Free The Marbury Lens by Andrew Smith Page A

wall. A wall of human butchery. Arrows. A boy named Ben Miller screaming to me, holding two horses behind a pile of rocks and corpses. And then me, getting shot through my side by a long black arrow. I could still feel it, the tickling vibration of the shaft sticking from my back as it quivered with each gasping breath and pulse of my blood, the pain, burning hot, stabbing every nerve in my body.
    I ran to the toilet and threw up.
    I sat on the edge of the bed. I had nothing on, just my underwear, and I was wet. I shut the window and took another gulp of warm, frothy beer. My hair dripped water on my shoulders and onto the wood floor. I went into the bathroom again, checked. I had taken a shower. A towel, my running shorts and socks, were thrown onto the floor. The clothes were damp and smelled like sweat. I must have gone for another run.
    Why can’t I remember?
    Freddie Horvath did something to your brain and you better get help, Jack.
    I checked the clothes I’d put on after breakfast, emptied the pockets of my jeans onto the bed.
    The glasses. On the floor. I thought about the glasses. I didn’t want to look at them, felt around with my palm, closed my hand around their bony frames, and slipped them inside one of my sweaty socks.
    I didn’t want to see those bugs again.
    I could feel the beer. I wanted another one. I felt guilty about drinking it, but it felt good.
    Fuck. Jack feels guilty about everything.
    I opened another beer, went back to the bed.
    My cell phone was dead. I wondered if I’d spoken to Conner, to anyone who could tell me I was really here today. Passport, money, folded slips of paper; and I found the smeared card Henry Hewitt had left for me in the pub lying on the bed under my digital camera.
    I picked up the card and read it again while I took another gulp from the beer bottle. I rubbed my thumb over the black ink. I shook my head.
    I must be going insane.
    No, I am insane.
    There was a yellow index card–size slip of paper tucked into my passport. It was a ticket for a Thames River sightseeing cruise, and it had been stamped earlier that afternoon.
    Okay. Crazy Jack went on a boat, I guess.
    I flipped my camera over and turned it on. I felt dizzy, like I was going to collapse. I dropped onto my knees, elbows on the bed like I was praying, holding the small screen of the camera up before my eyes. I played through the images: Marylebone Road in front of the park, a blurry image from the platform in a Tube station, boats on the river, the Houses of Parliament. Then there were pictures taken from a glass-canopied boat: the London Bridge, and, finally, a picture of me, smiling, standing in the sunlight, leaning against a red painted rail on the ship’s deck, under a perfect, blue sky.
    I think I stared at that picture for half an hour, studying every detail of it.
    I looked happy, standing there in loose jeans and a white T-shirt that said GLENBROOK HIGH SCHOOL CROSS-COUNTRY , hands tucked into pockets, white baseball cap turned around backwards, hair blown across an eye on one side by a wind I thought I could remember feeling somehow, standing so relaxed. Smiling.
    I wondered who took the picture.
    I tried turning on my phone again, irrationally hoping the battery may have restored itself.
    I pulled my jeans and T-shirt on. Then I tucked Henry’s glasses, wrapped in my sock, into a back pocket and slid my bare feet into my Vans.
    And then I went back to The Prince of Wales.

Twenty
    This is real.
    My feet, inside my shoes.
    Sounds of cars on the road.
    I slip my hand up inside my T-shirt and feel my side.
    This is real.
    Henry’s glasses are wrapped inside my sock and I know they’re in my back pocket.
    I haven’t gotten away from anything.
     

    Saturday night.
    The pub was crowded with kids; and three guys had set up on a stage near the back and were playing folk music with a guitar, mandolin, and drum. I scanned the length of the bar, saw the same bartender who’d served me the night