Nine

by Zach Hines

  “Show me that Warrior spirit!” Nicholas said.

  “Nope. I’m done for the night,” Logan said to Nicholas, wiping the paint from his eyes with the back of his hand, the flag resting in the crook of his elbow. He blinked his eyes twice and looked at Julian, confused. “Where’s Clayton?”

  “He was sick today, apparently,” Nicholas said. He turned to Julian with a smirk. “No cure for common cold feet.”

  He took the helmet from Logan. “Julian’s our understudy.”

  “Well, I set them up for you. You just gotta knock ’em dead.” Logan laughed loudly, to himself more than to anyone else, and handed the flag to Julian. He unclasped the cape from his neck and kicked off his shoes.

  Nicholas picked them up and turned to Julian.

  “All right, let’s suit you up,” he said.

  They stepped into a hallway out of sight of the crowd. Julian put on the costume, then Nicholas sat him in a chair to apply the white war paint.

  “So how does this burn work, exactly?” Julian said.

  “Well,” Nicholas replied. “It’s kind of all about the surprise with this one.” He bit his lip in concentration while applying the paint around Julian’s eyes. His breath smelled like peppermint.

  “How am I going to know what to do?” Julian asked.

  “You’ll know it when you see it,” Nicholas said as he smoothed the paint on Julian’s forehead with gentle strokes of the sponge. “Relax, please,” he added. “Your brow furrowing is messing up my application.”

  Julian rolled his eyes and tried as hard as he could to relax his face.

  “For this burn to be effective,” Nicholas said, “you just need to be a good Warrior. Just keep focused on that. You saw what Logan was doing out there. Run back and forth here behind the end zone, below the scoreboard. Wave the flag. Particularly when we’re trying to accomplish something, like score a touchdown. When we do, the big lights and sparklers on the scoreboard up there will fire off. That’s your cue to run out into the end zone. So it’s these big lights you’re going to be looking for.” Nicholas pointed out the large yellow orbs dangling beneath the scoreboard.

  Julian swallowed.

  “Close your eyes now,” Nicholas said, and he gently applied the white makeup over Julian’s closed eyelids. “Do you get it?”

  “I get it,” Julian said. “Bright lights, wave the flag.”

  He opened his eyes to see Nicholas’s face inches away from his. “Quick study,” Nicholas said.

  “You know, I’m actually glad you’re here,” he added. “You’ll do a great job. Much better than Clayton would have.”

  Julian glared at him from behind his face paint. “I don’t like this,” he said.

  “I know,” he said. “But that’s the point.”

  Julian took a deep breath, and Nicholas squeezed his shoulders.

  “Show us that Warrior spirit,” he said. “It’s banzai time.”

  Julian was slow to get the hang of it. The flag was heavier than it seemed, and his arms soon became sore waving it.

  He hated being exposed to the gaze of so many people, but he reminded himself he was protected under the makeup and helmet. He also hoped it would shield him from the clouds of fear he felt gathering inside him. He was, after all, about to die. Right in front of everyone. In some no doubt gruesome manner.

  He kept a close watch on the clock as it ticked down the third quarter, dreading every second that passed. He looked over to the stands—to where the Burners sat, two rows of white jackets behind the bench where the football team sat swilling sports drinks. Nicholas leaned back in his seat, relaxed, smiling and chatting with his disciples. His sheep, all dressed in white.

  He sipped from a soda and looked over toward Julian, gesturing with his hands to say, “Keep the spirit up.” Julian swallowed his rising frustration. He lifted the flag into the air and walked it one long lap of the end zone. The crowd cheered.

  About halfway through the fourth quarter, Lakeshore scored a field goal and the bright lights burst above Julian. A shot of sparks exploded overhead from the scoreboard’s built-in fireworks system.

  Oh God, this must be it.

  He hefted the flag onto his shoulder and ran out into the end zone. As he took a lap, he looked over his shoulder everywhere for death. At any moment, he thought he might step on a bomb that Nicholas had planted in the end zone. Or maybe a referee would turn around with a gun and put a bullet between his eyes. . . .

