University of Colorado, Boulder
CU Scholar
English Graduate Theses & Dissertations
Spring 1-1-2015
The Switch
Kolby Harvey
University of Colorado at Boulder, [email protected]
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English
THE SWITCH
by
KOLBY HARVEY
B.A., Pacific Lutheran University, 2008
A thesis submitted to the
Faculty of the Graduate School of the
University of Colorado in partial fulfillment
of the requirement for the degree of
Master of Fine Arts
Department of English
2015
This thesis entitled:
The Switch
written by Kolby Harvey
has been approved for the Department of English
Elisabeth Sheffield
Stephen Graham Jones
Martin Bickman
Date April 17, 2015
The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the
signatories, and we
Find that both the content and the form meet acceptable
presentation standards
Of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline.
Harvey, Kolby (M.F.A., English)
The Switch
Thesis directed by Associate Professor Elisabeth Sheffield
A young man, Joaquin, must navigate the difficulties of
surviving in the burned-out remains of his hometown following a
series of natural disasters, which culminated in a catastrophic
volcanic eruption. Joaquin and his chosen family—his boyfriend,
Huxley, Huxley’s sister, Gabby, their surrogate brother, Julio,
and their dog, Hippy—must adjust to orphanhood and isolation
together,
while
at
the
same
time
evading
the
mysterious
Mannequins, a group of people who reside in the town’s abandoned
mall and abduct the town’s few remaining residents for reasons
unknown. Joaquin must also unravel the mystery of “the switch,”
a
phenomenon
that
inexplicably
transports
Joaquin
into
deserted, suburban neighborhood at unpredictable intervals.
iii
a
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ................................................... 1
THE SWITCH (A NOVEL IN PROGRESS) ............................... 6
BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................. 104
iv
INTRODUCTION
I’m on the right track, baby. I was born to survive.
—Lady Gaga
When thinking about which direction to take my thesis in, I
couldn’t help but think of Lady Gaga. Originally I had intended
to make a completely different project all together—a collection
of what I envisioned as “alternate-dimension, queer religious
artifacts,” in the form of hagiography, midrash, saint cards and
more—but this quickly ballooned in scope, and the mixture of
writing and graphic design it required was simply too much to
complete to anyone’s satisfaction by the end of this semester,
so instead I opted to finish a young adult novel I’d started
last
year.
The
thought
of
trying
my
hand
at
something
more
straightforward in terms of narrative had been on my mind for a
while. It seemed to me something I should be able to do (and do
well) by the end of the program. Young adult appealed to me for
a variety of reasons, one being that it tends to actually make
its authors money from time to time. More important than that,
however,
was
audience.
I
often
struggle
with
how
to
handle
issues of identity in my work. It’s not that I’m afraid to
explore these issues, but I wonder to what degree I’m speaking
1
to
the
proverbial
choir
when
my
audience
is
comprised
of
(mostly) college-educated writers. Young adult, in my opinion,
offers the chance for me to “make a difference” in the minds of
my audience, in a way that I don’t think is possible (at least
not in the same way) with an audience of my peers.
Which brings me to Lady Gaga. I listened to her album, Born
This Way, the day it came out, on a ratty, pink couch in my old
garage in Tacoma, Washington. This happened at a time when I was
working three jobs and applying (thus far unsuccessfully) to
M.F.A. programs, which is to say I was depressed to a degree I’d
never experienced before. I won’t bore you with my thoughts on
the
quality
of
the
music,
because,
in
all
honesty,
they’re
irrelevant. What matters is this—near the end of the album’s
titular song, Gaga says the following: “No matter gay, straight,
or bi, / lesbian, transgender life, / I’m on the right track,
baby.”
While
it
may
not
be
the
most
eloquently
stated
of
affirmations, it stunned me. “Where was this when I was a kid?”
I said to myself. I cannot begin to fathom the ways in which
hearing a pop cultural figure as prominent as Lady Gaga telling
ten-year-old me that not only was it okay to be queer and/or
trans*, but that it was cool, fantastic, and song-worthy, would
have changed the way I viewed myself and others. Writing this
novel, I felt I owed it to myself to create something that I
desperately needed as a child—positive representations of queer
2
people nested inside an exciting story. I could try and come up
with some sort of theoretical bent to the process of writing my
thesis, but that would be a lie. My intention was to create an
entertaining story that just might make a confused junior high
or high school student feel a little better about themselves.
The genesis of the novel isn’t much of a story. When under
stress, I tend to have bizarre, and often horrific, dreams. And,
as I’m sure you all have experienced, there is a certain base
level of stress that comes with being a graduate student. Not
that I’m complaining, mind you, because this led to a dream in
which
all
the
major
elements
of
the
novel
were
present—the
switch, the Mannequins, Hux and Gabby, even the hypits. Some of
the
details,
crocheted
everything
from
you
like
the
fact
purple
yarn,
see
the
in
that
everyone
didn’t
novel
make
was
wore
the
there
in
lederhosen
cut,
some
but
most
form
or
another, with the exception of the scientists. When I started
writing The Switch, I had no idea what the switch itself would
ultimately be, and figuring that out accounted for a significant
amount of the work I did. It changed several times before I
settled on the introduction of the scientists, and even that I
had to rework a few more times before it took its current form.
In terms of influences, the two books I had in the back of
my mind while writing were always The Elfstones of Shannara by
Terry
Brooks
and
Old
Yeller
by
3
Fred
Gipson,
the
latter’s
influence perhaps being the reason why Joaquin kills a dog at
the beginning of the novel. I remember the simplicity of Brooks’
prose as a (positive) shock to my system. Having read Tolkien
just
before,
the
straightforward,
unadorned
(and
fast-paced)
quality of Brooks’ writing felt like a breath of fresh air in
the same way that reading Aimee Bender for the first time many
years later did. That a writer could say quite a lot in very few
words
was
more
than
just
impressive
in
these
cases;
it
was
enchanting. Old Yeller was the first book I remember falling in
love with on the level of language. When I read it for the first
time, I’d already seen the movie, so I knew, more or less,
everything that happened. But once again, the clean simplicity
of the writing made an impression on me, enhancing the story,
rather than getting in its way.
While
it
may
seem
like
laziness
on
my
part
that
this
introduction lacks references to Lacan or Derrida, my hope is
that the importance of not only queer characters in young adult
fiction, but queer main characters comes through. Growing up in
Spokane, I knew what a gay man was because of Melrose Place, and
I
certainly
can’t
remember
reading
anything
with
a
queer
protagonist. While there are young adult writers whose works
include
diverse
casts
of
characters
(Mercedes
Lackey,
for
example), we didn’t have their books in my school’s library, and
4
so I’ll go ahead and assume that we still need more of these
sorts of stories and characters.
In some ways, my first attempt at a novel is a failure. For
starters, I only got a hundred pages into it. However, I think I
managed to create something I would have enjoyed as a kid, and
that, ultimately, was my goal. Should this (after it’s finished)
beat the odds and find some kind of larger audience, my hope is
that someone, somewhere, reads it and feels like they are cool,
like
they
are
fantastic,
like
themselves in the pages of a book.
5
they
are
worthy
of
seeing
THE SWITCH
a novel
I
The
switch
first
hit
on
a
Tuesday.
I
was
out
running
errands, hunting. There was no click, but I felt something like
a click, like changing channels on the old TV or switching tabs
on the Internet. One second I was gutting a dog, the next I was
on a damask couch. I was in a room where damask still happened,
and that was as crazy as the switch. It was harder on my body in
the early days. When I came back the first time, my vision
blurred for a second and I felt dizzy. I threw up in the bushes.
Sometimes I’d come back with nosebleeds, not because something
had
scrambled
sometimes
you
my
hit
brain.
a
When
table
you
black
the
edge
or
out,
of
the
you
fall,
counter
and
or
a
doorknob on the way down. Yes, I’ve actually gotten a black eye
from a doorknob. Hux made a joke about it, about domestic abuse
and how people used to say that. Hux’s jokes are terrible, but
6
everything
else
he
does
right.
Sewing,
cooking,
keeping
the
house safe.
It’s hard to say when the switch will hit. Sometimes I
don’t know it’s coming until a second before. Others, I feel it
days off, hanging in the air the way heat does before a storm.
This usually means it’s a long switch, a few hours at least. One
time I switched for three whole days. Wherever it is I ended up,
I showered twice a day and drew a bath before it got dark. I
slept longer than I can remember sleeping, ever. Hux hates these
times and doesn’t leave the house. Wherever I’ve switched, he
picks up my body in his big arms and carries me to bed. He says
I don’t make a sound while I’m gone, no sleep talk, no tossing
and
turning.
I’m
just
limp
and
silent.
I
don’t
have
proof,
because I’m never there, but I know Hux cleans me up. I know
when he lays me down, he first puts me horizontal across the bed
with my calves dangling off the edge. He kneels down next to my
legs and pulls off my socks and shoes before turning my body so
it stretches lengthwise down the bed. After that, he either sits
in a chair next to the bed or lies next to me until I come back.
Sometimes
when
my
eyes
open,
he’s
on
Sometimes
he’s
in
the
chair.
But
he’s
his
side
almost
in
the
always
bed.
there.
Sometimes he’s fallen asleep waiting for me, so I touch his hand
when I’ve come back. He’ll wake quickly, taking in loud air the
7
way people waking quickly do, and pull me close. Sometimes he
cries. The only time I’ve seen Hux cry is when I come back.
Once he cupped a hand against my cheek, buried his face in
my hair, and said my name, Joaquin, so low I could barely hear
it. Then he told me he got so scared when I was gone.
Then I was scared too.
8
II
The switch used to frighten me too, but you get used to
things.
It
can
be
a
nice
break
from
hunting
in
lodo,
from
gutting dogs in alleys, from eating them. There’s not a lot of
food left where we’re at. There might be other places far off
with
better
food,
but
we’d
never
make
it,
not
with
the
Mannequins around. They’ve grabbed everyone else in town, for
the
most
part,
aside
from
the
few
stragglers
hiding
out,
sleeping in empty buildings, eating stray dogs. The Mannequins
get them all at some point. We’ve avoided them out at the edge
of town. They usually don’t go out of lodo, so we’re only at
risk when we go hunting. Once in a great while, we’ll hear the
whine of a moped cutting across the neighborhood. We all have
our
places
to
hide
when
it
happens.
We
go
to
them
without
thinking. We’re back off the road enough one’s never come up the
drive, but better safe than sorry.
The house where Hux and I live with Gabby and Julio is big
for its neighborhood--two floors above ground and an unfinished
9
basement. In the early days, right after we’d all met up, we
made it into a sort of fort to keep out thieves and worse,
piling up hunks of fence posts stolen from neighboring houses
and what scrap metal we could find to form a mess of a wall
around our old chain-link fence.
Back then, people still lived on our block. Not many, but a
few.
10
III
What’s funny about the place I switch to is that it’s even
emptier than the city I live in. Sure, everything is nice and
clean, but I’ve never seen anyone else in the switch-town. The
lights turn on, the water gets hot, the cupboards are full of
food, but no one’s home. In any of the homes. The lawns are all
kept up. The only things missing are TV and other people.
Each
time
I
switch,
I
end
up
some
place
different.
Sometimes I wake up outside in the grass, others I’m on some
kitchen floor, face down on cold linoleum.
During some of the longer switches I went exploring. I
found out I’d been popping up in the same general area--the
house with the damask couch wasn’t far from a little park I
later woke up in which wasn’t far from another place that had
nothing but canned green beans in the cupboard. It may not sound
like much, but I can think of few things better than hot green
beans with salt and pepper when all you’ve eaten for years is
boiled coywolf. I never thought of canned green beans as having
11
a smell before, but let me tell you: it smelled like home. Home
in the old sense, the way things used to be.
#
If there was some kind of pattern to where I ended up
after a switch, I never figured it out, but I’ll say it was more
important for me to try and figure out those things nearer the
beginning. Now I tend to enjoy the time away.
More than I should, really.
It’s hard to explain if you haven’t lived it. Hux, Gabby,
Julio, they’re great. Really, they’re my favorite people I’ve
ever met, but things have gotten so bad where we live, it’s hard
not to love the switch more than real life, more than them.
There are days where all I can think about is switching, days
where I just want to leave behind all the dog blood and dirt and
stink for a shower and a house all to myself.
