“I’m fine, Mom,” I said, desperately wishing things had gone differently. “Just drive, please.”
Along the way, Callie said, “We used the money my mother had been saving for my university education. That is, if I wanted to go.”
“You’d better thank your girlfriend,” my mother chimed in while glancing in the rearview mirror. “Joe’s father also helped out. I’ve already spoken with Callie’s mother, and she’s got my thanks as well. I’ll pay them back somehow. That’s the least I can do.”
Joe, thanks. As for Callie, she’d given up her scholastic future—for me? I asked her, “Why?”
“Don’t you know?” The question came out as a choked sob.
Shame washed over me. I leaned over to whisper in her ear, “Yeah, I do. Thanks. We’ll get the money to you.”
Just how it could be done was the million-dollar question, but we’d figure that out later. Callie held onto my hand tightly all the way back. Once there, we disembarked, but we pulled up short when we saw the front of our house. Some dickhead had spray-painted a little message on our front door—Mutants get out.
Gee, how original. My mother let out a gasp and staggered from the shock of seeing our house defaced. Callie grabbed her arm and held her upright. “It’s going to be okay, Mrs. Kessler. We’ll take care of it.”
“Who would—” My mother began, and then her voice switched off. Going silent, though, didn’t hide the look of anger and betrayal in her eyes. That’s what everyone had done to us. “Whoever did this is going to hear from me!”
Did it matter? No one was going to own up to it. “Mom, go inside and relax,” I said. “I’ll clean it up.”
“I’ll help,” Callie added.
“Me too,” Neil declared as he rumbled over. “I can sand it off.”
Shaking her head, my mother walked inside. Neil carefully used his forefinger to sand down the surface. While he was working, I ran to the garage to get a bucket of paint and a brush. Primer first, and then a coating of paint and it looked as good as new.
Job over, Callie and I, along with Neil, went around to the backyard. He immediately took a seat on the ground, his body sinking into the earth. “I’m not going to take a chance on breaking your stairs. If you want to have a discussion, just let me know what’s going on. When Callie came around to the forest with her mother, I knew something was wrong.”
She’d gone out there? I looked at her, and she shrugged. “I figured we might need some extra help,” she said.
Callie had gone over and beyond what I thought anyone would do for me. “So what’s this discussion all about?” Neil asked.
“Our past and our future,” I said, and quickly found us chairs to park our butts on.
A few seconds later, Joe came over with some cans of soda and proffered them with the order of, “Drink up.”
I looked up at my friend. “Joe, I have to thank your father for—”
“It’s okay, man. It’s all good.”
I had no words, but bobbed my head and whispered my thanks again. Neil cleared his throat, and it sounded like a miniature landslide. “Well, at least you’re out on bail. Me, I don’t have anywhere else to go, ‘cept back to San Diego, and what can I do there, sniff out rocks? What kind of future is that gonna get me?”
I was tired, needed a shower, and Callie’s downcast look disturbed me more than anything. “Mitch, you and your mother can stay out at our place. We have extra room, and—”
“We’ll think about it, okay?” I interrupted but pitched my voice low. I didn’t want her to get upset.
Callie nodded and leaned against me. With a grunt, Neil got to his feet. “Well, since you two need some alone time, I’m going to drive out to see the sights in the west end of town.”
He walked over to his truck and got in, the vehicle groaning under his weight. Before he started the engine, though, I had an idea. “Guys, let’s do something fun.”
Neil had been in the process of inserting the key, but stopped to ask, “Fun?”
“There’s a carnival going on in Portland. It’s the Twilight Festival. We should go,” I said.
Joe wore an incredulous expression. “Are you serious?”
I most certainly was. “Yeah, I am. I mean, I’ve got no friends except you guys, but I want to show everyone we can take what they throw at us.”
For once, a look of happiness broke through Joe’s façade of intensity. “Yeah, why not? I’m up for it.”