  Julian completed three laps of the end zone and . . . nothing happened. He walked off the field, relieved but wary. He looked back to where Nicholas had been sitting in the stands, but his seat was now empty. Nicholas was gone.

  Julian scanned the stands and the sidelines for him, but he couldn’t find him. This was not good. He was out there now, doing something, making arrangements. Prepping impending doom.

  Just calm down, Julian thought.

  You are going to die. That’s it. And you’ve already done that, and you came back. You know how it’s going to go. So just calm down, and then you will get the information that you are looking for. That’s what this is all . . .

  But what if you don’t come back?

  Julian suddenly felt light-headed. His breathing was coming in shallow bursts, and he could hear his heart pounding in his ears. One . . . two . . . now.

  Suddenly, the crowd rose to its feet, filling the air with thunderous screams. A Lakeshore receiver was tearing toward the end zone at full speed. The football was sailing through the air and the receiver made a lunging catch, smacking into the ground with an awful crunch. The crowd exploded into cheers, and the band pounded out a chest-rattling rhythm. Cheerleaders were tossed into the air and spun.

  Julian looked up at the scoreboard. There were four minutes left in the game, and Lakeshore was down by three points. This catch put them in striking distance of a touchdown, which meant a comeback, which meant a victory. The air was dense with noise.

  But Julian’s attention was drawn to the ground. His feet were wet. Water was pooling under his feet, mixing with the dirt. He lifted a shoe—it was covered in brown muck. He looked closer and saw that water was spreading all across the turf behind the end zone.

  Logan was standing in the entrance to the hallway where Julian had changed into the costume. He was nonchalantly holding a hose on full blast, water gushing from it into the sod. Two other hoses were turned on beside him, lying at his feet like snakes, feeding into the swampy mess.

  What the hell . . .

  Julian took a few tentative steps in the muck. The clouds he had been holding at bay inside him cracked open and a flood of terror entered his bloodstream.

  Out on the field, Lakeshore made a play. The crowd screamed. They were now within five yards of a touchdown.

  Behind the end zone, Julian spun around, searching for Nicholas.

  He was about to die. He knew that, but emotionally, he couldn’t accept it. Not knowing was agony. The fear coursing through him, pounding on the walls of his veins . . . it made his body physically ache.

  “Nicholas?!” Julian shouted, trying to raise his voice over the din of the crowd. He spun around again. “Nicholas!” he shouted.

  He caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye—a flash of white. He looked up to the scoreboard. Nicholas stood beside it on a service platform, placid, looking down on the game like an angel from on high. Something dangled from his hand. Something long and thick, coiled like a rope. Julian knew instantly that whatever Nicholas was holding, whatever that was, it would be the implement of his demise. He strained to see it, to understand what it was.

  Behind him, out on the field, the ball was snapped, and the players crunched into one another. The crowd screamed a white noise. He watched as a receiver tore through the end zone, just feet in front of him, juking hard to the right to lose the Poplar cornerback. He made it to an open corner of the end zone, and the quarterback let loose the throw. The ball sailed through the air, and things began to slow f
or Julian. He saw the receiver leap into the air for the catch, and Julian turned around, back to the scoreboard. . . .

  Three . . .

  He saw Nicholas standing there, looking down at Julian with a devil’s grin. It was some kind of cable. That was what he was holding. Nicholas stuck out his hand and dropped it. It tumbled into the swampy mess at Julian’s feet.

  Two . . .

  In those slow moments, Julian traced the cable to its source and then he realized—the lights. The sparks. It was the electrical cable for the lights that had just smacked into a pool of water at his feet.

  Now.

  He heard the crash of the players behind him in the end zone and the eruption of noise from the stands. They scored.

  He saw an explosion of white sparks leap from the end of the cable across the wet turf—the electricity dancing in front of him in abstract patterns, grabbing at him. He could feel it flow into him, and infiltrate his heart—a searing, white-hot pain. He fell to his knees, his head filling with heat, his vision doubling. He strained to look up at Nicholas as sparks showered down in front of him, as smoke wafted from his burning hands. Before everything disappeared into a final burst of Warrior spirit, the last thing Julian saw was Nicholas’s grinning face.

