Crap Kingdom (15 page)

“What’s
that
voice supposed to be?”

“’At’s how I talk and that!”

“You sound like my dad, Tom.”

Tom took this as a compliment, since her dad had sort of a British accent, even though this world did not have an England.

“Yeah, it’s me, so what?”

“Why are you dressed like that?”

“Because your dad wants to kill me.”

“That’s right! He does. So . . . gimme it.”

“What?”

“Give me your disguise or I’ll tell my dad that you’re here.”

“Okay,” Tom said, and began the excruciating process of removing his mustache without the proper mustache-removal solution.

“Where did . . .
ow
 . . . where did everybody go?”

“Kyle’s showing off his new invention.”

“What is it?”

“Something called music.”

“Wait, what? Kyle claims he invented
music
?”

“I don’t know why you’re getting so worked up about it. It’s pretty stupid anyway. I don’t see what the big deal is. When he debuted it last week everybody was like, oh, cool, that’s so great, that’s so
fun
. But who cares? It’s just noise, right? I can make noise. I’d make a noise right now if someone weren’t following me and I didn’t want them to catch me.”

“Who’s . . .
ow
 . . . following you?”

“Gark. My dad sent him after me. He wants me to hear ‘music’ with the rest of the losers, but if I wanted to hear a noise . . .
man
, do I want to make a noise right now!
That’s
fun. That and dressing up as stuff. Why doesn’t anyone understand that? No one ever wanted to have fun before and now that Kyle’s here and they do, they don’t even know how to do it right. Ugh, hurry up!”

“
Ow
 . . . Okay! There!” Tom handed her his mustache and wig.

“The rest of it, too. Your clothes.”

“What? Why?”

“Because I’m being chased and I need to change disguises!”

“These are the only clothes I have!”

“I bet that rock over there would sound really good against this big hollow metal thing, huh? Then you’d be in serious trouble.”

“All right, fine.”

“Aren’t mustaches the best? There was this guy the other night who I caught sneaking around, and he was wearing this neat fuzzy helmet thing, and when I made him give it to me so I wouldn’t tell anybody he was sneaking around, he took it off and he had an actual mustache! If I had a real mustache, I’d never cover it up with anything.”

“Yeah,” Tom said. “They’re pretty great.” He finished taking off the blazer and the jersey and the skirt. He had never anticipated being in a situation where someone would order him to take off a skirt and he would be mad about it.

He handed it all to Pira, who skillfully put it all on over her existing costume. When the process was over, in addition to all the other stuff, Pira was wearing a mustache on top of her Viking beard, and a white wig rested precariously between the two horns of her Viking helmet. Tom was wearing white cotton briefs and nothing else. He was embarrassed by them even though he didn’t think Pira knew a thing about Earth underwear. Tom knew that at a certain point you were supposed to switch over from tighty-whiteys to some other form of more mature underwear, but he still hadn’t made that transition, and it wasn’t until someone else saw you in your underwear that you realized you’d failed to make this and other critical transitions, transitions every other kid his age just seemed to know how to make automatically.

“Great. Well, have fun!” Pira scampered off around the corner.

A few seconds later, she scampered back, picked up the rock she’d pointed out earlier and threw it against the piece of metal she’d pointed out earlier. As promised, it made an awful clanging noise. Then she disappeared again. The sound had barely finished echoing when Gark appeared behind Tom.

“Hey, Gark,” Tom said.

“Oh, no. Oh no,” Gark said. “Tom, you’re not supposed to be here.”

“I know. I know. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry about everything, okay? Seriously. When I came and saw this place it wasn’t what I expected, at all, and the king kind of treated me like crap but you were great, and I should’ve treated you better, and I guess I should’ve taken your offer, because Kyle seems to be having a really good time. I just wish somebody had told me—I don’t know. The point is, I’m really sorry for the way I treated you and if there’s any way at all that you could not tell the king I’m here, I would really appreciate it.”

