This is My Kingdom. [Part One]

This is My Kingdom. [Part One]

My mother always told me that people were like notebooks.

I didn’t really know what she meant at the time, seeing as I was four, but for some reason the statement never really left me. I wondered if you could really open up people and write in them, read them, discover secrets that just weren’t shown on their covers. At first I was thinking literally but as I grew up I realized that that was exactly what my mother meant -- just in a different sense.

In school, I was invisible. It was partially my fault, really. Partially my mother’s, too. Teachers gave me assignments and I didn’t care; I was punished as such and my mother turned a blind eye. For most of my life she didn’t have a job. She had other things to worry about instead of the difference between an “F” and an “A”.

The other kids didn’t care for me. Why partner up with the girl who didn’t do anything and risk their grades and privileges? So I was alone. I did nothing. Rinse and repeat. Not that I particularly minded. I knew my classmates first hand, without them ever knowing they were talking to me.

Late at night, I would type away at my computer -- searching. Always searching, until the early hours of morning. I learned that you don’t get dark rings around your eyes when you stay up late if you wash your face the next day, and that it was possible for the human body to function after multiple nights with only one hour of sleep.

While most people sifted through sites, I sifted through people’s notebooks. I soon came to know them not as notebooks, but more like “kingdoms”; I looked for their likes, their vices, their interests. I became what they were looking for. Everything they could ever hope for. I became something other than my lonely self.

And if there was one thing I was good at, it was lying.

I found my friend Randy first, and completely by accident. He was on a Rise Against forum claiming that he was twenty-three and looking to join the next tour as an A/V stage hand -- I suppose he had always been nifty with that sort of thing. Immediately I established myself as the stage manager for a lesser band, asking for his qualifications and “determining” that he might not have what it takes to get the job. I stopped seeing him floating around a few days later.

I honestly didn’t expect to find Jocelyn, either. All right, so maybe I wasn’t as surprised as I should have been: she had attached herself to some sort of religious radicals site, which listed people in school that should be “saved”. My name, Devlin Northgate, was listed as number three on that list. Figures. Her outwardly atheist boyfriend, Michael Mitchell, was number one.

I grew particularly attached to Jocelyn, as a special case. When I e-mailed her I was a rich man in his mid-thirties, searching for God and enlightenment. She told me that if I converted then God would take pity on me and my soul would be saved. Halfway through the school year I grew bored with this persona and told Jocelyn I had lost all my money. She never contacted me after that.

And of course, there was Blake.

It’s interesting what you find out about people when they don’t suspect that you know them. They tell supposed strangers things that they don’t even tell their best friends, sometimes, because they’re sure that they’d never see that person again. That it didn’t matter.

I first saw Blake on a sign-up sheet for a poetry slam at the library close to school. I attended. He was there. He took me by surprise, the way he spoke his words. I never took him for a literature-oriented boy, really.

I found his book, next, on a self-publishing site. On their forums he was pretty popular; I took the form of a doubtful critic, and was taken aback by how many people defended him. He explained his book clearly and concisely without hesitation when I requested more information. We began to talk for hours about different novels we’ve read, his plans for the future. I bought his book.

At school, though, he didn’t know me. I didn’t know him. For the most part this lack of contact didn’t bother me, and there were even times when our eyes would meet and I would get scared because I’d think that he knew. But it was never for more than a few moments, if at all.

Other times, though, it bothered me. Bothered me to hell. I had read his notebook, his life, front to back. I should have at least been granted a chance to speak to him, instead of being held back by the social disintricacies that were known as the silent high school guidelines.





“Dev?”

I snapped out of stalker-mode and turned to meet Randy who, as always, had decided to bring his work along with him. In his arms he held a guitar amp and several tripods.

“Hey,” I said. “What’s with all the stuff this time?”

He grinned. “Ah, Ms. Harding said that the spring concert is coming up, and she needed the best A/V guy to handle the lights.”

“That’s pretty sweet, man,” I told him, slapping his back. He stumbled a bit, but soon righted himself.

“I know, right? I mean -- ”

“Devil Northgate.”

I rolled my eyes and quirked an eyebrow without looking behind me. “Hello, Jocelyn. You gonna get my name right some time this century? Or am I going to have to tape it to my back, just to help you out?”