  Chapter 22

  JULIAN BROKE TO THE SURFACE OF THE LAKE. HIS HANDS thrashed at the water. He sucked in breaths, but it just produced a white-hot stinging in his throat. And then, a searing pain radiated through his body.

  I am freezing, he realized.

  The Lake was ice-cold. Far away on the beach, he could see the guide light blinking. The signal tone sounded. Julian struggled to pull himself toward it, but he could barely keep above the water. He tried to scream, but it came out a ragged exhalation. Then a bright light lit up the water in front of him. The thrumming sound of a motor swelled up from the darkness behind him. The nurses’ cold-weather boat was approaching.

  It stopped just feet from him, sending up a small wake that splashed over his face. When he blinked it away, he saw nurses moving about on the deck, shadows before the floodlights. They were reaching into the water with long poles.

  A pole stabbed the water beside him. A nurse lurched it through the waves, smacking it against Julian’s chest. “Grab it!” the nurse shouted over the motor. “Grab the damn pole!”

  It smacked him again, but this time Julian wrapped his arms around it. The nurses pulled him to the edge of the barge and lifted him up on it.

  They wrapped him in blankets and led him into the cabin, where he sat, still dripping, on a bench. He pulled the rough woolen blankets in tight around him and hung his head. He looked at his toes and counted them left to right in order to calm his breathing.

  Another ten new toes.

  He grappled through the fog of rebirth to recall how he got here. He remembered talking to Nicholas out on the yard. Nicholas’s grin as he took Julian’s demand and twisted it, transforming it into a noose he used to snare him. The bright lights of the football stadium. And then, here.

  At least I made it, he thought with growing relief.

  The lights inside the receiving facility were lurid, and they made his head throb. As he made his way through the line, he had to keep his head down so his eyes could adjust. But before he entered the booth to get his new number, he felt a rough hand on his shoulder. It turned him around. Julian looked up and standing there in the fluorescence was the Prelate. The black goggles bulged from the purple headdress.

  “We need to see your eyes,” the Prelate said, his voice stern and slightly muffled from behind the mask.

  Julian blinked rapidly in the light as his eyes watered. He saw there were two male nurses standing behind the Prelate, their brows crinkled.

  “Hold still,” the Prelate said, gripping Julian’s shoulders and looking into his face.

  “Is everything okay?” Julian asked.

  For a few more uncomfortable seconds, the Prelate held Julian’s look with his black discs-for-eyes, and gestured to a nurse behind him.

  The nurse held a device to Julian’s face, like a small digital camera. It snapped with a quick burst of light.

  “Am I in trouble?” Julian asked as the nurse inspected the device.

  Finally, the nurse looked up and nodded to the Prelate. “Random check for retrogression,” the Prelate said in his low growl of a voice. “Next time, keep your head up.” He walked away without another word, the nurses following behind him.

  Julian exhaled in relief and rubbed his eyes until the sting faded. Then a nurse signaled him into the booth, where Julian was marked with his Three and given a cursory inspection.

  “What’s the Wrinkle?” Julian asked.

  “Nothing that is immediately apparent,” the nurse said.

  This phrase troubled Julian far more than it comforted him. There was a lot of bad shit that wasn’t immediately apparent.

  On the bus back to Lakeshore, he sat in the back, watching the evergreen trees roll by in the low light. He could not shake the growing sense that something was missing, that something was abnormal, though maybe not “immediately apparent.” He focused on the trees. Something about them made him feel strange. But what was it?

  Julian got off at the bus depot at Lakeshore. Three other rebirths got off with him, but they all had rides waiting for them. Julian was the lone walker. He thought about using the pay phone to call his father to pick him up—but no. His father would know all about it soon enough, now that he’d hit his Three, but tonight Julian just couldn’t face anyone else. Even if that meant he would be walking about a mile and a half in the freezing cold.