Gark looked pained.

“I always liked you, Tom.”

“Thanks,” Tom said.

“No,” Gark said, “I mean, I always liked
you
. Not . . . gosh, don’t tell the king I said this. Not Kyle as much.”

“Really?”

“Yeah! When that prophecy first came, I got so excited! I mean, come on, a Chosen One? We used to hear about that kind of stuff a lot when I was a kid, but it seemed like the king and my dad were kind of wanting any Chosen One talk to stop completely. But here was this prophecy through my window, and I brought it to the king, and I expected him to say no and instead he said sure, go ahead.”

“It doesn’t bother you that he was only letting you do it because he thought you’d mess up?”

“Who cares what he thinks, as long as I get to do it? That’s the way I look at it. I imagined it would take such a long time to find you, but you were right there by the portal, and then I had to think of a good way to approach you . . . and I know it didn’t turn out to be the best idea . . . but, you were like my project! It was so exciting!”

“You must have been disappointed when I turned out to be a jerk.”

“I don’t think you’re a jerk. You said a lot of things to the king that maybe I couldn’t agree with out loud, but they were things I’d always wanted to say. And as soon as I heard
you
say them, I was so excited because I knew I wasn’t crazy. And Kyle’s great! But there wasn’t anything to do, really, to get him here. It wasn’t a project. I already knew where he was, because he was friends with you. And the king liked him and took him to J’s cave and suddenly he was the king’s project. And everybody liked Kyle. And that’s great. But it was kind of fun when it was just my thing. You were my favorite, Tom. Yeah. I liked you a lot.”

“Is there still something we can do? Because I have to be here.”

“Why?”

“It’s tough to explain. But I have to be on this side of our two worlds.”

“Well then,” Gark said, “you should leave Kkkkttttnpth. You should be beyond the Wall. I don’t see the king changing his mind, especially if he finds out you snuck in here today.”

“Is there anything you can do?”

Gark shook his head. “He’s got his Chosen One.”

“But I can’t go too far,” Tom said, “’cause I can’t go back to my world without Kyle.”

“Then at least hide,” Gark said. “You’re pretty obvious the way you’re, y’know, dressed.”

“I know! I was looking for a hiding spot, and I didn’t mean to be not wearing clothes. . . . Anyway, if you see Kyle, and there’s any way to tell him this without the king finding out, just tell him I’m hiding underneath . . . underneath . . .” Tom looked around. “I don’t know, maybe that old canoe?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it. Just pick the best hiding spot you can, and I’m sure Kyle will find you with a person-finding spell.”

“Oh,” Tom said. “All right.”

“Did Pira come this way?”

Tom pointed directly behind him, toward the piece of metal and the rock and the corner she’d disappeared around minutes before.

“Thanks.” Gark started to walk away, then turned back to Tom and started taking his shirt off.

“Gark!” Tom said.

“You’re going to be cold,” Gark said.

“Maybe, but I’ll figure it out. What’s the king gonna say when he sees you without a shirt?”

Gark seemed to really think about this. “I don’t know.”

Tom laughed. “It was a rhetorical question. Go, I’ll be fine.”

“All right,” Gark said. “Good-bye, Tom.”

Gark went out of sight behind a tent flap that was actually an old beach towel. It was blowing around in a wind that was just now kicking up. The sun was just starting to set. The temperature was dropping rapidly, even without the wind’s help. Tom was freezing. He sincerely hoped that, back on Earth, his soul-other was using his body to win a fencing competition or something equally cool, to make it worthwhile that the real Tom was here, freezing in his underwear in a world where nobody wanted him.

At least Gark liked him. At least he was Gark’s favorite. Then Tom remembered that Gark was not the smartest guy, and was the kingdom’s least respected citizen. If the dumbest person liked you and no one else did, did that mean you were a bad person? If the smartest person here, which the king seemed to be, hated Tom, then that meant he was the worst, right? But Tom didn’t like the king. The king was mean and judgmental. A smart mean person hated him, and a dumb nice person liked him. Whose approval was he supposed to want?

