Matthew Wayne Selznick

Previously: Alex Kent is crushing hard on Angel Jenner, and she’s known all along! Lina Porter is recovering at Carson Meunetti’s after being drugged and nearly raped by Eric Finn. Carson, whose parents are away, just got a late night phone call.

“After the Phone Call”

“Are you still there?”

Alex blinked. He tried to relax his grip on the telephone receiver.

“Yeah.” He swallowed. “What?”

“Nothing.” Angel sounded… disappointed? Maybe just tired.

Alex exhaled and closed his eyes.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah… what?”

“Yeah, I do,” he said. “I do like you.”

Alex listened to static on the phone line for what felt like forever.

He couldn’t take it any more.

“You still there?”

She laughed, nervous and quick. “Yeah.” Another, shorter space of nothing, then, “Like… more than a friend, like me?”

Alex went for broke. “Yep. Kinda… took me by surprise.”

“Me too.”

Hope bloomed, pushing at his ribs. “You… too, what?”

“I’m surprised.”

“Oh.”

More silence.

Alex said, “That’s why I came by. On Monday.”

“I knew there was something up with you,” she said. “I’m… um… sorry about Mike.”

“Oh, well,” Alex floundered. This was still Angel, he reminded himself. His best friend. They could talk about anything. Why should this change that? “You didn’t know I was coming by.”

“Wish I had.”

Alex chuckled. “I’ll call next time.”

“That would have been good. I could canceled on him.”

“Oh, yeah?”

Her laugh, still hushed and restrained, probably to keep from waking up the rest of her house, was a little more relaxed. “Yeah.”

“So… how’s that going?”

“He’s a dick,” she said shortly. “You should be proud of me. I figured this one out in less than a month.”

She’d been hanging out with that guy for a month..? Put that away for now.

“I am proud of you.”

“Thanks.”

“So, um… how’d you know?”

“You were acting like a boy.”

“Like a boy? You mean stupid?”

She choked back another laugh. “God, I’m gonna wake up my dad… no, not stupid, Alex. Just… I knew something was up.”

“Sorry.”

“Why?”

“Okay, I’m not sorry. I just… I don’t know. I don’t want this to, y’know, mess us up.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, I don’t…”

“What?”

“I…” Well, this wasn’t easy. He was totally at a disadvantage, here. “I don’t know if…”

She cut him off. “How tired are you?”

“Um… I don’t know. Not really. Why?”

“Can you stay awake long enough for me to get there?”

There was that hope balloon again. Alex sat up straight on the kitchen floor.

“Sure I can.”

“Okay. I’ll see you soon. ‘Bye.”

The dial tone sang.

He hung up and stood in the dark kitchen. Angel was coming over. That had to be good, right?

Carson said goodbye. He heard the click when his uncle Mick hung up. Carson pulled the receiver away from his ear and looked at it. He stared at the tiny round holes of the earpiece.

He heard the dial tone.

Soon, he heard the impatient, repeating beep that was the phone telling him to hang up.

Carson put the receiver on the cradle with strange care.

If the phone was hung up, the call was over. If the call was over, that meant Carson had slipped from Before the Phone Call to After The Phone Call.

Carson’s parents were dead.

It was a small plane. They used it to go from San Jose International to the small island where the hotel was, where the conference was.

Carson didn’t know the name of the island. He’d want to know that. Someone would tell him. He was pretty sure. Then he’d know. He’d know, and he’d never forget it.

The plane was presumed lost, somewhere off the coast. People were looking.

Carson swayed a little. He took a couple of steps toward the couch.

“Uh.”

Carson let his legs give out. He slid to sit on the carpet next to the couch.

His parents were dead.

His Uncle Mick was coming here. It would be light by the time he arrived. Saturday.

Saturday.

Saturday.

Carson heard his own breathing, fast and short between his slightly parted lips. His lips were dry. He could feel the skin constricting, pulling.

Dying.

He licked his lips. His breath kept coming, fast. The saliva cooled; evaporated.

He licked his lips again. They dried. He did it again.

Nothing would change it.

He could hear himself making little noises in time with each exhalation. Little grunts. Moans, maybe. He didn’t know. He’d never heard himself make that noise before. He didn’t know what he was doing.

His parents were dead. It was almost Saturday. The phone call was over. Uncle Mick would be here in a couple of hours.

Was Uncle Mick supposed to take care of him now? Was that what was going to happen? He was almost eighteen… he’d be eighteen in…

He counted.

Fifteen days.

That would be two weeks and one day After The Phone Call.

He’d be an adult. He’d have to get a job. He’d have to support himself.

So what? Seriously, so what?

His parents.

They were dead.

Everything was different. Everything was different. Everything was different.

Everything is different everything is different everything is different everything is different everything is different everythingisdifferenteverythingis

Carson realized he’d stopped making that weird little noise. Instead, he was saying those three words over and over again.

He thought he’d only been thinking them.

His voice sounded…

Yeah. His voice sounded dead.

That didn’t make sense. You couldn’t have a voice if you were dead.

He’d never hear his parents’ voices again.

His mother.

She used to… There was that book. The rat and the mole with their tea and books and comfortable hole.

“The Wind in the Willows.”

She used to read it to him.

How could any of this possibly be real? How could a phone call change the world from one where his parents were alive to one where they left on a trip and never came back ever again at all ever?

He started to make noises again. They were like hiccups, or coughs, past his lips or through his clenched teeth and then out his open mouth. His head jerked. His shoulders twitched. His stomach twisted.

He couldn’t really control it. He didn’t know what it was. He wasn’t crying.

He was outside of his body, just on the other side of his skin, floating just beyond the hairs on his arms; just past his eyeballs, and the distance was narrow and cold and sharp and utterly, impossibly far.

Keening.

That was the word. For the sound he was making. He was keening. He’d read it in a book. He’d never heard it before. Until now. That’s what this was.

Keening.

Someone was in the living room.

It was dark, but Carson could tell. He stopped making the noise. He stopped keening. That was the word.

He looked over his shoulder at the shadowy silhouette standing at the edge of the hallway.

“Mom?”

“Car..? What… I’m… how did..?”

It wasn’t his mother. His mother was in Costa Rica.

No.

His mother was dead.

His mother

was dead.

His father, too. Both. Dead.

Lina’s shadow blurred and melted. The keening was back, along with a throbbing, pounding, hammering, pulverizing headache.

Carson bent forward on the floor and fell on his side. His arms went to the sides of his head to keep his brains from cracking through the fine fissures of his skull. His thighs pushed against his chest.

He shook, and he cried.

The cold distance between his soul and his body had been halved and halved and halved and halved and there was no more space left. All the pain was right there.

It was his.

It was him.

His parents were dead.

…to be continued!

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