Jumper by Steven Gould

Author:Steven Gould
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Science Fiction, General, Media Tie-In, Fiction
ISBN: 9780007275991
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Published: 2008-03-01T18:25:06.773000+00:00

In the corner of the apartment I came back to myself, seated on the floor, wedged between the end of the couch and a bookshelf. There was a book on the floor, with half the pages torn out and crumpled, individually, into tightly packed balls. My hand was in the process of tearing out yet another page when I realized what I was doing.

Mom...

I looked at the book, Pudd'nhead Wilson, from the Twain collection Mom gave me. I felt terrible. Dad tore up books. I didn't want to be like Dad. I threw the book across the living room and pulled myself up on the couch armrest. I felt like there should be tears and there weren't any.

It didn't happen. It was fever. It was delirium.

I turned on the evening news and the camera footage was there again, on ABC. I turned the TV off quickly, before the explosion.

Millie... Millie has to help me.

It was too much for one person to stand. Too much to stand alone. I walked out of the apartment and around the corner, intending to make her listen to me, to tell her about Mom, but I paused at the corner, uncertain.

Two different images—the explosion and Millie's face as she told me to go away and never bother her again—those images flipped back and forth in my mind, jostling for my attention, struggling against each other, sometimes merging to stab twice as deep.

The exterior of the apartment was red brick. I leaned against it, the brick cold and rough against my face. The wind was cold, out of the north, the sky clear with tiny, cold stars, like pieces of flint, like shards of broken glass.

There were footsteps on the walk and I turned, hunched over in the shadow of the hedge that lined the walk. A man passed by without seeing me, heading down the walk toward Millie's building. He passed into the direct glare of the streetlight and I saw his face.

It was Mark, Millie's old boyfriend, the man I'd jumped a hundred miles and left on the observation deck of Will Rogers World Airport.

Has he come to bother Millie again?

I could be a hero again, wait until he started bothering Millie, then jump him to Brooklyn, to Minnesota, far away, where he wouldn't bother her. Would she listen to me then?

Mark knocked firmly on her door. I jumped to the side of her walkway, behind an evergreen bush that was chest high. My hands flexed and unflexed, anxious to have something to grab, something to hit at. I thought of the walkway at Battery Park, of the railing between land and cold, cold water.

How easy just to jump him to the edge....

The door opened and I gathered myself to jump, to grab, to hurt. I listened carefully, waiting for the angry words to come, but though I heard Millie's voice, there was no anger, no outrage in it.

"Ah, Mark. Thanks for coming," she said.

The door swung wide, Mark stepped inside, and the door shut.

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