“Crack all the jokes you want, Northgate. When you burn in hell, I’ll laugh from heaven.”

Inside, I fumed. Outside, I sighed and faced her.

“When are you ever going to realize, my dear, that your pride is just as much a sin?” I asked, taking on a snobbish air and a faux-French accent. She recoiled, obviously miffed, and stalked away, followed closely by her possi. I elbowed Randy -- who had frozen on the spot -- in the ribs. “What? Joce-cat got your tongue?”

“N-no…”

“Aww, does someone like Joce-cat…?”

“No,” he repeated sharply. I just laughed and dropped the subject. No need to get him mad.

“Wanna go down by the brook later? I have some late homework I need to turn in that I know you have.”

Randy narrowed his eyes. “Dev…”

“Please, Rand?” I held up a pair of tickets in my hand. “I have the passes to the Rise Against concert…”

He immediately snatched one. “Deal.”

“Good. I thought you might see it my way, young grasshopper.”

“What?”

I patted his shoulder. “Nothing, hun. I’ll catch you later.”





“Devlin, can I talk to you?”

That voice.

Don’t act like you know his name. You’re supposed to be invisible to each other. His kingdom is supposed to be off-limits.

I look up from stuffing a heavy textbook into my khaki messenger bag. “Yeah? What about… your name’s Blake, right?”

“Yeah.”

I pretended to brush him off. “Well, what do you want, then? I have to meet up with someone.” He reached out and gripped my arm; I immediately snatched it back, suddenly on edge. “What’re you doing? Leave me alone!”

The look in Blake’s eyes was suddenly calm, and terrifyingly unfathomable. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I snarled, ignoring the way his usually neatly-combed cinammon hair fell over his face when I pushed him away.

“This.” He pulled out a semi-crumpled sheet of paper and held it out. “This is yours.”

It was a letter I had written for compositional writing on a book we chose to read -- the same exact one my lazy self had sent Blake about a week or so ago on his novel, give or take a few edited words. At the bottom, it was signed ‘Lisa Nevers, Literary Critic.’

I took it wordlessly and he stared at me, equally as silent. Finally:

“Where did you get this?”

“I’m teacher’s assistant.”

Ah. Right. Forgot about that. My eyes glanced nervously at the clock and bugged out. “Blake, listen, I’ll talk to you later tonight -- I have to do something at the library before I meet up with a friend of mine, okay?”

“But -- ”

I glared at him. “You know you’ll talk to me later.”

A pause, before he backed away. “Yeah. Talk to you later…Lisa.”

I turned and scampered out of the classroom as he chuckled behind me, my cheeks burning.





Thankfully, one of the computers was already on when I got to the library. For some reason, my paranoia believed that one wouldn’t be. My fingers blew over the keys, barely pressing down, used to the act of typing e-mails. Years of practice made sure of that.

I sent one to Blake, explaining a few things.

I sent one to Randy, for him to open when he got home, under my stage manager guise.

I sent one line to Jocelyn’s boyfriend, Michael, with a URL and no explanation. I thought I should teach little Joce-cat a lesson.

None of them had any meaning, really. Merely check-up notices. Updates. Ways to keep myself in a loop I wouldn’t otherwise be able to participate in. Just as I had sent the last e-mail to Michael, the computer beeped cheerily to signal an incoming message -- from Blake, nontheless. Just two words, and a small smiley face.



I smiled to myself. It was comforting to know that at least one person did.





“What does that one look like?”

“A…cloud…?”

“Aww, Randy, you’re no fun with this.”

He shot me a loaded look and I pushed him playfully.

“C’mon! Seriously try to imagine what they look like!”

“Okay…” He pondered the request over a moment, before pointing to the sky. “That one looks like a circuit board. The one next to it is shaped like a spotlight.”

“Better,” I consented, laughing.

It was a beautiful day, outside of the pressing walls of Trinity Prep. The sun-warmed grass we lay on was soft beneath us where we lay sprawled on the rolling hill that led to the bank of Sutter Creek. The clear, slow-moving waters belied a faster undercurrent, and sunlight rippled like jewels with many facets on the surface. We were forced to shade our eyes against the harsh rays, giggling as we did so with unexplainable giddiness. It was one of those unreal days; the times that we vow never to forget but always do, leaving ourselves with only a simple, vague memory of blinding gold.

