Chapter 9: VII: THE MAGIC PAC-MAN RIVER

[ ━━ ❝ ✧˚⋆｡☾✩˚⋆｡࿐❞ ━━ ]

CAIN

I HAVEN'T SET ANYTHING ON FIRE since I burned my school down.

Arson is an art form. It takes practice, skill, dedication. When you don't paint for a while, or when you don't sing for a while, you start to lose your talent, that little spark that sets you apart from the crowd. The same goes for the art of burning.

So, naturally, setting this stranger's house ablaze is difficult. I can hardly manage to conjure up more than a spark. But my friends are forwards-thinking. They find a red jerrycan in the barn and douse the house in kerosene.

The power of friendship makes arson as easy as 1-2-3. All it takes is a spark to set the buildings ablaze; I snap my fingers, and, like a trail of dominos, a snake of fire hisses into the house.

Just doing that much with my power is overwhelming. As the house catches fire, and the four of us stumble back from the inferno, I nearly black out. Atlas has to hold me up, and we watch as the house crackles and sparks and burns. Ugly smears of yellow and red and orange defile the sky like like vomit, and thick, heavy fingers of smoke claw at the clouds, blotting out the sun. It looks like the blaze is the only thing holding the world up.

And that's it. No fireworks, no applause, no glitter. There's not even enough pizzazz to be considered the ol' razzle-dazzle. It's just me and a burning house.

After that spectacle, we start headed west. As we walk, we gorge ourselves with granola bars, multivitamins, and lukewarm water, and nobody says much of anything. I try to stimulate some good old zesty conversation.

"Some weather we're having," I say.

They act like they don't hear me. I decide maybe a question will be a better route. It'll give them something to build off of.

"What's your opinion on gold-based currency?"

I know something's wrong, because even Meredith doesn't answer me. The girl has an opinion and a half on gold-based currency. Last year, she wrote a twenty-page thesis on why she thinks it's bullshit and we should all go back to a trade-and-barter system for fun.

"Mer." I wrap my arm around her shoulder. "What's wrong, boo?"

She shoves it off, wrapping her arms around her chest. "I killed a man," Meredith says, her voice cold as ice, eyes dark as bloodstained earth. "I killed a man and you want my opinion on finance and the weather!"

To be fair, I think but don't say, I've killed several men. And women, and non-binary folk. I don't discriminate my victims based on their gender or sexual orientation.

"I killed a man," Meredith repeats, shaking her head. "Have you ever killed someone, Cain?"

If I'm being honest, my friends don't know what I do for a living. (With the exception, of course, of Atlas.)

"No," I say.

"I have! I've killed someone! I'm a murderer! I killed someone—shot him in the chest and watched the life bleed from his eyes! And I killed my mom, too!"

"What?" asks Atlas, looking quite panicked.

Meredith doesn't bother to explain. She sinks to the ground, collapsing in a fit of sobs, her shoulders shaking with the weight of the world.

"I kill—I killed my mom," Meredith gasps. "I killed my mom."

Silas plops right on down in front of her. He puts his hands on her shoulders and places his forehead against her's. "You did not kill your mom, Meredith."

"But I did! I did! I did! If I hadn't fucking insisted that she get that fucking surgery, none of this would have happened and she'd still be alive!"

"She would have died anyways. You were trying to stop the inevitable."

"I didn't know it was going to kill her!" Meredith sobs.

"I know," Silas assures her. "And it's okay. It's not your fault."

I feel like an outsider. What could she possibly mean, she killed her mom? She died of cancer.

"What does she mean?" I whisper to Atlas, who looks as confused as I feel.

"I don't know," he admits.

"But it is. I killed her, and I killed him, too." Meredith's ugly crying, now, big wet globs of mascara running down her cheeks. "I kill everything I touch."

"You turn it all to gold," Silas argues.

"And that's exactly my poison! Midas turned his daughter to gold and it killed her."

"No," Atlas interrupts. Once a nerd, always a nerd. "He turned his daughter to gold, yes, but he didn't kill her. He cleansed himself of the curse in the Pactolus river. His daughter went back to normal. Nobody died."

This makes Meredith sob even harder. "I'M WORSE THAN KING MIDAS!" She screams. "THERE'S NO MAGIC PAC-MAN RIVER THAT'S GOING TO TAKE AWAY MY CURSE!"

