I was shaking from the intensity of the experience and thoughts of the future. This was not the same as Biology experiments and roadkill, this was real, huge. Looking outside the cemetery perimeter at two enemies and one friend, I knew it was time to swear the group to secrecy. A trickle of sweat slithered down my back and pooled at the waistband of my jeans, instantly chilling my fevered skin. I didn't want the same future as Parker. That loss of freedom was so not a part of my plan.
John and I headed out of the cemetery in a wave of uncertain promise.
CHAPTER 2
I smacked my alarm. Just five more minutes, I thought, dozing off.
“Caleb!” Mom yelled from downstairs.
I sat up. “Yeah?”
“School!”
I stumbled out of my bed and looked at the clothes on the floor. Hmm, what to wear that wasn't too wrinkled.
I picked up a pair of jeans and a shirt and took an experimental whiff. Good enough. I jerked on the jeans with a hop and a zip. I opened my sock drawer—a couple of socks, not matched but clean. Happy day.
I trudged downstairs to the kitchen. I sat at the table. “You cookin' today?” I asked, hopeful.
“No, but you're eating.”
Eating in the morning blows. I was that lazy. I'd open the fridge, nothing. Then the freezer, repeat. I usually ended up cramming a yogurt down.
She opened the fridge. “What flavor?”
“Do we have blueberry?” That was the only non-barf fruit I could think about eating that early.
She handed me the yogurt container. “Last one.”
“Where's Dad?”
“He is working on that new project.”
Great. Hopefully not anything new for kids to rant about. Mom and Dad were on the opposite end of the spectrum. She was free-spirited and thought the mystery of life and choice were taken away when the puzzle of the genome mapping was solved. Since my dad was an integral part of the team who achieved that accomplishment, we had an interesting family life.
“Does that mean he'll be home for supper tonight? I've got something to talk to him about.” I wisely didn't mention the whole corpse-raising episode. Dad was logic and fairness mixed. He'd know what to do. This... I might need some help on.
“Yes, he will, you know how important meal time is,” Mom said.
Maybe, maybe not. Science was important to Dad.
After I wolfed down the yogurt, I made a two-point shot at the trash can. Swish! No mess, but that didn't stop the frown from forming on Mom's face.
I moved quickly to grab my backpack, but she blocked my way, and I was forced to look up at her. Every girl in the world was taller than I was, even my own mother.
She brushed the hair out of my eyes, but it immediately flopped back down. “You need a haircut.”
“No, Mom.” A time sucker was all a haircut was, and I had more important things to do.
I slung my pack over my shoulder and left. I wanted to reconnoiter with the dudes, get things straight in my head from last night. Once outside, I slowed to a walk. I'd still be there early, and I was feeling lazy.
The canopy of trees allowed the morning light to filter through, speckling the ground with sunspots. My head began the familiar thrumming, a buzz seeping into the crevices of my mind as I walked toward the school.
I stopped. The buzzing became whispering. My heart rate sped up, my breath quickened, and my palms dampened.
The voices of the dead had arrived.
The whispering grew louder. The dull roar of the insidious voices was like a magnet, pulling me toward the forest. I followed it and was rewarded with even higher volume.
At the edge of the tree line, a crumpled body, lay beside a ditch. The head was canted at an awkward angle. My hands trembled as the whispering gave way to images flooding my head like a pulse-screen.
Headlights burst like twin spots before the cat’s eyes as she tried to escape them. Rushing forward, she sprinted across the street. She didn’t time the advance properly, and the twin orbs bore down on her.
Pain. Intense pain and blinding light.
The cat thought of her litter, her people... then, she was no more.
My breath returned in a paralyzing rush. I stood next to her small body. She had shared the last moments of her life with me.
I remained there, taking it in and realizing that life as I knew it was never going to be the same. I wasn't going to breeze through being a teenager.
Snapping back to reality I realized I was the Pied Piper of road kill.
Great. Definitely my life-goal.
