Michael Christie - If I Fall, If I Die

The boys managed to shake their heads affirmatively, Jonah’s breathing gone pure Black Lagoon at the mention of his house.

“Good,” the Butler said. “But if you do have the misfortune of encountering this poor, beleaguered fellow again, I’d like you to pass along some information for me.”

The boys nodded robotically.

“You tell him that things will be much safer for him when he brings me my proof .”

“Got it?” said Claymore, pitching his shovel over his shoulder, the wheelbarrow dead silent beside him.

“Here,” said Jonah at Will’s front door, holding up a sealed plastic baggie of fingerprints pressed neatly onto squares of cardstock, “I lifted these from your water bottle that first night we met Titus.”

Will removed the cards and examined the prints. Good definition on the whorls and crisp detail for each digit. “Looks like you managed some really good pulls.”

“I wanted you to have them because I’m finished,” said Jonah.

“But we’re getting so close!” said Will. “We’ll go down to the elevator tomorrow, tell Titus what the Butler said and see if he talks. Don’t you want to know what this proof is the Butler is looking for?”

“Will, last night after we met the Butler I got scared and told my brothers what happened and they freaked. They’re talking about leaving Thunder Bay, moving us to some little lake up north where our auntie lives. I had to promise them I wouldn’t go back down there to keep them from packing the van.”

“That’s easy. You’ll sneak out when they go to work. They can’t—”

“Will!” Jonah yelled, his face hard with disbelief. “He knows who I am! And from the way those wolves were sniffing at you, they’ve probably already figured out who you are too. Something bad is going to happen. I know it. I’ve had dreams about it. I just can’t risk it anymore.”

“Something bad is always going to happen,” said Will, stepping Outside and shutting the door so his mother wouldn’t hear. “No matter where you are or what you’re doing. You’re starting to sound like my mom.”

Jonah shook his head somberly. “You know what Indians do best in movies?” he said. “We die. It’s like our job. We look pretty, then scream and get shot from a brown-spotted horse with no saddle. I watched all those movies growing up and I thought dying in a hail of rifle bullets seemed … I don’t know, like … natural. Something I’d do one day, same as having a kid or leaving Thunder Bay.

“But you know why I really stopped being friends with Marcus?” Jonah continued. “It wasn’t because he broke his skateboard. He could’ve bought ten more with the money he was making from the Butler. It was because I was sick of worrying about him. Sick of lying awake all night while he slept somewhere outside, sick of watching him set bombs or taunt the biggest hockey players or skate out in front of cars just to see if they’d stop. I already worry about my brothers enough.

“That’s why I started talking to you,” Jonah continued, “because you were different. Cautious. Safe. Even when you did dangerous things, I never worried about you. Until lately.”

“But he’s still our friend,” Will said. “He should be here. Like we are.”

Jonah shook his head. “There’s no such thing in the world as ‘should,’ Will. Haven’t you figured that out yet? There is only whatever happens.”

“But maybe you’re wrong. Maybe we can still help him leave. We owe that to him.”

“You know I’ve always meant to ask you this,” Jonah said, his voice rising. “You think Marcus was your friend , but he shot you in the head with a rock , then stole your garden hose the first time you met him.”

“He didn’t mean to hurt me. He was … afraid. Just like you are now. It’s not good for us to be afraid. Trust me. Marcus taught me that. And finding him is the only way I can prove that everything Outside is actually safe.”

“Prove to who? Your mom?”

“To everyone.”

“Well, brace yourself for it, Will: it’s not.”

They stood in silence for a moment.

“You actually want me to say it?” Jonah continued, his voice quiet now. “Okay. You’re right. I’m scared. For you. For me. It’s hard enough for an Indian to make it to eighteen in this place and still have a pulse. Even if you’re doing everything right. But I refuse to vanish like Marcus. Or end up like that guy in the wheelbarrow. Call me a megapussy all you want. But skateboarding is as close to danger as I need to get.”

“We won’t even have to go near the elevators,” Will said. “We can still investigate from a distance, like we said.”

Jonah sighed and swiped away his bangs. They both sat on the top step. “When I was a kid and we first moved down to Thunder Bay,” Jonah said, “I used to think White people were trying to kill me, not just the social workers who tried to take me away — like all of them. For a while I didn’t leave the house, exactly like your mom. I’d stay in the basement and imagine them coming in the windows like zombies or vampires, trying to suck my blood, eat my brains with teaspoons. I used to concoct ways to defend myself against them. I’d practice judo and draw all these diagrams of explosives and guns and knives. I made traps, snares, and machetes hanging over the windows — that’s how I learned to make those match bombs. It was around that same time I stopped talking because I felt like my words were feeding them, giving them strength.”

“Nobody’s trying to kill you, Jonah,” Will said after some silence.

“You sure?” Jonah said, making to leave.

“You don’t want to help me anymore, that’s fine,” Will said desperately. “But winter’s going to last for three more months. What’re you going to do? Play hockey?”

Jonah shook his head. “I’m going home where it’s safe, and I’m going to stay there — I’d like to see those two try to come get me. Then I’m going to drink some hot chocolate and read two hundred books and have every known human disease memorized before spring comes. Then in a few years I’m going to get a crappy job like my brothers and save some money and go to med school in California and skateboard every single damn day with a big stupid grin on my face and I won’t ever think about Marcus or Thunder Bay or old Titus, not once.”

“Wait,” Will implored as Jonah backed down Will’s steps, “I have an idea …”

But he was out of ideas. Since he’d been Outside, he’d learned that fear was only a default setting, like how the TV always starts at channel 3 when you first turn it on. That everyone is born afraid of everything, but most people build calluses over top of it. His mother didn’t have calluses because she never touched anything, never even tried. Of the things Will was most afraid of — bees, wolves, witches, getting kidnapped, the clunking noise the dryer made when it stopped, calling Angela and telling her he’d liked their kiss, the Butler, the Bald Man, rebar, shovels — he was most afraid that, even after all his bravery and scars and near-death experiences, he still couldn’t survive the Outside without Jonah.

Jonah set the small vinyl case containing their fingerprinting kit on the bottom stair. “See you around, Will,” he said.

The following day, Will wrote to his principal as his mother to say there would be no need to send him to Templeton because they were moving back to San Francisco. Then Will spent the morning alternating between practicing fingerprinting, crying into his pillow, doing jumping jacks, and reading the Thrasher s Jonah had left behind.