Bourbaki - If

if

Nicholas Bourbaki

Livingston Press

The University of West Alabama

Livingston, AL

Copyright 2014 Nicholas Bourbaki

All rights reserved, including electronic text

ISBN 13: 978-1-60489-134-8, hardcover

ISBN 13: 978-1-60489-135-5, trade paper

ISBN: 1-60489-134-3 hardcover

ISBN: 1-60489-135-1 trade paper

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014932127

Printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America by

EBSCO Media

Hardcover binding by: Heckman Bindery

Typesetting and page layout: Nicholas Bourbaki, Joe Taylor

Proofreading: Joe Taylor

Cover design and layout: Joe Taylor

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

Livingston Press is part of the University of West Alabama, and thereby has non-profit status. Donations are tax-deductible.

first edition

6 5 4 3 2 1

if

How To Read This Book:

At the end of each chapter in If , you (the reader) are asked to make a choice. Instead of turning to the next page in the book, you will click on a hyperlink to go to the start of the next chapter.

For example, one of the chapters ends with the following choice:

If you blame yourself for your lifes failure, go here .

If you blame circumstance, go here .

Clicking on the first go here will take you to a new chapter in which you blame yourself for your lifes failure. Clicking on the second go here will take you to a new chapter in which you blame circumstance.

The novel begins on the next page

After school, you bike to your best friends house. It has been a long day, and you are looking forward to playing video games with him. But when the front door opens, it is your best friends little sister, Iris.

Is Gerard there? you ask.

Mom, is Gerry here ? Iris shouts at the top of her lungs, leaning into the shadows of the house. I dont think hes here, she says. You are annoyed, but you do not say anything. Iris used to keep her distance from you, but then she found out how young you are. She is in sixth grade and you are already in eighth, but because you started school early and skipped a grade, you are actually only a year older than her. Now she bothers you all the time.

Maybe hes in the underground room, she whispers, like someone who knows a secret.

What?

You know.

What underground room?

She pauses and squints. You know . The underground room.

Gerard has never told you anything about an underground room.

Come on, she says. Ill show you. She yells back into the house. Mom, were going to look for Gerry . Then she grabs your hand and shuts the door. I betcha thats where he is.

You let her lead you through the quiet and empty streets of the subdivision. She keeps telling you that you are going too slow. She tugs you by the hand, but when a car passes, she lets it drop. She looks at you, laughs again, and covers her face. Youre so weird, she says.

You keep wondering what the underground room could be. You and Gerard have walked this way many times before, but he never said anything about an underground room. Maybe it is a hiding place, like a tree house. But what kind of tree house is underground?

Iris picks a tall weed from a crack in the sidewalk and runs it across her nose. Betcha didnt know I was in the gang, she says.

Of course I did. You have never heard of any gang.

She smirks. No, you didnt. I bet you didnt know I got inducted . She says it like someone who is proud to have learned a new word but is still not one hundred percent sure about how to use it. She frowns and looks away.

You wish that Gerard had been home. The two of you would be playing video games and drinking sodas by now.

After a while, you and Iris come to the edge of the houses. There are wooden frames and empty lots full of sandy soil and weeds all around. It feels like you have been walking for a very long time, even though you know it could not have been more than half an hour. She leads you through one of the empty lots and points at a ditch behind it. Come on, she says. There it is.

You stare at the ditch. That? you ask. But when you walk closer, you see that there is a flat concrete channel inside the ditch. The channel is a few feet deep and about two dozen feet long. At one end is the entrance to a concrete tunnel.

Iris hops down into the channel and peers inside the dark opening. When you go to stand beside her, you feel a cool breeze coming out of it. It makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck. In the darkness, you think you can see some kind of phosphorescence glimmering far ahead on the tunnel walls.

Wanna go inside and look for him? Iris asks.

If the two of you crouched down and walked single file, you could explore the tunnel. But you have no flashlight or matches. I dont know, you say. Maybe we should go back. You suddenly feel nervous. You are not sure that you are supposed to be here, and there is something gross about the tunnel. There is a thin trail of slimy water that trickles out of it and down the middle of the channel between your feet. It goes all the way to the other end, then disappears into the rocks and dirt there.

Re-tard! Iris yells into the tunnel, crouching at the entrance. Re-tard Gerard! Her voice echoes in the darkness. Then she giggles. You wonder if there is anyone in the empty housing lots who heard her. Maybe there is someone watching you.

Lets go in, Iris says. Hes probably in there. She takes her hand out from the kangaroo pouch of her sweatshirt and points inside the tunnel. Unless youre afraid.

Afraid of what?

I dont know. Youre the one whos a fraidy cat.

You roll your eyes. Im not a fraidy cat.

She continues to stare at you, then laughs again and covers her face. Come on, she says. She grabs your hand and tugs you toward the tunnel.

But this time, you resist.

Oh my God, she says. She looks away. Its just like Gerry said. Youre such a faggot.

No, Im not, you say. And he wouldnt say that.

Youre such a faggot.

No, Im not.

Prove it.

Im not going to

But before you can say anything, she has crouched and disappeared into the tunnel. You can hear the echo of her footsteps.

Then, after a while, you cannot hear anything. When you call after her, she does not respond.

If you follow Iris into the tunnel, .

If you stay outside, .

Carried forward in the wave of bodies, you eventually surface at a collapsed section of the fence. The chain link bounces and shakes beneath your feet. Then you stumble across the coils of barbed wire and onto solid ground.

On the other side of the fence, the protesters disperse like particles drawn into a vacuum, circulating at random, pulled into the empty space. It is oddly peaceful. Some of the men continue to run this way and that in the faint illumination. Others mill about. A window shatters nearby, and you can hear the rattling of a closed door.

Then the first sirens. A few brief squawks. When you turn, you see spinning red reflections on the small storefronts in the distance. Some of the men start to push back toward the breach in the fence, forcing their way against the oncoming bodies.

Within an hour, the police have dispersed the crowd. A few of the protesters refuse to leave and are arrested.

You are reminded of the crowd when, three months later, another mob gathers in another state. This one, flown in at private expense by Republican campaign organizers, stages a riot at the meeting of a county canvassing board. A short while later, the Supreme Court decides to bring the counting of votes to an end.

You must ask yourself then: did your actions make any difference?

Next page