Jade looked over at me, her face alight. The Js looked like they would sleep as they stood there, but God love 'em, they were waiting it out. Now that was true friendship.
“What is this?” she asked, gently running her hand over an Astilbe that sat like a purple feather on top of its delicate leaves.
“An Astilbe,” I answered.
The Js made kissy faces at me behind Jade's back. Jonesy made the knife to the wrist motion, This meant morgue, he had explained at one point, whereas horizontal meant hospital. What a dumb ass. Not helpful.
Mom saved everyone from the flower worship situation by opening the door. “This must be Jade.”
“Hi Mrs. Hart.” Jade smiled back.
“Oh no, please don't, I look around for Kyle's mom when someone calls me that. Just Ali, nice to meet you.”
“You too.”
Mom was pretty good at avoiding awkward turtle moments. “Hey guys, I made banana bread today.”
The Js looked at her as if she were an angel. They raced into the house, shoving each other out of the way as they went. Mom and Jade rolled their eyes, laughing.
I cut up four pieces for each of us. It never occurred to me that Jade wouldn't like banana bread and I slathered butter over hers and mine. Jade looked at the slab and didn't seem sure what to do with all of it. It looked about the right size.
Mom saw the whole thing and stepped in. “Here,” she took the small, fish-shaped plate, cutting the bread in half, “this may be a little more manageable.”
How do girls stay alive? A mystery for another day.
Mom said, “You guys go get your crumbs all over the place outside, eh?”
“Good idea, Mom,” I said with a tone.
“Do you have a tone, Caleb?”
How do parents always hear a tone?
“No, we're pretty neat, is all.”
Mom looked at me as if us being neat was an impossibility. I grabbed the gallon of milk from the fridge and told John to get some cups. Like a good minion, he went straight over to the dishwasher he knew the drill, but Mom stopped him. “Those are still hot, just get some cups out of the cabinet.” Switching gears, he snagged four cups from the cabinet.
We sat on our deck which was bordered by a built-in bench. Jade pulled a lilac branch close to her, its flowers so deep a violet they looked bruised, smelling its powdery sweetness. The Js were inhaling their banana bread but Jade was taking little bites of hers. Her awe at our small patch of garden told me that she didn't have anything like it.
Jonesy was licking the crumbs off his fingers when I realized what I'd missed! I told everyone to hold on a sec, running inside to get a napkin, but Mom had one in her hand.
I winked. “No youngheimer's for you Mom.”
She frowned.
Alzheimer's was that freakish disease old farts got that caused their brains to turn to mush or was that mad cow? I don't know, I liked to use the non-politically correct terms to get Mom worked up. I could see her steaming in the kitchen, thinking about all the old people I had made fun of.
Jade smiled, taking the napkin and using it to wipe her mouth and hands. John wiped his hands on his jeans which was what I normally did. Jade saved me from these dire choices by handing me the other napkin. I looked back at Mom, pretty sly.
A movie would be great. My pulse said four-forty-nine, pretty close to supper.
“Mom,” I bellowed.
Mom cracked the window open. “Caleb, I loathe yelling, as you well know, come in here or next to the window.”
I sighed, getting up and closing the distance. “Can everybody stay for supper and watch a movie on pulsevision?”
Before she could respond I asked, “Wait, what's for supper?” Not all my friends were gonna like some fish thing.
“What day is this?” Mom asked matter-of-factly.
“Ah... Friday.”
Oh... duh. “Pizza,” I said, answering my own question.
Jonesy, always a good one for hearing anything food-related shouted, “Pizza!” double-fisting his excitement in the air.
Mom looked over at him then back at me, that's settled. I told everyone to pulse the world and see if it was cool. Once again, everyone jerked out their pulses and after a few silent minutes of thoughts, the pulses were tucked away for the night.
