Dissimulants

Parks could see no way, not even just a break in the clutter, to walk to the house. But the crazy thing was that once they stepped into the yard, dozens of intersecting paths popped out in front of them. All the paths eventually led to a single one that ended at the front door. Which was why the question Geli asked, made no sense.

"Which do you want to take?" There was excitement in her voice.

Still recovering from the assault to his senses, Parks didn't know what to answer; didn't understand the question. He looked at the paths again. It was clear she wanted a response, but what to say had him stumped.

"This one?" Parks offered, in the form of a question.

"Really?" She was disappointed. "I took the petunia path just this morning."

Did she want him to pick another? Parks couldn't tell. This was something Geli did when she asked him for a choice. No matter which he picked, she made him feel that he missed the obvious merits of the other option. He could see by her stance, folded arms and all, that he would have to make another selection. He pointed to the cobblestone path. "How about this one?"

"You're not being serious," Geli said.

"Does it make any difference?"

"I wouldn't be asking if it didn't," Geli said.

If it did make a difference, which he couldn't see how it would, he'd rather not have his bad choice around for Geli to bring up later. "You choose," he said.

"It has to be you."

"But you're not letting me."

"Okay," Geli said. "Whichever you pick next, that's the one we'll use."

Suddenly, his choice began to feel as important to him as it had to Geli. Each of the little paths now looked different from the others. He noticed that the pieces of broken gnomes, which had just seemed randomly scattered before, formed one of the paths. The circle of turquoise stones was a maze ending in another path. The walls of the orderly flowerbeds and the borders of the wildflowers created even more ways to get to the house. One path was made of big chips of dark brown wood; another was made of ultra-fine, straw-colored sawdust. Then, Parks saw a path that was entirely different from all the others.

"That one," he said. He pointed his finger to a gap in a huge, tangled bunch of vines. Just in front of the gap, on both sides, were clumps of polka-dotted mushrooms. They were the kind from fairytales and kindergarten. Until this moment, Parks had never known that they really existed.

Geli smiled.

"Good choice?" Parks asked.

"Great choice," she answered, then reached out for his hand and led him to the opening. "Get ready for a surprise."

As soon as he had crossed onto the path, the background of city beach noises disappeared. The muffled sounds of a damp forest replaced the hum of traffic from The Great Highway. The entire yard had changed into dense wood and moss. It was still dark, but it was no longer night. Where it found cracks in the branches, sunlight pushed through; shade covered the rest of the forest. They had stepped from the beach, deep into a growth of giant redwood trees. Parks wished that Geli had given him a better warning. Although he wouldn't have believed this anyway, it just wasn't enough for her to only say: "Get ready for a surprise."

A car had tried to run him down on his skateboard early that night. Hours later, he narrowly escaped people he didn't know who had come to kill him. And just after that, he outran flaming airborne car parts from an explosion at his back. Now, he'd ended that night with a quick teletransportion into the middle of the some day, in the middle of a forest. With all that, it didn't seem unreasonable to need a break. He took a seat on the trunk of the nearest fallen tree.

As he and his breath caught up with each other, and he realigned some of his wits, Parks began to realize that he could still hear the ocean. It wasn't any nearer or farther than it had been a few minutes earlier. Two hundred feet of open highway and sandy beach had become two hundred feet of densely packed forest, but Ocean Beach was still out there. He and Geli hadn't gone anywhere: the rest of the world had left them.

"Amazing, isn't it?" Geli asked.