Neil offered a nod. “I can’t do much outside of drive there, but yeah, I’ll go for some fun. They have rocks there, right?”
“Granite tastes the same everywhere,” Callie said, which got a rattling laugh from Neil. “I know the carnival grounds. I’ve been there before. It’s a nice place.”
It was settled. We agreed to meet on Saturday night, forty-eight hours from now. I flew Callie home. At her house, we parted after sharing a lengthy kiss, and she said that she wanted to see me the next night. She also reiterated her homestay offer. “My mother said it was fine to have you, and your mother is welcome, too.” Her green eyes, deep and soulful, pleaded with me to accept her offer.
When I held her, I felt as though nothing could or would come between us, but at the same time, I had the fear of a return of the monsters. Fear that Callie would be hurt ran through my mind, and it was that fear that kept me from saying yes.
For the moment, I assured her things would be all right, and said I’d fly over to her place tomorrow night. “See you soon,” she said. “I love you, Mitch.”
It was the first time she’d ever told me. I didn’t know what love meant, not exactly, but I did know I didn’t want to be without her. Perhaps that meant the same thing, and if so, I was totally down with it. “I love you, too, Callie. See you later.”
Chapter Fifteen: Crowd control
Joe called me at nine the next morning. “Come over, man. I’ve got something to show you.”
From his excited manner, something had to be up. On the way out, my mother met me at the door. She stated no progress on the keep-the-home home front thing, but then again, I hadn’t expected anything. “I’ll do what I can,” she said while simultaneously grabbing her bag and stuffing half a bagel in her mouth. “Stay strong.”
Keys found, she ran to her car and drove off in a whirl of dust. I locked the door and walked over to Joe’s house, the warm air flowing around me. Joe was waiting for me on the front step, fidgeting as usual, and ushered me inside and upstairs to his room.
Once he opened the door, my jaw almost hit the floor. Paper sheets lined the walls with names, dates, and more charts and diagrams scribbled on them. If it looked like a conspiracy theory chart, that’s because it was. “Yeah, call me obsessed,” he said.
It would be too easy, so I said nothing. With a sigh, he seated himself at his desk. A plate of sandwiches lay within his arm’s reach. Peanut butter and olive oil, fish-and-cheese, sausage and pickle combos and more variations on the tried and true. The grossness of the combinations wasn’t the point. The amount he ate, was.
In a lightning-fast move, he snatched a sandwich and crammed it into his maw. He then went back to typing away, checking out site after site, and what for? We were up against the government, and they were not about to let us in on their deepest, darkest secrets. Our secret lay in our powers, which were no secret to anyone.
A line from a television show came back to me. Mr. Hero—that happened to be the name of the show—was about a guy who’d been zapped by a strange ray from outer space. Wasn’t that always how it went? A person who’s a nobody gets turned into somebody, decides to do some good in the world, sets up shop in a fictional city, and is constantly fighting a battle against evil.
In the show, his nemesis, Ms. Saturnia, had always tempted him. At five-ten with long dark hair and a Playboy Bunny’s body, she personified hotness. “Come with me,” she’d purred in their last encounter. “There’s money to be made, and you can get�
��”
“I can’t do it. You’re evil, and I’m not. We’d never agree on anything,” Mr. Hero had replied in that stuffy voice all goody-good-gooders on television seemed to possess, the kind of whiny self-righteousness dripping from every word.
He continued to talk about following the right path, lacing every other sentence with truth, justice, decency, and more. Oy...
While the dialogue was incredibly lame, the concept of ripping people off had occurred to me. It would be easy. Who would stop me? Didn’t I deserve to have a life?
I’d had those thoughts, but just as quickly as they’d come, they vanished. Stealing meant the law would always be after me. Those guys would shoot to kill. Regular bullets couldn’t hurt me, but sooner or later their scientists would invent a weapon that could take me down. Besides, what would my mother and Callie think?
So, no thanks. My mother hadn’t raised a thief, and I didn’t want to become one. Still, it was nice to think about...
