Last Window

[FLIP]

Page eleven. Page twelve. Page thirteen.

Sunday afternoon comes in sideways through my blinds and lies across the bed in stripes. I'm on my stomach with the comic propped against the pillow, and the hero has just pulled his ship out of a dive so steep the panel is drawn upside down.

I said ten pages. That was a while ago.

[FLIP]

The ASK on my wrist is gone. Friday's bus and Saturday's bath took it. The skin there is just skin again, a little pink where I kept rubbing it with my thumb, like I was checking that the question was still on.

My bag sits by the chair with its scar facing the wall. Inside it, folded in half, is the Silk Road map worksheet Ms. Carter handed out Thursday. Due Monday. Label twelve cities. Draw the routes between them. Write two sentences about one of them.

I know exactly where it is. I can feel it from the bed, the way you can feel someone standing behind you.

Tomorrow morning, I tell myself. On the bus. It's just labeling. I presented this map. I could do it asleep.

That's the worst part. Knowing it makes it easier to leave.

[FLIP]

Downstairs Mom calls dinner. "Five minutes, Dave."

"After this chapter," I call back.

The chapter is nine more pages.

***

When I finally come down to the kitchen, Dad is on the couch with the TV on and the sound off. On the fridge there's a sticky note in his handwriting that says GUTTER, with two dates under it crossed out.

"Next weekend," he says when he sees me looking. He smiles. "For real this time."

I smile back. I don't know why it makes my stomach feel strange. It's a gutter.

***

[HISS]

Monday bus. I get the worksheet out before Leo even says hi.

The map is a gray photocopy, the coastlines fuzzy. The bus hits every pothole between my street and school. My pencil skids across the Caspian Sea and leaves a line that looks like a crack.

"Whoa," Leo says, sliding in next to me. "Homework on the bus? That's a vintage move."

"It's just labeling."

He looks at the page. Four cities labeled. Eight blank dots.

"You've got eleven minutes," he says.

He doesn't take my pencil. He doesn't whisper answers. He just talks about the pickup game, quietly, like background music, and lets me work.

Samarkand. Bukhara. My handwriting goes jagged every time the bus brakes. I get to seven cities before the school lane. No routes. No sentences.

"Seven," Leo says as we stand up. Not mean. Just engineering, reading a gauge.

"Seven's a good number," I say. It's what Dad said once. It doesn't feel true today.

***

[RING]

World History. Ms. Carter walks the rows collecting worksheets, and she doesn't need to read mine to see it. Seven names on twelve dots. No lines between them.

She stops at my desk.

"This is half," she says. Quiet. Not for the room. "From the kid who taught us this map."

"I know."

"I know you know." She taps the empty corner where the sentences should be. "Finish it and bring it to me by lunch tomorrow. Otherwise you'll finish it in here with me after lunch."

After lunch. Window hour.

Tuesday. The first ticket. The name I've been carrying around since Friday like a coin in my pocket.

"I'll bring it," I say.

Two rows over, Ryan leans back in his chair. "Ticket guy's got detention vibes again," he says, just loud enough.

The old words. From the first time he leaned in a doorway and made the class laugh at me.

I don't answer. I don't have to. He's not wrong about the worksheet. He's just wrong about what happens next.

Ms. Carter moves on to the next desk.

My face is hot for the rest of the period anyway. Not because of Ryan. Because I did this one to myself. Nobody tore my bag or gave me a nickname. I just read nine extra pages.

***

After school, Leo catches up with me at the gate.

"Mission eight tonight?" He's walking backward so he can see my face. "My mom's making popcorn. The real kind, in a pot. The dog has been practicing."

I want to say yes so badly my mouth almost does it on its own.

Popcorn in a pot. The carpet. A new mission nobody's played before. Two hours where nobody hands me a gray map.

"Can't," I say. "Worksheet."

He stops walking backward.

For a second I think he's going to argue. Or offer to help. Or say it's only five cities, I could do it after.

"Copy," Leo says. "Tomorrow, after the window?"

"Tomorrow after the window."

He bumps my shoulder and heads off toward his street. He doesn't look back to check on me.

A month ago I would have thought that meant he was mad. Now I think it means he believes me.

***

My desk lamp buzzes when it's been on too long. I never noticed until tonight.

The worksheet is flat under it. The comic is on the shelf behind me. I can feel that too.

Five cities left. Routes. Two sentences.

