Chapter Text
X
If someone were to ask Gumball—and he didn’t mean simply asking, he meant sitting down, looking him right into the eye with a clarity of the things that go on around him the cat would come to admire, and really ask for an honest answer—about how he felt about the Void, then he’d say that it was annoying. If someone were to look past it, and conclude that while he wasn’t lying, he wasn’t telling the whole truth either and ask again, then he’d say that the Void was something they shouldn’t take the time to understand.
Now, it’s critical to understand that while Gumball’s ego is the size of Hector and a half, he didn’t necessarily mean his answer in a way of insulting anyone, surprisingly. If those words ever do leave his lips, he’d be surprised to find that he wouldn’t be insulting anyone with the answer, either. In fact, the only thing trumping that bit of shock would be a resident of Elmore knowing enough about the Void to make conversation about it. Oftentimes, he found that the Void could allude to the thoughts as much as dreaming did, which was very. Freaking. Annoying.
Now, the crux of the matter wasn’t to highlight how the Void wasn’t worth thinking about, but to point out how it didn’t want to be thought about. It sounded insane. It looked insane. But that was how the Void seemed to operate. To try to understand it would be a waste of time.
It didn’t mean Gumball had to like it, though.
XI
“There’s no storm on its way, Richard,” Mom emphasized, a resigned sort of stress lining her sharp features. “None of us would get hit with lightning, so you can put down the rubber gloves.”
From her place at the table, Anais lifted her head from her book and opened her mouth. Mom gave her a look. She ducked her head down and flipped a page.
“Nu-uh!” was the eloquent response. The door was kicked down and there Dad was, arms full of bright yellow cleaning gloves and a determined glint in his eyes. There was a rubber glove hanging from one of his ears, which should be falling off from how it was hanging, and yet it wasn’t for some reason that it was too early to try to figure out. “The clouds are angry! We need to ensure our food! And safety! But don't forget the food!”
There’s the practiced motion of grabbing the rubber gloves from Dad’s arms. “I checked the forecast. It’s only cloudy, it’s not going to rain today, so we don’t need rubber gloves.”
“That’s what we assume.” Dad pulled a flashlight from who knew where and shone it in his face. No one wondered how the room suddenly dimmed for dramatic effects. “But the great cotton candy in the sky proves otherwise!”
Anais emerged from her book, a spoonful of Daisy Flakes an inch from her mouth. Darwin seemed to actually be contemplating the statement. Next to Dad, Mom yawned, grabbing her still full mug from the kitchen counter to take a sip, steam and all. She set it down again and exhaled what seemed to be a calming breath. Steam blew from her nose. No one knew if it was from anger or the coffee. No one dared to ask, either.
“ . . . do you mean the clouds?” Gumball gestured to the still very dull, very lifeless, very gray sky. “It does look like the world’s about to end.”
“Gumball!” And oh, that was definitely steam coming from Mom’s nose out of anger. And ears. “Stop scaring your father!”
He was going to open his mouth to defend his honor—or what was left of it, anyway—when she pinned him with a glare so harsh he felt his fur shriveling up and turning to dust. Literally. Next to him, Darwin coughed and spat out blue and gray. Other than a blank stare, his brother didn’t acknowledge him.
Did he do something to offend him unknowingly? He hoped not, but it was looking like that. Meh, he wouldn’t have been the first, and most certainly wouldn’t be the last. Shrug it off, Gumball.
Dad threw his hands to the sky and shouted out of fear. “We need to go to Joyful Burger! Every Joyful Burger in Elmore! My name will be inscribed on their walls with how much I’ll eat!” He glared at the ceiling. “I’ll eat anything and everything but cotton candy!”
“Clouds,” Mom corrected, shuffling to the kitchen to put the rubber gloves away. After brief contemplation, she reached for a higher cabinet instead of the one under the kitchen sink. “It’s just cloudy today, Richard.”
“Those aren’t clouds,” he was quick to refute. “But whatever it is, it’s probably edible, so cotton candy.”
“What about rain?” Darwin swung his legs as he hopped from his chair, cereal now ruined. He peeked out of the window. “It looks like it’ll rain, Mrs. Mom.”
She squinted at the television with a frown. “While I’m more than sure the world isn’t going to end—Richard, take off the glove, it’s probably filthy—I’m sure it’s going to rain eventually.”
“Today?” Anais asked.
“Eventually,” she repeated, swallowing the rest of her coffee. “But I don’t want you guys to get caught in any rain, so you’ll have to— Richard!”
“I’m not getting thrown into a trashcan today, cotton candy sky!”
XII
So as previously stated: the Void was as elusive as a really good dream. It just wasn’t true with Gumball.
