Burning Midnight

by Will McIntosh

  Before Sully could turn too red, Hunter smiled and said, “Don’t look at me. I’m all business, no pleasure.” She held out a sphere: Rose (ability to hold your breath for a long time). “Nothing like the Forest Green this time, but I take what I can find.” On the rarity chart it was a two, but scarce, as twos went. Sully could get about a hundred seventy-five for it.

  Samantha slipped away, saying she’d let them get down to business.

  “I’ll skip the part where we haggle, if that’s okay with you,” Sully said.

  “That’s fine with me. I’m all about minimizing the bullshit in my life.”

  “One twenty?”

  She pointed at him. “You read my mind.”

  Sully dropped a hundred-dollar bill onto the table, added a twenty from his wallet. “Is this typical for you, finding two marbles in a couple of weeks?”

  “I average two or three a month. Course, three years ago, I was averaging five.”

  Sully nodded. “They’re really drying up.”

  Hunter swept the bills off the table. It was hard to believe she was seventeen. There was an awkwardness in kids their age, as if they wanted to look and act like adults but couldn’t quite pull it off. That awkwardness was completely absent in Hunter.

  “They’re drying up faster in the city,” Hunter said. “More people in less space.”

  “You live in the city?”

  Hunter nodded. “The Bronx. Webster Avenue.” That was a rough neighborhood, a twenty-minute train ride from the flea market, plus a hike from the station to Webster Avenue. “I wish I could hunt past the suburbs. Much less competition out there.”

  Sully shrugged. “Why don’t you?”

  She waved her hand. “It costs thirty-five dollars to take the train there and back. I can’t clear enough to make that work.”

  Wheels began to turn in Sully’s head. This girl clearly knew how to find spheres. “I could give you a ride out once in a while.”

  Hunter gave him a big smile. “It’s good of you to offer, but what are you going to do out in Stony Point or wherever while I’m off hunting for ten hours?”

  Sully shrugged. “I could go with you. I’ve always wanted to do some hunting.”

  Laughing, Hunter folded her arms. “You’ve always wanted to do some hunting? You mean, besides the time you found the Cherry Red?”

  Sully felt that old familiar sting. He never knew if he was going to feel proud or embarrassed when the Cherry Red came up. “That was a fluke. I was hunting carp when I found it.”

  “Carp.”

  “You know, big fish that taste bad?”

  “Yeah, I know what carp are.” Hunter studied him, her gaze making him uncomfortable, like he was on a job interview. “I guess we could try it, see how it goes.” She raised a finger. “But I get sixty percent of whatever we find, and you pay for gas out of your end.”

  Sully raised his eyebrows. “How do you figure?”

  Hunter unzipped a side pocket on her pack, pulled out a spiral-bound notebook. She turned it toward Sully, riffled through a few dozen pages. Lists, crude maps, and blocks of neat writing flew by.

  “I’ve been doing this for five years, recording the details of every find, watching the news for details about big scores. You get the benefit of all that experience.” Hunter gave him a subtle one-shouldered shrug. “I should be charging you instead of giving you a cut.”

  Sully thought of the Forest Green, the sphere she’d brought today. If she was right about having better luck in the suburbs, it could be lucrative, and he sure needed cash. The notebook was nothing compared with the database Alex Holliday had compiled—he claimed to have information on every one of the millions of spheres his hunters had discovered over the past nine years. But no one outside his organization had access to that information, so Hunter’s notebook was about as good as it got for amateurs.

  Sully stuck out his hand. “Okay. Sixty-forty.” Something about this girl told him she was the type who could make a big hit, given the chance. She was…dynamic. That was the best way he could describe it. The direct, no-bullshit way she spoke; the fierce look in her eyes, like no one was going to stop her, and she’d tear apart anyone who tried.

  “How about this Wednesday?” Sully said.

  Hunter raised her eyebrows. “Your school have a special holiday or something?”

  “They won’t miss me for one day.” He shrugged. “What can I say? I want to get out there.” He needed the money way more than he needed algebra and biology.