My brain does what it always does. The map turns into a star chart. The cities become stations along a trade lane, caravans become freighters, the desert becomes deep space with pirates in it. The Vanguard escorts a convoy past Kashgar.

It's a good daydream. I let it run.

Then I notice something. The daydream isn't pulling me away from the map. It's running on it. It knows the routes because I do.

Kashgar is the last station before the mountains. Merv is where three lanes cross. I put the pencil down on the dot where the convoy would refuel, and I write Merv without even checking.

So I do the whole thing like that. A convoy route, station by station, the pencil following it in real life. The imagination isn't the escape hatch tonight. It's the map.

Eraser crumbs pile up on the edge of the desk. My hand smells like graphite.

At 8:40, the twelfth city has a name. The routes have lines. I write two sentences about Merv:

Merv was a city where many roads crossed. People stopped there to trade, rest, and tell each other what they had seen.

I read it twice. It isn't fancy. It's done.

I slide the worksheet into the folder, and the folder into my bag, and I zip it shut. The zipper goes all the way. The comic stays on the shelf.

I turn off the buzzing lamp. In the dark I can still see a sticky note on a fridge, two dates crossed out. Then I go to bed.

***

Tuesday. Before first bell.

Ms. Carter's door is open. She's writing the day's topic on the board. I put the worksheet on the corner of her desk, flat, where she can't miss it.

She glances at it. Twelve cities. Routes. Two sentences.

"Before lunch," she says. "Good."

She reads the Merv sentences a second longer than I expect. Then she goes back to the board.

That's it. No speech. I walk out feeling lighter than a worksheet should be able to make anyone feel.

***

[CLACK]

The half-door goes up. Last lunch bell is still echoing down the hallway.

Shift five. Amber at the cash box. Me on the stamp. Him on tickets, with a bag of chips folded and tucked into his apron pocket like a tool he might need later.

The line is longer than usual. Twelve kids, maybe more. A club night is coming up and everybody wants tickets before they're gone.

I can feel my heart in my wrist, right where the stamp ink goes.

I planned this all weekend. Well, not all weekend. Some of the weekend was comics.

First kid in line pays. Amber makes change. I stamp. He tears the ticket and holds it out.

"Thanks," I say. And then I say his name.

Out loud. Not loud like shouting. Loud like I mean it. Loud enough that the first three kids in line hear it, and the fourth one looks up from his phone.

He freezes for half a second, the ticket still in his hand. His ears go pink.

"Uh," he says. "You're welcome."

The kid at the front takes the ticket and says, "Thanks," and then, because she just heard it, she says his name too.

Then the next kid does.

I didn't plan that part. Nobody can plan that part. It's just a name moving down a line, one person handing it to the next, like a ticket.

By the sixth kid, he's grinning so hard he tears a ticket crooked.

Maya is eighth in line, holding a stack of club-night flyers. She looks at him, looks at me, and says, "Wait, that's your name? I've seen you at every booth since the fair."

"Yeah," he says.

"Huh." She takes her ticket. She says his name back, a little awkwardly, like she's trying it on. Then she looks at me. "You're making everybody be polite. It's weird."

"Sorry," I say.

"Don't be. Keep doing it." And she's gone, flyers and all.

Amber doesn't say anything until the line runs out. Then she counts the box, writes the number, and says, very quietly, without looking up from the sheet:

"I didn't know his name either. Until Friday. He told me you asked."

I look at her. She looks a little embarrassed. I didn't know Amber could be embarrassed.

"I've worked with him since the fair," she says. "Nobody ever said it."

"It's not hard," I say. "It's just one question."

"Yeah." She chains the stamp. "That's the annoying part."

Through the glass, the pickup game is running. Leo is in goal today, waving his arms like a windmill. He doesn't look toward the window. He doesn't need to.

As we close, Amber taps the schedule taped next to the laminated card.

"Heads up," she says. "Thursday's the last window of the season. After that, the booth shuts down until spring."

I look at the schedule. Thursday has a box around it in red marker.

The last window.

No more Tuesdays at the glass. No more key, no more float, no more stamp on a chain. No more reason, every week, to show up somewhere at a certain time and be seen doing it.

In my head, a status light I didn't know was there flickers from green to amber.

The window was never the point. I know that. But it was a door I could walk through twice a week without having to decide anything.

After Thursday, I'll have to decide.

I tie the apron strings into a knot and hang it on the hook, and I check my wrist. A fresh oval, dark and a little crooked.

Two more days of ink.

Then I find out what I do without it.