, in one sitting.

Yes, till three a.m.

That’s not the point.

The point is I want him to banter into my chest and to be unable to make his words out, but laugh anyway, out of certainty that if I had heard, it would’ve been funny, and also, of course, because his breath would tickle.

Instead, I thank him, and leave him to his city of light.

THE NEXT BEST THING

Breakfast meant something to me in the days before Westing or Richmond, days of blurred faces and muted words. I would make my way down the stairs of our house on Sunday morning to the smell of syrup and butter. Grandma and Grandpa used to cook breakfast for us on Sundays. Grandma liked to chase Grandpa around the kitchen with a wooden spatula.

They must be dead by now.

There’s a path I love that starts at the lake, arcs behind Galloway, and ends at the rear of the cafeteria. On a whim, I drop by the campus store in Galloway to buy Marty a present to say I’m sorry for always being late, something silly, and then I’m running for the cafeteria, the cobblestones under my feet wet from the morning drizzle. They look like glass. If not for the shade from the evergreens, I might catch my reflection in them. For no reason at all, I close my eyes. Sometimes I do this. Walk with my eyes closed. The sound of an engine interrupts my Zen. I open my eyes, step off the path. A Westing security officer whizzes by in a cart. The Believers are waiting on the cafeteria steps, holding their The End Time Is Your Time signs. A pretty boy with unruly hair flashes a smile at me, and while I’m momentarily taken off guard, shoves a flyer in my face.

In the cafeteria, I crumple the flyer and decide I’m not hungry, in spite of my stomach’s grumbling protests to the contrary. I find Marty at a table off to the side, hunched into himself, as if to minimize the space he takes up in the world. Of course, he doesn’t notice me. He’s bent