  She nodded. “Works for me.” She didn’t seem particularly concerned about school either.

  CHAPTER 4

  Sully took a break from wading through a book on the California gold rush and glanced around the library. He and Dom had chosen a desk by tall windows that looked out onto the parking lot.

  Taking in the view, he tried to identify places where spheres might be hidden as practice for tomorrow. He couldn’t wait to go hunting.

  He was also curious about Hunter. He had considered stalking her on Facebook, but decided she wasn’t the type to have a Facebook account.

  He pulled out his phone, opened the Facebook app. What the hell, it didn’t hurt to try.

  His search returned three Hunters in the New York metro area. Hunter number one, from Queens, was a guy who’d taken a selfie with his French bulldog. The second, from Scarsdale, didn’t have a picture—just a shot of a latte in a coffee shop. The third Hunter, the only one from the Bronx, was also a guy.

  Sully wasn’t surprised, but he was disappointed. He wanted to know more about her—who her friends were, what music she listened to, what she thought was worth sharing with the world.

  Taking a deep breath, he turned back to his book.

  “How do you make yourself give a shit about everything so intensely?”

  Sully looked up at Dom. “What do you mean?”

  Dom gestured toward the book. “I mean, you’re working on that history paper like it’s the freaking Magna Carta. This weekend you’ll bust your ass at the flea market.” He shrugged. “My grades are just about underwater, but I can’t make myself care. I just want to have a good workout and meet girls.”

  “You care about things. They’re just different things from me.”

  “Yeah. I care deeply about losing my virginity. But who doesn’t?” Dom made a face. “Look at that douche bag.”

  Sully followed Dom’s gaze. A guy Sully didn’t know—probably a junior or senior—was sitting at a table near the checkout desk, speed-reading a book. He’d scan the page on the left for two seconds, then the page on the right, then turn the page using his palm so it made as much noise as possible. He had a handful of brag buttons on his shoulder. Besides Burnt Orange (speed-reading), he had Periwinkle (good with numbers), Indigo (enhanced eyesight), Violet (verbal acuity), and Hot Pink (adrenaline rush—handy when you had to pull an all-nighter). He didn’t have the ultra-rare, million-dollar college helpers—Canary Yellow (perfect memory) and Mustard (high IQ). The guy had everything else, though. A pair of Periwinkles alone would have cost his parents over a hundred thousand. He’d probably been there cheering Alex Holliday last Saturday night.

  “He can’t just enjoy all those advantages his daddy bought him. He’s got to show off,” Dom said. “I can’t stand people like that.”

  “I know.”

  Sully hated kids who could afford to burn spheres. Although hating them made him kind of a hypocrite, because if he had the money, he’d burn some too. The speed-reader must be a moron, though, if he was at Yonkers High. Most of the kids loaded up as well as him were at the Masten Academy for the Gifted.

  Of course, they could all be fake. Bootlegged brag buttons were a hell of a lot cheaper than spheres, and anyone could flip through pages and pretend they were speed-reading.

  Dom closed his notebook, grabbed the books he was checking out for an English assignment. “You ready? I could use a Sprite or something.”

  Sully stowed his stuff in his backpack,
then followed Dom to the checkout desk.

  “You talk to Mandy since last Saturday?” Dom asked, keeping his voice low. Dom handed his books across the counter to the librarian. He pulled out his library card and handed it to her as well.

  “Nope. We should invite her to hang out.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “There you go, Mr. Cucuzza.” Ms. Yonke, the librarian, handed Dom his books.

  “Cucuzza,” a voice behind them said, laughing.

  Dom turned. Sully stepped out of the way as his friend, mouth tight, nostrils flared, stalked over to the speed-reader.

  “You got a problem with my name?” Dom asked.

  The speed-reader was a big guy with smooth red cheeks.

  “I just…,” he said, his voice a little tight. Chances were, the guy couldn’t resist showing off his enhanced hearing, given the chance. Only he hadn’t thought about how Dom might react.

  “You just what? You just can’t help being a douche bag?”

