Crap Kingdom (16 page)

Tom laid his head back down on his pillow. He was back where he’d started, staring at the ceiling the way he had one night a couple of months ago when he was certain no fantasy creature would ever burst through it telling him he was the Chosen One in some other world. He decided it was way worse to get something like a Chosen One–hood or the love of Lindsy Kopec and then have it taken away from you than it was to never know those things were options at all.

His phone vibrated in his hand. He brought it up slowly to his face. He could barely look, but he did. It was a text from Lindsy. Her response was long. Really long. He scrolled down and down and down. He sat up in bed again.

She was into it.

She was really into it.

Lindsy’s text was now the dirtiest thing he’d ever read.

This happened a lot. Not hot girls sending him sexually charged texts—that never happened. But there were always times when Tom’s head was on the chopping block and he would learn all kinds of lessons in that moment of need, gaining the wisdom of a man whose death was imminent. And then, at the last second, his head would somehow be saved from the chopping block and he’d completely forget all the things he’d learned when it was there.

He’d had a final in Tobe’s Beginning Drama class last year. He’d really wanted to do a good job on it to impress Tobe and he’d told himself he wouldn’t do what he normally would’ve done, which is wait until the absolute last second to do everything. A good two weeks before the project (a diorama of a stage design for a reimagining of
Julius Caesar
) was due, he sketched out the diorama he planned to build. He was so proud of himself for doing this, for behaving so unlike his normal self, that he didn’t work on it the next afternoon, or the next. He would think about it occasionally and think,
I’m ahead of the game. I worked really hard that one afternoon and I could do it again anytime.

He came into class a few weeks later and everyone was sitting on the carpeted amphitheater steps of the drama room with shoe-box dioramas on their laps. He had been so ahead of the game that he’d forgotten when the due date was, presuming that since he was so far ahead of the game and the due date was so far in the future, no matter how many days actually passed, his ahead-ness and the due date’s far-away-ness would always stay the same.

Tom sat down on the carpeted steps. He was doomed. He watched the door, waiting for Tobe to come in. But Tobe never came in. A substitute came instead. She asked for everyone’s dioramas shortly after taking attendance. All the other kids placed their dioramas on a table by Tobe’s desk at the front of the room.

That night, Tom worked like a demon building his diorama. Instead of the cocky feeling he’d had that first day a few weeks ago, he was now filled with a grave resolve, an adultness, an I’ve-learned feeling. He would hand it in the next day. He would not offer any explanation or excuse, only an apology. This wasn’t middle school anymore. His life, as his mom had told him many times, was now happening in the present tense. He would accept the consequences and learn and do better next time and never ever do anything like this again.

Tobe was back the next day. Tom was the first student in the room. Tobe’s back was turned and all the dioramas were still on the table where they’d been the day before. Tom realized it would be simple just to set his diorama with the rest of them. But no: that would be the cowardly, childish way out. He waited until Tobe turned around. He began to offer his no-explanation, no-excuse apology, when Tobe waved him off.

“Just set it there. Thanks, Tom.”

Tom never got to deliver his noble I’m-sorry-and-if-you-fail-me-I-understand speech. He would go on to receive a B-plus on the project and an A-minus in the class. He would also continue to do things at the very last minute.

Now the same thing was happening with Lindsy. Why would he ever stop entrusting his romantic life to his other self, who was so dynamite at saying exactly what Lindsy wanted to hear and doing exactly what Lindsy wanted done?

But he couldn’t get back over there without Kyle, and once he was back over there, he couldn’t be within the borders of Crap Kingdom. That part sucked.

His phone made a beep indicating he had a message from earlier that he hadn’t read yet. He looked again. This text was from himself to himself. He opened it. It was longer than his dirty text to Lindsy and her dirty text back to him combined.

The first few lines read:

the soul-swap’s easy enough. what follows are simplified instructions.

19

MAGIC ISN’T DOING
something extraordinary in your world, it’s doing something ordinary in the tiny world you’ve created inside your own world. in the tiny temporary world you’ve created, such things are possible. normal even.

magic’s not the hard part. magic’s probably not even a good name for it, because as i said, it’s all very normal. the hard part is the creation of tiny worlds inside whatever world you’re in currently.

