phone.
âI never said you were crazy,â he says at last. âItâs justâIâmâyou know. The game.â
âI already told you, I donât play anymore. I just like to tune in sometimes and see whatâs going on.â
âIâm not an idiot, Tosh. Just because I donât play doesnât mean I donât know how it works. It doesnât work like that.â
âIt helps sometimes, thatâs all.â
He opens his mouth like heâs going to argue the point, but he doesnât. 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 sheâd 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.
âSo,â Haze says, holding up the bird. âYou want help burying this?â
My attention drifts from the monitor back to Haze.
âYouâll do anything to keep me out of the Boneyard, wonât you?â
He smiles, adjusts his knit cap, tosses the baggie at me. I catch it in a tight grip so it doesnât slip out of my hands, offer the bird a silent apology in case I hurt it by grabbing too hard.
Out back the old manâs got an overgrown junk heap, but I canât find anything useful enough to dig a hole with. Just old tuna cans, a rust-covered slotted spoonânothing thatâll 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 donât 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 oneâs on me. Still, Iâm a panting, sweat-spewing mess before Iâve managed to dig anything deep enough to bury a bug in, let alone a bird.
I donât 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 Iâd get back on this map? For all I know, the interrogation they put me through earned me Ascent Credits. It freakinâ should have.
âYo, Tosh,â Haze says. âThatâs probably deep enough.â
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 doesnât point out that Iâm standing here crying over a dead bird in a plastic bag.
âWhat are you going to bury it in?â he asks instead.
âWhat do you mean?â
âWell, you canât just throw it in the ground. Thatâs kind of disrespectful.â
âHow is that disrespectful?â
âIt was a living thing, Tosh,â he says. Like I need to be reminded. âIt deserves a proper burial.â
âItâs in a bag,â I say.
âIt wonât be able to decay like that.â
The word eats through my bodyâI close my eyes against the unexpected sensation of the ground shifting from solid to semisolid.
âLook,â Haze says, âjust bury it in this.â
He hands me the crushed drink cup. As it passes from his hand to mine, I hear the roar of go-karts