One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy (44 page)

He looked around. He was surrounded, but nobody was paying much attention to him. Feeling a little wobbly, he stood up. He knew that there was one thing he had to do. One last thing he had to take care of before they got him for good. He walked toward a police car that sat unoccupied. In theory, he knew he could drive it. He did not have a license, but he had taken driver’s ed. He was going to steal it. He was going to steal the police car.

“Hey! You!” a voice shouted from behind him. ”Where do you think you’re going?”

Hieronymus, halfway in the driver’s seat, the door still open, turned around as fve or six police officers began moving quickly toward him.

“Get back here!”

But before they could take another step, Hieronymus lifted his goggles up over his eyes and the cops fell to the pavement.

“Watch out!” cried a terrified voice. ”The goggle-freak has taken his goggles off!” Everyone in the immediate area suddenly took cover behind cars and other objects, afraid to look into the direction of the boy whose eyes contained the color of the damned.

He started the car, and was surprised at how well he was able to drive. There was now only one place to go.

One place to go.

When he arrived home, he discovered the apartment was a complete mess. It must have happened when they had come to arrest his father. They must have turned the place upside down looking for him. Or could it have been his mother? It was only yesterday his da had been taken away—did she even know? Would she tear the house apart like that looking for something to eat? He walked into the hall, and as he got closer to her room, he could hear her sobbing. The same sound he had known all his life.

And then, he heard something else. Police sirens. They knew exactly where he was. They wanted to trap him—and that was fine, because he was home now, and what he had to do would not take long.

“Ma,” he said as he entered the room. As expected, the bedroom was a catastrophe. A shelf on the wall had been completely overturned. A closet emptied and clothes tossed on the floor. A bottle of water lay on the floor in its own puddle. A vase cracked.

Barbie lay in the bed, wearing her plastic raincoat and crying, her bright red hair a tangled, tragic mess. She looked up at him, and she continued to cry.

The sounds of police sirens came up from the outside world.

“Ma. It’s me! Your son. Hieronymus. I’ve come home. I’ve returned.”

The mad woman buried her face in the pillow, still sobbing. Hieronymus knelt on the floor next to her bed so he could be closer to her.

“Listen, Ma. I’m not sure you can hear me. I’m not sure that you can. I’ve spent my whole life with a mother I could never speak to. It’s not your fault, and it’s not my fault, it is just the way it is. But I’m your son and all mothers and sons have to speak to each other, otherwise we all become nothing but orphans, and I’m tired of feeling like an orphan.”

There was a crash from outside the bedroom. The first group of policemen must have smashed down the front door of the apartment. The unmistakable sound of rushing boots echoed through. The police sirens grew louder in the distance.

Hieronymus took his goggles off and he tossed them across the room. He knew exactly what was about to happen.

“Look at me, Ma,” he said, with both desperation and confdence. ”Please look at me. I don’t have much time. I know for a fact that they are going to come in here and drag me away. Please look at me before they do that.”

Barbie Rexaphin looked up at Hieronymus. Her reaction was different from all the others. Perhaps because she was already pretty much out of her mind, she looked at him, into his eyes of the fourth primary color, with more of an expression of curiosity than anything else.

There was another crash from the outside. Voices were commanding each other to do this, or do that. Three men rushed into Barbie’s bedroom, but they all collapsed to a pile on the floor in a second as soon as Hieronymus looked up at them. ”We found him!” someone shouted. ”He’s hiding in there—in the bedroom!”

Hieronymus turned back to his mother, who appeared to be really looking at him for the first time in his life.

“I know you can’t speak to me. And that’s fine. You see, Ma, I think I finally found a way for us…”

With that, he took out the copy of his mother’s long lost novel,
The Flood Country
.

“This is your book, Mother. This is yours. You wrote this. And you know what I’d like to do? I’d like to read it to you right now. I’m going to read as much of this as I can before they take me away. We may never see each other ever again, Mother, but this is something they will never be able to take away from us.”

With that, something that was almost a smile came to the redhaired woman’s face. Hieronymus opened the book and began to read his mother’s own words back to her.

When I was a young girl, back home in the country I am exiled from, and will forever be exiled from, as this land no longer exists, I had a friend whom I am not entirely sure was real. My parents claimed that he was an imaginary friend. His name was Hieronymus, and he was a boy. You see, I, at one time, had seven brothers, but they were much older. Hieronymus was younger and whenever he emerged from the shadows around me, I was so pleased to be the older one, the older sister for a change. When I fell asleep, he would walk with me into my dreams. When I awoke he would stay with me during the day. He was my secret, and if anyone came into my room, Hieronymus would fade away, back into the shadows. That is why I kept my room dark, with the windows covered, so Hieronymus would be comfortable in his hiding place. Then each time he came to exist, my world would be full of light and I would no longer be lonely.

He was a very smart boy and he was quite funny. If I was teased or made fun of, Hieronymus, riding within my ear, whispered the perfect response that would devastate any bully. He was my ally. He was always on my side. He knew me better than myself.

And he rescued me. I had been struggling within a dark pit of mysterious melancholy. It paralyzed everything, and I only felt normal when in the presence of this dream-like boy. He listened to me. We would have tremendous amounts of fun. When I finally told my parents about him, they became very upset. They did not understand, but there was nothing they could do. He was my invention, and he was very real to me.