Tom leapt up from his bed
.
He started clearing dirty clothes off the floor, throwing them in piles on either side of the room. He would need room to fall into the other world, he figured. He didn’t know how to do any of this yet but he was too excited not to do something immediately. It was the same as when he’d gotten really into chess in seventh grade: he’d checked out a
Chess for Dummies
book from the library and got home and read half a chapter and got so excited about the strategies he was supposedly learning and chess in general that he ran to his computer and fired up the chess program and played a bunch of games and always lost and never applied what he’d learned.

Focus. He had to focus. He picked up his phone again. He read:

these temporary worlds that allow for otherwise impossible things to take place are what you might more simply refer to as “spells.” to internalize a spell and be able to employ it just by thinking is to modify it, to create a tiny new world every time. this requires a great deal of time and skill and training. lucky for you there exist borrowed worlds you can employ, without having to call them into being from scratch. you will be able to invoke a simple soul-swap by using some basic magic words. the difference between a spell invoked with magic words and a spell invoked from within one’s own self is the difference between checking a book out from the library and purchasing it from a bookshop, or perhaps more accurately, writing an entire book yourself. but if i am reading the above correctly, you are only wishing to be able to do the basic swap, not become a level-5 gandalf or any such thing.

Tom was confused in a couple of ways. He scrolled up.

The texts from himself, to himself, before this one read:

dude, if i could soul-swap by myself, i would.

And then:

change your clothes immediately! they’re in your backpack.—tom

So his other self had received the second text immediately after the swap and, upon opening it, seen the first one, about Tom wanting to be able to soul-swap. His other self had then provided Tom a long and properly punctuated reply. When that was done, his other self had sent Lindsy the
Iliad
of dirty texts, which she’d loved. This other self apparently knew about bookstores, and about Gandalf. Had this other self had the time to be a brilliant actor, a romantic dynamo, and a scholar of magic,
and
read the entire most influential fantasy saga ever? Tom himself had only ever gotten halfway through
The Fellowship of the Ring
. How great could one guy be? Tom wanted to buy this guy a soda, or maybe a body of his own.

this is a newer version of the spell, slightly improved from the one i take it you’ve been using. every time i take residence in your body, that body is flat on its back, completely out of breath, and in a great deal of pain. this spell will simplify both your life and mine by eliminating the need for any sort of fall. i never had a chance to finalize it, but it should be stable enough for our purposes.

Oh. So Tom hadn’t needed to clear that space on the floor. Well, anyway, now his room looked cleaner. Maybe his other self would take the hint and clean his whole room. This was kind of like having a robot butler that lived inside your body.

the trigger words are “crabsaw griddlefriend.” just think of doing the spell and say the words, and, as they say, “presto.” the word “presto,” interestingly enough, is not used in any spells that i am aware of. i would try to work it into one but the words must be very carefully selected, for reasons too arcane and very likely too dull to go into here.

wish to return from the other world? say the words again. simple.

i hope this proves useful. i will continue managing your affairs on this side in the manner i have been. i presume you are content with said management, since i’ve been asked back into your life several times.

This was great! Tom could come and go from the nameless kingdom, or more important, the world around the nameless kingdom, without Kyle’s help. Tom was in control. He knew
magic.

Tom stood in the center of the room. He held his phone up to look at the “trigger words.” Before he could say them, his phone buzzed. It was a text from Lindsy. It read:

GET OVER HERE. NOW. ; )

That other world would still be there. He was going to do whatever Lindsy said. He was going to go over there, now, as himself.

He’d earned it.

20

TOM RODE HIS
bike over. Lindsy’s mom let him into their house. Tom mumbled something about him and Lindsy needing to run their lines for the show. She told him that Lindsy was upstairs in her bedroom. For some reason it was the word “bedroom” that did it. He went from very excited to very scared.

He had no training, basically no experience with any other girls. In fact, he had basically no experience with Lindsy. He’d barely been able to kiss her without help from his personal void-soul assistant. He was going to screw this up. He was in no way prepared. He had not even known what some of the terms she used in her text were. That should have never been the case. He was a teenage boy who had the Internet.

He was almost to the top of the stairs. He’d ridden his bike over, so it wasn’t insane for him to be out of breath already, was it?