"Meredith—" Silas begins.

She jumps to her feet, shoving away from him. "I need to go," she mumbles, stalking away.

Silas grabs her arm. "Meredith, stop."

"I need a moment!" she yelps, throwing her arm out of his grasp. "Leave me alone!"

Meredith stalks off, her head in her hands, her shoulders shaking. Every couple of minutes, she looks back at us as if checking to make sure we aren't following her. She disappears around the side of a mountain.

"We shouldn't have come here," Silas mumbles. "This world is gonna bring us nothing but misery."

"What happened with Meredith's mom?" I ask him.

"It's not my place to tell."

"Come on, man," I plead. "I won't say anything about it to her. Besides, I'm gonna find out anyways, either through you or through her. Wouldn't you rather you tell me, to save her the pain of reliving it?"

"Fine." Silas sighs. "After her mom's seizure, when they found out the cancer had made its way to her brain, they gave them two options, remember? One was surgery. They knew it would be risky—chances were that she wouldn't even come out of the operating room alive. But if it worked, her brain would have been completely cancer-free, for at least a little while. It would buy her, at the least, a year or two. But the chances for survival were so slim they gave them another option: doing nothing at all. They could have stepped back, hopped her mom up on painkillers, and let her last days alive be quick, happy, and painless. She could have passed away peacefully in her home."

"I remember," Atlas adds. "Meredith wanted her to get the surgery, didn't she?"

"Yeah, she did. She thought that if there was any chance at all, no matter how small, it was worth fighting for. She wanted to give her a fighting chance. But her dad, and her grandparents, and her mom's doctors were all against it. They thought the surgery was too risky."

"Is that why she blames herself?" I ask. "Because she couldn't convince them to give her mom the surgery, and then she died, just like they knew she was gonna?"

"No," Silas answers. "She managed to convince them. They gave her the surgery, and that's why Meredith blames herself for her mom's death. She died not even a week after the surgery. The cancer didn't stop her heart. The surgery did."

"But she couldn't have known that was going to happen," Atlas argues.

"That's what I've been trying to tell her, but she won't listen. I don't think she actually blames herself. I think it's just the only way she knows how to express her grief. It's easier to cast pain onto yourself than others."

"Yeah," mumbles Atlas. "Yeah, it is."

[ ━━ ❝ ✧˚⋆｡☾✩˚⋆｡࿐❞ ━━ ]

HALF-AN-HOUR AFTER HER DISAPPEARANCE, Meredith returns, her eyes puffy and her cheeks sticky with tears. She doesn't say anything about her breakdown, just insists that we need to start walking. So we do, and she's back to her normal chatty self, acting like nothing happened.

While we walk, the mountains dramatically dip into and out of valleys, farmland tucked inside the space between each summit. We start playing the cow game to pass time. For a while, I'm winning by a landslide, mainly because I'm cheating like a Gemini. It's an easy game to cheat in. Everyone's too focused on their own cows to notice that I go from three to five to nine to thirteen. However, as we get closer and closer to suburbia, and as the cow herds start becoming rarer and rarer, I lose my lead. Meredith spots a graveyard and kills all my cows. Since I can't find anymore cows, I can't cheat, and I never recover. Silas gets the gold with seventeen cows.

Three hours melt together like glue, and the next thing I know, farmland's been replaced with true suburbia. I realize, as we head into it, that I recognize this place. Berlin, New Hampshire. Population 10,225. Warwick's neighboring city nearly ten times smaller than it, but arguably the better place to live. Berlin is Warwick, if Warwick hadn't been destroyed by drugs and crime at the turn of the century. This city is a promise. It's full of hope of what the future could bring. There's a law firm, the high school, some quaint little shops and, bingo, the promised land: Target.

"Target," Meredith purrs. "Oh, yes. That's just what I need."

"This is a safe place," I concur.

"You don't need Target," Atlas offers, pretending to tear up. "Target needs you."

Meredith tosses her fist to the sky like a charging general and leads us inside. "Okay, bitchachos, what's on the menu?"

"Cocaine," I offer.

"Bullets," Atlas adds.

"Uh . . . bandaids?" Silas suggests.

"Stop thinking with your dicks," Meredith orders. "All of you. I need tampons or I'm going to bleed out."

