She zipped her jacket slowly and pushed her hands into her pockets. “Hey, um, I think I’m going to catch a ride home with Margaret.”
“What about the sleepover?”
“Yeah, I’m sorry.” Janis tried to smile. “Tryouts whipped me pretty good.”
“Oh. That’s cool.”
In the quick movement of Samantha’s eyes, Janis felt a chasm separating them. She wondered if they hadn’t started drifting apart that summer when she began having the strange dreams — dreams she’d been too weirded out to share, even with her best friend. Janis wondered, too, if her decision to stick with Alpha hadn’t further separated them. After all, Alpha had deprived them of lunches together. And with Janis possibly earning a spot on varsity soon, they would no longer be practicing soccer together, either.
“We’ll do it another time,” Janis said. “I promise.”
“It’s cool,” Samantha repeated but without looking up. “Well, my mom’s probably waiting out front. I should get going.” She turned and began picking her way down the emptying stands.
Janis stood watching her, wondering whether there would be another time after all.
16
“What are you seeing?” the man asked.
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” the woman replied.
“I don’t like it.”
“Is something the matter, sir?”
“There have been no energetic disturbances around the girl’s house since the end of last month. They’ve just stopped.”
“I see.”
“Similarly, the boy hasn’t been on his computer in the same amount of time.”
“Do you believe there’s a connection?”
“I’m not sure yet. Have they been communicating with one another?”
“Negative, sir.”
“I still don’t like it.”
“If it’s any assurance, they both seem engrossed in high school. I don’t believe we’d be seeing that if…”
“Keep a close eye on them regardless,” the man said. “We’re entering a critical period.”
“Yes, sir.”
17
Friday, October 5, 1984
7:09 p.m.
“Not very many cars.” Scott’s father scrunched up his thick glasses and dipped his shaggy head to peer past Scott. “The front porch light isn’t even on. Sure you’ve got the right house, Ace?”
Scott quickly read the numbers on the mailbox, then looked down at the invitation for the Alpha-Gamma gala, covering the address with his thumb. “It’s supposed to be 2624. Let’s see…” He pretended to search around. “Yup, says it right there on the box. I’m just a little early.”
“Do you want me to wait to make sure?”
“Naw, I’m fine.” He opened the car door and stepped out into the dusky street.
“All right. Well, call me when it’s over. I’ve got Christine loaded in the Betamax. It’s supposed to be a horror flick, but Jagu over at Video World says it’s a riot. Har, har, har! Then I’ve got the latest Dirty Harry flick, Sudden Impact.”
His dad cocked his head and started to squint, but before he could get off his horrendous Clint Eastwood impression, Scott closed the door. When he stood up, all he could see was his father’s belly over the steering wheel. Scott half-waved, half-shooed at him, then took a couple of slow steps toward the affluent-looking house as his father’s Volkswagen droned away. When the taillights had grown small enough, Scott headed toward the actual house, which was two blocks over.
Sorry, Dad, but tonight’s too important.
And it would not be out of character for his father to shout something mortifying from the car as the front door was opening: “Don’t feed him after midnight! Har, har, har, har!”
Scott walked briskly, touching his hair. He’d spent an hour in the bathroom with a blow-dryer and a comb, trying for a feathered style like Blake’s. In the end, he’d rewet his hair and combed it forward. At least the Bud Body book had arrived that week. In the first exercises, Bud had him skipping in circles, pulling imaginary ropes, and slathering his body with vegetable oil in order to “succor the muscle tissue.” Scott had been skeptical, but tensing now, he thought he felt the beginnings of a line separating his pectorals.
He winced when he cupped his bicep. He’d forgotten about the fading brown band on the inside of his arm. Another one marred his upper ribcage on the same side. They were from the day at the tennis courts a month earlier, when the fence he had clung to became… electric? With his cervical nerves being crushed inside Jesse’s pinch, Scott hadn’t been able to feel more than a faint burning. But by the next morning, two raw bands had appeared, their surfaces mottled with blisters like toadstools risen after a humid rain.
