Axis of Aaron (10 page)

Ebon blinked. He must be dehydrated. He hadn’t drunk enough water in the restroom. He might have been out here, in the sun, for hours. Maybe he’d passed out somewhere from the heat. That would explain his weak mentality and the fact that a few handfuls of water weren’t enough to erase it. It could happen out here on Canal River Holly, where all the cottages had been abandoned decades ago. Or on the crossroad to the right: Canal River Regret.
 

Sigh. Exhale. Eyes closed.
 

Begin again, and stay calm.
 

Ebon had to reach the restrooms behind him. He could get more water, splash more coolness on his face.
 

He opened his eyes and found himself standing in front of the public beach access across from Sweetums. Oasis was no longer playing, and the beach was quiet. A cloud had again stolen across the sun and turned everything grayish. Now it was possible to believe that even
these
homes were empty, despite the fact that year-round residents owned them.
 

Another deep sigh.
 

Feeling as if his world had gone slippery, Ebon took deliberate steps down the path. He neared its end and looked at his feet, unwilling to see where he was going lest he find it wrong. He watched sand-strewn grass surrender to pure sand, and only then did he slowly raise his head.
 

The boulder was before him, exactly where it should be. Its shadow was short but pointed toward the lapping water, because it was morning and Ebon was on the island’s west side.
 

Now back in the correct neighborhood, part of him wanted to race up the beach to Aimee’s. But he made himself stop, sit on the boulder, and fumble the rock out of his shoe. He breathed slowly, taking in the waves and the water.
 

He must be more unhinged than he’d realized. His life had ripped at the seams, opening like a bloom to show its blight. Nothing in Ebon’s life had turned out as it seemed. His apparent security had been an illusion. His lovely wife had actually been a cheating whore. His new family had exploded in glass and steel. It was appropriate that he’d wanted Aaron to help him forget because what was so recently behind him was now all gone. He probably didn’t even have his job anymore, and if he let his apartment rent lapse, he’d have no place to live. He could be a part of Aaron’s small community forever instead, and become one of the locals. He could make sandals or baskets for shells, then sell them to summer tourists.
 

Ebon stood. One step at a time, both literally and as part of his larger, fucked-up life.
 

He passed the cottage with the rocks out front, again feeling entirely too close to the home’s front porch. There were people moving around inside. That was good. People grounded everything. Proof that you were where you needed to be, because they’d notice if things were wrong and let you know. When you were cracking up, paths might sprawl in the wrong places, east and west might even swap spots, but at least right now there were others with him. Others who might not be stressed out, juggling six traumas at once. Others with an opinion about the beach being more or less sideways.
 

Ebon almost came to a halt when he saw the slanted beach ahead, but wouldn’t allow himself to stop completely. He had to get back. Home. Where he belonged.

He hurried on, fighting a delicate line between forced normality and a suspicion that he was totally losing it. If his feet stopped moving, he felt certain, the sense of tipping horizon would assert itself as literal. Right now, the people in the cottage behind him didn’t seem bothered by the way the coast had turned sideways, and right now his feet were still sticking to the beach, the rocks remaining rooted in the sand. It was only his head spinning though; if the world had
really
tipped, the water wouldn’t stay put. It would spill down toward the new gravity source, draining the ocean.
 

Ebon made his feet go faster, edging closer to panic. He’d taken high school physics, but wasn’t sure if that had been a month ago or half a lifetime before. He understood Gravity 101. There was no true up or down in an objective sense. Water, sand, and beachcombers losing their shit would all stick to the planet whether it seemed to be below or not.
 

Ebon closed his eyes, clawing for equilibrium.
 

He was exhausted, and thoroughly stressed. No wonder he couldn’t figure out which streets led where and which way was up. His life no longer had those touchstones. He was Ebon Shale. He’d always lived on Aaron, with Aimee. There had never been anything else worth remembering.
 

He opened his eyes, and found that everything was back to okay. He sighed an exhale, then kept walking. He passed Pinky Slip, again going the hard way and regretting it, staying close to the water. He had to reach Aimee’s. He needed to sit and get some food and caffeine into his body. Then things would be fine. He could unload some of this mental baggage that — of course, he saw it now — was weighing him down because he’d been stubbornly keeping it inside. He’d given Aimee the kiddie version of his life in the city and what had happened with Holly (how she’d had an unfortunate car accident, nobody’s fault and tragic) but not the details. He hadn’t even told her much about his job (he worked at a movie theater collecting tickets after school), his apartment (above the garage) or anything else.
 

But before Ebon could straighten all of that out, he had to get back.
 

Ebon came over the rise in the dunes and saw Aimee’s cottage as it had always been: gray-blue cedar shingles, a roof that almost matched, charming windows with shutters that were hung with welcoming drapes, stretched canvas furniture out on the wide porch, one chair occupied by a broad-shouldered visitor with reddish-blond hair who must have arrived while Ebon was away. The color of the scene was bright and fresh, the windows polished to near invisibility. The sandy grass, such that there was any behind the dunes, was neatly mowed; the shed to one side was pristine, secured with padlocks at both the top and bottom. It looked brand new.
Brand new.
 

The door opened, and Ebon saw Aimee emerge, running toward him with her feet bare, her messy blonde hair somehow longer than it had been when she’d met him at the boat. That made sense because it wasn’t actually
Aimee
coming forward; it was a girl in her early teens who’d been staying with Aimee that Ebon had forgotten about, and the girl wasn’t coming to rescue him or offer him coffee; she was coming to play. And it wasn’t really morning; it was late afternoon, and the vibrant blues and hot yellows had surrendered into evening’s inevitable oranges, Ebon’s shadow stretched toward the cabin rather than away from it, the sand tangerine in the light rather than the color of mud, the face of the cottage and the girl almost washed away in a spray of near-sunset sunshine that hit the world head on, the girl’s smile wide, one tooth crooked and a beauty mark on her chin. As she came closer Ebon wanted to greet her (of course he did; he
always
did) but he felt the air flee his lungs, and the last of his footing slipped away. He fell facedown on the dune, one eye open and able to count individual grains of sand as he watched the way they moved under his smashed nose’s exhale.
 

