The bus lurched forward. It heaved around the Chevelle, narrowly missing its rear bumper, blasted another long honk, and rumbled down the main hill. Scott wasn’t sure, but he thought he glimpsed the female driver extending her own middle finger. The bus disappeared from his view.
The driver will not stop for students who give chase, the letter from the school warned.
Not that Scott would have. Above the metal music, he heard raw laughter. The Chevelle gunned blue smoke and slogged out into the intersection after the bus, the frame squealing against the left front tire rim.
When the coast was clear, Scott emerged from behind the bush and stood for a moment in the lingering haze. Then he crossed the intersection and made for home. He hoped his father hadn’t fallen back asleep. He was going to need a ride to his new year of hell.
6
“New developments,” the man said.
“Yes?”
“The boy hacked into a high-security military site yesterday.”
“Hm,” the woman responded. “Are we talking computer skills or something more?”
“Sounds like something more. We’ll continue to monitor.”
“And the girl?”
“Some irregular energies manifested around her house last night.”
“Same pattern as the…”
“Ones throughout the summer?” the man said. “Yes. Only stronger.”
“Your orders, sir?”
“Remain vigilant.”
7
Wendy’s Restaurant
Lunchtime
“How’s it going so far?” Margaret asked, plucking up one of Janis’s fries.
Janis hunched her shoulders to her ears as Feather Heather squealed over something being said at the next table. It was the beach all over again, but instead of bikinis, everyone was in high fashion: Chic, Gloria Vanderbilt, Sassoon, Guess. Janis had agreed to wear jeans, even though it seemed ridiculous (Florida, late August… hello?). But she drew the line at the shoulder-padded number Margaret had tried to push on her, opting for a softball T-shirt instead.
How’s it going? Let’s see… I don’t know anyone in any of my classes. My one opportunity to spend with friends was preempted by your decision that I should eat out with The Seniors. And I’m starting to get that rash-like feeling I get around big crowds. Other than that, it’s going great.
“I started off with four killers.” Janis popped her last bite of burger into her mouth and washed it down with a sip of Coke. “Thought I was going to get a break with P.E., but all the guy could talk about was the F’s he gave out. Oh, and the time he made some big, burly football player cry.”
Margaret smirked. “The legendary Coach Coffer.”
“You don’t have him!” Feather Heather cried, spinning to face Janis.
“God help you,” Tina said, and the girls fell away into laughter.
Janis grimaced.
“He talks tough, but he’s not so bad,” Margaret said. “Just do what he says, and you’ll be fine. There will be plenty of ditzes and doofuses for him to make examples of. It’s not like Thirteenth Street High is in short supply.”
Margaret cut her eyes to a table where three boy-men were competing to put away their three-quarter pound triples in record time. A small, chanting audience had gathered. Jocks, Janis guessed.
The boys’ cheese- and mayonnaise-smeared jaws smacked and churned until, at last, a boy with a blond crew-cut pounded the table with both fists, then opened his mouth to show he was finished. A chorus of cheers rose above feminine protests of “How immature!” and “Grody!” that only made the guys at the table laugh harder. All except for the one who hadn’t participated. His lips were pressed into a grin, but his indigo eyes winced.
“Blake Farrier,” Heather said from beside her.
“Who?”
“The boy you’re, like, staring at.”
Janis’s cheeks started to burn. “I wasn’t staring at anyone.”
“Sure you weren’t.” Heather nudged her with a bony elbow. “But in case you were, I hear he’s as sweet as he is cute. I could totally put a word in—”
Janis spun toward her. “Don’t you dare!”
“Oops,” Heather whispered. “Like, I think you just got his attention.”
Janis lifted her face. Sure enough, Blake was looking right at her. Janis’s immediate instinct was to feel terrified, but his eyes were cool, a little mesmerizing. Now a smile reached them, a soft-dimpled smile that seemed to say, Hey, I’m a little out of place here, too. Janis tried to smile back but dropped her gaze to the scatter of fries across her tray, the spell broken.
Heather nudged her again. “Sure you don’t want me to channel my inner Chuck Woolery and make a love connection?”
