XGeneration, Books 1-3: You Don't Know Me, The Watchers, and Silent Generation

by Brad Magnarella

  And there you had it. Nothing more or less complicated.

  Janis followed the ball into the side yard, where the garden hose lay in a loose coil. She tugged off her gloves and shoved up her sleeves. As good a time to take a break as any. She twisted the spigot. The water that gurgled from the hose was still cold from the last time and felt wonderful flowing over her head. She tilted the nozzle up so the water pushed against her face, then took a long drink as the water trickled beneath her jersey, cooling her body in little rivulets.

  After tightening the spigot, Janis gathered the soccer ball and sat with it cross-legged inside the wall of shade along the edge of the yard. She traced the ball’s hexagonal seams with her fingers. All around her, the late afternoon heat rattled and droned with insect sounds…

  And then drilling.

  It was the same drilling that had been whining on and off while she practiced, but Janis hadn’t given it much thought; she couldn’t tell where it was even coming from. But now she could. She left her ball in the shade and followed the sound to the back line of bushes. Beyond the leaves, she could make out someone in a white T-shirt. Janis sank to one knee and pushed aside a low bough.

  Mr. Leonard was standing in front of his woodshed, with his back to her. He was bracing the farther shed door open about a foot while, with his other hand, he operated a drill powered by a long orange cable running up to his house. Narrow straps of muscle stood from the back of his sunburned neck. It was her first time seeing him since the dream (experience).

  But she felt no fear, not in the light of day. He didn’t know she was watching him, one. And at Janis’s back, across the yard, she could hear the intermittent clinking of pots where her mother was inside preparing their dinner. Janis had only to shout for her to look out the kitchen window.

  Janis shifted her attention from Mr. Leonard to the shed. It was decrepit and leaned with the lawn, just as it had in her dream. But of course she’d seen the shed before, like when she and Margaret used to roller skate down the culvert. Her mind had obviously kept the image on file and then called it up when, in her dream, she had ventured into his backyard.

  But what about the inside?

  The drill rattled to a stop. Mr. Leonard wiped his hand on his hip and began to turn. Janis released the bough and drew back. Through the leaves, she watched him set the drill on a folding chair. She reopened her sight line just as he shut the shed door and locked it with a key.

  So there was a bolt lock.

  But she could have noticed this feature from the culvert as well. Not consciously, maybe, but her mind could still have recorded the detail and stored it away.

  Mr. Leonard tugged on both doors, peering up and down the frame. He turned back to the chair and began gathering his things. Something small went into the front pocket of his cut-off jeans and something else into his other pocket. Then he scooped up what could only be screws by the way he palmed them.

  Parts of the old lock? The idea made the damp skin beneath Janis’s jersey bunch into gooseflesh. Sunday night you dream he catches you in his shed. Five days later he changes the lock. Ripley’s… Believe It or Not.

  Last, she watched him unplug and disarm the drill and then shove it into the waist of his shorts in the back.

  When Mr. Leonard turned, Janis was too slow to release the bough. She froze instead, like an exposed animal. He squinted around, his yellow-bespectacled gaze appearing to hesitate on the spot where she knelt. A second later, he turned and hiked toward the house, gathering the extension cord around his arm in sharp, strong gestures. He didn’t look at all like a hapless substitute. No, he appeared capable — capable in a way that made him far creepier.

  * * *

  That night, Janis sat up with her back against the headboard, telling herself she would quit reading at the end of the chapter and turn off her light. In English that week, they’d finished their discussion of 1984, and Mrs. Fern had assigned them To Kill a Mockingbird. “No book better contrasts the imagined realm of children with the stark and consequential world of adults,” she had declared. “And none better collides them.” Janis couldn’t say how, but she felt that Mrs. Fern had intended the message for her.

  She was at the nerve-wracking part where the kids sneak over to Boo Radley’s house at night, when a pair of taps sounded on her bedroom door. Janis gasped and pressed the book to her chest.

  “Come in,” she called, her heart still thudding.