I’ve never told anyone this before.
12
IV
Back when things first went bad there were earthquakes,
then the mountain blew its top. The glacier on the mountain
melted and half the city got buried under the lahar, a flood of
hot mud and ash. It took weeks for the mud to cool down.
Before it all went south, our city was one of the biggest
in the western half of the States. Home to one of the first
large-scale G-Engineering labs, it attracted scientists from all
over the place. Even if you weren’t here for the G-Engineering,
the view of the mountains made it worth it.
They say bad things happen in threes. That was definitely
the
case
with
us--the
Pacific
was
still
a
hot
mess
from
Fukushima; fracking had used up most of the ground water in our
part of the country, so no crops; and then the earthquakes and
eruption. It shouldn’t have been a surprise when there finally
wasn’t enough food and water for everyone, but I guess we all
assumed
someone
would
dream
up
invention that would save us all.
13
a
solution,
some
miracle
After
the
eruption,
the
government
was
largely
absent.
There was a half-assed evacuation, but mostly people were on
their own. If you got out early on, bully for you, but if you
didn’t, well. A lot of the people left behind were either very
young or very old, people who couldn’t get out on their own and
people who had refused to.
#
The G-Engineering made it easier to buy into the fantasy of
a better tomorrow. The miracle of genetic manipulation promised
drought-resistant plants and stronger fish for the ocean, ones
that
could
survive
in
the
hot,
radioactive
Pacific--fresh
seafood for the first time in a long time. Like anything else,
it was a way for men with a lot of money to keep making money
right up until the end. The government handed out grant money to
people who promised a solution to the food problem, and the
companies
behind
the
G-Engineering
craze
did
just
that.
But
instead of creating new food sources by the time the money ran
out, the G-Engineers had barely managed to create a few schools
of hyper-aggressive salmon. The Engineers released them into a
local river, and that was the last anyone heard of it. They
could be thriving, I suppose. Everyone forgot about the salmon
the following summer when the mountain erupted.
That summer was the hottest and driest on record. Between
the drought and all the fracking, plants and animals were dying
14
left and right. Food wasn’t just scarce in the city, but in the
mountains
outside
reintroduced
understand,
town
wolves
only
to
as
well.
the
instead
of
When
region
I
for
repopulating
was
a
reasons
as
kid,
I
they
didn’t
predicted,
the
wolves interbred with coyotes, making hybrids who were fierce
like wolves and as comfortable around humans as coyotes were.
The longer the drought went on, the more of the hybrids came
into town, snatching up housecats, dogs, even the occasional
unlucky human. Back then we called them coywolves. Now we just
call them dogs.
But the G-Engineers offered a solution: the hypit. As the
wealthy
feared
for
their
safety
in
the
face
of
coywolf
incursions into the city, G-Engineers recognized an opportunity
for profit. And so the hypit, a fiercely loyal yet supremely
aggressive hyena-like pit bull was born. Results were mixed: the
hypits were reasonably successful at fending off small groups of
coywolves, but it didn’t take long for the coywolves to figure
out that larger groups could overpower a lone hypit. I heard
rumors, too, of rouge hypits who had abandoned their caretakers
and taken to the woods, mixing in with coywolf packs. As more
and more people either left the city or figured out that hypits
wouldn’t stop the coywolves, hypit sales floundered. In a last
ditch effort to reenergize the hypit market, the G-Engineers
initiated a hypit training program, designed to teach the dogs
15
how to leave the city, enter the wild, and return with food-deer, rabbit, whatever they could find. Unsurprisingly, most of
the hypits took off. Some eventually wandered back to the city,
finding new companions among the few humans left in the city.
Those who didn’t end up bonded to a human became feral, more
aggressive
than
before.
If
you
ask
me,
the
whole
thing
had
nothing to do with coywolves and everything to do with rich
people protecting their stuff from looters, but I can’t prove
it.
#
Thing
about
hypits
is,
in
addition
to
having
jaws
as
powerful as a bone-crunching hyena, they are freakishly smart.
So when Hippie first rounded a corner in lodo just as Hux
and
I
were
cleaning
a
coywolf
carcass,
you
can
imagine
how
scared I was. The three of us froze. Hux and Hippie locked eyes.
My hand tightened around my knife. Without breaking eye contact
with Hippie, Hux sank slowly into a crouch, hacked off a chunk
of the coywolf’s haunches, and tossed the raw meat to Hippie,
who caught it mid-air. He gave two quick chews, gulped it down,
and then trotted over to Hux, happy as a clam.
Hippie took to Hux straight away. He doesn’t like me so
much, but he puts up with me because he knows Hux would skin him
if he hurt me.
16
17
V
Hippie wasn’t the only lost thing Hux took in. Like I said,
most people had left before the eruption, but my family, and
Hux’s too, had nowhere to go and no car to get us there.
Hux found me in lodo while he and Gabby were hunting. My
parents had died in the eruption; Hux’s and Gabby’s too. I’d
been hiding out in lodo for a couple of weeks when Hux found me
setting a trap for a bird. It was the kind of trap you’d see in
a cartoon--a box propped up with a stick, a bit of old wire
coiled around it and trailing up to my hand. I’d dug through a
dumpster to find a hunk of moldy bread, and I put that under the
box. It was stupid.
Hux rounded the corner of a building, saw me crouched a
couple yards from the box and smiled. That was all. Didn’t touch
the knife on his belt, didn’t say anything, just smiled.
I knew I was supposed to go with him, and he knew he was
supposed to take me.
#
18
Hux has a job on the old air force base. Well, the closest
thing
to
a
job
that
exists
in
our
neck
of
the
woods.
The
military, of course, took most anything of value with them when
they abandoned the base, but there are still empty hangars and a
few broken down planes and jeeps. Soon after the Mannequins
first appeared, Wallace--the scruffy guy who ran a body shop
downtown in the old days--set himself up with a new gig on the
base. A step ahead of the rest of us, he knew keeping whoever
was causing trouble in lodo out of our houses would be a big
thing. So he started harvesting scrap from the base and trading
it to the rest of us for food and other supplies. Hux helps him
take apart the hangars, planes, and jeeps in exchange for things
like oil for the cook fires and lamps or metal for the barricade
outside. A while back, Hux convinced Wallace to let him have a
couple of old parachutes he’d found. When he came home that
night, Hux taught Gabby and Julio how to sew, and soon after, we
all had new clothes. We cracked jokes about parachute pants for
weeks.
It wasn’t often Hux found anything fun at the base, but
when he did, oh man. The best was the paint. None of us could
figure out what the air force would need with a gallon of bright
red semi-gloss, but it didn’t matter. We made the most of it.
The closest thing Hux could find to a brush on the base was an
old hand broom. It did the job well enough. We painted ladybugs
19
on the walls of the room Julio shared with Gabby. For the spots
we rubbed the charred ends of wood against the red. He loved it.
After we’d painted as many ladybugs as we cared to, we
threw out ideas for what to do with the rest of the paint.
“We could paint the kitchen floor. That way the dog blood
wouldn’t show up as much,” Hux offered.
“Oh,
there
isn’t
enough
for
the
whole
floor,”
Gabby
answered, dismissing his suggestion with a wave of her hand.
“Hold on,” I said. “I know exactly what to do.” I ran to
Hux’s and my room, found the crappiest pair of pants I had, and
used my knife to cut about an inch off around the bottom of the
left leg. I gathered the fabric in my fist, allowing a bit to
poke out from where my fingers were clenched together.
I returned to Gabby, Hux, and Julio and sat down next to
the bucket of paint. “Watch this,” I said, dipping the piece of
fabric
sticking
out
of
my
fist
into
the
paint.
Carefully
I
dragged the fabric over one of my fingernails, blew on it, and
then held it up for everyone else to see.
“Makeovers,” I said.
“God, you’re a genius,” Gabby said. “Here, do my left hand.
I can do the right myself.”
We took turns painting the nails of one another’s dominant
hands,
except
for
Julio
who
needed
help
with
both.
We
even
painted Hippie’s toenails after coaxing him into the room with a
20
piece of what would be that night’s dinner. Hux had to scratch
behind
both
of
Hippie’s
ears
to
keep
him
from
running
off
partway through. In the end we’re pretty sure he liked it. The
four of us swore we could see an extra bounce in his step, that
he held his head just a little higher until the paint wore away.
21
VI
It’s hard to talk about Hux without the superlative. He’s
the best person I’ve ever met.
He kissed me for the first time just before the switch
started. I’d been living with him and Gabby and Julio for a
couple of months. Wallace had given Hux the day off, so we went
out hunting together, Hippie at our side as we scrambled over
uneven humps of mud left by the lahar. My last hunting trips I’d
come up mostly empty handed, so Hux and I decided to check out
one
of
the
more
ravaged
parts
of
town:
a
strip
of
former
Vietnamese restaurants off of 38th Street. These parts of town
could be dangerous on your own. The awkward terrain made running
away from dogs or Mannequins harder, but with two of us the risk
was acceptable.
Casing this particular block had been Hux’s idea.
“You ever go to that place Vien Dong on Yakima off of 38th?”
he asked me before we set out hunting.
“Nope,” I answered. “Any good?”
22
“Yeah, let me buy you lunch,” he said, laughing.
I told you his jokes were bad.
But Hux had a point.
“Funny
thing,
there
was
another
place
just
around
the
corner from Vien Dong, a little Vietnamese deli, less popular,
down a side street so small it looked like an alley.”
“You think it hasn’t been looted yet?”
“Maybe not. It was hard to spot even before things went to
hell. Checking it out’s worth a shot, don’t you think?”
It took us over an hour to get to 38th and the shell of what
used to be Vien Dong. Sure enough, the side street Hux had told
me about was pretty narrow and packed pretty high with dirt and
debris.
Hux led me down the street to a plain little shop with one
tiny window out front and a glass door, the first one I’d seen
in a while that hadn’t been shattered.
“I remembered this tiny window.” Hux said. “It was really
dark the time I went in here.”
He shook the door, but it barely gave. Even if we had
managed
to
break
the
lock,
we’d
never
get
it
open
without
digging out the space in front of it, and that would take too
much time.
The window was our only option.
23
Hux figured the window glass would be thinner than that of
the door, and he was right. All it took was one rock, lobbed at
its center, to break it. He used a stray piece of wood to knock
out what glass remained and took a knee. I was too short to
reach the window myself. He laced his hands together, nodded at
his feet, and said, “Come on.”
He pushed me up faster than I was expecting. There wasn’t
much to grab onto that wasn’t covered in shards of glass, and my
shoes struggled to find traction against the outside wall.
Hux put his hands on my hips and gave another push, enough
to get me through the window this time. My breath caught in my
throat as soon as he’d touched me. I don’t think anyone, let
alone a guy, had ever touched my hips before. I shimmied through
the window, landing awkwardly on the other side.
I’d started to get hard, and it was embarrassing, so I
poked around the store to distract myself, shaking bits of glass
from my clothes. It was damp inside, like a water pipe had burst
a while back, and smelled musty. Blooms of mold covered most
everything in the store.
“Don’t breathe too deep,” Hux said, startling me. I hadn’t
heard him climb through the window. “Mold’s super bad for you,
especially if you have asthma or anything like that.”
“How do you think I would have managed all the hunting I do
with asthma?”
24
“I was just worried is all.”
“I know.” I shot him a smile and turned to the far wall of
the store. About the only things that still looked edible were
bags of hard candy, sealed away airtight and pumped full of
preservatives. I grabbed a green bag with a picture of a brown,
spiky fruit on the package. It had been so long since I’d opened
a bag of anything I had to think for half a second how to go
about it, the muscle memory gone.
I scooped out two candies, tossed one to Hux, and popped
the other into my mouth. It was awful, but I didn’t want to ruin
the
moment--the
first
candy
in
months,
the
first
food
that
wasn’t a dead animal off the street.
Hux’s face soured as soon as he bit down.
“It feels like taffy but tastes like cheese,” I said.
Hux spit his candy on the ground. “Sorry to be crass.”
“Sorry I picked the worst candy,” I said. I walked to Hux
and hugged him, because it felt like the right thing to do.
He reciprocated, his grip tight, almost desperate, but not
in a way that put me off.
