Читать книгу Betwixt and Between - Jessica Stilling - Страница 7

PRestoN

It seemed as if he were somewhere else. Preston opened his eyes in the woods and the light shifted as if it were climbing down like careful, deliberate raindrops on a spider’s web. The forest floor felt like his bed at home, no twigs dug into his palms, no dirt collected between his fingers and when he kicked his leg, a reflex upon waking, it didn’t feel stiff or asleep. His stomach did not burn and the pain was gone. Preston opened his eyes wider and sat up. The forest floor was covered in an array of leaves colored for fall in purple, red and gold, not the crisp green of summer. He reached out and touched one and it felt like a leaf, any normal leaf, and yet it did not. It was somehow sturdier, crunchier, like it was made of fine paper.

The sun came through the trees; little specks of dust in the yellow light shimmering, first inside the air and then off the forest floor, wading like tiny pools of translucent film. Preston rubbed his eyes, sitting up straighter he ran a hand through his shaggy light brown hair and looked up through the blanket of branches toward the source of the light.

Rustling came from within the woods and Preston quickly turned his head. He knew someone was there, that someone should be there, but he only had a vague memory of who, as if the face and the name, the voice could be anyone—one person—or another—as if he were playing on the school grounds and then—and there had been a school grounds at one time, Preston remembered that, but not much more, as if all his thoughts were fuzzy.

“He’s here,” Preston heard the voice of a boy. “He’s here, he’s in here, I found him,” the boy called and the rustling grew louder as Preston looked through the trees. “Hi,” a boy with short brown hair gelled back said. He was wearing worn red pants and no shirt, only a jacket that looked like a blazer with holes in it. Preston looked at his own clothes, his brown and white striped shirt and blue jeans, they were nicer and newer, the style entirely different from what this other boy was wearing. “Hi,” the boy said again.

“Hi,” Preston responded slowly.

“I’m Starky,” the boy introduced himself importantly, pointing at his own chest. Preston watched the boy’s sagging brown eyes and wondered what it was about him that was so different.

“And I’m Clover,” “And I’m Dilweed,” “And I’m Oregano,” three boys cheered, stumbling out of the woods and talking simultaneously. There was a short, fat blond boy, a tall, lean black boy and a medium built kid with brown hair and glasses. The kid with the glasses swept his hair from his face in a way that reminded Preston of something he’d seen before.

“Hi,” Preston said, putting his hand to his head as he stood up, dizzy. “I don’t know. . .where am I?” He knew enough to question where, to ask why, he knew that there had been something before and that this was the something after, but as to whether this was actual. . .as to what was going on, he had no clue.

“You’re Here,” the boy named Dilweed explained as if Preston should have known better. “Come on,” he invited Preston as the four of them started walking away. Preston, having stood up, started to follow the boys as they trudged across the crispy leaves through the forest. “We’re Here too, but we don’t live so deep in the woods.”

“Hardly anyone goes this far,” Clover elaborated.

“Usually when new kids come, they come all at once, like they’re all waiting for something together,” Oregano added.

“Kids come Here a lot?” Preston asked as they stepped in time together. He tried to fall out of step, but couldn’t. “Where are they, the other kids?”

“Oh, all around, mostly at the tree house, but we go all around, we have the run of the place, not like back home,” Starky explained.

“Where am I?” Preston asked again. The words “back home,” made more sense to him, he’d heard those words before and he had an incredible urge to be there. “Back home, where is that? Can we go there?”

“No,” Starky said simply, shaking his head. “No, not ever again, we don’t go back. Only one of us has ever done that, and come to think of it, that one they found in the woods too, but that was even before my time and I’ve been here almost the longest.”

“Shut up, Starky,” Dilweed cried, playfully socking him on the arm.

“So maybe I can,” Preston thought out loud. “What is it, back home?”

“Don’t worry about that,” Oregano explained. “He’ll tell you everything, he really will. He’s good at explaining stuff, that’s why he’s the leader.”

“ Who?” Preston asked as they kept walking. The forest had looked the same for a while, trees with dark blackish bark, the way the leaves crackled under them as the sun filtered through, but Preston could see an end, as the light got brighter, seeming to envelop the scene before them, there were other colors and lights flashing and it reminded him of something he’d known before.

