Black River Falls by Jeff Hirsch(10)

Minutes later we were sitting on a bench watching the skateboarders whiz by while tourists snapped pictures of the bridge. I worked on my soft serve while you ticked off the pros.

“No more bedbugs. No more roaches. No more getting packed into subway cars with busted air conditioners in the middle of summer.”

“What about our friends?”

“Black River is only two hours away,” you said. “We’ll see them whenever we want. And besides, when we start at Black River High, we’ll be the cool and mysterious kids from Brooklyn, so we’ll make tons of new friends. Hot girls will literally swoon.”

“Hmm.”

“And there are bike trails,” you continued. “And rivers, and mountains. And people go out and pick their own apples and pumpkins in the fall. We can learn to kayak!”

“Since when do you want to learn to kayak?”

“Since right now! I just decided. I’m gonna be Kayak Guy. Oh! And maybe Snowboarding Guy. Wouldn’t that be awesome?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Awesome.”

“I can see you’re a tough sell, kid. That’s why I saved the best for last. This house Mom and Dad are buying? We’ll have our own rooms.”

I didn’t say anything, but all I could think was that I didn’t want my own room. You and I had been sharing a room since birth. The idea of being locked up in some room all on my own made me feel like I’d just been tossed into the East River with a sack of concrete tied to my ankle. I dumped the dregs of my ice-cream cone in the trash.

You nudged my shoulder with yours. “Think about it this way, bro. What would have happened to Kal-El if he’d grown up on Krypton instead of Earth?”

“Uh, he would’ve died when the planet exploded?”

“Okay. Fine. But forget that for a second. If Kal-El had grown up on Krypton, he’d have ended up just like everybody else. Dude had to move to Earth to be Superman.”

You turned to me on the bench and leaned in closer.

“Just think about it. There’s a whole new world out there, and we can make it into anything we want. We can make us into anything we want.”

Across the river the sun streamed down over the skyscrapers of Manhattan. I imagined a streak of blue and red soaring over the city and smiled despite myself.

“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe that is kind of awesome.”



I woke with a start and found myself still on the porch. I sat up, groaning, and put my back against the railing. The world was hazy and smelled of sweat and vomit. Dark clouds had spread over the town, and the air had that heavy, charged feeling that comes just before a storm. Once my head stopped pounding, I gathered my things, then staggered down toward the street.

As soon as I hit the sidewalk, I thought I heard someone call my name. I spun around, but didn’t see anyone. Just the house, towering over me. I thought about all the rooms sitting side by side within its walls—my bedroom, yours, Mom and Dad’s. They seemed like those chambers they find hidden inside pyramids, sealed up for a thousand years, airless. I felt a pull to go inside—to climb the stairs, to lie in my old bed—but I pushed it away. I strapped on my mask and started the walk back to Lucy’s Promise.

The supply drop must have ended hours earlier. The streets were empty and Black River was quiet. I could’ve believed I was the only one left in town until I heard the sound of someone running on the cross street up ahead. Whoever it was, they were moving fast and heading my way. I slipped behind a row of hedges and waited for them to pass.

The footfalls got louder, and then a girl with emerald green hair appeared, sprinting down the sidewalk. She made it to a brick house across the street from where I was hiding and collapsed against a telephone pole, head down, panting. The pale blue button-down she was wearing was dark with sweat. Her cutoff jeans and boots were splashed with mud.

The girl caught her breath, then looked back the way she’d come. That’s when I saw her clearly for the first time. As soon as I did, the world went a little bit still.

She was about my age, with a heart-shaped face and pale, lightly freckled skin that had gone pink from running. She was obviously scared, but she surveyed the road behind her with a fierceness that was so intense it seemed to make the air around her shimmer.

I started around the hedge, but before I could take more than a step, she was off again. At the end of the street she cut right and disappeared. By the time I came out into the road, it was empty in both directions. Whoever or whatever she’d been looking for was nowhere in sight.

I turned to where the peak of Lucy’s Promise rose over the neighborhood. The clouds above it were low and heavy. It took only a few seconds for a storm to turn the trail up the mountain into a river of rocks and mud. I told myself that the girl wasn’t my problem, that I needed to get back home before the rain started. But when I got moving, it wasn’t toward the mountain, it was to follow her.

When I rounded the corner, I saw her dodging into the driveway of a blue house halfway down the block. A second later, two figures appeared at the far end of the street, racing toward the same house. They hadn’t seen me yet. I wasn’t sure why, but I thought I shouldn’t let them. I hid until they were out of sight and then quietly followed.

A rusty pickup truck was parked at the end of the driveway. I moved behind it and looked through the windshield into the fenced-in backyard. It was small and overgrown with weeds. A pile of construction debris—lengths of two-by-fours, a box of nails—sat beside a half-built shed in the corner. Two men were squatting in the grass between the house and the shed, looking into the space beneath the back porch.