We stood together, silently, for a good while, breathing
mold spores, waiting for the lingering funk of durian candy to
leave our mouths.
He kissed me first. His mouth still tasted like sugary
cheese but nothing was perfect anymore.
25
26
VII
Hux is four years older than me. Gabby’s two years younger
than Hux and two older than me. She can be intense, but we get
along just fine.
Julio’s six. Hux and Gabby found him, a while before they
found me, hiding out in a dumpster. He’s a quiet kid, but smart.
Gabby said he’d thrown anything rotten out of the dumpster and
carried it far away so no dogs (or people) came snooping. Then
he’d refilled it as best he could with old papers and scraps of
cardboard--something to hide under when he needed to, something
to keep him a little warmer.
All of us have our duties around the house. Hux has his
“job.” I do the hunting and cooking. Gabby takes care of Julio
and the house, not because she’s the most motherly or feminine
(that’s me), but because Julio likes her best. Also, of the four
of us, she’s the coolest under pressure. If anything were to
happen to the house while Hux and I were away, she’d know what
to do. She’s got all kinds of makeshift weapons stashed around
27
the house, more, even, than she’s told Hux and I about, I think.
Really, it’s her house, and she’s the one who keeps it safe.
I have this memory of Gabby from not long after I came to
live with her, Hux, and Julio. It was late. I’d left the room I
now share with Hux--only this was before we’d officially decided
to share it, back when I still slept on the downstairs sofa--to
use the bathroom, which is really a nice way of saying to pee
outside. Gabby was downstairs in the kitchen, sitting under the
table with her knees tucked under her chin, reading by the light
of a small candle. Always the smart one, she’d chosen a spot
that
would
allow
little
if
any
light
to
bounce
around
the
kitchen and out through the gaps between the boards over the
windows. I stopped when I saw her, startled, unsure whether to
keep walking or not. The thing between Hux and me, it was new to
both of us, and I was still uneasy around Gabby and Julio, still
worried I was an intruder, not yet a part of the family.
She brought her eyes up over the edge of her book and said,
calmly, “I know you stay with Hux now. It’s okay.”
Even in the dark she had a knack for reading body language.
“Okay,” I said. “Thank you.”
Gabby’s eyes tipped down into the book again.
Funny that, even in a burnt-out shell of a city where we
lived without parents and ate dogs, I’d still be worried. I
guess that’s still the way of things.
28
I took a seat under the table. “What’s the name of the
book?” I asked, leaning in.
Without looking at me, she said, “I don’t even remember.
It’s
some
book
Dad
checked
out
from
the
library
about
the
Northwest, rivers and rain and all that.”
“Oh. Does it help you think of him?”
“No, it’s not like that. I miss him, I really do, but
that’s not why I took it with me when we left the house. There
was something sad to me about never going back to the library,
that we’d probably never need to check out a book again. I don’t
know how that one sad thing stood out against all the other sad
things, but it did.”
“Is it any good?”
“I don’t know. I forget every sentence as soon as I’ve read
it. I just can’t hold onto the words. It’s nice to look at
though.”
#
There’s
this
other
memory
too:
me
home
alone
when
the
volcano erupted, thinking about how I’d never watch TV again.
The carpet of ash forming on the lawn was its own show, as were
the stray rocks pelting the neighborhood cars. I wonder how I
would
have
building
felt
buried
if
in
I
hot
could
mud
have
on
seen
the
Mom
and
evening
waiting at the window, alone, for days and days.
29
Dad’s
news
office
instead
of
30
VIII
Our side of town used to be called Parkland. It’s up high,
which saved it from the lahar when the volcano blew, and it’s
the only part of town people still live in. There aren’t many of
us; we’re the last ones on our street. Used to be that Parkland
was
the
ritzy
part
of
town,
situated
at
the
foot
of
the
mountains as it was, or so I’m told. This was all before I was
born.
Once
they
put
in
the
air
force
base,
property
values
plummeted; nobody wanted to listen to the planes flying overhead
at all hours. Poor as the neighborhood was, it was the only one
to survive the volcano more or less intact, and now it’s the
last holdout for those of us who haven’t left. Leaving is hard.
You’ve got two choices: find a way through the mountains and the
who-knows-what that lies beyond or cross the Sound, the only
clear path to which leads you smack dab into the middle of
Mannequin territory. It’s hard to say whether the ones who chose
option
two
made
it
out
or
not.
Whether
they
leave
captured by the Mannequins, we never hear from them again.
31
or
are
#
No one really knows how the Mannequins got started, just
that a few years ago, people began to disappear in lodo. We
heard stories of people in white masks made of cloth sacks with
holes cut for the eyes. Gabby’s seen them ride a man down on
their mopeds, lasso a rope around his midsection, and drag him
away.
Rumor is they took over the downtown mall, boarded it up
like we did our house, strung barbed wire across the top of the
barricade.
They
say
that’s
where
they
take
the
ones
they
capture. They say they’ve got their hands on a few generators,
that at night lodo’s lit up by the mall lights, but we stay far
away.
32
IX
This one time, the Mannequins almost got me, and that’s
when everything got real crazy. I’d just killed a coywolf in
some alley in lodo. The teenage ones are easy enough to take
down if you can catch them on their own. The pavement in the
alley was all tore up, and the flattest ground was a patch of
dirt near its center. It’s easier to clean the carcasses on
level ground.
To one side of me, there was a half-crumbled wall, and past
it, I could see through the old building and out what used to be
a window into a courtyard full of tall brown weeds. To the other
side,
a
thick
patch
of
ivy,
covering
the
wall
from
top
to
bottom. It wasn’t often you saw plants that green.
I got so into staring at the ivy I cut my hand cleaning the
coywolf. That’s when I heard the moped--it couldn’t have been
more than a couple of blocks away. I thrust my knife into the
dirt and used both hands to pick up the dog and hurl its carcass
over the side of the broken wall. After retrieving the knife, I
33
kicked dirt over the pool of blood where the dog had been, then
shimmied back-first into the clump of ivy on the other wall,
pulling what vines I could over my shoulders. When I was good
and covered, I sucked in what was left of my gut and held my
breath.
I heard the moped round the corner of the alley about a
minute later followed by the click of a kickstand and the crunch
of boots in the dirt. Small boots. A little boy, I could see,
once he came close enough. He couldn’t have been older than
Julio. Not yet wearing the white cloth mask of a full Mannequin.
A scout. The dirt I kicked over the dog’s blood hadn’t quite
done its job, and a dark mud formed in the center of the alley.
The scout noticed it straight away. He pushed the toe of his
boot down into the wet spot and it came away red. He scanned the
alley, eyes darting from side to side. I readied the knife in my
hand. If he saw me, he’d alert nearby Mannequins, and that would
be that.
But he didn’t, just left instead. Maybe the blood scared
him off. Though I swore he’d caught sight of my eye through a
gap in the ivy leaves, swore we’d made eye contact for half a
second before he hopped on the moped and sped away.
Only when the boy and the moped were so far off that I
couldn’t hear the engine did I come out of the ivy. I hopped
over the crumbling wall and crouched down to stuff the dead
34
coywolf into a canvas tote. I wiped my hands against the side of
the tote, smearing it with red dirt and blood.
Before I could stand my vision blurred and the alley spun.
A switch was coming, and it was too close for me to make it home
before it hit.
I pushed the tote into a corner so that it wouldn’t be
visible from the other side of half-crumbled wall, in the alley.
The best I could manage was to lie on my side, back up against
what remained of the wall and hope that the scout didn’t ride
through the alley again before I came back. I closed my eyes and
rested my fingers on the handle of my knife just as I switched.
#
The next thing I saw was a white peacock, a few inches from
my face. This time I’d come out of the switch standing up--I
seemed to end up in a different position every time--facing the
mantle of a fireplace set into an eggshell wall. In the center
of the mantle, its beak even with my eyes, sat the gaudy, albino
peacock sculpture. Its beak and talons were gold, the only spots
of color.
What rotten timing, I thought. My body a sitting duck in
some
lodo
alley
next
to
a
bloody
carcass
that
was
sure
to
attract coywolves and more, and all I could do was stare at a
damn peacock statue.
35
I grabbed hold of the bird with both hands and hurled it as
hard as I could to the floor. The crash sounded delicious in the
empty
silence
of
the
switch-town,
like
a
sound
effect
in
a
movie, crisp and perfect.
In the peacock’s remains, I found what looked like a small
video camera. I picked it up, turning it over several times in
my hands. Just as I held its lens up to my face, the switch
reversed.
I came to in the same place as when I left, up against the
wall in lodo. Flies buzzed around the bloody tote. I hitched the
tote onto my shoulder and made for home. Dusk wasn’t far off,
and I didn’t want to be anywhere near lodo when night came.
36
X
That evening I made the coywolf into stew. After slipping
under a loose flap in the wall around the house, I fought with
Hippie over the dead dog in the sack. Like most hypits, he’ll
eat just about anything. I wrestled the bag out of his mouth,
then gave his wide, flat head a pat, tousling his spotted fur.
He followed me inside and walked circles around me, alternating
between whines and growls, until I cut off a hunk of leg from
the dog in the sack and tossed it to the floor. I wondered if
feeding one sort of dog to another sort of dog would create some
kind of mad cow type thing, but there wasn’t anything else to
give him, and we’d been eating coywolves so long that I was sure
the damage had been done.
On my way to the kitchen, I noticed Gabby and Julio mending
clothes in the living room.
“Where’s Hux?” I asked Gabby.
“Upstairs sick,” she said.
37
Hux had caught a fever the day before and it still hadn’t
broken.
Stew would do him good, so I set to cutting up the dog in
the kitchen. We’d ripped the top off the range and made the oven
into a makeshift fire pit. We hung a pot on a metal pole and
laid it across the top of the range. Sure, the house got smoky
when we lit a fire, but it was safer than cooking outside, safer
than risking a Mannequin see the firelight.
#
I was flaying the dog, probably the hundredth dog I’d done
this too, and I was just sick to death of it. There was nothing
I
wanted
more
than
to
throw
the
meat
on
the
ground
and
go
someplace else.
“If I have to cut up one more damn dog,” I thought.
“Any place else,” I thought.
And then I was someplace else. Under a maple tree just
before sunset, looking up through the leaves at the failing sun.
This was a yard I hadn’t visited before. The house that went
with it was a creamy yellow with white trim. Across the street
was a white house with green trim, and standing at the edge of
that yard was a young girl with red hair. We sat and stared at
each other a while before I stood up. I could see the girl tense
from across the street, and for a second I thought she might run
away. Instead she threw a quick look to either side and stepped
38
into the street. I opened my mouth to say hey, but before any
sound came out I was back in the kitchen, head pounding.
I had to tell Hux. It would worry him, but I felt like he
should know. I’d never once, not ever, seen another person in
the switch-town, not even direct evidence of other human beings,
aside from the canned goods in the cupboards and the relative
cleanliness of the houses.
I turned from the stew and made a break for the stairwell.
I got about three steps up before Gabby shouted, “Don’t you
wake him up unless dinner’s ready. He needs to sleep.”
“But Gabby, something’s happened. Something crazy.”
“Something to do with the switch?”
“Yes. I saw someone. A girl.”
“In the empty town? I thought it was deserted.”
“Me too. Until today anyway. I tried to talk to her, but I
came back too early.”
Gabby looked down and sighed the way she did when she was
thinking intensely. After a few seconds she looked up. “You’re
sure you’re not just dreaming? Or hallucinating?”
“It feels too real, Gabby. I can smell things when I’m
there. Have you ever remembered a smell from a dream?”
She sighed again. “That’s a good point. But your body stays
here when you switch. You can’t actually go anywhere, because
your body is always here.”
39
“I don’t know how, but I do go somewhere. I do.”
Gabby
crossed
her
arms.
“This
is
troubling.”
Her
eyes
darted to the side, past me and into the kitchen. “You should
check on the stew.”
She was right; it needed stirring, but I kept talking.
“Gabby,
there’s
something
else.
I
think
I
switched
on
purpose.”
She breathed in sharply. “But how?”
“I don’t know. I really didn’t want to cut up that dog and
I kept thinking about how I wanted to be somewhere else and then
I was.”
“It’s
a
coincidence.
