The Marbury Lens by Andrew Smith

key card into the liner of my shorts, hoping it wouldn’t fall out. Not very comfortable. He watched me do it.
    I made my way toward the uniformed men who stood at the entrance. I tried keeping my eyes down on the floor. Dark wood. Just like where I was born, I thought. I was so embarrassed for some reason, I felt like my skin was burning under all the attention.
    Stop fucking looking at me.
    The doormen stood ready, their gloved hands poised to let me out.
    I passed the lobby bar.
    Something made me stop.
    That was the first time I saw the man with the purple glasses.
    And I didn’t realize it at that moment, but that was the first time I had a flash of the other side, too.
    I guess I need to slow down here and try to remember exactly what happened.
    How things began falling apart for Jack.

Fourteen
    There was something about the man wearing the purple glasses that scared and relaxed me at the same time. It’s hard to explain, but it was kind of the same way I’d felt about Freddie Horvath, too.
    He stood there, obviously watching me, and when I looked at him, he didn’t glance away. He just kept watching me through those glasses, with a hint of a smile on his face like he’d been expecting me.
    And, considering where we were, he looked as out of place in that lobby as I did: He was wearing a long, dull-colored traveling coat and sweater, despite the heat of the day, and he held a rumpled hat in one hand. He seemed young, maybe in his twenties, but he also looked very tired, like he’d been on the road for months. The uneven, sand-colored stubble on his face made him look too young to grow a full beard, and it seemed he hadn’t been in front of a bathroom sink in at least a week. When I passed by, he stood up from the stool at the bar where he’d been drinking a glass of beer and quickly pulled the glasses away from his eyes, jolted, as if he recognized me, but I told myself I was just being ridiculously paranoid about people, and wondered if I would ever let myself relax and trust anyone again.
    But the thing that was most intense about him—and I know this now after what I’ve been through, even if I shrugged it off at the time—were his purple eyeglasses. Because they weren’t just purple, there was something else about them, and when I caught him staring at me and looked right at him, I swear that just for a blinking instant I could see something on the other side of the lenses.
    Something that was all white and gray, with edges and folds.
    Something like two deep holes that stretched farther and deeper than anything I’d ever seen before. Really big, like cracking a layer on one of those stacking Russian dolls and finding something you’d never expect could fit inside.
    And I swear that for that smallest of moments, I could see people on the other side of the lenses, too.
    All week long, I’d kept thinking about how the drugs Freddie Horvath gave me must have ruined something in my brain.
    I gave the man a dirty look. I was sick of people staring at me.
    That shit in his glasses had to be nothing more than the reflection of all those creepy old people hanging around in the lobby.
    Nothing else.
    Fuck this place.
    The doormen pushed open the heavy glass doors.
    I think I started running before I was even out of the hotel.

Fifteen
    I ran.
    My ankle hurt. I thought it was probably bleeding inside my sock. I didn’t look. It just wasn’t healing well.
    Yeah, I remember you, Freddie.
    Fuck you, too.
    As soon as I forget about you, you really will be dead.
    I ran fast. Sweat dripped from my chin and elbows. Sometimes, I’d look back to see where it left dark coins trailing my direction along the pathway.
    The park seemed to stretch forever beside an expanse of lawn where men in white played cricket, and blankets made red or yellow rectangles in the sun where lovers lay tangled, sleeping off the drowsy contents of emptied wine bottles.
    Conner and Dana.
    And everyone seemed to be looking at me.
    Quit it,