I thought of the frogs in biology. There had been so many that I hadn't been able to camouflage what happened to me.
I wished I could develop something righteous like pyrokinesis. That would be tight. At least only Brett and Carson knew the corpse-raising part. Getting them to cooperate with silence was another deal. People were going to get suspicious.
I trudged toward school, my limbs heavy and my head swimming with the heaviness of an undead moment. I lifted my hands. The fine shaking was almost gone. I wiped the sweat off my face with the back of my hand. I needed to get a hold of myself. I was on it.
The familiar doors to my daily prison came into view. I walked the rest of the way with my head down and went inside the school. I spotted the “cemetery group” right away.
John and Jonesy stood apart from the others. Almost five-ten with a shock of frizzy, carrot-colored hair and pale blue eyes, John looked a little freakish, but he was my main dude, my go-to guy when things went sideways. In stark contrast, Jonesy had short, nappy hair and teeth that stood out like white Chiclets in his dark face. He was taller than I was, but built stocky. They'd been my friends since kindergarten.
Standing a few feet away from my friends was the rest of the group. They were a mixed bag, didn't feel solid. It would take some clever conniving to get promises of secrecy from the rest. Brett Mason and Carson Hamilton. They had identical white-blond hair and were about the same height, making them hard to tell apart. They'd been in my class since kindergarten too, but not in a good way.
Edging through the throng of kids, I made my way to John and Jonesy. Jonesy leaned against the locker, arms crossed. John seemed ready to explode, not a typical look for him.
Jonesy nodded at me. “Sorry about the bludgeoning.”
“Yeah... what the hell?” I asked.
“Your face sorta got in the way.”
“Oh... really?” Gee, hadn't noticed that.
“It was an accident, John and I were discussing—”
John broke in. “Arguing.”
Jonesy glared at him. “I changed my mind is all.”
I raised my eyebrows, Jonesy never switched gears.
“About the merit of them knowing,” John finished.
I glanced at Bret and Carson. Too late. The milk was spilled and dripping on the floor. They walked over to us.
“I wasn't pulling a hypo in Biology,” I told them, “and now Aptitude Testing is coming up.”
Brett smirked. “Yeah. You have your dad to thank for that.”
I caught sight of a grape-sized bruise the color of pale chartreuse at the base of Brett's neck. His smirk faded as he shifted his shoulder to make his shirt cover the mark.
Jonesy straightened. “Shut up. It's Caleb's ass on the line.” He jabbed his thumb at my chest. “You know what happens when you hit the radar as a corpse raiser. He'd be a government squirrel, like that Parker dude.”
“Nobody wants to have their life planned by somebody else,” John said.
“My dad didn't have anything to do with that,” I pointed out.
“But thanks to him, everyone's tested now because of the mapping. All the do-gooders want to 'realize our full potential.'” Brett made air quotes as he said the last phrase. “What an ass-load of crap that was.”
Carson nodded. “So even if we don't want to be mathematicians or scientists, we're on that freight train until it reaches the depot.”
<
br /> His murky-green eyes burrowed into mine.
It was an old argument. Kinda like being the preacher's kid, I got blamed for everything my dad did… or didn't do.
“You dickface...” Jonesy pointed at Carson. “Yeah you. It isn't Caleb's fault that his dad started that ball rolling with the mapping. If it hadn't been him, it would've been someone else.”
Carson clenched his hands into fists and looked as though he might take a swing at Jonesy. He didn't like being told the obvious. Probably shouldn't have opened his mouth and crammed a foot in there until he choked. Kinda brain dead—kinda consistent.
“Listen, guys,” I said. “This isn't helping. It's the now we need to figure out. I don't want to pop a five-point AFTD on the APs. They're only a week away? My dad”—I saw Carson roll his eyes, but I ignored him—“says that puberty is when they test because scientists have proven that abilities come on then, sometimes for the first time.” Not for me, I added silently.
