Prerecorded; an excerpt

So here is the first part to my NaNo novel Prerecorded.  Tell me what you think!

1.   The Tapes

 

 

“When they come looking for me, and they will, don’t tell them about these.  Please.  They won’t help them find me.  These…are a testament.  They’re special, and if they got out…then nothing would be the same again.

                “So, it’s up to you.  You don’t even have to watch them, really, I guess.  You can throw them away, burn them.  Hide them on a shelf, in a box, if you want.  They’re yours, but they’re private.  They’re…they’re me.  They’re you.  They’re one story.

                “And I need to tell it.”

 

 

The moon looked like a marble, and it shocked Jackson that it could be so big in the sky.  Clouds drifted over it like cigarette smoke, turning grey white, and a halo of light surrounded the moon.

                Jackson leaned on his shovel, the wooden handle dug into the muscles in his arm.  In front of him, the shovels of dirt that Brian was tossing into the air plopped on the pile beside him.  Jackson’s eyes tore from the moon and to the tree where Brian was digging at its roots.  The bark had been marked with a crooked “X” and Jackson still gripped the scrap of paper in his hand with the GPA coordinates on it.  Those had been Brian’s idea.  From when he used to geocache with his dad.  Jackson admitted that he’d hidden the tapes well.

                “OK,” Brian said.  He straightened and dropped his shovel to the ground.  He pressed his hands into the small of his back, and the cracking sounded like crunching fall leaves.  “It’s your turn.”

                Jackson replaced Brain’s position at the base of the tree—the burrow between the roots was too small for two people to dig at a time.  The hole in the ground was almost four feet deep.  They had to be getting close.

                Jackson shoved his shovel in the hard damp dirt and heaved against the weight as he wiggled the scoop free.  Brian fell back onto his back and stared at the sky.

                “Why do you need them anyway?” Brian asked.  Jackson knew he never liked the tapes, but Jackson didn’t either.  They’d just chosen different means of handling it.  Jackson was obsessed.  Brian buried them.

                “To take home,” he said.

                “Don’t bring them back, OK.”

                Jackson glanced up at Brian.  He was staring at the sky, his face in shadows and one cheek reflecting the white light, and Jackson stole one more look at the moon before a rush of navy clouds blocked it from view between the tree branches.  He dug the shovel back into the dirt, and it clanged against a rock, and he moved the shovel to dig around it.

                Jackson and Brian, when the tapes first arrived, had watched them twice.  To make sure each copy was the same.  It’d been like dipping his feet into icy lake water.  His entire body shook watching them a second time.  Since then, he’d seen both sets more than he could keep track of.  Then Brian made him bury them.

                His shovel clanged against the rock again, and he glared down into the dark pit, his back bent from standing above it on the roots of the tree.  His lower back ached from pain and shot tendrils up his spine into his shoulders.  He scraped some of the dirt away with the metal end of the shovel, and the rock began to take the form of a square box.

                When he realized what it was, exhaustion and fear washed over him.  He felt sick and nasueas, and he began to think digging them up wasn’t a good idea, that maybe Brian was right and he should leave them where they are.  He felt like he had just found the remains of an old friend, buried beneath an “X” and a tombstone.  But before he could turn around and pile the dirt back on top of the safe, he threw the shovel away from him and jumped into the pit.  He scraped clumsily aroung the edge of the safe, his feet displacing the mud and dirt and clumps of grass so that whenever he uncovered a corner, the dirt would rebury a side.

                Finally, he found the two handles on either side of the safe, and he lifted it from the surrounding dirt and tucking it under his arm.  Now, Brian was standing above him, his height towering when Jackson looked up at him.  He handed the safe to Brian and pulled himself from the pit, and when Jackson was on his feet, Brian shoved them back into his hands.  “I don’t want them,” Brian snapped.  Jackson glared at him as Brian picked up his shovel and began shoving the dirt back into the hole.

                Jackson sat down in the grass, and breeze rustled the leaves on the ground.  It wasn’t snowing, yet, but now Jackson remembered how cold it was.  His fingers were numb from gripping the shovel, and blisters burned through his dirt covered palms.  His entire body shivered, and his lips chapped when he licked them.

                Jackson leaned back and dug in his jeans pocket for the key.  Brian breathed heavily in front of him, and the sound filled the outskirts of the forest with whispers, and as Jackson unlocked the safe, he shivered again.

                He lifted the lid gently, and tucked inside was the bundle of stolen washrags he’d wrapped the tapes in.  Tied around them was an industrial rubber band, thick and straining around the wad.

                “Stop it,” Brian said.  Jackson looked up at him.  He was standing above the pit, still working, the shovel moving back and forth between pile and pit like a machine, dumping dirt into one and stealing it from the other.

                Jackson looked back at the tapes.  He moved them aside and found the black notebook at the bottom of the safe.  He lifted it up and let the pages swish past his eyes as he flipped through them, the words scrawled there blurring and gliding like wings.  His sketches and notes and websites and news reporters where written in the margins.  He’d spent months on them.

                He stopped on a page toward the beginning and held the notebook up until it caught the moon’s light.  She was talking about Brian:

                “I didn’t think I’d send these to you.  Maybe I shouldn’t have.  Maybe I shouldn’t.  This story isn’t even supposed to be on here.  I wanted…  I wanted to protect him, to spare him from hearing about you.  But, you told me once…”

                The moon slid behind the clouds again and the page was shrouded in darkness.  Jackson’s arms dropped, and the pages fluttered in the breeze, flapping like wings through the night.

                Jackson closed the notebook and set it back in the safe.  He closed it and set it aside and pushed himself to his feet.  He grabbed his shovel and began helping Brian.  They were like brothers, silently shoveling dirt into the ground, burying a mutual friend and pretending they were the only ones that knew why they had died.  They were keeping each other’s secrets, pretending at the same time that the other didn’t know about them.