by Ken Brosky
“I like the new name,” I said.
“Yeah, man,” said the boy with sunglasses. “It’s like … I dunno.”
We waited for him to elaborate. When he didn’t, I asked, “So what’s your name?”
“Clyde,” he said. “With a Y.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Alice.” I held out a hand. He slapped it in a high-five sort of way, then smiled.
“Radical,” he said. “Just totally radical. What’s your opinion on sharing chips?”
I looked down at my plate. “I guess …”
“Radical,” Clyde said, grabbing a couple of the chips. He stuffed them all in his mouth, smiling. “These are where it’s at.”
Rachel shook her head. “Apparently radical is his new favorite word. So what are you doing over here, anyway? I thought you bounced around the lunchroom with your boyfriend.”
A bite of grilled cheese got stuck in my throat. She was right: the very fact that I’d decided to sit here instead of with the track and soccer players near the front of the cafeteria was popularity suicide! I very casually glanced over my shoulder. Yup, a couple of them were definitely looking at me. But guess what? I couldn’t even remember half of their names. I wasn’t friends with them. Edward had been friends with them.
And Edward was dead.
Or, rather, he’d “moved away.” That was the official rumor going around. And no doubt that devious dwarf Sam Grayle had helped spread the rumor to keep prying eyes away from his acquisition of Edward’s mansion and treasures inside.
“Well, Edward and I broke up,” I said. “And quite frankly, I’d rather hang out with you guys.”
Clyde smiled and reached into his pocket. “Here,” he said. “Have some gum.”
“Oh. Uh, OK. Thanks.” I took the piece of gum. Spearmint—not my favorite. Well … at least he was nice. Strange, but nice.
“So … we usually talk about Robot Attack during lunch,” said Rachel. “Do you know what that is?”
I shrugged. “Can I learn?”
Rachel exhaled a long sigh. “Well, let’s see … way in the future, people build these giant robots called Automatons and go to war with each other. Some of the Automatons have lasers and some have missiles and some have big guns. They just …”
She stopped. There was clapping at the front of the cafeteria. I turned around, straining to see over the tables of students. Someone in a wheelchair was coming through the doors.
“Is that Chase Anderson?” I asked.
“Yeah, man,” said Clyde.
Chase wheeled his way past the cash registers. Even the old cashiers were clapping. Some of Chase’s teammates on the baseball team were standing and hooting at the top of their lungs. Chase had let his brown hair grow a little longer and he’d combed it up and back into a low pompadour reminiscent of a young Elvis or James Dean. It was a total “Chase” move that only the star of the baseball team could pull off. Last year, he’d taken to wearing leather gauntlets to class. Our sophomore year, he’d shown up to the first day of school with the number .344 tattooed on his forearm. It was his batting average for his freshman year. I knew enough about baseball to understand how good that was.
Then the tattoo had started to fade because it was only temporary. But of course Chase had already fooled pretty much everyone by that point, which had been his intent all along.
He was mildly hunky, too. Not overly jock-y like the football players—just enough that you could see his muscles stretching his shirt. But as he wheeled toward the table full of his baseball teammates, he looked not just thinner but in a way almost … deflated. He was lanky and though slightly tanned, he was noticeably paler than his teammates who’d spent their summer playing on the city intramural league. He wore a faded blue Washington baseball tee and a pair of deep ink-blue jeans cuffed to reveal a pair of classic cap-toe sneakers. He had a sharp nose and bright green eyes and the hint of dark stubble on his jaw only served to further the old-Hollywood rebel vibe he seemed to be going for.
Wait. I studied him as he wheeled closer while the applause died down. No, his eyes … they weren’t quite so bright as I remembered them, either.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Drunk driver, man.” Clyde tsk-tsk’d with his tongue. “Caught him at an intersection. Wrecked his legs good. Lucky he got out of it alive.”
“It was all over the TV,” Rachel added. “Didn’t you see it on the news?”
