The Mostly True Story of Jack (26 page)

Frankie turned away from the tunnel and went back to the strange membrane separating them from the place where Wendy was. He shivered. It had been four years since he was last inside the house of the Lady, the World-Under-the-World, but it terrified him to be this close nonetheless. He could see Wendy, who was kneeling next to a very large mirror.

“Wendy,” he yelled. “Wendy, we’re here!”

The vines wrapping around Jack’s body did not fall away, nor could he rip them. Instead, they withdrew into his skin, absorbing quickly like lotion. Most of the skin on his legs was gone now. He stared down at himself. He was supple and strong as a sapling. He knew that he shouldn’t believe it, or if he did, he should be frightened.

But he
did
believe, and he wasn’t scared.

His legs looked
right—
righter than they had ever looked for as long as he could remember. On the other side of the membrane wall, Wendy approached. She
knelt down by the rip and laid her hand in the space. She couldn’t push through either.

Jack stood up and stretched his arms. His old skin fell off like old, dry leaves, and the new skin on his arms was green and alive. Each time he moved, he released the strong scent of sap.

“Ugh!” Clayton said. “What’s that smell? And shouldn’t we be going
that
way?”

No one answered him. Clayton looked suspiciously at the thick vines lining the new tunnel. It
looked
strong enough to climb, but he figured he’d wait for someone else to go first.

Jack knelt next to Frankie. Frankie glanced up and down at Jack’s body, more brown and green now than pale and pasty, but said nothing. Really, what was there to say?

“So She took me out and pulled you in?” Jack said.

Frankie nodded, swallowed. “But it was wrong, you see? Mr. Avery was supposed to say ‘my son for your son’—and he
did
. It’s just that he hid Clayton and used me instead. So it was a lie and the Magic backfired.”

“Yeah…” Jack struggled with a memory that flashed deep in the back of his mind. “They were supposed to say
yours
and
mine
. Is that right?”

“The Magic didn’t know which way to go. It scattered. I woke up in there”—he pointed to the membrane wall—“but She was too weak to take my soul away
from my body. It was like She was slowly going dormant, or something. Or maybe I held on to it too tight. And then Clive got me out and She went completely dead. But, She wasn’t dead at all. Just sleeping.”

Jack held his breath and let it out in a long, slow hiss. He ran his hand through his leafy hair. “Clive said I have to even the score. Wendy’s taken
your
place, so I have to change places with her, don’t I?”

Frankie laid his hand on the nest of scars on the side of his face and Jack wondered if they hurt. He wondered, too, if he should feel guilty for Frankie’s pain. Most likely, he decided. Guilt, then.

“Someone has to,” Frankie said, closing his eyes. “That’s why I came down here. To get her out.”

Jack shook his head. “No, Frankie. It can’t be you. She’ll take your soul and get stronger. Then She’ll take more. If I’m in there… I don’t know. Maybe I can fix Her. Someone needs to fix Her. Right?”

“You have to choose it,” Frankie said. “I’m pretty sure that I can’t make you, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“But if I don’t choose it, then either you or Wendy can’t get out.”

“True,” he said, “but if you
do
, then I don’t think you can get out
either
. You’ll belong to the underground place. Or it will belong to you. Whichever.”

Jack looked back at Anders, who removed his cap and scratched the back of his head thoughtfully. Jack thought about his mother and father, how they seemed
constantly surprised to see him in the room, how they were hardly ever aware that there was another kid in the family besides Baxter, which, in retrospect, was actually true. There wasn’t another kid in the family. There was only Jack, who was, well, something
else
.

Jack nodded. “Once Wendy’s out, go back to my aunt and uncle’s. I don’t know how to put things back together, and I might screw it up. I just know that while She’s broken, the Lady makes things go wrong. If everything was okay before She was split apart, then maybe they’ll go back to being okay if I can put Her back together again.” He swallowed. “I mean, in the end, they are
both
my mother, right? They’re
mine
.” That word sent a shiver through his body.
Why?
he wondered. “Obviously,
they
can’t put them
selves
back together.” Jack paused. “Or they would’ve done it by now.”

