B005N8ZFUO EBOK

by Lubar, David

  “What if we get caught?” I asked after I’d stepped away from the ladder.

  Lucky shrugged. “What can they do? Shoot us?”

  I saw his point. We were already at the end of the line as far as getting in trouble.

  It’s a good thing I wasn’t afraid of the dark. Torchie had forgotten the flashlight and nobody felt like going back for it. We walked in total blackness through the pipe. It was a darkness so complete it made me feel I no longer existed except as a bundle of thoughts. Even though I wasn’t scared, I didn’t like the experience. It’s weird what visions the mind can create when the eyes can’t see. But I got through it.

  The pipe spilled us out on the side of a wooded hill, about fifty yards from the road. We followed the road into town and headed for the arcade.

  The thought of video games made me realize I had a problem. “I don’t have any money,” I told them.

  “No big deal,” Lucky said. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a handful of quarters.

  I hesitated. It felt funny taking money from him.

  “Go ahead. Help yourself. I didn’t steal it.” He shook his hand, jangling the coins in his palm.

  “I never said you did. It’s just that I don’t know when I can pay you back.” I figured I could ask my folks for some money, but they probably wouldn’t send me any.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Lucky said. “It’s my treat. You want it or not?”

  “Thanks.” I took the coins from him and put them in my pocket.

  The town of Edgeview wasn’t very big. Actually, the main part was across the interstate. The side we could reach was only about seven blocks from the school, but traveling through town felt like walking into a different world—a world of houses, homes, and families.

  It didn’t take long to figure out that I was marked. Groups of kids, standing and horsing around in the streets, got quiet when we went past. Some of them crossed the street when we came near. A couple little kids even ran away from us.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Torchie.

  “Huh?” He looked around as if he didn’t know what I meant. Maybe he was used to seeing kids flee from him.

  “They’re scared of us,” Cheater said, grinning. “Can you believe that? They think everyone from Edgeview is dangerous. Do I look like a killer?”

  I squinted at him. “Hard to tell in the dark. Take off your glasses and try to look mean.”

  He had his hand halfway to his face before he realized I was kidding.

  I wondered how the kids from town knew we were from Edgeview.

  “It’s a small place,” Cheater said, as if he’d guessed my next question. “So we really stick out. They know we don’t go to the public school. They call us ‘Alters,’ since we go to the Alternative School.”

  “Guess what we call them?” Flinch asked.

  “I give up. What?”

  “Edgies,” Flinch told me. “I came up with that.”

  I wasn’t surprised. Flinch had a gift for funny stuff. He was the one who’d started calling Waylon Hindenburg.

  “You’ll get used to them,” Cheater told me. “Hey, I’m certainly used to people treating me different. When everyone stares at you, after a while it’s like nobody at all is staring.”

  “That’s the truth,” Flinch said.

  I guess they had a point. But it really felt strange the way the town kids acted. I’d wondered how they’d react to someone who was really dangerous, like Bloodbath. He’d plow through these kids like a bulldozer through a basket of light bulbs.

  As we got closer to the small strip mall, I scanned the stores, hoping for a pizzeria or a burger place. No luck. There was a video store at the end nearest us. I guess it closed early, because the lights were off. I realized I hadn’t seen a movie in weeks. Past that store, a laundry pumped the steamy smell of clothes dryers into the air. The drugstore next to it had a sign in front that said NO LOITERING. Beyond the drugstore, jangling and flashing in that unmistakable way, stood the arcade. It was called MondoVideo. Nice surprise—it was larger than I’d thought it would be. I went inside, expecting nothing more than a few hours of fun.

  But it was in the arcade, surrounded by the bright noise of mindless electronic entertainment, that I began to see the whole picture.

  TWO EDGIES TALKING ON THE SIDEWALK A BLOCK FROM THE ARCADE

  Edgie One: Oh man, it’s Alters.

  Edgie Two: Let’s get out of here. Those guys will beat up anyone they get their hands on. [he starts to run]

  Edgie One: [running] I hope they don’t follow us.

