Pulse

by Patrick Carman

  Wade shook his head and looked thoughtfully at the hammer where it lay lifeless in the grass.

  “She is good with that hammer. No denying it.”

  When a Tablet split apart into so many pieces, it couldn’t fix itself. Hawk’s Tablet was gone for good.

  “You’re the biggest a-hole in the universe,” Hawk said. He started to leave, but as he passed by, Wade grabbed him by the collar and held him firmly.

  “Next time it won’t be the Tablet. It’ll be your face. I’m done with your Wire Codes. Some kind of bad mojo you’re brewing up. Let’s call it even and leave it at that. Tell me we have a deal.”

  Hawk was so mad he was shaking. He wished he were a bigger guy so he could wrestle Wade Quinn to the ground and punch him a million times. He vowed to have his revenge but nodded his ascent. If Wade Quinn would have been smart, he would have taken Hawk more seriously, because people piss off geeks at their own peril. They know a thousand ways to ruin a life, and they have plenty of pent-up nerd frustration just waiting for a reason to get out.

  Hawk pulled himself free and yelled, “When are you going to grow up, man?”

  “Yeah, when are you?” Hawk heard Faith’s voice as she approached the field. All he could think about was how much he wished she would leave it alone. He knew her well enough to know that wasn’t going to happen, but he tried to shut her up anyway.

  “It’s fine, Faith. Just let it go.”

  Faith looked at Hawk as if to say This isn’t about you. It’s between me and him.

  Wade’s sister was walking up the middle of the football field. The scene was complicated enough, and he wished she’d just stay where she was. But then Dylan Gilmore appeared from the gym doors looking protective, and Wade started to feel outnumbered.

  “Answer him, Wade,” Faith said. She shoved him in the chest with both hands, but Wade barely moved. “When are you going to grow up?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Wade said.

  “Sure you do. You gave me a Wire Code. What else did you do to me that I can’t remember?”

  “It’s not what you think,” Wade said. “It’s complicated.” He wanted to explain what had really happened, but how could he tell her he’d wiped her memory because he’d killed ten Drifters—not because he’d taken advantage of her? So instead he turned the focus away from himself and onto Hawk. “He’s the one you want to talk to. He makes the stuff. And he told me it was a really low-level set of codes—nothing big, just a fun time.”

  “You’re lying,” Faith said, but then she looked at Hawk and she just knew. “You didn’t,” Faith said, stunned and confused and angry.

  “I’m sorry, Faith,” Wade said. “But nothing happened. We only kissed, that’s it. Seriously. When I figured out it was strong stuff, I took you home. I swear.”

  Hawk was speechless. He had no words to convey his immense frustration and shame. It was true; he had made the stuff, but only because Wade had forced him to. His Tablet was destroyed, and it would be days before the Western State would send a replacement. And Faith, the only friend he had left in the entire world, was looking at him like he’d ruined her life. As Dylan Gilmore arrived from one side and Clara from the other, Hawk started running. He had to, because he knew it was only a matter of seconds before he started crying, and that was an embarrassment he wasn’t willing to risk.

  Dylan arrived next to Faith at about the same time Clara arrived next to her brother. The four of them stood motionless—two on one side, two on the other—and stared at one another.

  “Everything okay?” Dylan finally asked no one in particular.

  “Everything’s fine, right, Faith?” Wade asked, reaching a hand out toward her. She backed off but stopped short of leaving altogether. Dylan saw the smashed Tablet and raised a dark eyebrow.

  “I’m guessing that’s Hawk’s Tablet. Looks like it got hit with a hammer. Literally.”

  Clara started laughing, but when she saw that Dylan responded with curious indifference, she swallowed hard and backed off. “Don’t look at me. I don’t even know that kid. It’s him you want.” Clara hooked a thumb at her brother and walked over to pick up the ball and chain.

  “I’m doing this school a favor,” Wade said, playing a risky hand but feeling like he was all in whether he liked it or not. “He’s making Wire Codes, bad ones. I just put him out of business.”