“Use the mirror,” Frankie said. “That’s what She did anyway. A long time ago. She would reach through it and pull people’s souls into the underground, leaving their bodies behind. If you could pull Her back inside—both halves of Her. I don’t know. It worked in a story once anyway.”

Jack nodded. “My mom and dad. And my brother. Well, they were pretend, I know, and they probably don’t remember me. But I remember them. I loved them, you know? Tell them that for me, okay? Tell them again and again so that they remember.”

He didn’t wait for an answer, and, wiping his eyes
with the back of his brown and green hand, he climbed into the gap. He pressed his hand just opposite of Wendy’s on the other side of the membrane wall. Laying the Portsmouth on the membrane, he said, “I need a place for swapping places. I need a place
between
.”

The membrane rippled, and Jack slipped inside.

T
HE INTERIOR OF THE MEMBRANE WALL WAS LARGER AND
wider than Jack would have believed. Indeed, looking over his shoulder, he saw the muted images of Frankie and Clayton, their eyes aghast, hands flat against the resin surface. They mouthed his name, though he couldn’t hear their voices. Jack looked around. Though he knew—he
knew
—he was
inside
the wall, it appeared as though he stood in the center of a long, straight hallway—dark walls, dark ceiling, and a packed earth floor. Jack turned to Wendy and waved.

Wendy, peering curiously at the two-dimensional image of Jack in the wall, pressed her forehead to the surface. To her astonishment, the membrane wall broke around her face like water. She stared into the
in-between
space in wonder.

“Jack,” she called. “Jack, is that really you in here?”
And where is here?
she wondered.

“Yeah, it’s me. Come all the way in. I’ll show you how to get to the other side.”

“But I can’t. I don’t think anyone can.” She pushed her hands into the surface, felt the edge of the wall ripple across her arms in waves.

“You can now. Come here. I’ve got to explain something to you.”

She ducked in, yelped a bit, and hit the cold stone floor with her worn-out sneakers. Jack watched her run toward him and he realized that there was nothing he could explain. He couldn’t explain the alterations in himself, nor the fact that his aunt and uncle were actually no relation, nor were his mother and father and brother. He couldn’t explain the split mother, or the imprisonment, or the talking house, or the sneaky interventions of Gog and Magog. All he knew was that she was running toward him, that she would be free and he would not, but that he did not resent her for it.

He
wanted
her freedom.

It felt right, just as his new body felt right, and the truth about himself felt right too.

She ran to him, and threw her arms around him. She smelled like green grass and summer dust and too much sun. He inhaled and felt a dense, green knot form around his heart. “Jack,” she said, “you’ll never believe—”

“Yeah,” he said, “you’d be surprised. Listen, run to the other end of the hall, and head toward daylight. I’m not sure where you’ll come out, but just get yourself to my aunt and uncle’s house quickly.”

“What are you talking about? You’re coming too.” But even as she said the words, Jack could hear in her voice that she knew they weren’t true. “Oh,
Jack—”
she began. She looked at him and gasped. Her voice seemed to shatter in her throat. “But I can’t leave! I have to help. I promised. There are people in there—or not people anymore, just souls. The—whatever you call Her—the Lady, She’s got them trapped in there and—”

“It’s okay, I’ll figure it out. Things seem to…
listen
to me down here. I can’t explain it. I just know that I’m supposed to be
here
. And I think I’m
supposed
to fix things.”

“I can’t just leave you behind. I can’t leave them either. Grab my hand and we’ll run for it. If there’re two of us, we could probably force the thing open. Maybe leave a space for the souls to get out.”

Jack shook his head. “That’s not how it works.”

Wendy stamped her foot and grunted in frustration. She turned away and hastily wiped both eyes with the backs of her hands.

“Wendy,” Jack said, putting his hand (or what
had been
his hand but was now a complicated network of roots and stems in the shape of a hand) on her shoulder. “I need to stay. I need to fix—”

“So you’re just giving up?” she asked, rounding on him savagely. Her eyes were red. Her breath came in tiny gulps. “Just like that? You’re not even going to try to get out?”