Has
to
be,”
Gabby
said,
though
I
suspected she didn’t fully believe her own words. “I think the
stew is burning.”
I darted into the next room. Few things tasted worse than
burnt coywolf. From the kitchen I could hear Gabby pacing and
sighing, lost in thought.
#
When the stew was finished, I brought some to Hux while
Julio and Gabby ate downstairs. I had to tell him what had
happened. It was too big to keep from him.
I roused him gently and placed the stew on the nightstand.
I let him finish eating before dropping the bomb.
40
Hux wasn’t happy about it. I’d always assumed he thought my
switching was some sort of hallucination, some problem in my
brain that was only getting worse the more often I switched;
that
other
people
now
populated
the
switch-town
meant
the
delirium was worsening. But this wasn’t the problem right then,
at least not the one that upset him. It was that I’d chosen to
go.
“I don’t understand,” Hux said. “Has it been on purpose
this whole time?”
“I honestly can’t answer that,” I told him.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I don’t know how this works, Hux. I can’t tell
you how I switched that time or any other time, and I can’t tell
you where I go. Do you really think I want this on top of
everything?”
Hux hung his head, looking ashamed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t
mean it that way.” He sighed and looked me in the eyes. “Okay, I
thought that for a second, but it’s because I was scared.”
Hux’s eyes become watery. “I’m afraid you’ll leave. Every
time you switch, I don’t think you’ll come back.”
With the fever on top of everything, this was all Hux could
manage. He couldn’t hold back the water in eyes. We held each
other then, and Hux didn’t stop crying until he fell asleep. His
body heat was overwhelming, but the thought of letting go, of
41
rolling over onto the other side of the bed felt wrong. There’s
nothing like a good cry to put you to sleep. It wasn’t long
before I too was out cold.
#
I woke late in the night to the creaking of the downstairs
floorboards. These things happen in old houses like ours, but
something about it sounded off, too loud. I crawled slowly to
the bedroom door and peeked around the corner. While my eyes
adjusted to the dark, I held my breath to listen. They said
nothing, but there were people down there. There were creaks.
Hippie should have been going nuts. They’d probably slipped him
something. Or killed him. With Hux still too feverish to move, I
had to get to Gabby down the hall. She’d know what to do. So I
inched out the door and over to Gabby’s.
My head felt cloudy. I was dizzy. Another switch was on its
way.
There was a creak at the bottom of the stairs.
Then another. And another.
Someone was coming up.
I had to get to Gabby’s room before they reached the top of
the stairs. Before the next switch hit. I moved as quickly as I
could without making noise, which wasn’t very, but quick enough.
I
slipped
through
Gabby’s
door
while
the
stairs
were
still
creaking. I knelt at the edge of Gabby’s bed, put my hand over
42
her
mouth,
and
shook
her
awake.
Her
eyes
went
wide,
but
I
pressed a finger to my lips.
I only had time to whisper “Gabby, someone’s--“ before it
took me.
43
XI
I woke up flat on my back in a garage somewhere in the
switch-town. It was dark enough that when I opened my eyes, I
thought for half a second I was still in Gabby’s room. When my
eyes had adjusted, I turned over. The slivers of light coming
through around the edges of the garage door were enough to help
me find a way into the house. Inside, it wasn’t much different
than most of the other switch homes. Off the dining area, a set
of French doors opened out to a nice yard with three squat
Japanese maple trees.
I walked into the back yard, sat down in the grass, and
thought hard as I could about switching back. I closed my eyes
and scrunched up my face. I said, “I have to go back,” to myself
over and over. I balled up my fists and hit them against the
sides of my head.
When it became clear I wouldn’t be switching back at will,
I decided to look for the redheaded girl. Climbing onto the
house I’d woken up in was easy enough--the houses here were so
44
close together I used the fences between them to grab hold of
the edge of the roof and pull myself up from there.
The view was disappointing. Your average house--and trust
me these houses were av-er-age--isn’t all that tall. From the
highest part of the roof I could see a ways down the street in
either direction and into a few back yards, but that was about
it. I hollered a bit, on the off chance she (or anyone else) was
near enough to hear, thinking it was a dumb idea the whole time.
I’d given up the yelling and was sitting on my butt on the roof,
spaced-out and impressed with how bright the red maple leaves
looked in the sun when it hit me: a fire. That’s how I’d get her
attention. Also, a fire would help with orienting myself the
next time I switched, assuming it would still be burning or at
least smoldering.
I hung off the edge of the roof and dropped down into the
yard, then beat feet into the kitchen to rummage through the
drawers for matches or a lighter. Everyone had a junk drawer in
their kitchen, and every junk drawer had matches or one of those
long
candle
lighters
with
the
replaceable
butane
cartridges.
This house was no exception. I got really lucky and found a jug
of 40:1 oil-gas mixture, probably for an old lawnmower, on a
dusty shelf in the garage.
Since
the
houses
here
were
so
close
to
one
another,
I
worried that starting a house fire would get out of control. I
45
still wasn’t sure how exactly the switch worked or where I’d go
or which parts of me did the traveling, but the last thing I
wanted was to burn up in a fire or switch into a charred corpse.
Fortunately, a great big sycamore just down the street looked
like it stood far enough from the house whose yard it occupied
to burn without taking out the whole neighborhood.
“Hopefully,” I thought to myself.
I jogged over and threw the oil-gas mix as high up the
sycamore trunk as I could, careful to avoid splashing myself.
When I’d emptied the jug, I lit one of the matches, let if fall
near the trunk and ran like hell, spurred on by the smoke in the
air and the heat against my backside.
I made it across the street and about three houses down
before the switch got me.
#
I opened my eyes, once again flat on my back, in a large
room next to Hux and a woman I’d never seen before, the three of
us
huddled
against
a
wall.
I
couldn’t
see
Gabby
or
Julio.
Opposite the four of us was a metal lattice that extended from
floor to ceiling and beyond it what seemed to be a wide, bright
corridor. I could make out another grid of metal lattice, like
the one keeping us in, on the other side of the corridor and
above it a red and white sign, hanging onto the wall by only one
46
corner. I squinted to read its letters: AS SEEN ON TV. The
Mannequins had taken us to the mall.
47
XII
I sat bolt upright as soon as I realized where Hux and I
had been taken. He put a hand on my arm after I shifted my body.
"What happened to Gabby and Julio?" I asked.
"They got away, I think. After you switched Gabby took
Julio into our room. She managed to wake me before the two of
them went out the window. I went back for you, and that's when
they got me."
As my eyes adjusted to the lack of light, I could make out
the swollen purple skin around Hux's left eye and a gash in his
right cheek.
"Does it hurt?" I asked him.
"I feel like I should lie and tell you it's not that bad,
but it's pretty bad. Have you ever been punched so hard in the
face your skin splits open?"
"Jesus, Hux. I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault."
48
The stranger coughed in the way people do when they want
your attention. She was older than me by a lot, white, with
brown hair that just touched her shoulders. It was hard to tell
in the light, but she looked dirty.
"You're finally up," she said, looking me up and down.
"I've got some bad news for you, boys. You're going to be in
here a long time."
#
For
before
as
our
Mannequins
much
menace
capture,
were
we
and
mystery
found
about--they'd
as
had
out
pretty
been
taking
surrounded
quickly
people
them
what
to
the
use
as
slaves in the mall. The rumors of them getting their hands on
generators were true. For the big stuff, like the outside lights
they turned on at night, they had gas-powered generators, but
for smaller things they had little hand-crank models they'd make
the people they'd captured turn for them. They'd also rigged up
bicycles and treadmills to mid-size generators. These provided
most of the power inside, and these were the machines we most
often worked. You had to have been held in the mall for a long
time before you were trusted enough to operate the hand-helds.
The mid-size units provided electricity for the pageants.
Once every few days the Mannequins would gather in one of the
empty stores in the mall to reenact scenes from movies or old TV
shows, depending on the chosen disc for that week, whichever
49
they'd salvaged from the old Suncoast. They never picked the
same DVD twice, just worked their way piecemeal through what
remained of the Suncoast stock, though
they were partial to
westerns and detective stuff, or movies about boxing--anything
male-dominated.
TVs and speakers used up a surprising amount of energy,
especially if it was a big screen, so it usually took a small
group of us to work each of the pageants. Once the TV was up,
they'd start the show. Each week a different set of Mannequins
performed, their faces covered in white powder, their bodies
slathered in jewelry from the old Nordstrom. Only the finest.
It was all so creepy and confusing. They'd start up the
Blu-ray and enact a twisted kind of lip-sync, exaggerated and
terrifying,
like
a
bad
clown
(is
there
any
other
kind?),
imitating not only the facial expressions of the characters on
the TV, but their bodily actions as well.
Sometimes when it had been an especially displeasing week
for them--say, if they’d brought in fewer new captives than
normal,
or
if
one
malnourishment--the
participate,
whomever
usually
they
had
of
the
more
Mannequins
in
some
picked
valued
would
sort
of
battered,
workers
force
one
fight
scene
bruised,
or,
died
of
us
to
of
that
in
a
left
few
horrific cases, dead. I was lucky in that the only scene I'd
taken part in was from some tearjerker--they needed a dead body
50
for a funeral scene. We all felt impossibly sorry for anyone
chosen
to
be
in
one
of
the
more
action-oriented
pageants.
Westerns, cop shows, war movies--they were all pretty hard on
us. Horror was the worst but thankfully almost never happened.
#
Most of the empty stores in the mall had been converted to
cells, save the department stores. Those the Mannequins saved
for
themselves.
The
Mannequins
with
the
most
social
capital
claimed Nordstrom. The next highest chose Sears, as its hardware
section
proved
to
be
a
wealth
of
tools
and
weapons.
The
mercenary force occupied the Kohl's.
Our store was the old Rave. It had been stripped of its
mirrors and anything else we could make into a tool or weapon,
but some of the higher gray shelving remained, as did the desk
that had formerly housed the cash register. We usually slept
behind the desk, the three of us huddled together for warmth out
of view of the Mannequins. We had just one cellmate, the white
lady named Johnson.
Rare
as
it
was
to
see
prisoners
from
other
stores,
we
caught glimpses of faces, nearly featureless in the dim light,
as we were shuffled to and from generator duty. The As Seen on
TV store across the promenade looked fuller than our Rave as far
as we could tell. Same with the Yankee Candle next door.
51
Usually they took only one or two of us out for work at
time, always teams of two Mannequins for every prisoner. The
others were made to stand at the back of the store while the
Mannequins lifted the grille just enough for whoever was working
to belly-crawl underneath. If you tried to run, you got clubbed.
If anyone who wasn't chosen to work approached the grille, the
people crawling out got clubbed. A simple system, but effective.
Twice daily they wedged bottles of water into the grille
and made us drink from them, one at a time, like hamsters.
I can't even begin to describe what they made us eat.
#
Turned out Johnson had been in the longest. She'd actually
managed to get evacuated after the eruption but came back to
look for her partner, Suzanne, who hadn't been as lucky. It
didn't take long for the Mannequins to get ahold of Johnson.
Needless to say, she never found Suzanne.
Johnson was good people, helped us out a lot, showed us the
ropes, gave us tips on how best to avoid getting hit by the
Mannequins.
She
was
quiet
most
of
the
time,
and
I
remember
seeing behind her eyes something that maybe once had been anger
but had gone cold.
My first night in the Rave I asked them about escape.
52
Johnson shook her head and said, "Even if you got past the
grille, where do you think you'd go after? You'd never make it
out of the mall without them seeing."
"But there's got to be a way, something the Mannequins
haven't thought of," I said.
Johnson sighed and looked at the ground. "I told myself
that
for
the
first
few
months
counter and lay down.
53
too."
She
walked
behind
the
XIII
I didn't switch for almost a week after we got captured. By
the time I got back to the empty town, the fire I set had gone
out, but lucky enough there were still thin fingers of smoke
trailing up into the sky to guide me back to the house. Even
burning unchecked, it seemed like a long time for that tree to
be smoldering, and I wondered if time worked differently when I
switched.
Getting back to the tree didn't take long. I'd switched
pretty close this time. In my absence, more than just the tree
had burned. The fire had spread across the yard to the house
nearest the tree and to the houses on either side before burning
itself out. Or before someone put it out, maybe the same someone
who put the camera in the peacock statue.