  Probably Margaret, home from her date with Kevin. The rest of the Graystone clan had spent the evening with bowls of popcorn, watching a rental from Video World: The Private Eyes, a Tim Conway and Don Knotts spoof. Movie night on Friday was a Graystone tradition, a reward for their week of work.

  But it wasn’t Margaret. When Janis looked over, she found her mother slipping ghost-like into the room, one hand to the chest of her cotton nightgown. She smiled and moved in a way that seemed apologetic.

  “I saw your light on,” she whispered.

  “What are you still doing up?” Janis asked.

  “I could ask the same of you. It’s almost midnight.”

  Janis held the book up. “Just some reading for next week.”

  Janis’s mother took the book and sat with it on the edge of the bed. “Harper Lee. I would have been about your age when I read this.” She seemed to reflect on that for a moment before smiling and handing the book back to Janis.

  “Is everything all right?” Janis asked.

  “I just woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep. It happens from time to time. Normally, I go to the kitchen table and read until I’m tired again, but when I saw your light on… I thought maybe you were having some trouble sleeping, too.”

  Her mother’s low voice sounded lonely to Janis, but she told herself her mother was trying not to wake the rest of the house.

  “No, I’m fine, Mom.”

  “You would tell me if you weren’t? If anything was the matter?” She touched Janis’s cheek and smoothed the hair around her ear, like she used to do when Janis was a little girl.

  Janis looked into her mother’s eyes. For a moment, she considered telling her about the dreams, about her fear of falling asleep. But Janis knew it would only make her mother worry for her, and what could she do anyway?

  “Well, there is this whole thing with Alpha.” Janis cut her eyes to the wall separating her bedroom from Margaret’s. “She just doesn’t get that I don’t want anything to do with it.”

  Her mother chuckled, more with her body than with her voice. “Deciding what’s best for others is your sister’s way of showing her affection. She’s a lot like your father that way.”

  Her mother looked down in a manner suggesting she hadn’t meant to say the last part. But Janis saw she was right about Margaret — and her father. And in this realization, her heart suffered a pang of what could only be described as jealousy. Ever since she was a little girl, Janis had tried to emulate her father — his strength, his even-spokenness, his athleticism — so to now see this stronger semblance between Margaret and him felt strange.

  “You know, I started school this week, too,” her mother said.

  “Wait, what?” Janis sat up. She tried to read the soft upturn of her mother’s lips.

  “It’s a biology class. We meet twice a week at the community college, Tuesday and Thursday mornings.”

  “Biology? When did this happen?”

  The smile continued to spread over her mother’s face, as if it had been wanting to express itself for a long time.

  “You know how Samantha’s mother is a special education teacher? Works with the elementary school kids? Well, it’s what I’d like to do someday.”

  “That’s great, Mom. But why haven’t you said anything?”

  The smile lingered across her mother’s lips, then slipped away.

  “Your father and I decided to do it this way for now… just a class or two a semester until you graduate high school. And then if I’m still interested, we’ll see about the full-ti
me program at the university.”

  Janis giggled at the idea of her mother in a classroom full of students. She had always seen her mother as… well, a mother. But she had been a student once, too, hadn’t she? A serious one. For some reason, Janis had never thought to ask why she’d never earned her degree. But it was obvious. She’d married Dad after taking his course in international relations, had Margaret a year after and Janis three years later. There had been meals to cook, clothes to launder, grocery and shopping trips, rides to and from school, lessons and practices, not to mention batteries of appointments — duties Janis had taken for granted. It had just seemed what her mother did, who she was.

  Janis had never stopped to consider that her mother might have other dreams.

  “That’s so great.” She took her mother’s hand and squeezed it. “Really. I’m proud of you.”

  “Thanks, hon.” Moisture glistened in the corners of her mother’s eyes as she squeezed back. “Well, I’ll leave you alone with Scout and Jem.” She planted a kiss on Janis’s forehead. “Don’t stay up too much longer.”

  “I won’t, Mom. G’night.”

  Halfway to the door, her mother turned, her hand pressing the collar of her gown flat. “What were you doing by the bushes this afternoon? In the backyard?”

