Chapter 2 (Griff)

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Next: Chapter 3

Walking to the casket was easy enough, but the moment Griff arrived, he felt stupid and weird and completely aware that there was a dead person in front of him. He’d never seen a dead person before. Did he really want the first one to be his dad? He couldn’t just turn around now, could he? Turn back and admit Mom was right? Snowball’s chance.

Besides, she wasn’t right. She couldn’t be. There were rules to this. Normal human things people did. He felt the back of his neck bristle at the word human, but brushed the feeling aside and touched the wood of the casket instead. It was...surprisingly plastic-y, and cold.

Griff jumped at a light sensation on his shoulder.

“Woah.”

“Hi—oo! Sorry.” It was his petite blonde stepmother, the one who had given the tearful eulogy. She seemed fine now, though, strangely, besides some smudged makeup. And she was standing very close to him, almost whispering. Griff understood after a cursory glance around him. There was a small group of especially well dressed funeral attendees gathering around his father’s body like pigeons on a telephone wire, bobbing and murmuring to one another. “So sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m Amy. And you must be Griffin.” Griff was caught off guard.

“What? Yes. That’s me. I didn’t think you’d know.”

“Nonsense. You look just like him.” She tucked her chin in to get a better look. “You have his...general look.”

“I do?”

“You do. And you should know he was always so proud of you.”

“He was?”

“Amy,” came an insistent voice. She and Griff both turned to face it. It was a little crowd, now, just populated enough to block Griff’s line of sight to the rest of the garden, and to his mother. “Amy, if you could?”said a burly man with a mustache that didn’t match his hair.

“A minute, Mr. Church,” said Amy, and she turned back to Griff. “These nice people want to pay their last respects,” one of them scoffed, but Amy didn’t seem to notice, “which means we’re going to open the casket for a minute. Would you like to see your father one last time?” Well, Griff supposed, this was it. This was what he wanted-ish.

“Sure,” he said, for lack of a better word, and his Stepmother nodded warmly, then she turned to the little crowd and nodded at two men on the sides wearing white gloves. They walked over to the casket and pulled it open in a slow, fluid motion.

And there was his father. Griff knew he wasn’t supposed to judge people when they were dead, or ever, but his first thought was—he doesn’t look that special. Maybe Griff had built him up too much in his head. Maybe it was the giant estate and the three wives. Maybe it was being a corpse and all. But Griff was mostly underwhelmed. His father wasn’t particularly young, nor old. Not so handsome, but not hideous. He looked like a normal person. They even put him in there with glasses.

“Does he?” Said Griff, quietly enough so only Amy could hear. “Look like me, that is.” She gave him a soft, inscrutable expression but was interrupted before she could respond.

“Well it’s him, I suppose,” said an old woman.

“I guess even Jack old boy runs into bad luck like the best of us,” said a man with a big shiny watch. Another man crossed his arms, like he wasn’t buying it. Someone else Griff couldn’t see chuckled.

“Ten grand says the Tamyrs knocked him,” said the old woman. Amy scowled.

“He caught an infection,” she said. “Do you want the coroner’s report?” Her face had darkened so quickly Griff felt like he was getting whiplash. This lady sure could turn on a mood. Mr. Church stepped forward.

“I wouldn’t mind having a closer look myself,” he said, but Amy put up her hand and he halted.

“Anthony? Don’t be a pig,” she spat. He shrugged. Amy sighed, aggressively. Then she reached into her purse and pulled out a pocket knife. She flipped it open with surprising ease, walked right over to her dead husband’s body and sliced off a piece of his face. There was no blood—because of the embalming process, Griff thought, just a clean slice, like off a piece of meat, followed by a loud, collective gasp  from the crowd. Amy held out her hand impatiently. One of the white-gloved men put a white handkerchief in it and she wrapped up the flesh. She handed it to a stunned Mr. Church and then glided back to the casket. She slammed it shut and Griff felt the crowd jerk backwards at the noise. “Have it tested,“ said Amy, “put it in a chalice and sell it as a relic. Make little baby Jack clones. I don’t care. Just get off my property, you vultures. He’s dead.”