  Edgie Two: I heard some of them carry knives.

  Edgie One: [panting and looking back] It’s okay. They didn’t follow us.

  Edgie Two: That was close. I hate those guys.

  Edgie One: Don’t worry. I heard the place is getting shut down.

  A GLIMMER OF THE TRUTH

  I’m not a bad game player. I do best at the driving games, but I do okay on the other stuff, too. And I like pinball. Torchie, Cheater, and Lucky were all pretty good, but Flinch came close to being amazing. I started out playing Road Revenge. Flinch was standing next to me, taking on one of the new fighting games with the really cool graphics. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed he was undefeated after I’d already gone through a dollar. That got my attention. In the next hour, I saw him roll up incredibly high scores at almost every game he played. I could barely believe that someone who was so jumpy could play games so well.

  “He’s got great reflexes,” Torchie said as we watched Flinch blast his way through level after level on Smash TV. They had a lot of the latest stuff at the arcade, but Flinch seemed to like the old games as much as the new ones. He’d go from something brand-new like Shaolin Annihilator to something ancient like Pole Position, Frogger, or Centipede. I stuck with the old games, since most of them were still just a quarter. I didn’t want to run through Lucky’s money too quickly. I even played a game of Skee Ball for old times’ sake, hitting just enough of a score to win one ticket. My sister and I used to play it when we were little. I usually gave her all the tickets I won so she could save up for good prizes. I shoved the ticket in my pocket, figuring I could send it to her as a joke.

  I beat my old high score on Xenon, one of my favorite pinball machines. For a moment, as I stood there, just drinking in the great sounds that washed over me from all the machines, life seemed absolutely fine.

  Flinch stepped away from Smash TV and went to one of the all-time pinball classics—Eightball Deluxe.

  “Want to play a two-player game?” Torchie asked me, pointing to NBA Jam.

  I shook my head. Right then, I just wanted to watch Flinch. There was something odd about the way he used the flippers.

  “Guess I’ll play pinball,” Torchie said, stepping up next to Flinch and feeding some change into Excalibur.

  I think, if I’d just watched Flinch, I might never have noticed what was going on. But with Flinch and Torchie standing side by side, I began to see the differences in the ways they played.

  After a while, I started to understand what Flinch was doing. As the first suspicions grew, a shiver of excitement tingled across my flesh. Beneath the thrill of discovery was a tinge of fear.

  Even though I was sure I’d figured out what was happening, I didn’t quite believe it.

  A couple minutes before midnight, the lights blinked on and off. “Closing time,” the guy behind the counter shouted.

  “We’d better get going,” Torchie said.

  It was just as well—I was down to my last three quarters. “Here,” I said, handing them to Lucky.

  “Keep ‘em,” he told me.

  I felt funny about that. “I don’t need—”

  “Keep the quarters, okay?” He glared at me, his hands clenched in fists.

  “Yeah. Sure. Thanks.” I wasn’t going to get into a fight over it. If he wanted me to have the quarters that badly, I’d keep them.

  We headed out. I watched Flinch carefully
on the way back to the school. He didn’t do anything unusual, but I decided to keep an eye on him.

  We got inside without any trouble. Much to my surprise, climbing up was a lot less scary than climbing down. As Lucky hauled in the ladder and stuck it under his bed, my eyes homed in on the open closet.

  “Wow.” I couldn’t help gasping. There was no way the door could close. The closet was crammed with stuff. I stared at stacks of cardboard boxes overflowing with an amazing variety of loot—pens, eyeglasses, tape recorders, hats, wallets, all kinds of small toys. I saw at least a dozen baseballs, most pretty scuffed but one that looked brand-new, a bunch of golf balls, tons of tennis balls, and a jar full of coins.

  “Found ‘em,” Lucky said. “I didn’t steal them.”

  “All of that?” I walked over to the boxes.