He refused to look more into that than at face value. He didn’t know why he was the exception. He didn’t want to know why. He kind of wanted to go through with his life and ignore it, if possible. He knew it wasn’t really possible at this point, but he liked lying to himself whenever he could.
Turned out, he liked lying to himself so much he sometimes didn’t really notice it when he lied to other people.
XIII
So also as previously stated: the sky looked so asinine that even he could tell that something was going on. Another thing not previously stated: the weird sky had something to do with yesterday, which also had something to do with the Void, which had something to do with the lack of sun and stifling warmth clamoring over his fur like that itchy winter coat Gumball hid in the attic in hopes of never having to wear it again.
Another thing previously stated but not explained enough: Darwin was currently upset at him.
See, Darwin didn’t get angry (his words, not Gumball’s). He didn’t get aggravated enough to keep a frown on his face for more than two minutes. He was more of an optimistic personality, often glazing words and truth with a layer of icing thick enough to turn a cake into a cinderblock upon hardening. But Gumball loved cake, even as a cinderblock, because that meant he could throw it whenever he grew bored and get the still soft cake underneath. And hard icing was still edible icing. He’d still eat it.
Point was: Darwin got upset—and rarely anything more drastic than that—but it faded away quickly. Fizzled out like bits of television static. He’d get distracted by one thing or another or begrudgingly followed Gumball with whatever he was doing and things mended on their own. Continuity was strange, but it was even stranger with someone like Darwin. He just didn’t hold onto things long enough for there to be one.
Not to say it was a bad thing—it was quite the opposite. Turned out, it was just how Darwin was. Forgiving nearly to a fault, but somehow chaotic enough to constantly exist on the same wavelength as him. So when something upsets him, and it stumped even Gumball, the resident annoyance, about it . . .
On the bus ride to school, conversations were as animated as ever. Not as boisterous as students during yesterday’s fire drill, but a calm kind of chaotic that only took the smallest ember to stir up trouble. The kind of environment Gumball tended to thrive in, basking under the rays of entropy and narrowing his eyes, unwilling to miss a single opportunity.
But not this morning.
Not even Rocky’s eccentric driving could peel his eyes away from the window, where bloated clouds hovered over Elmore. There was a stone in his stomach, sinking down to the cracked leather seats, down further to the road, and down even further until there was an endless, everlasting bottomless pit large enough to swallow the amount of food Dad ate on a weekly basis.
And from an outside point of view, there was nothing inherently wrong with the sky. It just looked like it was going to be a cloudy day—probably rain a bit, but nothing to get alarmed about. Just bloated, gray clouds hovering in the sky, positioned just enough to shield the blue sky from his eyes.
But . . . Gumball just knew it was something else.
Call it intuition (or fear, or cowardice, or the sound of his brain screeching to a halt whenever anything concerning the strange nature of yesterday was concerned) but the moment Gumball looked at the cloudy sky, he just knew that something wasn’t as it seemed.
The worst part? He just couldn’t put a finger on it. The sun wasn’t even active as it usually was yesterday, and while it was somewhat uncommon, it wasn’t alarming. Heck, even the cloudy sky wasn’t alarming, when one used logic (or something resembling it, in this case).
The bus ran over a pothole. Everyone jostled but conversation otherwise went uninterrupted. Gumball nearly went back to staring at the sky when he noticed the scent of burning skin.
“Dude,” he said, turning to Darwin, “you’re burning holes in the back of my neck.”
“Good.” He crossed his arms. “I want you to feel the full consequences of lying.”
Oh, so that was what it was about. He should’ve rubbed his remaining neurons together to get that one. He hummed. “Next time you want me to feel the full consequences of anything, then I suggest getting Mom involved.”
Darwin gave him a look so upsetting half his face proceeded to catch on fire.
Literally. It was so abrupt that he sat there in disbelief before the heat settled in.
Then he screamed. Darwin’s breath got caught in his lungs; nearby, Teri screamed and scooted the closest she could possibly get to the window.
“I’m going to catch on fire!” She flailed. She was, indeed, quite flammable.
Penny and Sarah gasped. “Gumball!”
Bobert tilted his head to the side. “Initiating emergency protocol ORANGE. Please stand—”
“I got it, I got it!” Darwin, having recovered from the shock by, you know, the sound of Gumball freaking out, grabbed a water bottle that came from No One Knew Where and proceeded to dump it on his head. “Don’t worry, I’ll save you so I can keep being upset at you!”
“What the— what?!” He sounded like he was drowning, probably because he was close to it, and he probably looked and smelled like a wet cat. Burnt wet cat, but still. “You’re mad at me? But dude—”
“ Upset. And you lied to me! Twice! I even made a speech—”
“Made isn’t the right word. You plagiarized it from Daisy the Donkey—”
“—about the two-way street that is trust.” Wow, absolutely no acknowledgment of his comment. He really was getting mad—er, upset. “I thought you would tell me the truth.”
