We Won't Feel a Thing (14 page)

She started to climb.

Chapter Eight

Riley squinted in the half-dark basement, taking deep breaths of warm familiar mustiness. The blue door had delivered him to his second-favorite place in the library: the abandoned AV room. He loved the drawers of microfilm and microfiche, the metal canisters of faded filmstrips, the quaint computers with dead gray screens and putty-colored monitors. A new AV room had been bankrolled five years ago, but no one had considered anything as drastic as dismantling the old one. Nothing old in Puckatoe ever really went away. They’d just built the new room upstairs in the annex, and this place had become an unofficial museum.

Riley walked to the far end of the room and sat on a blue plastic chair in front of the yellowed projection screen, still pulled down as if a film could start any second. On slow snowy days at the library, he and Rachel sometimes crept down here to screen school films from past decades; last winter, over a bag of kettle corn popped in the break room, they’d nearly choked when sweater-set Judy told leather-jacket Johnny that
a wienie roast with the gang sounds just swell!

Riley tugged at his curl. The memory was so sharp he could taste the salty-sweet popcorn, see Rachel stuffing her bra with crunched paper to mimic Judy’s bullet-shaped breasts. He heard her breathy theatrics:
Know what else is swell, Johnny? My bosoms!

His throat ached. He strapped the goggles on. Before his courage could falter, he jabbed the button at his left temple and closed his eyes.

When he opened them, he saw nothing but gray.

Riley stared into a blank expanse the exact shade of boredom. He wiped his hands on his jeans. What if he did Step Three wrong? He pictured the goggles emitting a brilliant burning flare, blinding him for life, sentencing him to wander the streets of Puckatoe for eternity with his mother leading him around by the elbow.

Hello RILEY WOODLAWN!

A cartoon tidal wave popped up. It had David’s serene smile and well-groomed eyebrows. A thought bubble formed to its left:

It looks like you need some help. To begin, please visualize your Ideal Future Situation—Free Of The Object (IFS-FOTO). If you do not have an IFS-FOTO and would like one provided for you, please plug the goggles back into the console and—

Riley rapped the silver button again, like a desperate person hurrying an elevator. The wave blipped away.

He took a deep breath. He started his vision with himself; that seemed safe.
Me,
he whispered, and before he could give himself too much thought, the gray background crowded with thousands of bright fragments, the kind he was always collecting in his head and shuffling into pictures. Riley leaned forward, fascinated. The tiny tiles worked fast. They constructed his curls, suggested his features, put him in his favorite five-pocket pants and blue t-shirt.

Mosaic Me.
He smiled.
Hi.
His twin waved back.
Jump,
he thought, and his avatar performed a jaunty hop. He had a million questions for David, for his mad-genius artists and techies who made this happen. He wished Rachel were with him so he could show her.

Don’t think of her.
He shut his eyes.
Don’t think of Puckatoe. Invent your new life.

California.

California.

Riley opened his eyes and concentrated hard. A simple street drew itself, two thick dark lines that started far apart but grew closer and closer as they reached the vanishing point. He summoned his dim California memories.
A beach town,
he instructed.
Friendly but quiet, artsy but not pretentious. A happy place.
Tiles skittered into the scene, jostling and leapfrogging. They whipped up the buildings in his mind: aqua and yellow and flamingo-pink, with orange-tiled Tuscan roofs and white balconies.
Sun?
the tiles asked, and built one in the sky.
Dark,
he corrected. He did his best work after midnight.

The sky swarmed with night tiles, Van Gogh blue with yellow chips of stars. Strings of lanterns lit the street. The sidewalks flooded with people: blond boys with surfboards, rollerbladers in pink shorts, women selling wind chimes and ropes of turquoise beads. A glittering slice of ocean in the distance made him smile and hug himself. He could practically smell the Pacific.

Halfway down the street, beside a taco truck painted in Technicolor stripes, a blur of gray rushed at the feet of Mosaic Riley. He took it for a shadow at first, but then the tiles sharpened and he recognized the picture: Sniffles the poodle, alive and well and unstuffed.

“Hey, boy!” Riley thought the words, and they showed up as a caption.
Neat,
he thought.

Sniffles barked. “Hello,” his caption said.