  “Yeah, all of that. Especially around home on the weekends.” His voice grew tense. He moved a step closer to me. “I found it all. Finders keepers.”

  “Great.” I held my breath, hoping he wasn’t going to get angrier.

  Lucky smiled. “Go ahead. Take anything you want.”

  I looked at him, unsure what to say.

  He nodded. “Really.”

  I figured he’d get upset if I refused. I reached toward the top box. It felt funny—almost like I was stealing. But Lucky started to look tense again so I just grabbed the first thing my hand touched. “Thanks. This is great,” I said. I looked down and discovered I was holding one of those big plastic clips girls use in their hair.

  “Nice choice, Martin,” Flinch said. “Maybe we can get you a dress to go with it.” He started laughing, and exchanged a hand slap with Torchie.

  “Hey—I’m going to send it to my sister,” I said. I shoved the stupid thing in my pocket and left the room. Sometimes, Flinch just didn’t know when to keep his mouth shut.

  “That was fun, wasn’t it?” Torchie asked after we’d slipped back into our room.

  “Yeah. Thanks for letting me come.” I thought about telling him what I’d seen, but I decided to wait until I had real proof.

  It wasn’t as simple as I’d hoped. After spending most of Saturday trying to study Flinch without being obvious about it, and learning absolutely nothing, I realized it might be better to get more information first. So I decided to do some research. If I was right, everything I knew about the world was about to change. Everything I knew about the whole universe, for that matter.

  After breakfast Sunday morning, while all my classmates were hanging out and relaxing, or spending quality time at home with their parents, I went to the school library down on the first floor. The librarian—I think it was the same guy who taught the history lecture—seemed shocked to see someone. Or annoyed that I had disturbed his nap. I’m not sure which. Either way, I had the place pretty much to myself.

  I wasn’t exactly sure where to start, so I wandered around reading the titles of books on the shelves. I knew I could look something up on the computer catalog that listed all the books in the library, but I didn’t even know what to look under. It was like trying to find a word in the dictionary when you didn’t know how to spell it. But at least the library didn’t have as many books as the dictionary had words.

  “Can I help you?” the librarian asked after I’d scanned the shelves for ten minutes or so. He walked over toward me, but stopped several feet away, as if I might be contagious. I guess it drove him crazy watching me search the shelves like someone trying to find the right variety of soup in the supermarket.

  “No thanks, I’m just looking.”

  He gave me that special smile teachers use with students who aren’t very bright. “Well, if you tell me what you’re looking for, I can help you find it.”

  I shrugged. “I won’t know what I’m looking for until I find it.”

  “Suit yourself. But call me if you need help.”

  “I will.” I resumed my search. There was a lot of interesting stuff. There were some books about dinosaurs and tanks and outer space. All the books looked pretty worn. The ripped covers were wrapped in yellowing plastic. A lot of them were patched with tape that had turned stiff and brittle. I flipped open a couple of the books and checked the dates. Most of them were written years ago. I guess an old book is just as good as a new one if it has the facts you need. But at first I didn’t see anything that would do me any good.

  Then I got warm. I spotted a book called A Skeptical Look into the World of the Unexplained. That seemed worth a shot. I took it to one of the tables and started flipping through the pages.

  The guy who wrote the book talked about all kinds of unexplained phenomena like ghosts and stuff, and he tried to explain them in normal terms. Some of the unexplained stuff he’d investigated was obviously fake. He’d caught people making thumping sounds and pretending it was a ghost, or using hidden springs to make objects jump off a shelf. There were all kinds of frauds out there. Some of them were after money, and some just wanted attention.

  I wasn’t interested in the fakes. The most important thing I got from the book was a list of the words for what I wanted to learn about. I’d brought a notebook with me. I wrote down the words—clairvoyance, telepathy, telekinesis, and several others. Then I went to the computer—it was an old piece of junk with a green screen, and the software was pretty lame, but it had all the books in the library on file so you could search for titles and subjects. I noticed the librarian giving me a smug look, like he’d won some sort of contest. I ignored him.