“And I was,” he explained, “I just fell asleep yesterday.”
“For, like, fourteen hours!”
“So? Dad slept double that time once!”
“But it was normal. Even the sleep-eating.”
(“Do you think we should stop them?” Alan whispered. “It looks like their preexisting relationship is being tested—likely either the beginning of or as a result of preexisting internal strain.”
“Are you kidding?” Leslie rolled his eyes. “I don’t think either of them is capable of keeping secrets from each other.”
“Which makes their friendship so strong,” Sarah admired.
“Which means drama,” Masami said. She and Leslie were wearing matching cat-like grins.
“That too!” Excitement bled into Sarah’s voice. “Do you think it marks the beginning of a harrowing conflict that will define them for years to come?”
“Are you implying we’re side characters?” asked Carmen.
Sarah went to respond. “I mean—” Her thoughts fizzled into static. She tilted her head to the side. Got the sudden, indescribable feeling to look outside, so she did. Looked up at the sky. Looked down at her hands when she realized what she was doing. That line of thought also fizzled out into static. She instead scrambled to finish her sentence. “—well, we all are in our own ways, aren’t we?”
“Weirdo.” Masami rolled her eyes, but Sarah was frowning, unlistening, trying to remember what exactly she was thinking.)
“—thinking that hey, maybe Gumball was telling the truth this time because it’s an integral part of building better relationships on all levels, but then that wasn’t the case, and—”
“This isn’t about not trusting you, dude, oh my—”
“Well, what else am I supposed to assume?”
“I—and I’m being honest right now, don’t give me that look—didn’t lie to you. My headache was really gone. I felt fine! I didn’t even feel tired until later! I’m being honest! Honest!”
“You said you were fine.”
“And I was fine! I felt fine. That nap could have resulted from anything.”
Darwin gave him a look that made Gumball contemplate whether or not he was still holding the shovel he was digging his grave with. “You really think that?”
Then here was when Gumball really started putting his foot in his mouth. His big mouth seemed to run a mile a minute, which also ran without input from his brain, which seemed to be engraving his name on his headstone with every word he spoke. “Why do you care so much anyway? It isn’t anything serious. Again: just a headache!”
Gumball could clearly taste foot in mouth as Darwin wheeled from the offense. “Well, sorry if being concerned is such an inconvenience. You’ve just never acted like that before.”
And—well, that was a pretty valid point. Wasn’t like he could even begin to talk about why, though. He was a lot of things, but he carried a certain flavor of crazy he liked to keep—and not be mixed with the much more serious, people staring at you without a hint of mirth in their eyes, kind of crazy. “I know but—aren’t you overreacting? Just a little bit?”
“Oh, so now it’s my fault?”
“No.” He won’t concede, not as long as there’s a way to solve this without taking a rocket launcher to his ego. “It’s just a series of events that come together to make something inconvenient altogether. I had a headache, but it went away. Probably due to the insane amount of water you forced down my throat, but it’s gone. Then I was just tired. It wasn’t anything to talk to you about because it wasn’t anything to be concerned about. Just—it was never an attack against you, okay?”
“Wow, Gumball,” Alan said, “that was really mature of you to say that. Takes real guts—”
Gumball did something he didn’t expect himself to do and drew out a single claw and pointed it at Alan. He didn’t want his condescending praise right now. He may actually pop him using Carmen’s pricks if it came to that.
Silence echoed throughout the bus. Never had it sounded so sweet.
Almost everyone looked away and started busying themselves with something else. Almost everyone. Leslie and Masami weren’t deterred from such forms of entertainment so easily. They watched reality television together.
“No, actually,” Darwin piped up, “I want to hear their opinions since you think I’m overreacting.”
“Darwin, come on—”
Carrie nodded. “I think you’re valid in both your reasoning and reaction, Darwin.”
“That’s a biased party—”
“Well, I think Gumball deserves to at least be heard out.”
Hearts and sparkles and all things magical popped up around Gumball’s face, brighter than the sun. His voice came out utterly lovestruck and dumb, soaked in syrup and covered in the mush that love tends to turn his thoughts into. “Thank you, Penny.”
She giggled and he was about to melt into a puddle right then and there. Just. Become one with water for the remainder of his life.
Darwin cleared his throat.
He pointed at the fish. “I still think you’re overreacting!”
And—oh. Now he looked mad. Like, legitimately mad. Good job, Gumball. “And you’re a massive jerk!”
He slid from the seat and walked across the bus.