Scott was still trying to make sense of it all: Jesse’s strength… Creed’s speed… And what about Tyler? Before Mr. Shine appeared, Tyler had been retracting his arm from beneath the windbreak. Had he shot current through the fence? Scott straightened his glasses. He couldn’t exactly stroll up to Tyler and ask him. Ever since the incident on the courts, he’d been taking extra care to avoid those guys, his ears attuned to the faintest rumbling of the Chevelle.
Scott squinted ahead, penny loafers slapping the sidewalk, pink argyle socks poking out from beneath the hems of his cream-colored slacks. He spotted Margaret Graystone’s Prelude parked among the many cars cramming one particular driveway.
Ooh, boy.
He fanned his face with the invitation. All the curtains on the ground level of the castle-like home had been pushed open, and light shone out into the yard. Inside, young men and women in formal attire sipped drinks and palmed cocktail napkins, some of them tipping their heads back in laughter.
You’re out of your class.
Scott slowed at the foot of the walkway. It was the voice again, the one that had been haunting him since the first Gamma meeting. But he’d done fine so far, he reminded himself. The lunches, where he was beginning to feel comfortable with the other pledges, truly comfortable; the Standards; the two Saturday morning service projects he had attended; even the push-ups and sprints the older members sprung on him from time to time — he’d done fine with all of them.
But the pledge period isn’t even half over, Scott. There’s still plenty of time. Plenty of time for them to see you don’t belong.
Scott shouldered the doubting voice aside and continued up the walkway. A couple was stepping outside when he reached the front porch, and he used the opportunity to slip through the front door. He found himself on a Persian carpet, marble columns standing like sentries beside two doorways. Conversation and music poured in from his left, Chaka Khan, from what little he knew of music.
He ran his hands down the lapels of his Miami-blue blazer, adjusted his pink knit tie, muttered a prayer, and stepped around the corner. The Alpha and Gamma members were spread over the living room. Several clustered around a sleek black piano, singing a rousing song Scott didn’t recognize. Something about a piano man. Cologne and perfume intermingled in an intoxicating bouquet. Scott’s gaze flitted around for the other pledges while his damp hands alternately clasped in front of him and hid in his pockets. He recognized several of the older brothers and raised his chin when they looked his way, but their eyes showed only the dimmest recognition.
That’s what you get for hiding in the back all the time.
It was true. For the last month, Scott had been trying to have it both ways: participating without being seen — or at least without drawing attention to himself. And that’s where he was still conceding to the doubting voice, to his beleaguered past. To be seen was to risk being singled out.
Yeah, but not to be seen is to miss out altogether.
At last he spotted the back of an Ovaltine-colored bowl cut across the room. Scott smiled in relief and made his way over.
Sweet Pea was standing in front of a glass-topped table arrayed with drinks and platters of hors d’oeuvres. He glanced up. In his bowtie and too-small blue suit, he looked like
a parody of Spanky from The Little Rascals.
“Whaddya say there, Stretch?”
“Hey, not much.”
Sweet Pea was fixing a plate of food, though loading it was more like it.
Scott stepped up beside him and poured himself a Pepsi. “Been here long?”
“Long enough to pick out the four chicks I’m taking home.”
Scott’s laughter came out louder than it felt. When Sweet Pea turned, his plate was heaped so high with shrimp and cocktail sauce, he might as well have just taken the whole platter.
“Gawd!” Sweet Pea exclaimed around his first wet mouthful, wide eyes sweeping the room. “There’s nothing but nines and tens in here. All right, maybe a couple of eights.” He elbowed Scott in the side and lowered his voice. “What do you figure her for? Size D?”
Scott followed Sweet Pea’s gaze, not knowing what he was talking about. They were apparently looking at a young woman whose breasts jogged inside her dress every time she laughed.
“Yeah, D sounds about right.” Scott brought his cup to his lips.
“Well, she’s not in training anymore, that’s for sure.” That got another elbow into Scott’s side, and Sweet Pea snorted on cue. He suckled his fingers, then wiped them against his round thigh. He popped two more shrimp into his mouth. “Got your eye on anyone, Stretch?”
