Falter Kingdom (7 page)

I'm kicking myself for it because I sort of knew it would happen. I mean, I remember thinking about taking it, like I subconsciously knew something would happen if I left it here. So it's sort of my fault. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. But that doesn't change the fact that it's gone.

My laptop. Where the fuck?

Here's what I'm talking about when I say it's exhausting.

I have to look everywhere. There are so many places where the laptop could've gone. Then I think about the possibility that it broke the laptop or banished it into the ether of some kind of hell or something.

My life is in that laptop.

I can't live my life without it.

Just thinking about all of it...

Okay, I sit down on the bed. I take off one of the hoodies because I'm legit sweating now. I maybe close my eyes and maybe fall asleep.

Whenever I start searching for it, like a half hour's gone and I'm exactly the same: tired, just really tired. Also a little afraid. Definitely confused.

I keep thinking about what the demon might look like. I'm surprised that the more I think about it, trying to form an image out of the bits and pieces I've seen, I'm more interested than scared.

That's normal, right? I really don't know.

I want it to be normal.

I start from the basement. I hate the basement. Not because it's scary—it's really not—but because it's where my mom has all of her whatever-you-call-them, collectibles, I guess. They're so stupid but she loves collecting them. They are all figurines of different fantasy and science fiction characters. She doesn't read and she doesn't watch any movies, but she buys all the memorabilia. It's all in this basement. But not my laptop.

I check the kitchen; the dining room; the room some people call the “family room,” which is dusty and has a very cool TV that we never use; every stupid closet (there are too many closets in this house); all the upstairs rooms, including the drawers jammed full of stuff I don't need to know about; and not the bathroom because fuck that bathroom.

I go back to my room. I go online via my phone and just kind of try to think about something else.

When something like this happens, it's not like all the movies where the character fights back and everything just falls into place. The laptop is missing and I'm out of options. I've looked everywhere and it's gone.

I start thinking about what to do next. Did I back up my files? Any very personal data on there that I don't want anyone, or anything, to know about? I think about stuff like that, and it makes me really, really tired.

I sit in bed and then I lie down in bed and then I'm remembering where I'm supposed to be. I'm remembering the party, Jon-Jon's thing, and I'm remembering something else.

I check my phone. There's still plenty of time.

Back out in the hallway, I keep the lights off because it's creepier that way. Actually, I keep them off because I'm too lazy to feel around for the light switch. I go down the stairs and out the door to the recycling bin shoved to the side of our garage.

I pick my laptop up—nope, not wasting any thought on how this could have happened or how I could just know where it was all of a sudden—and I look to see if it's been scratched, messed up, broken. It's like it just flew here.

Back in my room, it's cold again.

Where's my hoodie? There. Okay.

I open up the laptop. It looks like the screen froze, but no, actually it hasn't, hmm. Tap a few keys, click around, and the window starts playing a video I've never seen before. It's not something I was watching.

Two guys in a skit, both of them overreacting and freaking out over the simplest things. It's actually kind of funny.

I pause it a moment but the pause button isn't working.

The video's got a mind of its own.

The two guys in the video seem like great friends. I like this video. I hover over the subscribe button and figure, “Why not?”

They practice their secret handshake and it soon gets out of control, one of them being punched in the face. The punch goes right through the other, and that's where I definitely laugh out loud. Almost no one ever actually does that when they type “LOL,” but in this case, I did. I didn't even need to type out the acronym.

When the video's done I try playing it again but it won't work.

Then the browser crashes.

“Fuck,” I mumble, but thankfully my session is restored. But that tab's—go figure—missing. It all makes sense even though it also kind of doesn't. But right about now, I don't want to be alone with a demon in this house. I know it's early, not time for
that party yet, but I think I'll just go to a coffee shop or get food somewhere.

I suddenly can't stand being here, alone with it.

I shiver and am confused by the fact that I can go from being curious to completely afraid just by the way everything feels around me. It's like... the weight of the air shifts, and at the same time my senses are all out of order. Not like I can feel what I taste, not that sort of thing. Um... it's more like I can just feel everything more, and my nerves are extra sensitive to anything that happens. My mind is racing too, and that's really why I want to leave.

