Books by Philip Hoy

Will it hurt?​

​She’s crazy, you think, or so strung out she might as well be. You should be inside with your friends and not out here in the parking lot stuck to this princess from outer space. You close your eyes, filling your lungs with the cool night air. A week or two from now, you’ll need more than a long sleeve shirt to keep you warm, but tonight the weather is perfect. You open your eyes. If you’re going to ditch her, then where better than a hospital, right?

But when you turn and see the tears rolling down her cheeks, you know that isn’t going to happen. In fact, your instinct for escape is countered by an urgent need to hold her. Of course, you do neither. You also know what you saw, or didn’t see, in the back seat of the car earlier. “What did Rudy take out of your bag?” you ask.

“I…” She inhales, a quick shuddering breath, then slowly lets it out. “It’s called, bounce,” she says, drying her face with the sleeves of her sweater.

“Show me.”

She takes another deep breath, exhales. Her bare legs appear from beneath her sweater and she stretches them out in front of her, crossing one booted ankle over the other. Then she slides her knapsack onto her lap, reaches inside, and produces a single blue pill. “This,” she says, holding it out to you in the palm of her hand.

You lean toward it for a closer look. It’s a capsule, not much larger than the Tylenol your mother keeps in the medicine cabinet, only instead of a red and white shell, this one is transparent and filled with tiny luminous blue pellets. “Is it like acid or LSD or something?”

She shakes her head. “It’s not that kind of drug.”

“What does it do?”

“It’s hard to explain.” She closes her hand. “It … transports you.”

“Transports, like teleportation?”

Her mouth twists to one side as she seems to consider this. “Sure, okay.”

“So, Rudy didn’t really fall out of the car?”

“Well, in a way, he did.”

“What do you mean, in a way? I don’t understand.”

“I told you.” She returns the capsule to her bag. “It’s complicated.”

“Rudy had to come back from where he left. That’s what you said in the car.” Your thoughts slowly piece together. “He came back, but the car wasn’t there anymore.”

“Exactly.”

“You expect me to believe that Rudy swallowed a magic blue pill that teleported him to the side of the road?”

“I don’t expect you to believe anything. And it’s not magic,” she says, eyes narrowing dangerously. “It’s science.”

“Then explain it to me.”

She swings her head around. “Explain it to you? Tell me, do you know what the zepto-life of an isotope is? Or what temporal singularities are? Wormhole regressions?”

You feel your face grow warm, but manage to hold her angry gaze.

“No?” she continues. “How about temporal regression? Or maybe I need to explain quantum mechanics to you? String theory? The Bose-Palacio Continuum? Hertog’s Law? Temporal divergence?”

“Okay, okay.” You hold up your hands. “What are you, some kind of undercover scientist?”

She laughs, a burst of warm air on your face. “Are you fucking kidding me? I barely passed Physics.”

Something tickles your cheek, just below your eye. You start to reach for it but her hand gets there first. “Oh, shit!” She wipes at your face with the tips of her fingers. “Did I just spit on you?” Now her other hand is on your shoulder as she continues to lean toward you. “I’m sorry,” she says, dabbing at your upper lip and a spot on your chin with the tips of her fingers. “There, I think I got it all.”

You smile, already having forgiven her.

She releases your shoulder, sits back, and folds her hands in her lap. “My natural mechanics teacher, Mr. Sanjay, was okay though. He was good with analogies.”

“Today in biology, we learned about the journey of a bite of pizza through the digestive system.”

She gives you a sly look. “I think we covered that in the fifth grade.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure you did.”

For a while, neither of you speaks. You try to wrap your brain around everything she’s said, everything she’s done. Eventually, you arrive at a very unsettling conclusion. You believe her. Not that any of it makes sense, you just do. There is something unreal about her, more than the distant focus of her eyes, or the warm glow of her skin, or even the strange, elastic quality and vibrant color of her sweater. She doesn’t belong here, but then neither do you. And hasn’t it always been that way? Eric, Rudy, even Gus, they belong. They always have. But you will forever be the guest in your own home, the visitor at your own school. And with Robert gone it’s only gotten worse. Right now, all you want is to be in her world. To belong, however briefly, to something.

