Now, Leslie adhered to a very strict belief in situations where she did not know anything. Contrary to most people in such predicaments, Leslie did, indeed, believe that she did not know anything. That is to say, she made no assumptions, she considered anything to be a possibility, and she operated under the suspicion that conclusions were theoretical rather than factual. So, even though she firmly believed in the words she spoke to Kermit Kinnard, Leslie still continued to think about their talk for a long time afterward. Where most might imagine that Kermit's warning was based on anxiety about travel and the loss of a good friend, Leslie considered otherwise. After all, for all she knew, Kermit's string might reach up past the sky, past the galaxy, past space, into heaven, and connect to God him or her self. This, of course, was assuming that God and heaven existed.
Either way, Leslie just didn't know.
A few days later, she even spoke with Aisa Fryman about it.
"Don't think about it so much," Aisa said, "he was probably just worried about the trip. I am too. Whenever someone leaves it's kinda hard."
"Yeah, but this was different," Leslie contemplated, "Why would he start getting worried so suddenly? It just doesn't make sense."
"Who knows… maybe he saw a movie or something that freaked him out," Aisa said shrugging her shoulders. She didn't know either.
"Well, I think it's a safe bet to say that something probably happened to him in-between the time I first told everybody about Chicago and a few days ago when we talked."
"What's that… like a one-month window?"
"Yeah," Leslie said, "I wonder what could have happened."
It was a weekend, and Leslie had decided to accompany Aisa during one of her choice long walks. A few hours already past since they started, and neither one of them knew where they were. Things looked less and less like Pittsburgh. It didn't seem like a city anymore. The air was country fresh and the field-of-vision wide. It was a foreign surrounding that they were exploring for the first time. Unknown was everywhere. They pressed on.
"You're about to start. I know you when you get like this," Aisa said nodding her head, "It's times like these when I know that you're a little different than everyone else."
"What do you mean?" Leslie asked.
"You're about to do one of your genius things where you kind of leave everyone else behind in the dust. It's a little scary, but it's also kind of cool and fun."
Behind them, a truck snuck up on the road and passed them by. It had the word FedEx written on its back. Leslie stopped and pointed at it.
"Do you see the white arrow in-between the 'E' and the 'x'?" she asked.
Asia looked at it carefully. She squinted her eyes. When the truck rolled out of sight she sighed. "I couldn't see it."
"That's probably a good thing," Leslie said, "Because after you see it for the first time, you'll never be able to look at it again without seeing it. That white arrow changes how you think."
"Hmm… something that small can change how you think?"
"Yep. That's why it's also important to be able to ignore the arrow and look at it the way you would if you didn't know it existed. That way you can think in two ways." Leslie stuck her tongue out at the last place where she saw the truck.
They started walking again.
It is worth noting at this point that, beyond the fact that she did not see the white arrow, Aisa didn't really get what Leslie was talking about. It was no fault on her part. Aisa, in fact, picked up on a lot more of the subtle hints Leslie gave about the mysterious linkages between seeming randomness than anyone else.
No one could say for sure whether Leslie gave those hints on purpose or whether she did so unconsciously. The reason for that is because no one asked her. Either way, it was likely that those particles of commentary that Leslie issued forth every once and a while were products of the strings that her madness caused her to see.
The connection that Leslie made at this moment was between the empty white arrow and Kermit Kinnard. Just as there was a void of blank empty space in-between the "E" and the "x" that shaped the appearance of the word on the truck, there was a void of blank empty space between Kermit's initial reaction to Leslie's announcement that she was going to Chicago and the warning he gave just a few weeks later. This void of space made a shape slightly bigger than an arrow, however. It was shaping the outlook of the future.
Though Aisa didn't get it, she did get that something had just gone over her head. "See, this was what I was talking about," she said waving a finger into the air. "You certainly are strange, Leslie." She walked a couple more steps before cracking a smile and laughing. "But still, I wouldn't want things any other way... Why don't you finish telling me what you were thinking about Kermit?"
"Are you sure? You said it was scary," Leslie said looking up to the sky.