“No.” The last time I’d seen the news, it had been a report of Grayle Bank’s generous decision to halt all foreclosures. Everyone was praising Sam Grayle, calling him the nicest guy in the world. Right. Real nice. If I hadn’t forced him to do it, if I hadn’t offered him an alternative source of revenue, he’d never have stopped. It made me sick just thinking about it.
One of the cute girls from my homeroom—Jenny Mills—went to the lunch counter and grabbed a burger and soda. The elderly cashier waved away her money with a knowing smile. Jenny returned to the baseball players’ table, handing the burger and soda to Chase. He smiled thinly, grabbed the food, and suddenly I realized there really was something different about him.
He looked defeated.
Chapter 2
Something weird happened over the course of the next two nights: two different dreams. They both came to me on each night, jockeying for my attention. First, I found myself in that same old house, wandering through the empty rooms. One of the rooms was a playroom, with little kids’ tables and brightly colored plastic toys and even an old wooden rocking horse tucked up against one corner. There were children’s books strewn about, too, but something was strange about them.
It looked staged. I know that sounds crazy, but after three months of putting away kids’ books in the library, I knew what to expect whenever a couple dozen kids were finished with their reading group. Books would be sitting on the table, sitting on the floor, resting against the wall, resting against shelves, put away improperly … you name it. Basically, it looked like a mini tornado had blown through.
But this room was different. It was as if someone had placed a book on the floor here, set another one over there by the rocking horse, set another one beside the large wooden bookshelf resting against the wall, set another one underneath the red curtains.
It all looked too careful. No books lying open. None of them damaged or ripped or bent. As if they wanted any visitors to think the kids were using these toys and books.
Then I heard the crying again. I felt pulled toward the sound, floating back into the hallway, to the far end of the house. One of the doors back here was different, and as I drifted closer I could see even with the dim lighting that this door was thicker. Older.
And then the dream changed. Happy country music kicked up. I could smell cigarette smoke. As the darkness gave way to light, I saw a bright jukebox sitting against a crusty-looking wall with chipped woodwork. In the far back, the floor was raised a couple feet into a little wooden stage. There was a pool table, too, with three balls—the four, the two and the sixteen—each sitting near a pocket. Three booths sat along the wall beside the pool table. They were all empty, the tables encrusted with old food and cigarette ashes.
“I’m not complaining,” came a voice. I felt myself slowly turning toward the other side of the room. There was a long wooden bar with old 1970’s horror movie posters—The Stepford Wives, Jaws, The Amityville Horror—spread out on the wall behind the bartender. The bartender was drying off glasses with a dirty rag, uninterested in the three guys slumped over on the barstools. Out of all of them, he was the only truly hideous one. He had a sour-looking wrinkled face and wild gray hair. He wore an apron that used to be white but was now smudged with black and red and dark yellow splotches. But mostly red. His bare arms were hairy—almost freakishly so—and his fingers were long and tapered like beer bottles.
“Then what are you doing?” asked one of the guys. They all looked like they’d spent a week camping. They had scraggly beards and wore stained t-shirt
s and dingy blue jeans. Their hands were encrusted with dirt.
All of them were glowing. Including the bartender.
“I’m just stating the truth,” said another guy. I drifted closer, getting a good look at his face. Underneath his beard was what had once been a handsome mug: square jaw, straight nose, dark brown eyes. But the eyes were sunken, and underneath the jaw hung a layer of fat. And his eyebrows? Well, they could have used a trim. “That guy is totally not right for her,” he continued. “I mean, she was a princess, for crying out loud. Now she’s dating an accountant? Have you ever met a handsome accountant?”
The other guys grumbled.
“She’s just going to eat him at some point anyway, right?” asked another man who was wearing a red baseball cap. He took a long drink from his glass. It looked like beer. The glass was sweating, just like the guys; I could feel the warm air in the bar. Dim lighting, no air conditioning, dirty tables … yeah, this probably was the sort of place only a bunch of Corrupted would want to hang out in.
