Challenger Deep Page 5

  To which Mom replies, “Serves you right. You shouldn’t be eating peanut butter before dinner.”

  Still, Mom spares a glance from the kitchen at me and my project. I feel her wave of worry like a patio heater—faint and ineffective, but constant.

  29. Some of My Best Friends Are Cirque-ish

  I sit with my friends for lunch. And yet I don’t. That is to say, I’m among them, but I don’t feel with them. Used to be I could easily fit in with whatever friends I was hanging out with. Some people need a clique to make them feel safe. They have this little protective bubble of friends that they rarely venture away from. I was never like that. I could always flow freely from table to table, group to group. The athletes, the brainiacs, the hipsters, the band kids, the skaters. I was always well liked and well accepted by all, and I always managed to fit in like a chameleon. How strange, then, that now I find myself in a clique of one, even when I’m with a group.

  My friends scarf down their lunches, and laugh about something I didn’t hear. It’s not like I’m intentionally zoning out, but somehow I can’t land myself in the conversation. Their laughter feels so far away it’s as if there’s cotton in my ears. It’s been happening more and more. It’s like they’re not even talking English—they’re speaking that weird fake language the clowns speak in Cirque du Soleil. My friends are all conversing in Cirque-ish. Usually I’ll play along. I’ll join in the laughter so I can stay camouflaged and appear to be in step with those around me. But today I’m not in the mood to pretend. My buddy Taylor, who is slightly more observant than the others, notices my absence, and raps me gently on the arm.

  “Hey, earth to Caden Bosch—where are you, man?”

  “In orbit around Uranus,” I tell him, which makes everyone laugh, and it starts a whole round of rude puns that all sound Cirque-ish, because I’ve already checked out again.

  30. The Movements of Flies

  While we crewmen do our business, pacing back and forth on deck with no seeming point to the endeavor, the captain stands above us at the helm. Like a preacher, he pontificates his own peculiar brand of wisdom.

  “Count your blessings,” the captain says. “And if you count less than ten, cut off the remaining fingers.”

  I watch the parrot checking in with the crew members one at a time, landing on their shoulders, or perching atop their heads for a few moments before flying off to the next. I wonder what he’s up to.

  “Burn all your bridges,” the captain says. “Preferably before you cross them.”

  The navigator sits on a leaky barrel of yuck that was once full of food, but its stench testifies to the fact that the foodstuffs have decayed into something other. He creates a new navigational chart based on the movements of flies swarming around the barrel. “Their motions are more truthful than the stars,” he tells me, “because common flies have compound eyes.”

  “Why does that make a difference?” I dare to ask.

  He looks at me as if the answer is obvious. “Compound eyes confound lies.”

  I can see why he and the captain get along so well.

  The parrot lands on my shoulder as I do my endless shuffle across the deck. “Crewman Bosch! Hold fast, hold fast!” He then peers into my ear with his unpatched eye, bobbing his head as he does. “It’s still there,” he says. “Good for you! Good for you!”

  I assume he’s talking about my brain.

  He flies off to check in the ear of another sailor. His low whistle betrays disappointment at what he finds—or fails to find—between the boy’s ears.

  “There is nothing to fear but fear itself,” the captain announces from the helm, “and the occasional man-eating monster.”

  31. Is That All They’re Worth?

  Although the pesticide residue is gone from our house, I can’t stop thinking about termites. If antibacterial soap creates super germs like they say, what if toxic tenting creates super insects? I sit with my sketch book in this New Age kind of rocking chair we have in the living room—a piece of furniture left over from when Mackenzie and I were babies, and Mom breast-fed us. I’m sure I must have some old sense memory, because when I sit in the chair and rock, I usually feel a little more relaxed and content—although, thankfully, the memory of breast milk has been lost in the tunnels of time.

  Today, however, I’m not feeling relaxed at all. I can’t stop thinking about squirming things evolving. I begin drawing what’s in my head, as if maybe by drawing it, it will exorcise the super bugs from my brain.

