There’s always at least one.
And one is all it takes. From there it’s simply dominoes and what we call momentum.
Lefty ran with the gun in his waistband and his shirt wrapped around his head to soak up the ravenous sun. It was hungry today. It was hungry everyday. Before his birth – before even the generation of his grandfather – breathing had been a warm and muggy business. Lefty couldn’t remember the last cool breeze. He didn’t have a chance. It was all cooked way before his time.
So, the home layer was thinning. That much was obvious.
What to do about it? Well, running was a good place to start. Even Jojo had considered it – momentarily. Lefty gave his mind over to the memories and tried to ignore his thumping, groaning pulse.
A year or so ago:
Jojo went out early most mornings; Lefty didn’t always know where, but he understood why. Jojo needed what he called personal space. An discarded concept. Sure, everybody had a moment to themselves during break time. Allotted minutes. Structured and proportionate to each community member’s effeciency grade. Jojo wanted more.
So, he snuck out of their shared room, out the window each morning before the sun could catch his shadow, and he had this tree. It was built out of the kind of bark that shreds as it hits the ground. It was the kind of climbing tree which allowed for moods: go this way when you’re feeling grumpy or go up that way when you need some adrenaline. Checkpoints in the branches for losers, loners, and lovers. And up at the top – that’s where Jojo was headed.
It was the end of the week. No one would be awake for another two or three hours. Jojo left through the window, and Lefty decided to follow.
The community couldn’t keep anything green unless it was inside. Grass, flowers, weeds – anything left outside couldn’t stand the heat. So, people pulled the plantworld indoors and set up shop in two competing venues: the amateur home and the professional greenhouse. In general, the greenhouses in the center of the community (there were three of them) housed plants native to the area. Experts in attendance. The idea was to keep the species alive until they could be reintegrated outside. As soon as possible. That was three hundred years ago. The plants kept in private homes were typically foreign species, delivered to collectors as seeds and grown for pleasure.
The tree was the only one of its kind, that is to say, the only tree that anyone living had ever seen. And it was rooted in its own tower, tucked into the side of the mansion at the edge of town, kept in the artificial habitat curated by Jojo’s father. So, Jojo had the key.
It sunk into the lock without a sound. Lefty watched until Jojo had slipped all the way through the crack into the fake dawn inside, and then he hurried to catch the door before it closed. He stuck his gloved hand into the crack and leaned with his shoulder. The weight of the door was shocking – it was this immense faux wood layer of security, and Lefty immediately realized he couldn’t hold it. He would have been found with a crushed or severed gloved hand, crumpled at the door of his best friend’s father’s house sometime later that morning if Jojo hadn’t turned around and hit the lever.
“Are you kidding me?” Jojo wasn’t angry. He even laughed a little, and without surprise.
Lefty rubbed his wrist and shrugged. “Maybe I have big news?”
“Do you?” Jojo couldn’t keep a straight face. Lefty glared back. And then grinned.
But that was a year or so ago.
Lefty was running now from the memory as much as from any potential pursuit. They’d climbed the tree together that morning, Lefty learning the handholds Jojo knew by heart. Then, at the top, in those sparse and final branches: “Sometimes, Lefty, you know I think it might be nice to leave. Go find a place less…lethal.”
Maybe that was the beginning of the bending – for Lefty. And, for Jojo, the end?
The ground under Lefty’s feet suddenly dropped; he’d been seeing the tree and Jojo, and now he was falling, jerking his legs out to catch anything. It wasn’t a steep slope, but he stumbled for a second. Then, he found his footing and stopped. Good timing. He’d reached the Edge. A few scrapes and bruises and on his knees at a precipice, looking out into the fog that hovered over everything in sight. Lefty leaned back and sat in the dirt. He took a breath. He beat his gloved hand against his chest. Dust in clouds drifting away from him, meeting the haze everywhere out there. With the particles floating ahead of him and the sun setting behind, Lefty navigated the impenetrable ridges of the glove with his free hand; it was no use, and it never had been.
Letting his feet hang over the Edge, it almost looked like he could push off and stand on the grey below him.
Less lethal. Jojo said that.
Okay.
But it didn’t take long for him to change his mind. For half a year, he and Jojo met in the tree, in the dark freedom of a wakeless world. Then, one day the branches were there.
And Jojo wasn’t.
Lefty waited for an hour before he began to feel the first tremors in his right hand. And from there the weeks of scheming distilled into something new: it wasn’t just about the home layer anymore. If he was bending, then it was time to go.
He sat in the tree and let his feet drop into empty space. His hand began to pulse with new blood.
He sat on the Edge and took a breath. Then, he jumped.