Switch Read online

  DUTTON BOOKS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  First published in the United States of America by Dutton Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2021

  Copyright © 2021 by A.S. King

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Dutton is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us online at penguinrandomhouse.com.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  Ebook ISBN 9780525555520

  Cover art © 2021 by Nicki Crock

  Cover design by Samira Iravani

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  pid_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0

  For the class of 2020

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue I / Time Stopped

  Prologue II / the Switch

  Part One: AFT3RMATH

  The Paleolithic

  Solution Time

  Growth Mindset

  Floor Plan / Wiring Diagram

  Box #11

  Night Shift

  Trust

  Fear

  Glowing

  Mama

  Weekend in #7 Minor

  Potluck

  Part Two: 1NCID3NT / EV3NT

  Track Meet

  Rubber Bullets

  Paparazzi

  Crowbar

  Residue

  Castle / Moat

  Storm

  Part Three: OR1G1N

  Anomalies

  We Are Psych Team

  Cleanup

  Tiny Bombs

  In the Arrow

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Time is the most unknown of all unknown things.

  —Aristotle

  Any man can call time out, but no man can say how long the time out will be.

  —Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

  Knock hard. Life is deaf.

  —Mimi Parent

  Prologue I / Time Stopped

  THE FOLD

  We have arrived at a fold in time and space. Nothing moves forward. A scientific dilemma yet to be solved fully.

  You are probably confused.

  We are confused, too.

  Analog, digital, stopwatches—cell phone providers argued over the idea of fake time / decided it would be unethical / left us with our lock-screen picture—no clock / no date.

  It is, and has been, June 23, 2020, for nine months now.

  It’s a fluke. An irregularity in space. We just have to be patient. Our hair grows / babies are born / people die. But time has stopped. We are being held for ransom / no one knows what the ransom is / who to give it to.

  SOLUTION TIME

  By the Fourth of July, things disappeared from grocery shelves / people hoarded everything from yeast to taco shells / couldn’t stop watching the news. Supermarkets put limits on milk and meat, and only 25 percent had toilet paper, sometimes guarded by signs about how God was watching so people didn’t buy too much.

  Inside of a month, the secretary of education enacted “Solution Time.” Curricula crafted for every classroom / every school / university / every state, to solve the world’s time problem. Students would figure it out / be sufficiently distracted.

  The first outcome of Solution Time was N3WCLOCK, invented by three nineteen-year-olds in a summer-session community college classroom in Reading, Pennsylvania.

  N3WCLOCK exists in one place—N3WCLOCK.com—on the internet. It is now the most-visited web page of all time. It tells you what time and date it would be if Earth hadn’t fallen into a fold in time and space. For the record, N3WCLOCK says it’s presently Monday, March 15, 2021, 16:11. They use military time just in case this is really an alien invasion.

  * * *

  By August, politicians had decided to rely on N3WCLOCK worldwide, and everything returned to normal. Back-to-school sales drove record-high profits. Our clocks stood still. Our egg timers never dinged. Yet we were on time for dentist appointments and we didn’t burn dinner.

  YOU GET USED TO IT

  That’s what they said would happen. Sun still rises in the morning / sets in the evening. We still eat dinner at around 18:00.

  I refuse to pretend that N3WCLOCK is the solution to being in a fold in time and space, though. Solution Time was not invented so we could find new ways to lie to ourselves.

  I’m looking for the Real Solution.

  I think it has something to do with giving a shit about people.

  Prologue II / The Switch

  THE SWITCH

  In the center of our house, there is a switch. It’s like a light switch—on the wall in the hallway outside the kitchen. No one knows what the switch controls, and no one wants to know. So no one in my family ever touches it. And we don’t take any visitors.

  This one day, Daddy built a box around the switch as a safety. When he did that, I wanted to find out everything about that switch. I pried off the box. I stared at the workings / chewed them like gum / but was too scared to flip it / blow the bubble.

  Nailed the box back on. Ignored the box. Spited the box. Until Daddy built another box—a bigger one / plywood / to contain both the switch and the first box.

  This went on for two years. Bigger and bigger boxes. To keep us safe.

  I have been nailed into box #7. My sister in #9, my brother in #11. Daddy lives outside the boxes, hammering.

  NOT WHAT YOU THINK

  Daddy is from Somewhere Else. A place where things are different and where people are secure. He is a naturalized citizen, but there’s nothing natural about being American, he says. All slick talk and bullshit, he says. Daddy comes from a place where every word is honest / nobody shoots you.