"Yes, I did." Aisa said definitively, "But I also said it was cool."
Leslie smiled. They walked for a few more steps before she said, "Aisa, I'm sure that something big is happening, but just because it's big doesn't mean that I'm supposed to avoid it. I know where I want to be, and that's where I will be. I'll take this one precaution, though." Leslie had stopped walking. "Will you do me a favor?" she asked.
Aisa paused and looked carefully at Leslie. "Name it," she said.
Leslie drew air from the well of oxygen surrounding her. Then she looked at the clouds and said, "If something happens to me or if you don't hear from me for a long time after I leave, promise me that you will dig up Ijames' time capsule and take out the book that I put inside. I want you to read it. I know that I'm a pretty strange person to be around, but what's inside that book might help you understand me a little better. I have really appreciated your friendship over these years. You deserve it the most."
The wind blew gently, whistling faintly past open ears. It was the only sound that came for a long while.
"Leslie, this would be one of those times when you're being scary," Aisa said with a worried look on her face.
"Aisa…" Leslie said turning her gaze to meet Aisa's eyes, "promise me you'll get that book." Leslie's strength was seeping through her eyes again. In a way, it scared Aisa into submission.
"I promise. You can count on me."
"Thank you," Leslie said softly. She took a deep breath and sighed.
Aisa was still staring though Leslie had closed her eyes to give them a rest. The air felt ill. Aisa wanted to give it some medication: "Geez, but nothing is going to happen anyway so it doesn't even matter."
That seemed to do the trick.
Aisa looked around at the now healthy surroundings. Through the intricate magic of ignorance she had failed to notice her last few steps. Lying beneath her feet was a paved road. Sitting to her left and right were open clearings. Behind her, the large buildings at the center of Pittsburgh city could be seen, but they looked only like small, gentle gray shadows. The great grey fortress was there too—hand reaching to her face shielding a yawn away from the rest of the world. The sun was high, but it was beyond its apex making its way down to the horizon. It wanted to hide from the moon before night fell.
"By the way," Aisa asked, "where do you think we ended up?"
It was an odd, curious, ironic, coincidentally or not thing for Leslie Moira to say what she said next. This is what she said:
"We're on the surface."
This may or may not have been another one of Leslie's hints.
It is crucial to pause the conversation at this point to divulge some very relevant, seemingly digressive information. See, every now and then Gus Little would go through a brief respite in which he would convince himself that he could, indeed, tell the stories floating around in his head. During such daring moments he would write or draw or film his ideas at an almost frantic pace in an almost vain attempt to finish before his sudden inspiration wore off. All in all, Gus had only completely finished thirty-seven of the onehundredthirteenthousandsixhundredtwentyone and still counting stories his imagination had blueprinted. Of those thirty-seven stories, Gus was unhappy with how every single one had turned out.
Frustration, in this situation, was an understatement.
Roughly, if that huge number were to be broken down, it would mean that the stack of papers that Gus contributed to the time capsule—the one with all of his stories compressed into compact little summaries—was around 5,681 pages long.
Still, frustration did not stop Gus from sharing his few completed works with a few of his closest friends. Maybe… just maybe, Gus hoped, someone would give him the clue he was lacking that would help him perfectly tell the tale.
It was one of these unsatisfactorily completed stories that Leslie referenced when she said what she said. Gus finished it during their third year of high school. After he was done typing it up, he found his friend one by one in different parts of the school and threw it into their hands. He was quite proud of it at first:
"Commit this to memory," he said to Ijames giving Ijames a copy of the book.
Ijames shrugged compliantly scratching away at his arm.
"Tell me what you think of this froggy," he said to Kermit, giving Kermit a copy of the book.
Kermit was slightly pissed, but he took it anyway. He didn't hesitate to give Gus a death-stare.
He gave a copy to Leslie not saying anything. Leslie touched her index finger to her thumb. This is what those fingers said: OK.
And finally there was Aisa. "Hey, Aisa! I got you a surprise! It's an IQ test. If you're able to read it, I might be slightly more convinced that you're not an idiot!" he joked flapping the story around in the air.
