The Mostly True Story of Jack (25 page)

“Wendy,” Frankie yelled at the wall, hitting at its surface with his fists. The wall vibrated and thrummed like the skin of a drum, but it wouldn’t break. And the silhouette of Wendy didn’t seem to notice.

Frankie stepped back, rubbing his hands against his face and grunting in frustration.

The walls of the hole were damp. They smelled. Every once in a while the ground around them rumbled and shook, and large hunks of damp soil fell from what served as the ceiling onto what he supposed was the floor. Clayton put his head between his knees and tried to shield his hair with his hands.

“I don’t know why you’re bothering,” the sneak Frankie Schumacher said. “You’re already filthy.”

“We’re going to be buried alive and it’s all your fault,” Clayton moaned. The dirt was dark and alive. It wormed into Clayton’s eyes, itched at his ears, and filtered into his nose. He sneezed.

“We’re not going to be buried alive,” Frankie said. His hands pressed against the membrane wall. Each time he did so, a sharp, bright smell attacked their noses and retreated. It smelled, Clayton thought, like sap. He hated sap. It stuck to your hands, collected dirt, and wouldn’t wash off.

Frankie shook his head. “There’s a story that’s kind of like this,” he said. “Did you know?”

Clayton decided not to answer. If Frankie could pretend to be a stupid mute, then Clayton, for one, could do it too. He wasn’t going to be shown up by a kid who looked like a circus freak.

“The heroes were sent to rescue the maiden who had been captured by a wicked creature. They wanted to
know how to reach the maiden, as she was nowhere to be seen. They learned that in order to find the lair of the creature, they had to go down. They had to go inside and between. But we’re in a different kind of a story. I don’t even think we’re the heroes.”

“What are we if we aren’t the heroes?” Clayton sniffed.

Frankie shrugged. “We could be innocent bystanders,” he said. “Or roadkill.”

Clayton pursed his lips together.

“That’s not even a real story,” he said.

“Of course it is. And anyway, how would you know? You don’t even read.”

“I can
read
,” Clayton said.

Frankie shook his head and turned back to the membrane wall. “And you don’t listen properly either.”

Frankie put his face right on the skin of the membrane. It was springy and tough. It yielded to the slightest touch but sprang back instantly. It wouldn’t break. He peered through. The light behind Wendy was brighter than before, sharpening the shadowed edges of her body as she bent and reached, bent and reached.

“What are you doing?” Frankie whispered, shaking his head. “Why can’t you hear me?”

“What is that thing, anyway?” Clayton asked, pointing to the resin wall.

“It’s a membrane, I think. The whole thing is something like a seed,” Frankie said, tapping on the wall.

Clayton snorted. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. A seed is small. Plus seeds aren’t even
alive
.”

“You should pay more attention in school. A seed
is
alive. There’s a whole universe inside of it. A limitless world curled around and around itself like a spring. A seed is powerful and infinite. And by the way, you’re an idiot.” Frankie gasped. After all these years listening and reading and
thinking
, it felt incredibly good to finally speak. And what’s more, he realized with a jolt that he had quite a bit to say. And even though he knew it wasn’t very nice, it felt even
better
to insult Clayton Avery. He smiled.

“I hate you.” Clayton folded his arms and looked away and Frankie turned back to the membrane wall.

“Look over here, Wendy,” Frankie whispered urgently. “Look this way. I’m
right here
.”

Clayton started to cry. Frankie groaned in frustration.

“Listen,” Frankie said savagely, “we’re
not
going to get buried alive. We are going to get out of here, okay? Just pretend you’re in a story. Pretend none of this is real. It’s easier to be brave if you think there are no consequences, know what I mean?”

“No,” Clayton said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand, which left a dark, muddy streak that swooshed across his face.

“Listen, the story goes like this: the heroes go on a quest. They go down, inside and between, and still they
can’t reach the maiden. But what they don’t know is that two other heroes are on the same quest. They’re coming from the other direction. You see? Help is on the way.”

“What story is that?”

“Our story. It’s happening right now.”

“You’re crazy,” Clayton said, hyperventilating. “You’re absolutely nuts.”

