Jericho wasn’t at school the next day, or the day after that, and while Malcolm desperately wanted more answers, he used his free time at school to print out a blank copy of the physics test. He filled it out with correct answers, then had a classmate write ’98’ at the top of the page so his mom wouldn’t recognize the penmanship.
When he returned home he dug the page from his trapper and handed it to his mom.
“A ninety-eight.” She nodded, the corners of her mouth turning upward and threatening to become a smile.
“Yeah, I felt pretty good about this one.” He kept his tone low and passive, hoping not to give away the truth.
His mom handed it back with a simple nod. “You forgot to include a negative sign when calculating velocity.”
“But I knew how to get the right answer.”
“It doesn’t matter if you know how to get the right answer if you’re unable to show that you know it.”
“It was a simple mistake.” Malcolm mumbled. Oh, if she only knew his true grade…
His mom’s mouth, previously on the precipice of acceptance, became pencil-thin, and he knew he was on thin ice. “Tests are passed and failed based on simple mistakes. Go upstairs and study your kinematics. Study until you can subconsciously remember the correct direction of a moving body.”
Malcolm returned to his room and threw the fake test on his bed. He considered digging the real test out of his waste bin and showing his mom…It would almost be worth it to see her overreaction…To rub his failings in her face.
…But he couldn’t stand to be such a disappointment, and with his sister’s looming visit he’d only appear that much worse by comparison.
He opened a textbook and tried studying.
He was too distracted. Too many thoughts.
His phone buzzed with a newly arrived text message.
‘Dude come over. I figured it all out.’
Malcolm sighed. Couldn’t his friend understand he had more important things to do than humor hair-brained conspiracy theories?
He typed out a reply.
‘I’m busy. Can’t.’
‘Come over tomorrow…Promise it’ll be worth.’
Malcolm tried to blink away the frustration…It lingered all the same.
‘Sister’s visiting in 2 days. I’ve got to study for ACT. I can’t keep doing this with you.’
‘This will be the last time, I promise. If you aren’t convinced this time I won’t mention it ever again.’
Never again…On the one hand Jericho tended to attract conspiracy theories like he, Malcolm, attracted mediocrity, and there’d certainly be another goofy fantasy just around the corner after this one disappeared…On the other, he was tired of the “my brother’s a clone” shtick and was worried at how far Jericho was taking it and would welcome something fresh and new.
‘Fine. I’ll be over tomorrow evening.’
…
The next day was Friday, and the energy created by a looming weekend buzzed through the school. Jericho wasn’t there, but that did nothing to stop the deluge of distractions that were rife in every hall and every room. With all the commotion, studying was impossible. Everyone was looking forward to the weekend, and even the teachers seemed to be phoning in their lectures.
Malcolm approached his physics teacher’s desk. “Mrs. Derrick? Can I talk to you about my test?”
She looked up at him and smiled. “Ah yes, Mr. Ericson.”
He knew he wasn’t a model student, and yet she treated him so well and had such an aura of friendliness that it made him feel guilty about his sub-par grades.
He frowned. “Can I ask you a few questions about my test?” He pulled the crumpled, somewhat ripped paper from his trapper and put it on her desk.
She didn’t seem to mind the fact he’d scored so lowly, nor did she seem to care that it had been crinkled to the point it needed flattening in order to become legible.
“A sixty-two.” She nodded. “Not a good score, but it’s passing. What questions did you have?”
“All of them.” He answered.
“All of them?” She raised her eyebrows in mild surprise.
“All of them.” He repeated.
She took out a blank sheet of paper and wrote out the first problem he’d gotten incorrect.
“For this one it seems you used the wrong equation. Remember, start off writing out your list of knowns. Read the question carefully. What variables do you know you have?”
He read the problem to himself. “It gives the velocity and position.” He said.
“That’s ‘V’ and ‘X’. What else?”
“I think that’s everything.”
“What about gravity? You see I included the value at the top of the page?”
“Well yeah, I guess I know gravity too.”
“And gravity’s a…”
“It’s a…force?”