. . . or at least tried to. With Rocky’s driving it was always a gamble. He blinked, taking a moment to process what just happened. Darwin sat next to Carrie, as to which Gumball sighed and decided to give him a few minutes to think things over. He looked back outside at the clouds and—
“—de? Gumball, are you okay? We’re here already.”
Gumball blinked and . . . the bus was nearly empty. The only people that remained were him and Rocky. Otherwise, the place was empty.
“We are?” he asked dumbly, looking out the window to see Elmore Junior High. Some students still lingered outside—likely to talk or to make the most of the few minutes before the bell—but most of them were either pouring in or were inside already. “Huh, we are.”
“Are you okay?” the bus driver asked. The frown looked out of place on him because a) he was a puppet and b) he never seemed to take much of anything too seriously. Not as far as he knew, at least. “You seemed really out of it.”
“I’m just contemplating how to maximize recess with the sky as gray as an angry Masami today.” He placed a fist in the palm of his hand. “So far, I need a deck of cards, some candy, and a table to throw.”
He laughed. “Gambling is illegal.”
“Only if you get caught.” He smiled.
Stepping from the bus, he wondered how, once again, he lost track of time to the point in which he wasn’t really aware of what was happening until someone else said something. He had an attention span the size of a—
He found Bobert and frowned. Something was telling him that something dealing with him was going to happen today. Or repeat, really. Probably another fire drill? Eh, it wasn’t like he hated them.
His eyes searched until he found Darwin. He drew a hand up to wave, but his brother turned away with a huff and crossed arms.
So he’s really mad at me this time.
XIV
“I think,” Mr. Small advised, “we should go over your version of the story.”
Gumball would take a deep breath if the room wasn’t currently choking on the scent of cheap candles and air freshener. There were two cups on Mr. Small’s desk next to his propped feet, both filled with lemonade (“I’m trying a new recipe,” he said, as if lemonade wasn’t one of the simplest things to make) that he was too apprehensive to try. Whenever he wasn’t looking, the cat slowly slid his cup further away from him. Not to be mean, but—well—he wasn’t going to drink that. Not if he wanted to survive long enough to finish this conversation.
He clasped his blue hands (paws) together. “Let me guess: Darwin was already dragged here?”
“ Dragged is such a strong word,” he said, which totally meant he was dragged to this very same chair one point earlier in the day. “I prefer the term encouraged.”
“Well, was he encouraged to think about how he was overreacting?”
He raised a finger. “I am not here to pick sides. To simplify the world into black and white discredits the shades of gray and complexities that construct human thoughts, passions, and emotions.”
Right, he thought and resisted the urge to sink lower in his chair. Apparently, all it took were a few aggravatingly well-placed and well-timed rumors (less like rumors, and more like conversing, not that he really wanted to acknowledge the innate ability for Masami and Leslie to do just that) for the school’s resident guidance counselor to descend upon him like a vampire. The notion of keeping problems to oneself in a town like Elmore was nonexistent simply ‘cause problems always have to subtly involve Gumball, one way or another for better or worse. In this case, for worse. He didn’t really want outside input. Didn’t even want to think about the situation, if he was being brutally honest.
He stared at the stubbornly gray sky. This is your fault, Void.
The Void, unsurprisingly, didn’t dignify him with any indication of an answer.
“This is stupid,” he commented. To both the Void and the situation.
“Perhaps some lemonade will cheer you up,” Mr. Small suggested.
He ignored the lemonade. The little slice of lemon floating in there serenely only served to annoy him more. “This is stupid.”
“Well,” he abruptly said, “I think I’ll start off by asking for a recollection of the events from your perspective, then.”
Mr. Small was annoyed, but so was Gumball so he hardly felt anything for him. He didn’t want to be here, so it was fair that he, in turn, was somewhat annoyed. This was one of those issues that just spiraled out of his hands simply because it did, not because it was necessary, or even because of bad luck. It just spiraled to include other people because that was just the way things worked.
It’d always work like that—things happened, they expanded, and then they imploded, and all of a sudden it worked out again. But that wasn’t what was chipping away at him. It was just—
“I had a headache and then I didn’t and I took a nap afterwards. Darwin suddenly thinks I’m lying about being in pain. He thinks I’m lying—even though I don’t lie to him. Why would I lie to him about this?”
—that Darwin didn’t seem to trust his word, despite him actually putting grunt effort into making his word genuine.
Mr. Small took a sip from his cup, blanched, hid his mouth behind a hand, and set it down. Gumball shifted his cup even further away from himself. “From a philosophical standpoint, lies could be subjective when given the circumstances.” He eyed his face. “Not to jump the slingshot—”
“What?”