He stood up and smacked the membrane wall as hard as he could. The smell of sap nearly brought him to his knees. “We’re miles and miles underground and all you can do is quote some stupid fairy tale? Listen, Freak Show,
no one else is coming
. We’re
by ourselves
and we’re
trapped
. We have no food and no water and I don’t know who you think is on the other side of this”—he pointed weakly at the membrane—“whatever it is, but no one is crossing it any time soon. The walls are going to come down, we’ll run out of air, and we’ll die. The—”

He was about to say
end
, but he was interrupted by a sudden rupture in the earth wall, and two boys tumbling in, right on top of him.

“Uff!” Clayton grunted.

“Frankie!” Jack said.

“Ha!” Frankie said. “You see? I told you!”

I
T DIDN’T TAKE LONG FOR
W
ENDY TO COME TO A DECISION:
if the Lady—or whatever She was—once used the mirror to see what was going on above the ground, then Wendy was going to do the same. Wendy was not the sort of girl to be shown up by anyone, least of all a soul-stealing bully like the Lady.

After years of meeting that creep Clayton Avery with her fists, she had learned one important thing: bullies fall to pieces when someone fights back. None of these poor souls had the strength to fight back, but Wendy knew
she
did. No one was going to take
her
soul, she decided. And no one was keeping
her
underground forever. She was getting out.

She’d use the mirror. If for no other reason than for the light, since she couldn’t do a darn thing in the dark. And if it happened to be magical… well, all the better, she figured. She started piecing the mirror together, watching it grow and grow.

What’s she doing?

What does it matter? She’ll leave us too.

She’d never!

Look at the mirror! I know that house. I’ve been in that house.

No you haven’t. We’ve only ever been here.

Liar.

Wendy did her best to ignore the voices in the dark. Her hands were cut and raw, but she didn’t slow down. The mirror—or at least
part
of the mirror—hung in midair, as stable and immobile as if it had been hanging on a wall. But there was no wall. The edges were sharp and ragged and
painful
. Wendy chose another shard from the scattering of pieces littering the ground. Each shard of the mirror glowed more brightly as it neared its interlocking piece, and once connected, it flashed briefly, knitting so seamlessly together that even she couldn’t tell where the break had been. Shard after shard glowed, then flashed, then healed, and Wendy kept working. After a while, she didn’t notice the pain in her hands. She didn’t mind the
deep slashes in her skin, nor the way her blood ran down her fingers to her palms and dripped off her wrists to the ground. Meanwhile, the mirror grew and grew.

In the mirror, a field of corn transformed from lush and supple green to yellow to brown. A green woman and a small boy hid behind a house—and then the woman
was
the house. Or the house was the woman. It didn’t matter in any case, because the house was falling apart, shedding pieces of itself the way a bird sheds feathers. In another part of the mirror, another woman drove a car around and around in a circle, and a boy tumbled down a wooded hillside and fell into a hole. These images slid and flickered at the edges of her vision, and she paid them little mind.

You need to hurry
, the older voice hissed in her ear.
She’ll be back soon. She’ll be coming for you.

“She’ll be sorry if She does,” Wendy murmured as she fitted another shard into place. “I don’t truck with bullies.”

The mirror shivered and hummed, its images sharpening. Wendy could see that they told a story. She could see a lovely woman making a terrible and rash decision. How She, in Her grief and shame and triumph, had split into two halves, one good and one bad.

“Is this a true story?” Wendy asked.

Of course. All stories are true. Or
mostly
true anyway.

“It’s terrible.”

Terrible
, one voice agreed.
And I think it might be my fault… but I… I can’t seem to remember.

Wendy kept staring, but her own reflection never appeared. She waved at the mirror, but still nothing.
Well, that can’t be good
, she fussed.

“Have I died?” she asked. Wendy looked at her hands. They still bled, though they did not hurt.
Of course not
, the same male voice said.
Dead people don’t bleed. They rot.

Good point
, Wendy thought. “Are you dead?”

You mean my body? Oh, certainly. She took my life force and I died, all right. Just as you will. But my soul… Souls go on, you see. They go… elsewhere. Or they’re
supposed
to anyway. But not us. We’re stuck here.