“Well it is, but it’s also an acceleration…So in addition to ‘V’ and ‘X’ you also know ‘A’.”
He continued struggling through the examples Mrs. Derrick wrote. With each failed answer, with each missed clue, with every stumble, he felt that much more frustrated. What was the point? Even with her kindness, a kindness he did not deserve, he was doomed to remain a failure.
He began to feel warm.
He felt tears swimming in his eyes.
Why did he have to be so fucking stupid!?
He wanted to just split his head open, hollow out his skull, and turn it into a vase…At least then it would be protecting something of value.
Mrs. Derrick seemed to sense his sinking mood. Halfway through one of the problems she put the sheet away.
“Malcolm, is it okay if I ask you a personal question?”
He was surprised, but nodded.
“Why do you care about all of this?”
“Because I don’t understand how to get the answers…”
“There are lots of things in life we don’t understand. Me, I’ve never been able to figure out how to fix a car, but then, that’s something I never cared to learn…So why do you care about learning this?”
It was a bit odd to have one of his teachers ask why he cared about their subject.
“Because I want to understand.”
“Do you really? I must admit I never thought you seemed very interested in physics. Could it be that you don’t care about the subject and are instead trying to live up to the expectations your parents have for you? Tell me, is this something they desperately want you to learn?”
The words struck him so deeply he couldn’t respond. He could barely move.
Mrs. Derrick seemed to pick up on this.
“I’ve seen it sometimes. Parents will push their kids to become something they want, not something the kid wants to be. Tell me, what do you want to do when you grow up?”
“I want to be a doctor.” It was an automatic response; no thinking required.
“If you’ll forgive me for making assumptions, that sounds like something your parents want for you. Do you really want to be a doctor? What is it you want out of life?”
He frowned. His future choices had been so frequently drilled into his head that he’d never actually given any of them any thought. Mrs. Derrick seemed keenly aware of this.
He tried thinking about it…But he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. Between his frustration and the lack of autonomy he’d experienced in life, he was wholly incapable of thinking for himself.
“I don’t know.” He murmured.
“And that’s perfectly alright! You don’t need to know what you want to do when you graduate high school. You don’t even need to know what you want when you graduate college! There are plenty of jobs out there and the best part is that if you don’t like one, or one doesn’t work out, you can always find another.”
Mrs. Derrick continued trying to instill some self confidence in him, but he resisted at every turn. She’d attack with a compliment, but he was quick to parry. She’d try to ease his mind with comforting talk of the future and all the potential he had, but he’d easily dodge.
Eventually, thankfully, the bell rang.
Malcolm realized he still didn’t know the answers to his test.
“Thank you Mrs. Derrick.” He mumbled, grabbing his test from her desk. “See you Monday.”
…
Malcolm lightly banged his head against the bus’s window. After it dropped him off he planned to head straight home and bury his misery beneath hours of mentally exhausting science problems and literary essays, but a continually buzzing phone threatened to upturn these plans.
‘Dude you coming over?’
He ignored it.
‘Dude?‘
He continued ignoring it.
‘Seriously man, come check this shit out.’
‘Promise I won’t bother you anymore…Just one more time.’
‘Dude…DUDE!’
‘Dude?’
Text after text after text. A few times his phone rang before he was bombarded with even more texts. Eventually Malcolm relented.
‘Okay, I’ll be over shortly, but this is the last time, alright?’
‘Yeah’.
He got off the bus at his regular stop, then walked to his friend’s house. It being a Friday, his mom was often a bit more lenient in how he spent his time…But since his sister was arriving the next day, he wasn’t sure he could fully depend upon this leniency.
So along with his school items, he carried a sizeable amount of guilt…Down the streets, through the yards and woods, and to the part of town that was a bit lower class.
Jericho was busy waiting for him on the lawn. Malcolm waved. Jerry urgently beckoned for him.
“Hurry dude! I don’t know when he’ll be back!”
“Your dad?”
“That drunk asshole? Nah, he’ll be at the bar until about two. No dude, my brother…Or rather, my brother’s clone.”
