The Wicker King Page 12

  “We’ll come back. I promise.” August’s voice cracked. “When we see each other again, things will be different.”

  Rina touched his cheek and guided his head down so they were level. Then she kissed him gently on the forehead. “They had better.”

  BRICK

  August jolted awake with a gasp.

  “Dude. Picture day.” The kid sitting behind him stopped flicking the back of his neck once he saw that August wasn’t asleep anymore. “We all have to go to the gym—they just announced it on the intercom. Why aren’t you dressed in nice clothes?”

  August looked around. The kid was right. Pretty much everyone was in dress shirts and ties, and the girls were in dresses. He looked down at his stretched-out shirt. With all the commotion lately, he’d completely forgotten about picture day. It was just so irrelevant in the grand scheme of things that it had barely even crossed his mind that it would be around this time of year.

  There was nothing to be done about it now. So August just sighed and sullenly followed the rest of his classmates down the hall and into the gym. Roger and Peter quickly spotted him and made their way through the crowd.

  “Is that the best you could do?” Peter said derisively, looking at August’s clothes.

  “I forgot. I’ve been busy,” August replied, pulling at his shirt. He was a little embarrassed. Peter smacked his hand away and began fiddling with August’s hair.

  “Don’t pull on your shirt. You’re making it worse. You’re lucky you have a good haircut, at least.” Peter fussed with him, scowling. August was so exhausted that he just let it happen.

  Roger rummaged around in his backpack a bit. “I brought you some samples. Antianxiety meds, sleeping pills, what do you want?”

  “I don’t want your drugs, Roger, but thanks for offering. I just want to take my picture and go to class so I can get back to sleep,” August mumbled.

  Peter put his hands down and stared at August helplessly. “Well. That’s the best we can do. They’re making us line up in alphabetical order, so we have to go and get in the back. See you later.” The twins walked away, but not without Roger sending August one of the most profound looks of pity he’d ever received in his entire life.

  August clenched his hands into fists and stepped into line.

  FLASH

  “So, do you want the gray background or the black background?”

  “Black.”

  The light was so bright, August’s eyes could barely focus. He squinted at the camera.

  “Sit up straight and smile!”

  Yeah, he wasn’t doing that. August took the opportunity to try to search Jack out near the back of the line to see how he was doing.

  “Seriously, kid. You only get one shot.”

  Oh, he found him. Jack was up against the wall, hand outstretched to guide himself forward. Leaning into the warmth of the person in front of him to sightlessly follow the pattern of the line. People bumped into him and he crumpled under their force, unprotected. Like a small white boat being tossed in the black waves of a rolling sea. August’s heart seized at the sight.

  “I said, you’re done.”

  He stumbled down from the chair and started toward the Wicker King like he was being pulled forward by an invisible rope. But before he could get there, his English teacher blocked his path.

  “All students must sit on the bleachers until the rest of the class is finished.”

  August shook his head to clear his mind and rubbed at his eyes. “Oh. Okay. Sorry.” He went to go sit on the bench with the others.

  THE CLOVEN KING RISES

  August had detention that day, so he didn’t get out of school until late. He trudged home tiredly. But before he could even make it all the way inside the house, he heard the screams. He sprinted up the stairs and threw his bedroom door open. Nothing. He ran into the bathroom, where he found him. Jack was shuttered in a corner, curled as small as he could make himself, with his arms over his head. August threw himself into Jack, prying his arms up roughly and checking for injuries. He glanced back through the door and briefly considered if this was bad enough to disturb his mom about.

  “August! August!” Jack shrieked as he clawed August’s back and arms.

  “Jack! Calm down!” he shouted over the hysteria to no avail. Part of him wanted to push Jack away, run downstairs, and call the emergency room, but another part wanted to clutch Jack to him and join in his panic. “Jack!” August grabbed him by the back of the neck and gripped hard, digging his nails into the skin. “Jack, stop!”

  “Noo…” Jack shuddered with terror. “Please.”

  “What is happening?! WHAT ARE YOU SEEING?”

  “They’re standing around you,” Jack whispered, his eyes wide and blind. “Ten of them. Dressed in black. They’re speaking to me, but I can’t hear them. It doesn’t work that way. I can’t hear them and they’re changing the world. My world. And I can’t change it back…”

  “What are they changing it to?” August asked, gripping Jack’s face between his hands. “Jack! You have to tell me what’s going on!”

  Jack sank to the floor in unspeakable melancholy, dragging August down with him. “I don’t know,” he sobbed. “I don’t know.”

  LOVE

  They awoke on the bathroom floor. Jack’s face was still stained salty from the night before. He lifted his head and looked at August critically. August stared back at him, exhausted.

  “You’re so thin…,” Jack said. “You haven’t been eating.”

  August swallowed. His throat burned like he’d been gulping down steel wool. He closed his eyes against the look on Jack’s face. His head felt so heavy.

  “August, you have to eat,” Jack urged. He raised his fingers to August’s lips and brushed his fingertips across them, his skin catching on the dryness. “You’re going to die,” Jack gasped shakily. He sounded scared again.