“I’ll keep checking,” Joe repeated and then snapped his fingers.
I only dimly heard the sound, but it was enough get me out of my semi-trance. “What?”
“I said I’ll keep on looking.” And this time Joe sounded totally pissed.
“Sorry, I was thinking about something.”
The annoyance faded, if only by a few degrees. He snatched a few more sandwiches, fed his face and mumbled, “If you’re thinking about Callie, fine.”
Astonished, I asked, “How’d you know?”
“You’ve got that I’m-in-love look on your face, sort of like you’re dreaming. I know you’re into her, but you’d better think about you and your mother finding another place. I don’t have any ideas for you.”
Callie had made an offer, but that meant imposing on someone else. Knowing my mother, she’d be too proud to accept. After checking my watch, I realized I was running late. “See you. I gotta go.”
“Yeah, buddy.” Joe turned back the computer, this time grabbing three sandwiches which disappeared in record time. I heard the sounds of him chewing away as I closed the front door.
While walking down the road, I glanced left and right. It was hard not to be paranoid, but I imagined someone sneaking over to my place and doing some more spray painting. The residents who were home shut their drapes when they saw me coming. Yeah, thanks for being so neighborly.
Thinking things over, did I really want to put up with this crap? Rhetorical—the answer was no, but no matter where I went, I’d always be the gargoyle kid. A sense of helplessness hit. Joe could do all the checking he wanted, but in the end, the result would be the same.
In a huff, I let out my wings. A few hard flaps and I was airborne, headed in the direction of Portland. A friendly tail-wind boosted me along, and soon I touched down on Callie’s front walk. She was waiting and favored me with a hopeful smile. “We can walk from here,” she said as she took my hand in hers.
Yeah, let’s perambulate. We took in the sights of summer, I smelled the strong scent of pine and other trees, and for once I felt things might go my way. I still didn’t have a place to live, no prospects for a job, but being with Callie—maybe things would work out.
Downtown was unusually quiet. There should have been lots of people out and enjoying the summer. The stores should have been doing a brisk business, and the restaurants, the same.
Yet, when I looked around, hardly anyone was on the streets. Asking Callie about it, she shrugged. “They know about the attacks. They know about you. And the shopkeepers are scared, too. I know because I heard it when I came here with my mom about a week ago.”
“Are they scared of the monsters or of me?”
“Both,” she replied, but quickly added, “My mother and I went to speak to the City Council members.”
She’d gone? “You spoke to Mr. Roberts and the rest of his ghouls?”
Callie nodded. “They’re a bunch of stiff-asses, that’s for sure, but we asked them to give you more time.”
“Thanks.”
As if it would help—rhetorical, it wouldn’t. Roberts and his ilk wanted me gone. A number of thoughts, mainly of the kick-ass-and-take-no-names variety, ran through my head, but reason prevailed. Callie didn’t like it when I changed. It frightened her—and me as well.
In the past, I’d rarely lost control. Although I’d run up against a few punks, there was never a time when I’d truly lost it, as I was afraid of what could happen. This was not the time.
“Enhance my calm,” I mumbled.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
We continued walking, and sure enough, just when my maim-and-destroy urges were on the verge of leaving, a man walked up to us. He wore a too-small rumpled black suit with a carelessly knotted tie. With a shiny bald head and an extremely red and wrinkled face, he reminded me of an overripe tomato left out under a broiling noonday sun. “Excuse me, but can you direct me to the nearest department store?”
Callie pointed to a large brown building down the street. “That’s Macy’s. They have just about everything.”
He nodded and wiped the sweat streaming down his face. “It’s too hot here.”
He then tottered off. Was there anything to worry about? The way he walked, was he one of them, the manufactured ogres that had threatened to end my existence? He didn’t smell bad, but then again Reilly hadn’t stunk, and neither had that centipede guy.
My girlfriend smacked my arm. “Mitch, he was a little weird looking, but I don’t think he was about to start something. You remember the contact, don’t you? He was pretty odd, but he turned out okay.”