It feels like something's sorting through my thoughts, rearranging them.

I want out. And I guess, this is my opportunity to do just that, even though I won't really know anyone at the party, and they really want to hang around me only so that they can know more about the demon. What do you tell people if you, yourself, don't even really know what it is?

Then I get scared again, by the lone thought that lingers like it was handed to me, dropped right in my brain:

You will.

4

JON-JON WASN'T JOKING ABOUT BEING FASHIONABLY
late. When I walk in, everyone's already watching. They're like, “Hunter, holy shit, look at you!” And I'm like, “Yeah, you're looking right at me, what's up?” But that's the extent of most of our exchanges. The place is pretty swank for a high school party. But then Jon-Jon said it's more than that. A lot of people, yup. There's no way I'm going to be comfortable here. You know that it's a bad sign when the first thing you think about when getting to the party is how you desperately want to leave.

Ha, and I want to even more when Jon-Jon spots me.

“Hunter, excellent,” he says, and gestures for me to sit with him at a table.

What is this place, I mean really? That's what I want to know. It's a ballroom but it's also a club. It's a club but it's in someone's house.

“Money, isn't it?” Jon-Jon asks me.

I'm like,
What?
But really I say, “Yeah.”

What else is there to say?

I'm still thinking about the laptop thing that happened.

I'm thinking about that video.

I'm thinking about the way the two guys acted all genuine, cool, like longtime friends, and for some reason I think about it as fiction instead of it being something real. Those two guys are definitely real but I can't take it as that. They might as well be comic-book characters or something.

Jon-Jon tells me, “It's okay. This will be easy money for us. I'll get people to hang around us, and you just keep them entertained.”

I snap at him, “What am I, a prostitute?”

Jon-Jon laughs. “That's good. Be just like that.”

He leaves me at this table. I stare at empty plastic cups. I could really go for something to drink right about now.

I don't look around the room like I probably should. If I do, I'll end up making eye contact with people. I find it kind of strange that I'm overwhelmed by this kind of reaction, but at the same time, it's still very flattering.

I am flattered.

This is all fake flattery but it still hits. It still sticks.

And I want that attention like anyone else.

A guy named Jeff sits next to me. He has a drink for me. Now this really does feel like some kind of prostitution thing.

I'm getting really nervous.

“Be cool,” Jeff says, “figured you wanted a drink.”

“Thanks,” I say, and then, “So what's this party all about?”

Jeff takes a sip from his cup and I sip from mine. The beer is kind of lukewarm and tastes watered down—bottom-of-the-keg beer.

“The guy that's hosting it is being all
Great Gatsby
about it.”

“Huh?”

“Never read that book?”

I shake my head. “I guess not.”

“He's into a girl that he can't get. They have a history. That's what this party's about.”

“Oh,” I reply. I'm really not doing well at this. I think it's because I'm being forced to hang out with people.

“Anyway,” Jeff starts, “how's the demon thing going?”

“It's... going,” I say in a surprisingly monotone way.

“Yeah”—he nods—“I had one too.”

“You did?”

“Yup.” Jeff takes another sip, which sends the signal for me to drink too. “But I didn't do that Falter thing. That's crazy. It's a cool legend, but no, I'm too claustrophobic for that.”

“How'd you get it?”

Jeff shrugs. “I just got it one day. Woke up and everything had changed.”

“Damn.” I take a gulp of beer.

“Yeah, but I didn't wait around for symptoms to really kick in. I had the exorcism two days after I started being haunted.”

Shit, makes me think about how long I've been holding that off.

“But I guess you're planning on going through with it?”

Through with what? Do I play dumb? Do I actually know what he means?

Jeff's like, “If you do, be ready, man. People do it but it's basically like saying, ‘Yeah, I'm ready to die.' Some people think it'll make them transcendent. That there's life beyond the body.”