  I searched the computer for the words I’d found. There weren’t any books on the subjects. That didn’t surprise me. It wasn’t the sort of thing a school library would have. So I tried the encyclopedia. Bingo. I found short articles under several of the words. And I learned a couple more words from those articles, especially the part at the end where they say see also. I added those words to the bottom of my list. After I’d looked at everything I could find in the encyclopedia, I took those new words and went back to the computer. This time, I actually found two books listed.

  As much as I hate to admit it, I was starting to have fun in the library. If I told the guys that I was enjoying myself, I’d be kidded without mercy. They’d probably start calling me Bookman or Wordboy, or something like that. I certainly wasn’t a brain, and I didn’t think of myself as the kind of kid who studies stuff or learns things just for fun, but this was almost as good as a game.

  And I’d done it all by myself. I’d gone in there with little more than a suspicion, and ended up learning a lot more than I’d expected. As I sat back in the chair at the library, thinking about all I’d read and what I suspected, I realized there was an easy way to get the proof I needed. And I could do it before the end of the day.

  MILKING THE MOMENT

  I was in the library so long, I missed lunch. I guess the bell rang, but I didn’t pay any attention to it. So I had to wait until dinner to spring my trap. It was tough keeping quiet. The guys would be blown away when I told them what I’d figured out. It was all so amazingly incredible. I caught up with them in line. Lucky hadn’t come back from his weekend with his dad, so it was just Flinch, Torchie, Cheater, and me.

  When we brought our trays out from the food line, I grabbed a seat next to Flinch. This was perfect. All I needed was a distraction.

  That came quickly enough. I noticed Torchie’s napkin was on fire. It wasn’t a big blaze—the edge was lightly smoldering. “Fire,” I said, just loud enough so Flinch looked at Torchie’s tray. I reached out and smothered the fire with my right hand. As I leaned across the table, I knocked over my milk with my left hand.

  Before the carton even landed on its side, Flinch jumped out of his seat. At that point, he still wasn’t looking in my direction.

  “Hey, careful,” he said as the milk glugged out of the open lip of the carton and splashed over the spot where his butt had just been resting.

  “Wow. I’m sorry,” I said. I mopped up the chair with a handful of extra napkins I had on my tray. I knew I’d nee
d them, so I’d grabbed a whole bunch. It was hard to keep from grinning. But I wasn’t grinning over spilled milk, I was grinning over the proof I’d hoped to find. As I’d expected, Flinch was bone dry—not a drop had touched him.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  “I’ll tell you later,” I whispered. This was great. I was dying to tell them right there, but I didn’t want anyone at the other tables to hear. “It’s a secret. I’ll explain when we get back to the room.”

  “I can’t wait to hear this,” Flinch said.

  “Hear what?” Torchie asked.

  “Later,” I said.

  Cheater gave me an odd look. I had a feeling he already knew what I was going to talk about. Even so, he didn’t say anything. None of the others had a clue yet. But that would change after dinner.

  As I finished my meal, I thought about how thrilled they’d be to hear the truth.

  “Okay,” Torchie said after we’d had gathered in the room. “What’s this big mystery?”

  That was a good choice of words. I felt like the detective at the end of a mystery movie, when he’s gathered all the suspects together and is about to explain everything. I stood up and pointed at Cheater. “Why are you at this school?”

  “You know why,” he said. “They think I cheat on tests.”

  “Do you cheat?”

  “No. I don’t need to cheat. I’m smart. Ask me anything. Anything at all.”

  “I know you’re smart,” I told Cheater. “What about you? Why are you here?” I asked, pointing to Flinch.

  “I’m kind of jumpy,” he said. “I guess I get distracted a lot. It messes up my grades. According to my teachers, I’m a disruptive influence in the classroom.”

  “And we all know why Torchie is here,” I said. “But maybe the adults are wrong about you guys. Maybe there’s another explanation.” This was going to be great. They’d be amazed when I told them what I’d figured out.