“Oh, leave her alone,” Margaret said.
Heather opened her mouth to say something more but then got pulled into whatever the girls at the end of the table were shrieking and giggling over. Janis peeked beyond them, but Blake’s head was turned, the feathered sides of his sandy brown hair hiding his face. Soft ridges of muscles showed through his pink Polo shirt.
“Hey, did you have a nightmare last night?” Margaret asked.
Janis blinked. “Huh?”
“I heard you yell, I don’t know, around one a.m. I almost went to check on you, but you only did it the one time.”
Janis felt her stomach lurch. “I… I did?”
A huge mushroom cloud sprang up in her mind’s eye, like one in that movie on ABC last year, The Morning After, about a Soviet nuclear attack on the United States. She watched the cloud swell and blister, sensing its tremendous heat. She began to smell it, even, a smell of death and—
“Oh, before I forget.”
Janis found herself staring at Margaret, who was snapping her fingers.
“Alpha meeting this Friday at lunchtime. Don’t make other plans. Understood?”
It took a moment for her sister’s words to compute. When they did, Janis stifled a groan. Alpha was a service/social organization for girls — scratch that — for popular girls. This would be Margaret’s second year as president.
“Alpha has its share of athletes, and it’s never been a problem,” Margaret said, preempting Janis. “It’s not going to interfere with your soccer or softball or whatever other games you decide to play.”
“Sports.”
Janis was also tempted to throw in that cheerleaders, while athletic, maybe, were not athletes — not as far as she was concerned. But she bit her tongue. She felt a little more forgiving toward Margaret today. A little more… protective? In her gut, it seemed like the right word. But it didn’t make sense. Why would Margaret need protection? Something to do with the nightmare? Janis fought to think, but all she could dredge up were fragmented images of cockroaches and rotten sacking. Her mind recoiled from them.
“Understood?” Margaret said. “Friday at lunchtime. Don’t forget.”
* * *
Students poured from the classrooms on all sides of Scott, like water through just-opened sluice gates. He fidgeted with his watch and adjusted his glasses, but his legs remained rooted. To that point, he had known more or less where to go, first period to second to third to fourth, the crumpled schedule his compass. But now, with the start of lunch, he hadn’t the slightest idea where to aim himself.
“I’ve got shotgun!”
Scott flinched back before realizing the guy with the orange, flipped-up collar was talking about riding in the front seat of someone’s car. A group of girls followed closely, shoes clacking, gum smacking, making loud plans for the Wendy’s salad bar.
Scott let the girls’ raspberry scent pull him into their wake, into the general flow. He tried to make himself just another droplet in the gushing current. Nothing to see here, folks. Then it dawned on him that the current he’d entered was pulling him toward the senior parking lot.
You have no car, Scott. No ride, either.
He stopped and, his head buzzing with sleep deprivation, wheeled
to go back the way he had come. He didn’t see the solid guy in the pink Polo shirt until it was too late. The impact knocked Scott sideways and as he danced a circle to stay upright, he felt the guy moving in.
Here we go.
Scott cringed and raised a forearm. But when Pink Shirt grabbed him, it was to help steady him. “Oh, man, I totally didn’t see you,” he said, his brow furrowing above indigo eyes. “You all right?”
Scott fixed his glasses. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
“Cool, man.” He clapped Scott’s shoulder. “Catch you later.” Pink Shirt resumed his athletic trot down the hallway. Scott stared after him, as stunned by the collision as by the fact that the guy hadn’t called him geek or dweeb or just pummeled him outright.
Around Scott, the flow of students tapered to trickles. He craned his neck, hoping to spot Craig or Chun, even Wayne. But whatever plans they had made for lunch hadn’t found Scott’s ears — by design, of course.
Things had gone badly that morning in their computer programming class. When Scott had attempted to sit beside him, Wayne threw his backpack over the seat and refused to look up. And when Scott proceeded to try and warn him about the phone tap, Wayne closed his smudged-in eyes, plugged both ears, and gave him the “la-la-la” treatment. Scott ended up spending the period on the far side of the room, drafting his warning on a piece of paper and then passing it to him. But no dice there, either. Wayne’s mustache curled into a snarl and, with one hand, he crumpled the paper into a wad. Then, on his way out of the classroom, Craig and Chun following like obedient lap dogs, he spiked it into the trashcan.