That seemed to do it. The well-dressed men and women trickled away, leaving the grieving widow with her back to them, glowering over the corpse. One by one they left, and took their whispers and murmurs with them. A beet red Mr. Anthony Church scurried off with his macabre souvenir, snapping at some suited men to take it from him.

Griff stayed frozen in place, staring ahead. Not quite at the casket, not quite at his stepmother, just into the empty space beyond them. What in the frozen circles of hell had just happened. Was that—he searched for the word—closure? He heard his stomach grumble, or gurgle. He wasn’t sure which. Then he felt his esophagus reach all the way down to his gut. His eyes watered and he keeled over but nothing came out.

“You alright, buddy?” Someone slapped him on the back. It didn’t help. A long string of saliva blobbed out of Griff’s mouth and glooped  onto the limestone patio. “Yeah you’ll be fine.” Griff shot up and tried to compose himself.

In his now blurred vision, Griff managed to gather that there were now only three people left in the garden besides him. Just Amy and the woman with long purple hair he’d seen earlier, now approaching the casket. The teenage boy, who’d just knocked the wind out of Griff’s already emptied lungs, followed close behind. And where was Griff’s mother? He scanned the white folding chairs behind him but she was nowhere to be seen.

“I think they bought it, don’t you?” Said Amy, oddly chipper again. She’d turned around to face the other two.

“Yes,” said the purple haired woman, “In fact, I think you might have oversold it. Amy, there’s perhaps a bigger problem we need to take care of now.” Despite the urgency of her sentence, there was something infuriatingly nonchalant about the way she said it. “What is it, Parker?”

“Sorry to interrupt, Mother,” the teenager motioned at Griff, “but are you sure you want to do this now?”

They all looked at Griff, still half choking on the stomach acid in his throat.

“You know it’s funny because—“ Griff started. But halfway through the sentence he realized he actually had nothing to say, so he just rubbed his face and swallowed uncomfortably instead. The triumvirate of shady step-relatives took a moment to collectively judge him before moving on.

“I won’t say it doesn’t concern him,” said the purple haired woman. “Jack was his father, after all.”

“Yes,” said Amy, “we’re all family here.” The kid they’d called Parker rolled his eyes.

“I don’t understand,” said Griff—to himself or to them, he wasn’t sure.

“He doesn’t understand,” said Parker, in a tone that could have been genuine or mocking. Either way, Griff felt a pang of gratitude for being acknowledged again. By someone who seemed particularly self-possessed, no less. And they were all so pretty, which wasn’t helping his ability to function in the situation. It was like watching a bunch of movie stars on set. He wasn’t sure if he was actually there or it was happening on a screen.

“There’s no time to waste,” said Parker’s mother, holding up some kind of letter opener looking thing. “I found this in the parlor. Someone from the Service is rummaging around the house.”

“Oh dear,” said Amy, “pesky, pesky. I suppose we’ll have to do something about that.”

“Wait a minute,” said Griff, still several hundred steps behind. “Who were those people earlier? Why were they so interested in my Dad?” But did he say it out loud? Because no one seemed to pay any mind.

“I’ll check the south wing,” said Parker. He winked at Griff, or maybe something got caught in his eye as he turned his head. Either way, Griff felt himself looking away reflexively. How old was this guy, exactly? Older, for sure, but by how much? He looked 18 –19 maybe.

“I’ll check the north wing,” said Parker’s mother.

“I guess that leaves me with the main hall,” said Amy. “Oh, but what about the tower?” The boy and his mother were already on their way to the mansion, exiting the garden in two different directions. “Jordan? What about the tower?”

“Just head there if you finish your part first,” she answered.

“Oh and Jordan!” Amy gathered her purse and a black shawl from the front row. “Please be careful with the rugs! It’s my house now, you know. I want it in ship shape!” And then she was off, too, down her own path, one that Griff hadn’t even noticed behind two large clay pots. And just like that, Griffin was left alone in the garden.

