by Matt Carter
Ben stared at me for a moment, then caught himself. “How do you do that?” he asked.
That’s easily the kindest way anyone’s ever found to call me a freak.
I shrugged. “How do you know how to bet without doing that?”
He shrugged back. “Hey, I’m teaching here. I wanted to let you play a round all the way through.”
“You spent three more chips than you had to for that.”
He turned a little pink when he smiled.
“That’s why I won.”
He was right, of course. I would have put the cards against each other directly and won if it weren’t for those three chips, but how he could have known that escaped me. He didn’t seem to be preparing to explain, so I reminded him.
“Hey, you’re teaching here.”
He smiled a little wider. “Yeah,” he conceded. “Whatever you have in your hand, pretend it’s worth something, even when it’s not.”
That helped a little. I’m a fair liar. Not a great one, but performing my work in my home always demanded it, and I won a few hands once I realized Ben was more interested in predicting my cards than his own.
The next time I glanced at the clock, my guess at the time fell outside my usual six minute margin of error.
Well outside of it.
Somehow, in what should have been an hour, I’d managed to spend nearly two and a half hours playing cards and doing nothing else. And what was more, my head was as crystal clear as it had been when we’d started. It occurred to me that this might be the reason I was dreading Ben’s departure. I was definitely going to miss that still, calm, uncomplicated feeling.
16.
What’s Pie Got to Do with This?
Ben
I yawned as I walked downstairs the next morning. It had been a late night, later than I was used to, but a lot of fun. I wasn’t entirely sure yet whether or not Mina and I could be called friends, but now I had evidence of why I liked her as a person, rather than just vague suspicions. There were moments when you could get her to let her guard down, maybe even trust you, that she seemed almost normal. She would smile. Get close to laughing even.
The rich smell of a fresh pot of coffee filled the kitchen. It wasn’t one of my favorites, but when you needed to open your eyes in the morning, there was nothing better.
My mom sat at the kitchen table, sipping a cup and reading the local paper.
“Good morning, Ben,” she said with a smile.
“Morning. Where’s everybody else?” I asked as I searched for a mug.
“Christine had to work today. She dropped Haley off at a dress rehearsal down at the park. She said she’d really appreciate it if you could come by later, talk to her during their lunch break?” she said, nudging me without nudging me. There was that knowing smile that no amount of my eye-rolling could ever get rid of.
“Yeah, I’ll probably do that,” I said. I poured myself a cup and sat down across from Mom. She looked at me, her smile strained, almost nervous. I was pretty sure I knew what was coming up.
“I hardly ever see you these days. You’re either out with Haley or . . . what’s her name?”
“Mina,” I said.
“Right, with Mina so much, I barely see you for more than a few minutes a day anymore. How are you doing?” she asked.
I’m fighting against a sinister plot by shape-shifting monsters to take over this town.
“I’m all right, I guess,” I lied. “Just hanging out, wandering mostly.”
“Do you like it up here?” she asked.
There it was. There was her pitch. She was ready for a fight, and not long ago I would have offered her at least a token one, but this town, everything I had gone through . . . I was just exhausted.
“So you want to move up here?” I asked.
“Would that be so terrible?” she asked back. “You’ve got friends here, it’s a really nice neighborhood, and your Aunt Christine said she had some friends who could likely hook me up with a nice job. Home prices are really low. We could get a house with a yard, and I hear they’ve got really good schools here, too!”
I didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t that this was unexpected. I’d known it was coming after our first week here. It didn’t mean I had to like it. We would be uprooting ourselves, again. I’d have to start life over, again. I’d be in a town full of monsters who were very likely out to get me and destroy everything we held dear (at least I didn’t have to add an “again” after that problem).
But then there was Mina. If we did move up here, she wouldn’t be so alone in this fight of hers.
And there was Haley, even more alone in a way, unknowingly surrounded by monsters that had attacked her once already with the only people who knew enough to protect her convinced that she was a monster, too. I was the only defense she had.
And even selfishly, I didn’t know if I could bear to leave this town with what I knew. I would spend the rest of my life wondering, looking over my shoulder, trying to figure out who was human and who wasn’t. At least here, with Mina, I might have a fighting chance.
I put my head in my hands, wiping the sleep away and trying to remember how I’d answer this question if I didn’t know about Splinters.
“I don’t know. I do kinda like it up here, I guess,” I said.
Mom smiled, put her hands on mine, “I won’t make this change without you. I know . . . I know things haven’t always been easy, and I maybe haven’t handled things as well as I could. If you want to stay down in San Diego, we can do that. But really . . . this would be a phenomenal opportunity for a new start. In a big city, we would be nobodies, but out here, we could be something. This is the kind of town where we could have a future.”
Ordinarily, she might have been right about that, but with the way the Splinters worked, I had my doubts about our future.
Still, I smiled and took her hands in mine.
“Let me think about it?”