It was finally time to pick a place to hide. As usual, he had started out with every intention of making a really good decision, but as usual, the options had overwhelmed him, and he was tired and cold, so he gave up and climbed into what he thought was called a wardrobe. It did not take him to a second fantasy world, though. What had seemed appealing about it was that it had doors, and he could just open it, climb in, and not even have to crouch down because it was a little taller than he was, and he could close the doors and be out of the wind. What was unappealing about it were the things piled up at the bottom. He saw them as he stepped in. They appeared solid enough, but they crunched underneath his feet as he turned around to shut the doors. He looked down. They were like smooth, gray circular rocks, and they all had holes in the middle. But why were they crushed so easily if they were rocks? Because they weren’t rocks, he realized. They were doughnuts. Extremely old doughnuts. The sprinkles were the dead giveaway. The bread and frosting had molded over, but the sprinkles, the cockroaches of the confectionary world, had maintained their color and shape.
Ewww,
Tom thought.

He considered kicking them out into the road, but he figured once he shut the doors, a pile of doughnuts outside would be a dead giveaway to whoever had placed them in here. This was what he could’ve done as Chosen One. This was how he could’ve been a leader. He could’ve said, “Hey, you know what? GET RID OF THE DOUGHNUTS!”

He winced, shut the door, and tried to be thankful that Pira hadn’t asked for his shoes. No one here seemed to recognize the value of shoes. Kyle was teaching them music? Kyle needed to be teaching them shoes.

In the periods when the wind died down, Tom could hear Kyle’s show, or gathering, or whatever it was. There was loud recorded music playing. It sounded like The Beatles. Maybe Kyle had found a boom box and some D batteries underneath a different pile of rotting doughnuts. Would Kyle do a whole lot to dissuade the people from thinking he’d invented music and not just brought it over from another world? Probably not. Tom didn’t know why he assumed that, but he did. He was no longer sure whom he was mad at, exactly, but if he kept being mad at people it would keep him from being mad at himself.

After what seemed like forever, Tom heard applause and shouting. The music died away. Seconds later, there was a thudding sound in front of the wardrobe doors. They swung open.

Kyle said, “Ready to go?”

Tom returned to his own body to find that body lying on a bed. His bed. There was no one with him this time. He was lying on top of his sheets. His other self had made the bed, and had done a way better job than Tom ever did when his mom made him do it. Tom was wearing his street clothes. That meant his other self had followed the instructions to change clothes, too. He really loved this guy.

Tom was holding something. His new phone. He looked at it. It seemed his other self had figured out how to send texts. Or really, he had figured out how to send one text message. A really, really long one. To Lindsy.

Tom sat up. He scrolled down and down, reading the message, his horror growing.

It was the dirtiest thing he’d ever read.

The time stamp said it had been sent twelve minutes ago. There was no undo button, no grabbing the text back from her inbox. The damage was done.

The text was something Tom would never, ever say. Would he think it? Definitely. All the time. Alone. But he would never say it. He would certainly never put it in written form and send it to a girl’s phone, because she would definitely respond by deleting the message and deleting his number from her phone and not speaking to him again, ever. It would not be unreasonable for Lindsy’s father to come after Tom with a shotgun. Two shotguns, even. Tom had shaken Lindsy’s father’s sizable hand. He could definitely handle the weapons. Two shotguns, each of them double barreled. Four barrels of paternal teenage-boy-killing fury headed up the stairs of Tom’s apartment building. Not unreasonable. Not at all. Tom had earned it.

What he hadn’t earned was Lindsy. Not really. And it was over now, and that made sense, because he’d never earned it in the first place. He’d had some stranger’s soul pinch-hit his entire brief relationship with a girl he would never have gotten just by being himself.