It was the perfect end to that last moment -- the moment before I left Randy with the strangest feeling that I was burning.





I couldn’t sleep that night. An invisible fire with intangible smoke was suffocating me, strangling my lungs and filling me with the false-yet-still-agonizing realization that my whole body was ablaze. When I opened my eyes everything was glowing with a strange light from within. A big, burning flash. Not as if I were blind, but as if the world was pulsing, ever so faintly.

And then there was the humming.

I gripped my sheets with one hand and clapped the other over my ear, trying to block it out. I sang to myself, trying to drown it with childish nursey rhymes, but it only got louder. It wasn’t just my mind that was humming, either; it was my whole body. My whole being. Everything that was me was vibrating at a frequency so low, I was sure I would never have noticed it -- if I hadn’t noticed it already.

As the night waned on the humming intensified to an obnoxiously loud angry-hornet buzzing; I curled up on my bed and whimpered, waiting for morning, the Lucifer of migraines hammering into my skull.





The next day wasn’t much better. I informed my mother that I would be walking to school instead of taking the bus; the idea of so many voices, so many noises only adding to my pains made me nauseous. On the inside I was numb from the humming -- like I was absorbing the vibrations from a stereo that had been turned up too loud. And even when I closed my eyes, there was nothing to stop my smoldering vision. There was nothing to stop this feeling from burning the pages of my notebook kingdom until all that was left was ashes and dust.

I didn’t talk to anyone when I reached Trinity. Or, at least, I think I tried, but no words came out. As I neared the auditorium where we convened for the morning announcements, though, the humming increased and I faintly felt myself cry out. There were so many people crowded there, near the entrance. More than usual.

If only I could think past the humming, then maybe the white pulse of my surroundings wouldn’t be so bad.

If only I could see past the bright flashes, then maybe the overwhelming feeling that I was burning to death would leave.

I couldn’t think clearly. I wanted nothing more than to turn and run. I looked to the nearest person, a girl with her hair tied in a tight ponytail, and clutched her uniform sleeve desperately.

I’m on fire, I mouthed. Can’t you see that I’m on fire?

“I can’t hear you!” she yelled over the commotion. Her voice crashed down on my eardrums as if it were a one-hundred pound weight on my head. “Everyone’s talking about the suicide -- ”

“The…suicide?”

“Yeah. Jocelyn McGregor. Said she hung herself from the auditorium lights, on the stage. Can’t get a good look, though -- could just be rumors as to why they’re not letting us in. Peh, like something that exciting would ever happen here.” The girl smiled at me. “Are… you okay? You look kinda pale.”

“I…I’m fine. Thanks.”

Jocelyn? Suicide? The acrid smell of burnt skin touched my nostrils and I winced as the fiery sensation intensified a hundred fold. I rudely shoved my way through the crowd towards the window embedded in the door and stood on tiptoes to see through it.

I couldn’t help it; I very nearly threw up.

They hadn’t cut her down yet. Jocelyn’s limp form swayed in the non-existent breeze of the auditorium, from a thick rope that formed a noose about her neck. my fingers trembled, clutching the edge of the door.

I needed to get to her. I needed to touch her, to feel her disappear in my hands and breathe a sigh of relief as I woke up and realized that it was all just a dream. A crazy, unreal dream. Things like this didn’t just happen. But the tears that streamed down my face seemed too real; they burned my cheeks like trails of liquid fire. This was all too tangible, even though I didn’t want it to be.

What could have driven her to do this? She was rich, she was popular, she had something to believe in, she had a boyfriend that every girl wanted who absolutely lavished her --

I froze.

Michael. Oh god, Michael.

The e-mail, with the link to the fanatics site. Could he have talked to Jocelyn already? Could he have been that angry? Was there something else I didn’t know? I tried to reason with myself. Things could have gone wrong at home, or perhaps it was an idea that had gone horribly wrong? An accident. Of course. That’s what it was. I reasoned myself to oblivion and beyond, temporarily ignoring the humming and the blazing pulses of light.

It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t me.

But I couldn’t help the ugly feeling that somehow, it was.