my memories are fictions, fabrications, then what am I?
“I’m not crying,” I say, ridiculously, as I’ve been at it since I broke the window.
“That day in the woods, I hated that I couldn’t imagine you ever hurting anyone. I knew you’d never escape. I knew you’d sit behind these walls till you rot.”
“Why are you saying this?”
“Because I’m a terrible person,” he says. “Because I’m using you. I couldn’t have dragged myself here without you. Don’t you see that?”
I let go of him, put my hands to my ears, even though it’s useless, even though I can’t unhear what he’s already said. “Do you think it’ll be easier if I hate you?”
I don’t know if it’s what I said, or how pathetic I must look, but something in him breaks. He covers my hands in his and that simple gesture makes me believe again, in everything that he’s just told me is untrue.
“I’m not saying that’s what I was doing,” he says, in a low voice. “But I think that would make things easier. Wouldn’t it?”
I let my hands fall to my sides.
“You’re the only person who’s ever—” he starts, but he can’t say it. “I don’t think Addie ever loved me.” He shakes his head. “God, did I ever think this was going to go so differently.”
I can see, now, he’s going to do it. The resolve in his eyes.
“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” he says. “You’re my best friend, for doing this. I’m sorry I couldn’t make us both happy.”
He leans back, lifts his arms up, over his head, and falls.
The edge is right there, so close. I stand where Zach sat a moment before, my arms outstretched, eyes closed. My heart hammers so hard I can feel it in my ears.
The Great Cliché hurtles somewhere above.
It was never going to hit the earth.
Zach is splayed on the ground below, surrounded by a spray of Skittles.
We were never going to be together.
But that, more than anything, was the story I believed in. We have so many stories to choose from at Westing. The Great Cliché, the Home Hotline, the possibility of escaping over the walls. Westing’s nefarious collaboration with aliens. Mad scientists who download our memories onto chips to sell to the highest bidder. Marty the hero, who discovers PPV is really a biological weapon against centipedes and escapes to Mexico to tan it up. The end of the world! All these stories, because the alternative is too hard to take seriously: incontinence support; giving Michelangelos and Sapphos castles and shit while Alex reads books beside a urinal; we are weak and small before the great tragic powers of the world, and so are our parents, and so are our friends; we will never know why some kids get sick and some kids do not; we will never know where away we go.
With Zach gone, I am almost nothing. A strong wind will blow me away. But there’s only one thing I still believe in, one story I have left inside me, and that’s Neverland.
I laugh, then, standing on the roof with my arms outstretched, because Polo Club had it all wrong. Marty, the one person who should’ve had it right, got it all wrong.
We should’ve never fixed upon those ladders, upon scaling the walls.
That would never get us where we wanted to go.
No, the answer was right next to the ladders.
I even hit my foot on it.
I take out my phone to make a few calls, because Polo Club’s not finished yet.
The more I move, the less time I have to feel. Even so, watching the boy you love kill himself really takes it out of you. A peek around the corner of the greenhouse gives me a clear view of the construction shed, and the guards stationed by its door.
“Yo, how many, bro?” Nigel whispers into my ear as I retreat into cover. I can smell the alcohol on his breath. Zach fell in a rain of Skittles—what am I supposed to feel? I don’t know. I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know.
“Noah?” Nigel repeats.
“Two,” I force myself to say. “But we need the key first. You sure the old man has a spare?”
“Old coot has, like, seven spares,” Nigel assures me.
We use the light from our phones to guide us through the dark until we find the window to the groundskeeper’s office. I try to force it up, but it’s locked, so I take my shirt off and Nigel whistles approvingly as