“Slingshot. Guns are too violent for the school setting. Anyway, not to jump the slingshot, but I don’t think you’re lying. I just don’t think you’re telling the truth, either.”
Gumball raised an eyebrow. “So I’m like, in a secret third option in limbo that rarely anyone knows about and yet have to parse through anyway?”
“What? Of course not—” Gumball said that with dripping sarcasm, but he wasn’t going to correct him now. “—but the truth of the matter is you’re not fully aware that you’re lying to him because you don’t want to acknowledge an undeniable truth.”
“An undeniable truth?” he echoed.
He gestured to his window. “Take the sun—which will be out again tomorrow, but for now, just imagine that it’s out right now—for instance. Now, imagine you’re someone who gets a sunburn easily. But one day, you boast about being able to enjoy the sun and ignore the use of sunscreen. You get a sunburn but still boast about being able to enjoy the sun. You’re in obvious discomfort, but choose to ignore it because you still like the sun. Now, embodying Darwin’s side of things, a friend close to you wouldn’t get upset because you’re boasting about liking the sun, but because you’re ignoring your discomfort—which would serve as the undeniable truth in this case—and brushing off outside concerns. In some cases, it usually points to something bigger.”
“Bigger?” He frowned. “I don’t get it—it’s just a headache. And a nap. But that’s not weird, right?”
Mr. Small tapped the rim of his cup. Gumball somehow suddenly felt small in the chair. Far too small for the big words that were headed his way. “The difference between a lie and abnormal circumstances mainly lies in how you react to it.” He glanced at Gumball. “If it was a lie, you usually try to cover it up. But if it was just abnormal, you would’ve taken advantage of having a simple headache and would have gone home the first chance you got. At least, that was what Darwin told me when I talked with him.”
XV
Gumball never got sick.
He could command his body to simply not get sick—manipulate himself on levels that actively disturbed Teri and awed Darwin, to an extent. Fighting germs was something his body was efficient at doing—something dealing with his immune system, but he didn’t care enough to know it—and had been doing it for a long time. Well, for as long as he’d been alive.
But pain, in general, was . . . a gray area.
A tremendous one.
Some days, he could break bones or get thrown into a wall, or suffer some harmful fate that would befall him for whatever reason and get back up. Which was kind of weird. Okay—it was very weird. One of the oddest things that would happen to him, but he worked with it. Didn’t really question it—so he didn’t know if it was a Void thing or not—primarily because it didn’t happen exclusively to him, and he didn’t know where to begin trying to figure that out, so he let his procrastination turn into his lethal form of laziness and didn’t pursue the phenomena at all.
Other days, however, he couldn’t help but notice that injuries healed slowly, or just slower than average. Dragged out just enough to be an inconvenience, which also just so happened to be convenient for whatever problem was going on right at that time (or inconvenient depending on the context).
So while Gumball never really got sick, his injuries (and allergies—he could never look at makeup the same after that incident) never were consistent either. For him, because getting sick was never really an issue for him, headaches were always assumed to be because of an injury. Which was what made yesterday so strange. He didn’t actively do anything that would have caused a headache, so he shouldn’t really have had one. And if it was something that was in his realm of manipulation, then it would’ve been gone pretty quickly.
So to conclude: yesterday on all accounts was strange.
But, that also never took into account how the Void tended to play with these rules.
A normal headache? Abnormal, but something to work around. A headache because of the Void one way or another? Abnormal, but not something to work around. He had to get through it because these things were more like the Void working him around than him working around the Void, if that even made sense (it probably didn’t, but whatever).
With that in mind, it was likely that whatever pain he did feel was because of or the result of the Void, which also didn’t really . . . make sense. It was supposed to regulate the mistakes of Elmore, but pain? A pain factor? That didn’t make sense. A lot of things about it didn’t make sense, so he decided not to think about it. Didn’t want the trouble that came with questioning it.
Like Gumball previously asserted: the Void was just annoying. Not really something worth putting energy into figuring out.
XVI
“Well, Darwin doesn’t know everything about it,” came out before he could stop it. Immediately after, he wanted to eat his words. Swallow them up and their bitter taste and digest the poison, even if he’d be nauseous. He already felt nauseous from saying that. Why did he say it? Him and his big mouth.
“Secrets are like coins. You could collect them, but too many—”
“And you have so much fun at the arcade?” he asked hopefully.
“—and they start to weigh down on you. They’re different kinds of coins, but some weigh more than others, so sometimes it matters the kinds of coins that—”
“So I shouldn’t be keeping secrets?”
“Of course you should be keeping things to yourself. Everyone’s entitled to their secrets.”