Wait, this couldn’t be right. They want me to follow, right? He thought. They’d—someone—one of them for sure—had been starting to or meaning to tell him something. He looked frantically from one path to the other.

And then he noticed something. Another set of vases, like the ones Amy had slipped behind, standing against the foliage at the edge of the garden. Griff approached, and was surprised to find that the vases were in fact much larger and thicker than they first appeared and also sealed at the top. Almost like they weren’t vases at all. But behind them, as suspected, a fourth path, barely wide enough for one person. Just a tread mark really, through the trees. And without even glancing around, Griff followed it.

Turns out the trees didn’t go very far, just to a cliff wall not far off, but there was a staircase there, up the side of that wall, and Griff followed it up, enchanted. The staircase led to an arch in the cliff side, that led to a tunnel, lit by old cage lamps sticking out at odd angles from the walls. Condensation dripped onto Griff’s neck as he wandered forward for about three minutes until he saw sunlight again. There was a spiral staircase this time—wrought iron smudged with red dust. And when he emerged at the top, somehow Griff was exactly where he knew he would end up.

He was standing beneath the tower at the center of his father’s estate. It was much older than everything else, he noticed—the rest of the mansion must have been built around it. The main hall stood behind him and the two wings stretched out on his right and his left, forming a wide courtyard between them. An open air colonnade connected  the far ends of the wings in the distance beyond the tower, which now loomed above Griff, with all those claustrophobic carvings he’d seen from a distance, now all the more impressive up close.

The tower actually stood in a bit of a crater, a story below ground, with a truly unnecessary spiral of steps processing slowly around the whole circumference down to the bottom. But those steps were part of the design, part of some story that was being told. They were carved to look like all these people—some of them very human, some of them only vaguely, but all of them hunched over or lying down so you could step on and over them. And they weren’t so detailed like the carvings on the tower, or—as Griff looked, he saw that the carvings seemed to get more detailed the further up the tower they were. The ones down here were just the shapes of the creatures, with light impressions of faces. Then at the base of the tower were some kind of giants, going up three stories. Majestic things, all dressed differently and holding different symbolic objects: swords and staffs with strange symbols, animals and sprigs of whatever iconic plants Griff didn’t know. A couple, puzzlingly, simply held smaller versions of themselves. They all seemed crushed by the weight of the rest of the carvings above them; some were protecting their heads or slouched over, covering their eyes. The bigger ones were keeled over entirely. One had been reduced to her hands and knees, weeping, her back forming an arch over the red oak doors.

What was causing them so much pain? Griff wondered. He need not look further than directly upwards, to a mass of slightly-larger-than-human-sized figures, with deeply cut, furious brows, and bulging muscles. They thrust their spears and long, segmented swords, and other weapons Griff didn’t recognize down into the giants below. They rode chariots and elk and what looked like feathery dinosaurs. Some were almost naked while others wore flowing robes and seemed to be crushing rocks into sand with their fists. But they weren’t all triumphant. The hands and weapons of the giants below them reached up into their ranks, strangling and piercing them. Even the most wide-eyed, fearsomely rendered figures, stabbing downward with their double blade swords were also being gruesomely impaled from below. The largest giant, in fact, had a set of horns on his head that reached all the way up into the third tier of soldiers, goring people along the way, until its tip was shattered by a serene looking woman and her...aerosol spray can? No that couldn’t be right. Griff would have to get a closer look, though she was already so vivid, perching there near the top. Her face was so detailed, Griff thought he could make out a vein popping near her temple.

It was like that, all the way up; a pile of gradually more advanced, ever more detailed, ever more stoic figures, stabbing and being stabbed by the giants at the base, until the giants couldn’t reach them at all. From barely clothed bloodbaths to crowns and pentagonal helmets, wild flailing, to orderly rows, and halfway up horses appeared, along with robed men and women gripping staffs, wind whipping at their hair. At the top, the people looked almost bored, aiming their ornate wands and inlaid rifles placidly downwards. In a way they were a solemn refraction of the giants—each with their own dress and symbols and gestures. The fanciest ones, that ringed the topmost layer before the roof, weren’t even holding weapons. Just books and tools and scientific instruments—and instead of looking down, they were looking up, climbing, actually, writhing up towards the summit.