Riley almost said
You can talk?,
but that happened in movies every time there was a suddenly-talking animal, and he wanted to get on with it. He made his avatar follow Mosaic Sniffles past coffee shops and yoga studios. They stopped in front of a building. It was white and square, like a birthday-cake box.

“What’s this?” Riley captioned.

“You tell me,” barked Sniffles.

He looked again. A silver sign hung on the glass front door:

HEART OF GLASS: new mosaics by Riley Woodlawn

“Really?”
he said.

“Go in,” said Sniffles.

Riley enjoyed what his subconscious was filling in so far, so he told his mosaic self to push the door open.

Inside was the gallery of his dreams.

It was a beauty, the space he’d dreamed about since he was seven and his mother took him to Lincoln for an exhibition called The Art of Storytelling. The hardwood floors gleamed. His mosaics shimmered on every wall. Tidal waves swallowing lovers, sad mermaids melting into seafoam, a floor-to-ceiling mosaic of the ocean at night.

Don’t look at that one,
Riley told himself.

Aunt Jerrie was there in a jade-green kimono, her arm around a new not-Marisol woman. His parents held hands in a corner, sipping champagne and looking touchingly happy. They were talking to a girl, a cute blond in pink who gave Riley a finger-wave when he caught her eye. Her long curls spiraled like thick yellow ribbons on a birthday package.

“That’s your girlfriend,” barked Sniffles.

“For real?” Riley captioned. “I imagined her?”

“She must’ve been in there somewhere.” Sniffles tilted his head. “Nice visualizing.”

“Thanks…” Riley wanted to drink in the details of his perfect future, but instead he scanned the crowd. Random red tiles began to flicker on the walls—the red of the velvet coatdress Rachel wore to Chad Armstrong’s Valentine dance.

“What are you looking for?” said Sniffles.

“No one.”

Sniffles nudged Riley’s leg. “Are you sure?”

“He’s looking for Rachel,” captioned his girlfriend. She was standing beside them suddenly, frowning. “Aren’t you?”

Mosaic Riley blushed pink tiles. “No, I—”

“I
knew
there was something weird between you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Those looks you give her. The private jokes. The hugs that last a little too long.”

“It’s the future.” He grasped her shoulders. “Everything’s perfect now. We fixed all that.”

The girlfriend folded her arms. “Then why is her name all over you?”

Mosaic Riley jumped back and looked down. A rash of red
Rachel
s had broken out all over him: on his face, his hands, his clothes.

“I didn’t do this,” he said. “I swear! I got over her. I don’t think about her that way now.”

“I don’t believe you,” said the girl. Two iridescent tears slid down her cheeks.

“Don’t be too upset, dear.” Mrs. Woodlawn approached, draining her champagne glass. “It’s a terrible sickness he has. It can’t be helped.”

“That’s not true!” said Riley.

“It is, Champ.” Mr. Woodlawn sidled up, munching a stack of hors d’oeuvres. “We’ve been watching you forever. The whole Rachel thing’s pretty hopeless.”

“But—”

“In fact, none of this really exists,” Mrs. Woodlawn said to Girlfriend. “We’re a fantasy he uses to console himself. In reality, he still lives in our basement and stares at cooking shows all day.”

“Right,” Mr. Woodlawn captioned, his mouth full. “He never went to California after Rachel left for New York. Chickened out.”

“So I’m not real?” said Girlfriend.

“None of this is,” said Mrs. Woodlawn.

Girlfriend nodded. “I thought I was out of his league.”

In the AV room, Riley rapped the side of the goggles.
Stop this. Stop everything.
He made his avatar hurry for the gallery door; it swung open in front of him, offering escape
.

Mosiac Riley stopped in his tracks.

In the doorway loomed a giant man with wild auburn curls. He wore a wolf mask and a coat of animal pelts.

He stepped inside. He had a three-legged dog straining on a leash and a girl smiling on his arm.

Mosaic Rachel.

She glowed, her dress a million jots of shimmering reds and golds. A red glass heart winked on a chain around her neck. Riley touched the goggles and shivered. When he thought of Rachel, his brain made shorthand of her strange beauty, so her features were always slightly blurred and exaggerated. The tiles had reconstructed this to perfection, the way the Impressionists he loved could capture a flitter of sunlight better than a photo.