“So I’m just—” he cut himself off and sighed. The thing was, Gumball knew he was getting too worked up, especially in front of Mr. Small. He usually said confusing things and gave even more confusing pieces of advice, leading to bigger problems than actual solutions. The thing was, Mr. Small brought up crystals and candles and the occasional dreamcatcher—did just strange things with heart, but didn’t give solutions. So instead he sighed and asked the question that had been on his mind since being ushered to this chair. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you so invested? No offense—” Full offense, but it wasn’t the time to be anything other than polite. “—but a small argument between friends isn’t usually something you interfere with. Usually . . . ” He made a vague gesture.
Thankfully, he understood what he meant. “Because it’s my job,” he said. Gumball stared at him until he conceded, “My tryout yoga session was canceled today.” When he continued to stare at him questionably, Mr. Small perked up and plucked a rainbow flier from a drawer in his desk. It was the most hideous thing he had laid eyes on in a while. “I’ve been advocating for a yoga club after school. Not only is yoga beneficial for mental and emotional well-being, but it’s also a great source of exercise—”
“You’re quoting this paper,” Gumball interrupted and squinted, “word for word.”
He shrugged. “Well, yeah. How else am I going to sell it—”
“It looks like,” he barrelled on, “a librarian swallowed a book and threw up on it.”
“I know it doesn’t look the best—”
“And then they tried to clean it, but accidentally acid-washed it instead.”
“—but no one wants to read a brochure about—”
“And then,” he continued because he was on a roll, “it was thrown back in a washing machine with literally everything, so all the color bled onto the paper, and if that’s not enough, the font’s in comic sans.”
“I also welcome constructive feedback. I had to cancel it, so there’s still more time to attract interested students.” More to have something to do than because he liked it, Mr. Small swallowed the rest of his lemonade in one brave gulp. His left eye twitched. Gumball suppressed a shudder—that drink looked rancid.
He shrugged after recovering from the shock. “I’m not an artist. But, dude, I can attest to my attention span being the size of a pea. I’m not going to stand there and read all of that. And not in comic sans. Especially not in comic sans.”
“But a child’s attention span has been shortening with the rise and influence of technology and video games. Shortening this important information means I have to bend to the will of—”
“I’m not listening to all of that.”
“However,” he whispered to himself (despite the fact that Mr. Small obviously couldn’t whisper for his life because Gumball could clearly still hear him) “if I don’t appeal to the masses, then all this work would be for nothing. I have to concede in order to share my message. Stubbornness doesn’t win out every time. If only the sun was out—for best results, I wanted to lead a yoga session in the sun. One must connect with nature now more than ever.”
Gumball stared at the sky again. A question bubbled up like carbonation in soda. When Molly got sucked into the Void, he, Darwin, and Mr. Small were the ones to go and retrieve her. Mr. Small was the one who drew attention to all of Elmore’s mistakes in the first place. They went there with Janice (he still thought it was kind of weird to name a van, but not the point).
But when the Void first started talking to him afterward, he didn’t really talk about it to anyone. Again—it could be something so not cool. He could also be insane, which was something he didn’t feel like entertaining. He was probably not so much now, since something actually was happening, but.
But.
He’d gladly dump all of this on someone else.
Hopefully.
“Doesn’t the sky look weird?” he asked.
Mr. Small looked outside. “It’s just cloudy. Unexpected, and the meteorologists are getting paid to mess up our days with their half-baked predictions, but it’s not something that could be helped.” He shrugged.
Gumball wanted to raise an eyebrow because—was that it? Nothing about any impending doom about Elmore? Wasn’t he like, conspiracy theories up to the neck? Honestly, he could be so similar to Rob sometimes it physically hurts. “It was just sunny yesterday.”
“The weather does that.” Mr. Small smiled and gave him a questioning look. “Why are you asking? Is there something on your chest?”
And—oh. Of course, he was alone in this too. “Nothing.”
And then he proceeded to slam his head on his desk. Hard.
XVI
The Void spat him out.
“You know,” Rob said, “I’m starting to think you miss me.”
“You know,” Gumball mocked with flair because he refused to be outdone, “I’m starting to think you miss me.”
Rob reached down and plucked the tin foil hat from his head. “You don’t need this anyway.”
“Well I want it, so give it back.” He could see if he could bring it with him out of the Void and put it on someone’s head, or something. And they call him dumb.
He raised an eyebrow. “So my theories hold water. Hmm. Good to know.”
“Hat,” he griped.
“No.” He dropped it from the side of . . . the floating rock they were standing on. “We’re going to have a conversation. A real one.”
“We were.” He looked over the side of the rock. “And now we aren’t.”
A hand grabbed him by the back of the shirt. “Yes.”
An eye twitched. “No.”
Rob’s holding a spray bottle filled with water. “Yes.”