Griff found that he was holding his breath. His head swam. From the lack of oxygen, maybe, or the feeling that an eon had just flashed before his eyes. But there was something in particular that had caught his eye as he scanned the structure again. There, in that first wave of soldiers, was a girl with two faces: human and hawk. Her arms, melting away into wings.

In a second, he was at the red-oak doors.

The doors swung open with ease when Griff pushed, like they could have been blown open by a strong enough wind. And indeed a wind did seem to arrive just as Griff did, because the first thing he heard was the wild flutter of paper being whisked into the air. And as the light from the doorway swept across the cavernous main atrium, Griff grinned.

"It's a library," Griff whispered to himself, "of course it's a library."

He could see the books before anything else; piles and piles and shelves and shelves of them, going up floors and floors, spines and covers and pages, quivering in the wind—or was it all just vibrating to some unseen hum? And then there were the spears of light; oddly shaped spotlights coming in from all directions, like a laser show, or like someone had poked random holes everywhere so their pet rabbit could breathe during a journey.

His steps were soft and muffled. Why was that? He dug his toe into the ground and felt it sink softly downwards, a few of the most intrepid grains of sand trickling into his shoe. Unreal, thought Griff. He picked up a book, half buried—or mostly buried. It ended up being way thicker and heavier than he’d expected, leather bound and gold-lettered. The Apologies, said the cover. He flipped to a random page, but could barely see, so he walked into one of the light spots.

Wherefore the latter materials of this earthly plane carry with them undoubtable significance of an energetic nature, the question of moral significance in the manner—Griff shut the book and coughed at the cloud of dust that came up. Well he wasn’t going to find answers in there.

Somewhere in here, though, he’d find what he needed. He’d never really had faith in anything, but this he did. It just made sense. He’d known he had to follow that path and head to the tower, and of course it was a library—he must have felt the books calling to him. Maybe that was part of his superpowers or whatever. He’d let go of his fears for once and just let the horizon lead him (as Gary was known to say). And now that he was in a library, well, he knew exactly what to do. He had to keep going, keep wandering! You never went into a library knowing exactly what you wanted. How could you? There was so much to know in the world and so much you didn’t...how could you possibly know what you wanted to know? No, the best and only real way to be in a library was to run your hand along the spines and scan for nothing—except you were definitely scanning for something, you just didn’t know what it was until you saw it. He could feel it now; the click, the relief of flipping through some mystery volume and just knowing absolutely that this was right, that your journey was completed. It was romance, there was no other way to say it.

He’d reached the grand staircase now, at the end of the atrium, and as his eyes began to adjust to the dimness he began to notice things he hadn’t before: the dark wooden beams, jutting out from beneath the balconies, their ends carved to look like animal and humanoid faces; the shelves that weren’t shelves but cubbies stuffed with scrolls (there were a lot of them on the ground level and the next); the occasional reading tables, most stacked with more books, loose papers, and the occasional sculpture or clock from far away and long ago. It was all dark and heavy, simple, yet grand. The wood steps didn’t squeak as he ascended, but he felt them compress.

Now, the question was: was there some method of organization to all this? It wasn’t by Dewey-decimal system that’s for sure. Or, maybe  it was, but a lot of it was in scripts and languages Griff didn’t recognize. They seemed, to a certain degree to be arranged by language, so maybe the first step was to find the English section. He’d thought he’d found one, but it was a tiny collection in the corner of the second level; maybe four or five books stacked on a table with titles like Evandalic Reference and Byufurt Transliteration. So he made a round of the second story and, finding nothing, ascended another level where Griff found he could see much better. There were a couple windows on this level, all of seemingly random shapes until he looked closer and realized that behind and above the shelves, the walls inside were continuations of the walls outside. If the left side of a giant was facing outwards, Griff now saw their right side. Heads that were turned away he now saw turned towards him. There were a lot of butts also. And the windows, in fact, were gaps in the sculpture; a space between two clashing swords, or under someone’s armpit. In one case, through the spokes of a chariot’s wheel.

