Ned Vizzini - Clash of the Worlds

“Kids, there’s something else I have to tell you,” Mrs Walker said, looking a bit nervous. “It’s certainly not going to be easy – but it’s for the best. It’s the reason we need to move tonight instead of tomorrow.”

The Walker kids stopped and waited anxiously for her to deliver the news.

“I know this will be hard for you, and it is for me too,” Mrs. Walker said slowly, her eyes looking red and tired. “But tomorrow morning, your dad is going away for a few days, or maybe even a few weeks. To a gambling addiction treatment facility.”

“Wait, Dad is a gambling addict?” Cordelia asked.

Guilt began to stir inside her as she realised that her first thought was how this was going to affect her – what would people think? Would all the prestigious colleges she hoped to get into somehow find out that her dad spent time in treatment? Cordelia had always focused on her future, doing everything the “right” way and trying to be the best. But now she saw her dreams quickly fading in the face of this news. Did kids with addict fathers actually get into places like Harvard and Yale and Stanford?

“Dad is going away?” Eleanor asked, her voice breaking. The thought of potentially losing Fat Jagger and her dad in one night was more than she could stomach.

“Don’t worry, baby,” Mrs Walker said, pulling an arm around Eleanor and trying to force a smile. “It’ll just be for a little bit, and we can visit him this weekend. And when he gets back, everything will be so much better. I promise. You kids are so strong and independent, you always have been. I know you’ll … we’ll get through this, together.”

“But what will we do for money?” Brendan asked.

“Brendan!” Mrs Walker said, glaring at her son. “Is that all you can think about right now?”

Brendan hesitated, perhaps a moment too long, before finally shaking his head no , feeling bad that he was more worried about family finances than his own dad’s mental health.

Of course, there was always the Nazi treasure map they’d brought back from the book world. But that was a long shot. According to the red X on the map, the treasure was hidden somewhere in Europe. Which, the last time Brendan had checked, was a long way away from San Francisco. Plus, they still had no idea if the treasure would even be there in the real world at all. It might only exist inside one of Denver Kristoff’s fictional books.

“In the meantime, I am more than capable of taking care of our family,” Mrs Walker continued, struggling to sound positive. “Which is why I will be starting a new job in the shoe department at Macy’s tomorrow.”

Just a few weeks ago the family lived in a beautiful Victorian home overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge and had a ten-million-dollar bankroll. Now they were moving into a tiny apartment with virtually nothing to their name. Well, except the embarrassment that their father, Dr Walker, had brought by losing his medical licence and then gambling away all their money in just a few short months. The family still had that to their name, of course.

Brendan suddenly felt horrible giving his mom such a hard time about money. None of this was her fault, after all. She was the one Walker who was probably least responsible for any of the family’s recent and ongoing problems.

“Well,” Brendan said, “if you need your first customer, I’ve got some birthday money saved up. I always wondered what I’d look like in a pair of red heels.”

In spite of the sombre mood, all of the Walkers laughed. The sound of their laughter almost seemed to lift some of the darkness draped across Sea Cliff Avenue that evening. As if the moon had suddenly switched to a higher setting.

“I think I would actually pay to see Brendan in heels,” Mrs Walker laughed, hugging them all. “I love you guys, you know that? No matter how bad things get, you always find a way to make me smile. Anyway, you won’t have time to shop for shoes tomorrow.”

“Why not?” Cordelia asked.

Mrs Walker then delivered what Brendan and Cordelia thought to be the worst news of the evening so far.

“Because you’ll all be going back to your old schools tomorrow morning.”

Later that night, Eleanor tossed and turned in her tiny bed inside her tiny room that she shared with Cordelia in the tiny apartment they had moved into. Nightmares haunted her sleep. Nightmares of Fat Jagger fighting off massive great white sharks in the dark waters of the San Francisco Bay. Nightmares of Fat Jagger getting caught up in a fishing net and drowning. Nightmares of Fat Jagger getting discovered and then hunted by men with giant harpoons in whaling ships. And in all her nightmares, there was nothing she could do to help him.

Brendan, however, was not even trying to sleep.

He was sitting at the small desk in his room with his head in his hands, thinking about having to go back to his old school and seeing all of his old friends and teachers. They would all ask him why he had to transfer out of private school and come back. He’d have to tell them the truth. That his dad gambled away all their money and they got kicked out of their home. It’d be especially hard to face them after the way he’d left – admittedly (now) a little too cocky over how much better his new private school was going to be “than this dump”.

This reality somehow filled Brendan with more fear than most of the crazy book adventures he had been on. He realised death was almost easier to face than total humiliation – which was a startling and sobering revelation.

Brendan distracted himself by switching on the fifty-five-inch TV that he’d brought with him from his not-quite-a-man cave in the Kristoff House attic. They could take away his cool attic bedroom and his old school and the money and his chauffeur (which was probably his favourite part of their old life). But nobody was getting their hands on the TV he bought with some of the money Eleanor had wished for using The Book of Doom and Desire . He and the TV had been through a lot together already, including the Giants’ most recent World Series victory. He’d been so excited on the final out, that he almost accidentally threw his half-full can of soda right through her beautiful and flawless screen.

Brendan flipped through the channels, looking for the reruns of Family Guy or South Park that always seemed to be on late at night. He was just about ready to settle on ESPN as a consolation, when a headline on a news channel caught his eye. For a second, he figured maybe he was watching a parody news show, because there was no way the headline could be true.

But the channel was CNN. The news story Brendan watched play out on-screen was most definitely real. And it caused him to literally fall out of his bedroom chair and land on the floor with a sickening thud.

At the other end of the Walkers’ apartment, Cordelia was in the middle of the strangest dream of her life. In fact, it didn’t feel like a dream to her at all, but more like reality, with actual sounds and smells and textures. If it weren’t for the fact that what was happening in her dream was impossible, she would have believed it was really happening.

Cordelia was back in the book world. She wasn’t sure how she knew that, but she was certain of it. Perhaps it was partly because the sunshine seemed a little too bright as it poured through the narrow windows lining the walls of a huge castle. The slivers of sun lit up her feet as she moved through a long, vast stone hallway.