Gumball stared right at the nozzle, daring him to use it. “No.”
He sprayed him.
The Void swallowed him up.
He gritted his teeth throughout the impending fire drill.
XVII
(“It’s just.” Darwin tried not to sniffle. Mr. Small moved a box of tissues closer to him anyway.
“Just what, Darwin?”
“It’s just so weird. He usually would want to go home. We’ve faked being sick before—um, I never said that.”
“You never said that.” The counselor agreed.
“And he would’ve jumped on the opportunity. But instead he—he tried to hide it? It doesn’t make any sense. Am I really overreacting? What if it’s really nothing?”
“‘We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.’”
“ . . . what?”
“It’s a quote from C.S. Lewis’ book called—not the point. But it means that sometimes separation is as valuable as togetherness.”
“So I was overreacting?”
“I am not here to take sides. I’m here to say that your reasoning for your actions is sound. From what I’m hearing, while his reasoning is sound as well, I would like to talk to him about his perspective and give him advice as well.”
“Dude.” He snorted wetly. “I don’t think candles and book quotes are going to get through to him.”
“Well, I like to think I’m an adaptable person.” He then pulled out a piece of paper. “And speaking of adaptability, the weather is less than optimal, so I have to move back my yoga—”)
XVIII
There’s an inevitable, impenetrable weight pressing down on the dinner table.
Gumball rolled a pea across his plate, allowing it to make a path through the gravy. It was embedded close to the center of the gravy like a jutted stone sticking out in the middle of the sea. His fork played with the gravy, and it almost looked like waves were crashing against the rock.
He never really was a beach person. The sound of crashing waves and cawing birds that bloomed from his memory was more from movies and video games than actual experience. His imagination soon melted into the sound of gunfire and lasers, coming from the cubed carrots as they sailed into the sea.
He never got that burnt wet cat smell from his fur—he didn’t really notice it that morning, but any time after that fire drill he started getting hints of it. If he looked close enough in the mirror, he could catch hints of singed hair on his face.
“So,” Dad said, stabbing his steak, “how was school?”
Anais didn’t say anything, but she cast a look at the brothers. Upon catching his eyes, she made a slightly annoyed expression.
Of course, it’s my fault, a bitter part of him thought. He moved his fork through the carrots and peas with a bit more force than necessary.
“There was another fire drill,” he answered, showing carrots in his mouth. Long live those brave soldiers. “I think Bobert exploded again—seriously, he was putting on a fireworks display with the number of sparks that were flying.”
After Gumball left Mr. Small’s office, he immediately went straight to lunch. As expected, Darwin sat with Carrie and didn’t look at him more than twice during the period. Penny was sitting with a group of girls, and upon persuasion from him, continued to sit with them. He had too many thoughts being thrown through a tornado barreling its way through his empty skull to really hold a conversation. As annoying as ever, Tobias sat next to him because, and he quotes, “Banana Joe isn’t here and there are no empty tables, so I don’t get cool lone wolf points for sitting by myself. You understand, right?”
He said some reluctant affirmative before he continued eating. Between one moment and the next he fell asleep, had a brief conversation with Rob, and woke up to a loud fire alarm. He nearly tripped over his feet trying to get up at a reasonable pace.
. . . and speaking of the Void, he eyed the aluminum foil in the kitchen. He had to remake that hat sooner rather than later.
“The school almost caught on fire.” Darwin had an unusual amount of pessimism in his voice, but he wasn’t going to be the one to point it out. “I heard they almost suspended him.”
Likely to keep an air of normality, Anais sighed, “I think he should do his updates in an environment safer than a school—and if it’s causing him to glitch and explode like that, then maybe he should check to see if he’s storing any malicious software.”
Gumball shrugged. “So Bobert’s sick. Happens.”
She frowned. “Robots don’t—”
“Well, it would have been beneficial for everyone involved if he admitted to it upfront.”
Gumball turned in the direction of the voice, facing Darwin for the first time since they sat down for dinner. “Who knows, maybe he didn’t expect the issue to reoccur.”
“So you’re admitting that there’s an issue?”
“Of course there’s one,” Dad interjected with his (completely unasked) input, “he exploded.”
“Well I for one,” Mom was letting everything roll off like water on a duck’s back, “think it should be taken care of now, so talking too much about it wouldn’t change a thing.”
Gumball nodded. “Exactly. Worrying about it puts more stress on your shoulders. Just let it go, dude.”
Darwin huffed. “I can’t just not care. The more I think about it, the weirder it gets.”
“You know what's weird?” He plunged his fork straight into his steak. He didn’t want to do more hypothetical conversations, despite nailing them yesterday. “You. Worrying so much about something that already happened.”
