7

  Cody

  Christian was in English the next day. He was there, but he wasn’t. He kept staring out the window, had this long thousand-yard stare on his face. Never raised his hand once in the, honestly, great discussion the class was having about Beowulf.

  “Christian?” Mrs. Pate attempted to call the attention of one of her, usually, most engaging students.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head and most likely trying to force thoughts of great fields and the beautiful mountain’s majesty of the other world out of his head.

  “We were just talking about the shift in tone between the fight with Grendel’s Mother and his eventual battle with the Dragon, do you have anything to add?” she asked.

  “Umm,” Christian fumbled over his words, “Umm, Wilgaf represents, umm, I don’t know, I’m sorry,” he said.

  Only Christian would apologize for not having an English reference ready for class.

  “That’s okay, maybe go over the text again, Beowulf can be a difficult read for some people, it’s almost unchanged from the direct translation we have from the Germanic text,” she shrugged Christians unusual lack of attention off and turned to the class, “Give it another read, Beowulf will constitute one fifth of your final so do make sure you’re familiar with the text by the end of the semester,” she said as the bell rang.

  Everyone got up, put their books away, I waited behind, watching Christian pack up his book bag, take a big yawn, and make his way out of the class.

  “Christian,” I followed him as most of the class was already on their way to next period and grabbed his shoulder, “How are things man, are you okay?” I asked him.

  “I’m fine, I’m just tired,” he said.

  “Did you come down with something, we noticed you weren’t here yesterday, is everything okay?” I didn’t want to come out and say it. I didn’t want to be as direct as Susie would want me to be.

  “I…I…” he was shaking his head, getting nervous, wringing his hands.

  “Hey,” I pulled him aside by the lockers, no one was around us, just me and Christian, “It’s okay, just tell me, I’m your friend,” I really did mean that last bit. Not a lot of people wanted to be Christian’s friend, but I did, I really did. Never mind helping me out on that test, never mind tutoring me, he was an okay guy. I won’t say he was a great guy. Susie has been on my ass about me trying to explain away what a monster she thought he was. We disagree, and I’ll let Susie make her case for a condemnation of Christian in her chapters. I’m not saying Christian was some paragon of virtue, we all know what he did wasn’t the smartest, or most noble action he could have taken. I just hope that I can explain, at least in my chapters, that while mislead Christian’s heart was always in the right place. At least I think it was. We’re still too early into the story to get into the messy details of the ending, I’m sorry to tease you with it again.

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  “I went back,” he said. I knew he went back, even when I was arguing with Susie, I knew he went back the whole time. I had a feeling that was the case. I was just trying to defend him, but I knew he went back.

  “I don’t blame you, but Christian, whatever it was that happened to us, it’s bigger than we could imagine, we should probably avoid this situation, this is too big for us,” I told him. I wasn’t ready for his counter argument, and God damn did he make a good argument.

  “I have something to show you,” he said, leading me to his locker, looking over his shoulder to make sure everyone was dispersed or uncaring enough to not pay attention to him. He undid his lock and reached into a small pouch at the corner of his locker. It was made of fine leather, had stitching on it that looked to be professionally made, and in a style that was generations old, “Look at this,” he said, turning the pouch over and emptying two gold coins, about as big as one of those Sacajawea coins but a bit thicker. They had odd runes on one side and numerals I couldn’t recognize on the other.

  “What are these?” I asked, turning the coins over in my hand, trying to figure out exactly what he was showing me.

  “It’s gold,” he said, “They each weigh about an ounce, give or take, it’s gold Cody, solid gold,” he lit up.

  “Where did you get these?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Somewhere else, I got them over there,” he said.

  “What? How? How much are these worth?” I asked as I marveled at that irresistible sheen and color that could drive any Bond Villain to evil.

  “I spent the weekend there, but over there it wasn’t a weekend,” he said, “I lost count of the days, but it was not a weekend over there, When I came back and found out it was just six a.m. Monday morning, I had some jet lag so I called out of school,” he said, “There’s a bigger world out there, it’s so much bigger then what we saw that night, and it’s so much more beautiful,” he said.

  “How did you get these coins?” I asked, “How much are these worth? This is gold, Christian, it’s gold,” I said, unable to take my eyes from those two foreign and amazing coins.

  “About two thousand dollars each, haven’t figured out how to sell them yet though,” Christian said, “I took the weekend to explore that world more, I found a village, some guy there needed someone to make a delivery to another town, so I took the job. I brought some spices and a few tools to another village, and I was rewarded with these,” Christian said, “And tons of people over there need people to do jobs, Cody, I don’t know what this world is but if gold is this easy to get over there, this merits another visit,” he said.

  “Christian, you said that there are people over there? Like actual people?” I was enthralled. I heard the bell ring but screw Pre-Cal right now, this crazy bastard just discovered people living in some kind of crazy fantasy world totally alien from our own.

  “We should go again, all of us,” Christian said.

  “Christian, we should tell-”

  He cut me off, “No, we can’t tell anyone, the four of us saw something. Even if we try to explain this to people, we’ll look crazy, and the first thing other people are going to do is bar us from going back,” he said. “We should go back ourselves, find more work there, it’s so easy, we can come back with gold, actual gold,” he said, “Let’s just meet and talk about this, we can’t tell anyone else, the four of us are all we have on this,” he said.

  “Okay, okay,” I let Christian strong arm me. I could understand why he wanted to go back to that world. And after everything we went through, I can understand that even more. “I’ll tell Susie and Brad to meet us in the library afterschool,” I said, condemning myself to all the adventures we would soon have in that world.

  “You need to swear to me you won’t tell anyone,” Christian said.

  “I won’t, I won’t tell anyone,” I said, I meant it. Brad was right, the last thing three teenagers wanted was a descent of government scientist hauling you off to god knows where to try and figure out exactly what this portal to another world meant. And Christian was right people would think we were crazy if we came out and told them that we discovered another world, a fantasy world, a world where all of one’s dreams could come true.