(story includes short references to w@r and b0mbs; if this upsets you, please do not read) WANDERLUST/// When I was three years old, my mum told me not to run away from her in the grocery store. She found me seventeen minutes later in the Employees Only area. When I was six years old, my teacher told me that if I ever got lost in a crowd or store, I should go find the nearest policeman or cashier. I was found two days later sleeping happily on a mattress in a mall. When I was eight, I lost my keychain at the park. "Don't go back and get it, it's not worth it," said my brother. It shut him up to find me back at the park five hours later, playing in the sandbox with my keychain in hand. My mum called my travelling tendency Wanderlust. She said all the witches used to have it, back when they were everywhere. I was apparently the first person in a century to have the Wanderlust. I liked that. It wasn't that I was a rebel, I just really didn't like being told where to go. They said to hold still, stay in one place, but I couldn't do that. And that was fine. That was me. My mum sure didn't think it was fine, mind you. She was worried that any time she left me alone, I'd go away and never come back. As I got older, she tried even harder to keep me close to her. But one day, she stopped. One day, she sat me down at the kitchen counter and took my dry, scuffed hands in hers and said in the saddest voice she'd ever used, "Elliot, don't you ever trying going around the world in a straight line." I nodded, but that was a lie, of course. I had to do that. A week later, I slipped out of my window in the dead of night and started walking. I didn't have a compass, but I didn't need one. I walked in a straight line all the way through town, passing through the buildings that stood in my way, like a ghost. I walked through the cars that cluttered the road and through the trees in yards. The sun went up and the sun went down, and I needed nothing, just the sounds and the sky and the feel of pavement under my sneakers. When I came to the edge of the beach, I walked into the water. I walked right into the waves and sank to the bottom of the seabed where I walked through gardens of coral and sand. The fish tickled my shoulders and the currents pulled at my jacket, and it was wonderful. There was no need for air as I bounced happily onward, floating like an astronaut on the moon. The ocean was big and long and I had to walk for a long time to get out of it. It was nice, though, just being down there with the swirling bright things. I liked walking in the darkest depths with nothing at all to guide me. I splashed up from the water onto a very different coast than the one I had seen all my life. It was full of colors and bright lights and voices. I could understand the people even though they weren't speaking English, but when they called for me to "Come dance!" I pretended I couldn't understand them and just kept walking. The towns were bright and the people warm, but I passed through them all like a breeze, ever focused on moving on. The seasons changed, and I waded through rushing rivers and waist-high snow. There were people with tanned skin and big laughs and candy on sticks, and cobbled roads, but I looked straight ahead of me and never once stepped off the line. People saw me step through solid walls, but the spell of Wanderlust made it so they didn't think twice about it and just forgot about me. Forgotten. I liked being no one in a world made of everyone. ... The journey was a mix of sun and sand and flowers and faces and smiles, and the drive to keep walking. The drive made up most of it. As I moved further east, I came to a city where the people I passed seemed very tense. Their eyes darted around. They made very little noise. The streets emptied at dusk, and I went down the road alone. "Young man, you really shouldn't stay out this late!" a woman whispered, peeking out her window. "Why?" I asked, speaking for the first time in months. "They'll eat you alive," she said fearfully, closing the window again. I kept right on walking. At night, sharp-teethed things prowled the streets, but they paid me no mind. Onward.... ... One day, I came to a city made of crumbled buildings. Smoke drifted up to a sky speckled with the sounds of people screaming. I walked through the flames of still-burning fires. I wondered what could have happened to break such a big crater in the ground, and what could have happened to force so many people to lie sleeping on the ground. The scent of fire was heavy in the air. It did not harm me, but I saw men around me gasping for breath and children falling to the ground. It was so odd. I wondered for the first time what it was like to be mortal. I couldn't be mortal, not anymore. I moved on. vvvv
The trees bloomed and withered before me as I crossed the open country. The sky above was once again blue. Well, blue until I made it to another city, where people wearing gray and green and black threw themselves at one another with howls and machines that spattered fire across the ground. It was something that I couldn't watch for long, and I hurried on with my head down. The mothers in the next town cried when I walked down the street, and one threw herself at me sobbing, "Do you know my Jackie?!" I stood there unsure of whether to walk through her or speak, and she wept into my shoulder as I remained silent. "Which one?" I asked finally. She raised her watery eyes to mine and gave a last name. I did not know a Jackie with that last name, and I said so. A fresh wave of tears came, but she nodded and stepped back, smoothing the neck of my jacket. "That's all right, young man. You look like you've been through quite a lot to get to safety here. Why don't I fetch you some soup?" "I don't need it," I said, and I set off again down the street. ... One day I was walking down a quiet lane when something whistled in the sky. I glanced up to see a small black thing falling to the horizon. With a tiny thumping sound, light split the sky open and the world was consumed. I stood in the midst of it in awe as the air burst and the ground ruptured and tore into pieces and the trees ripped up and whirled over my head. There was a sense of chaos, and through it an eerie peace as I watched things die all around me in a fast-forward motion. I think I cried. When the smoke lifted, there was no more. It was a magic trick gone wrong, and I couldn't be worried by it because I couldn't be killed. It shocked me, it awed me, but it could not keep me. I picked my way through bits of obliterated stone and road, but stopped when a shout came from my left. I turned to see a man clambering over rubble towards me. "Are you okay?" he yelled. "Yes," I said, and turned back to the road again. Before I could keep walking, he ran up to me and grasped my hand. "You're all bloody," he said in a voice that sounded like the fake calm voice that scared adults use when they don't want to sound scared. "It's not my blood," I said plainly. "It's the blood of all the people I walked by." His eyes widened, and he looked me up and down. I hadn't had time to stop walking in months. I had to have looked a mess. "That sounds real awful," he said. "Come on, I'll take you somewhere safe." His hand wrapped around my wrist and he firmly led me away from the path. My eyes shot open wide and I inhaled sharply, my body fluttering like a heartbeat as it was pulled off track. I couldn't think. I had been severed from my lifeline, set loose, cut adrift. The person who had dragged me from the path told me his name as he half-guided, half-carried me towards where he said was a safe place. His name was Blake. He said he was a Corporal, whatever that meant, and he rambled about how I was safe and he would find my parents. I didn't want that. I wanted to walk, but the Wanderlust had shifted and jarred inside me and I was uncertain of how to move for the first time in my life. The camp was small and narrow and muddy, crawling with rats and slithery bugs and tar. Blake led me to a circle of men who were all smoking cigarettes, and they talked about me while I sat there in shock. Time became a blur. The world tipped. Days went by, days of walking alongside Blake and his cigarette men, and one day they led me up to a plump old woman and told me to stay with her. "Mrs. Adams will keep you safe," Blake said. "Stay strong." More days went by, more days of sitting in chairs like a statue and being fed and trying to find the Wanderlust deep down in me. Why was I looking for it? What was it for? Why was I walking? I think I really understood it when I was eating oatmeal one morning, slowly spooning it into my own mouth, my mind scattered far and wide and searching. And then I heard a little sniffle. I looked up. Mrs. Adams was sitting across from me at the table. She was crying. "Oh honey," she said to me. "You want to get to places you weren't born to get to. Sit down. Watch the world a while, the way it is. I never got to do that." I wish that I had listened. But there was more land to cross. The moment that Mrs. Adams told me not to go, the Wanderlust stabbed up from the depths of my heart. I wanted to run away. I wanted to travel. "I don't think I'll ever be able to stay down either," I said as I got up from my seat. "I hope you understand." Mrs. Adams nodded, her face grayed with age, and I took that as my cue to walk away. I walked. I ran. vvvv
