Libba Bray Read online

  For my parents with love.

  This one’s also for Wendy.

  And, as always, for Barry and Josh.

  acknowledgments

  I would like to thank everyone I’ve ever kissed or punched* and anyone who has ever kissed or punched me.

  I’d like to thank the guy who once validated my parking ticket when I had no money, and the homeless lady who said my hair looked like a dandelion with pieces blown away. I’d like to thank the people who save the whales and the whales themselves, especially the whales stuck in middle management, because that is tough. I would like to thank the people in this world who are weirder than I am—all three of you, plus Crispin Glover. I’d like to thank people who read and think and people who have made me think and read and those who think while reading and read while thinking, but you shouldn’t read while driving because that’s a safety issue. If I possibly met you in some parallel universe, I would like to say welcome and thank you, too, and, you know, sorry about not calling—that time-travel thing’s tricky with my rollover minutes—and also, is there a way to get that sticky stuff from the Higgs field off the bottom of your shoe? I’m asking.

  I issue these copious thanks because I’m always afraid I’ll forget somebody. By the time the pages are in copyediting, and my brain feels like it’s gone a few rounds with Ali in his prime, I have a hard time remembering to pick up milk, let alone remembering the many wonderful people who helped midwife the book. This is a commentary not on their much-appreciated contributions but on my beleaguered mind, which—if I may offer this in my defense—did live through the 1980s, which was a hell of a decade.

  So, you know, thanks. To everybody. Everywhere. Well, maybe not the guy who vomited on my new shoes after the True Believers concert that time in Austin. I don’t want to thank him. But most people—thanks.

  Still. In acknowledgments pages, they like you to get specific with your shout-outs. Otherwise, people stop inviting you to dinner. And I like dinner. So, with that in mind, I would like to thank the following very specific people:

  My publishers, Beverly “I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar” Horowitz and Chip “Animal House Was Based on Me” Gibson. Much respect.

  My beloved editor, Wendy Loggia, whose faith never wavers and who pulls me off the crazy train even when my bags are already on board and the conductor (who looks an awful lot like Jack Nicholson in The Shining) is offering his hand. Thanks, Wendy.

  My agent, Barry Goldblatt, who believed from the beginning, and who has the misfortune of being married to me, so it’s hard to escape the neurosis.

  Pam Bobowicz and Krista Vitola for their support and input. Also, the chocolate.

  The über-talented Trish Parcell for another boffo cover.

  The ever-lovely Lisa McCourt and her dad for the Disney World insider info. Thank heavens it really is a small world after all.

  Clive Owen for continuing to have an imaginary affair with me.

  Rachel “Chelbaby” Cohn, Susanna “Superfoxy” Schrobsdorff, and Jo “Just Because I Haven’t Come Up with Your Annoying Nickname Yet Doesn’t Mean I Won’t” Knowles for reading an early draft of this novel and offering great critiques and encouragement and just generally making me feel minty fresh. Great do you all rocketh.

  Justine Larbalestier (who doesn’t get a nickname because I fear her) for pushing me to push myself, and for telling me to give the gnome more screen time.

  Maureen Leary. Maureen Effing Leary! (Really. That’s her middle name. It’s on all her monograms.) Maureen Leary, Writer Extraordinaire, who gave me incredible advice and helped me slaughter my “little darlings.” Those Midwestern vegans. Surprisingly savage with a pen.

  Adam McInroy for talking me through all the physics. Also, for teaching me how to do a layup when you were nine and helping me pass College Math for Idiots when you were only eleven. But I kicked your ass at Axis & Allies a couple of times, bucko, and don’t think I don’t hold on to that to salve my petty ego.

  Laurie Allee for being there and for the physics links. In any parallel world, I still want you as my wing (wo)man.

  Brian Greene, Nima Arkani-Hamed, Hugh Everett III, Lisa Randall, Steven Weinberg, Ed Witten, Michio Kaku, Neil Turok, and Julian Barbour for their amazing work on unlocking the mysteries of our universe and providing me with inspiration. (Albeit only through bookstores and the Internet because I don’t actually know any of you, but you seem lovely.) Any liberties taken, science gotten wrong, or weird stuff completely made up and perhaps trademarked are solely the fault of the author, who can barely program her DVR.

