Now Is Not the Time to Panic(37)

“Zeke! Please. Okay? It’s okay. You didn’t do anything. You didn’t hurt me. You stopped, okay? We’re okay. You’re okay.”

“I’m so sorry,” he said, but, like, who cared? It had happened and it hadn’t quite happened, and I felt like I was safe now. I thought maybe it could go back to how it had been. I didn’t know what else to say or do.

“The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers,” I said, and Zeke said, “Oh, Frankie, I’m so sorry,” and I said, “Shut up. The edge? The edge? It’s a shantytown, okay? Just shut up for a second and breathe. The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us.”

“Okay,” he said, “okay.”

“We are fugitives, Zeke. We are fugitives. We are fugitives. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us.”

“Okay,” Zeke said, a kind of submission. “Okay, Frankie.”

“No, just, let me do it. The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers,” I kept going. I said it ten times. Twenty times? I don’t remember. I didn’t know how long we’d been there. I had to call my mom soon, find a pay phone to let her know that I was coming home. I was going back to Coalfield, and nothing had changed. As long as I kept saying the phrase, nothing would change. Zeke would not leave. He would not hurt me. He would not hurt himself. I said it again. And again. Zeke had stopped crying. I kept saying it, and he finally looked up at me, made eye contact. I kept saying it. Again and again, until he knew. Until he knew that I’d never stop saying it. For as long as we lived, I would never stop saying it. And we would live forever. So it would go on forever. It would never stop.

I said it again. And again. The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us. I’m saying it right now. I’ve never stopped saying it.





Eleven


HOW ELSE COULD IT HAVE ENDED? I DROPPED OFF ZEKE, AND HE didn’t even say goodbye. And when I got home, my brothers were in the living room and my mom was on the phone pacing in circles, asking, “How hurt are you?”

“What’s . . . what’s happening?” I asked.

“You didn’t see when you drove home?” Andrew asked. When I shook my head, Brian told me that the Poster Posse had cornered a group of about five or six teenagers from our school, who were putting up more posters. The kids had painted their faces like Brandon Lee in The Crow, and when all the drunk old men in hunting orange threatened them, Casey Ratchet had thrown a bottle, knocking out Mr. Ferris, who ran the pool supply store out on the highway. And another man, they didn’t know who yet, had shot Casey, point-blank in the chest. And Casey was dead.

“What now?” I said, stunned.

“Casey Ratchet fucking died, Frankie,” Charlie said. “Hobart’s on the phone with Mom, because it’s bedlam over by the strip mall. It was all in the parking lot by Diamond Connection. He was there interviewing the Poster Posse. I guess somebody trampled him, and his leg is broken or something.”

“Casey Ratchet?” I said again. Casey was maybe five feet, four inches, but he had been in Thrasher Magazine and was a sponsored skater. He’d spent spring break in California filming a skate video. He got suspended as a freshman for dyeing his hair pink and had been cited lots of times by the police for skating on private property. He had never said a single word to me, but I’d always thought he was cool, was destined to leave Coalfield and do neat things. And he was dead.

“If you told me that Casey Ratchet had made the poster,” Andrew said, “I’d believe it. That would make sense. Remember, he had that Suicidal Tendencies T-shirt?”

“You think Casey made the poster?” I asked.

“I’m saying, I’d believe it if it turned out it was him,” Andrew clarified.

“I don’t know if anyone actually made it,” Brian offered. “Like, I think the CIA started it as a kind of mind-control experiment. To see what would happen. That’s why I never fucked around with it, because I didn’t want to get disappeared by some secret government hit squad.”

“I still think it’s lyrics from a song,” Charlie said. “Like, I know I’ve heard it before.” Then he kind of did a faux–heavy metal screech. “Tha EDDDDGE is a shantytown . . . ,” he said, sounding like Axl Rose.

My mom was off the phone and ran over to me. “You okay?” she asked. I nodded. “Hobart broke his leg, for crying out loud. I have to go get him from the emergency room and take him home.” She looked at the triplets. “Don’t leave this house,” she told them. “Protect Frankie, okay?”

“Mom,” I said, “I don’t need them to protect me.”

“I’ll be back in a few hours,” she said.

The triplets went outside to shoot baskets, and I stood in the living room, the house now empty. I wanted to tell Zeke what had happened. I felt like if he heard about it from anyone but me, he’d lose his mind. I was still holding my backpack. I opened it and there were four posters left, slightly crumpled. I went out the front door and just kept walking. It took about twenty minutes to walk the four blocks, but I could see the light on in his room. I went to the window, crouching in the bushes. I realized that I could very easily get shot, or reported to the police. I tapped on the window, standing on my tiptoes. And I saw Zeke’s face through the glass, but he couldn’t see me because of the glare. He was just staring out into the dark, his eyes so unfocused. He looked sadder than I’d ever seen him before. “It’s me,” I said, but he didn’t open the window. He just stood there for a few more seconds and then walked away. I tapped again, but he didn’t even come back. I took one of the posters out of my backpack and folded it a few times, made a square, and I wedged it in the little crack of the window where the window meets the frame, sliding it as far as I could into the slit, hoping he’d see it. I waited for five minutes, tapped two more times. Nothing. I didn’t want to be gone when my mom got back home, so I finally gave up. I had three posters left, and I felt like God in the most ridiculous way, like no one in the world knew what I knew, not even Zeke. I picked three random mailboxes and slid the posters into them, pulling up the red flag on each one.