Podcast of a Teenage Super-Villian

Chapter Nineteen: 4-D Chess

Max.

In a haze, I clamber out of the house. The world is spinning and words drift out of me as if they're recordings playing off a voice box. Nothing I say feels like me, or mine. My skin feels plastic, my hands, my quivering mouth, my spinning head, they all feel like circuits and silicone. 

I collect phone numbers, talk to my guests in a slurring, slumped state. The police arrive, yelling through megaphones, and kids, scared kids, angry kids, fresh adults, fake punks, true rebels, all small cogs in a big machine, stumble out of the house. Shouting, tossing things. Shards of crumbling drywall. The soft, wet vinyl crust that makes up the floor. Glass. I glide easily into the mass of mad kids, my head ducked and my hands laced behind my back. And just as easily, I escape.

I creep past the jumble of cars; sleek skeletons and shiny beetles. The moon is high in the sky now, a big white gibbous thing. 

There's an old adage about how the moon always watches, that it's the same everywhere. It's sitting over Monet and Percy, Chip and Finn. My dad. Gideon, poor Gideon. I think about them looking up at that same moon, and my chest hurts. I look up, waiting for a cloud to pass over its pale face, so I can stop remembering all the eyes of all those people I've betrayed, stop seeing them blinking down at me in the cool, watery light.

As I trail through the tall, dead grass, and I try not to think, the moon gets bigger and bigger in the sky overhead. The world is still swimming, stars still turning and turning all around me, like I'm standing under Van Gogh's painting, watching the world curl up and the lights spin. I think I'm still bleeding. I think I'm hurting, but all I feel is warm. 

I stumble, cracked inside, kicking up mud and clumps of weed. I walk through the darkness, walk into the closest copse of trees, walk without looking up, looking around, looking back. I walk and I walk, hit with the smell of pine trees, the bristle of bark on the ancient trees that cut my arms and bite my back. I close my eyes, press my fingertips into my temples. Draw in a deep breath and let it whisp back out in a small puff. Then I open my eyes with a sigh.

Mist rises around me, and I splash warm muddy water with another step, and the farther I go, the little pine grove fills with little muddy puddles. Steam weaves up in the air like white ropes, so thin and translucent there's something almost angelic about them. I take a deep breath and sit down on a thick brown log. Water laps my boots and soaks my pants, and the warmth of the water, the warmth of the blood, the warmth of the alcohol all heats me at my center. I close my eyes and let my head fall backward. 

All I want is for the world to stop spinning. All I want is to stop thinking.

Footsteps. I hear them, but instead of running, I freeze. I keep my eyes squeezed shut, my stomach rolling like a marble going thunk thunk thunk down a flight of stairs.  Maybe I'm imagining them, maybe if I don't think about them they'll go away. 

They get louder, the soft squashing of mud on their shoes, and then they go silent. I hold that long breath deep in my core. And then I stand up and whip around, ready to answer more questions from more dumb kids, adrenaline already pumping through my fried veins. 

Chip's glaring back at me. 

A sound tears out of my mouth and I stumble backwards, all reflex. My foot catches on the bumpy wet log and I hit the bottom of the puddle. Dirty water rolls around me and I grip the mud in my shaking fists. "What are you doing here?" Maybe he isn't real. Maybe this is a vision. Between the heavenly mist and the big moon, he might be a ghost from my past. And I start to laugh. "You can't know that I'm in Starlight. You couldn't have tracked me to this stupid party. This isn't real."

Chip steps up on to the log. He looks thinner than before, his hair longer now, limp and greasy. He's wearing a blue hoodie, a tie-dye shirt, and torn-up jeans. But he's not something I've carved out of my memory, the soft, cowering boy, dressed all in black. His body is tensed, and the colors look foreign on him.