That’s when Griff had a stroke of inspiration and hopped up another flight of stairs, circling around the balconies, but this time without looking at the books. He focused on the sculptures. There was a—yes, there was one of those hooded rock crushing dudes being squished by a giant hand, and above him a rearing jaguar leaking tears, and then just to the left, the girl turning into a bird. She was crying, too, actually. That’s all Griff could see. The rest of her body was blocked by a shelf, which Griff looked at, and strangely, unlike any other shelf he’d seen, it was empty.

Griff shook his head and tried to ignore what felt like his heart falling into an endless void. This had to be a coincidence. He was just making things up in his head about the walls and the books and what they had to do with each other. It could all just be random. But he had to check. He had a theory to test. He ran up the next flight of stairs, and then the next until he found a section with what looked to be English and snatched up a random book. The cover was blank so he opened to the first page.

Blood of Lords and Kings of Midland, the Great Families.

He flipped forward. It was some boring genealogy stuff. Family trees and weird names like Ymmfer. Griff looked up at the frieze in the wall and sure enough there was a bearded man with a crown, crossing his arms. Some ways to his right, there was a figure Griff had really focused on when he was outside. It was this young, sullen-faced dude holding a thin staff to his chest while making an intricate gesture with his other hand. He was not only very attractive, he was also twice the size of all the other figures around him, and seemingly untouched by the giants. It was just his back showing on the inside of the tower, his robe billowing out behind him and mostly just his torso visible above the shelf. But he was unmistakably the magic guy—come on, Griff had played enough video games to know that he was the magic guy—and voila, the shelves beside him were all magic, all day: the Worthy Magician, Alchemical Fundamentals, Rites of the First Mages, a Study of the Occult and its Practitioners. There were several more copies of The Apologies as well. Griff imagined tossing another one down the long vacant center of the tower and watching it smack into a cloud of sand. And then, what the hell, he did it. But it wasn’t so much a throw as a suddenly furious hurling. The impact of the book was muted, but final and decisive, the flowering wave of sand that puffed up and outwards was small and unsatisfying.

From this vantage, Griff could see the dual profiles of girl and bird several floors down and, in the shadows below her, the empty shelf. Was it the sand he’d kicked up all the way down there? Or was it hard to breathe? He pressed his forehead into the rails of the balcony and let himself sob, silently, like that shapeshifting girl and the jaguar. He felt his shoulders coming up and rattling and then falling down, kept thinking about what that empty shelf looked like, and that pocketknife cutting into that strangers face, and that blank look Gary gave him when he walked in and saw Griff tearing at his face with his nails, limbs retracting back to their normal lengths. Gary had just sat there a full two minutes before calling the ambulance, staring at Griff like he didn’t know what he was looking at. He’d opened his mouth and nothing came out, just nothing.

Griff didn’t like this. He didn’t like feeling like this at all. Something was out there that could solve him, and no one would just give him the answer. Some person or book or message in a bottle had the exact words or information that he needed; he could feel the shape of it so clearly in his head. He just needed to hear it for real and everything would be better.

So he took out his phone. Three missed calls from Mom. He ignored them. He very nearly texted Karthik. Typed out a message and everything: Hi are you there?  But even if he responded, Griff knew he’d only feel worse in the end for talking to him. So Griff called Gary. He didn’t think through what he was going to say. He just did it, just for a quick gasp of air. The phone was ringing. Ringing. Oh geez, Griff’s phone was at 15% battery. Probably he shouldn’t have been playing on it all night. Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t slept properly in two whole nights.