  Dylan shrugged like it didn’t mean much, then lowered the boom.

  “I guess you’ll have to find another dealer then, won’t you? Too bad. I understand he was giving you what you wanted for next to nothing.”

  Faith shot a glance at both guys and put up her hands. “I’ve had it with this place. You people are crazy.”

  She started to leave, then turned and came back, standing in front of Wade. She looked up at him, and for a brief but fabulous moment, Wade thought she was going to forgive him. Then she slapped him, and the ringing in his ears sounded like a siren call.

  “Don’t you ever trick me like that again. And leave Hawk alone. He’s just a kid.”

  She turned to leave but found herself face-to-face with Dylan, which forced her to look into his eyes for a split second. They were dark, deep, and worrisome, like he thought she might have gone too far. Faith was sick of everyone at Old Park Hill, and as she stomped away, she made sure everyone knew it. “And tell your sister she’s a bitch!”

  “I’m standing right here,” Clara said. She was holding the ball and chain like she might swing it over her head a few times and aim for the back of Faith’s head.

  Dylan followed Faith off the football field as Clara stood next to her brother and handed him the hammer.

  “Your turn to throw,” she said, looking at Dylan like she wanted to reach out, take his hand, and pull him away from Faith. All she could think about was how it would feel to have Dylan look at her that way, like he wanted her. There was something about his dark eyes and that solid frame that made her think the unimaginable: Would he ever be into someone like Clara as much as he obviously cared for Faith? But it didn’t change the way she felt: there was something about Dylan Gilmore that felt powerful—and she wanted it.

  Faith wasn’t just distracting Wade from the important work he needed to do. She was also standing between Clara and Dylan. And that, Clara began to realize, was unacceptable.

  At one time, years before he’d met Faith and Liz, Hawk had been a sneaky little kid. By the third grade he’d fashioned himself a persona that allowed him to drift through school without being noticed. He’d gotten into the habit of finding discarded Tablets—all too common with eight-year-olds hell-bent on playing tag on the playground. Grade school kids don’t keep a lot of interesting, private information on their Tablets, but it had been a thrill all the same to find some nugget of information he could use when he needed it.

  Hawk was always the smallest guy in the room, and for the most part it hadn’t bothered him at all. It seemed to him that the other small boys in grade school were trying too hard in order to make up for their size. They were all clowns or live wires, full of aggressive energy, their voices stuck at an annoyingly high volume. It wasn’t in Hawk’s nature to be obnoxious or hold center stage. He didn’t talk much; but when he did, his comments were wry and cutting, the stuff of legend. No one wanted to be on the receiving end of a well-crafted Hawk comeback, so very few kids scuffled with him verbally back then. It was how he’d gotten his nickname. Hawks were quiet watchers; but when they were ready, they moved with purpose and struck with deadly force. It helped that Hawk seemed to know secret things about almost everyone, in part because he had big ears and listened to every conversation, but also because he’d been inside most of their Tablets at one time or another.

  Unfortunately for Hawk, he’d lost every ounce of his early confidence in the sixth grade, and it had never returned. Grade school was so simple: stay quiet, provide a biting remark when required, sneak around as much as possible. But middle school had been like a wrecking b
all on his quiet personality. He’d tried a cutting remark only once and chosen badly, finding himself with a bloody nose at the hands of a large, mean, popular kid. The incident had put a black mark of humiliation on Hawk that dogged him all the way to Old Park Hill. His quiet charm turned reclusive and weird. Other kids kept their distance and mocked him when he tried to fit in. One might say he was driven underground, deeper into himself, where he spent endless hours hacking into his Tablet. By the time he met Faith Daniels at Old Park Hill, Hawk was one of the few people in the outside world who had cracked the Tablet code. It was a dangerous thing to have done, he knew, because it gave him access to things he wasn’t supposed to see. He hadn’t told anyone, for who would he tell? His parents were as isolated as he was, content with their books and their writing. For them, the outside was a quiet place to be left alone for as long as the world would allow them the peace and quiet.