“Our leader,” Starky replied as if Preston should have known. “You didn’t think we were in charge, did you? Do we look like a bunch of leaders? We were just out in the woods hunting Indians and wildcats when we heard something moving. Oregano thought it was an Indian and Dilweed thought it was a wildcat but I’ve been Here a long time and I thought maybe you were one of those that came from the woods, like the other one did.”

“The other one?” Preston asked and Dilweed quickly socked Starky’s arm again.

“For someone who’s been Here a long time, you sure are stupid,” Dilweed complained.

“Anyway, so we decided to give up Indian hunting and go on an Explore and that’s when we found you. I don’t know how you’d find him if we hadn’t shown up.”

“Him? Him who?” Preston asked and something about all this made him remember. Not a real memory, not a picture or words, only a feeling, a bright, an excited feeling that swelled in his stomach before he realized he didn’t know what it was.

“The leader,” Clover replied as if it really were a very simple concept.

“What’s he like?” Preston asked.

“He’s a married man,” Starky stated as if he’d memorized a list of facts about him.

“He likes to draw and play the flute,” Dilweed explained.

“And he can’t read,” Starky went on. “He’s always trying though. Some of the boys brought books with them Here and he’s always trying to read them, in any language he can, but it never works.”

“He can’t tell time either,” Clover went on. “He’s always forgetting the time.”

“But he’s the best leader in the world. He can fight better than any of the Indians or the cowboys, he can shoot a gun and slash a sword and he crows and flies better, he can run faster and slay a tiger for dinner…. Besides,” Starky went on. “Only pirates need to know how to read.”

“Pirates?” Preston asked, intrigued.

“Shhhh,” Dilweed, Clover and Oregano hissed together as they wandered out of the forest. “We don’t talk about pirates.” Preston was about to ask why when the blanket of branches lifted and he saw more light.

The light was not the same as through the trees, there was something flashy, something artificial about it and it took him a second to realize that he hadn’t been seeing the sun; it was dark out and for all he knew it could have been the middle of the night here. What he saw were light bulbs, bright flashing orbs, neon lights, colorful bulbs like on a Christmas tree. And there were in fact Christmas trees all around, large, never-ending pines that crashed into the sky flashing with neon and ornaments, and inside a clearing a gigantic multi-colored Ferris wheel stood going around and around. Near that was a bright red and silver merry-go-round, also going forever. Preston walked up to the gate, watching the white horses with golden manes, the pink flamingos and tigers with bared teeth flashing their claws, each brightly painted animal turning to the beat of circus music. Off to the side there were red neon lights flashing the words “Toy Store” over a heap of toys that boys played with—new toys in bright boxes, motorized cars and intricate action figures, and old wooden toys with creaking wheels and pull strings on the ends. Each boy brought a new toy to the pile and picked up an old one as if it didn’t matter. There were movies playing on screens, pictures he’d never seen before about racecars and animals, submarines and giant trucks.

It was all the lights really, all the lights that made Preston forget. Maybe it was Mr. Hawthorne’s, or that last time playing with Peyton, or his family or school or before, but whatever it was it made it so that he didn’t even consider how many other boys there were. Behind the Ferris wheel and the merry-go-round stood a large tree, not like one of the trees in the forest, this one towered above the carnival equipment, its limbs reaching out on all sides, and Preston could see the outline of a roof in the middle, with little roofs scattered all around the branches.

“That’s where we live,” Clover said, pointing up. “I live in the house on the end, on the sixth branch up.”

“Is it like before?” Preston asked and Starky shook his head no.

“You don’t know about Before yet, but he’ll tell you. He’ll tell you everything. It’s not our job to show you around, we just found you in the woods. Usually he does all the talking and we meet you later.”

“Okay,” Preston replied, this seeming to make perfect sense. He watched the other boys still playing; they didn’t seem to know he was there, they didn’t notice Clover or Dilweed, Starky or Oregano either, they were off in their own worlds playing, some even playing together, but not in the same game.