''Hi this is Gary—man, I can’t believe I’m missing your call! I bet it would’ve been a great one—''

Griff hung up. He would have slammed it if this was an old timey phone that went on a hook, but touch screens were just so un-dramatic. You had to make a big show of tapping a screen, and it really just hurt your finger. So Griff just hung up normally and groaned. For the first time in his life, Gary’s cheerfulness felt genuinely grating. Was this how Mom felt most of the time? All the time? It used to be he could talk to Gary about anything. Anything. But lately--ever since--well--Gary hadn’t really known how to deal with Griff’s sudden transformations. Griff had tried to explain it, at the hospital after that first time it happened. But it was like a two way mirror had gone up between them, and Griff was on the invisible side, waving at a face that couldn’t tell if he was there anymore...

“No,” Griff had said, “I’m telling you, I was different. I looked—like someone else. And then it hurt again and when I turned the lights on and went back to the mirror, it was me again. But I changed, Gary. I really did.”

“Yeah,” said Gary. “Yeah, of course. I believe you, bud. Go on.” He was nodding intently, but Griff could tell he was terribly distracted. There was the beeping EKG machine next to the bed and then the doctor himself right outside the door, whispering to a nurse. And then there was Gary’s phone vibrating once every five seconds. “Yeah,” said Gary. “Of course, bud.”

“I didn’t say anything,” said Griff.

“What? Oh. I’m so sorry bud. I’m listening. You changed—into, into what?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Griff. “You should check your phone.”

“No, no, it’s all you, buddy,” said Gary. “Talk it out.”

“It’s probably Mom,” said Griff, “you should answer her.”

“Okay, yeah,” said Gary, “you’re right. Wouldn’t want to. Keep her. Waiting.” He grabbed his phone and immediately started replying. Then the doctor came in. Said his spiel. Everything looks fine, but we should keep an eye out. Maybe it was this. Maybe that, yada yada. Possible allergic reaction. Stay away from XYZ until we get blood work back.

Half way through Mom showed up, panting. Her makeup was all messed up around her eyes. She hugged Griff about five times and then the doctor started the whole spiel again. Griff buried his face in his hands.

“Oh thank God,” said his mom, after the doctor finally left, “Thank god. Gary, you made it sound like he’d been impaled and roasted on a spit.”

“I’m sorry! I didn’t know what was going on. He was just yelling and rolling all over the living room floor and his skin was all red and, I don’t know…bumpy.”

“But he’s fine now,” said Mom.

“He’s fine now,” said Gary.

“He’s fine,” said Mom. She clasped her hands together. Then she put them around her mouth and breathed. She paced.

“Gary,” said Griff.

“Yeah, bud?”

“I’ve been having these dreams,” said Griff. “I turn into things…and people.”

“What kind of things?” said Gary.

“Like, I don’t know. A bird.”

“Oh, Griff…” said Gary, “Does this have to do with that time that girl called you a bird?”

“She said I looked like a duck,” said Griff, “and thanks for bringing that up.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Gary. “I’m sorry I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Stop apologizing! Its fine, Gary, I’m over it. But listen, I think the dreams…might have to do with…you know when I changed. When I changed. Because I change in my dreams. And it hurts, too. But this time I changed in real life. And I—I think there’s something really fucked up about me, Gary.”

“What did you say?” said his mother. She’d stopped pacing and she stood up straight by the door. “You said—you changed?”

“Look I know none of you are gonna believe me and probably I’m just hallucinating, but when I looked in the mirror after it first started hurting, it was weird. It was like—”

“You turned into something else,” said his mother. Someone, Griff wanted to say, someone else. But he didn’t. And then there was a rap on the door.

“You have visitors,” chirped a nurse. Remy poked his head around the doorframe. He had a guilty look on his face. Griff felt his insides fall away.

“Hey, dude,” said Karthik. He stood in the doorframe, still wearing his volleyball uniform. He gave Griff a dopey smile. Griff snorted. “Isa. Mr. Goldmark. Delighted. Delighted.” Karthik blew them kisses.

“Karthik!” said Gary, “we haven’t seen you around in a while! How’s it hanging?”

“You know, Mr. G, same old, same old.” Karthik put a hand up in half a stretch and then scratched the back of his head absently. “How about you? Sixth graders keeping you busy?”

“Every goddam day,” said Gary, “I thought about switching to ninth grade but I think Griff would kill me.”