I borrowed Mom’s SUV to drive down to the park. After Haley’s call about her memories, I’d been planning to try to talk to her when I got back from Kevin’s, but she’d been out with our mothers when I got there and asleep when I snuck back from trying to make things right on the Mina front. I wasn’t sure how mad Haley might be or whether she still felt like talking. She had never shown any anger over how unavailable I’d been since discovering the Splinters, but I knew I couldn’t claim to have been the greatest friend recently.
This wasn’t a conversation I was looking forward to.
I sat down on the grass by the park’s amphitheater, watching as they finished up play practice before lunch. I didn’t know much about the play Titus Andronicus. From what I could tell, it wasn’t entirely pleasant. Alexei’s constant interruptions and baffling suggestions at scene direction seemed to do more harm than good, but enough of the young actors nodded and smiled that I had to assume he knew what he was doing. Still, the way he moved and spoke made it hard to believe anyone thought he was human.
Along with the few other friends, parents, and passersby who sat on the grass, I clapped appropriately as the dress rehearsal broke down for lunch. Haley stood by for a few moments, taking notes from Alexei. She looked to me briefly and smiled. I smiled back.
So far so good.
The medieval gown she was wearing was hideous, but made up and with her hair tied back in an ornate braid, she was quite beautiful.
She came down to me, smiling and waving back at one of her castmates.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
Haley rolled her eyes dramatically, “If Robbie York can stop making jokes about his codpiece for two seconds and actually learn his lines, I think we might have a show by the end of summer.”
Her smile faltered briefly as she looked around the crowd.
“You want to go for a walk?” she asked.
“Sure.”
We strolled away from the amphitheater, almost to the adjacent playground. Aside from a few kids playing on the equipment and the
ir mothers watching over them, we were basically alone. The cheerful façade Haley kept while on stage was gone; now she looked fearful and hesitant, her eyes darting from side to side as if she were worried about being watched. How quickly she could drop that cover made me realize how good an actress she really was.
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a while now. I just didn’t know where to start,” she said. “You’ve been out so much these days. I haven’t really had anyone I could talk to about this. Nobody who would understand, at least.”
I barely understand. That’s what I wanted to say, but didn’t for fear of revealing too much.
She bit her lip, looking away as if she were about to cry.
“I thought they were bad dreams at first,” she said. “I thought that I must have been imagining things that might have happened while I was gone. But the dreams kept coming back, more of them, more clear . . .”
I put my arm around her shoulders protectively. She didn’t push me away.
“What kind of dreams?” I asked.
“I remember running. Running through darkness. Out of a cave, into the forest. I feel like I’m being chased. I am being chased. By people I know, all calling for me, angry, but I can’t understand them. Friends, neighbors . . . Mrs. Morgan from the dentist’s office, Mr. Delgado from down the street, Britney who sits behind me in algebra. Alexei . . .”
She shuddered against me, drawing closer as if freezing even though it was hot as can be outside.
“Do you have any idea how hard it is to pretend things are normal around them when you feel something very wrong has happened and that they’re a part of it? I remember them all looking down at me when I was in the dark. In a large, dark room that seems to go on for miles. Them and others I can’t see, like they were waiting for something to happen to me, something that wasn’t working,” she said.
I held her closer, wanting to protect her from this nightmare.
“I didn’t think too much of this at first. I thought, maybe this was my way of coping, maybe my mind is just piecing together memories from when I was out and when I was not and throwing them together with old nightmares,” she said.
“That sounds . . . likely,” I said.
She pulled away from me, looking at me defensively. “But these aren’t just dreams, Ben,” she said, shuddering softly. “There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m not crazy. These aren’t dreams; these are memories! I know it! Ever since I’ve gotten back, I’ve seen these people watching me! I thought it was like all the other attention at first, but whenever I walk through town, or drive to the store with Mom, or rehearse the play up here, I can see them watching and talking about me! They smile, they laugh, they pretend everything is normal, but it isn’t! They look like people I know, but I know—I just know—that they aren’t,” she said.
Haley looked at me for support. I didn’t know what I could tell her, I didn’t know if I should say anything. We were treading into dangerous waters, and I didn’t have Mina’s help to know what information was safe to give out.
“You think I’m crazy,” she said. “You do, don’t you?”
“I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. My mom thought I was reading too much into this, she thought it was ‘Post-Traumatic Stress.’ She hasn’t seen them looking through my window at night, she hasn’t heard them talking about me when they’re setting up their secret meetings!” she exclaimed.
This raised a flag.
“They talk about secret meetings?” I asked.
She shook her head, started to walk away. “Forget I said anything.”
I grabbed her by the wrist. “Wait. I believe you, I do. I can’t say why, yet, but I do. I just need to know more. What were you saying about that meeting?”
Haley darted her eyes back and forth again, trying to make sure we were alone.
She sighed. “Every day after rehearsal, Alexei goes into his office behind the amphitheater and is on the phone for about five to twenty minutes. One day last week I followed him, and I listened to his call. He was talking to someone about meeting up for a barbeque in the middle of the night. They talked about ‘The Perkins Girl’s Initiation.’ It creeped the hell out of me.”
She shuddered, coming back to me for comfort. Again, I wrapped my arm around her shoulders.