They walked closer to the bottom of the tree house; its roots were as tall as Preston, reaching from the ground with their tough, wooden arms. Preston touched the tree and it was warm, he could feel it like a beating heart, it reminded him of his own body, his own self and he pulled his hand away, worried it might burn him.

“The tree’s not going to hurt you,” Dilweed explained. “Nothing is going to hurt you.”

“Not unless you meet a pirate. . .” Starky started and Dilweed hit him again.

“Shut up,” he cried and Oregano gave Starky an annoyed look.

More lights started flashing, flickering over and around in circles. They weren’t like the Christmas lights, or the flashing bulbs of the Ferris wheel, these lights were alive, a beating heart like the tree. One of the lights came closer to Preston, so close he had to close his eyes as something landed on his nose. It was cool and fresh like diving into a swimming pool, but blinding and it wasn’t until he felt a hand on his face swiping the light off him that he could open his eyes again. “Go on, shoo,” Dilweed cried, put out as if he were flicking a bug. “Leave him alone, he’s new. If you want to help go find him and tell him he’s here.”

“What was that?” Preston asked.

“Fairies,” Starky explained as if Preston should have naturally known. “There’s a ton of them, they wander around all the time causing trouble, bothering the boys when they’re trying to play. They do some good though; they help the kids who don’t have happy thoughts. And our leader is friends with them. But he’s friends with everyone except the pirates.”

“What about these pirates?” Preston inquired since they had been mentioned so many times. He could feel something, a flash of an instant appeared and he saw a room with light blue carpeting and a window that looked out to a sea green yard; he saw a sandy colored coffee table and a television set, a bowl of fluffy white food that he knew was called popcorn, and a man and a woman. “Wait, I know that. . .I. . . .”

“I hope he finds you quick, you’re starting to remember,” Oregano warned.

“Do you all remember?” Preston asked the boys as he leaned back on the tree, something about its heartbeat feeling safe and natural now.

“You don’t come to forget, you come to remember,” Starky explained. “And I’ve been Here the second longest so I remember the second most. It was in the middle of a great big war and they took me and my family from our home, they put us on a crowded train and threw us in a camp. They took my Mom and sent me off with my Dad. They lined us up and then there were a bunch of showers, they turned on the showers, someone said something about gas and I came Here. A bunch of kids from the showers came Here with me, but I’m the only one that’s left of them.”

“Why? Where else do you go?” Preston asked.

“We don’t know,” Starky explained. “He knows, but he doesn’t ever tell us.”

“But it’s great Here,” Clover interjected. “And you get to play all the games and with all the toys you want. No one tells you to go to sleep, no one makes you eat your vegetables and you can have dinner whenever you want, you just have to think about it, and you can play with whoever you want and no one complains.”

“Really?” Preston asked, and though this was all very strange, it excited him.

The fairies returned. Preston saw them, lights blinking, as he turned his head and looked up. The other boys didn’t seem to notice as they went on talking; it seemed to Preston that they were still explaining things, and he thought it might be a good idea to listen, but he couldn’t with the lights flashing right in front of him and he wondered how long it took to get used to these fairies that buzzed around like bugs.

“And there are a whole bunch of other people Here, they’re not even all kids and most of them play with us, or we play with them—” Starky was saying as Preston turned from them, shifting all the way around to see what the fairies were so excited about.

A boy was standing behind them, his hands playfully on his hips, a smile spread across an impish face. It was as if he had always been there, as if they’d walked up to him, not the other way around. Preston watched him and the boy, who had shaggy, messy, dark blond hair came closer, still smiling. There was something about his face, it was the same as every other face and yet it wasn’t. He had a small, pointy nose and dimples, his chin jutted out just a little bit and his ears were shaped funny, not so much abnormal as a little bit pointy. He wore green, dark green shorts with leaves and twigs jutting out of them and a green shirt cut in a long, low V at his collar. He had tied around his neck with a thin braided rope a kind of flute, crudely made of wood with large, jagged holes chiseled into it. The boy, who stood a few inches taller than all the others, seemed to walk on tiptoes, as if he were dancing, though his feet were planted firmly on the ground. The other boys, sensing Preston’s suddenly waning interest, turned around as well.