****
The movie was righteous with zombies chasing everyone around (the irony was not lost on me, the Js giving me sly looks), the heroes saved the world and fell in love. Jade liked the love story and the rest of us guys were diggin' on the gore. The parents allowed four Pay-for-Pulse movies per month. It wasn't too expensive. It was a little like the Netflix fad that mailed (unbelievable) people movies and video games back around when I was born. It all seems like a lot of work to me.
Mom made two pizzas and all that was left were a couple of crusts. Jade had one slice and we feasted on the rest, re-feasting once a few well-concealed burps made additional room. She'd set out a ginormous bowl of popcorn and we all got special, bottled root beer. A perfect night.
Dad popped his head inside the door right in the middle of The Quintessential Zombie Moment where it gets an arm torn off and uses it to beat the tar out of an enemy. Impervious to pain, zombies!
He shook his head, backing out.
The parents weren't big zombie fans.
Finally, the night had to end. All of us were rubbing our eyes and trying not to show how tired we were. The Js took off together and Jade and I stood at the door. I didn't like her walking home by herself but didn't know if she liked being independent and would be pissed and stuff?
I asked anyway, “Do you want me to walk you home?”
“Nah, you don't have to.”
Well... okay, huh.
“Is it okay? Or do you really not want me to?”
“It's okay,” she said with a small grin.
Ah-huh, so she dug it. Girl-speak was sorta hard to figure out, definitely a learned skill.
The parents told me to take my pulse. I held it up, its metallic black exterior glinting under the porch light.
Jade's neighborhood was a fifteen minute walk one way to the East Hill area. Most of the houses were seventy-five years old, built in the 1950s. They were in various states of disrepair. Looking around, it was a little depressing. There were crappy looking junipers on the edge of decaying lawns, outlawed now unless they were grandfathered.
Mom was a big one for the No-Lawns Act that was passed; mental eye-roll. Don't even get started with the Indigenous Plants Proposal.
Walking deeper into the rows of houses, my sense of foreboding came on line. Jade's mouth made a little “O”.
“You feel that?” she asked.
“I feel something.”
I sure wasn't needing anything besides the AFTD.
“Don't worry, it's probably me, spilling on you.”
“Spilling?” I quizzed.
“Yeah, sometimes when Sophie and me hang, I can 'leak' some of the stuff I pick up onto her. She says it's major creepy.”
Okay. “Why do you feel...” I struggled here, not wanting to sound dumb, but thinking the adult words my parents used might sound weird, “... anxious?” There, better than foreboding.
“Anxious?” she giggled.
My lip jutted out, I did pretty good with that. She saw my semi-pout, putting her hand over her mouth, stifling more insensitive giggling.
I frowned. “You've been laughing at me a lot today.”
“Oh come on, Caleb, you can be really funny!”
Yeah, hilarious.
She began to slow in front of an especially gross house. Paint peeled like ribbons of decay off the trim. Once white, it was now a grim shade of bone-gray. The lawn, if you could call it that, started from some underground place near the house which teemed with a riot of overgrown bushes and became one with the sidewalk. It was a dirty brown, somewhere between poop and mud. Strange mounds of dirt were sprinkled all over it like big pimples in an ugly face.
“This is Brett's house,” Jade said quietly.
Oh. I didn't really know what to say. The thought that it looked like an unhappy, lonely place did cross my mind. I couldn't help but compare it to my house. The atrium, backyard and the comfort smells of my home seemed like a dim light, shining a mill on miles away when faced with this.
We heard raised voices.
Jade grabbed my hand. “Quick, hide!”
I whipped my head around looking for a spot but she knew right where to go and dragged me to an overgrown hedge that we hid behind. Our sides were pressed together, eyes peering forward, seeing only silhouettes.
A booming male voice was screaming words, bad ones. The F-bomb was flying, with some accuracy. Jade flinched each time an “F” flew.
“You worthless turd. You wouldn't know sense if it knocked your dumb teeth out. Get the fuck outta here.”
I saw Brett, I assumed it was him, he was shorter than the monster that stood opposite him.
