The Kraken Project

19

It was after dinner, and Jacob Gould was in his room. He was supposed to be solving quadratic equations and writing a book report on A Separate Peace, but instead he was lying on his bed, listening to Coldplay and reading Neil Gaiman. A loud banging on his door disturbed him. With a groan he rolled off his bed and opened the door to find his father there, irritated but still forcing himself into that phony cheery smile.

“Jacob, I’ve been calling you for five minutes.”

By way of answer, Jacob pulled out the earbuds and dangled them silently in front of his father.

“The real estate agent is here with clients. We have to leave for a few minutes. We can go to the workshop.”

“Aren’t they supposed to give us a warning?”

“There was a miscommunication.”

Jacob wrapped the earbuds around his iPod and stuffed it into his pocket. Their house had been for sale forever, and it seemed like these real estate showings would never end. And they always seemed to happen in the evening when he was doing something.

“Come on, buddy. It won’t be more than half an hour.”

Jacob scooped up his book and followed his father, who paused to pull up the covers. His room was a wreck. Since the accident, they had stopped asking him to clean it. Maybe these people wouldn’t buy the house because of his messy room.

As they were walking down the back hallway toward his father’s workshop, he could hear the real estate agent’s shrill voice. Borrowed when prices were up … Real value for the money … Needs updating, of course … All that over there could easily be torn out …

His mother was already in the workshop, sitting on a bench with her arms crossed hard over her chest, surrounded by gleaming robot bodies, legs, heads, circuit boards, and bundles of wires. Her face was pinched, her hair hastily tied back in a ponytail, with strands sticking up in the back from static electricity.

“I’m going to have a talk with that agency,” she said frostily. “I don’t know how many times this has happened.”

“Let’s please not do anything to cause a problem,” said his father in a low voice. “They’ve been awfully patient in this market. If we don’t sell the house … the bank will just…” His voice trailed away.

Jacob felt the cold ache growing in his gut. He didn’t think he could stand this much longer. “Can I go for a bike ride down to the beach?” he asked.

“Have you finished your homework?”

“How am I supposed to do my homework in here? My math book is back in my room.”

“Funny how you happened to forget it,” his father said.

But they never said no to him now, not after the accident. They always gave in. And they did so this time, too.

He exited through the back door of the workshop, hauled his mountain bike out of the garage, and headed down the driveway, past the hated FOR SALE sign and down Frenchmans Creek Road. He picked up speed going downhill, faster and faster, the cool evening air rushing past. Usually this downhill rush made him feel better, but now it just made him cold. Good. Coming around the corner, he whipped past the Apanolio nursery and pumpkin farm, with its rows of greenhouses and fields. Mavericks was too far, and it would be too difficult to get down the bluffs. He headed for the main beach. He continued past the park, over the highway, and then down Venice Boulevard to the parking lot. He rode across the lot and hit the trail. He ditched his bike where the trail dropped to the beach. There, he paused on a hillock of sand at the edge of the drop to watch the sun set. The orange globule of sun was just touching the edge of the ocean. The beach was almost empty, and the rollers thundered in from an offshore storm, breaking about a quarter mile out. There were a few hard-core surfers in full wet suits catching the evening glass-off. He could smell the ocean and the scent of beach sand, the faint whiff of a barbecue grill, hear the crying of gulls.

He took out the iPod and plugged in the earbuds, cranking up “In My Place.”

This was where he and Sully used to meet almost every evening, before Sully moved away. Six months and a week ago. As he listened to the music while the light died on the great surface of the ocean, he sensed a gathering feeling beyond words, an emotion of loneliness and futility. He looked at the dark ocean thinking, It would be so easy.

He and Sully had talked on Skype almost every day after he had moved away, but then their conversations got less frequent. He couldn’t remember the last time they talked. Two weeks ago? Sully was living in Livermore now, almost an hour and a half away. It was just far enough to be difficult to get there for a visit, with his own dad working every weekend and his mother hating to drive after the accident. But he finally had visited Sully a few months ago, a much anticipated weekend visit. Livermore was an ugly, hot, inland city, and he’d found that he and Sully didn’t have as much to talk about as he had thought. They’d drifted apart. It was an awkward weekend, and it never happened again.

And I was lost, oh yeah, oh yeah

The sun had set. A single contrail from a jet flared orange above the horizon. Blue-black gloom lay on the face of the ocean. There were only two surfers left, and they were on the main break way down the beach.

He got up, dusted the sand off himself, pulled out the earbuds, and wrapped them around the iPod. He hesitated and then carefully laid the iPod next to his bike. He started down the trail, through clumps of beach grass and brush, to the beach. He walked toward the water, trying not to limp, halting just above the wet apron of sand where the waves finally stopped. The water looked black and cold. There was no one around. The waves hissed up the sand and retreated in a regular rhythm, leaving a sheen that sank down into the sand, only to happen again as the waves came back.

Who would care? Nobody. Who would miss him? Nobody. Or maybe his parents, but that was too bad. He imagined them sitting on the sofa in the living room, weeping into their hands, and the vision gave him a feeling of satisfaction. It didn’t seem real. They’d get over it. He was doing horribly in school, and the house was a torture chamber of fake jollity. And they didn’t really care. Since the accident they let him do whatever he wanted, they never checked his homework, they never made him do the dishes, they just let him lie around in his room all the time, playing video games. But even as he felt sorry for his parents, he also felt a creeping anger. His father was so unbearably lame, so stupid, thinking he could just give him a robot to be his “friend” because he had no friends. And his mother had been driving when the accident happened, and nothing had happened to her. The other car had hit his side and crushed his leg. And nothing had even happened to the other driver except he got in trouble for being drunk.

Nobody would care. Everyone would be relieved. In fact, he was doing them all a favor.

The anger pushed him over the edge. He began to walk down into the wet zone of sand, and as the dying waves hissed up, the water ran over his shoes and socks, and he kept going and going until it was up to his thighs. His bad leg hurt like hell from the cold, and that made him glad. He ducked through the inner break, the water numbingly cold, until it got so deep that his feet lost contact with the bottom and he merged with the blackness of the water and began to drift out to sea. And then, just as he felt the cold was unbearable, he suddenly became warm again, and flooded with the peace that everyone promised. He stopped moving his limbs. His head slipped beneath the surface and he held out his arms, feeling his body slowly drift down into the warm, kind blackness.

There was a jumble, and he vaguely felt himself being tugged and pushed and slapped and everyone was shouting and then he was coughing and heaving and puking, and he was lying on a blanket on the beach with people all around him, hysterical people, with other people lifting him up toward the flashing lights. And the cold was suddenly excruciating.