“She doesn’t eat them,” said Eyebrows. His words slurred together. “Man, don’t you ever listen to me? She hasn’t turned that evil yet. She’s just a fledgling. I mean, yeah, sometimes she’ll eat a pigeon or maybe a cat, but who hasn’t?”
The man with the baseball cap finished his beer, tapping it on the bar a couple times to get the bartender’s attention. “I wish I just ate cats. You know what I did after I stumbled out of here last week? I ate a car. I kid you not. I was walking across the street and some guy hit me.”
“That’s bogus,” said another of the guys. He was resting his head on the bar, one finger digging in his large, freakish-looking ear. “You shoulda called the cops.”
The others looked at him.
“Anyway,” said the man with the baseball cap. “It wasn’t my fault. Maybe. I don’t remember all that well.” He grunted. “May have had a few too many. So then the guy got out of his car and asked me if I was all right. And of course I was. I had a few broken ribs, but they healed up pretty quickly. I got to my feet, and this weird hunger just … overtook me! And so I just started tearing apart his car and eating it.” He smiled dementedly. “It was pretty weird.”
“Wonderful,” mumbled the man with his head on the bar. His eyes were closed. He coughed something fierce, then licked the spittle off his lips. “So now you’re eating cars. I can’t wait to see what you’re doing in another hundred years.”
“I need to get Constance back,” said Eyebrows. He waited for the bartender to pour him another beer, then downed the entire thing before continuing. “For real this time. I should never have left her.”
“You left her seventy years ago!” exclaimed the man with the baseball cap. “Let it go already. It didn’t work out. You changed really fast and she didn’t.”
“It’s so unfair,” mumbled the half-asleep one.
There was a knock at the front door. The bartender stared at it for a moment, then glanced at the others. Eyebrows gave a sullen shrug. The bartender walked over and unlocked the door. A young man wearing a black t-shirt walked through. He looked around. “Isn’t there a rock show here tonight?”
The bartender smiled a yellow-toothed smile. “No show tonight. Tomorrow night. But why don’t you have a beer on the house so long as you’re here?”
“Sure,” said the young man. “I’ve never turned down a free beer!”
The bartender licked his lips. The scene darkened, but not before I saw the bartender shut the front door, locking it.
The next night’s dream was even stranger. And worse. First, I went through that very same mansion again. I saw shadows moving along the walls but every time I turned, I found only empty rooms. I was beginning to get scared, even though I knew I wasn’t actually there. It was almost as if someone was stalking me.
Or hiding from me.
In just moments, the dream changed back to the bar. Instead of country music playing this time, there was the sound of a beating drum. The pool table and the other tables were pulled back against the wall. A band was set up on the little stage. Tall black amplifiers stood on either side of the drummer. It was the guy with the baseball cap. The bassist was the formerly half-asleep one. The guitar player was Eyebrows himself, one hand held tightly around the neck of his sleek red guitar to mute the strings.
In front of them were a hundred screaming fans. Everyone was dressed in dark clothes. Most had piercings. They were all cheering as the drummer picked up the tempo, the thumping of the bass drum so loud that the half-empty glasses of beer sitting on the bar hopped with each thump.
And the bartender? Well, he couldn’t have cared less. He had bright yellow plugs in both his ears and was the only person in the room not nodding along to the drumbeat. He refilled a half-dozen cups with more beer, then stared out at the crowd.
He had the same sour look on his face as the previous night.
“Are you ready?” Eyebrows shouted into the microphone. His voice blared through the heavy black speakers. The crowd cheered. They were packed in tightly, hands raised high in the air.
“Then let’s rock!” And with that, Eyebrows played a heavy chord. The crunching, distortion-driven sound escaped the speakers, flooding the room. Eyebrows changed to a new chord, then another, and by the third chord everyone in the room was dancing and cheering.
His finger slipped and one chord came out all wrong and out of key. The crowd’s dancing stopped instantaneously. Some of the people looked around, confused.