  Hawk always liked the reason for his nickname: that he could strike at any moment, and the victim wouldn’t see it coming. Though, to be fair, he hadn’t struck anyone with deadly force in his entire life. He thought about it a lot, because he had long ago acquired the skills to inflict a lot of misery on his enemies, and he often reveled in these thoughts for longer than was useful. A little fantasizing about watching your tormentor suffer was fine, but that sort of thinking can get to be a problem if it becomes a habit. Hawk had thought of a thousand ways to ruin Wade Quinn’s life since arriving at Old Park Hill. They’d both been there longer than Faith or Liz, and somehow they’d fallen into each other’s orbit. Wade had gotten a taste for Wire Codes at his old school, and he knew from experience that it would be the really smart, socially awkward kid who would have the skill to get it done.

  “Never made one,” Hawk had said the first time Wade asked him to make a Wire Code, which wasn’t exactly true. As a Tablet hacker of some renown, he’d played around with Wire Codes purely to see if he could make them. They were a witch’s brew of crazy codes and hidden sites; and while no two of them were exactly alike, they all shared the same foundational coding designed to set the mind on fire.

  “I tell you what,” Wade had said as he stared down at Hawk during their first encounter. “Give it a shot. I’ll pay twenty Coin just to see what you come up with.”

  Wade Quinn was the biggest badass Hawk had ever encountered in his life, and he could tell from experience that he was an alpha male of the highest order. This was the kind of guy who could literally destroy a kid like Hawk, but Wade was also that rare beast who could carry a kid like Hawk up the social ladder. Associating with the likes of Wade Quinn, especially in the form of something that instantly created dirt on the guy, had a certain appeal.

  “No promises, but I can try,” Hawk had said. “Give me a couple of weeks.”

  “Let’s say tomorrow instead,” Wade replied.

  By this time Hawk’s awkward nervousness had taken full bloom, and he yammered on for another few seconds before Wade walked away without so much as a good-bye. By 4 a.m. that same night, Hawk had created his first functioning Wire Code, a real junker; but he was able to deliver it the next day.

  “Be careful with that thing,” Hawk had said, only half joking. “It’s radioactive. I really have no idea what it will do to your brain.”

  Wade had tapped out the transaction for twenty Coin on his Tablet, transferring the funds to one of Hawk’s many untraceable accounts, and Hawk slipped the Wire Code necklace into Wade’s hand. The deed was done. Hawk, the geeky quiet kid, was officially a drug dealer.

  Standing outside of Faith’s window at midnight wasn’t something Hawk had planned to do; but there was something he had to show her, and it couldn’t wait any longer. A week had passed since the incident on the football field, and he’d reverted back to his quietness, not talking to anyone at school and avoiding eye contact with the people he knew. It was an unusually cool night as he looked into Faith’s window, trying to decide how to wake her. He wasn’t fully aware that Faith’s parents weren’t in the picture, so as far as he was concerned, ringing the doorbell wasn’t an option. He was thinking of tapping on the glass when she began to stir.

  He watched her roll over and pull the thin covers up to her chin, curling into a tight ball in her sleep. Then the door to her closet began to open slowly, and he ducked low against the windowpane. At first he thought there might be a dog or a cat in the house, or worse, a coyote, which had been known to roam the valley. But how would a coyote get into Faith’s closet? She’d never said anything about having a pet, either.

  Hawk peered over the sill of the window, cupping his hands to his eyes for a better view through the shiny glass. What he saw made no sense, and he began to wonder if he was tired enough to be seeing things that weren’t there. It was true he hadn’t slept very much in the past few days, but he’d never hallucinated before.

  A folded blanket was hovering a few feet over Faith’s bed, and as Hawk watched, it began to unfold. A few seconds later the blanket was all the way flat, hanging in the air like a big magic carpet.

  Hawk couldn’t help himself from banging on the glass, because he cared for Faith and he somehow imagined the blanket was about to smother her. He watched as Faith stirred awake and rolled over onto her back. As she did, the blanket fell, landing softly over her entire body before she opened her eyes and looked around like someone might be in the room with her.