"But what about money?" Atlas asks. "I didn't think to bring any."

"I didn't either," Meredith admits. "Silas?"

"Only a Chick-fil-A gift card." Silas digs through his pockets, pulling out the aforementioned gift card and a crumpled piece of paper. "Oh! And a score card from when I went to laser tag with my swim team. I got last place!"

"You're all so sweet, thinking about money," I say. "But you needn't worry. Mama Cain has it covered. We're going to steal them."

"Cain," Silas warns. "I didn't agree to this plan."

"What would you prefer us to do?" I ask. "Solicit tampons from random women we meet in passing?"

"We could explain our situation and ask for them very, very politely," he suggests.

"God!" Meredith groans, looking like she's about to pull her hair out. "This is why tampons should be free. Imagine all the people with vaginas that can't afford them and are forced to bleed all over themselves." She sighs, angrily blowing a strand of hair out of her face. "Tampons are a fucking human right, and a necessary force behind any civilized society, and they should be free, goddamnit!"

"That's a big-ass retweet," Atlas agrees.

"We're stealing the goddamn tampons," Meredith growls. "Fuck capitalism. It only works in theory, yanno?"

So, fuming, Meredith leads us through the towering aisles. As is proper for all American citizens, we meander around before directly hitting our target (hah), oohing and aahing at all of the goodies that this place has to offer. However, all great journeys must come to an end, and we reach our final destination: the feminine hygiene aisle.

"Feminine my ass," Meredith complains as she grabs two boxes of the good shit. "There's nothing feminine or dainty or secretive about bleeding our of your vagina. Men have vaginas, too, you know? They should call it menstrual hygiene, or something less inconspicuous. Like monthly vaginal blood products!"

"You're very passionate about vaginas," Atlas notes.

Meredith licks her lips. "What can I say?"

The three of us make a casual, not-at-all-suspicious protective circle around Meredith. She shoves the boxes in her bag, and we bounce.

Really, everything goes swimmingly until we try to leave this capitalist hell.

Meredith's the first to step through the security sensors. Atlas and Silas are a step behind her, the latter of the two praying for forgiveness, as per usual. I'm confidently marching behind them, a security guard ready to do whatever it takes to make sure the Great Tampon Heist goes as planned.

Meredith's in the middle of telling Atlas to deepthroat her foot when a sound like someone's digging thousands of tiny needles into my eardrums bursts to life.

"What the fuck?" asks Atlas, genuinely confused.

"I knew this was a bad idea," Silas admits.

"Run!" I order.

And we do—or, at least, we try to. The four of us take off at a sprint. Silas, the only athletic one, reaches the doors first, trying to shove them open even though they're clearly labeled pull.

"They won't open!" yelps Silas, who's clearly started to panic.

A deep voice starts screaming at us. "Put your hands where I can see them!"

I freeze. I know the dril. Goal-post position, palms facing outwards. Slowly, I get to my knees. My friends copy me, their expressions an amalgam of scared and confused.

"What the fuck?" Atlas asks. "We literally stole a box of tampons. They're acting like we killed a man."

We did, I silently remind him. And burned his house down. All crimes under federal law. Really, this is to be expected. But as I remember everything we've done while in this dimension, I feel my heart freeze with fear. Have I been caught? Have I, Cain Terranova, master of staying above the law and under the radar, actually been caught?

It's unheard of. Impossible. Inconceivable. Ridiculous. An idea so absurd, I'd sooner believe myself to be straight.

"We stole two boxes of tampons," Meredith corrects him.

"Welcome to America," Silas whispers.

"Stop talking," the same voice—the same man—orders. "Place your bags on the ground in front of you."

Slowly, cautiously, we comply.

Standing in front of us is two uniformed security guards—two white men, of course. One of them is older, grayer, obviously the man in charge. The other is younger, fresh-faced and wide-eyed, probably a rookie.

"Sir, I called for backup," the younger one—whose nametag reads BUSBY—tells the older one. "They're on their way."

The older man—JORDAN's his name, according to his nametag—nudges Silas's bag forwards with his foot. He slides on a pair of chemical blue medical gloves and begins to root through it like he's picking through a dumpster.

"What've you got here?" he asks us, speaking to us like we're children.