  “So are you,” August whispered. “We can’t live this way, Jack. We have to tell someone. We’re just … kids.”

  Jack laid his head back onto August’s leg, and August weakly dropped his hand onto Jack’s cheek. He closed his eyes again, drowning in the black. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.”

  WICK

  They skipped school that day. August brought a box of Pop-Tarts upstairs and they ate them in his bed. He was too tired to cook. Jack finished his first, then resumed staring off into nothingness.

  “So … fire,” he said after a while.

  “Fire,” August agreed.

  “You kept that lighter I gave you? All this time, you didn’t lose it.”

  “Yeah.”

  Jack laughed. “How romantic. My knight in shining fucking armor.”

  August’s cheeks burned. “It’s not that big of a deal. It’s just a lighter,” he mumbled.

  Jack gazed at him for a moment. “Is anything ‘just’ anything? After all these months? Even dressed in my colors? Even with your favor at my feet? Even as the sky falls and the only thing I can hear besides your voice is the screams of the dying and the thundering of horses? You remembered to keep it when you couldn’t even remember to eat. It’s a lighter, yeah. But it’s also everything…” Jack grinned. “We’ve had our conduit all along.”

  August gazed out the window. His neighbor was walking her dog. The bus was dropping off elementary school kids. An airplane flew overhead. The sky was so blue.

  Jack reached out and grabbed August’s chin, wrenching his face away from the light. “You burn things all the time these days,” Jack said softly. “Would you burn for me?”

  August stared him down. Stared into the gray of Jack’s eyes. So clear, they were—not a hint of delusion. Just fierce and grand as the day he lay with his back in the river’s mud. Ten thousand years ago.

  “You already know I’ll do it,” August said.

  You already know. You fucking know.

  HOUSTON

  August put the gasoline can down and waited. Jack lit his cigarette, holdi
ng it between strong white teeth before passing it over. Like a secondhand kiss on a breath of ash.

  “Should I do it from the outside in?”

  “Do it however, just make sure it’s done.”

  “Will you come with me?” August asked quietly, blowing smoke into the wind.

  “Do kings march out to war?”

  “They used to.”

  He could feel Jack smiling at him. Breathed it in so he could feel it deep in his lungs. This was it. This was everything.

  “Your kingdom come. Your will be done.”

  THE FIRE

  He clipped the wiring to the alarm system and fire sprinklers with a knife.

  August took care of the outer rooms first, setting tables and chairs in the offices alight. He splashed the doors and left them open.

  Then he took to the perimeter of the factory floor. He went around the main room in a circle, dousing it all in gasoline. It was taking a while. The fire was beginning to break glass and consume wood. He would have to be quicker. August took the Rapturous Blue out of his backpack, wrapped it in the oilcloth Jack had given him, and set it on the floor.

  It burned purple and indigo just as Jack had said it would, just like Jack had seen with his crazy eyes, just like it was supposed to.

  He picked it up and put it in the water cooler, ignoring the blazing heat as the flames burned through his gloves, blistering his skin. Then he peeled them from his hands and dropped them to the floor.

  August looked around him at the red and the orange and the yellow and the black and the Rapturous Blue that shone so bright, finally pulsing with purpose.

  The serum from his raw, blistered palms sizzled as it dripped from his hands; he knew that it was worth it.

  WELL

  August kicked out the glass and came tumbling through the window. Jack caught him before he hit the ground and pulled him to his feet.

  “You did it! You did it!” Jack was delirious in his happiness. He grasped August’s wrists, beaming in the light of the flames.

  The Wicker King was beautiful—brilliant, mad, sick, free. He kissed the blisters on the palms of August’s hands. “Thank you. Thank you…”

  August buried his face in Jack’s chest, curling in against him to hide from the heat of the flames. Jack held him just as tight, fingers digging into his shoulders, his arms wrapping around August’s waist, clutching at his hair. August didn’t realize he was crying until his sobs began to choke him. “Is it over? Is it over? Is it over?” He wasn’t talking about the fire.

  “Hush,” Jack murmured. “You did well.” He rocked August gently back and forth. “You did well.”

  IRON AND ASH

  The police wrenched them apart an hour later as the firefighters put out the flames.

  Being snatched from Jack’s grasp damaged his clarity. In the gray, there was the sound of shouting, men in masks and gloves, police officers with their rough hands and calm, stern voices. They took him and put him in the back of an ambulance, and Jack was taken aside for questioning. The paramedics kept repeating something to August, and he nodded blearily as they loosely bandaged his hands.

  Someone was yelling at Jack and Jack was yelling back.

  People were pushing August, pulling him, moving him, cuffing him, and locking him in the back of a squad car. He couldn’t remember the drive at all. The haze remained until they slammed the door of the holding cell shut. Then everything became crisp all at once, and there was nothing left to filter out except the sounds of the other men in the cell with him.

  HOLE

  They sat an inch from each other. August scratched his bandaged fingers against the floor. “The kingdom?”

  “Rejoicing,” Jack said, staring sightlessly toward the wall.

  “The throne?”