  After a while I look up to see Mom standing there, watching me. I have no idea how long she’s been there. And when I look down again, I see that the page is still blank. I haven’t drawn anything at all. I even flip the page back to see if maybe the drawing is on a previous page, but no. The bugs are still in my head, and won’t come out.

  She must see something unsettling in my face because she says, “A penny for your thoughts?”

  I don’t feel like sharing my thoughts, so instead I challenge the question. “Really? Is that all they’re worth? A penny?”

  She sighs. “It’s just an expression, Caden.”

  “Well, find out when the expression was thought up, and then adjust for inflation.”

  She shakes her head. “Only you would go there, Caden.” Then she leaves me to stew in thoughts I refuse to sell.

  32. Less Than Nothing

  I read somewhere that they’re going to be doing away with pennies entirely one of these days, because I guess thoughts are all they’re good for. Bank accounts will be rounded to the nearest nickel. Fountains will reject copper. Purchases will be required by law to end in either zero or five. Nothing in between will be allowed. Except that there is something in between, even if everyone denies it.

  It’s like all those subway tokens that became obsolete when New York started using magnetic cards instead. No one knew what to do with those tokens. It was like this dragon’s hoard of worthless brass that not even Smaug’s underachieving brother would want—and with real estate being so expensive in the city, the cost of storing them was probably astronomical. I’ll bet they just hired the Mafia to dump them into the East River, along with the body of whatever city planner thought MetroCards was a good idea.

  If pennies become worthless, does that devalue our thoughts to less than nothing? It makes me sad to think about it; billions of copper bits spinning down the yellow funnel into oblivion. I wonder where they’ll go. All those thoughts have to end up somewhere.

  33. Weakness Leaving the Body

  I decide to try out for the track team, to keep my mind from being idle, and to reconnect with my fellow human beings. My father is overjoyed. I know he’s secretly marking this as a turning point for me. The end of my anxious days. I think he wants it so badly, he doesn’t seem to notice that I’m still anxious—but him thinking that I’m okay makes me feel like I am, too. Forget solar energy—if you could harness denial, it would power the world for generations.

  “You’ve always been a fast runner,” he says, “and with those long legs, I’ll bet you could be a hurdler.”

  My dad was on his high school tennis team. We have pictures of him in ridiculous Adidas shorts that leave nothing to the imagination, and a headband holding back long hair, most of which has since washed down the drain.

  “The coach wants us to walk or run everywhere,” I tell my parents. Now I walk to and from school each day. My feet develop calluses and sores. My ankles hurt all the time.

  “It’s a good kind of hurt,” my father tells me, then he quotes some sports guru, saying, “Pain is weakness leaving the body.”

  We go out to buy new, expensive running shoes and better socks. My parents say they’ll try to make it to my first meet, even if they have to take off from work. This would all be fine, if it weren’t for one thing. I’m not actually on the track team.

  I didn’t lie about it—not at first. I really did go out for track, but I only went to practice for three days. As much as I tried, I just wasn’t fe
eling it. Lately there’s this subway-like bubble of isolation around me, and when I’m in a place filled with camaraderie, like on a team, it’s only worse. Don’t be a quitter my father always told me. That’s how I was raised, but is it quitting when you never really joined?

  So now I walk after school, instead of run. It used to be that walking was just a way to get from place to place, but lately it seems to be both the means and the ends. It’s like that urge to fill an empty space with drawings. I see a vacant sidewalk, and I have to fill it. For hours at a time I walk. The calluses and aching ankles are all from walking. And I see things. Not so much see, but feel. Patterns of connection between the people I pass. Between the birds that swoop from the trees. There is meaning out there, if only I can find it.

  I walk for two hours in the rain one day, my hoodie soaked, my body chilled to the bone.

  “I should have a talk with that coach of yours,” my mom says, fixing me some hot tea. “He shouldn’t make you run in this kind of downpour.”