  My insane friend Brenda Cowan for the genius that is Shithenge. I’m not worthy.

  John Nevius for the paper-clip analogy and the discussion about Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

  Vivien Schultz and Debo Hendrix, old friends and natives of New Orleans, for helping me remember that you get saltines and hot sauce on the table, not spicy peanut mix. I don’t know what I was thinking.

  The Tea Lounge on 7th Avenue, 2001–2008. R.I.P.

  The baristas at ’Wichcraft, Southside, and Red Horse Café, also.

  Pete Townshend. I don’t actually know Pete Townshend either, but I’ve just always wanted to be able to thank him in my acknowledgments pages.

  The makers of Rock Band, because it’s cheaper and more fun than antianxiety meds.

  The Camp Barry crew for their encouragement.

  For listening to me piss and moan beyond all reasonable limits, purple hearts to Maureen Johnson, Robin Wasserman, E. Lockhart, Holly Black, Cecil Castellucci, Cassandra Clare, Justine (again), Scott Westerfeld, and that guy who sits at the table next to us wearing a weary expression worthy of Camus.

  My son, the awesome Joshua, who was patient enough to survive yet another deadline with Mom. For the record, honey, I think your idea about Zombie Bunnies™ rocks out loud.

  Last, but most definitely not least, this novel wouldn’t exist without the velvet whips and “make it work” attitude of Cynthia and Greg Leitich-Smith. Going Bovine was written for their wonderful WriteFest workshop in Austin, Texas, in 2005. Thanks, Cyn and Greg. In the pasture of life, you are both prettier than speckled cows—the bombshells of bovines, I am told. (It’s good to know that in case you’re ever playing “What’s My Category?” Death Round quiz and that question comes up.) A big thanks to all the WriteFesters who participated but especially Brian Yansky and Anne Bustard, who were saddled with the entire manuscript and didn’t complain once but offered insightful, invaluable critique. You rule.

  * For the record, the only person I have ever punched was my older brother, Stuart. And he had it coming. No one should get to wear the Batman cape all the time. The word is “share.” I’m just saying.

  Take my advice and live for a long long time, because the maddest thing a man can do in this life is to let himself die.

  —CERVANTES, Don Quixote

  Hope is the thing with feathers.

  —EMILY DICKINSON

  It’s a small world after all.

  —WALT DISNEY

  CHAPTER ONE

  In Which I Introduce Myself

  The best day of my life happened when I was five and almost died at Disney World.

  I’m sixteen now, so you can imagine that’s left me with quite a few days of major suckage.

  Like Career Day? Really? Do we need to devote an entire six hours out of the high school year to having “life counselors” tell you all the jobs you could potentially blow at? Is there a reason for dodgeball? Pep rallies? Rad soda commercials featuring Parker Day’s smug, fake-tanned face? I ask you.

  But back to the best day of my life, Disney, and my near-death experience.

  I know what you’re thinking: WTF? Who dies at Disney World? It’s full of spinning tea
cups and magical princesses and big-assed chipmunks walking around waving like it’s absolutely normal for jumbo-sized stuffed animals to come to life and pose for photo ops. Like, seriously.

  I don’t remember a whole lot about it. Like I said, I was five. I do remember that it was hot. Surreal hot. The kind of hot that makes people shell out their life savings for a bottle of water without even bitching about it. Even the stuffed animals started looking less like smiling, playful woodland creatures and more like furry POWs on a forced march through Toonland. That’s how we ended up on the subterranean It’s a Small World ride and how I nearly bit it at the place where America goes for fun.

  I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced the Small World ride. If so, you can skip this next part. Honestly, you won’t hurt my feelings, and I won’t tell the other people reading this what an asshole you are the minute you go into the other room.

  Where was I?

  Oh, right—so much we share, time aware, small world. After all.

  So. Small World ride, brief sum-up: Long-ass wait in incredibly slow-moving line. Then you’re put into this floating barge and set adrift on a river that winds through a smiling underworld of animatronic kids from every country on the planet singing along in their various native tongues to the extremely catchy, upbeat song.

