Free Gravestone by Travis Thrasher Page A

they’re saying, but I wonder why they’re saying it to me.
    “What are you doing here?” one of the men asks.
    It’s like four detectives on one of those old cop shows I used to watch. But why four? There never used to be four. Only one, two at the most.
    “Where am I?”
    “You do not belong here,” another says.
    “Where is ‘here’?” I ask.
    “No,” says a guy with a beard, probably the oldest. “Not now, not like this. Not here.”
    I feel like I’m in trouble, but I don’t know why. I look around me for someone I recognize—my mother, maybe Sheriff Wells, somebody else from Solitary that I know.
    “How did you get here?” the man in the beard asks me.
    “I don’t know.”
    “You have nothing else on you?”
    “Like what?”
    “Any papers or documentation?”
    I shake my head and then reach into my pocket. Maybe I’ll find a silver passport or a golden ticket or my school ID or something. I don’t find anything but lint.
    There’s a knock, and then the door opens. A woman stands in the doorway and glares at the men, as if they’re wanted, as if they’re in trouble. They all turn, and without saying anything they file out one by one. The bearded man glances back at me and pauses.
    “Stay here, right there in that chair. Can you do that for me?”
    “Yes,” I say.
    When they’re gone, I wait for a few minutes.
    I’m sure I’m being watched, though there is no one-way mirror that I can detect.
    I get up and try the door handle.
    It turns, and I open the door and step through.
    I told the guy yes when he asked, “Can you do that for me?”
    And I could physically do that, if I wanted to. But what I need to do is get out of here and find out where I am.
    As I step outside the small white room, the lights go out like a fuse box bursting. I step ahead to find a wall or something to guide myself with, and instead I find myself falling backward, doing somersaults as I’m dropping, the wind whipping my face and my hair, and my stomach lost a hundred stories above me as I suddenly and completely find myself back in my bed.
    I don’t wake up with a gasp. It’s more like I brace myself for impact.
    I wake up to the sound of cracking life outside of me. I look out a fogged-over window that I wipe down only to reveal a distorted crystal spiderweb covering the outside. The world outside is one big icicle.
    I open my bedroom door and holler out for my mom. Nothing.
    That answers the school question. No Mom, no school. I seriously doubt the bus is going to be out on a morning like this, but even if it is, I’m staying here. If Mom is playing hooky, so am I.
    Hopefully she’ll call soon to let me know she’s alive. Which is always a nice thing to know.
    I think about last night—the hailstorm and the strange sounds and the even stranger dream—then I randomly pick out an album to crank.
    Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill does the trick.
    I blast it away and cause Midnight to look up from the nest she made in the corner of the bed.
    This is what it feels like to be single.
    This is what it feels like to be on my own.
    And I gotta say … I like it.
    That all changes in an hour when I hear a knock on the door.
    About time she showed up.
    I have a mouth full of ancient Cheerios that taste like soft mush after being drowned in milk. I glance at the door and wonder why it’s not opening, then get up and reach for the handle.
    Before I open it up, I can see him in the window.
    The ugly round face, troll-like and irritated as usual.
    “Come on, open up.”
    For a second I consider not opening it, but my male pride lets me down. I swing the door open and finish swallowing my cereal.
    Gus glances at me with disinterest. I didn’t see him at all the first week of school. Maybe he just got back from vacation or from the cave he sleeps upside down in.
    “Nice little storm, huh?”
    “What do you want?” I ask.
    His hands are free, which is good. I look down and see a black Humvee waiting at the bottom