“Hi,” the boy said and the way his voice hit the air it seemed to crack the molecules in it and the four others got very quiet. He didn’t stop the fun, most of the boys playing on the Ferris wheel and merry-go-round were still doing just that, but there was a certain something in the air, as if it had all changed. “Hi,” the boy said again, holding out his hand for Preston to take. “Nice to meet you.”

“Hi,” Preston replied. There was something about him that made Preston ask, “You’re the leader?” He looked like a boy, an older boy, maybe fourteen or fifteen, but a boy and not a married man like they’d said.

“I’m the leader,” the boy announced and the others rushed to him.

“We found him in the woods, just like you said you found the other one. . .” Starky started and Dilweed hit his arm once more. “And we brought him here. I don’t think he’s a cowboy, he’s too young, or an Indian, I don’t think he’s a pirate either.”

“Well of course he’s not a pirate,” the boy said, laughing a belly laugh as if genuine happiness were a part of his physical makeup. “He’s not a mermaid or a cowboy or an Indian. He’s a little boy like all of you. A little lost boy.”

“Am I lost?” Preston asked, hoping that wasn’t the case, since being lost, he knew not from where, meant that he was to be found and brought somewhere else.

“That you are my friend, that you are,” the boy replied. “You’re lost and Starky is lost and Dilweed and Clover and Oregano. They’re all lost. And they’re all going to stay Here for a little while, just until certain things happen in certain other places and then they’re going to go somewhere else. But for now, you’re Here and I’m going to take care of you, the fairies are going to take care of you and the other boys, we’re all going to take care of ourselves. Even this place is going to take care of you.” “How long do I stay?” Preston asked as the leader moved seamlessly with him, draping a wiry arm around his shoulders as the others ran off. Preston turned to look for them and they were playing; Starky with a pair of jacks while Dilweed and Clover ran toward the Ferris wheel and Oregano picked up a toy gun and started firing at trees.

“You stay Here until things are better where you came from,” the boy explained as they walked up to an opening in the trunk of the giant tree house. Once inside they shot up as if on air and Preston grabbed the leader’s arm, holding tight. “It’s all right, that’s just how we get up to the house. It all happens when we want it to happen, like the Ferris wheel and the merry-go-round, no one takes care of them, they just are. Nothing goes wrong Here, nothing stops working. Even when things change, even when the boys bring video games and magic moving carpets with them, even then it’s all the same.”

“Okay,” Preston replied cautiously once they reached the inside of the tree. There was a large room with a red carpet where pictures flashed on movie screens and boys handled video game controllers or jumped on mechanical pads.

“This is where we live. Some of the boys like to play inside. It’s only been a little while since the inside boys have been Here, the ones who only want to play with TV sets and video games. But you can do whatever you want Here, bring whatever you want. It all just comes,” the boy explained. “But you’ll remember more later. Your first day you forget, the second day more starts to come and by the time you’ve been Here a week. . .but I am always forgetting the time, but by about a week you understand everything but it doesn’t matter because you’re so busy playing.”

“Is that it, is that what I do, I play?” Preston asked. The boy walked him through the large room and out a small wooden door that led back outside. They weren’t on the ground anymore, but several feet up on one of the branches. Preston could see the forest before a blue-mooned night, the music from the Ferris wheel and merry-go-round rang in his ears as they watched the boys playing below.

“Let me take you to your room, it’s on this floor,” the boy offered as they kept walking across the long, wide branch. “You can do whatever you want,” he went on as they walked down the sturdy wooden limb of the tree. “I just want to say that you’ve been cheated out of something, you’ve been cheated out of something good and so have the others who knew you, especially your Mom and Dad. That’s why you’re Here, so they can grieve. You see, the people who loved you, they need to mourn, and it’s different, I mean, whenever someone goes away, whenever that happens obviously the loved ones need to grieve, but when a child goes away and doesn’t come back there’s a certain intensity to the grief, especially for the Mom and Dad, and you have to stay Here, in Neverland, for a while so they can get used to your being gone. It’s not the Before, you’re not with them, but you’re still in the Universe, they can still feel your presence Here at least in the backs of their minds, and they need that for a little while. If a child’s presence simply disappeared right away from the Universe, which is what happens when you go from Here, without giving the parents time to mourn, it would be very bad, the parents would be too sad, they’d do crazy things with their grief, which is why you come Here first, to give them time.”