  The speed-reader’s red cheeks went crimson. He looked Dom up and down, sizing him up. The guy had maybe thirty pounds and four inches on Dom, but it was easy to see from Dom’s bull neck, the way his shoulders filled out his brown leather jacket, that Dom wasn’t someone you wanted to mess with.

  The guy swallowed. “I was just saying your name.”

  Dom glared at him a heartbeat longer, then turned to Sully. “Let’s go.”

  They headed back to study hall.

  Sully would never forget that day in sixth grade when Haley Hinton told Dom his uncle was on CNN, then showed him on her phone. It was ironic, that Anthony Cucuzza was more infamous for walking into the Met and destroying hundreds of priceless works of art with an AK-47 than some people were for shooting living, breathing people.

  The week before, Dom’s aunt Terry had left Tony for a guy she’d met where she worked, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Uncle Tony got back at her by destroying the things she loved most in the world.

  “What a tool,” Sully said as they walked.

  “I hope my uncle’s miserable in prison. I hope the food is rancid and his cell mate is an art-loving skinhead.”

  It was a weird bond they shared, being known for something. At least Sully was known for something he’d done. Dom had to live with a last name that was a verb through no fault of his own.

  CHAPTER 5

  “How come you always wear gloves?” Sully asked. They’d been driving up the Palisades Parkway in silence for the past ten minutes.

  Hunter turned her head, gave him a badass glare.

  “I’m not saying I don’t like them. They look good on you. I’m just curious why you wear them, even in the car with the heat on.”

  Hunter licked her upper lip, closed her eyes for a second, like she was trying to muster patience. “I don’t know, my hands are cold all the time. My blood must be thin.”

  “I have a cousin who has poor circulation in her fingers and toes—”

  “Take this exit.” Hunter pointed at the sign for Exit 19: Bear Mountain State Park.

  “Bear Mountain?” Sully asked, trying to picture where they’d hunt there.

  Hunter smiled. “Sure looks that way, doesn’t it?”

  He’d been to Bear Mountain a couple of times as a kid. There was a little zoo, a big lodge, and a mountain. Not many good places to hunt. Sully put on his blinker, got in the right lane.

  On the ride he’d learned Hunter’s parents were dead, that she “mostly” lived in an apartment with “a bunch” of roommates. He wanted to ask what her life was like, but she didn’t seem eager to talk about life in the Bronx. Mostly she wanted to talk about spheres. That was fine with Sully.

  “You ever burn any?” Sully asked.

  “Me? Nah. One day when I can afford it, there are a few I want. How about you?”

  Sully pulled into the drive that led to the Bear Mountain parking lot. “Same story. Can’t afford it. So how’d you find your way to a flea market all the way out in Yonkers, anyway?”

  “Found you on the Internet, thought I’d see if you paid fair prices. There aren’t many independent dealers left in the city, and Holliday’s and the other superstores rip you off, so I’m always on the lookout.”

  As soon as Sully put the car in park, Hunter jumped out. Sully followed as she turned away from the lodge and zoo, and headed toward the mountain.

  “We’re going hunting in the woods?” If there was one thing everyone knew about finding spheres, it was that not many were hidden in nature. Once in a while someone found one wedged in a tree or stuffed in an old gopher hole on the prairie, but most were hidden in and around man-made structures.

  Hunter’s eyes were bright with excitement. She was walking so fast that Sully strained to keep up with her. “Yes and no. We’re going to Doodletown.”

  “Doodletown?” He’d never heard of Doodletown. It sounded like a joke. A made-up place.

  Hunter pulled a folded page from her back pocket and handed it to Sully. “Once upon a time there was a little town called Doodletown, about three miles from here. Seventy houses, a school, a church. Two stores. The last residents left in 1965, and it became a ghost town. Ten years after that, the buildings were bulldozed. All that’s left are a dozen foundations, a few walls, and two graveyards.”

  Sully scanned the Wikipedia entry Hunter had printed out, his smile growing bigger as he read.