“Hey. Don’t let nobody tell you what to do, Mr. G,” said Karthik.

“I don’t know,” said Gary, “between these two,” he pointed at Griff and his mother. “Anyway, Isa and I have some paperwork to do and some things to discuss so we’ll leave you boys to it. Remy, thanks for coming. Still the best history paper I ever graded.” Remy blushed. Mom nodded at both of them and followed Gary out of the room. She gave Griff one meaningful glance before she shut the door. The kind that meant they’d talk later.

The boys dropped all pretense as soon as the door shut and they rushed to Griff’s side.

“Hoooly shit, dude,” said Karthik. “Did you almost die? Did you see God?”

“I was super worried,” said Remy.

“Aww,” said Karthik. He kissed the top of Remy’s head. “Sweet child.” He looked back at Griff. “Dish. I came right over from the game. We lost really bad. I’m drenched in sweat. What’s your story?”

“Um. I don’t know. I was in my room.” Griff swallowed.

“Let me guess.” said Karthik

“Sure,” said Griff.

“Heart attack,” said Karthik.

“No.”

“Rabies.”

“Nope.”

“Aw man,” said Remy. “I had my money on rabies.”

“Only yourself to blame,” said Griff.

“Poison ivy gone terribly wrong,” said Karthik

“How?” said Remy.

“He ate it.”

“Eh,” said Griff.

“That’s not a no!” said Karthik.

“Poison Ivy like from Batman,” said Remy.

“Colder,” said Griff.

“Poison,” said Karthik. They looked at him. “Just poison.”

“Okay,” said Griff.

“Poisoned by Ms. Eaton.”

“No.”

“Poisoned by your mom,”

“No.”

“Poisoned by yourself.” Griff’s heart leapt into his ears.

“Not. No,” he said.

“Poisoned by your mortal enemy Blasé Facile, French mountain-man with your very self-same haircut, on the eve of the twenty first of April, on the eve of the eve of the day you first took from him that which he loved most in this world, his one and only true Virginia Cottleby, courtesan and marine biologist.”

“I don’t even know what genre that is,” said Remy.

“Nailed it,” said Griff. “But he made one mistake. Which was that the dosage he gave me was…too precise, you know? Only just enough to kill me based on his meticulous calculations.”

“Ah,” said Karthik, “to prove he was the better dosage-er person by far.”

“Exactly,” said Griff. “But he didn’t anticipate…”

“…that you’d grown two inches since you last met,” said Karthik, “because you’re fourteen and you do that shit.”

“Alas,” said Griff, “Pride was his downfall. And his greatest weakness.”

“Much like yourself,” said Karthik.

“It’s true,” said Griff, “my villains are all refractions of my darker selves.”

“So…” said Remy, “what was the method? How did Blasé Facile manage to poison you?”

“I don’t know,” said Griff, “Space…needle.” They couldn’t keep it together after that. They sputtered into chortles and then chortled into laughter.

“Wow,” said Remy, “isn’t it great now that we’re all back together? The three of us like it was.” Smiles faded from Griff and Karthik.

“Yeah, dude,” said Karthik. “It’s nice. How’ve you been, Griff?” They didn’t meet eyes.

“Perfect,” said Griff, “just hanging out with Remy mostly. You?”

“Decent. Decent,” said Karthik, “just hanging out with a couple guys from the team. And Haley.”

“Who’s Haley?” asked Griff.

“My girlfriend,” said Karthik.

“Oh,” said Griff. “Cool.” He could guess which one was Haley from the videos. There was a lot of her. She was pretty and she played the guitar. She had feather earrings.

“Well if you ever feel like being our friend again you know where to find us,” said Griff, more bitterly than he had intended. Karthik made a face.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he said, “I know I haven’t showed up for lunch or whatever, but I texted you to hang out.”

“Once,” said Griff.

“That’s all it took before,” said Karthik. He’d kind of raised his voice, but only in tone and depth, like a verbal puff of the chest. “You’re the one that got fussy,” he said. “I just thought you didn’t want to talk anymore.”

“Whatever, man,” said Griff.