  Did I mention it’s about a ten-minute ride?

  Of the same song?

  In English, Spanish, Swahili, and Japanese?

  I’m not going to lie to you; I loved it. Dude, I said to myself, this is the shit. Or something like that in five-year-old speak. I want to live in this new Utopia of singing children of all nations. With luck, the Mexican kids will let me wear their que festivo sombreros. And the smiling Swedes will welcome me into their happy Nordic hoedown. Välkommen, y’all. I will ride the pink fuzzy camel in some vaguely defined Middle Eastern country (but the one with pink fuzzy camels) and shake a leg with the can-can dancers in Gay Paree.

  Bonjour.

  Bienvenido.

  Guten Tag.

  Jambo.

  I was with the three people who were my world—Mom, Dad, my twin sister, Jenna—and for one crazy moment, we were all laughing and smiling and sharing the same experience, and it was good. Maybe it was too good. Because I started to get scared.

  I don’t know exactly how I made the connection, but right around Iceland, apparently, I got the idea that this was the after life. Sure, I had heatstroke and had eaten enough sugar to induce coma, but really, it makes sense in a weird way. It’s dark. It’s creepy. And suddenly, everybody’s getting along a little too well, singing the same song. Or maybe it had to do with my mom. She used to teach English classics, heavy on the mythology, at the university B.C. (Before Children) and liked to pepper her bedtime stories with occasional bits about Valhalla or Ovid or the River Styx leading to the underworld and other cheery sweet-dreams matter. We’re a fun crew. You should see us on holidays.

  Whatever it was, I was convinced that this ride was where you went to die. I would be separated from my family forever and end up in some part of the underworld where smiling kid robots in boater hats sang nonstop in Portuguese. I had to keep that from happening. And then—O Happy Day! Salvation! Right behind the Eskimo igloo (this was before they were the more politically correct but slightly naughty-sounding Inuits), I saw this little door.

  “Mommy, where does that door go to?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, honey.”

  We were headed for certain death on the River Styx. But somehow I knew that if I could just get to that little door, everything would be okay. I could stop the ride and save us all. That was pretty much it for me. My five-year-old freak-out meter totally tripped. I slipped free of the seat and splashed into the fishy-smelling water, away from the doe-eyed, pinafored girl puppet singing, “En värld full av skratt, en värld av tårar” (Swedish, I’m told, for “It’s a world of laughter, a world of tears”).

  The thing is, I didn’t know how to swim yet. But apparently, I was pretty good at sinking. You know that warning about how kids can drown in very little water? Quite true if the kid panics and forgets to close his mouth. You can imagine my surprise when the water hit my lungs and I did not immediately start singing, “There’s so much that we share.”

  The last thing I remember before I started to lose consciousness was my mom screaming to stop the ride while crushing Jenna to her chest in case she got the urge to jump too. Above me, lights and sound blended into a wavy distortion, everything muted like a carnival heard from a mile away. And then I had the weirdest thought: They’re stopping the ride. I got them to stop the ride.

  I don’t remember a whole lot after that, just fuzzy memories filled in by other people’s memories. The story goes that my dad dove in and pulled me out, dropping me right beside the igloo, and administered CPR. Official Disney cast members scampered out along the narrow edge of EskimoSoontoBeInuit, yammering into their walkie-talkies that the situation was under control. Slack-jawed tourists snapped pictures. An official Disney ambulance came and whisked me away to an ER, where I was pronounced pukey but okay. We went back to the park for free—I guess they were afraid we’d sue—and I got to go on the rides as much as I wanted without waiting in line at all because everybody was just so glad I was alive. It was the best vacation we ever took. Of course, I think it was also the last vacation we ever took.

  It was Mom who tried to get the answers out of me later, once Jenna had fallen asleep and Dad was nursing his nerves with a vodka tonic, courtesy of the hotel’s minibar. I was sitting in the bathtub with the nonskid flower appliqués on the bottom. It had taken two shampoos to get the flotsam and jetsam of a small world out of my hair.