Jack shook his head. “Listen, Wendy, you were my first friend. I never knew I was lonely before, but I
was
, and now I’m not. This was the first time I got to feel like a person—a real person, like you and Anders and Frankie. I know I’m not—not
really—
and I know it wasn’t for very long, but it meant something to me. I’ll never forget it, Wendy.
Never.
” And without meaning to, he stood on tiptoe and kissed her once, briefly, on the mouth.

Embarrassed, he turned and ran into the darkness.

He didn’t look back.

W
ENDY LED THE WAY
.

She pushed off the advancing hugs from her brother and Anders, and while the sound of her brother’s voice calling her name nearly broke her in half, she couldn’t stop and think about it just yet. She had to
move
, despite the tiny cracks that were, even now, cutting across her heart.

“We have to get to Mr. Fitzpatrick. Jack’s trapped inside that… whatever that place is. Mr. Fitzpatrick will know how to get him out.”

“But, Wendy,” Anders began, “I’m not sure that’s what we’re supposed to—”

“
Climb
,” Wendy commanded savagely, reaching up to the thick-limbed ivy and swinging her legs to the wall of the vertical tunnel. “It’s only—what—twenty-five feet
maybe
to the top. We’ve all climbed that high before.”

“I haven’t,” Clayton said.

“Well, then, you’re going to get left behind.” And without looking back, Wendy climbed, Clayton scurrying behind her.

Frankie and Anders watched them ascend, waiting to make sure no one fell.

“After you, Frankie,” Anders said, with a flourish and a bow.

Frankie climbed, though much more slowly than his sister, his movements careful and deliberate.

Anders looked closely at the structured vines. They rustled pleasantly, though there was no wind this far underground. “You are a curious little thing, aren’t you?” Anders murmured to the plant. “Are you part of Jack, or is Jack part of you? I can’t decide whether you took him away, or if you were inside him the whole time. In either case, I hope you don’t mind if I just do this.” Very gently, he brought his fingers to the base of a small branch of the vine and pulled it free. He inspected the larger plant to see if it minded, but the leaves continued to rustle in the nonexistent wind. Anders nodded, satisfied.

It could be useful, Anders reasoned, to have a magic
plant on the farm.
If
he could get it to grow. “Besides,” he said to the plant as it wound itself—quite on its own—around his arm three times before twining a tendril around its beginning, latching on securely, “If you really are a part of Jack, I think I like the idea of keeping a bit of you rooted to the surface. Just in case.” And with that, Anders hoisted himself up and climbed to the gap of open blue.

The cats were waiting at the mouth of the hole. So was Lancelot. Wendy scrambled out of the tunnel, though she had a sneaking suspicion that the vines were helping her along. The whole way up she felt them shift when she needed them to shift and tighten when she needed them tightened. It was as though the vines
wanted
her to make it to the top in one piece.

“Pfft,” one of the cats said—Gog, or Magog, she couldn’t tell them apart.

“How did you three know to wait for me here?” she asked, and then she shook her head. “Actually, never mind. I don’t want to know.” She didn’t wait for the others, but took off out of the gully at a run, with the cats bounding just ahead and the bird soaring just above the limit of the trees.

Clayton emerged out of the green, scraped and slapped by thorns and stray branches. He heard his mother’s voice from… somewhere. He crawled away from the
hole on his hands and knees and flopped onto his back, looking up at the sky. He had never noticed it before, but the sky was amazingly beautiful. And the trees were beautiful. And the rocks and the masses of birds flying overhead. Even that Schumacher girl was beautiful, if she wasn’t punching you in the face. He had never much cared for Wendy, so his surge of happiness when she emerged through the membrane wall mostly unharmed surprised him. Clayton was not normally one to spend much time thinking about the welfare of others.

“
Clayton!
” he heard his mother scream.
“Oh, please, no!”

He tried to sit up, but his mother came hurtling out of nowhere and pinned him to the ground. She sobbed and smiled and squeezed her eyes tight. “You’re alive,” she gasped. “You’re whole and you’re alive.”

“Of course I’m
alive
. What else would I be? Jeez, Mom, toughen up, will you?”

By the time Wendy made it to the road, Frankie and Anders had caught up with her. The three sprinted toward the Fitzpatrick house.