  This place is war / he is a soldier with six-inch steel nails. This is a circus and he is juggling all of us. War juggling / weapons in flight. Circuits in circles. Me, Richard, sister. Me, Richard, sister.

  I am a missile launcher.

  Richard is a rifle.

  Sister is an assortment of bombs.

  Part One:

  AFT3RMATH

  The Paleolithic

  BOX #7

  Box #7 makes no sense. It’s supposed to contain me but there’s a hole. A me-shaped hole. When I slide through it, I find the entire world. I slide through it every so-called weekday morning—and go to the high school.

  My brother Richard is presently in his box. #11. No him-shaped hole. If he wants to go anywhere—like classes for his sophomore year at community college—he has to use the front door or climb out a window.

  Sometimes I hear him crying in there. Sometimes I hear him skipping rope so fast I can feel the wind of it. Sometimes I hear him practicing Portuguese. I asked him one time why
he’s learning Portuguese. He said, “So I can talk to myself and none of you will know what I’m saying.”

  Richard found high school to be educational. He learned how to be a rifle there. Load him and squeeze the trigger—ideas come out / clubs get formed / find yourself singing holiday songs at the old-folks home or picking up trash on the side of a highway.

  But Richard / Rifle has no bayonet. He cannot stab ideas, he can only shoot them.

  The only thing educational to me in high school so far is the wide selection of javelins in the track and field shed. I stab ideas with them. They teach me how to fly through time when no time exists.

  TRACK / FIELD

  When I was born, I did not know how to throw a javelin. I am now sixteen and I know this: either you are on the oval / track, or inside the oval / field.

  am inside the oval

  am the jav as it flies overhead

  missile seeking its target

  Until three weeks ago, I didn’t know about track and field. It’s a freak accident no one knew was coming. My arm has something in it. My body has a need to propel. There is gunpowder behind it / kapow / I am downright Olympic.

  * * *

  —

  It was a natural progression. I wasn’t supposed to be in that particular gym class, but our schedules changed to allow Solution Time and I accidentally skipped a PE credit / Tru Becker please report to the guidance office.

  It was way too cold to be going outside for Intro to Track & Field because it was the first week of pretend-March, but it was refreshing, too. I didn’t have any choice, and this is what Daddy always said: Find reason to like the thing you must do. It makes easier.

  I didn’t need to find a reason / the reason was clear. I was in the AFT3RMATH / sister had moved away—I could be good at Intro to Track & Field because for the first time in my life, no one was waiting at home to make fun of me / make me pay for being good at Intro to Track & Field. Daddy, Richard, and I were the only ones left and Daddy was busy with the boxes / Richard was busy being a good boy / rifle at community college. I could do anything I wanted to and do it well. This was a novelty / a dare.

  I was okay at short running. Decent at jumping once I got my footing. But then I threw a javelin for the first time.

  “Holy shit!” I heard Coach Turner say.

  The first time I watched it fly, I was part of it. Even in the spring morning grass / shoes weighted down with damp, I was flying.

  We watched it / me land far away from the other students’ attempts / stabbing the idea of failure.

  “Becker!” he yelled as he jogged toward me. “How’d you know how to do that?”

  I shrugged.

  “You threw one of these before, right?” he asked.

  “Can I throw another one?”

  He gave me another javelin. I rolled my neck and shoulders, weighed it in my hand to feel the balance, then took three sideways steps, bounced, and tossed it again. I felt my arm still part of it, pull me off the ground and behind it. I felt sixty-miles-per-hour.

  Gym class had never been interesting before.

  * * *

  —

  Coach Turner sat me down later that day with two other track coaches and I didn’t understand anything he said. Something about preseason. Something about being late. Something about missing “conditioning time.” He tripped over his words while the other two coaches looked less than enthused. The only thing Coach Aimee said was “You have to maintain a B average to compete. You’re going to have to bring your grades up.”

  When I had Daddy sign the permission slip, I didn’t even know what a track team really was. I’ve been going to practice for two weeks now. I’m still not entirely sure.

  I just know the javelins are educational every single day / taught me that none of us know what we have inside of us until it shows itself / until we take the dare.

  GREEK GODDESS / SPEAR

  I do not listen in class / have trouble caring about things that don’t interest me. I don’t know two-thirds of the elements of the periodic table or how to find x when y equals five.