The first bell gave its shrill beckon. I looked at Brett and Carson. “I need you guys to cover for me. At least until after the testing.”
“You can't force us, Hart,” Brett said.
Carson nodded. “Yeah, just because Daddy's famous doesn't give you clout.”
So much for that.
“How about doing it because it's the right thing to do?” Jonesy asked.
“Because it’s the human thing to do,” John interjected.
“He's not human.” Carson said, stabbing a finger toward my chest.
“You got that right,” Brett agreed.
They turned and moved into the multicolor sea of kids.
“Did ya see that bruise necklace Brett was wearing?” I asked.
“It's the dad,” John answered.
Jonesy turned his liquid eyes to me. “Feel sorry for him, Caleb? Don't go soft on me, bro. You're always giving jackasses the benefit of the doubt.”
My conscious teetered on the balance of right and wrong. Brett had it bad, but he chose to act the way he did.
Jonesy clapped me on the back “Yeah, my cup of care is empty too.”
CHAPTER 3
The Js and I went to shop class. I was making my mom a heart-shaped box, though my heart was definitely not in it.
After talking to the ass-monkeys, I couldn't get the genome out of my head.
The mapping of 2010 happened under pressure from President O'Llama. Desperate for health care reform, the government wanted to activate “markers” for the population. Mapping the human genome was the key to identifying potential for cancer, heart disease, stroke, and even alcoholism and drug addictions. If the people wanted government health care, they would have to be mapped, and have a microchip implanted that contained their genetic codes. Refusal of the microchip meant no health care. The program had been expanded, and disease markers weren’t the only things on those chips.
The teacher, Mr. Morginstern, approached our table with a cheery “Good morning, fellas!”
It was criminal that he was so happy. Didn’t he know the Monday-is-hateful-rule?
“Hey,” I mumbled, as Jonesy and John gave Morginstern the nod.
Morginstern was excited about teaching and we were excited about... school ending for the day.
“So how was your weekend? Do anything interesting?”
Yeah.
I imagined a conversation like: Ah no problem, Mr. Morginstern, just creeping around illegally in a graveyard, raising a corpse, enemies seeing the blow-by-blow... real interesting.
Instead, I shrugged and said, “It was okay.”
Jonesy looked to be choking back a laugh. I gave him a don’t-blow-it look.
John was unflappably silent as usual, controlling a sly grin with effort, the anchor to our madness.
Morginstern seemed to accept our weird responses, and he went over the whole process of our boxes again. Adults were painfully redundant.
We got to decide what kind of box to make. Heart shaped was the hardest, but I was a masochist. I got out my sandpaper—one-twenty grit, extra fine.
A fine dust fell from the interior arc of the heart onto the work table. The sanding from the three of us served as an excellent conversation concealer.
John whispered, “So what's the plan?”
“I don't know yet,” I replied. “I gotta think about it more. I'm not ending up like Parker.”
“Ask your dad,” Jonesy said. “He's the genius.”
“Quiet, smack attack.”
Jonesy ducked his head. “I'm sorry, bro.”
I grinned. “Gotcha. Just wanted to see what you'd say.”
“Oh man! Don't do that, dude!” Jonesy threw his sandpaper at me.
I deflected it with my arm, and the paper landed on John, getting embedded in his hair.
Morginstern gave us a warning glare. “Caleb Hart! Jonesy, John, no throwing supplies.”
“Stop screwing around,” John hissed. “This is serious.”
As serious as a heart attack. I struggled not to laugh. “I'll talk with my dad tonight. He'll have ideas.”
“He's got resources, right?” Jonesy asked.
I smiled. “Using your big-boy words Jonesy?”
We all laughed and agreed to meet up at my place.
I had every class with John except PE. Jonesy was in my PE class, though. I was never without a J. Jonesy and I liked PE because we got to check out the girls. There was one in particular that I liked a lot.
When we got to the gym, Jonesy said, “I want to play dodge ball today.”