Scott’s ears prickled. “Hmm?” He took a sip of Pepsi.
“You know — chicks, babes, broads, honeys — whatever you like to call them. Anyone in particular getting you hard?” He lowered his voice. “Better yet, any of them getting you off?”
The way Sweet Pea leered up at him, gobs of cocktail sauce ringing his lips, made Scott want to pack up his feelings for Janis and carry them someplace far away.
“I guess I’m still looking,” he said quietly.
“Playing the field, huh? I like that.” Another shot to the ribs. He brought his hand to his mouth like a megaphone. “DID YOU HEAR THAT, LADIES? MY FRIEND HERE IS A FREE AGENT — AND LOOKING! AND THEY DON’T CALL HIM STRETCH FOR NOTHING!”
Scott’s face exploded with heat. He spun toward the table, head down, and pretended to fix himself a plate. “What did you do that for?” he hissed from the side of his mouth.
“Hey, I was doing you a favor. I thought there might be some takers.”
Scott started to shake his head, but from his new vantage he could see into what looked like a den, where several other Gamma pledges mingled. Alpha pledges were down there as well, one he recognized from his English class. And then his heart changed in tenor from the hard, humiliated thuds of only seconds ago, to a fresh, fast thumping.
Janis was down there.
He pushed up his glasses and zeroed in. Yes, she was sitting on the couch, talking with another Alpha pledge. He watched the small movements of her head, her close-lipped smile, the way she palmed her drink in the lap of her black dress. Scott wasn’t sure how he had missed her at first. Her red hair illuminated the room. To her left sat an empty couch seat.
There it is, Scott, your opening. Your opportunity.
“Hey, uh… wait here,” he told Sweet Pea. “I’ll be right back.”
“Don’t you worry,” Sweet Pea answered, fixating on a trio of young women chatting in front of him. “This puppy’s not going anywhere.”
Good.
He needed to concentrate, needed to focus. What he didn’t need was Sweet Pea making his entrance behind him and trumpeting that same horrifying declaration to all of the pledges. Scott edged his way along the refreshment table. At the bottom of three white-carpeted steps he drained the last of his Pepsi and crushed the ice between his teeth. This was the whole reason he’d pledged Gamma.
This was His Moment.
The couch sat on the far side of the room, beside a mirrored fireplace. And for a second, it seemed an impossible distance to Scott, as impossible as the distance separating their houses. He dropped his empty cup in a planter and began fording the room. Pledges in formal wear eddied around him. Scott never shifted his gaze. His focus, his everything, remained on Janis, on her smooth cascade of hair, on her muscular calves, on the unclaimed seat beside her. And the nearer Scott drew to that seat, the more certain he became that someone was going to appear from nowhere and plop blithely down. He tried to swim his limbs faster.
A Gamma pledge passed in front of the couch and paused. Sharp-dressing, smooth-talking Jeffrey Bateman. Disappointment guttered in Scott’s stomach like cold fire. Jeffrey pulled up the knees of his slacks and began to squat, but then raised his hand to someone and strode from the couch.
And then Scott was beside her.
He sat. Air hissed from the leather couch cushion, and he felt himself sinking. Soon, his eyes were level with his knees.
It just can’t be easy, can it?
He peeked over at Janis, who still faced the pledge to her right. For a moment, he was struck by the closeness of her hair, its smooth, almost glossy, sheen. Scott managed to scoot himself out of the hole and to the couch’s edge. He perched forward, an elbow propped on his knee, and angled himself so as to appear interested in whatever they were discussing.
“…so we’re going up there over winter break to tour the campuses,” the girl with the frizzy hair was saying to Janis. “My dad was a Blue Devil, so that’s his first choice for me, you know? But I sorta like Wake Forest.”
Janis hmmed.
Scott hmmed behind her, but it was too soft, a low note buried in the chatter around them. The girl’s rapidly blinking eyes never left Janis’s.