Now, with the last cries of the lunch rush tailing off, Scott gave up his search for his friends and watched his gray Velcro tennis shoes scuff over the concrete. He followed an outdoor hallway that ran perpendicular to the school’s four wings and led to the auditorium. Above the metal doors, a banner with purple lettering read: WELCOME TINY TITANS – CLASS OF ’88!
Scott’s mind crunched the numbers. Four school years. One hundred forty-four weeks. Seven hundred twenty days. Five thousand forty class periods. He dropped his gaze from the banner, swallowing his despair.
Twin pay phones stood off to the right of the doors, and Scott scuffed toward them. Reaching back, he fished his hand into the smaller pocket of his backpack until he found a quarter. He lifted the receiver on the rightmost phone and dropped the quarter into the slot. He dialed a random 376- number, listened until the line began to ring, and hung up. The phone coughed his quarter into the change receptacle. Scott started over, this time with another random 376- number. He did this twice more.
Finally, he dialed his own number, another 376- number. Scott listened and replaced the receiver promptly.
Damn.
All of the numbers he had just called were located on the same exchange. And as he’d expected — and as should have been the case — all of the delays before the start of the ring lasted roughly the same. Except for the delay on his own home number. Just like last night, the difference could have been measured in milliseconds, but it was there, just long enough for him to notice.
Someone was still listening.
You need Wayne.
Scott hesitated before nodding to himself. Wayne had hacked Bell South’s switching control system before. Using a clean line — Craig’s or Chun’s, maybe — Wayne could do it again. He could discover when the order for the tap had been placed and by whom exactly. Only one teensy little problem. The last time Wayne had accused Scott of holding back info, he’d gone a month without speaking to him.
“Must be wanting to talk to someone pretty bad, calling so many times.”
Scott’s hand jerked, and the quarter he had been drawing from the change receptacle spilled to the ground. It wasn’t just the suddenness of the voice, but the sense that the person had been behind him the whole time. Scott peeked around. Hands the color of dusty teakwood drew up a pair of blue pant legs. The man had been pushing a cart with a metal trashcan. Several garbage bags hung like drapes from the mouth of the can while a broom and a long pick for stabbing stray trash leaned against it. The man reached for the quarter, which was rolling in dying circles near his paint-spattered work shoes.
Breathe, Scott. Just a custodian.
With a chuckle like dry wind, the custodian captured the quarter between his thumb and third finger. His upper back remained slightly hunched when he straightened. A flat-topped straw hat shaded his black-weathered face, where a row of teeth shone white and straight. The man held the quarter out, the tails side showing. And now Scott recognized him.
“Mr. Shine?”
Mr. Shine was their yardman — the yardman for several families in Oakwood, in fact. Scott was so used to seeing him in cuffed brown trousers and suspenders that his mind was still trying to reconcile that image with the coveralls. But the rich brown gaze was unmistakable, the gaze of someone from another era, an era of sun-bleached dirt roads and wooden porches. Old Florida. That’s how Mr. Shine struck him.
Mr. Shine smiled as Scott reached for the quarter. “Better hol’ to her tight, or next time I’m liable to keep her.” His eyes squinted when he chuckled. “Course, maybe I already kept her.”
Mr. Shine snapped the fingers holding the quarter — a fast, dry sound — and Scott watched the quarter disappear. Mr. Shine showed his large, calloused palm, then the knotted darkness of the back of his hand, also empty.
“How did you—?”
When Mr. Shine snapped his fingers again, the quarter reappeared right where it had been, except now with the heads-side showing. A laugh of disbelief escaped Scott’s throat. He pressed his glasses to his face and stooped toward the coin, still trying to figure out what Mr. Shine had done.
“Don’t worry. I ain’t gonna make her jump again.”
