(3.2) Starr Boulevard
Jamie sat alone, on the floor of Lance's basement room. His head was full of stuffing, like he was one of the teddy bears that used to sit on his bed when he was a child. And his stomach hurt. Light filtered in through the window they'd neglected to curtain the night before. Lance's family had a ground level apartment—more expensive than Jamie could even imagine. It was like an actual house, if one ignored the sounds of those who lived above them.
Lance was still fast asleep. He was shirtless, blankets lying in a crumpled pile on the floor, by his bed. Jamie had gotten the couch cushions, stripped from the living room upstairs.
There was a knock on the window. Through the silence it was deafening, and Jamie jumped to his feet, looking frantically for its source. When he realize that, yes, it was a real sound, there was another knock. Jamie hurried over to the window. Snow knelt on the frosted grass of the courtyard, peering down into the basement. She grinned at him.
“Let me in!”
Jamie could barely hear her, but he knew what she meant, her lips easy enough to read. She began knocking again, and Jamie brought his finger to his lips. It was still early. Chances were, Lance's parents were still in bed.
He held up a finger, and whispered, “one second.”
Snow understood, getting to her feet.
Jamie weighed the pros and cons of waking Lance, but decided against it. Snow was waiting. It was best to get her inside as quickly as possible, then give him a surprise. Jamie didn't feel the least bit bad.
Snow bounced up and down on her toes, her breath forming a cold cloud. When Jamie opened the door she practically ran inside.
“Don't take off your shoes.” He stopped her as she bent down. “Just come downstairs, and be fucking quiet.”
Lance's family had space on both the first, and basement floor. Thankfully the stairs were just inside the door that lead from the communal entrance hall.
“What are you doing here?” Jamie asked, closing the basement door. “It's seven thirty in the fucking morning. You're lucky I was awake.”
“I knew you would be.” Snow sat on the ground as she unlaced her boots. “Somehow I knew.”
Their eyes met and there was a long moment of silence.
“What are we going to do, Jamie?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I don't know. Go to that apartment, I guess. I still remember the number. You guys don't have to come if you don't want to.”
“Of course we're going to come.” Snow walked over to Lance's bedroom. She leaned on the frame, looking in.
“Should I text Yamir?” she asked, her voice a little quieter.
“Sure.”
Jamie flopped down on the couch, reaching for the lamp. Light flooded the room.
“Should I wake him up?”
“Not yet.” Jamie pushed himself slowly, painfully, into an upright position. “It is really fucking early.”
Snow sat down next to him. “So.” She dragged out the word, looking at him intently. “You with a mutation. Who would have thought? You do have a mutation, right?”
“I don't know.”
Jamie was exhausted, but that hadn't seemed to help when he'd awoke sweating on the floor of Lance's bedroom. As tired as he was, he wasn't going to get back to sleep. All the same, he tucked his knees up to his chest, leaning into the cushions.
“I won't tell anyone,” Snow hurried to add on. “None of us will.”
“I know that. It's just... I don't know what I'm doing.”
Saying it now, Jamie could barely stop himself from bursting into tears. The boy had showed him the end of the world, then he'd given him the responsibility of stopping it. Him. What could he do? Jamie felt as if he was drowning, and the only thing saving him from falling off of the deep end completely was the fact that it didn't seem real. He'd been so high last night it was possible for him to tell himself he'd just imagined it all. But here Snow was, shattering that little fantasy.
“What if I'm the wrong person.” Jamie cradled his head in his hands. “I don't know how to do whatever it is he wants me to do.”
Jamie's bright red hair bunched around his fingers, and he rocked back and forth a little. Snow slid an arm around him, letting her cheek fall between his shoulder blades.
“I've seen you do it Jamie. Unbelievable as it is, you are who that boy was looking for.”
Jamie clutched his head even tighter.
“But you don't have to do this alone. The three of us are just as much a part of this as you are. And we can do it together.”
“No we can't.” Jamie removed Snow's arm from around him, letting his head fall back against the couch. “What in the world makes you think that we're going to be able to do this?” he asked. “Whatever 'this' is.”
“Come on.” She elbowed him. “Yes we can. We're special, Jamie. We've been chosen for this... for this... quest!”
“It's not a game!” He rounded on her. “This isn't a game. Not anymore. When we were in that place, that place of ruins, I felt something.”
“What?” Snow couldn't help but get excited, thinking about Jamie's power.
“I don't know.” He cradled his head in his hands again. “I don't know, but it scared me.”
There was a muffled sound from the other room. They'd woken Lance.
They managed to get out of the house without Lance's parents seeing Snow. It was pretty easy actually. No one was awake when they went upstairs. Lance left a note, saying they'd gone out for breakfast.
“They're going to think something's up,” Lance said, as he locked his front door with the push of a button.
“Why?” Snow pulled the next door open.
“The fact that we're up before twelve.”
