Rick Yancey - The Infinite Sea

He shrugs like it doesn’t matter, which it does, or he wouldn’t shrug. He slips the quarter back into his pocket and packs up the box, muttering under his breath. I catch the word chess.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.” Cutting his eyes away.

“Something about chess.”

“Chess, chess, chess. Chess on the brain. Sorry chaseball has nothing on chess in the sheer thrill category.”

He shoves the box under his arm and stomps to the door. One last parting shot before he goes: “I thought maybe I’d cheer you up a little, that’s all. Thanks. We don’t have to play anymore.”

“Are you angry at me?”

“I gave chess a chance, didn’t I? You didn’t see me bitching.”

“You didn’t. And you did. A lot.”

“Just think about it.”

“Think about what?”

He shouts across the room: “Just think about it!”

He slams out the door. I’m out of breath, shaky, and can’t figure out why.

I’M READY WITH an apology when the door opens that night. The more I think about it with my feverish mind, the more I feel like the bully at the beach who kicks over some little kid’s sand castle.

“Hey, Razor, I’m—”

My mouth drops open. There’s a stranger holding the tray, a kid around twelve or thirteen.

“Where’s Razor?” I ask. Well, more like demand.

“I don’t know,” the kid squeaks. “They handed me the tray and said take it.”

“Take it,” I echo stupidly.

“Yeah. Take it. Take the tray.”

They pulled Razor off Ringer duty. Maybe chaseball’s against regs. Maybe Vosch got ticked, two kids acting like kids for a couple of hours. Despair is addictive, for the one watching it and the one experiencing it.

Or maybe Razor’s the ticked party here. Maybe he asked to be reassigned, took his chaseball and went home.

I don’t sleep well that night, if you can call it night under the constant sterile glow. My fever shoots up to a hundred and three as my immune system launches its final, desperate assault on the arrays. I can see the blurry green numbers on the monitor inching upward. I slip into a semi-delirious doze.

Bitch! Leave me. You know why they call it baseball, don’t you? It’s a deep drive into center field! I’m done. Take care of yourself.

The grungy silver turning in Razor’s fingers. It’s a deep drive. A deep drive. Lowering toward the board in slow motion, where the fielders come up, second base and shortstop go back, left goes right. Blooper on the first-base line! Fielder races up, baseman back, boom. Fielders up, infield back, cut to the right. First baseman back, right fielder up, boom. Up, back, cut. Back, up. Boom.

Over and over, let’s go to the instant replay, up, back, cut. Back, up.

Boom.

Now I’m wide-awake, staring at the ceiling. No. Can’t see it as well. Better with my eyes closed.

Center and left slash down. Left cuts across:

H

Right steps up. First base runs back:

I

Oh, come on. Ridiculous. You’re delusional.

When I got back to our camp that night with the vodka, I found my dead father curled into a fetal position, his face covered in blood where he had clawed at the bugs born inside his mind. Bitch, he called me before I left to find the poison that would save him. He called me another name, too, the name of the woman who left us when I was three. He thought I was my mother, which was ironic. From the time I was fourteen, I was more like his mother, feeding him, washing his clothes, taking care of the house, making sure he didn’t do something catastrophically stupid to himself. And every day I went to school in my perfectly pressed uniform and they called me Her Majesty Marika and said I thought I was better than everybody else because my father was a semi-famous artist, the reclusive genius type, when the truth was that most days my father didn’t know what planet he was on. By the time I got home from school, he’d be full-on delusional. And I let people on the outside hold their delusions, too. I let them think I thought I was better, the way I let Sullivan think she was right about me. I didn’t just foster the delusions. I lived them. Even after the world crashed around us, I clung to them. But after he died, I told myself no more. No more brave fronts or false hopes or pretending everything’s okay when nothing is. I thought I was being tough by pretending, calling it being optimistic, brave, keeping my head up or whatever bullshit seemed to fit the moment. That’s not tough. That’s the very definition of soft. I was ashamed of his disease and angry at him, but I was just as guilty. I played right into the lies right up to the end: When he called me my mother’s name, I didn’t correct him.

Delusional.

In the corner, the camera’s blank, soulless eye staring.

What did Razor say? Just think about it!

That’s not all you said, is it? I ask him, looking blankly back at the blank, black eye. That isn’t everything.

I HOLD MY BREATH when the door opens the next morning.

All night I seesawed between belief and doubt. I wallowed in every aspect of the new reality.

First option : Razor didn’t invent chaseball any more than I invented chess. The game is Vosch’s creation for reasons too murky to see clearly.

Second option : Razor, for reasons only clear to Razor, has decided to seriously mess with my head. It wasn’t just the hardhearted and resilient who survived the winnowing of the human race. A lot of sadistic assholes persisted, too. That’s the way of every human catastrophe. The douchebag is nearly indestructible.

Third option : All of it is entirely in my head. Chaseball is a silly game made up by a kid to take my mind off the fact that I may be dying. There’s no other point, no secret messages traced on a chessboard. My seeing letters where there are no letters is the human brain’s tendency to find patterns, even where there are no patterns.

And I hold my breath for another reason: What if it’s the squeaky-voiced kid again? What if Razor doesn’t come back, ever come back? There’s a real possibility that Razor is dead. If he was trying to secretly communicate with me and Vosch figured it out, I’m sure Vosch’s response would be one thing and only one thing.

I let out my breath slow and steady when he steps into the room. The beeping of the monitor kicks up a notch.

“What?” Razor asks, narrowing his eyes at me. He senses something’s up right away.

I say it. “Hi.”

His eyes cut right, cut left. “Hi.” Drawing the tiny word out slowly, as if he’s not sure if he’s with a lunatic. “Hungry?”

I shake my head. “Not really.”

“You should try to eat this. You look like my cousin Stacey. She was a meth addict. I don’t mean you literally look like a meth addict. Just…” Face turning red. “You know, like something is eating you from the inside.”

He pushes the button beside the bed. I rise. He says, “You know what I’m addicted to? Sour Patch Kids. Raspberry. Not so crazy about the lemon. I have a stash. I’ll bring you some if you want.”

He sets the tray in front of me. Cold scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, a blackened, crusty thing that may or may not be bacon. My stomach clenches. I look up at him.