I didn't see the girl, so I took a seat on the curb in
front of the burned-out houses and waited. I thought about Gabby
54
and Julio, and Hippie too, where they might have been, what they
were doing. They'd be all right together, I told myself. They
were all smart.
I began to worry that the girl wouldn't show up at all.
With the switch taking as long as it had, there was no telling
when I'd be back next, and I feared what little smoke hung over
the burned houses would be gone by next time. I couldn't very
well set a fire every time I came and went. Me or the girl could
end up switching into the fire for all I knew. We needed a way
to map the switch-town, but how? Sometimes I recognized houses,
but appearing in a different spot after every switch made it all
but impossible to recognize more than a few landmarks. I thought
back to talking with Gabby in the kitchen--when I told her about
switching
on
purpose
and
how
the
switch-town
had
to
be
a
physical place--and came up with an idea.
Crossing the yard of the now-dead tree, I stepped over
what had been the threshold of one of the charred houses and
plucked
a
black
hunk
of
wood
off
the
ground.
I
dragged
it
roughly over the back of one hand, using its ashen tip to draw a
crude circle.
"You want to see if it's still there when you wake up,
don't you?" said a voice from behind.
I turned around sharply, dropping the piece of wood. It
was the girl with red hair.
55
"I tried something like that one of the first times I woke
up here," she said.
"And? What happened?"
"You'll see. I don't want to ruin the surprise." She kicked
a stray bit of wood. "I've been looking for you, you know. That
trick with the fire was smart. I followed the smoke back here as
many times as I could. It's lucky we crossed paths before the
smoke was gone."
"We need to come up with a place to meet before one of us
switches," I said. "So we can share information, or whatever."
The girl cocked her head. "Switches? Oh, you mean going
back."
I nodded.
"Switch."
She
said
it
slowly,
drawing
out
the
final
consonant sound into a long whisper." I like that. It's catchy.
But you're right--we need to agree on a meeting place. Have you
been to the house with the fish fountain in the front yard?"
I shook my head.
"What about the cul de sac with the brick house in the
middle?
I've
woken
up,
I
mean,
switched
there
twice."
Her
eyebrows rose excitedly when she said the word, as if she'd
discovered an edgy bit of slang.
"Maybe. I'm not sure."
56
"Okay, too vague. I know! That little roundabout with the
wrought-iron sculpture in the middle."
All I could do was shrug. I was starting to become insecure
about my unfamiliarity with switch-town topography.
"Is this your first time here or what?" the girl asked,
half-joking, half-exasperated. "What do you do when you're here?
Take bubble baths?"
"So far I haven't found any bubbles, but basically yes. We
haven't had running water in Parkland for a long time," I said.
The girl's eyes went wide. "People still live there?"
"The ones who didn't get evacuated, yeah."
"They said on the news there was nobody left." The girl put
her hands on her hips and began to pace back and forth. "Let me
get this straight--" she stopped abruptly and thrust one hand
toward me, keeping the other on her hip, "they just abandoned
people in the city and told us you were all dead?"
"It seems that way. I don't know. It'd be dangerous to come
back now anyway because of the Mannequins."
The
provided.
girl
"How
looked
do
overwhelmed
you
even
by
survive
the
new
there?
information
Isn't
I'd
everything
buried under ash? Are you all alone? And what's a Mannequin?
Okay, I know what a mannequin mannequin is, but not what you're
talking about. Oh my gosh, I just can't bel--"
57
I cut her off, gently. "That's a lot of questions, and we
still haven't figured out where to meet up for next time."
She took a deep breath. "You're right. Any ideas?"
I bit my lower lip until it came to me. "The park."
"Yes!" She clapped her hands together. "The one that's not
far from that weird house with all the beans?"
"That's the one," I said, smiling.
"Now that we've got that sorted out, answer my questions,"
the girl said before hastily adding a please.
I didn't know where to begin, which must have shown on my
face, because the girl started talking again.
"Look, I got a little too excited. Let's start over. Tell
me about where you live. Actually, no. Tell me your name."
"Joaquin."
She held out her hand. "It's nice to meet you, Joaquin. My
name's Winn, well Winifred, but I've gone by Winn for as long as
I can remember. Oh god, I'm doing it again. You talk. Please."
"How about this--I don't think I know how to get to the
park from where we are right now, and you seem to know more
about this place than me. Can you take me there?"
#
The walk to the park took longer than expected, which was
just as well, since Winn and I had a lot to talk about. I told
her all about Hux and Gabby and Julio and the odd, new family
58
we'd formed together, about the house in Parkland, about eating
coywolf, to which she'd remarked, "You must have been excited
about that house full of beans." I laughed.
My smile ended when I told her about Hux and me trapped in
the mall.
"There's got to be something I can do when I get back.
Someone I can tell who'll help," Winn said.
"Is anybody going to believe you?" I asked.
She sighed. "Probably not. My parents don't think any of
this is real, not physically anyway. The medic where we live
said that I was, oh what did he call it, dissociating. Like my
brain is coping with the stress of evacuating by letting me
escape my own reality. I don't think he's even a psychologist,
though. Just someone to help the injured refugees."
"Where do you live, anyway?" I asked.
"Just over the mountains at the edge of town, in one of the
roadside motels along the interstate. The government bought a
bunch of them, turned them into shelters for the people who had
no other family to go to."
"That doesn't sound so bad," I said.
"It's not. There's usually hot water and all that. Usually.
Things aren't perfect in the rest of the country still, but
nothing like where you live, I imagine."
59
When we arrived at the park, Winn chose to sit on a patch
of grass near the center, a good ways from a pair of benches and
some small playground equipment--monkey bars, a slide, and a
merry-go-round. She motioned for me to sit as well, and when I
did, she leaned in close, smiling, and spoke very softly.
"Joaquin, it's important that you stay quiet and keep a
smile on your face. We don't have much time. I feel a...switch.
The more you move around, the faster they come, I've noticed."
I forced a smile onto my face and faked a chuckle like what
she'd just said was terribly funny.
"I think someone is watching us, Joaquin."
"Me too," I said. "Once I found a camera inside a statue I
broke
in
one
of
the
houses.
And
I
don't
think
that
fire
I
started put itself out."
"Of course not!" The smile on her face was genuine then, I
think. Happy that I'd caught on, she continued. "We have to
figure
this
out,
but
I
don't
think
they'll
let
us
be
here
we
come
together if they think we're up to something. Agreed?"
"Agreed," I said.
"So
here's
what
we
do.
Every
time
we
switch,
straight here. If you can't find it, do your best. I'll do the
same."
And with that, Winn's eyes rolled up into her head as she
slumped forward into the grass between us. Finally I knew what
60
it was like for Hux to see me switch, and I understood better
how frightening it was for him.
I had no more than a few seconds to look at Winn's sleeping
body before the switch took me as well, forcing my eyes to open
not on a suburban park but a black nightstick hurtling toward my
freshly awakened face.
61
XIV
The nightstick caught me in the mouth, and I tasted blood
almost immediately. I could hear Hux shouting behind me, though
I couldn't make out specific words. In front of me stood a
Mannequin, holding the bloodied nightstick in his left arm. What
I assumed to be another Mannequin stood behind me, pinning my
arms behind my back. I struggled against him.
"He's awake!" the Mannequin behind me shouted to the one
with the nightstick.
The Mannequin in front of me gathered my shirt in his free
hand and yanked me so close I could see stray threads around his
mask's mouth hole twitching as he spoke.
"You ever pull that again, pretending to be asleep when
it's your turn to work, and I'll beat you to death with this
stick," he wiped the blood on the nightstick, my blood, across
my cheek, "and throw your body to the coywolves. Understand me?"
62
I nodded.
"Good. Time to work."
As the Mannequins pulled me out of the Rave, I saw that
three of them had held Hux down while the leader beat me. One of
them punched him in the gut, and the trio left the store. Two
others held baseball bats menacingly before Johnson. As soon as
Hux got hit, they too backed away. I'd never been called to work
alone. I felt dizzy from the blow to my face, but I forced one
foot in front of the other regardless, working hard to keep pace
with my captors.
#
The Mannequins led me to one of the bicycle generators, at
which point the one with the nightstick (which spun with an
unsettling nonchalance in his hand while he walked) motioned
toward the bike, saying nothing more than "Work. Now."
I mounted the contraption as quickly as I could and began
pedaling.
He watched me for a moment, twirling the nightstick, and
then
approached.
Before
I
had
time
to
recognize
what
was
happening, he brought the stick down hard against my back.
I
struggled
to
regain
my
pedaling.
"Pedal faster," he said.
I did.
63
breath
but
managed
to
keep
The Mannequin turned to leave, saying to the others on his
way out, "If he slows down, kill him."
I can't guess how long I pedaled, but I can tell you it
felt like longer than any shift I'd worked before. I suppose
that was the punishment. The more I worked it became clear the
blow to my face wasn't the first one they'd landed back in the
Rave. I had no way of knowing how many times they'd hit me until
I got back to Hux and the others, but one of my eyes swelled
nearly shut during my time on the bike, and I felt a terrible
soreness across my abdomen.
Tightening
stable.
The
my
backs
grip
of
my
on
the
bike's
hands
were
handlebars
dirty
from
felt
days
good,
without
bathing, but the black circle I'd drawn in the switch-town was
either gone or had never been there.
The minutes blurred together, but at some point my vision
blurred, and I knew I wouldn't be able to keep up the grueling
pace the Mannequins had set for me much longer. I tried to slow
my pedaling to such a small degree that they wouldn't notice. My
legs burned. My head spun with the wheels of the bike.
At
the
far
end
of
the
room,
the
Mannequin
with
the
nightstick returned. He spoke with the ones who'd stayed behind,
pointing at me.
I pedaled faster.
64
One Mannequin broke away from the conversation and came
straight for me.
I pedaled quick as I could.
The Mannequin kept coming.
Breathing
became
difficult
and
my
vision
blurred
so
intensely I couldn't see just as the Mannequin pulled me from
the bike by my shirt.
#
I was both confused and terrified as the Mannequin dragged
me from the generator station, leading me deeper into the mall
than I'd been since the days before the eruption. I had trouble
walking and fell three times before my escort help me up in
front of his face and asked, "If you are allowed to catch your
breath and then move at a slower pace, will you be able to
walk?"
I
nodded,
taking
the
deepest
breaths
I
could
without
sending pain across my chest and abdomen.
The Mannequin watched me, eventually grunting and looping
my arm behind his neck to help me walk. The walk was slow going,
but I was allowed to take my time. After we passed the old
GameStop, I figured out where the Mannequin was taking me.
"We're going to the Nordstrom, aren't we?" I asked.
"Boss wants to see you," he said flatly, only he didn't
look at me when he did, nor did he look straight ahead. His head
65
swung nervously from side to side, like he was expecting an
attack from the one of the shadowy hallways that housed the
restrooms and janitorial closets.
Soon
after
Nordstrom
came
into
view,
fluorescent
light,
more man-made light than I'd seen in months, spilling out its
entrance,
silhouetting
Mannequin
guards
like
teeth
before
a
great, luminous mouth.
In the center of the promenade, just a few steps away from
us but a good twenty yards from the Nordstrom entrance, stood a
large pot stuffed with a dense artificial shrub and lined on all
sides with white benches. The Mannequin accompanying me pushed
me roughly onto the bench and leaned toward me. The second time
I'd been this close to one of the white masks that day.
The Mannequin spoke in gruff whisper with a voice that
differed from the one I'd heard before. He pressed a finger to
my lips before asking, "You are confined to the Rave, correct?"
I nodded.
"I can't help you where you're going, but if you make it
back to your cell, and I hope you do, I need you to deliver a
message for me. Can you do this?"
I nodded again, confused.
"Tell Lucy I'm coming for her. Tell her to sit tight, and
I'll be there soon."
"Lucy?" I whispered.
66
"Yes." The Mannequin pulled up the bottom of his mask,
revealing a woman's face. "I'm showing you my face so you know
you can trust me." She yanked the mask back down and pulled me
to my feet, guiding us once again toward Nordstrom.
She delivered me to the two guards posted at the store's
entrance, saying, "Boss wants to see this one."
One of the two grabbed me high up on the arm and led me
inside. I stole a glance over my shoulder at the woman walking
silently away into the dark of the promenade.