  “When you’re picking sites, you have to keep in mind, you don’t know what’s already been searched. You could break into an abandoned factory in the city, and it looks like the best place in the world to find marbles, but ten people have already gone through it with a fine-tooth comb. This late in the game, the key is coming up with places other pros wouldn’t think to look.”

  “You really thought this out.”

  Hunter looked at him. “It’s all I think about.” They reached the sidewalk that ran along the base of Bear Mountain, and paused. “One day I’m going to make a big score. Maybe not a Cherry Red like you, but big. Chocolate. Mustard. Olive…”

  Sully nodded. Those were million-dollar marbles. He watched Hunter’s face as she gazed toward the summit, her dark eyes blazing. She saw him looking. He looked away, at the mountain.

  Through the trees he scanned the snow-covered boulders that filled the lower half of the climb. He used to get a kick out of climbing around on those rocks as a kid.

  “Six miles, round-trip. I hope you’re in shape.” Hunter hopped onto a rock, sprang across a little gap to the next. Sully followed. He’d keep up if it killed him.

  —

  The narrow trail they’d been hiking opened onto a wider road heading uphill. Trying not to let on how out of breath he was, Sully fell into step beside Hunter.

  “You in any particular camp about what they are?” he asked.

  Hunter shook her head. “I like it that no one knows. Whatever you want to believe—that they’re proof God exists, that they’re from another dimension, that aliens left them—no one can tell you you’re wrong. You can’t laugh at someone else’s ideas if yours are just as crazy. And they’re all crazy. How can they not be?”

  Sully couldn’t argue with that.

  The weirdest part to him was that they were hidden. If they’d all just appeared at random one day, that would be one thing, but they’d appeared in hiding places. That was one of the arguments the God camp used. The spheres were hidden, and that meant an intelligence was behind it, and that meant God. Or Satan.

  A steel sign on a tree announced that they were entering Doodletown. To their right, a concrete walk ran up a hill, leading nowhere. A few hundred yards farther along they came to a three-sided stone wall surrounding nothing but snow and weeds. It looked to be a building foundation.

  Hunter consulted the map she’d printed out and pushed past the foundation, toward the trees beyond. “Let’s start at the farthest point and work our way back.”

  At first Sully just watched Hunter work, and she didn’t questio
n this. He wanted to pull his weight, and before he could do that he needed to see how she approached the job.

  Hunter worked methodically. Her first target was a low stone wall overgrown with vines and brambles. Squatting, crawling, sometimes snaking along on her belly, Hunter worked the crevices, especially down low. She checked for loose stones, and when she found one she pulled it out, checked the crevice, then replaced the stone. After finishing the wall she went to work on what the map identified as the second schoolhouse, starting at one corner of the stone foundation.

  Sully watched a little longer, then joined her, moving in the opposite direction around the low stone foundation.

  He was grateful it was the middle of winter, otherwise they’d be taking their lives into their hands jamming their fingers into crevices. Timber rattlers and copperheads would be all over these woods in the summer.

  “Hey!” Hunter called. She held up an Army Green (resistance to the common cold, rarity one) for Sully to see before stashing it in her backpack. “At least now we know this place hasn’t been picked over by a pro.” Sully’s cut of the sixty dollars they’d probably get for it would cover gas.

  After a couple of hours of hunting, Sully’s toes were numb. He and Hunter went from headstone to headstone in the cemetery, running their fingers along the base, seeking chipmunk holes. Some of the headstones were from the late 1700s. None were hiding spheres.

  Hunter jotted notations on the map, plumes of condensation wafting from her mouth. “Let’s take a look at this mine.” She spun, headed into the woods to the left. She was always looking around, scanning the ground by her feet, the low branches of trees. Always hunting.

  Sully had pictured the mine as a cave that ran horizontally in the side of a hill, but it was nothing but a hole going straight into the ground, roped off so no one would accidentally stumble into it.

  Hunter pulled a coiled length of blue and black cord out of her pack and tied one end to a nearby tree.

  “You’re going down there?” Sully asked, peering into the hole.