“It’s going to be all right,” I said.
“How do you know that?” she asked, looking up into my eyes.
“I don’t know. I’ll think of something,” I said.
“Hey, Haley!” a boy called from behind us. A handsome boy in a medieval costume and a backwards baseball cap waved his arms to get her attention. “Alexei’s got some more notes for you, said something about what to do with your hands when they’re no longer attached!”
She sighed, calling back, “I’ll be there in a second, Robbie!”
To me, she muttered, “I hate this play. Will we have more time to talk, soon?”
“Of course,” I said. “All the time you need.”
“Tonight?” she asked, hopefully.
“Maybe. Soon, I promise. I know someone who might be able to help you out with this. I just need to work some things out with them first,” I said.
Her eyes brightened at that, and she smiled, stepping up on her toes so she could kiss me on the cheek. “Thank you,” she said as she ran back to the stage.
I rubbed my cheek. I’m sure there was a stupid smile on my face (it’s not often a pretty girl kisses you on the cheek), but she didn’t seem to mind as she looked back at me one last time.
While Haley was immersed in conversation with Alexei, I ran back to the parking lot and pulled out my cell phone. Mina wouldn’t be able to help out, not while stuck under house arrest like this, but there was one number I could try.
“What is it, Ben?” Aldo asked when he picked up. After a pause, he added, “Is Mina okay?”
“She’s fine, Aldo. Listen, I need your help.”
Alexei’s bungalow behind the amphitheater looked like it was meant to be more temporary than it turned out to be. A construction trailer that might have been new when Back to the Future topped the box office, it had been made permanent by virtue of a cinderblock foundation and a sign that said “Park Office for Rent—Check City Hall for Availability.” There were two doors, one with a permanent plaque on it that said “Park Maintenance,” the other crudely printed up and taped to the door reading, “Shakespeare Summer Extravaganza!”
Something told me that was Alexei’s office.
I looked over my shoulder toward the amphitheater. It sounded like play practice would be wrapping up soon. We would have had more time, but when I’d called, Aldo was doing chores and couldn’t get out of them for nearly forty-five minutes. By the time he could get the necessary equipment and I could pick him up, the rehearsal had nearly finished. We were going to have to cut this close.
I tapped the Bluetooth in my ear, “You hearing me, Aldo?”
“Loud and clear. Alexei’s got them working on proper pie-eating technique, but most of the actors have already started to clean up,” Aldo said.
“Just keep an eye out,” I said.
“For you, Ben, I’ll keep two eyes out,” he said. His voice was dripping with sarcasm, but I had no doubt he would do what he said. Aldo may have been a kid, and may have been protective of Mina in an annoying kind of way, but you could not doubt his competence or professionalism. He was smart, and he would have my back if Mina wanted him to.
Alexei’s door was unlocked, which was helpful. The rest of his office, on the other hand, was much less helpful.
To call the place a mess would have been generous. In one corner was a couch, I think. In the opposite corner was a desk, I think. I think there might have even been some bookcases and filing cabinets lining the wall. I only say “I think” here because it was nearly impossible to see anything in this room through all the mess. The floor was covered with racks of costumes, cardboard boxes and stacks upon stacks of books so high they appeare
d to have transformed into pieces of furniture over time. A stack of cookbooks in the middle of the room, mostly about baking pies, stretched high enough to hold up a sagging section of the trailer’s hanging ceiling. The walls were decorated with ancient woodcuttings of people in Elizabethan costumes and graphic depictions of what people used to think the inside of human bodies looked like.
“What’s it like in there?” Aldo asked.
“It’s like Hannibal Lecter’s college dorm room,” I said as I tapped a hanging mobile of obscure Shakespeare quotations. A faint skittering sound above set me on edge, but the squeaking sound soon after relaxed me. Just a rat stuck in the hanging ceiling, probably made it in through one of its many, many holes.
“Yeah, Alexei’s always gotten into his plays; he lives for authenticity, if not age-appropriateness. Have you found his telephone?” Aldo asked.
Winding my way through the perilous obstacle course of books and boxes, I found his desk, cluttered with photocopied scripts, more ancient texts on vivisection, and pictures of himself in clown makeup. Beneath all this, there was indeed a telephone.
“Yeah, I got it,” I said.
Between my lack of experience and Aldo having to look up instructions on how to plant the bug he’d given me in the ancient landline, I spent about ten minutes longer in Alexei Smith’s office than I would have liked, but they were minutes well-spent. I had the phone disassembled, the bug placed, then reassembled, then tested by Aldo, and I hadn’t even made a mess of things. All in all, I was proud of my work.
“Uh oh,” Aldo said in my ear.
“Uh oh?” I asked. My heart began to race. I knew what “Uh oh” meant.
“You gotta get out of there. Alexei’s coming your way. Can you get out of one of the back windows? He can see the door perfectly.”
I looked around quickly, panicking. The door was my only real consideration for an exit. All of the windows were blocked with heavy piles of books. I could probably knock them over and get out, but that would blow any cover we had. That didn’t leave many options.