  “Claimed.”

  “The people? The wraiths?”

  “Safe, gone, denied.”

  August scratched again, the concrete scraping against his nails. “You still see it all, don’t you?”

  “As clear as I see you.” Jack’s head lolled against the cinder block, eyes unblinking. They sat like old marionettes with the strings cut at the root. Thrown carelessly to the ground to rot in the sun and dust. “Are you proud, Eagle of the North? The Champion with Sparks in his Veins. They will sing songs of your victory and word of your sacrifice will drip from the tongues of young and old until … the end of time. Are you proud?”

  “Shut up,” August said, curling in on himself on the cell floor. “Just shut up.”

  CELL BLOCK 3

  The next night the cell was crowded. When they’d arrived, there were maybe five or six other people, but tonight there were at least fifteen. He and Jack had slowly migrated to the corner so they were out of sight behind a large, old drunk man who was slumped over and drooling on his leg in his sleep.

  Jack had stayed away from August since the moment they arrived at the station, like he was afraid that touching him would break some sort of spell. It had bothered August at the time.

  But now August was just angry at himself and numb. He knew his mom wouldn’t come for him. And Jack’s parents were probably out of state.

  He gazed over at Jack, who was shivering and trying not to bring attention to himself. A man across the cell was leering at him.

  “Jack,” he whispered. “Come here.”

  Jack twisted toward him, startled.

  August opened his arms.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Jack leaned down and rested his head against August’s knee. Very stiffly, as if he didn’t belong there.

  August flinched as one of the men in the room said something derogatory and vulgar about the nature of their relationship, but his hand was steady as it rested against Jack’s neck.

  “You are my sunshine. My only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray.” He hummed the next bit because he didn’t know the words.

  GREEN

  His lawyer was a woman, and he thanked fuck that it was a woman who had sons.

  “If you plead guilty, you’ll probably get some community service and a fine at best and a year in prison at worst,” she said, taking a sip of her coffee. “You torched the place with gasoline. A jury isn’t going to believe it if you plead innocence.”

  “Is there any way I can plead insanity?” August asked tentatively.

  She put the cup down and gave him a look. “Why on earth would you want to do that?”

  “Because that’s what Jack is going to do. He’s unstable. He can’t hide it anymore. Plus, if we both plead the same thing, there is a chance that we’ll be sent to the same place. I don’t care how slim it is, it’s worth it.”

  She pursed her lips and drummed her fingernails on the table as she thought about it. “What is the nature of your relationship? I know you were living together at the time of the incident.”

  “We’re not dating, if that’s what you’re asking,” August sighed. “We’re just friends, I think. We grew up together. His mom and my mom were really close when we were kids, before my parents’ divorce. So we have just always been together.”

  “I have kids myself. Three boys … they’re not much younger than you.” She shook her head and laughed to herself a bit. “I can almost understand … but do you mind if I ask a question? Why did you do it? You don’t have any prior offenses. Your grades were pristine until this semester. It all seems so uncharacteristic. What happened?”

  August frowned. “I had to.”

  His lawyer gazed at him for a while, then placed her hand on top of his.

  02/07/2003

  The case was quick. The twins sold them up the river.

  “No one was supposed to get hurt,” Roger said, pleading with August to understand. “Not even you.”

  Jack’s hands shook the whole time.

  Sixteen months in the psychiatric ward for them both, with the stipulation that they be kept away from each other. Separate facilities, then.

  Jack looked terrified as they dragged him aw
ay. Too scared to even reach out for him or call his name.

  GUT

  They dressed him in a special orange uniform and escorted him down the hall to his room. The other patients shrank away from them and muttered fearfully at the large security officers that flanked August. He had never felt more anxious in his entire life. He tripped over his feet. One of the officers grabbed his arm in a crushing grip, jerking him upright. When they finally got to his room, the orderly said something that he couldn’t hear over the roaring of his own blood. Then they slammed the door shut and left him in the dark.

  August stood still where they had placed him in the middle of the room and clenched his hands into fists. He glanced at his roommate, who had scrambled as far away from him as he could without melting completely into the wall.

  August gritted his teeth.

  He had failed. He had failed in every possible way with every possible choice he had ever made. Jack was still crazy. He was alone. And he was in a prison of his own design. The embarrassment and regret were choking him from the inside out, and all of a sudden he was screaming.

  It started small, but it bubbled bigger every minute. Rising black and ugly through the veins in his feet, up and up, bursting his cells and filling his lungs, encasing itself around his bones and finally spilling from his eyes, tacky like tar. It tumbled from his mouth in a howl of rage so deep it shook his teeth. The hairs rose on the back of his neck.

  It was a shout of pain so pure and hot, he could have sworn it was burning out his eyes.

  And then, like a living nightmare, his howl roused the other patients to noisemaking. Like a battle cry. It soared above the symphony of their screams of confusion and fear, the banging on the doors and the weeping. Soared above all. A phoenix that burned and fell to ash before it could set alight the room at the very end of the hall where the dreammaker lived, imprisoned by his visions. Unanchored and unnoticed in the dark.