  Hawk tapped on the glass once more and waved moronically, hoping Faith wouldn’t chase him off by yelling for her parents.

  “It’s just me. It’s Hawk. Nothing to worry about.”

  Faith breathed a sigh of relief and then seemed to wonder how the blanket had gotten onto her bed. She went to the window and unlocked it, pushing it upward only a few inches and crouching down to talk.

  “What are you doing here? It’s after midnight. In case it wasn’t obvious, I was asleep.”

  “No, I get it, I do,” Hawk said, nervously shivering in the cold. “This can’t wait. It’s a timing thing, honestly. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have to.”

  “You’re acting weird.”

  “I know, totally normal, back to my old self. Can you let me in? It’ll only take a second.”

  Faith looked back at her bed like she were still dreaming, rubbed her eyes, then peered back out the window.

  “Did you put that blanket on my bed?” she asked.

  “I’m out here, remember?”

  Faith looked dubious, but she raised her eyebrows and shrugged it off, pushing the window up high enough for Hawk to crawl through.

  “You know, I do have a front door. For future reference.”

  “Didn’t want to wake up your parents,” Hawk said as he climbed through the opening and caught his tennis shoe on the edge, falling onto the carpeted floor. “Always liked carpet, much more forgiving than hardwood. Love the stuff.”

  “Uh-huh,” Faith mumbled, shutting the window and crawling back under the covers before Hawk could say anything else. He stood in the dim light of her room rubbing the cold from his bare arms.

  “No, you can’t get in,” Faith said.

  Hawk looked like he was about to cry.

  “If it’s that big a deal, fine,” Faith said. “Just stay on your own side.”

  Hawk shook his head back and forth like she’d misunderstood.

  “I’m sorry, Faith. I blew it. I didn’t think you were going to take those Wire Codes. They were for Wade.”

  “Uh-huh,” Faith said, not sure how she was supposed to respond. She was tired, and she felt betrayed by one of the only friends she had in the world. What she really wanted at that moment was to fall asleep and forget about Wade, Hawk, Dylan—all of them.

  “I need to tell you how it happens,” Hawk said. “He doesn’t ask me to make them. He tells me to. Try being my size with a guy like that telling you what to do. It’s not easy saying no.”

  Faith’s heart softened as she looked at Hawk. He looked so young and vulnerable. She was starting to feel like maybe sh
e was being a little too hard on him. She still didn’t know if she could trust him, but she was willing to listen. The truth was, she felt lonely, and Hawk was very chatty. He’d do most of the talking anyway.

  “Come on, get in,” she said, pushing down the covers on one side of the bed and patting the sheet like she were trying to coax in a puppy.

  Hawk leaped onto the mattress so fast it startled Faith fully awake. He didn’t even remove his shoes, which she thought was gross and dumb; but he had the covers over his legs before she could say anything.

  “Cold out there. Way better in here. Thanks for the invite.”

  Faith was pretty sure she’d just made a mistake. How long was this going to take?

  “So you’re not a notorious drug dealer then?” Faith said.

  “No way, not that. Not even close. I’m very limited release, superexclusive. Only rich a-holes need apply.”

  “Right.”

  Faith ran her hands along the soft surface of the blanket.

  “How did this thing get here? You sure you didn’t do it?”

  Hawk was nervous about how to answer, because obviously Faith didn’t know her room was haunted. What else could have caused a blanket to drift over a bed like that and unfold? Was there any chance he had imagined it himself? His stress level had been off the charts lately, and it was dark in the room. Maybe he was losing his marbles.

  “Probably the Wire Codes,” Hawk lied. “Sometimes you forget little things for weeks after. You probably put it on and just don’t remember.”

  “I guess. You know what the strange part is though? I was thinking about how cold I was, not really dreaming it, just wishing I had another blanket. And then I woke up, and there it was. Weird, right?”

  Hawk shrugged like he had no idea what she was talking about.

  “You know, if you want, I could probably sleep here for the rest of the night. My parents don’t even know I’m out.”