Mr. Shine handed the quarter to Scott, who took it between his own thumb and third finger. Scott began to execute a slow snap, watching the quarter rise between his first and middle fingers.
“Now you don’t go makin’ her jump.” He nodded past Scott. “You need her lots worse than me, seems.”
Heat scaled Scott’s cheeks. “Oh, I was just, um” — he turned his face toward the pay phones and then back to Mr. Shine — “just trying to call home.”
“You forget the number?” Light twinkled from his eyes.
Before Scott could come up with another half-truth, Mr. Shine leaned into the cart, setting the wheels into wobbling motion. “You have you’self a fine day, sir,” he called over his shoulder.
“Thanks, Mr. Shine. You too.”
“Oh, and ’round here they call me Geech. Ain’t my name, but just so’s you know.”
Scott looked from Mr. Shine’s limping, receding figure down to the quarter. He turned it from heads to tails and back. All the years Mr. Shine had worked in their yard and that marked the first time they had really talked. Scott considered this as he pocketed the quarter and wandered off in search of lunch.
* * *
Janis reached fifth period typing between the warning bell and final bell, out of breath and with the first stabs of a stomach cramp. Eating off campus was liberating, sure, but she’d never had to sprint to get to her next class at Creekside Middle School.
The desks sat in pairs, and the sight of twenty-odd sets of eyes peering over the enormous Smith Coronas unnerved Janis. She scanned the room for a place to park herself, thankful her hair had darkened a shade over the last years. She still harbored adrenaline-spiked memories of other kids, boys especially, taunting her on the first day of elementary school each year, calling her Strawberry Shortcake. Not that she hadn’t eventually straightened them out with her fists. Her temper had once been as storied as her bright hair.
Now, a pair of sniggers made the nape of her neck bristle. Her gaze darted toward the source, a boy with a pug nose and shades parked on the top of his head of tight, blond curls. But his sniggers weren’t meant for her. He was leaning toward the punk-rock girl seated in front of him, poised to set a wad of
gum atop one of her blade-like spikes of black hair.
“Hey!” Janis called.
The guy jerked his arm back. The girl, who had been oblivious, turned from the window, one knee hugged to her chest. Janis looked on her gaunt, pale face painted with black lipstick and funeral-dark eye shadow. It was a face Janis had seen once that day already, though she couldn’t remember where. She approached the empty desk beside her.
“Seat taken?” Janis asked.
The girl shrugged a shoulder. “Knock yourself out.”
Janis thanked her and shot a warning look at Blondie, who had popped the gum back into his mouth and dropped his shades. Janis stowed her books under the desk and glanced around. When the final bell rang, the teacher’s desk remained empty.
Janis cleared her throat. “I’m Janis.”
The girl lifted her dark, hooded gaze. “Star,” she said.
And then Janis remembered. “Right, you’re in my American history class. Second period.”
That would be Advanced Placement American history, Janis. And here you’d figured her for a burnout.
Star tensed her lips and eyes into something like a smile, then looked away. Janis’s gaze fell to the black Chuck Taylor perched on Star’s chair. Messages and little pictures covered the high top’s graying rubber. Question Everything! the toe commanded. It seemed her typing neighbor was into skulls and ravens as well.
“Used to be called Americanism versus communism,” Star said.
“I’m sorry?”
“Our history class.”
Star dropped her foot from the chair and smoothed her ruffled skirt. Beneath the black skirt, she wore black tights. A green-checked flannel shirt hung from her rail-thin torso. Janis wondered what her own father would do if she ever tried to leave the house like that. And it went beyond the clothes and makeup. Janis, who had been allowed her first piercing only last year, counted eight black studs around Star’s right ear.
“The legislature passed a law back in the sixties forcing the high schools to teach anti-communism. They were afraid we’d reject American consumerism if they didn’t. Isn’t that something? Using the same kind of indoctrinating as the Soviet Union — the evil empire — to cheer our system and crap all over theirs.” She snorted and began nipping at a black-painted pinky nail.
XGeneration, Books 1-3: You Don't Know Me, The Watchers, and Silent Generation Page 5