They laughed.
The air still held the morning chill, at eight o'clock. The courtyard of Lance's apartments was completely empty, but out on the road there was already a fair deal of traffic. The group figured they actually would get breakfast, as they all tried to get a hold of Yamir.
“Maybe I should call him,” Lance suggested.
Jamie and Snow had already tried what—collectively—had to have been more than five times, but they did not object.
The three of them went to a little brunch place that served a massive plate of eggs, and the other breakfast essentials, for only seven bucks. They all ordered without looking at the menu.
Snow checker her phone.
“Anything?” Lance asked.
She shook her head.
They ate greedily, Jamie surprising them all by taking his coffee black. His exhaustion had just began to rear its ugly head, and he refused to allow it to consume him. He'd drink coffee until it burned a hole through his stomach. All three of them were burnt out, and they fell into a comfortable silence as they ate, staring, dead eyed, down into their food.
At the end of the meal, Snow decided to call Yamir again. Much to their surprise, he picked up. His voice was heavy with sleep, and at first he had trouble keeping up with Snow's words.
“Save the world, remember?” Snow played with her napkin as she spoke folding and unfolding it with one hand.
As she listened, her eyebrows furrowed. She had seen something, over the shoulders of the boys, out the large front window. She'd stopped hearing Yamir all together as she leaned forwards across the table, eyes wide.
“What is it?” Jamie asked.
“Holy-” The phone drifted away from Snow's ear.
There was a crash, as someone made contact with the glass. A man pressed a cardboard sign against the window. He looked homeless, hair an insane mass of grey. Scrawled in messy marker were the words, 'The end is upon us.'
“Fuck off, man!” Lance reached over the booth, banging against the glass.
The soothsayer payed no mind. Lance was pissed, so early in the morning, Snow vaguely amused. But a strange look had found its home on Jamie's face. A feeling had overcome him, as the deranged creature pressed his nose to the window. It was thin, and they could hear him easily as he began to speak.
“You're all going to burn!” It was a hiss. “You can ignore me, ignore it, but you'll all burn in the end.”
Jamie was having trouble breathing. His eyes connected with the man's, smog grey in colour, and he couldn't look away. He saw the city crumble around them, just as it had in that place the boy had shown him. He could feel death, as if it had already settled over Valuit, like a blanketing of snow.
The manger had left the store, yelling at the man, pulling out his phone to call the cops. Snow and Lance sighed in relief, Snow beginning to explain to Yamir what had happened. But Jamie saw nothing but the man, and the memories of the night before, heard nothing else of what was happening around them.
“They know!” The homeless man broke the eye contact, freeing Jamie, as he addressed the owner. “The companies know and they're just going to let you die.”
It was too much of a coincidence, Jamie knew. It could not just be chance that this man had come here this morning. They called him crazy: everyone, Snow and Lance. He knew the world was ending and they called him insane.
“Jamie!” Snow was shaking his shoulder.
“Come on, man.” Lance was snapping his fingers in front of Jamie's face.
The man was gone, chased off somewhere. Jamie came back to reality with a snap, apologizing hurriedly.
“He was fucking nuts.” Lance said, pushing the rest of his food away.
“It's kind of sad, I think,” said Snow.
“Yeah, I guess. But man, Jamie, you don't have to look so shaken up. It's not like this is the first time we've seen a crazy hobo. The Dark Day is only a few days away, and it always seems to bring out the weirdos.”
Jamie focused on keeping his voice level as he spoke. “But the world really is ending this time, isn't it?”
It was like realization hit them, all at once. They'd been high, then tired, and it had all happened so fast that none among them had had time to stop and think.
“No.” Lance spoke first.
“Five days...” Snow was incredulous. “It's true. I can't believe it's fucking true.”
If Jamie had needed any more validation, this was it. The connection to an urban legend just a little before their time, gave the five day countdown a meaning.
The Dark Day was something of a holiday for the people of Valuit, predating the births of the teenagers that sat around the table. One January seventeenth the city had gone dark. It had been a Valuit wide blackout, the first in the city's history. Though the research into it had been immense, no explanation was ever uncovered. Then, the next year, same day, it happened again. Then the year after that. The time at which it occurred fluctuated a little, even encroaching sometimes into the early hours of January eighteenth. But every year, without fail, the city went dead.
As it became clear that no one was making any headway into why it happened, other precautions were taken. People prepared, businesses and schools were shut down. Some of the more vital parts of the city, like hospitals, even managed to keep their power on through various means. It also took an hour, at most, for the government to reboot the system, now that they were expecting it. But every piece of tech, every computerized system, still went haywire. It was not a day for business to continue as normal.
