Free Ascending the Boneyard by C. G. Watson

want, potato chip.”
    Haze reaches back, takes the phone and charger from me, plugs it all in. I almost can’t believe the cigarette lighter still works in this crap car.
    Only now my hands are twitchy. No keypad, no music, no Snipe page, no way to check messages. And five hundred miles to go.
    I close my eyes. Why the hell wasn’t the old man at Goofy Golf with Devin? How could he just disappear like that, not even leave a note? Wouldn’t he know? Wouldn’t he know that would trip my shit in the worst possible way? After my mom and Stan . . . You don’t just up and leave without—
    I replay the conversation with the commandos over and over in my mind. What did I miss? Were there secret plans, messages, hints I should have taken note of? We think you can be of help to us. If that’s the case, where are they?
    My head jerks against the tattered seat back. I sit up, look around, scratch a rogue itch.
    â€œHey,” I say to no one in particular. “Hand me my phone.”
    Elan is the one who pops it out, charger and all, and I immediately check the wall screen, where the Day-Glo numbers pulse neon green at me.
    Sweat starts sheeting down my back.
    Midnight.
    It’s already midnight.
    That can’t be. When I handed my phone to Haze, it said ten to four. No way that was eight hours ago.
    I bolt upright in the seat, pivot toward the window, then each of the other windows, but no matter where I look, it’s all the same darkness.
    â€œHaze!” I call out.
    His head wobbles off the back of the seat. “Wha—?”
    I recant. Everything’s not right with the world. In fact, it would be accurate to say that something here is very, very wrong.
    â€œWhere are we?” I ask.
    Elan’s smile reflects back at me through the rearview mirror, her teeth glowing in the light of a massive full moon.
    â€œYou mean, are we there yet?”
    â€œAre we where yet?” I’m testing her. I know it. She knows it. Haze . . . whatever. Waking up is not his forte.
    Elan hasn’t answered my question, so I press against the window, squint to get a look at the full-frontal urban assault: honking horns, sirens, traffic. The night spasms to life around us, puking up neon and humanity everywhere I look.
    â€œAre we here yet,” she corrects me. “And the answer is, yes.”
    I don’t know how Haze and I both sawed enough z’s to get from Ohio to New York, assuming we are, in fact, in New York, without even noticing the extensive passage of time. That alone is enough to roll me, especially since Haze is a natural-born conspiracy theorist and I already know he doesn’t trust this girl.
    My own mistrust increases exponentially as the city presses its grimy face against the windows of the car.
    â€œThis is where I drop you boys off,” she says, winding her way through a tangle of crowded streets.
    I kick another glance out the window, absorb the sheer volume of bodies and machinery and high-rises and steam and neon and rebar and asphalt.
    The commandos had better chime in here soon.
    â€œOff you go,” she says. “The universe abhors a vacuum, you know. Once you leave home, you have to turn up somewhere.”
    Haze and I stagger out of her decrepit little car, and as we step onto the curb, I remember about the UnderGround, the City Hall Station.
    I turn, call out, “Wait, where’s the—”
    But the Big Apple has already taken a bite out of the night, and just like that, both the girl and the car are gone.

7.5
    I’m not sure why the commandos would send an UnderWorld hostage to me and then have her drive off without being saved.
    So, fine, this isn’t a salvation mission. But why have Elan show up just in the nick of time and take us exactly where we needed to go, and then, just before I could think of how to help her, poof ?
    Gone.

8
    Haze’s mirror-eyed rage bears down on me with an intensity I