The Marbury Lens by Andrew Smith Page A

Jack.
    A towering stone building on the other side of the trees to my left supported an immense clock on its highest peak. Five o’clock. I had to think about what time that really was to me.
    I kept running, over a bridge and along the shore of a lake where an old man stood throwing crumbs to the birds that came out onto the grass between the water and the path. Behind the zoo, I made a circle around what I guessed was the perimeter of the park, clockwise, back toward the entrance.
    Clockwise.
    I stopped in a narrow garden that was walled in on both sides by tall hedges and lined with intensely bright flowers along the gravel of the pathway. I was drenched. My shirt was plastered to my skin. I took it off and held it to my face, bent forward, resting one hand on my knee.
    “Are you hurt?”
    Startled, I let the shirt fall. I straightened up.
    An old man with a moustache bent toward me. A cricket player. He smelled like tobacco.
    Smoke.
    “Huh?”
    “Your foot,” he said. “Do you need some help?”
    My sock was soaked through with blood where my shoe rubbed against what was left of the mark Freddie Horvath had left on me. I hadn’t even noticed.
    “Oh.” I felt myself reddening, picked up my shirt. “I did that a while ago. I thought it was gone now.”
    “Mind that, then,” he said. “Cheers.”
    And he walked off.
    I found my way back to the park’s entrance and turned right onto Marylebone Road.
    The man with the glasses was waiting for me there.
    He stood with his back to the park’s iron fence and watched me while I pulled my soaked T-shirt back over my head. He wasn’t wearing the glasses, though, and I thought it was odd, since we were outside and they seemed to be so dark. But he still had that expression like he knew me, or at least wanted to say something to me.
    My stomach knotted. I was convinced that somehow I was being followed for what Conner and I had done.
    I gave him another dirty look, turned my chin in the direction of the hotel’s entrance, and jogged past him.
     

    I took off my shoes and socks. I opened the window, peeled out of my wet shirt, and hung it from the casement hinge. I stretched out on the bed.
    My cell phone showed I had a missed call, from Conner. It made me feel good to see his name.
    He didn’t say hello or anything. “Jack. How the hell is it over there?”
    “Hey, Con. I don’t know. I just got here. It’s pretty cool, I guess. Just everything is different. Strange. It’s real easy to get around. I just got in from about an eight mile run through the park. And wait till you see the room they put us in. It’s kind of weird, too.”
    “Like what?”
    “Well, there’s only one bed.”
    “Don’t tell Dana. You know she totally thinks you’re queer, anyway.”
    “You didn’t say anything, did you? About what happened to me?”
    “Oh, come on, Jack. You know I wouldn’t do that.”
    I sighed and sat up on the bed, like I was looking around the room with Conner’s eyes. “And you have to leave the bathroom door open just to get into the shower.”
    “Nice. Super gay.”
    “And the water tastes like fish.”
    Conner laughed.
    “But other than that, and all the weird people, I think we’re going to have fun. And I’m going to be there on Monday at the airport when you get here.”
    “So, you’re all okay, then, Jack?”
    “Con, it feels like someone’s following me.”
    There was silence after I said it.
    I looked out the window, my wet shirt hanging there, convinced, now, that maybe somebody had heard what I said.
    Quit it, Jack.
    Conner made a joke out of it. “You? You’d have to pay someone to follow your skinny ass around.”
    I thought about that man in the restroom. Gary.
    “I feel a little tripped out about things,” I said. I inhaled. “But I think being over here is going to be good for me. You too. I’ve been making myself stay awake so I can get used to it. I’m going to take a shower now and go out and get some