Ascending the Boneyard by C. G. Watson Read Free Book Online Page B

phone.
    â€œI never said you were crazy,” he says at last. “It’s just—I’m—you know. The game.”
    â€œI already told you, I don’t play anymore. I just like to tune in sometimes and see what’s going on.”
    â€œI’m not an idiot, Tosh. Just because I don’t play doesn’t mean I don’t know how it works. It doesn’t work like that.”
    â€œIt helps sometimes, that’s all.”
    He opens his mouth like he’s going to argue the point, but he doesn’t. Instead he shuts up again and nods his head, just one time.
    I close my eyes for a quick second against a twinge of déjà vu. My mom did that nod thing all the time. The old man would be raging as Dev and I cowered in a corner, terrified, and she’d look at us without saying a word and nod just like that. Just once. Like it would all be okay somehow.
    My red-rimmed eyes gravitate back to the Boneyard, to the yellow car with the black-and-white checkerboard around the top, wheezing in front of a row of rangy trees.
    â€œSo,” Haze says, holding up the bird. “You want help burying this?”
    My attention drifts from the monitor back to Haze.
    â€œYou’ll do anything to keep me out of the Boneyard, won’t you?”
    He smiles, adjusts his knit cap, tosses the baggie at me. I catch it in a tight grip so it doesn’t slip out of my hands, offer the bird a silent apology in case I hurt it by grabbing too hard.
    Out back the old man’s got an overgrown junk heap, but I can’t find anything useful enough to dig a hole with. Just old tuna cans, a rust-covered slotted spoon—nothing that’ll dig deep enough or fast enough to get this over with and make the whole bird thing go away.
    I know we have a long-forgotten shovel around here somewhere.
    I eventually find it camouflaged in a pile of rotting lumber.
    Haze holds the bird while I start digging. I don’t talk, just kick out shovelfuls of dirt. It would be accurate to say that Haze is less of a stranger to physical labor than I am, but this one’s on me. Still, I’m a panting, sweat-spewing mess before I’ve managed to dig anything deep enough to bury a bug in, let alone a bird.
    I don’t understand why it had to go and die. I mean, it must have known that someone was coming to save it; otherwise, why would it have fought so hard? What good does it do to stay alive through all the crap stuff only to give up right at the end, just when things are about to turn around?
    The sky will fall and death will beat its wings against the ground.
    They called it. Whoever sent me that message totally called it. Was it the commandos? Did they intentionally lure me to Goofy Golf so I’d get back on this map? For all I know, the interrogation they put me through earned me Ascent Credits. It freakin’ should have.
    â€œYo, Tosh,” Haze says. “That’s probably deep enough.”
    I look down at the two-foot hole I dug without realizing it, pull my arm across my face to wick away the sweat, only to find a big line of snot across my sleeve.
    Luckily, Haze doesn’t point out that I’m standing here crying over a dead bird in a plastic bag.
    â€œWhat are you going to bury it in?” he asks instead.
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œWell, you can’t just throw it in the ground. That’s kind of disrespectful.”
    â€œHow is that disrespectful?”
    â€œIt was a living thing, Tosh,” he says. Like I need to be reminded. “It deserves a proper burial.”
    â€œIt’s in a bag,” I say.
    â€œIt won’t be able to decay like that.”
    The word eats through my body—I close my eyes against the unexpected sensation of the ground shifting from solid to semisolid.
    â€œLook,” Haze says, “just bury it in this.”
    He hands me the crushed drink cup. As it passes from his hand to mine, I hear the roar of go-karts