"Lady stuff," Meredith tells him with a crooked grin. "Tampons. I'm actively bleeding out of my vagina."

"How much of this is stolen?" he asks.

"None of it, sir," Silas responds. His head hangs low, and he refuses to meet the guards' eyes.

Jordan roots through Atlas's bag next. The entire time, the poor kid's stiff as a board, his eyes somewhere between terrified and downright murderous. Of course the first bags they're searching are the black guys'.

"Is it clear?" asks Busby.

Jordan just nods and goes in for Meredith's bag, eyeing her like he doesn't trust her. I'll admit that she does look a bit suspicious, with her eyes bugging out of her head and sweat staining her shirt's collar. He grabs the two boxes.

"These were what set the alarms off," Jordan announces, tossing them to the side.

"Check the last guy's bag," Busby orders him, like he's his superior. His predatory stare lands on me, and I feel a shiver race up my spine.

"I know what I'm doing," Busby replies, irritated and distracted as he rips open my bag.

Internally, I panic—all of our weapons are in there. Guns, knives, my good looks. But I don't move. I can't. I'm rooted in place with fear. What do they know about us? What do they know about us that they'd treat us like we're criminals over a fucking stolen box of tampons? They have to know something, don't they? Why else would they be acting like this?

His expression doesn't change as he searches through my shit. "Do you have a license?"

"No, sir."

I'm assuming he meant a concealed carrying license. Not a license to be fabulous. I have one of those! It came in a Hannah Montana book I got in third grade.

"Then how did you get a hold of all of these?" Jordan questions.

"My father bought them, sir."

"And why are they in your possession?"

"I'm meeting him at the shooting range. He wants to teach me how to defend myself."

Jordan seems dissatisfied. "Who's your father?"

I give him the first name on my mind. "Hannah Montana."

"Pardon?"

I pretend to cough. "I said Harold McDonald."

"Does he have a license?"

"Yes, sir."

"Check" Jordan orders Busby.

Excited, Busby whips out something that looks like a smartphone-walkie-talkie. He frantically types something in.

"Sir," Busby informs his superior, "the only Harold McDonald we have in our registry is a prostitute from Alabama. He was executed thirty years ago."

Executed? For prostitution? Jesus.

There's a beat.

"Sir?" Busby asks.

"Cuff them," Jordan orders.

Oh, boy. Already?

"Are we going to get a public execution, by chance?" I ask, thrilled at the prospect.

Meredith kicks me. "Shut up, you idiot! Anything you say is gonna be used against us!"

"Buy my silence!" I yell, wanting to be defiant in my last moments on this earth.

"I told your dumb ass to cuff them!" Jordan screams.

Finally, Busby gets to business, though he isn't defeating the huns. Atlas and Silas are frozen and compliant. Meredith, who has nothing to lose, screams and claws and kicks and bites, but all it does is pisses Busby off. He puts the handcuffs on her so tight her face knits up in pain. Me, I don't fight him. I'm kind of into being tied up, as you all know.

Once he's gotten all of us handcuffed to hell, he grabs two of us—me and Meredith. Jordan grabs Atlas and Silas. They lead us outside, the cold metal handcuffs pinching my wrists.

A cop car sits idle in front of the Target, waiting for us.

Atlas tries to whisper to me in Italian, but his accent's so bad, his words are fuzzy and slurred and nearly incomprehensible. I have to ask him to repeat himself twice to understand what he was trying to ask me: if I can burn the car.

Could I? Well, not likely. The only reason I burned the dead man's house down was because we doused it in kerosene first. Maybe if I hit the car's gas, or engine, or something, it would catch, but I don't know. I tell him to shut up.

"Quiet, you two," Busby orders us.

Our little parade crosses the street, and Jordan knocks on the cop car's window. Slowly, it rolls down. A young Indian woman—hardly a woman at all, but a teenage girl—stares back at us from the inside. She's wearing a leapord-print hijab held in place with sparkly pink pins. Her eyes are dark and piercing, the manner in which she holds herself intense and a little frightening, but I immediately trust her a million times more than I trust Busby and Jordan. Maybe it's because she's so young, or maybe it's because she's not white, or maybe it's because of her pink pins or her pretty ruby necklace that makes her browned skin pop, but I don't think so. Despite her seriousness, despite her raw intensity and cold sense of calculation, she has the kindest face I've ever seen. Despite how predatory her stare is, her eyes are as soft as rich, melted dark chocolate. She reminds me, a bit, of a gun-wielding grandma. Like she's a terrifying, powerful force of nature that'll rip you to shreds in an instance and then bake you cookies and knit you a wool sweater.

