I waited for him to tell me something else. When he didn’t, I asked another question.
“Were there other kids?”
“You mean, human kids?”
“Yeah.”
“There were a few. There was one kid a couple years older than me who was from our world. His portal was in China—he didn’t speak any English and I didn’t speak any Mandarin, but luckily one of Cordelia’s friends spoke both. So we figured out how to talk. He was a little freaked out because the weather was really warm, and he was from somewhere really cold. I mean, he was freaked out about other things too. Like the maddoxes.”
“The maddoxes?”
“We don’t have them here. They’re, like, part bear and part ox. It’s hard to explain. There were a lot of creatures like that. Honestly, I only saw about one percent of all the creatures they have in Aveinieu. We didn’t travel that far.”
“Why not?”
I could hear Aidan turn over in his bed to face me.
“Because it was just life,” he said. “There wasn’t any quest. There wasn’t any treasure to find or secret to unlock. It was like living on a farm, only the farm happened to be in a completely different world.”
“I thought you didn’t like farms!”
“This wasn’t a third-grade field trip to see some cows and goats, Lucas. It was so weird. All the colors were off—Cordelia said it might be our eyes, and that the light just hit them a different way. But there was a green sky and a silver sun and these trees that were—”
“Blue,” I said, suddenly remembering the leaf that had been in his hair.
Aidan turned on the lamp next to his bed.
“Why did you say that?” he asked.
I was already up, digging through my hamper for the pajama bottoms I’d been wearing two nights ago.
“There was a leaf in your hair!” I said as I dug. “I put it in my pocket.”
The pajamas were now in my hand, and I reached into the pocket and felt the crushed leaf in my fingers. Even before I pulled it out, I could tell it was now in pieces.
Aidan was up and next to me. “Let me see,” he said. “Give it over.”
I cupped the remnants in my hand, then offered them to him.
He and I saw it at the same time:
Not only was the shape destroyed, but the blue leaf had turned…brown.
It looked like any other leaf.
“No,” Aidan said. “No.”
We stared at the pieces in my hand.
“I swear, it was blue when I picked it up. And shaped kind of like a diamond. Here.”
I put the remains of the leaf in his hands. I didn’t know what else to do with them. And now he didn’t know what to do with them either.
“This is all that’s left, then,” he said sadly.
“It’s something, right?” I offered.
“Is it?” he said, putting the brown pieces in his top desk drawer, then shutting it.
“I’m sorry I didn’t put it somewhere safe. A lot was going on.”
He got back into bed and turned out the light.
“It’s okay,” he said. “It wouldn’t have mattered.”
Maybe he was right. But I still felt bad.
“Tell me about some of the other colors,” I said when I got back into my bed.
“Nah. I need to go to sleep.”
So we stopped there.
He didn’t ask me if I believed him now. Which was good, because I still didn’t know what to believe. Maybe in all the excitement, I’d been wrong about the leaf. Now it just seemed like a normal, broken leaf.
It no longer had any story to tell.
22
True to his word, Glenn showed up at ten o’clock the next morning. Mom and Dad clearly hadn’t talked about whether a visit would be against the rules, and once Glenn was there, they weren’t about to chase him off. I followed Aidan and Glenn down to the den, but they positioned themselves on the couch in a way that made it obvious I wasn’t wanted. And then, just in case I didn’t get the point, Aidan said, “It’s a two-player game, Lucas.”
I went upstairs to get my homework—there was still a lot left over from the week we’d missed. Then I made a space for myself behind the couch. Glenn and Aidan knew I was there, but as long as I wasn’t in their way, that was fine.
Usually when Aidan and Glenn played two-player games, it was a very loud sport. They loved making up insult jokes for each other—“My grandma drinks tea better than you shoot zombies!” “You’re steering that car like it’s a half-wheeled bicycle!” “I’ve seen better hand-eye coordination in ticklish sloths!” It was like their commentary about the game was as fun as the game itself. But now…mostly I heard the sounds of the game. At one point, Glenn yelled out, “I crush you like an ant with my clown shoes!” but Aidan didn’t have a response. I figured Glenn was letting him take the lead. Then, after about an hour of them playing, I heard Glenn say, casually, “So, dude…where were you?”
I made myself really still, because I knew if my presence was felt, Aidan might not answer.
The game sounds continued. Finally, Aidan asked, “Does it matter?”
Glenn laughed. “Of course it matters! It’s all anyone can talk about! And since I have, you know, best friend status, they’re asking me all the time. Not that I’d tell them, right? But a guy’s gotta ask.”
Aidan tried a joke, but it sounded forced. “You afraid that they implanted a supercomputer in my brain, which is why I’m beating you so badly at this game?”
“How’d they get a supercomputer in there?” Glenn bantered back. “Oh yeah, there was all that extra space from you missing a brain.” Then he steered back to the original question. “Seriously, I’m dying to know.”
Aidan hedged. “I’m really not telling anyone. That’s what the police wanted.”
“But you can tell me.”
Tell him, I thought. Glenn wanted to know so badly…and if Aidan couldn’t tell him, then I knew he wouldn’t be able to tell anyone else.
Aidan kept playing the game. As he did, he said, “I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t remember a lot of it. They think I must have been sleepwalking or something. But I left the house and walked into the woods and got completely lost. I must’ve been walking and walking. Even after I woke up, I had no idea where I was. Eventually I found this cabin, but no one was home. I found a key under the front mat and let myself in. It didn’t have electricity or anything, and barely had food. I didn’t feel good and I must’ve been really sick, because I completely lost track of time. I must’ve had the worst fever, but there wasn’t any way to call for help. So I just stayed there until I was strong enough to leave. I walked for a while and eventually got to Route 95—I was afraid to get into a stranger’s car, so I just walked in the woods alongside the highway until I knew where I was. Then I made it home. I left a note in the cabin and I’m hoping they’ll call here, so I can figure out where I was. But I don’t think it was close.”