  The road home was lined with evergreens. He stopped under a branch that hung out over the road. He grabbed it by the tip and pulled it in close. He fanned the needles out on his hand. They looked . . . gray.

  Not green. Not even close.

  He pulled some of the needles off and stuffed them into his pocket.

  At home, he stepped gently so as not to awake his father and brother. He locked the door to his room and took the handful of needles from his pocket. He turned them over in his palm. In the light, he could see them clearly. Yes . . . they were gray.

  Julian sunk onto his bed and laid his head back on his pillow. He blinked at the ceiling.

  Did he just lose the color green?

  Was that even a possible Wrinkle? Losing a whole goddamn color from the spectrum?

  He pulled the shoebox out from under his bed.

  On his mother’s Lake-issued ID card, her eyes were deep pools of green. It was the picture that constituted his mental image of his mother. And now . . .

  Her eyes were gray.

  He stared into his mother’s time-frozen eyes—and her gray, time-frozen eyes stared back at him. It was true. Julian had lost green. He lay back down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. His eyes became hot again, and he could feel the tears rising. He closed his eyes and let them leak out the side.

  The tears continued to flow, but Julian kept himself as quiet as possible. He choked down any sound of his crying so as not to wake his father or brother through the thin walls. It was as if a cork had popped somewhere in his psyche. A feeling of loss poured through him. It stretched on like an endless black pool. He focused on the image and controlled his breathing, concentrating on the vastness of the expanse that stretched before him.

  Eventually, he lost himself in the enormity of it and drifted off to sleep.

  In his dream, the black expanse was transformed into the Lake, and Julian was swimming through it. His limbs were pulling against the heavy water, struggling to reach the beach, where a solitary, skeletal tree stood. Underneath the tree sat a woman in a gray dress. His mother?

  Once he was able to drag himself onto the beach, he saw that the woman in gray was not his mother. She was not actually a woman at all. It was a robe, like a nurse’s robe, that had been caught, torn, on a tree branch. As he stepped forward to inspect it, the branch holding it lurched away from him. It rose up, and he re
alized that the branch was, actually, a massive cat’s claw. And this tree was a towering, monstrous black cat, a white patch over its eye.

  That cat.

  The cat.

  It loomed over Julian, massive. Its body was a craggy gathering of bones jutting under a hide, stretched so thin it was tearing in places. The cat unwound its body with irregular jerks, and leaned down so that its head was level with Julian’s. Its face was the size of a truck tire. Its two eyes were massive globes filled with a milky liquid and sliced with slits for pupils.

  It opened its mouth at Julian, revealing a row of long serrated teeth, each the size of a kitchen knife. A horrific buzzing sound emanated from the creature’s throat. It started softly and grew in intensity until the buzzing rattled inside Julian’s head so strongly it awoke him with a start. He shot up in bed, covered in sweat.

  It was morning.

  Time for school.

  After he had dressed and packed his backpack, Julian found his father in the workshop. He was wearing dirty overalls and sifting through a pile of tools, his back to the door.

  Julian said blankly, “Hey, Dad. I’m a Three now.”

  His dad turned around, and upon seeing the Three on Julian’s neck, a smile broke through the tight lines of his face.

  “Thank you, Son,” he replied. In a shaft of light coming in from the window, Julian could see that tears were rimming his father’s eyes.

  Julian nodded and turned away. He had to get to school. There would be news waiting for him there.

  Indeed, there was news.

  Nicholas had led a round of applause for Julian when he entered the orchestra room that morning. Warrior Spirit crushed it, apparently. Whatever it was he did, Julian could still not remember it through the fog—and that’s how he was going to leave it. He was never going to look it up. Never going to watch it.

  Constance led the Burners to stand on their seats, whistling and cheering. Nicholas was beaming. He explained with great pride how he was able to manage Headmaster Denton and have the cleanup look like it was an unhappy accident so that the game could continue and Lakeshore could notch a victory in the books. And a victory in the Burners’ Bible, too. Nicholas made a big show about entering Julian’s death into it. “But,” he said, putting the pen down and looking out at his disciples from the podium. “This will be nothing compared to The Drop Dead Drop!”