Kids loved it. Jamie and the others liked to sit somewhere high and watch as the heart of their living, breathing city stopped beating, as a sea of lights went dark. The stories went, though they were no longer as popular as they used to be, that The Dark Day was one of the signs of a coming apocalypse. The other, was the appearance of the mutants. Whether by chance or something greater, the first Dark Day had occurred in the same year that the general public had become aware of their existence. That, in truth, was why no one talked about the apocalypse anymore. No one wanted to give the government more reason to mistreat the mutants than they already had.
As the four teenagers payed their bills, Snow watched Jamie intently. A friend with a mutation, a real power. As much as she knew people would chastise her—call her privileged—if she were to say it aloud, Snow had sometime wished for a genetic mutation. The excitement, the power. She cringed away from the thoughts as they formed. But they were on an adventure now; a real quest, and she could not help the speed at which her heart had began to beat.
They had agreed to pick Yamir up at his building. It was in the right direction anyways. On the walk—about twenty minutes—they saw even more signs, this time held by protesters. They clustered outside the police station, dressed in thick jackets. There was a sizable crowd.
Lance squinted to see them from a distance. “People not lab rats- Oh!” he exclaimed. “It's about the mutations, like the government crackdown.”
“Good.” Snow set her jaw, nodding at the protesters.
“Fuck the government!” Lance yelled, as they passed.
There was a small cheer in response.
They were both looking at Jamie. He knew that, and they knew he knew, but he kept his eyes on his shoes.
The silence, something so normal between them, had become strange, and Snow began to read signs. “Do not fear our future. Oh, shit, look at that one. My son was born this way...”
Even on a Sunday morning in the edge zone, traffic began to thicken between nine and ten. The smell of bus exhaust hit them as the vehicle pulled to a stop a little ways ahead.
“There's a lot going on,” Lance commented. “I can feel it in the air, like static electricity.”
“Like this city is boiling.” Snow tilted her head back, looking up at the tops of the buildings.
“I know what you mean.” Jamie finally spoke, inspired by the rare moment of collective poetry.
He needed to snap out of it. It may have just been because he was burnt out, but he was being quiet this morning. Jamie did not wish to be the weight dragging their group down. But Lance was right. There was something in the air, and it was heavy.
Yamir lived in one of the taller apartment buildings in the area. He met them in the lobby. Today he wore a hat made from electric blue wool, his eyes dead, framed by circles darker than his skin. They told him about the homeless man as they walked, and about what they'd realized. Jamie struggling to stay in the conversation.
Starr Boulevard was a big street in the edge zone, not something they'd needed to research. It was where the cheep apartments were mainly located, little shoe boxes which were often rented by young adults, trying to get their start in a quieter part of Valuit.
Lance knew the area because of the parties his brother would often go to. On one particular night, their chosen adventure had been to find a Starr Boulevard party. They'd failed, of course, but the conversation drifted to the memory. The end of the street to which Jamie lead them was not as familiar. It was quieter, out of the way.
“What was the number again?” Yamir asked no one in particular.
Neither Snow nor Lance had even the vaguest idea.
“Two three five,” Jamie answered.
He remembered without effort, which came as a relief. Also, when they had stepped onto Starr Boulevard, it had just seemed natural to walk left.
“We are going in the right direction!” Snow exclaimed, peering at the electronic numbers over the door of the nearest building. “It should just be coming up now.”
Building 235 was nothing special: made of concrete like so many around it. The only sign of new technology was the electronic fire escape, glinting in the sun.
“Should we climb up?” Lance asked, gesturing at it. “We could move the dumpster so we could get up there.”
Now was not the time. “Or we could knock on the door,” Jamie said.
His friend looked a little sheepish, staring at the ground instead of in his eyes, and Jamie automatically felt guilty. They had absolutely nothing to go on, no idea what to expect. There was nothing that made Lance's suggestion less valid than his. All the same, for some reason, he felt that the best course of action in this case would be the legal one.
“What are you going to say?” Snow's question stopped Jamie in his tracks.
He'd just found the listing for apartment 2134, his finger hovering over the call button.
“I--” Jamie stuttered. “I have no idea.”
The confidence which had been fuelling him up until that point drained. There were three names when he clicked on the apartment number. If he had to guess, he would say roommates. Which one did he even want to talk to? All of them? Lance's earlier suggestion was starting to become a possibility.
“Are we going to call up?” Yamir was looking at him.
“I'm not sure.”
It had come over Jamie like a breaking wave—the uncertainty. It had just struck him how he had no idea what he was doing. He didn't even know why they were here. He'd been high, and he'd heard an address. That was all this was.
“Can't you...” Lance paused awkwardly. “You know? Do your thing?”
“I can't.” Jamie was beginning to panic. “I don't know how.”
Just then the door behind them flew open and a woman entered carrying shopping bags. She flashed her card without looking at them. Maybe it was just old habit, but Lance grabbed the door, milliseconds before it closed.
“Shall we?” He directed his question towards Jamie.
The redhead cast one last frightened look at the consul, then he nodded.