Malcolm sighed as he was lead inside. “Listen man, this has to be the last time we do this. I’ve got a lot on my plate right now.”
Jericho began descending the stairs into the basement. “I understand, but I think this time I’ve got something that not even a close-minded person like you could deny.” Malcolm ignored the slight. He’d heard worse; much of it from his own psyche.
As he was led into James’ room, Malcolm tried to guess what he’d see. Probably an out of place letter, or some sort of normal business item his friend would mistake as being the hallmark of an out-of-this-world conspiracy.
…He hoped it wasn’t a dead body, but remembering the severed finger, he braced himself for that possibility as well…
“I had to wait until he left before I could do a bit of investigating.” Jericho said, slowly sneaking across the room.
Malcolm looked around. Everything looked normal; cleaner, perhaps, but still completely normal. At the very least, no dead bodies…
Jericho reached for the closet door. “At first I thought he might’ve been a government clone sent to spy on me, or maybe even an alien clone…Remember two summers back when I got embroiled in that alien plot?”
“I remember you said you saw lights in the woods late one night.”
“Yeah, that…Anyway, take a look at this!”
He dramatically swing the closet open in a fast, sweeping motion, and Malcolm stared at the completely normal interior.
Normal clothes hanging from a single horizontal rod.
Normal boxes piled around the sides.
…And then normality disappeared.
He froze.
His skin felt clammy.
A shiver ran through his veins.
“Duuuuude.” Malcolm said. “What?!”
“I know.” Jericho nodded. “I thought it was weird too. I really thought it was aliens who’d replaced him. I never would’ve suspected mole-people.”
Malcolm barely heard his friend. Every neuron in his brain was busy focusing on and trying to comprehend what he was seeing.
In the middle of the closet floor, surrounded by boxes and containers piled high on either side, was a hole. Malcolm slowly approached for a better look, but the bottom was too deep. Even stranger, the walls of the hole appeared to be made of a pulsating, pink, possibly organic tissue. A warm breeze wafted up from the tunnel, carrying a pungent smell with it.
“Dude what the fuck am I looking at?”
“I think it’s where he’s from.” Jericho said. “I think it’s Clone-James’ real home.”
Malcolm still didn’t believe his friend’s brother was a clone, but there was undeniable proof that something weird was happening.
“What made this? Is this…What?”
“As far as I can tell, it goes down forever.” Jericho said. “All the way to Clone-World.” He stepped near the edge, pulled a coat hanger off the rack, and threw it irreverently into the darkness below.
It disappeared without making a sound.
But Malcolm was still so discombobulated that he couldn’t form a coherent thought.
“Is it…flesh?”
“The pink stuff? Probably. It’s warm. Here, reach down and feel it.”
But Malcolm would do no such thing.
“Dude, we need to call someone! Have you told your dad? What about your brother?”
“My brother obviously already knows about it, since that’s where he came from. As for my dad, you think I’m gonna show that asshole the entrance to a clone chamber? I don’t want more of him in this world.”
“Clone chamber…” Thoughts were beginning to pierce the barrier of Malcolm’s stunned disbelief. He blinked, then forced himself to calm down.
“How do you know this is a clone chamber?”
“Because…What else could it be? Where did my clone-brother come from, if not here?”
Malcolm wanted to argue that they still didn’t know he was a clone, but the gaping flesh-tunnel leading into the Earth was enough of an oddity that he felt it might be worth being a bit more open minded to the possibility.
“Do you know where it goes?”
Jericho shrugged. “Clone-world, maybe? Possibly to the mole-people. I’m not sure…I’m no expert.”
“Well when did it appear?”
“I expect just before clone-James did.”
Malcolm closed his eyes and tried to find patience among the panic. He wanted to chastise Jericho for being so fixated on the clone hypothesis…
…But something weird had formed in the closet, and he, Malcolm, had no idea what it was or what had formed it or why. He decided to put aside his natural skepticism, at least for the time.
“Okay, maybe it is a clone…Hole…” Malcolm agreed slowly. “But we need to test it to find out.”
Jericho smiled. “I’ve been thinking about that, and I have an idea.”
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