“Don't hit mom!” Brett screamed. Even through the hedge I could see that his fists were clenched, definitely a Mason family theme. Hell, the dad was beating on the mom?
The dad raised his fist up and I knew he was gonna clock Brett, and I just couldn't not do anything.
Jade grabbed me. “No don't,” she begged.
I shook my head. I couldn't stand cowards. He'd have to beat my ass too. In that moment I didn't care that it was Brett. The whispering that was always there grew in volume and a dull, static roar filled my head. It felt good, throbbing with my heartbeat.
“Stay here,” I told Jade, never turning.
She watched me clear the hedge as Brett's dad's fist connected square with Brett's chest. It made a meaty thumping sound, Brett staggering back. The dad came right after him with purpose.
Brett was making alarming wheezing sounds, trying to recapture air that had been knocked out.
“Hey!” I yelled, startling them both.
Brett turned toward me, still wheezing, arms flailing, the elder Mason with a comical expression of surprise.
He recovered with a wonderful, “Who the fuck are you?” in a snarl.
Ignoring his question, saying more calmly than I felt, “You're not supposed to be beating on people.”
Brett gave a spastic shake of his head, holding his chest with both hands, almost catching his breath now, looking at me with clear warning. There was no love lost between the two of us but he thought I was insane to take on his dad.
Me too.
The Dad turned to face me, Brett forgotten. He was tall like my dad. Clearly, when he was younger he may have been athletic, but it was submerged underneath the hundred pounds he had on me. His fists were loosely clenched but ready for action, his gut hanging over stained blue jeans with a matching T-shirt, equally disgusting.
A prize to be won.
I let that thing that was always curled tight inside me out. I didn't mean to, but like a caged animal let loose, it responded to my distress signal. I was in trouble with no plan whatsoever except that I didn't want to watch some kid my age, even a dickhead like Brett, get the shit beat out of him by his dad.
He stalked toward me, all shadow and menace. Then, all the little dirt mounds in the lawn exploding, dirt geysered like miniature volcanoes erupting; raining back down on all of us.
Brett's arms fell to his side and he sorta landed on his butt right where he was. The breath I was holding slid out of me in a long line of relief. The whispering had stopped and the lawn had blown up and... I was feeling... fine.
I heard a noise behind me and it was Jade.
“What. Are. You. Doing?” I asked, clearly vexed that she was in sight now! Double-duh!
“Look.” She pointed.
All around the lawn, moles (big ones) were standing at attention, there reflective eyes like small suns, staring at me. Brett's dad just got angrier.
“I killed all you,” he shrieked at them. “You're dead!”
Priceless, of course they were dead, you dolt. I could hear their thoughts, waiting for me to tell them something, a directive I intuited.
Before I had time to do anything, the dad switched his attention from the Army of Moles, to Jade.
“Aren't you that upstart LeClerc girl? The one that gave her daddy all the trouble with them cops?” He glared at her and she shrank away behind me.
The slug started making his way to where Jade and I were standing at the edge of the split and cracked sidewalk. Moles stood vigil, their collective eyes watching me.
He was almost on us and Brett gave one more effort to deflect what he saw as a Big Problem by shouting for us to run. My heart was a jack hammer in my chest. I wasn't gonna run from this guy.
Jade's hand clenched and bunched on the back of my hoodie, a lifeline.
“Sounds to me like you two are in my boy's class; losers,” he said with certainty. “And I know how to take care of that, yes indeedy I do, I'll clean that attitude right out of ya both.”
He moved forward as if to grab the two of us, and I let a little juice funnel through the moles, which looked exactly like big-ass rats with pointy faces. Wait a second, these weren't moles I thought: as they literally swam across the grass as one unit, their fur a slick and deep chocolate tipped with a smoke-gray against the vomit-lawn. These were... I searched for the name, gophers.