“Can I save you?”

I don’t know. Once, a soul grabbed on to Her skirt when She went through the mirror. We never saw him again, and the Lady wept for days and days. I didn’t know wickedness could feel grief, but She certainly seemed to. Or perhaps it’s just the memory of grief—a gap where the feeling used to be.

Wendy continued to piece the mirror back together. “I’m getting out,” she said to no one in particular. “I’m getting out of here.” She could feel the souls gathering behind her, pressing their papery hands and faces to her back. She didn’t shrug them off. She didn’t turn around.

“We’re
all
getting out of here.”

V
INES ERUPTED FROM THE WALLS OF THE UNDERGROUND
space.

“Poison ivy!” Clayton screamed.

“It’s not
poison ivy
,” Anders said scornfully. “Jeez, toughen up, will you?” Despite the calm in his voice, the vines lashed quickly around his legs and waist and wound around his throat.

“It’s Her,” Frankie said through a mouthful of leaves. “She knows we’re down here.”

Jack looked down. There were so many vines binding
his legs that he looked like the trunk of a tree, woody and leafy, brown and green.

Although he was scared, there was something to this greenery.

It looked
right
, somehow.

“No,” Jack said. “It’s not Her at all. I think it’s
me
.”

From somewhere—whether it was a dream or a memory, or a dream of a memory of a dream, he did not know—Jack could recall looking down once on his hands and legs and torso, and he did not see skin, nor T-shirt, nor khaki shorts. Instead: leaf, bark, and wood.

“I used to look like this,” Jack said—more to himself than anyone else. “Leaf and wood.”

He squirmed under the vines. He could feel the runners moving over his body—poking through his clothes, curving around his knees, pushing their way past his skin, as though it were nothing more than tissue paper. Piece by piece, he could feel his skin pull up and flake away. To Jack’s surprise, it did not hurt. Instead, he only felt relief—as though he were finally shrugging out of an extremely uncomfortable suit or a shirt that itched.

Clayton started to cry. “The plants are killing the new kid!”

“No, they’re not—” Jack began. He flexed and extended his woody fingers. “They’re
fixing
me, I think.”

“I want to go home,” Clayton sniffed.

Anders, pinned to the wall, was not uncomfortable. On the contrary, the vines seemed to wrap him
cautiously, almost tenderly. And while the magic in the vines buzzed against his skin and sometimes pricked unpleasantly, on the whole, he found the experience more
interesting
than frightening. He watched the snaking vines with fascination. The vines, he noticed, were intelligent. They operated with forethought and intention. Then, very gently, the vines began to wrap around him more tightly than they ought, and Anders began to choke.

“It’s too tight around your neck,” Jack said, suddenly alarmed. “Let go,” he pleaded. To his shock, the vines around Anders’s neck loosened and drooped.

“Jack!” Anders said. “They listen to you! Don’t you see? Try it again.”

Jack didn’t have time to disbelieve—he just
knew
it, just as he knew that the woody skin was his
real
skin, and the leafy hair was his
real
hair. “Back off,” he said loudly, and the vines peeled away and slithered on the floor. “No,” Jack said, more loudly this time, “I said
back off
!” His voice echoed and boomed. All at once, the vines shot at the side of the small cavern. The wall broke open with a loud, painful ripping sound, unleashing a riot of dust and gravel and rock. Jack, Frankie, Anders, and Clayton covered their faces with their hands, and waited for the ceiling to fall.

But nothing did. The vines covered the ceiling and the walls. They crisscrossed, and wove a tight scaffolding, holding the dirt at bay. Meanwhile, more vines twisted and burrowed into the far wall, widening the
opening until the boys could see a leafy tunnel stretching straight up toward daylight.

Anders whistled. “Nice work, Jack,” he said.

Clayton, certain that he had already suffered suffocation, contusion, and death, was surprised to hear a voice calling his name. It sounded suspiciously like his mother, who he knew—or at least felt pretty sure—was not dead, which provided a compelling argument that Clayton was not dead either. He sniffed hard.