  “Mom, don’t,” I tell her. “I’m not a baby! Everyone on track does it, and I don’t want to be singled out!”

  I wonder exactly when it was that lying became so easy.

  34. Behind Her Back

  “Caden, I have fer you a challenge,” the captain says, “to prove whether or not you have the mettle for the mission.” He puts his large hand on my shoulder and squeezes so tightly that it hurts, then he points to the front of the ship.

  “See there? The bowsprit?” He indicates the mast-like pole that pokes out at the front of the ship, like Pinocchio’s nose after the second or third lie. “The sun has aged it and the sea has weathered it. It’s high time the bowsprit was polished.” Then he puts a rag in one hand and a tin of wood polish in the other. “Get to it, boy. If you succeed without perishing, you shall be a part of the inner circle.”

  “I’m fine in the outer circle,” I tell him.

  “You misunderstand,” the captain says sternly. “This isn’t a choice.”

  Then, gauging my continued reluctance, he snarls, “You’ve been to the crow’s nest, haven’t you? You’ve been partaking of its odious libations. I can see it in your eyes!”

  I glance to the parrot on his shoulder, and the parrot shakes his head, making it clear I should keep my mouth shut.

  “Don’t lie to me, boy!”

  And so I don’t. Instead I say, “If you want this done right, sir, I’ll need more polish and a bigger rag.”

  He glares at me a moment more, then bursts out laughing, and orders another crewman to provide me with better supplies.

  Luckily it’s a calm day at sea. The bow rises and falls just slightly as it rides the waves. I’m given no rope, no way to secure myself. I am to shimmy out to the very tip of the pole with no protection but my balance to keep me from plunging into the sea, where I would be taken down beneath the ship, and shredded by its barnacle-encrusted hull.

  Rag in one hand, polish in the other, I straddle the pole, pressing my thighs together to keep myself from falling into the bottomless blue. The only way to do this is to start at the far end and shimmy my way back—because once the wood is polished I know it will be too slick to cling to, so I carefully make my way to the front and begin, doing my best to forget about the waters passing beneath me. My arms ache from the work, my legs ache from holding on. It feels like it takes forever, but finally I am back where I started at the bow.

  I carefully turn myself around so I’m facing the ship, and the captain grins broadly. “Competently done!” he says. “Now come off there before the sea or something in it devours your semi-worthless hide.” Then he leaves, satisfied that I’ve been sufficiently tormented.

  Perhaps it’s that I get a little cocky at my success, or perhaps the sea is spiteful that it hasn’t claimed me—but as I climb back to the bow, the ship lurches on a sudden swell. I slip and I slide off the pole.

  It should be the end of my miserable life, but someone catches me, holding me as I dangle by a single arm above doom.

  I look up to see who has saved my life. The hand that grips me is brown, but not brown like flesh. It’s ashen, and the fingers rough and hard. My gaze tracks up the arm until I see that I am being held by the ship’s figurehead—a wooden maiden carved into the bow, beneath the bowsprit pole. I don’t know whether to be more thankful or terrified—but terror dissolves as I realize how beautiful she is. The wooden waves of her hair dissolve into the timbers of the ship. Her perfect torso tapers into the bow, as if the rest of the ship is just a part of her body. And her face—it’s not so much familiar as it is reminiscent of girls I’ve seen in secret fantasies. Girls who make me blush when I think about them.

  She studies me as I dangle, her eyes as dark as mahogany.

  “I should drop you,” she says, “for looking at me like an object.”

  “But you are an object,” I point out, and realize it’s the wrong thing to say, unless I want to die.

  “Perhaps so,” she says, “but I don’t appreciate being treated like one.”

  “Will you save me? Please?” I ask, ashamed to be begging, but feeling I have no other choice.

  “I’m considering it,” she says.

  Her grip is firm and strong, and I know that as long as she’s still considering, she won’t let me fall.