Jerked out of my reverie by a hand clenching my shirt together with my hoodie and my toes clearing the sidewalk, I didn't struggle but hung like a dead weight as Jade squealed and pulled me back. I appreciated her efforts but this guy had the manic strength that only the truly drunk have. I was betting he would be hella sore tomorrow, but for beating up teenagers, he was about inebriated enough to make a go of it.
A gopher sailed across the remaining two feet flying like a bat with wings, landing on the vulnerable back of the neck area, making a tight “C” shape with its body. He bit The Dad's neck as it made purchase.
Brett's dad dropped me like a box of rocks, trying to do a quick release by jerking the gopher off his neck with his hands. I could feel its mind, with solitary purpose: to protect me. All it knew was that I was master and it would be torn asunder rather than allow harm.
I turned. Like an invisible string my power slid down that line, finding eager recipients, the remaining gophers launching themselves at various parts of The Dad. He did a little dance, round and round he hopped trying to divest himself of the troublesome gophers. They were single-minded, biting, nipping and defleshing Mr. Mason.
I stood swaying, feeling like I held a great baseball in my hand with the absolute knowledge that the perfect pitch was within reach. Jade's hand was pressed against the small of my back, the gophers making satisfied mewling sounds as their teeth connected with flesh.
“Caleb... stop it,” Jade said, voice raised above the crunching and gnashing of teeth, “you'll kill him.”
Instead of being filled with the expected horror of The Dad's death at the hands of my gophers, there was a distinct satisfaction. I knew that his life hung in the balance of my action and it wasn't worth it.
Brett was suddenly beside me. “Please,” he said, one hand still on his chest where his dad had hit him, “he's bad but he's still my dad.”
Brett the poet.
I felt the power leaking out into and through all the gophers and made the ginormous effort to rein it in. For a moment...nothing happened. I was suddenly scared that this thing I had was bigger than I could manage, unwieldy. Then something clicked into place and I was in control again. The gophers looked at me, some of their teeth glistening wetly black with The Dad's blood.
Rest, I thought, and gave a mental shove of “juice” that felt like turning off a big, humming battery.
The gophers, my gophers, swung their heads to consider me one last time before swarming back to their mounds, sinking into them, like water finding a cleft in a rock.
Jade, Brett and I walked over to where Brett's dad lay, groaning. Blood pooled around his body, pretty much everywher
e. I stood, without sympathy, the lingering emotion of wanting to end his existence still there, still waiting.
I knew that I could call them back.
“Thanks,” Brett said in an hollow voice.
“What do you think, Caleb?” Jade asked.
“He'll live,” I said.
I looked at Brett, all out out of words. Jade and I walked off together.
I turned around just as we were almost out of sight and saw Brett standing there, over his dad's body, staring at me as if he'd seen a ghost.
CHAPTER 13
I woke up naturally, that means no-damn-alarm. Throwing my hands behind my head, a long sigh escaped me. Oh joy, the weekend was here and I didn't have a thing to do today. Okay, not true, I did have some ridiculously insignificant homework.
Last night came crashing down on me a minute later. Brett, his psycho dad and the gophers. I'd pulse the Js later, update them on the newest mess. Did this change things for tomorrow? Maybe that was the bigger thing.
I heard Mom-sounds coming from downstairs. I glanced at my suspended monitor, the glowing numbers read ten-forty. Huh, I didn't sleep in too late today. I stood up too fast and swayed, dizzy. Pancakes were the cure for that!
I stumbled over to my door, kicking the clothes out of the way so it would open.
Mom looked up from the griddle as I rounded the corner.
“Hey pal,” she greeted.
“Hey.”
Mom gave me a sideways glance. “Little rough today?”
I smiled. “Yeah.”
“So how did it go last night?” I knew she meant about walking Jade home.
Dad walked in, wearing pajama bottoms that looked a lot like mine.
He plopped down opposite me, resting his head in both hands. We looked at each other and he gave a chuckle. Family telepathy, I guess.
“Yes, how did things go?”
I threw out what happened. “Brett's dad was beating on him and I got in the middle by raising an Army of Gophers.”
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