“Why?” Preston asked and the boy laughed as they kept walking, past other doors, some painted red or white or green, some with posters hung up, others with music blasting from them. “Go away from where? Not coming back from where?”

“It’s all right, I’ll explain later,” the boy said. “But this is where you live now. And you can go out with Starky and Dilweed and Clover and Oregano all you want and you can play on the swings or hunt Indians and cowboys and—“

“Pirates!” Preston cried, excited since somewhere, somehow he had heard of pirates.

“No,” the boy cautioned. “No, we do not associate with pirates, we do not hunt pirates or provoke pirates or play with pirates. They keep to themselves and we do not go and find them.” He raised his voice slightly and, seeing the terror in Preston’s eyes, the boy reached out and rustled his hair, calming down. “It’s all right. Just stay away from pirates is all. But don’t worry, they won’t come after you and you’re not going to accidentally run into them, okay?”

“Okay,” Preston replied still a little shaken by how upset the leader had gotten.

“It’s all right,” the boy said. “You’re okay now. You’re one of the special ones, the ones that just appeared, you didn’t have to come the normal way and that has to mean something. You’ll remember and when you remember I’ll tell you everything. That’s my job and I do my job, that’s why I’m the leader. I don’t know what it means, but the last one who came out of the woods was special too.”

They walked on a little further and Preston watched the boy. “Well, here’s your room,” he said, grabbing the handle and opening it for him. The room looked like something from Before, the very room he used to sleep in.

“I remember this,” Preston said, walking in and taking a seat on the bed, his bed, he bounced on it a couple of times and the mattress felt like home, whatever home was, a certain smell, snowy shoes on a welcome mat against the wall, cereal in milk on a school morning. “It’s all the same,” Preston observed, “except that,” he said, pointing to a TV set and video game system. “My Mom would never let me have that in my room.”

“But you always wanted it,” the boy replied. “One of the perks of Neverland. Anyway, I’ll let you settle in, I’ll see you tomorrow.” The boy turned to go, but then he stopped, like a dog he seemed to smell something, as if the air had changed and he faced Preston.

Preston’s stomach started to hurt a little and he couldn’t remember why. It seemed as if there was a light around the boy, the same light he’d seen coming down through the forest when he’d first woken up and he wondered if the boy had been with him the entire time he’d been Here. Then he saw a woman; she was pretty and familiar with long light brown hair and soft brown eyes. He saw her smiling at him, he heard her laugh and knew he loved her very much and that made him sad because he also knew, though he knew not from where, that he’d never see her again.

Then he saw it, as if time had stopped it was both the blink of an eye and a hundred years. He could see his mother handing him a bowl of cereal that last morning. He heard Peyton knocking on his door asking him to go outside, he saw his friend and Eva running one way and he the other. He remembered the lady with the wart on her face and Mr. Hawthorne and those cookies. He’d seemed awfully persistent, why else would he so insist that he take cookies? He tried to put it all together, but the images just hung there. He saw other things; getting off a plane and going to meet Grandma in Florida, Christmas when he was seven years old and the way the brightly lit tree towered over even his father; he saw school when he was very small and learning to ride a bike. It wasn’t so much that his whole life flashed before his eyes, he could feel it quivering inside his body, a movie projected on autopilot. Preston turned to the leader, who seemed to know what he was seeing, though he was a bit disturbed by it.

“It doesn’t usually happen this quickly, you don’t usually remember so soon,” the boy said seriously.

“But I think I see it,” Preston replied.

“Well, if you see it, you see it. Now I can answer your questions.”

“Will I ever see her again?” Preston asked, referring to the woman with the brown hair, his mother.

“No,” the leader said sadly. “I’m sorry, no.”

“Can I ever go back?”

“No.”

“What comes next?”

“I can’t tell you now. It’s not time,” the boy replied very seriously, more seriously than a boy in ragged clothes, with messy hair should naturally act.

“Who are you?” Preston inquired wondering if he was only called The Leader.

“I’m Peter,” the boy replied. “They call me Peter.”