"Shut up, Gus!" Aisa snapped back. "I already heard about your story from everyone else. You couldn't be more of a jerk!"
Gus was slightly taken aback. Aisa was being serious. "Okay," he said. "I'm sorry I bothered you." Gus turned to leave, taking the final copy with him.
Suddenly, he heard Aisa yelling at him from behind. "What the hell are you doing?! Give me the damn story!" She rushed over and snatched it from his hand.
"Well, I thought you didn't want it! What the hell!?" Gus fumed in confusion.
Aisa took a deep breath. "Don't think, Gus. Just stop thinking. It's not very befitting of you." With that, she walked away. "My life," she continued to herself, "is going to be so much easier after this is over."
It was only after he had passed out his work and after he had read through the entire thing for the first time himself that Gus realized that he had created yet another miserable failure.
The story was about three young boys who spent their time adventuring on the surface of Earth years and years after a fabulous cataclysm had wiped out most of the population. They would play or fight or ask questions about god or why everything under the sky looked so dead and barren or where they were going to find something to eat. One boy was named Yolseph, one boy was named Asa, and the last had no name. The nameless boy was the was the narrator.
Yolseph was the oldest, and he tended to lead them around from place to place. He was an interesting character because he had an odd bulge protruding forth from his stomach. Yolseph always had the bulge covered with his shirt at all times. He protected it with his life.
For some reason, whenever the three boys were playing in, on, or within the rubble of the surface of earth and they heard a low humming sound, they would drop whatever they where doing and run and duck under into the protection of broken down subway tunnels.
When Yolseph ran, his bulge jiggled.
They would huddle together as the sound passed by. It was crucial that they try to stay as still as possible.
"It's going to be a long time before we can go back to the surface," Yolseph would say.
"Tell us the story…" Asa would say, "tell us the story about Eddie."
And then Yolseph would think for a second and finally tell the story.
Eddie, according to Yolseph, was an individual who walked the Earth whenever he pleased. Even when the low humming sound came, he wasn't afraid. In fact, the humming sound would even stop if Eddie got close enough to it.
Apparently, Eddie was a messiah of sorts because he walked the earth for the sake of those who hid in tunnels. He walked the Earth for people like Asa, Yolseph, and the nameless.
The story would get sad at that point because Eddie, as Yolseph told it, died. He didn't just die, either. He was absolutely obliterated into nothingness by a lightening bolt. The survivors of earth didn't even have a relic of Eddie to worship in hard times.
Now, Yolseph would tell the tale of Eddie three times during the course of Gus Little's story, but it was only during the last one, when things were looking really bad, that Yolseph continued the story into an area that he had never discussed before.
"But Eddie's coming back," Yolseph said. "I know for a fact."
"How do you know?" Asa asked.
And then Yolseph showed them what he was hiding inside of his bulge. He held it at arms length, dangling it in front of their faces. It was a pair of red sneakers.
"They belong to him," Yolseph said, "And he'll come back to get them."
That gave them hope.
The story was unimaginatively named "Eddie."
Getting back on track:
Aisa laughed. "I read that too. This is nowhere near as bad as 'the surface.'" Aisa made air quotes around "the" and "surface."
Aisa was right. It was nowhere near as bad as the catastrophe that Gus described in his story, but the reason that Leslie's comment was an odd, curious, ironic, coincidentally or not thing was not because of where they were or what they were doing.
The odd string that she tripped over back at the time capsule had left her with some residual effects. See, Leslie's comment wouldn't become an odd, curious, ironic, coincidentally or not thing until after she and Aisa walked back to Pittsburgh. And then it wouldn't happen until after she packed her bags. And then it wouldn't happen until after she said goodbye to everyone a day before she left. In fact, it wouldn't even happen until after Leslie Moira walked on board a plane inbound for Chicago and it took off under the power of its screaming engines.
The anticipation was maddening. Kermit Kinnard stared and stared at his wall on the day that Leslie left. He wanted to be positive. He wanted to be as strong as Leslie. But he couldn't do it. He just stared and stared. He was waiting.
And then it came.