“And what do you think?” I said that not because I want to know but because by asking that question, it'll cause Jeff to carry the conversation, and I don't have to say anything.

“Me? Well—”

But Jon-Jon interrupts us. Someone else, a girl named Melanie, wants to say hi to me.

Jeff shakes my hand. “Good luck with it. With all of it.”

“Yeah, thanks,” and then he's gone, back into the crowd of the party.

Melanie smiles a lot and giggles. She asks me more about running than the demon. She says it's really, really hot, a big turn-on, dangerous situations like that.

“Do you go to Meadows?” I ask her, just to change the conversation.

“I'm going next year.”

Her hand is on my leg. Oh, man...

“Next... year?”

“I'm almost done with eighth grade,” and then a giggle.

Oh god, hand off crotch now. Now, now, now. “Oh, cool,” I say.

She giggles, drinks more, and I want to ask her how she got into the party, but there are always ways. It's not like there's anyone paying much attention.

Thankfully this train wreck doesn't last long.

Another group shows up and starts lecturing me on the ins and outs of demon hauntings. All sorts of stories about how demons can travel through time from one “unclean” place to the next. They talk about religious stuff, the fact that demons are from hell.

I don't know much about it, but they are talking and I don't have to really do anything but occasionally nod my head and say “Yeah.”

So it's okay, but it's also so absurd that this is happening.

That this is all happening.

After the group finishes, Jon-Jon sits down and asks me in that way he always does: “How much money do you think you made in the last hour, on a scale of one to ten, ten being raking it in like a fiend? What do you think?”

It's hopefully enough to stop. I tell him, “Eight?”

Jon-Jon laughs, hands me a beer—not keg beer, but an actual bottle of IPA, some craft beer I don't know. “You're off the hook, friend.”

I stare at him. “So... I made money then?”

Jon-Jon tells me, “You're off the hook. Debt paid. Next thing we do, you'll be raking it in. But I got to take everything I'd give you as repayment and handling fees.”

“That's bullshit.” Shouldn't have said it but...

It's okay because Jon-Jon just laughs it off. He must have made a lot. He's happy. I haven't really seen him like this before, all mellow and laughing, not playing up that crime lord crap.

I stand up and ask, “So I can go now?”

“Don't forget your beer.” Jon-Jon hands me the bottle.

“Yeah, okay. Yeah,” I say. I sound drunk even though I'm not.

So I walk around the room once, determined to leave now, totally not digging this atmosphere; everyone's trying so hard, you know? It just feels... wrong to be at a party like this, where everyone's all about being amazing and dressed up and trying to get laid. It's so
much effort, for me it kind of takes it out of caring. I usually care. I'm here, aren't I? I cared enough to make sure that they still notice me. Now I feel empty.

I really feel empty.

I just want to...

Oh.

“Hey,” I say, forgetting the concept of pickup lines.

Nikki Dillon walks up to me and hugs me like we're dear old friends.

Of course Nikki Dillon is at a party like this. Of course.

“Hunter, so great to see you!”

It sounds so genuine it makes me blush. Probably doesn't look like I'm blushing though, in this dark light, which is good, because I feel really nervous all of a sudden.

All of a sudden, it's happening, what I could never bring myself to doing... talking to Nikki Dillon. No secret to anyone and I really don't need to say it now, but here it goes: it's no secret that she's a longtime crush. I think she knows it as well, because in the past we've had too many encounters where we cross paths and exchange glances, do that thing that is everything about saying you're interested but without actually putting yourself out there.

We do that stuff.

But now it's finally happening.

She's talking to me, doing all the work, and I don't know what to say.

I don't have to say anything.

I grin and forget everything.

She tells me, “You're a hit.”

“I'm a... what?” Too nervous, and stupid, to think.

“Everyone loves you.” Nikki raises her eyebrows in a cute way as she brushes a strand of hair from her face. She does that so perfectly. I bet she practices these kinds of gestures in the mirror for hours.

“I guess so, yeah.” I laugh all nervously.

Stupid, so stupid.

Then she says something that I think she lifted from a romance film, or a spy thriller, or maybe I'm just thinking that she did.