  “Cameron,” she asked, pulling me onto her lap for a vigorous towel-drying. “Why did you jump into the water, honey? Did the ride scare you?”

  I didn’t know how to answer her, so I just nodded. All the adrenaline I’d felt earlier seemed to pool in my limbs, weighing me down.

  “Oh, honey, you know it’s not real, don’t you? It’s just a ride.”

  “Just a ride,” I repeated, and felt it sink in deep.

  The thing is, before they pulled me out, everything had seemed made of magic. Like I really believed in this crazy dream. But the minute I came to on the hard, glittery, spray-painted, fake snow and saw that marionette boy pulling the same plastic fish out of the hole again and again, I realized it was all a big fake. The realest thing I’d ever experienced was that moment under the water when I almost died.

  And in a way, I’ve been dying ever since.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Wherein the Cruelties of High School Are Recounted, and the Stoner Dudes of the Fourth-Floor Bathroom Offer Me Subpar Weed and a Physics Lesson

  “Who the heck is Don Quicks-oat?” That’s what Chet King wants to know.

  It’s early February, six weeks into the new semester, and we’re in English class, which for most of us is an excruciating exercise in staying awake through the great classics of literature. These works—groundbreaking, incendiary, timeless—have been pureed by the curriculum monsters into a digestible pabulum of themes and factoids we can spew back on a test. Scoring well on tests is the sort of happy thing that gets the school district the greenbacks they crave. Understanding and appreciating the material are secondary. For the record, our friend Chet King has read exactly three books in his life, but I’m not sure that sitting through The Happy Bunny Easy Reader twice should count. The other book was, no doubt, about football.

  “That’s Don Quixote,” Mr. Glass says, pronouncing the “x” as an “h,” the proper way.

  “Don Key-ho-tay,” Chet repeats, exaggerating Glass’s somewhat effeminate enunciation. The other jocks snort in laughter, like backup singers on steroids. They’ve got their jerseys on. Chet does too, though he won’t be playing today or any other day. Ever since a bad slam on the practice field cracked two vertebrae near his neck, our former all-state quarterback has been permanently sidelined. Another guy
might’ve gone out drinking over the loss of a big-time sports career. Not our guy Chet. He went to the other extreme, claiming that the accident must have been God’s will, a way to steer him toward a new direction in life. He gives this little motivational speech, “God took away my football scholarship but I’m still happy, happy, happy,” at Kiwanis club dinners, pep rallies, churches, youth groups, any place that will clap and cheer for him. I guess when your drug of choice has been applause and adoration from the stands it’s kind of hard to give that up.

  Anyway, it gets him laid, I hear. Doing the horizontal mambo with sympathetic cheerleaders is, apparently, a-okay in God’s book, and it doesn’t upset your spine like football. Of course, now he’s dating my sister, Jenna, so I’ll just be flipping on the denial meter for that one.

  Mr. Glass is undisturbed. “Okay, settle down. I haven’t dismissed you yet.”

  You dismissed us on day one, I think. It’s the kind of sardonic comment that would be good to share with a mate, a pal, a sidekick and coconspirator. If I had one.

  “¡Hola! ¿Quién puede decirme algo sobre Miguel Cervantes?” It’s Mrs. Rector, Calhoun High School’s Spanish teacher, to the rescue. This year, the administration has decided to have coteachers on certain segments. The idea being that we need to cross-pollinate our educational experience with tidbits from history and literature, social studies and foreign language skills, chemistry and home ec, which might prove valuable if we get the urge to make a highly volatile banana cream pie.

  Mrs. Rector translates some of the text from Spanish, adding the proper “r” rolls and flourishes. She’s got a reputation as the town lush. ¿Quanto costa una grande margarita, por favor? The fluorescent lighting is zapping out its periodic Morse code of odd sounds: We are hungry. Send us more of your bug kind. All in all, I’m ready to ride out the class under the radar. Just another ten minutes till I can blow through Calhoun’s front doors, past the school buses lining the drive for the away game, past the phalanx of cars and trucks ready to follow them anywhere Texas sporting loyalty demands, and hotfoot it downtown to Eubie’s Hot Wax—half-price CDs and old vinyl.