“Yeah, that'll happen. 'No head shots, no body shots above the waist, no leg shots.'” I said, imitating Miss Griswold's annoying voice.
I sighed. Dodge ball rocked, but Griswold was a joy sucker.
Then Jade LeClerc walked by. I tracked her with my eyes. Her jet-black hair gleamed like a curtain of silk waiting to be touched. She had the greatest eyes, green like a cat's. A memory shimmered just out of reach—a red shirt, concrete, and dirt.
Jonesy gave me a strategic elbow to the side, and the image slipped away like a vapor.
“Ow!” I turned to him. “What was that for?”
“Stop staring,” Jonesy said. “Why do you like her anyway? She's kinda emo.”
“No she's not, she just wants people to think she is. Keeps them away,” I said, trying to recapture that fleeting shard of the past.
“Oh, and you're such a girl expert. Right!” Jonesy laughed.
I scowled at him. “I've watched her. She doesn't make a move to be anyone's friend, but there's something cool about her.”
“She's too weird. Pick someone else. Look at them all.” He spread his arms to include the bounty of girls.
My eyes strayed back to Jade. She just looked unique. “I’m gonna talk to her.”
“You've had English and pre-Biology with her, what, almost two semesters? We're in fourth quarter, and you still haven't said anything. Besides, what's she gonna think when she finds out about what you can do? She saw you pass out, right?”
I couldn't deny his reasoning there. Who hadn't seen me bite it? Maybe once I had a plan on how to hide what I was, I could say hey.
“Maybe she doesn't need to ever know.”
Jonesy arched one eyebrow, the whites of his eyes wider in his brown face. “You can't cover forever, bro.” He shrugged.
I figured, but I liked to fantasize.
Miss Griswold blew her whistle, and we lined up for warm-ups. We were in alphabetical order, so Jonesy wasn’t close to me, and neither was Jade. But I was next to Carson Hamilton.
“Hey, Hart. Thinking about any ghosts?”
Carson-the-Clever. Yeah, right.
I ignored him and started doing jumping jacks with the others. “Switch drill!” Griswold shrieked.
We went down to our knees for push-ups.
I finally responded, “Don't be a tard, Carson. You and Brett said that I was faking shit. I wasn't. I proved I'm AFTD.” I huffed out five more.
“Switch drill
!” Griswold's irritating voice rallied for the final insult.
We stood up for jumping power lunges. I hated those. I put out one foot and lunged so my knee didn't pass my toe then, up, jump, other side. Talking was almost impossible.
Carson managed. He had a lot of hot air.
“AFTD is so rare only freaks have it. That's why they took Parker away. The military wanted to quarantine his ass to protect everyone else.”
Carson dropping another pearl of wisdom. Like I care.
Hop. Switch legs.
“Stop!” Griswold yelled.
Panting, I turned to Carson. “Nobody'll believe you. You didn't believe until the cemetery.” He'd look like an idiot if he told people I was a corpse raiser (like we were running around in droves). Carson was all about image.
He looked thoughtful; Carson was a rock with lips.
“Maybe I won't tell anybody, but me and Brett might want something.”
He looked down at me and smirked.
We glared at each other until Griswold waddled over to stand in front of us. I wondered how teachers always seemed to know just when something was going down.
Griswold put her hands on her considerable hips. “Problem here, boys?”
“No problem, Miss Griswold,” Carson said.
I said the obligatory, “No, Miss Griswold.”
Just as she moved out of hearing range, Carson said, “Hag.”
Griswold turned around and yelled, “Time for dodge ball! Pick your teams.”
The guys gave a collective groan, and the girls didn't look any happier. At least I got to look at Jade, the highlight of PE.
Jonesy gave me a questioning look from across the gym, Carson and Brett were fast moving from irritating to becoming a problem—one that I planned to contain, creatively.
Jonesy would scheme, John would deliberate and I would definitely do.
CHAPTER 4
“How was school today?” Mom asked.
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