  “Oh, I heard Mr. Leonard drilling. I just wanted to see what he was up to.”

  “I see.”

  “Is that all right?”

  “The Leonards are… private people. Your father and I have always thought it best that we respect their privacy.” She looked like she was going to say something more but instead glanced around the room. Her gaze touched on the posters tacked to Janis’s walls: the Tampa Bay Rowdies, U.S. women’s softball, a flag-draped Bruce Springsteen. When her gaze returned to Janis, her mother was smiling that apologetic smile again. Or was it sorrowful?

  “All right, then. Sleep well, hon.”

  But Janis did not sleep well. As she was drifting off, she dreamed she was creeping up to Boo Radley’s front door at night, just as Jem had been doing in the book. Janis didn’t want to, but it was as though some inimical whisper compelled her, telling her she had to. The door loomed closer. In her dream, the door was suburban-looking and yellow. As she reached forward to knock, it swung inward.

  A pale hand seized her wrist and pulled her into the darkness.

  It took Janis another hour to fall back asleep.

  13

  Thirteenth Street High

  Tuesday, September 4, 1984

  Third Period

  Scott was waiting for the computer at his station to boot up when a high, sneering voice pierced the classroom doorway: “Even with a plasma effect, the electrical pulses would have to be sustained, dill weed!”

  Wayne brushed past, bumping Scott with his backpack. Craig and Chun followed closely. By the time they took their seats across the room, Scott gathered that they were debating whether or not a lightsaber could be built using present-day technology. Scott caught himself cocking an ear before realizing that was just what Wayne wanted: for him to feel left out.

  Scott had left several phone messages for Wayne that weekend. None had been returned. He sighed. This had gone on long enough. He pressed his hands to his desk and weaved past the intervening computer stations. Stooping over Wayne’s shoulder, he spoke through his teeth.

  “Can we drop the whole Scott Spruel Doesn’t Exist thing already? This is getting way past lame.”

  Wayne turned his head one way, then the other, his back to Scott.

  “Did you hear something, men?”

  Craig’s eyes flickered toward Scott as he shook his large head, his feathery blond hair in disarray. Chun fingered the purple mole above his right nostril and lowered his face. His black bowl cut shuddered with quick rotations.

  “Hmm, must be the interference from the simultaneous boot-up of three systems,” Wayne said. “Just ignore it, men, and those annoying noises will go away.”

  “I hope you realize how stupid you sound.”

  Wayne wheeled to face Scott, his mustache bristling above twisted lips. Narrow, smudged-in eyes looked him up and down. Scott braced for a blow to the stomach, but Wayne’s narrow shoulders began to shudder with laughter. “Talk about stupid! Who dressed you in pink this morning? Miss Pac-Man?”

  Scott glanced down at his Standards: Miami-pink shirt, pressed white slacks, penny loafers. He smoothed his yellow paisley tie, his neck burning. “Yeah, well…”

  “And what’s this?” Wayne grabbed the laminated letter around his neck. “The sign of The Secret Order of I’m-The-World’s-Biggest-Ignoramus?” He unleashed more spitting laughter.

  “It stands for Gamma. It’s a men’s organization, something you wouldn’t know anything about, you — you hacking neophyte.”

  Wayne went rigid. “What did you call me?”

  In his anger, Scott had gone straight for Wayne’s Doomsday Button. He glanced over at Craig and Chun. They looked back with wide-eyed expressions that said, Now you’ve done it.

  “Just forget it,” Scott said.

  He tried to draw away, but Wayne still had the other end of the letter in his grip. The glint of condescension in his eyes sharpened to blades of jealousy.

  “Let go,” Scott said.

  Wayne mimicked him in falsetto: “Let go.”

  “Let go, I said. You’re gonna tear it!”

  “You’re gonna tear it!”