  I mostly read articles about psychology.

  x equals why my brother Richard cries.

  x equals why gym class is suddenly interesting.

  I have finally found a place for myself in high school / I am here to throw a spear. Next pretend-Tuesday is our opening home meet. Carrie says away meets are the best because sometimes we don’t get home until after dark and we sing on the bus.

  Carrie calls me goddess, like this shit is Greek. But I’m Paleolithic. It’s survival, not competition. When I sleep I can feel the cave around me. The predators. The danger of being good at something.

  Only thing x means to me now is where it marks the spot—

  farther than anyone ever threw before.

  Solution Time

  NIGEL

  Our advisor / absentee / predator for Solution Time is Nigel Andrews. Nigel is in love with himself and his Solution Time program / he invented it / it came to him in a fever dream back when Earth first landed in the fold. He is never here, even though he’s supposed to be helping us complete our two Solution Time objectives.

  Create an individual project that explores time in a new, exciting way / You will conduct this project with your group as the instructor.

  Write a research paper about your personal solution / Your thesis statement must be clear and match your conclusion.

  How anyone can find “a new, exciting way” to do anything in the same old way we do everything is beyond me / typical adult bullshit. Thesis / conclusion / educational missionary position. Nigel thinks “real” science is 3-D printers and advanced math / lab rats / rivalry and electric shocks. High school is precious, you know / best years of your life / why waste it on psychology.

  But Nigel is also often drunk. Back in pretend-December, Len guessed from the smell of Nigel’s breath. “Hard to tell on top of the Altoids, but it’s presenting as gin,” he said. Ellie told her dad / her dad called the school / Nigel only visits us once a month now.

  I’m pretty sure Solution Time was invented as a nationwide distraction. They schedule us to make us feel less lost / two hours every day, first thing in the morning. First quarter, we invented our research projects. Second and third quarter, we conduct our research and have team discussions about it. Fourth quarter is dedicated to writing our papers about our solutions. Our thesis statements are due in two weeks. I have no idea what mine will say.

  PSYCH TEAM

  We were split into groups during a day-long assembly back in pretend-September. The auditorium was its usual sea of almost all white faces / we are considered one of the “good” schools / half of us drowning in shame for it / half of us waving tiny American flags, saying we deserve the best / everything.

  Our group is Psych Team: five weirdos who believe that the human mind has something to do with escaping a fold in time and space.

  It only took a half hour for us to find a stack of old psychology textbooks in the back of the book closet. Nigel said that we were too far back / those books weren’t for us / we’d never understand them. “Psychology at your age is pointless.” But I walked out with a Robert Plutchik textbook and an old philosophy book, Ellie walked out with two Jean Piaget books, and Carrie picked Philip Zimbardo because the cover promised that the book would change the reader’s life. Eric walked out with a Strauss and Howe about Generation X, and Len ended up with a guide for college freshman from 1958 called Controversy / picked it because it has a chapter in it titled “The American Sex Revolution.”

  The outcome of the too-far-back book-closet dive was awesome / five students with brand-new bayonets / Psych Team’s projects are off the charts.

  Carrie’s project is about the psychology of time, focusing on Zimbardo’s time perspective theory,
and how each of us is affected by how we see the world and our lives through time. For example, I started out in past-negative / future-negative but I’m working toward past-positive / future-positive.

  Eric’s project covers epigenetics and recent discoveries that trauma passes down on a genetic level. He already has his paper mostly written: “Generation Fifteen: Dragging Fourteen Generations’ Worth of Your Bullshit.”

  Ellie uses Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development to explore the different results Solution Time will get from children at different stages of development. She’ll then look at how those results should be shared with all age groups for further expansion. Since this would benefit Solution Time in general, Ellie’s was Nigel’s pet project until her dad called the school about the gin-breath.

  Len wants to be a filmmaker. He records random stuff all the time and makes short documentaries. For Solution Time, he’s asking us a lot of “why” questions about our futures / what are the advantages of being educated? / going to college? / what is college really for? He films parts of our conversations and will make a film of it somehow.

  * * *

  —

  My Solution Time class project relies on the ideas of two dead white men.

  “If everything when it occupies an equal space is at rest, and if that which is in locomotion is always occupying such a space at any moment, the flying arrow is therefore motionless.”

  —Zeno of Elea, Greek philosopher