67
XV
The inside of Nordstrom was sickeningly bright, and it took
until the guard and I reached the escalator for my eyes to
adjust. Only half the escalator remained usable, the other side
buried
in
a
heap
of
office
furniture,
clothing
racks,
and
shelving. One staircase is easier to defend than two in a fight,
I suppose.
The second floor had been divided up into what I assumed
were
apartments.
The
linoleum
walkways
formed
makeshift
hallways. Homemade walls or just huge barricades of the same
materials that had blocked half the escalator marked the end of
the store's linoleum and the beginning of the carpeted sections.
Shoes, housewares, menswear, etc.--all were now the semi-private
living quarters of the Mannequin elite. Ironically, I didn't see
a single clothing mannequin anywhere.
68
The guard forced me halfway around the store and then all
the
way
back
into
a
corner
that
used
to
house
Brass
Plum.
Bedecked with wide spirals of barbed wire, the walls of this
makeshift dwelling were the most intimidating of all. The guard
pulled me to a narrow gap in the fortification and shoved me
through. I landed flat on my face, and then I switched.
#
First thing I did was bellow a string of expletives. The
second was leave the house I'd switched to and run down the
street, looking for the park. In my haste, I got turned around,
taking a couple of wrong turns, but found the park before too
long, completely empty.
I had to get back to the mall before the Mannequins tried
to beat me awake again or worse. I'd done it once before, I told
myself. Sure, it was in the reverse direction, but I'd done it.
I thought about that day in the kitchen, how I hated what I was
doing with every piece of myself. I hated that stupid coywolf. I
hated that I was cutting up its carcass. I hated the stew I was
making and the house I was making it in and the sad excuse for a
life we all had to live in the husk of our former hometown.
All this I remembered while I sat in the park grass. I
tried to recall every single detail about the switch-town I
could. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. Flecks of neon
darted across the black in front of me. I allowed myself to
69
become more and more agitated, angry to the point of shaking. In
my mind’s eye, I gathered every detail of the switch-town and
imagined gripping all of it with both hands, hard. With as much
anger as I could muster, I pushed away from the images of the
town like I was pushing away from a dock at night, into a deep,
unknowable black.
#
That switch wasn't like the others--quick and painless-instead it felt like hours in the dark. When I opened my eyes in
the Nordstrom I felt tired, as if dragged from a deep sleep.
Sharp flashes of pain bloomed rhythmically across my forehead.
It took getting used to the pain for the bizarreness of my
surroundings to sink in. Above, sheets hung tent-like from the
ceiling, blocking out the fluorescent ceiling lights, the former
Brass Plum now lit by a variety of decorative lamps--stained
glass Tiffany knock-offs adorned with dragonflies, illuminated
salt crystals, even a couple of lava lamps. The inside of the
walls were lined with pegboard no doubt pilfered from other
stores
in
the
mall.
Very
little
of
the
peg
board
remained
visible, as whoever occupied the room had covered the walls with
an assortment of decorations, ranging from paisley-print scarves
to ghastly Thomas Kinkade prints in cherry-wood frames.
Though I'd left the room lying face-down on the floor, I
came back to it in a chaise lounge from, I assumed, one of the
70
other department stores that still carried furniture at the time
of the mall's closure.
Across from the chaise sat a middle-aged white man with
thinning gray hair, salt-and-pepper stubble covering everything
below his cheeks. He didn't look at me and instead picked at his
nails while he spoke.
"You're either very funny or very stupid." He had a voice
like a politician, crafted and slimy. "You were warned not to
feign sleep again. You're lucky I don't have the gumption to do
to you what the men downstairs did."
"I wasn't pretending," I said.
"Is
that
condition
so?
will
Do
prevent
not
forget:
you
from
if
some
further
sort
work,
of
then
health
I'll
be
forced to have you killed. Now, what was it you were doing?"
"I
wasn't
pretending,
and
I
wasn't
sleeping.
I
went
somewhere else."
He
looked
up
from
his
fingernails
for
a
brief
moment.
"Wherever did you go, young man?"
"An neighborhood full of empty houses. I go there all the
time, and when I'm gone, it looks like I'm sleeping to the
people here."
"An amusing story. You're certainly more creative than the
majority of people locked in the shops below us."
71
A sharp pain shot through my temple, causing me to gasp.
The man looked at me strangely. Something was wrong. I could
feel another switch coming. They never came this close together.
Never.
It happened quickly that time, closer to normal, and the
pain in my head subsided once I was back in the park. Someone,
something, wanted me here, was keeping me from leaving. If I
couldn't force my way out, I'd have to trick whatever kept me
switched into letting me go. Winn had said moving brought it on
faster, so I ran aimlessly down the street, fast as I could. I'd
left the soreness in my legs and torso in the mall along with my
fatigue and so I covered five blocks before I stopped to catch
my breath. I stood panting on the sidewalk when a memory of the
fire I'd started popped into my head--the feeling of the heat at
my back as I ran away, just before I'd switched. Locating the
tools
to
start
another
fire
would
have
taken
too
long,
so
instead I approached the nearest house, fished a rock out of a
flowerbed, and hurled it through the house's front window. This
I repeated, breaking window after window until at last I was
sent back to the mall.
#
My body had remained on the chaise lounge. The Mannequin
boss still picked at his fingernails. I shifted on the chaise,
drawing his attention.
72
"I assume you left again?" he asked.
"Yes."
"And? Tell me what you did while you were away."
"I
ran
through
a
park,"
I
said
flatly.
"Broke
some
windows."
The Mannequin grunted. "How quaint. When my men told me you
had the audacity to try and get out of work, I assumed you'd be
entertaining at least. You've disappointed me."
I swallowed loudly enough for him to hear the gulp of air
in my throat.
The
man
smiled.
"It's
no
matter.
That's
not
why
I've
brought you here. I believe your, shall we say, imagination,
this flair for the dramatic you've demonstrated, will do nicely
in our next pageant."
I shifted nervously on the chaise.
"I imagine you'd like to know which pageant you'll be a
part of. Would you?"
I nodded.
He produced a DVD case and rattled it in front of my face,
too vigorously for me to make out its title.
"Young man," he began, "it's the greatest story ever told."
Though
I
couldn't
read
the
words
on
the
case,
recognize the image of Jesus wearing a crown of thorns.
#
73
I
did
Vomit rose hot in my throat the whole walk back to the
Rave.
I was going to die in a mall.
Not far from our cell, I pulled away from the guard chosen
to escort me back to throw up in one of the large pots in the
center of the promenade. He yanked me away from the pot as soon
as I'd finished.
The Mannequin guard deposited me unceremoniously into the
cell. Hux came forward as soon the grille had closed. I opened
my mouth to tell him what had happened--so much had happened-but no sound came out. My throat and chest tightened, breathing
became difficult. Hux guided me behind the counter and helped me
off my feet. He sat behind me, hands sliding gently up and down
arms, while I wheezed and forced bile back down my throat. I
couldn't tell him about the pageant, not just then anyway. There
was something more important.
"Who's Lucy?" I said loud enough for Johnson to hear. Her
eyes went wide.
"That's me," she said in little more than a whisper.
"I saw a woman," I explained. "She told me to tell Lucy she
was coming."
Johnson's face went rigid with a resolve I'd never seen in
her before. "Only one person calls me Lucy. You saw Suzanne."
74
XVI
Hux needed to know about the pageant, of that I was sure,
but I had trouble working up the wherewithal to deliver the
news. It took me a few hours after my return to do it. He hadn't
asked why the Mannequins had taken me when I got back, partly
because we'd spent a great deal of time talking to Johnson about
Suzanne, but also because he wouldn't have wanted to pressure
me. If I needed rest, he'd want to give it to me. He was a good
guy, the best guy.
Johnson was different after I told her I saw Suzanne. Where
before she'd exhibited a quiet, dignified resignation to never
escaping the mall, now she gave off waves of determination,
intense and consistent, and her eyes shone with renewed energy.
She talked more too, mostly about the ways we could prepare for
Suzanne's eventual coming to the rescue. She drilled me for
information,
certain
that
Suzanne
75
would
have
given
me
some
indication as to when she would return, when in fact Suzanne had
told me almost nothing.
She spent and hour or so pacing the old Rave, not so much
as angry as frustrated, stopping every few minutes to say to me,
"Tell me again exactly what she said."
Though I couldn't help Johnson, her energy was contagious,
and before long the three of us set to scheming about how to get
past the grille at the front of the store. We scoured the place,
looking for anything we could use as a weapon or tools. We came
up with nothing, but it felt good to try.
We slept well that night, exhausted by the excitement of
the day.
The next morning I told Hux I'd been chosen for a pageant.
"So, that's why they took you?" he asked.
"Yes. That and the boss had heard about me switching and
wanted to know more."
"The boss?" Hux looked confused.
"I don't know his name. The guy who's in charge. He lives
in the Nordstrom. That's who they took me to see."
Hux nodded like he understood. "I'll bet the pageant isn't
too bad. The last one was pretty rough." It had been a torture
scene from a Bond flick neither of us recognized.
"I know what it is, Hux."
He leaned toward me. "So tell me."
76
"A Jesus movie," I said, the words heavy in my mouth.
"Oh no. Oh no, no, no." Hux rubbed his hands over his eyes
and dragged them down his cheeks. "Which one?" he asked.
"Does it matter? They all end the same. Anyway, I didn't
get a good look at the cover. It happened really fast. I think
it was the Gibson one."
"Oh no, oh no," Hux repeated. He sat silently for a moment,
and then his face hardened. "Suzanne better hurry."
#
The next day passed without incident. The Mannequins more
or less left our cell alone, though Hux did get chosen to work
one of the generators for a few hours.
The switches were coming faster, like whatever had pulled
me there in the first place wanted me to stay. I could have
fought it, but finding Winn would be important if it led to us
figuring
the
switch
out.
I
worried
less
about
any
of
the
Mannequins finding me passed out back at the mall. I doubted
they'd bother doing anything to me before the pageant.
I felt another one coming, so I lay down, closed my eyes,
and waited for it to hit. I didn't have to wait long.
There
were
no
street
signs
in
the
switch-town,
but
I
recognized the road I'd just woken up at the edge of. Memory
told me I could follow its curve to the next cross street, take
a
left,
and
end
up
at
the
park
77
after
walking
four
or
five
blocks. I did so, made a left-hand turn, and got about two
blocks down the street before I caught sight of Winn popping out
from a side street a block in front of me. She was running and
turned immediately toward the park and so did not see me. I
called out to her, and she twisted as best she could while still
running to see behind herself. Her face looked different than
usual,
flushed
from
running,
but
there
was
something
else--
panic, maybe.
After she looked my way, Winn changed directions quickly,
making a beeline for me. I broke into a jog to try and meet her
halfway.
When
I
was
close
enough,
she
stopped
and
said,
half
panting, "There are people here. I saw them."
I tried to ask for details but she cut me off.
"They're following me. We have to run."
And so we did, back the way I'd come and past where I'd
switched, on and on until, after we'd rounded a corner, we found
ourselves face to face with group of stern-faced men and women,
some in long, white lab coats, others in wrinkled button-ups
tucked into ill-fitting khakis.
Winn and I were too tired to run again, so we stood our
ground, tense and out of breath, before the strangers. There
were a lot of them, probably twenty or so clustered together in
the middle of the street.
78
"We're sorry we frightened you," a man’s voice rang tinnily
from a megaphone or loudspeaker, "but it's very important we
speak with you, that we explain what's been happening to you." I
couldn’t see who was talking--he had to be somewhere near the
back
of
the
crowd--but
there
was
something
familiar
in
his
voice.
Winn and I looked at one another. She didn't know what to
do any better than I did.
"We realize how confused you must be, but if you come with
us, we can explain everything."
I edged closer to Winn. I thought if we let them talk long
enough, we could catch our breath and run again. I hoped Winn
was thinking the same thing.
"We won't hurt you," the voice continued. "In fact, we need
your help. The two of you are very important."
My breathing had slowed and was almost back to normal. I
listened for Winn's. It too was less heavy.
The people before us began to shift, and the crowd parted
to reveal the man with the megaphone. My breath caught in my
throat. The man’s voice had seemed familiar because it belonged
to the Mannequin boss from back at the mall. He’d shaved his
head since our meeting, but the same gray stubble covered his
cheeks, chin, and neck.