What was remarkable about my darling Hieronymus were his luminous eyes. He could see in the dark, and he could see through walls, too. He could see through people, and he often knew what you were going to do before you were going to do it. Once I got lost in a forest, and I had no light and I was so desperately afraid until Hieronymus emerged from the shadows of my tears, and led the way home as if his eyes were a pair of lanterns.

Of course, I am alive today because of my imaginary friend. During the horrific rains that within a week completely fooded and destroyed my entire country, I was with my family and we were climbing into a boat that came to the rooftop of our house as the water was rising so fast. The wind knocked me into the rushing current, and to the horror of my parents, I was pulled away from everyone else. Luckily, I found a large floating table and I climbed onto it, but I was so worried about my parents and my brothers that I started to cry. All I had was my raincoat. Suddenly I realized that Hieronymus was with me, and he told me not to worry. It got dark, but with his luminous eyes he was able to see where the higher land was, and that’s where we went. As the rain was still falling and the water was still rising, Hieronymus took me to all the places where the water was not collecting, and he told me that he was able to see where the water was going to go before it got there, and that was because he had luminous eyes.

I was the only one in my immediate family who was rescued. It was the most terrible, loneliest time for me. My grandmother also survived, and as refugees, we went into exile.

After the food, Hieronymus disappeared. What a loss. All family and friends, real and imagined, gone. It was difficult to adjust and I became angry at him for abandoning me. I just stayed in bed all day. I found a raincoat and I wore it when I slept, as my dreams took me back to the scene of the deluge. I wanted to rescue my family, and I wanted Hieronymus to rescue me. But all I did was cry. Nearly all of the time.

I got so depressed that I ended up in the hospital.

And it was there, one night, that my Hieronymus finally returned. He came to me out of the shadows, as my room in the hospital was so ominous and full of them. By that time, I was a young woman. My imaginary friend came to visit as a young man. I’ve come back, Barbie, he said to me, but you are no longer the same, and so I can’t stay for too long. I was so happy to see him, and I asked him, Dear Hieronymus, with your luminous eyes, you see how dark my heart has become. Can’t you guide me out of these halls of madness as you guided me out of the food country? Can’t you guide me from this exile of sadness, this far side of the heart where shadows are long and the night does not end?

But Hieronymus only smiled. The next time we meet, he told me, I will be a real person and I won’t fade away into the shadows anymore. And you won’t need anyone’s luminous eyes, for only your own words will turn your exile into your home, your own words will turn your night to day, and your own words will guide you out of the food that has made your world so wet with grief that the tears you cry are never ending. I will return and I will listen to all the words I’ve waited to hear from you all my life. Someday, you will only wear your raincoat when it rains
.

I always pick up hitchhikers. The far side of the Moon really is the end of everything and I don’t think I can just pass anyone who’s stuck out there on Highway Zero. Well, you would not believe who I picked up last week. A really, really weird girl. A total foxentrotter, by the way. I thought she was on drugs when I first saw her, but no, she was straightedge. I was out there in my mega rig doing my usual haul between the mines and Collinsberg when I spotted her, just standing of to the side of the highway. She didn’t even have her thumb out. I told you, she was unbelievable looking! Hot. With a body that…well, you know what I mean. Of course I stop, and I say, "Hey, iceboxmelter! You wanna ride?” and she gives me this look and she says, “No, I’m fine walking,” and so I ask her, “Where you going?” and this time she answers a little more squarely, and she says, "District of Copernicus.”

I tell you, nobody out there ever turns down a ride. Her hair was really weird, like it had been gelled up but the gel got mixed up with dirt and dust and it was stuck in all these different directions. She looked like she was dressed for nightclubbing, but she was covered in filth. I asked her what she was doing out there, and she told me she was at a party and that her date got arrested. She said that now she was on a special mission to get to the Lunar Federal Court in District of Copernicus and was perfectly happy to walk. A nut. But I couldn’t just leave her out there.

I finally convinced her to take a ride with me. As it turns out, she had been walking for three days already. Sleeping on the side of the road. She must have been starving. When I ofered her some dried moose jerky, she refused. She said not till I do what I have to do in the District of Copernicus. Here we were, in the middle of nowhere, and this girl, this
foxentrotter
, just kept staring ahead, utterly in another world and completely determined to get to that big snail-shaped building in D.C. Well, I felt sorry for her. As it turns out, I always pass D.C. on the way to Collinsberg anyway, so what the Hell. I agreed to take her there. All the way there.

And that was that. I was completely exhausted. I tried to get her to come with me to a motel room, but she gave me this weird look and said, "I don’t do that kind of thing anymore.” I pulled over at the next rest stop which had a Lunemotel and I told her if she didn’t want to come with me she could sleep in the rig. I went to bed by myself and got about seven hours of Z-time. I then went back to the truck and she was still there, sitting in the same place, waiting for me to take her to D.C.

I don’t even know what her name was. She wouldn’t tell me. I don’t think I have ever seen anyone more focused or determined before this one. After another whole day of driving, we finally make it to the District of Copernicus. As you might know, the first thing you see is that gigantic building that is shaped like a snail’s shell. She points it out to me. ”There, take me there,” she says about twenty times. Then she takes out this gray, finger-sized rectangular object with a flashing red light. She holds it in both hands. By that point, I was really glad to get rid of her.

I brought her right up to the front of the building. She said thanks and she got out. What a sight was she, walking up those huge steps, behaving like she had the weight of the Moon on her shoulders.