He tripped on the very top stair. He didn’t fall flat on his face. He caught himself. It was almost more embarrassing to catch yourself than it was to just plain old fall, and even worse when no one saw you trip. You still knew what had happened. You still knew you were a total goober.

Why was he like this? Why did it take getting the things he really wanted to bring out the worst emotions he was capable of feeling? Weren’t those feelings only supposed to surface when really bad stuff happened to you? Why did they show up when good stuff happened? If that was always going to be the case, why ever want anything good to happen at all? He was beginning to think the king had been right. Why get excited for anything? You’re just going to screw it up. But you can’t screw up something you don’t want. Well, you can, but you won’t care when you do. His hand was on her doorknob.

He paused. He raised his fist to the door. Five full seconds later, he knocked.

“Tom?” Lindsy said from inside.

“Yup,” he said.
Yup?
he thought.
YUP? That’s sexy?
Is that what he thought sexy was?

“Come in,” she said.

He put his hand on the doorknob.

Open it,
he thought.
She already knows you’re out here. You’re being weird, and you’re being a coward. Other You would just barge right in. Other You would just
do
and not think.

He turned the doorknob. He could hear soft music playing inside Lindsy’s room. Female vocalist. He stepped inside. He closed the door. He looked at the door as he closed it for some reason, probably because he could not trust his body to perform simple actions such as closing a door and felt he had to supervise with his actual eyeballs.

“Hi,” Lindsy said.

Tom looked up.

Lindsy was lying across her bed, on top of the covers, like Tom had been on his bed earlier that afternoon.

Except unlike Tom, Lindsy was beautiful.

And also unlike Tom, Lindsy was naked.

Tom had a very quick panic attack. Then his panic attack had a panic attack.

“Hey,” he burped.

The old Tom was dead. All that was left was a being made entirely of terror. Naked terror. Ha, that was funny. He had thought of a joke. How could he think of a joke at a moment like this? The fact that he would think of a joke at a moment like this said everything about why he would never be the kind of person that could actually
do
this.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” he said.

“What?” Lindsy said. “Really? Okay . . .”

He put his hand on the doorknob again.

“Heyyyy,” Lindsy said, playfully, “dummy!” She pointed to another door in her bedroom. Right. She had a bathroom of her own in here. Tom knew that. He’d used it many times. He’d probably even used it at times he didn’t know about. He crossed to the bathroom. This brought him closer to her than he’d been yet tonight.

“But at least kiss me first?” she said. Still playful. Maybe everything wasn’t totally screwed up. He turned. She was smiling in a sexy way. How could girls smile in a sexy way? Smiles were inherently goofy. Lindsy was pulling it off, though.

All he had to do was walk over and kiss her. The rest would take care of itself. It wasn’t about what he did and didn’t do. It was just about doing something. That was the difference between him and his text-messaging magic-knowing otherwordly cohort: that guy did stuff. Tom thought about doing stuff until the chance to do anything had passed.
Do something
.

“I’ll be right back,” Tom said, and ducked into the bathroom.

He shut the door and leaned against it. He pulled out his phone and looked through his text messages.

“Are you okay?” Lindsy called to him.

“Crabsaw griddlefriend,” Tom said.

“What?” Lindsy yelled.

Crap, it didn’t work. And she’d heard him. Maybe he was supposed to say it louder. But when he said it louder, would she be even more weirded out? What if his other self just barged back out of the bathroom without flushing the toilet, and she thought all Tom had done in here was yell nonsense words to himself? Should he pee now, and flush, and wash his hands? The flush would cover the sound of him speaking the trigger words, right? It would help, at least.

He started trying to pee standing up. His hands were shaking. He couldn’t pee. Nothing in his body was working right. What would she think about his hands shaking? He hoped his other self had a hand-steadying spell.
Just flush the toilet,
Tom thought.

But wait, what if his other self didn’t know to wash his hands and Lindsy thought Tom didn’t wash his hands?

Just go,
he told himself.
Just let the other guy handle it.

Tom reached out and smacked the handle. Water spun in the toilet. There was the
whoosh
of water in the pipes. Now was the time. What were the words again? He looked at his phone.

“CRABSAW GRIDDLEFRIEND!”