Rachel dropped the masked man’s arm and stepped closer. Everything crumbled around them: the mosaics, the walls, the gallery crowd. A new scene built itself. A beach cottage. Sand floor, shell ceiling, driftwood walls, like the illustration on the
Crab & Clam
book cover.

Riley’s heart bucked. Mosaic Rachel cradled Bob and Athena, tapping the clock face with one finger.

“Welcome home,” she captioned. “Did you forget?”

“Forget what?”

She smiled.

“Today,” she said, “is Fun Day.”

Mosaic Rachel and Riley were face to face. They made an optical illusion: two profiles etching the outline of something new.

Oh god.
Riley gulped, hitting the button on the goggles.
This is bad. Really really bad.

“Maybe we should—reschedule?” Mosaic Riley captioned.

Mosaic Rachel grabbed his shirt with both fists. “Best friends,” she captioned back, “do
not
reschedule Fun Days.”

Riley pressed the goggles to his face. He couldn’t breathe. He watched their mosaic selves entwine, watched their lips move closer…
closer
…

Something bonked the back of his head. The tiles shattered and fell away.

Riley tore off the goggles and sprang to his feet. Chad Armstrong stood across the AV room, laughing and pointing at a yellow stress ball rolling under a table.

“Oh, man!” Chad hooted. “I didn’t think I’d get you.”

“What the hell?” Riley stepped behind his chair, trying to hide the front of his pants.

“Why are you down here?” said Chad.

“Why are
you
?”

“Jeanette sent me.”

“Is she mad?”

“Is she mad?”
Chad mimicked. “God, you have no nuts at all, do you?”

Riley lowered his eyes, hating himself for ducking the challenge.

“Hey, don’t sadface. I’m a truth teller. Can’t help it if it hurts.” He ambled closer. “What’s with those goggles?”

“Nothing! They’re nothing.”

“Oh yeah?” Chad grinned. “Wow, you and your bitch of a sister are terrible liars.” He grabbed for the goggles. Riley slammed both hands into Chad’s chest.

“Really? Yeah? You wanna fight like in the movies?” Chad shoved him back. “Come on. Let’s go.” Riley took a deep breath and lunged. Chad danced away.

“You can do it, grasshopper,” he said.
“I believe.”

Riley’s stomach lurched. He thought of Chad strutting to their door with his heart-shaped box of chocolates, pictured his thick hairy fingers sliding inside Rachel’s red coatdress. He remembered her coming home from the dance with a tracksuit in place of the dress, saying
It was gross. He was gross. Let’s not talk about it.
He wanted to pound Chad senseless.

“C’mon,” Chad said, throwing phantom punches. “Hit me hard enough and maybe some secrets’ll fall out.”

Riley’s hands curled into awkward fists.

I am a nonviolent person,
he told himself.
But once, just this once, I will make an exception.

***

Rachel kicked her victim.

The red door had led to the library roof, a concrete expanse with a few filthy patio chairs and a disused trash can of thick gray plastic. The can said NIF-T INDUSTRIE’S, so she kicked it as soon as she saw it. That felt good, so she kicked it again and again, pretending it was Chad Armstrong’s shin.

The can smacked the concrete lip of the roof and bounced back, whacking her legs. She stopped, fists clenched, her foot sore and tingling. There was nothing more unsatisfying than kicking a commercial waste receptacle; her most vicious blows had left only faint scuffs.

She turned the can over and sat on it, catching her breath. A distant plane forged through the gray sky. She’d never been on the library roof before. From her high breezy perch, she could see downtown Puckatoe in miniature, like the model train display she and Riley went to see every Christmas at the Holly Mill Mall.

Don’t get sentimental,
she told herself.

New life.

New home.

Rachel strapped on the goggles.

She had a very specific vision in mind, and she had planned to feed explicit mental instructions to the goggles as soon as she pressed the button. But the vision started right away, with no prompting. She saw numbers first. Black numbers in circles that lit up in turn, red-orange like full moons. 37. 38. 39.

An elevator.
She let herself smile.
I’m on an elevator.

At 45, the doors split open. To her left stood a sign in elaborate gold script:

A red carpet stretched down a long stone hallway lined with rounded doorways. Rachel’s heart thumped faster. She hadn’t expected a vision rendered in old-school animation, but it made sense. How many times had she watched those vintage hand-drawn fairy-tale films, thrilling at the villains and switching it off before the dull prince and princess kissed and ruined everything?