“Ebon, you’re back!” said the girl, coming to stand above him.

He tried to roll over and reply, but he was rooted, unable to blink. All he could see were her small, dirty feet at the edge of his peripheral vision.

“Let’s build a sandcastle,” she said.
 

She ignored the way he’d fallen, the way one arm had awkwardly bent beneath him and been pinned by the sand, and the way the coastline had again tipped and was now revolving around them both.
 

Ebon watched her legs cross as she sat near his crumpled form, Indian style. He groaned, somehow delighted.

And then there was nothing.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Meaning in it All
 

EBON SAT CROSS-LEGGED IN THE sand, seven dollars in the pocket of his slippery black gym shorts (the ones his mother had packed — perfect for soccer practice, kind of wrong for the beach), using his fingers to make long parallel furrows like a miniature, arid farm. Seven bucks was enough for two carnival admissions (that was intentional; Grams had thought he might have, make, or run into a friend), but Ebon didn’t know a soul on Aaron. He’d pay $3.50 for a solo ticket, then use the other $3.50 for a hot dog or cotton candy or an elephant ear, whatever he could afford. That had been the plan until he’d met this bossy girl on his walk to the pier. Now that he was apparently stuck here, he might have seven bucks to himself — or none, if he admitted the truth to Grams and had to give it all back, unused.
 

“Go get more wet sand,” said the girl.
 

Ebon considered telling her to get it herself, then decided there wasn’t a point. The sandcastle they were apparently building together (he hadn’t agreed to do it and so far hadn’t really participated, other than being her gofer) needed wet sand if it was to turn out spectacular, and the girl — “Aimee with two e’s” — was busy sculpting. Besides, she was fourteen, and he was only twelve. She had the bloom of proper girlhood all over her, small indentations peaking her shirt where the girls Ebon knew at home had none. She certainly acted like she was in charge.
 

Ebon stood, approached the water’s edge, and used a garden trowel to fill the bucket with the exact kind of wet sand she needed: the hard-packed stuff where the water had washed up a while ago and then retreated, not the sopping goop down by the lapping waves. He’d made the mistake of bringing her the wrong kind before and had been sent back to get it right.
 

Ebon returned and sat beside her, then took a moment to look up at the girl, knowing her focus was on the sand. Her straw-blonde hair was an absolute mess. He’d mentioned it before, and she’d said that her dad wanted her to brush it but that she didn’t give a S-H-I-T. She’d spelled it defiantly, eyeing him to make sure he understood that she was serious about such S-H-I-T whether he was or not.

“If you don’t pack that tower tighter,” she said, pointing at a section of the castle that was under Ebon’s assigned jurisdiction, “it’ll fall apart and ruin everything.”
 

“Those are the ramparts,” said Ebon, pulling a term from his abundant fantasy reading. “Where the dungeon is.”
 

“That’s stupid. Why would the dungeon be rundown, while the rest of the place is strong and new?”
 

“It’s a dungeon. Prisoners don’t care.” Ebon knew a lot about dungeons and castles — far more, surely, than she did. He searched for impressive miscellany, then said, “Do you know how an iron maiden works?”
 

“Just pack it tighter. And you can start working on the moat too.”
 

Ebon looked up the coast, toward where the carnival was around the bend. Then he looked at the porch of Aimee’s cottage, where a big, solid-looking man with reddish-blond hair sat not quite reading the newspaper. Every few seconds, the man’s gaze flicked around the paper and fixed on the kids playing in the sand. Ebon had seen that gaze earlier and knew the cool blue eyes behind it. Aimee’s father’s words then had seemed kind, but Ebon couldn’t shake the feeling that he was waiting for the new boy to kidnap his daughter.

“I don’t even
want
to make a sandcastle. I want to go to the carnival.”
 

Aimee looked up and rolled her eyes at Ebon. They were soft green and somehow insulting. “No, you don’t. You just don’t know any better.”
 

Ebon felt annoyed. He knew what he did and didn’t want to do. He certainly “knew better.” She was treating him like he was six years old. She wasn’t merely refusing to go to Aaron’s Party with him (he hadn’t asked — though he could, given his pocket of wealth); she was telling him that the carnival was off limits even if he went by himself. He’d been walking past, minding his own business, on his way to ride the famous Danger Wheel and whatever else the boardwalk had to offer. She’d stopped him and asked him to hand her a turret mold that was slightly outside of her reach. He’d been her slave ever since, lectured about the error of his carnival-seeking ways.

“I ‘know’ just fine.”

“You’re just a summer kid,” she said. “You’d get it if you lived here.”
 

Ebon didn’t know where to begin his rebuttal. He wanted to ask the girl how she could possibly know he was a summer kid (he began to compile lies in his head to convince her he was a year-rounder, if needed), but he also wanted to attack the repeated idea that he’d “know better” if the carnival wasn’t new to him. Why did the year-round availability of something make it mundane, in and of itself? Couldn’t a carnival be amazing
and
ever-present? Maybe she was the jaded one.
 

Ebon considered arguing for the carnival’s amazingness, but Aimee had a distinct advantage. She had been to it before, and although he’d been looking forward to visiting it himself since springtime, he’d never gone. Anything he said about how great it was would be talking out of his butt, and she’d easily lap him if it turned out to be less amazing than Grams, Pappy, Mom, and Dad had made it sound.
 

“Why is it so lame, if you’re so smart?”