“How many do you have?” you ask.

She seems to pull herself back from wherever her own thoughts had taken her. “Why?”

“I wanna do it.”

“It’s not what you think,” she says. “You won’t like it.”

“I don’t care. I’m not a child. You don’t need to protect me.”

“You saw what happened to your friend. Why would you want that?”

“Why would you?”

The question seems to sting. Her eyes blink rapidly. “I, I only…”

But you can’t stop. “If it’s so terrible, then why do you even have it? How many times have you done it?”

She glares at you, opens her mouth, closes it. “Fine,” she says. “See for yourself. But not here.”

“Where then?”

She looks over her shoulder toward the emergency room entrance. “Someplace private.”

“Eric’s car,” you say. “When we got Rudy out. I don’t remember locking it.”

Just as you predicted, the passenger side of the Datsun is unlocked. You slip in and open the driver’s side for Jai. “How does it secure?” she asks.

You show her by shoving down on the knob next to you.

She locates it on her side and does the same. Then she leans forward and begins unlacing her boots. “And the seats? Do they recline?”

“There’s a lever on the side,” you say, finding yours. “Pull up on it.” Your seat tilts all the way back until it comes to rest on the seat behind it.

She reaches down and fumbles along the edge of hers, unsuccessfully at first, until finally there is a muted click, and suddenly, “Ooof!” she is lying on her back beside you. “I think I found it,” she says.

You lift yourself up on your elbows and roll unto your left side. “Is this necessary?”

“For you, it is.” She kicks off one boot and then the other, each hitting the floorboard with a resounding thump. Then she brings her knees up and scrambles backwards on the collapsed seat until she is sitting up cross-legged next to you.

“Your socks,” you say. “They don’t match.” One ankle-high bootie is rainbow striped and the other is light blue.

She looks down at them, wiggles her toes. “So I’m not perfect.”

“Should I do that too?”

“No,” she says. “You’re going to need your shoes.” She holds up a capsule between her thumb and forefinger. “Swallow this whole. Don’t chew it. Once you put it in your mouth you can’t spit it out or cough it up. Understand?”

You nod.

“Need a minute to suck on your tongue?”

“Already have.”

“Open up then.”

She places the pill on your tongue. You close your mouth, swallow, and lie back with your hands folded across your stomach. “Will it hurt?”

She leans over and kisses you once, very gently, on the mouth. “I don’t know.”

Your heart seems to stutter in your chest as you stare up at her. “Will you be here when I—”

The light is blinding. You squeeze your eyes shut and cover your face with both hands, but as soon as you do, the ground drops beneath you, up becomes down, and you are spinning out of control. You reach out to steady yourself and feel warm dirt beneath your fingers as you slowly unclench you eyes.

You are kneeling in grey soil beneath a low canopy of twisted branches and large, jagged-edged leaves. As your eyes continue to focus, evenly spaced trunks and suspended, black irrigation lines come into view. Your remaining senses are equally overwhelmed with the smell of moist earth, the sharp, green scent of the leaves, the distant rumble of a car engine, the echo of a woman’s voice moving like a whisper though the vines.  

You are struck with the impossible feeling that you have been here before. Then you recall that time late one summer when you were nine and Mr. Diaz, the old man next door, took you and Robert fishing. On the way home, he pulled his battered orange truck off the road next to rows and rows of grapevines just like this. He had you and your brother run in and bring back as many grapes as you could carry in one trip, assuring you that it was not stealing as the season was over and the grapes left would only rot on the vine. You were happy to comply, though you both knew by his hushed voice and restless gaze that this was not entirely true.

Is this how it works, Jai’s drug? Does it manipulate past memories, use them to create the illusion of new ones? Not bad, you think, clenching a handful of sand and feeling it sift through your fingers. What else does it do?

You decide to head toward the sound of the car engine. Moving in a crouch, you step through a gap into the next row and from there into the next, where it becomes obvious that you are nearing the edge of the vineyard. Through the leaves, you make out what appears to be a small house in the distance.