“He turned up dead and just how would you know?”
Perhaps my answer came out too quickly or too sharply, or maybe both. Callie got a surprised look on her face that quickly changed to one of anger. “You’re being an asshat. You know that?”
In a quick move, she pivoted around and strode off down the street, leaving me wishing I hadn’t opened my big mouth. A few other passersby gave us a quick look and then moved on. One woman, fat, blowsy-looking and middle-aged, sidled over to me. “Young man, was that your girlfriend?”
Was she after I’d shot off my big mouth? “Um, yes she is, ma’am. At least, I hope so.”
The woman gave a snort. “Then why are you standing here instead of running after her?”
Good question. I took off in Callie’s direction. “Callie, where are you?”
Faces, more faces appeared, and now I was getting worried. Calling out her name, again and again, no one answered. However, a young kid, maybe thirteen, was walking around and he asked, “Hey, are you talking about a really pretty girl? She’s got long blonde hair?”
That got my attention. “Yeah, did you see her?”
“She was walking near that alley.” He pointed the way.
A high, shrill scream sounded from where he’d pointed. I took off in the direction of the cry and soon found Callie in an alleyway, slumped over a shattered crate. A narrow and dirty place, the stink of that special unholy monster hung in the air. “Hey, are you okay?” I asked.
Moans of pain filled the air. “Do I look okay?”
No, she did not, but it could have been far worse. A few cuts shone out on her face, and a trickle of blood came from her left temple. “He... he came out of nowhere,” she whispered. “Some short fat guy with tiny eyes. It wasn’t the guy we met. It was someone else.”
I sat beside her. “He wasn’t trying to rob you?”
Callie shook her head. “No, he wasn’t after, you know...” Her face turned red, and she whispered again, “My body. After I screamed, he took off over the fence.”
She pointed at it. It had to be at least twelve feet high. Impossible, and then something she’d said about tiny eyes hit me. “You said his eyes were really small, I mean, they were sort of beady, right?”
A look of comprehension dawned on her face. “Yeah, like a crow’s, only tinier, like pinheads. Was it
one of them?”
She meant the government manufactured monstrosities. Lucas had been right. Whoever was running the show had been stalking us all this time. Callie didn’t seem too upset about herself, but suddenly alarm showed on her face. Reaching inside her bag, she pulled out her cellphone. “My mother—I have to warn her.”
She hurriedly tapped numbers, and a second later, she was talking to her mother, urging her to leave. “Mom, don’t argue, just go and stay with Aunt Leslie in Eugene. I’ll call you later.”
Callie hung up and stowed her phone away. “She said she’d go. Maybe that creep won’t track her there.”
With a sense of impending doom, I knew this wasn’t the end, only the beginning. “It’s not just one creep. It’s more, and they’re after us.”
The hospital wasn’t very crowded, and I waited outside the examination room while the doctor checked my girlfriend over. A few of the people there recognized me. Most of them turned away, but one young boy came over. He had a cast on his right arm with a lot of signatures on it. “Hey, you’re the gargoyle guy!”
He would have to call me that, but considering he didn’t look older than eight, it wasn’t worth getting angry. “Yeah, I’m the gargoyle guy, but my real name is Mitch. What happened to you?”
“Fell off my bicycle,” he replied in an offhand manner. “Can you sign my cast for me?” He reached into his pocket with his free hand and took out a blue marker.
“Sure.”
I took the marker and signed my name. He stared at the signature in awe. “Thanks. Wait ’til the other kids at school see this!”
My first fifteen minutes of fame and right now, I couldn’t have cared less. All that mattered was Callie, but still, I gave the boy a friendly nod. He ran off, and the door opened. The doctor, in his thirties with a spindly body and saturnine face, asked if I was with her. Answering yes, he said, “Here’s the scorecard. The young lady has a few bumps and bruises on her face and her arms. Otherwise, she should make it.”
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