  Scott had hoped to resolve their dispute with the same command and maturity as Scott Summers of the X-Men. But here they were, grappling for a laminated letter like a pair of first graders. All that was missing were the glue sticks and round-tipped scissors. Scott glanced back to make sure the other students weren’t watching and found them standing in a semicircle, all glasses and unkempt hair. He seized Wayne’s fingers and tried to pry them away.

  “I just wanted to warn you about a tap,” he whispered as they struggled. “There’s one on my line… might be one on yours.”

  “Crap on your tap.” Wayne jerked his arm, and the string around Scott’s neck snapped. They both looked at the letter in Wayne’s hand, an “Oh, shit” flitting across Wayne’s eyes. Then he scrunched up his face and flung the letter away. It flapped over the heads of the onlookers.

  Scott stared at Wayne, klaxons blaring between his temples. He imagined himself seizing his best friend’s neck, pressing his thumbs into his bony Adam’s apple. But then he counted off the consequences in his head: trip to the dean’s office, suspension, expulsion from Gamma.

  He leveled a finger at Wayne’s nose. “Don’t talk to me. Ever again. I mean it.”

  “I mean it,” Wayne echoed, waggling his head. Several students tittered, including Craig and Chun.

  Scott wheeled to hunt for his letter.

  * * *

  Janis stood on tiptoes outside the peeled-paint metal door, trying without success to peer through its mesh window. She knew about the room from when Margaret had pledged. It contained a couple of small tables, a non-working refrigerator, and a countertop with broken cabinets where rats nested. The room’s official name was the Teacher’s Dining Room, a relic of some sepia-toned decade past. Now it was Where the Alpha Pledges Ate Lunch.

  Janis sighed through her nose and seized the door handle. Let’s get this over with. Hinges squealed, and the pledging class, crowded around the two pushed-together tables, blinked up at her from the darkness like well-heeled tomb robbers. The room’s lone fluorescent bar didn’t work either, a detail Janis had forgotten.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she muttered, letting the door swing closed behind her.

  Chair legs scraped, and when Janis’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, a narrow wedge of table had opened up for her. She was glad to see it wasn’t beside the Amy-Alicia-Autumn hydra. It was bad enough having to miss her lunches with her friends, but being confined to a room with her archenemies…

  “Just as well for you,” Amy chirped. “It gave us time to spruce up the room a little. You sh
ould have smelled this place ten minutes ago.”

  Janis didn’t lend her voice to the flutters of laughter. Instead, she unpacked her lunch bag. Apparently the three A’s had been holding court before Janis’s arrival because they resumed chattering about life in front of the cameras to their rapt audience. Janis took a despondent bite from her bologna-and-mayonnaise sandwich and examined the stained ceiling for roach activity. Never in a million years would she have imagined experiencing the place herself. And yet, thanks to whatever power Margaret wielded over her thoughts, here she was.

  Yay for me.

  The stuffiness of her outfit — slacks and a flipping blouse — made her shift and fidget in the half light. She had drawn the line at hanging the A around her neck. It would be her silent act of defiance, and if it meant demerits, so much the better. Maybe she wouldn’t get in.

  “So what do you think, Janis?”

  She looked over to find the round whites of Amy’s eye looking back at her, sculpted eyebrows raised.

  “What do I think about what?”

  “About getting together this weekend. The whole pledge class.”

  “No thanks.” Janis took a sip of Capri Sun and pretended to become interested in the writing on the metallic pouch. The other pledges fell silent. Of course to them, she was the stuck-up bitch.

  “Oh, are you busy this weekend?” Amy asked.

  Janis was, actually. She had plans to practice up in the Grove again with Samantha.

  “Not really.”

  “Well, think about it.” Amy’s voice sounded a half octave higher than natural. “You still have my number, right?” She didn’t wait for Janis to answer before turning to the rest of the pledges and listing the places they might meet up. Naturally, the food court in the mall topped the list.

  Janis pushed the last bite of sandwich into her mouth and scooted her chair out. She had fulfilled the requirement. She’d eaten with the other pledges. No one had said anything about sitting there the entire lunch period. Heads turned as she stooped for her books. Before the door could swing closed behind her, she heard Amy telling the others she would be right back.