Anais gave him a look. “Gumball—”
“But how do I know that? How do I know it’s over when you won’t tell me?”
There was something nipping at the edge of Gumball’s mind. Something swirling his thoughts and rearranging the letters.
But he really, really didn’t want to deal with that right now. So he ignored it. And him, because all of a sudden he didn’t want to entertain his brother. They’ve been fighting and he’s been stating the same points all the while Darwin’s been regurgitating his same points. Neither of them had been getting anywhere, and while it was a depressing set of thoughts to have, it was even more depressing to keep pushing for something that wasn’t going to unearth itself in the direction they were heading in.
Briefly, Dad stopped gnawing on what had to be the fifth piece of steak that night. At least. “Okay, so maybe we can—”
“What’s going on between you two?’ Mom’s eyes were narrowed, a frown on her face. “What on earth are you fighting about?”
Silence. And then—
“He’s lying to me!” Darwin shouted, slamming a fin on the table hard enough for his plate to rattle.
Oh yeah, well two could play at that game. “He’s making a big deal out of nothing!”
“Nothing? It’s not—”
There was a moment, when something bubbled up and nearly exploded, simmering like oil. Darwin’s face twisted and he frowned, looking all the worth like someone who just ate something sour. Reminiscent of Mr. Small after he drank that lemonade. There’s conflict flitting across his face, under his scales, and behind his eyes. It suddenly struck Gumball that there could be an underlying reason why Darwin had been behaving this way, an underlying reason why he’d been overreacting to a degree, and not just for the flimsy reasons why he hadn’t been behaving as normal.
But Gumball couldn’t really act on it. Whenever he blinked it was like television static imprinted on the back of his eyelids. He shoved food in his mouth, but all he could taste was metal and ozone.
“It is. I know you care about more things on a daily basis than I do, but this is too much, even for you—”
And then what happened?
And then the world shifted.
The next time he opened his eyes, the world was desaturated and frozen.
He sighed. Like, a long and deep sigh that encompassed enough agitation to fill his Dad’s stomach three times over.
“What?” he asked, “What do you want?”
The Void didn’t answer.
“Okay, seriously.” He glared at the ceiling. “If there’s something you’re trying to tell me, then I’m afraid I’m not the person for it. Obviously, something’s weird. Even I know that. Obviously, you want me to . . . do something about it. Unless you want me to smash a combo and I have a controller, then I’m not the person. Farthest from one, actually. Move on to someone more noble, or whatever. I’m a coward.” He puffed up his chest. “A proud coward, actually.”
Silence greeted him.
“No,” he said, “and that’s final.”
It was quiet for a second. Two. Three, four—
And then the world spins. Around and ‘round and ‘round and ‘round his head like cartoon birds, chirping and swirling into a mess of static and colors.
He blinked again. He was suddenly thrust into the waking, moving world.
“—ough!”
A pair of fists slammed on the table. Mom looked miffed, having had enough of their argument. Words washed over him. Likely a lecture. He didn’t hear anything. Probably couldn’t hear, not with the blood roaring in his ears louder than Tina’s cries of anger before she flattened anything (and anybody) in her path.
He felt like he was drowning. Except not under water or anything. Just—under the weight of the Void invading his mind, scattering what little introspection he may have.
So.
The Void didn’t listen to him. He’d be more annoyed about it later.
He shut his eyes as noise swam over his head. Not quite hurting, but not quite not hurting, either. Uncomfortable would be the best way to put it. Like electrocuting a pot of honey, heating it up, and pouring it into his skull. Like shoving a ball of aluminum foil up his nose and smearing jalapenos in his eyes. Like swallowing a spoonful of cotton but there’s molten lava in the center.
There was a moment when all the noise was drowned out. Like suddenly snuffed itself out like a candle.
There was a hand on his shoulder.
He opened his eyes at the same time when—
The Void in his head suddenly jolted—
—and the next thing he knew, the light above the table suddenly exploded into a million pieces, showering the food in glass.
XIX
It chittered. Slivered. Trembling with the power of something beyond what words could break apart and put together.
Elmore was stuck in the past, like over-ripened fruit or moldy bread, having been left out on the counter for far too long. Over. The old. Out with it.
It pressed into the sky, gray and white and expansive. Looming over heads and houses, bloated and puffy. It could not see. It didn’t need to.
It didn’t need to wait or open its metaphorical arms or open its chasm wide to feed. It didn’t need to eat Elmore up whole and chew on the discarded bones like bubble gum. It didn’t need to even look through with another perspective, or pick a user like its counterpart. It worked alone, silent and looming, ready to work slowly yet effectively.
The Null existed, but it also existed to infect Elmore, ready to dissolve it until it was nothing but discarded plotlines.