She stares blankly at the two security guards.

"Get these four to the station for questioning," Jordan orders. "They seem to be carrying arms unlawfully obtained."

The cop smiles at them, and her grin is even more unsettling than her stare.

The two guards shove the four of us into the backseat, which is really only big enough for three. Somehow, I end up on Atlas's lap. The cop rolls her window up, turns on the car's flashing lights, and places something on the floor of the car. We shoot forwards.

It's then, with the car recklessly speeding forwards and innocent civilians diving out of the way to avoid becoming roadkill, that the cop finally opens her mouth, and I suddenly find myself very aware of two things.

This woman is simultaneously not a cop and very, very drunk.

How can I tell? Well, the thing she opened her mouth to say was a simple phrase, really. Fuck the police. And now she's beginning to chant it, beginning to scream it at the top of her lungs. Also, it's the fact that she's speeding and recklessly driving and ignoring all rules of the road. She's also not in uniform and far too young to even consider becoming a member of law enforcement. Besides, she's so tiny the sight of her sitting in the front seat, several textbooks (about various political science topics, I notice) stacked under her bum so she can see over the steering wheel, her bare feet barely reaching the pedals, is comical. The idea of her being a cop would be absolutely absurd.

Also, her foot isn't on the gas. Instead is something large and red: a brick.

Atlas notices this at the same time I do.

"Stop the car," he orders.

"Man, fuck you!" She laughs. "I don't take orders from nobody, mister! I'm a cop, beep beep!"

"I said stop the car!" Atlas orders, louder this time, more demand in his voice.

"YOU CAN'T STOP THE BEAT!"

"You're gonna get us killed!" Meredith screams. "Please, stop!"

"What's with the brick?" I ask.

"So I can drive!" She replies, laughing. "Duh!"

Silas, I notice, has gone silent. Sitting directly behind this drunk girl, he stares at the back of her head, his glare nearly as intense and predatory as her own. A dribble of blood trickles out of his nose. He's trying to use his power—he's trying to control her thoughts, get her to do what he wants her to.

She makes such a sharp turn onto a bridge, we nearly go barreling into the creek below.

"Stop!" I plead.

All of a sudden, she rips her hands from the wheel as if in a trance. She reaches down and moves the brick from the gas pedal to the breaks, grunting theatrically with the effort.

The car comes to a screeching halt, and she turns to look at us. Her eyes fall into a glassy sort of focus, making her look like any normal drunk girl at any normal party. The air feels too still, now that we aren't going a hundred miles an hour.

"Have her unlock the doors back here," I tell Silas.

A second later, she does.

I take the chance while I have it. I climb out of the backseat, throwing her door open and dragging her out of the car. She instantly collapses to the ground when her feet hit the floor, and when she hits the road, she starts howling.

"Stand up," I tell her. "I'm not helping you."

"I can't!"

"What do you mean, you can't? You have two legs! Use them!"

"I MEAN THAT I CAN'T!" She screams. "I'm fucking paralyzed, you douche-bag!"

I would feel bad, getting mad at her over a disability—over something she can't control. But she did nearly kill us. So I guess we're even. I help her to her feet.

"YOU'RE A DOUCHE-BAG!" she screams into my ear.

Atlas has left the back seat in favor of riding shotgun.

"Yeah, thank you." I set her in the backseat, then get into the driver's seat. "Who are you?"

There's silence for a moment. "Oh," she finally realizes. "Me?"

"Yeah."

"A revolutionary."

"No, for realsies."

"Yes, for realsies! I'm a motherfucking revolutionary!"

"I was just asking for your name."

"Oh. I'm Maya. Maya Zoomin'—I mean, Zaman."

"And how old are you, Maya?"

"Nineteen."

"Where do you live?"

Maya gives me a sidelong glance, momentarily hesitant. Then she caves and gives me her address and apartment number.

"We're gonna ditch this car a couple blocks away from her place," I tell my friends. "Mer, give our girl some water. We need to get her sobered up."