The conversation picked back up from there, but only for a little while, and with an uncomfortable undertone to it that only Remy acknowledged, with his fidgeting and blinking. Griff briefly considered confiding in Karthik—not everything, of course—just the dreams and the mirror. But he didn’t. He summarized what the doctor said in two sentences and then they went on talking about what they always did: videogames, teachers, other kids. Karthik carefully steered the conversation away from anyone he’d been spending time with. Then they were off. Homework to do. Sleep to get. There were a couple of “love you mans,” and a clap on the back and then Griff was alone.

He checked his phone. He opened the last text from Karthik, dated four months ago.

''Hey man, sorry I haven’t been around at lunch. I had some things to sort through but all good now. Let’s hang out? Name a time and place. I’ll be there.''

Griff flipped himself over and buried his face into the plush, cool hospital pillow. It was baffling how much he could love someone and hate them at the same time. Or, it couldn’t be Karthik he hated, could it? No. It was him. It was Griff that Griff hated.

Griff slumped down on the floor into a nook between two shelves. While there was a particularly muscular butt carved about three feet above him, fortunately there was also a flatter surface below it, where Griff could put his back to, part of a line of battlements that randomly showed up around the warriors. Griff sighed. In nearly any other circumstance, this would be the best day of his life—meeting family, exploring an epic library, finding a bunch of real magic books? Anything was possible! I mean, what, was his dad a wizard? But also: Anything was possible. It was all twisted somehow, all just sour enough to ruin the taste. He already knew magic was real. The surprise was ruined when it ambushed him with painful and uncontrollable shapeshifting abilities. And if his dad was a wizard, what was Griffin? Cursed? A magical experiment gone wrong? What was this tower even doing here anyway? What was the point of all these clearly rare books and items…

Oh. If his mother was to believed, maybe this wasn’t a library after all but a giant, incredibly conspicuous storehouse filled with illicit goods. Or, the more he thought about it, the more likely it as that this whole tower was one giant stolen artifact. Griff’s little puppet voice went wild:

THE TOWER GETS SHRUNKEN DOWN AND PUT IN A BRIEFCASE AND YOU GET CRUSHED TO DEATH IN AN OVERHEAD STORAGE COMPARTMENT.

Griff tried Gary again. I guess it’s a school day, he thought, ''he’s probably busy teaching. Probably. But his phone isn’t off. But maybe he just left it on accidentally and you’re embarrassing him in a meeting.''

OR HE HATES YOU AND HE’S DEAD

Ring ring.

''Hi this is Gary—man, I can’t believe I’m missing your call! I bet it would’ve been a great one, but sadly I’m not able to pick up right now. Just drop a message and we’ll be in touch before you know it.''

The phone beeped. Griffin stared across the tower into the shadows where no spotlight illuminated whatever incomprehensible books or contraband antiques lay sneering at him from the dark.

“Gary,” he said...he wasn’t sure what to say next. “I want to go home,” he finally landed on. But it didn’t seem right. Or rather, it didn’t seem specific enough. “Er... kind of. I don’t know. I’ve had a weird day.” But before he could explain, the red oak doors seven floors down swung open, the wind rushing in and scattering sand and stray pages. And in the doorframe, the silhouette of a teenage girl. Griff hung up the phone.

She seemed in a rush, out of breath as she closed the doors behind her. Griff stood up quietly to get a better look. It was hard to see details from here, but it seemed she was dressed for the funeral—though Griff didn’t remember seeing anyone like her at the service. Not that he could have really seen it from here, but she was wearing a wide-brimmed sun-hat that was blocking her face. She flipped on a flashlight and also she had a gun. She had a gun. She was definitely carrying a gun, which she swept the room with in tandem with her flashlight. She has a gun, thought Griff, or something that looks a lot like a gun and why would she have a gun? He felt himself slowly backing away from the edge of balcony, trying to gauge how much sound he was making with his footsteps, and that was when he ran into not something, but someone, whose hand quickly clasped over his mouth, muffling his yell of surprise.

Next: Chapter 3