  “There are things going on behind my back, aren’t there?” she asks—and since she’s the figurehead of the ship, the answer is, of course, “Yes.”

  “Do they speak ill of me? The captain and his pet? The crewmen and their demons that hide in crevices.”

  “They don’t speak of you at all,” I tell her. “At least not since I arrived.”

  That doesn’t please her. “Out of sight must truly be out of mind,” she says with the sticky bitterness of oak sap. Then she studies me a few moments more. “I will save you,” she says, “if you promise to tell me all the things that go on behind my back.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Very well.” She squeezes my hand tighter, and I know it will be badly bruised, but I don’t care. “Visit me, then, to vary my days.” And then she smirks. “And maybe one of these days, I’ll allow you to polish me, instead of just that pole.”

  Then she swings me side to side, building momentum, and finally heaves me back onto the bow, where I land hard on the deck.

  I look around. No one is nearby. Everyone on deck is occupied in their own particular obsession. I resolve to keep this encounter a secret. Perhaps the wooden maiden will be an ally when I need one.

  35. The Unusual Suspects

  The mission team has been chosen. The captain gathers a half dozen of us in the map room—a sort of library beside his ready room, filled with scrolls of maps, some of which already show signs that the navigator has had his way with them. There are six seats, three on either side of a pockmarked table. On my side is the navigator, and the scream-faced girl with the pearl choker. Across from us is another girl with hair as blue as a Tahitian bay, an older kid with a hard-luck face God forgot to give cheekbones, and the obligatory fat kid.

  At the head of the table stands the captain. There’s no seat for him. That’s intentional. He towers over us. The light from a flickering lamp behind the captain casts his shadow across the table—a shifting blob, that almost, but not quite, mimics his actions. The parrot sits perched on some scrolls, his talons digging into the parchment.

  Carlyle, the swabby, is also there. He sits on a chair in the corner, whittling on his mop handle, like he’s turning it into a very thin totem pole. He observes but says nothing at first.

  “We bob above many things unseen,” the captain begins. “Mountains of mystery lie low in the lightless, bone-crushing depths. . . . But as you all know, it be not the mountains that obsess us, but the valleys.”

  Then his single seeing eye looks to me. I know he’s making eye contact with all of us as he speaks but I can’t help but feel that he’s singling me out as he waxes pirate poetic.

  “Aye, the valle
ys and trenches. And one in particular. The Marianas Trench . . . and that place in its icy depths called Challenger Deep.”

  The parrot flaps to his shoulder. “Been watching you, we have,” the parrot says. Today he sounds like Yoda.

  “Indeed we have been scrutinizing your ways,” adds the captain, “and fiercely reckon that you be the ones to play a crucial part in this mission.”

  I roll my eyes at his strained pirate-ese. I wouldn’t doubt he spells everything with triple rrr’s.

  All is silent for a moment, and from the corner, Carlyle, without looking up from his whittling, says, “Of course, I’m just a fly on the wall, but this would all go much more smoothly if the six of you shared your opinions.”

  “Speak,” orders the parrot. “All must speak of what you know of the place we seek.”

  The captain says nothing. He seems a bit irritated that his authority has been undermined by the parrot and the swabby. He crosses his arms in a display of power, and waits for one of us to say something.

  “Well, I’ll go first,” says the girl with the pearl choker. “It’s a deep, dark, terrible place, and there are monsters that I really don’t want to talk about . . .” and then she proceeds to tell us about monsters none of us cares to hear about—until she’s interrupted by the obligatory fat kid.

  “No,” he says. “The worst monsters aren’t in the trench, they guard it. The monsters come before you get there.”

  Choker-girl, who insisted she didn’t want to talk about them, obviously wanted to, because she’s miffed that she’s been cut off. Now everyone’s attention turns to the fat kid.

  “Go on,” says the captain. “Everyone’s here to listen.”

  “Well . . . the monsters keep people away by killing anyone who gets close. And if one doesn’t get you, another one will.”