79
The man extended an open hand toward Winn and me. "Please
come with us. We need you."
The gesture shocked me into action. I grabbed Winn's hand
and bolted to the right with no thought as to where I was going,
save to get away from that man.
Behind us, I heard him yelling, "Send them back!" before I
blacked out mid-step.
#
I woke up in the Rave but hardly had time to sit up before
I felt the pull of another switch. I fought it as hard as I
could but didn't last long, and when I opened my eyes again, I
was on asphalt, surrounded by the people I'd tried to escape a
moment ago. Winn was sitting next to me, her knees tucked up
under chin. The group had formed a tight circle around us. There
was
nowhere
to
run,
though
none
of
them
made
any
move
to
circle
of
restrain us. They regarded us with cool, patient faces.
The
Mannequin
boss
stepped
forward
from
the
people and crouched down. He wore a white lab coat with two pens
tucked in the pocket.
He looked me in the eye. "I've already spoken with your
friend, and I'll tell you the same thing I told her," he began.
"We're the ones who brought you here, and we have the ability to
send you back. That's what we did just now, to prevent you from
running away. We can do it again, if we have to, but we'd rather
80
not.” The boss’s voice was calm and different than when we’d
spoken last. The weary affect he’d displayed in Nordstrom was
gone, replaced by a cadence that was flatter, almost robotic.
Even more strangely, he spoke to me as if we’d never met before,
making no mention of our previous conversation. Or the death
sentence he’d pronounced upon me. “I'm asking you both to come
with us. Will you do this?"
I looked at Winn. She nodded, but said nothing. I looked
back
at
the
boss.
Something
was
different
about
him,
less
menacing, though he didn’t strike me as trustworthy either. I
wondered if I’d stumbled across his twin. In any case, fleeing
was no longer an option, so I bit the bullet and nodded as Winn
had.
#
They led Winn and I to a nearby house, through the front
door and down into the basement where they pulled a shelf away
from the wall, revealing an imposing metal door. They took us
through the door and into a hallway with cement walls and floor.
There
were
no
overhead
lights,
and
instead
a
string
of
industrial bulbs, the kind you'd hang up in house that was being
renovated, spaced at wide intervals, lit the way. As we walked
down the corridor, I could see other hallways branching off from
ours, leading to metal doors like the one we'd passed through. I
81
wondered if every house in the switch-town was connected to some
kind of tunnel system.
We walked a long time, taking so many turns I completely
lost track of which direction we traveled in. Had I been forced
to find my way back on my own, I couldn't have done it. Winn and
I were both silent. I assumed she was as nervous as I was. I
don't know what I would have said anyway.
I can't really say how long it took for us to get to the
lab--time works differently when you're scared--but I can say
that's where we ended up, that one of those metal doors led to a
stairway, which in turn led not into a house but into some kind
of research facility, clean, white, and sterile, with no windows
that I saw and harsh fluorescent lighting.
The Mannequin boss’s twin or whoever he was led us through
the lab, past people hard at work, none of whom seemed the least
bit interested in our arrival. Our trip ended in a room with
white walls and two empty hospital beds. There were machines
next to each bed. I couldn't tell you what they did, except for
one
I
recognized--the
thing
that
beeps
when
people
die
in
movies.
"This," our guide said to us, "is your room." We must have
looked confused, because he quickly added, "You both sleep here.
The two of you have been in comas for almost a year now."
82
XVII
The man who looked like the Mannequin boss--he claimed to
go by his last name, Connor--told us everything, starting with
the fact that where Winn and I came from and the switch-town
were in parallel dimensions.
The
bodies
we
switched
to
were
our
own,
Connor
had
explained, only different versions of them.
I was immediately lost in my thoughts, desperate to figure
out what it meant that I’d encountered both versions of Connor,
or if it meant anything at all. Thankfully Winn was with it
enough
to
ask
questions,
smart
questions.
"Am
I
right
in
assuming that the Winn and the Joaquin who live here are in a
coma, and that when you bring us here, you also send them back
to where we’re from?"
"Correct," Connor answered.
"That explains why Hux says I sleep the whole time I'm
gone," I said.
83
"Yes, my parents have said the same thing," Winn added. She
turned back to Connor. "How did, um, we end up in comas?"
"Car accidents, both of you, but separate ones. Completely
unrelated."
"So, tell me this--" she began, "why bring us here just to
let us spend nearly a year wandering around an empty town? I
know you were watching us."
"We wanted to learn as much about the exchange as possible,
but we also had no idea as to what type of people you two would
be. We decided that a period of observation would work best.
Also, we needed to know we could maintain the exchange long
enough for us to have this conversation. It wouldn't do to have
you careening back from where you came at the drop of a hat."
Winn sighed, placed her hand against her mouth with her
index finger curled so that the knuckle pointed up and touched
her nose. Her eyes drifted to the corner of the room. I assumed
she was trying to do the same thing I was--sort out which of the
myriad questions ricocheting through our brains to ask.
For once I beat her to the punch. "If we sleep here in this
room, then why do we wake up in different places every time we
switch?"
Connor’s lips spread into the faintest bit of a smile, as
if I’d asked something particularly clever. "The technology we
84
use to bring you here has been designed to function over a
significant distance. We needed to test the exchange--"
Winn cut him off. "Switch really is a better word."
If
Connor
was
at
all
bothered
by
the
interruption,
he
didn't show it, but continued without missing a beat. "Very
well. We needed to verify that the switch could function over a
variety
of
distances
from
our
central
laboratory,
where
the
technology itself is located. When you switch, there is in fact
a delay between when your consciousness is brought into these
bodies
and
when
you
gain
awareness
of
your
surroundings.
Oftentimes, the both of you exhibit signs of grogginess upon
arrival."
"But it feels so sudden," I interjected.
"Perhaps on your end it is," Connor said. "However, through
our monitoring of you, we've determined you require a short
amount of time to readjust to your new bodies."
"How extensive is this monitoring?" Winn asked.
"We watch you at all times so long as you're here."
"So the camera in the peacock statue was yours?" I asked.
"Oh yes, and there are plenty more hidden cameras where
that came from."
I panicked a bit to myself at the thought of having been
watched, even in the bathroom. Had they seen ... everything?
85
Winn's voice brought me back to the situation at hand.
"Tell me why the houses are empty."
"As I said, we determined it was safer to observe from a
distance."
Winn
pressed
Connor
for
more.
"Yes,
but
those
houses
weren't just emptied of people. Aside from a few cans of green
beans and other odds and ends, it looked like nobody had been
living in any of them for a really long time."
"Oh, most of us have long since relocated underground, into
the
laboratory.
belongings,
or
We
brought
hiding
them
you
here
every
so
time,
often,
would
removing
have
our
proved
impractical. There are sleeping quarters down here too. It makes
it easier to spend the day working when you wake up just down
the hall."
Winn still looked dissatisfied to me, and Connor must have
thought so too, because he clumsily changed the subject.
"Wouldn't you like to know how all of this works?"
#
I'm not even going to pretend I could explain the science
to you. Even if I had it written down in front of me. The
closest I got to understanding it was with the visual aide.
Connor tried dumbing down the physics for Winn and me, but not
enough. I imagine my eyes glazed over. I couldn't even nod and
fake it. Connor walked to a nearby table and picked up a small
86
notebook. He took the front and back covers in each of his hands
and
pulled
notebook's
them
so
pages
far
fanned
open
out
they
like
touched
those
each
cheesy
other.
paper
The
party
decorations, the ones shaped like pineapples and stuff.
"This,"
everything.
Connor
The
said,
nodding
multiverse--every
at
the
single
bit
notebook,
of
"is
matter,
and
everything else, in existence. Think of each page as a universe
and everything inside that universe as the letters on the page.
Everything you've seen, known, and touched fits on just one of
these pages. Our universe, the one we're in right now, is one of
these pages, and the place we send you to is on a different
page. Understand?"
Winn and I nodded.
"In English, we have twenty-six letters, plus numbers and
punctuation
marks.
However,
we
can
arrange
these
letters,
numbers, and symbols in different ways on every page. Each page
will be different, yet made of the same materials, and some will
be more alike than others.
"Even
though
each
page
is
separate,"
Connor
continued,
"they're all attached to the same spine." He set the notebook
down on a nearby table. "Now, try to avoid thinking about some
nice,
Instead
clean
center-of-the-multiverse
imagine
a
place
where
every
full
page,
of
cosmic
every
glue.
universe,
intersects all the others. This place holds all the matter,
87
energy, and everything else in existence, all the letters in the
book." He paused briefly. "Are you two keeping up?"
"I think so," Winn said.
I shrugged. "I guess."
"So
from
this
point,
all
the
building
blocks
of
the
multiverse (the letters) get expressed in different arrangements
in different universes, but it's all the same material, existing
in multiple places at the same time. All of it is entangled.
That means 'connected,' sort of," he half-corrected.
"The universe you come from is very much like our own. Its
matter is arranged close enough to the way ours is arranged that
we
were
able
to
detect
the
entanglement
of
your
universe's
particles with ours. Once we discovered the entanglement, it was
only
a
matter
manipulating
it
to
exchange
places
with
our
counterparts on the other side. Obviously, exchanging an entire
body with all of its intricacies would have been too complex and
dangerous, given that we knew next to nothing about the other
dimension. But brainwaves, a person's consciousness, that was
within the realm of possibility, so long as there was a brain
waiting
on
the
other
side.
We
achieved
full
exchange
by
establishing a quantum..."
And that was as far as my understanding went. How they
managed to futz with the connection between our dimensions was
beyond me, but somehow my consciousness and Winn's got pulled
88
through
parts
of
time
and
space
beyond
our
perception
and
deposited into two comatose bodies, our own comatose bodies. I
imagined
my
mind
traveling
through
some
kind
of
inter-
dimensional tunnel they'd bored through the multiverse. Other
times I pictured it zipping along a metaphysical telephone wire
that connected me to myself across bulbous nebulae, past great
streaks of comets, over bright galaxies pinwheeling through the
deep black.
Cutting through this fantasy,
a question came to me so
quickly, I blurted it out without thinking. "Why bring us here
at all?"
"Yeah, I don't get it," Winn chimed in. "What do you get
out of all this?"
"We gain knowledge," Connor said in a tone that implied the
answer was obvious. "Discovery, exploration. If you two can help
us
locate
our
counterparts
on
the
other
side,
we
could
participate in the exchange as well. We could experience a new
reality.
Who,
besides
the
two
of
you,
can
say
they've
done
that?"
"So, you've never tried sending one of your own to our
dimension?" Winn asked, giving Connor the side-eye.
Connor sighed and hung his head a bit. "Once. Before we
brought you here. One of our own volunteered. He died almost
immediately on our end. We don't know if he's still alive in
89
your reality or not. This is why your help is so important. If
we can find him..."
"I'm not sure how much help I'll be," I offered. "Where I
live, there aren't many people left. Not after the eruption."
"Eruption?" Connor looked taken aback. "You have to tell me
everything."
90
XVIII
While Winn and I explained what had happened to our city,
to our homes, Connor brought out a group of surveyor's maps and
unrolled them on a nearby table. He waited for a break in our
stories and then asked us to point out the location of our city
on one the maps as best we could. The shape of our part of the
country was pretty much the same as his, so it wasn't hard. The
biggest difference was no mountain. In his world, our city was
still intact. Connor pointed out the lab's location, somewhere
around the southern edge of our town.
"It would be nice to see it. The city, I mean," I said.
"I don't think we can keep you here that far away from our
equipment," Connor said flatly.
After he put the maps away, Winn and I told Connor what
remained of our respective stories--mine ending at the mall,
hers ending at the hotel over the mountains--as well as the
names of people we knew who had survived on our side. I didn't
have
many
to
offer.
I
got
the
91
feeling
Connor
didn't
fully
believe me, and I couldn't really blame him. If someone had told
me two years prior that I'd be held captive by a bunch of masked
white men in a mall, I'd have laughed in their face. Given that
I couldn't think of any way to convince him of the truth, I
didn't bring it up again.
The conversation after that lagged. Winn and I had reached
our
limit
and
had
little
else
to
offer.