“We keep trading looks. I feel like it's time we trade numbers.”

That was so smooth I can die happy now.

And then we do. I trade numbers with Nikki Dillon.

Nikki hugs me again, plants a kiss on my right cheek, and says, “Call me.”

This party's not so bad after all. But it's peaked, it's over.

I'm glad I'm here. I'm glad I showed up. I'm not going to think about how she's into me maybe just because of the demon.

She's always liked me.

That's what I choose to believe.

But I get the hell out of the room, posthaste. It's like if I stay there, everything will be second-guessed and ruined.

In the back of my mind, I'm thinking, “When is it time to trade photos of ourselves naked?” Then I hate myself for being an asshole. That's something Brad would do.

I drive around aimlessly, up and down the neighborhood streets. I'm actually just happy, feeling like everything is perfect. Like life can be the shit sometimes.

I can't believe it.

I drive for what feels like hours until she texts me.

She
texts
me.

I pull into the driveway, seeing that Dad's home. I stay in the car and text her back. We have an entire conversation in text, with me sitting in the car, avoiding the fact that I'll have to go back inside. I'll have to face it. And every night it surprises me with something worse. I don't want it to ruin this feeling.

So I think about this instead.

Reread every single line of the conversation we had because I can't really believe it.

“Hey H.”

“Glad I bumped into you tonight.”

“Me too.” Winking smiley.

“You still there?”

“Left after the keg was tapped.”

“You up for something this weekend?”

“I'm up for anything.” Heart emoji.

“You up for something
tomorrow
night? 7ish?”

“Mmhmm. Sounds good.”

“Sounds great.”

“Sounds perfect.”

Here's where I respond with a stupid regular smiley.

“Buh-bye babes.”

“Night!”

Could have done without the exclamation point. Also, I don't like that I was the last to reply. But still. There it is—proof that everything's changed. Proof that it happened.

Please be enough proof to steel my mood until I fall asleep tonight.

I look up at my window and see that the lights are on. I turned them off when I left. Beautiful. But you know who's beautiful?

Nikki.

I have a date with Nikki.

Friday night.

“Mr. Warden to the principal's office.” The way Halverson's office goon says it, I don't know, it just makes it sting so much worse, you know? I was in second period doing my best to just be myself, but since word got out about running and the demon on my back, I can't focus on anything else. I feel like all eyes are forever on me, so I have to put up appearances like this is a twenty-four-hour reality TV show. That's enough pressure, especially when you kind of want everyone to keep watching, but then someone gets on the PA and says those things. If you think being dropped off at school by your parents is embarrassing, being called to the principal's office like some sixth grader is worse. I can't look people in the eye on the walk to the office.

But then everyone's buzzing about what Halverson might want with me. I hear in the halls their whispers, gossip already starting.

There's talk about me being expelled.

For running the gauntlet? Really?

I hope not. I also don't care. But then I remember what happens to people who are expelled, especially this late in the school year. Starting over at a new school for, like, a few weeks or something is like being sent to prison. If that happens, I'm finished. Like totally done. I won't be able to go on.

Think about something else.

Think about something else.

I have nothing in common with anybody but I still want them to like me, especially now that it's all like this. They're all watching.

That's a scary sentence: They're all watching.

Almost scarier than having to go home and face a demon that's getting worse with each day.

Last night... yeah, I'm not thinking about it.

I'll just repeat the excuse I'll give Mom if she asks:
I decided to rearrange my room. It was getting boring and dull the way it was.
Things didn't move, exactly. It's just that things went missing and I wanted to keep all the things I really need close to my bed, like I'll be able to grab the thing before it tries to nab it. I kept my laptop in my arms when I slept.

It's getting kind of ridiculous.

The office goons make me wait like they didn't just announce my name over the PA for the whole school to hear. Rush me in here but then I have to wait.

I shiver and start worrying that it'll start messing with me during the day. Then again, is “messing” the right word for this? Haunting is a form of hazing, right? I guess so. Not like I'll ask anyone for clarification.