As you reach the last row, you realize there is still a stretch, maybe fifty yards, of empty desert between you and the house, which you now see is a doublewide mobile home parked beneath the shade of a single, immense cottonwood tree. There is another structure behind the house, a large shed with some kind of attached awning, and several vehicles, including an old, beat-up white truck beside a very new red sports car parked in front of the house. That engine, which had been growing louder with your approach, suddenly stops. The silence is unnerving and you hesitate before stepping out into the open.

That’s when you see the figure crouched beneath a side window of the mobile home. You ease back into the shadows beneath the vines and watch as he slowly stands and turns to face the window. He must not be able to see much though, because the bottom of it comes just level with his eyes. He reaches behind and slides something dark into the back waist of his jeans. Then, one foot on the trailer hitch and both hands on the window’s edge, he pulls himself up to look inside.

Your pulse quickens. Is he some kind of peeping tom? Are you witnessing a robbery? He remains there a moment, then lowers himself to the ground and retrieves the object from his waistband, which you now realize is a gun. Holding the weapon in both hands, he moves toward the edge of the trailer and carefully peers around the corner in the direction of the large shed. There is a sound from behind the house, possibly a car door slamming, and then a man’s voice. “Goddammit!” he says, and there’s more but you have trouble making it out. The figure eases away from the corner and turns with his back to the trailer. He seems to be listening, waiting, maybe. Then he lifts his head and looks out across the desert directly at you.

You flinch, but are too stunned to react. He lowers his head. You wait, heart racing, to see what he’ll do next, reassuring yourself that he isn’t looking at you, only in your direction. Besides, what could he possibly see at this distance? He’s standing out in the open, but if asked to describe him what would you say, jeans maybe, a blue shirt?

Then he shifts the gun to one hand, raises his head, and begins to sprint toward you across the desert as if his life depended on it. You duck behind the gnarled trunk of the nearest vine, eyes transfixed on the stranger. The closer he gets, the more details come into view. His hair is light brown, almost blonde, and parted down the middle, feathered bangs whipping at his eyes as he runs.

He’s halfway across the field when a dog begins to bark, a big one by the sound of it. You spot it next to the mobile home beneath the same window. It’s joined by a second dog just as large. Now both are barking.

He begins to run even faster, each lanky stride kicking up fistfuls of dirt that hang in the air like a trail of smoke behind him. His shirt, you realize, is made of the same blue plaid material as yours. Even his shoes look somehow identical to the blue Top-Siders on your own feet.

Your brain is attempting to wrestle with this just as a man in a white t-shirt appears from around the side of the house to stand between the dogs. He raises one arm and points it at your runner. There is a loud bang and something passes through the leaves above you with a sound like shuffling cards. You drop to your stomach and wrap your arms around your head as three more shots are fired.

“Goddammit!” the man shouts. “How many of you motherfuckers are there?”

You brace yourself for more bullets, but when none come. You open your eyes and slowly raise your head.

He is lying on his stomach an arm’s length away with one empty hand reaching forward and his face twisted toward you as if he crawled the last few yards to get here. Blood runs from his nose and mouth to disappear into the dirt beneath his chin. There is no sign of the gun he was holding, but you know it can’t be far. Behind him, on the blurred horizon, is the white t-shirt, moving this way, his dogs bounding along beside him.

The boy opens his eyes and sees you, because that’s what he is, what you are, just a boy. “Robert?” he asks through a mouthful of blood.

You reach out to grasp the fingers of his open hand, but he is already gone. Everything in view, the boy, the blue sky, shrinks suddenly to a single dot on a black screen and disappears. “No!” you shout into the whirling darkness.

“It’s okay,” she says, her hands on yours.

You are falling … and then you are not.

“You’re okay. I got you.”

“Please,” you sob as her face comes into focus above you. “Please. I need to go back.”


NEXT EPISODE:

​​THE MISADVENTURES OF MATTHEW VAN DER BOOT is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental … no matter how many times you ask.