Traveling
between
universes can really take it out of you. Connor got absorbed in
his own thoughts, remaining silent for long minutes and talking
more to himself when he did speak up. Knowing about the string
of disasters that befell our town led him to hypothesize that
his
deceased
colleague
had
traded
places
with
one
of
the
casualties of the eruption. Without a living body to house it,
Connor
guessed,
his
consciousness
had
simply
ceased
to
be.
Nothing had been brought over to his side, because there was
nothing
to
bring
over,
and
so
the
emptied
body
of
Connor's
colleague stopped functioning.
At some point, Connor seemed to figure out that me and Winn
had had enough and directed his attention back to us. "If I send
the two of you back now, will you help us gather names so that
we can attempt a safer visit to your world?"
We agreed. The whole situation remained hard to wrap my
head around, but rebellion seemed pointless at the time.
92
"I'll give you a while on the other side, but I'll bring
you back before too long. We're still not sure whether time
flows identically in both places. If you can, keep track of the
date and time when you get back and as close to when you leave
again as possible."
It hit me that I had absolutely no idea of the date, aside
from which season it was.
"By chance you don't know of anyone who looks like one of
us," Connor moved his hand in a sweeping gesture past the other
scientists at work, "who happens to be in a coma, do you?" He
chuckled
then.
It's
the
only
time
I
recall
him
making
any
attempt at humor, and it made me uncomfortable. It made him
sound like the Mannequin boss.
Winn shot me a look that told me she too was weirded out.
"Connor?" she began in the voice people our age use when they
want something from adults. "I'm so tired, and I bet Joaquin is
too, and it's so much quieter here than on our end. Do you think
we could have a few minutes in, um, our room? You know, to
sleep?"
"Of course," he answered. "It's the least we can do." He
gestured toward the room and we left him to his thoughts.
#
I'd hardly set foot in the room before Winn shut the door.
She turned off the overhead lights, but enough fluorescent blue
93
came in under the door for me to just make out the location of
our two beds. I sat down on the nearest one, and Winn took a
seat next to me.
She scooted close and spoke in a low whisper. "Something's
off here, Joaquin. These people creep me out, especially him."
My eyes had adjusted enough for me to see her jerk her chin
toward the door. "I don't trust them either," I told her. "The
people who captured me and locked me up? Their leader, it's him,
Winn. The other version has hair, but it's him."
"No
effing
way!"
she
whispered
sharply.
"I
don't
think
we're safe here."
"So, what do we do, Winn?"
"We can't risk fighting them, not yet anyway. For now I say
we help them a little, give them just enough to think we're
cooperating while we think of a way out of this. I think the
next time we're here we need to ask Connor for a tour of the
machines they use to bring us here."
"Do you think he'll do that?"
"If we play our cards right, yes. Probably. Whatever, he
needs our help. He'll do it. And once we know where it is," Winn
paused and rubbed her hands together, "then we can figure out a
way to destroy it." She hopped off the bed we shared, walked to
the other one, and lay down.
"What are you doing?"
94
"I'm going to get some sleep before they send us back.
Aren't you exhausted?"
"Yeah, but," I lowered my voice as quiet as it would go,
"are we safe?"
"If they wanted to kill us, they'd have done it already. At
least that's how it would work on TV."
"I guess you're right." I reclined on the bed. I hadn't
been this comfortable in a long time. I think I was asleep
before my eyes closed.
After what seemed like only seconds, a man knocked lightly
on the door of our room and poked his head in. "It's been hours.
We'll be sending you back now if that's all right."
I mumbled a half-asleep mmm-hmm and dozed off again. I woke
in the mall, in the dark, with my head in Hux's lap. The switch
hadn’t roused me, at least not until it was complete. I spent a
few minutes wondering if they’d switched me in my sleep before,
and if so, how often it had happened. It wasn’t long before I
decided it didn’t matter and let myself drift in and out of
consciousness, my face flush against Hux’s warm body.
95
XIX
Back at the mall, the sun had yet to rise, and I felt
grateful for the extra bit of darkness as I slept shallowly,
waking often from strange dreams--Hippie appearing before us in
the mall as a giant mallard duck; me kissing a boy whose mouth
was full of sand; the three of us escaping our cell by crawling
through a power socket; Mannequins chasing me across the roof of
building and me taking a blind leap right off the edge of it.
That last one made by body shudder so bad Hux came halfway out
of sleep, enough to pull me closer to him. He wrapped both arms
around me and, placing one hand gently against the back of my
head, guided my face to rest against his chest. He kept his hand
where it was, stroking my hair slowly until he was completely
asleep again. He did all of this without opening his eyes. The
floor of the Rave wasn't as comfortable as the bed in lab had
been, but Hux was warm and soft and safe. I pretended the rise
and fall of his chest were waves rocking a boat the two of us
had piloted into the Sound. His breath was the crash of water
96
against the distant shore. His heartbeat was the slap of fenders
against the hull. I breathed deep and slow until I passed out so
hard I didn't dream.
#
Johnson
store.
It
woke
was
us
better
when
to
she
be
heard
up
someone
when
the
approaching
Mannequins
our
came.
Sometimes they'd take your sleeping as some kind of personal
slight and wake you with a nightstick.
Hux and I rose quickly, rubbing the sleep out of our eyes.
The three of us were standing together behind the counter when a
single Mannequin came into view, holding two full water bottles.
He thrust them clumsily into the grille, took a step back from
the wire mesh, and then stood still.
Hux, Johnson, and I exchanged confused looks. Usually the
Mannequins
left
immediately,
unless
they
wanted
to
give
us
trouble. We'd certainly never seen one hang out in front of our
cell before.
Abruptly, Johnson reached out, taking one of Hux's hands
and mine in hers. "Suzanne," she said quietly.
The Mannequin at the grille gave the slightest nod.
Johnson took a step forward, and Suzanne gently shook her
head. It would look suspicious for Johnson to be near the grille
if another Mannequin were to walk by.
97
The two women stood silently, eyes locked on one another. I
imagined them trying to say with their eyes all the things they
couldn't say out loud. I thought about what I'd want to say to
Hux were we in their position.
Somewhere further down the promenade, a Mannequin shouted,
startling Johnson. Their moment had ended. Suzanne tapped one of
the water bottles she'd shoved in the grille twice and took off
in the direction she'd arrived from.
Johnson held our hands a few second longer and then let go
and made for the grille. She pulled both water bottles out and
tucked them under her shirt. Normally we had to drink from the
bottles like hamsters while the Mannequins watched. However long
they decided to wait was the time we had to drink, and they
rarely waited long enough for each of us to get more than a gulp
or two. Now, we had two bottles to drink from as we pleased.
Johnson went back behind the counter and sat down. She
pulled the bottles from under her shirt, passed one to Hux, took
a long drink from the other and then passed the bottle to me.
Her face was beaming, but not just because of the water. She had
something in her hand.
"I found this wedged under one of the bottles." Johnson
held up a small piece of paper that had been folded twice. She
opened it and read the note aloud. "I'm brining you something
98
tomorrow. It's all part of the plan. Trust me, there is a plan.
Eat this note when you're done so they don't find it."
Johnson then tore the paper into thirds. "Help me out,
boys," she said, handing a piece to Hux and me. I don't think
any three people have been as happy to eat paper as we were
then. We chewed thoroughly, closed-mouth smiles on our faces the
entire time. The extra water helped to wash it all down.
"It's a good thing the Mannequins wear those masks. Suzanne
must never take hers off. I don't think I've ever seen a lady
Mannequin," I said.
Johnson
chuckled.
"Oh,
even
if
she
took
the
mask
off,
Suzanne's always been a little on the butch side. Most days she
wears a binder, too. She can roll with the boys when she wants
to."
I was suddenly very excited to meet Suzanne properly. I
wondered what all of us would do after we got out. Look for
Gabby and Julio first, of course. But after that, maybe the six
of us could find our way out of the city together.
We spent the rest of the day in unusually high spirits,
chatting infrequently, taking sips of water as we pleased. At
one point, Johnson asked us what food we missed the most. I was
going to say pizza, but Hux answered before me with raw oysters,
which was way too fancy for me to follow up with pizza, so I had
to ask for time to think. Johnson said that she and Suzanne were
99
vegan before everything went south, and that Suzanne made a mean
barbecue seitan sandwich. It wasn't what I wanted to eat, but
all I could think about was the disgusting candy Hux and I
shared the first time we kissed. Even if we didn't make it out
of the city, so long as we got out of the mall, out of lodo and
back to Parkland, things would be all right. So long as I had
Hux.
#
Sleep
didn't
come
easy
that
night
because
of
all
the
excitement. We'd puzzled over what Suzanne would bring like kids
thinking about Santa. My guess was a key to open the grille. The
only problem with that was how to get out of the mall without
being
seen.
We
speculated
until
yawns
interrupted
every
sentence, forcing us to lie down.
The
three
of
us
woke
at
first
light.
We
watched
the
promenade in front of the Rave like hawks. When Suzanne finally
appeared it was with two prisoners--a girl a couple years older
than me and a little boy.
"No way," Hux said, mystified.
Suzanne raised the grille and shoved Gabby and Julio inside
with a phony "Get in there!" for good measure. She nodded to
Johnson and left.
Hux and I couldn't contain ourselves. We ran to Julio and
Gabby, each of us locking the closest one in a tight hug. Hux
100
lifted Julio off the ground and held him. Julio laid his head on
Hux's shoulder and wrapped his small arms around Hux's neck.
Gabby returned my embrace just as tightly for a few seconds
before loosening her grip and saying, "Okay, you're squishing my
boobs."
Hux put Julio back on the ground so he could take Gabby in
his thick arms. "Good to see you, sis," he said.
I walked to Julio, tousled his hair, and kissed the top of
his head.
"Glad you two are okay," Hux said to Gabby.
"Oh yeah, me and Julio and Hippie got away the night the
Mannequins came. There were too many of them to get you two away
from them, so we followed them back to the mall. We were camped
outside the mall, trying to figure a way to bust you two out
when we ran into Suzanne."
Hux's face turned serious. "What about Hippie? Where is he
now?"
"You and that dog," Gabby said, rolling her eyes. "He's
fine. We left him outside at the campsite we made. He'll be
waiting for you."
Once the initial rush of seeing Gabby and Julio again wore
off, I felt like it was time to get down to brass tacks. "Don't
get me wrong, it's great that we're all together again, but
isn't you being in here kind of the opposite of escape?"
101
"Oh ye of little faith," Gabby said, pulling a key ring
bearing a single key out of her pocket. "Suzanne lifted a master
key from one of the guards who, let's just say, won't be needing
it anymore."
Johnson didn't look happy. "She didn't...did she?"
Gabby put the key in her pocket. The smile she'd had on
left her face, and her typical seriousness returned. "Johnson,"
she
began,
"you're
Johnson,
right?
First
things
first,
I'm
Gabby." She stuck out hand, and she and Johnson shook. "Nice to
meet you. And yes, Suzanne did have to take that guard out.
There was no way around it. I didn't mean to sound flip earlier,
but we had to."
"Gabby what happens when the Mannequins come looking for
this guy?" Hux asked.
"Honestly, Hux, they're not that organized. And even if
they did, they'll never find anything."
"How can you be sure?" Hux was visibly frustrated. "They're
going to kill Joaquin if we don't get out of here now. If they
get wise to the fact that a master key is just floating around-"
Gabby cut him off. "The body is gone, Hux."
"You mean like buried?" Hux asked.
"Not exactly, no," she said.
"Well, what then?"
102
"Hux, as you know food is scarce right now and--"
Hux cut her off this time. "No you did not!"
"Me? Oh no, please. Like I said, food is scarce, even more
so than when we were in Parkland. It’s so hard to hunt when
you’re
on
the
run,
and
Hippie
does
eat
an
awful
lot."
She
trailed off.
"No, no, no. You fed my puppy,” Hux struggled to find the
words, “Mannequin meat?"
Gabby dismissed him with a wave of her hand. "Really, Hux.
He's
eaten
worse.
And
we've
got
more
important
things
to
discuss. For starters, our escape plan." Gabby paused while the
most mischievous smile I have ever seen on a human face overtook
her lips. "We're getting you out of this store, and then we're
going to blow up the mall."
103
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