“They’re totally hard to get into, though. Dad says I should have some backups. You know, for just in case.” She went on to list the lesser schools she was considering, none of them familiar to Scott.
He hmmed anyway.
That got no reaction either. And he was sliding backward, sinking into the cushion again. Scott leaned against the back of the couch to slide himself out. And his seat flipped open. The couch featured a recliner on the end, but Scott didn’t realize that, not at first. He believed he was overturning the whole thing. Someone screamed. He flailed an arm over to catch Janis, but his wrist jammed against the adjoining section of couch, which hadn’t moved. When he rattled to a rest, he was nearly flat, the tops of his penny loafers staring back at him.
Laughter rose around him. Scott pressed his calves against the leg rest with such force that he was bolted upright and nearly launched from the seat. For a moment, the room jittered in his vision. This second maneuver earned him more laughter, and Scott could feel the old shame exploding over his face like a devilish case of acne.
“All ri-i-ight!” Sweet Pea cried from the top of the steps. “Now that’s what I call a ten!”
The room cheered, and Scott realized then that the laughter hadn’t been cruel or demeaning, just fraternal. His throat convulsed around a chuckle. Sweet Pea gave him a thumbs-up. And just like that, the room fell into jumbled voices again, the baking spotlight off of him.
Then Scott remembered the scream. He turned to find Janis’s friend standing with one arm held out in front of her, looking from her black and white polka-dot dress to the cup, where whatever had sloshed out was still dripping from her fingers onto the glass coffee table.
“Oh, my god,” Scott stammered. “I-I’m so sorry.”
The girl glared at Scott, set the cup down, and ran off in search of a bathroom.
Scott turned to Janis. “I really didn’t mean to. Should I…?” He gestured to where the pledge had disappeared, not knowing how to complete the thought. He was waiting for Janis to curl her lip at him and go storming after her friend.
“Oh, she’ll get over it.” Janis waved her hand. “It’s just water.”
He exhaled. “Thank goodness.”
Janis smiled and laughed, which made Scott laugh, too. He stooped to straighten his pant legs and, when he sat up, found her head tilted toward his. He breathed the clean scent of her hair.
“Actually, I should be the one thanking you,” she w
hispered. “Debbie’s been obsessing about colleges for the last month, but tonight it was reaching a whole new level. I didn’t think she was ever going to shut up.”
“Always happy to be of service.” Scott winced at what he was about to say but said it anyway. “Need a conversation crashed? Call Scott Spruel. Should be getting those business cards printed up any day now.”
Janis giggled and leaned against him. It lasted only a moment, but for that whole moment, Scott’s senses swam.
She leaned away and looked at him thoughtfully. “You know, I was just thinking about you the other day.”
“Really?” He tried to appear calm even as his mind blew apart.
“Do you remember how we used to play in the woods? When we were kids?”
“Yeah, of course.”
You were the superior shark’s tooth hunter, I’ll admit, but I built the better forts. He was pretty sure that would have gotten another laugh, maybe even another lean, but he didn’t say it. He didn’t want to sidetrack her from whatever she was about to reveal to him.
“That’s what I was thinking about,” she finished.
“Um… oh.”
“Do you ever go in there anymore?” she asked.
Only the time I went to spy on you while you were practicing against your garage door.
He shook his head. “Not lately.”
“No, me neither.”
She was looking off to his right, and Scott wondered if the house and the party had become as distant for her as it had for him. He watched her eyes, green eyes, he remembered now. You couldn’t see the green from a distance because it melded so cleanly with the chestnut spires of her irises. You could only see the green up close, face to face.
“It was our world in there, wasn’t it?” she asked, squinting slightly. “Back then?”
He nodded, not quite sure what she meant.
She asked, “Do you remember how, when you went in far enough, especially in the summer, you couldn’t even see the houses anymore? It was just the trees and creek and us, I guess. Whatever we were doing. Whatever we were imagining. The only time our parents ever came in after us was to call us home.”
XGeneration, Books 1-3: You Don't Know Me, The Watchers, and Silent Generation Page 14