Eyebrows moved his fingers a little bit on the fret board, fixing the note. The dancing started up again. It seemed like everyone loved these guys … who were they? If only Seth were here, I thought; he would recognize the music for sure. It was hard rock, with crunching guitars and heavy bass drums and a furious tempo.
So furious, in fact, that I was surprised the people kept dancing. For a moment, it looked like just another rock concert—albeit one more exciting than any I’d ever witnessed—but then I saw two people in the crowd look at each other, and I recognized the look immediately.
Fear.
Eyebrows let another chord ring out while he took a long swig from his beer. Then he picked up the tempo, quickly moving into a melodic solo. The crowd danced harder. They were cheering now—no, not cheering … crying out! They were in pain. They couldn’t stop. It wasn’t long before a handful of them collapsed in exhaustion, but still they writhed around on the floor. Some tried to escape, pushing each other over, unable to stop dancing.
The exit was locked. The bartender smiled his yellow smile. Some shouted at him, others cried out. The music got faster.
More people collapsed. Eyebrows slowed the tempo to a smooth groove, and the handful of brave fools who’d tried rushing the stage found themselves unable to move forward. They swayed left and right, almost as if hypnotized.
I felt a cold breeze rush past me. The lights above flickered. More people in the crowd dropped to the floor, their legs still dancing in the air. Something began to escape from their open mouths: a blue essence, like a wisp of smoke, traveling to the little stage.
Eyebrows opened his mouth, inhaling. Sucking up every last wisp.
I woke up sweaty, clutching my sheets tightly. “What the crap!”
“Huh? What?” Briar got up from his place on the floor, blinking a few times. He smacked his mouth. “What is it? Dogs? Wild dogs?”
“Two dreams,” I said, turning off my buzzing alarm. I squinted in the morning sunlight. “Two separate dreams for two straight nights. What the heck does it mean?”
“It means the Corrupted are jockeying for your affection.” He yawned, stretching his arms over his head. “What’s for breakfast?”
“I’ll leave you a bagel,” I muttered.
It was Thursday, which meant I got to eat lunch with Trish and Seth. I also had only one hour of chores at the library and the rest of the day would be mine. Thankfully! I had forty pages of reading to for my Lit class. We were starting Prodigal Summer by Barbara
Kingsolver. Forty pages wasn’t that hard, but given the intensity of my dreams, I had a feeling I was going to need to set aside some time for serious butt kicking.
Oh, and fencing? Let’s not even talk about it. Suffice it to say I was coming along slowly, working with the more advanced students. Yeah, I know it seemed like I was pretty hot stuff for a while there. But the fact of the matter is Junior year’s class was just that: a class. This was the team now. This was serious. And if I wanted to compete, one of the things I would need to learn how to do was counter-riposte.
The lesson was drilled into me on Thursday. Again and again.
“Counter-riposte!” Mr. Whitmann shouted. “Counter, Alice! This ain’t class anymore. This is the real deal!”
“Don’t know what that means,” I muttered, hopping back to avoid my opponent’s foil. Underneath the mesh mask was Barry Jones, one of the boys’ team’s top fencers. He was brutal, unrelenting, pushing me back again and again. Every time I thought I had successfully parried his attacks, his blade seemed to snake around mine with a mind all its own.
The tip of the foil was dulled, and our protective clothing was thick … but that didn’t mean a good blow didn’t hurt if it snuck past the armor.
“All right,” Mr. Whitmann announced. He marked the score on his clipboard. “That’s fifteen to eight. Jones wins. Everyone shower up.”
I tore off my mask. I was momentarily surprised to see Chase sitting in his wheelchair next to the bench press machine on the far end of the fencing mats. He high-fived the other boy fencers, then glanced in my direction.
“Mr. Whitmann?” I said, spinning around. “You got a minute?”
The big old buffoon stopped and turned around, absently scratching a fleck of dry skin on his cheek. “Yeah?”
“You know, I’d do a lot better if you paired me up with one of the girls.”